I'm hoping people are still interested in this RP. Especially Billy himself, since a lot is riding on finding out what the Sacred Gem actually does, how its role is incorporated into the storyline, and I feel doing anything with it without his okay on it may break and ruin any kind of interesting plan he had for it. It does sound like he has something interesting in store for when people actually come across it, but it's just getting to this point that seems to be a struggle.
I think we need a means to get people split up, at least for a little bit. Having an entire group of people travel together tends to really bog things down. Either that, or we need to have this game-changing event happen right now, as in making this event take place in the next post (I can understand if finding the Sacred Gem in the tundra was meant to be a challenge, but I don't think stalling any longer to hit a vital turning point is going to help). Things are slowing down too much and I'm already seeing people that were in this RP and claimed they would post soon are now signing up for other RPs. That's a surefire signal that lack of free time isn't the issue here, the fact they've lost interest is.
Anyway, I think we need to ultimately decide what we want to do and what happens. As much as I'd like Hawke to actually find the Sacred Gem and discover something cool or fascinating about it, I don't want to ruin Billy's plans. However, that kind of puts me in limbo at the moment, since while I can have Hawke adventuring through the tundra, it's meaningless if I can't ever make anything come out of it with regards to the Gem. And for him to never find it and then just go home empty-handed pretty much ends his story.