Campaign Setting: Icehold (Adventure Seeds)

Icehold is a system-agnostic fantasy campaign setting built around a settlement sitting at 78 degrees north on an Earth-like planet. You can find the introduction and index for the Icehold Campaign Setting here.

These are short seeds of adventures to give a GM some idea what could be done with the setting.

(Art by Andrus Ciprian)

Adventure Seeds

*It’s April 18th, and the sun has risen for the long Trade Summer. But the harbor is still hard frozen, there’s no sign of open water in the ocean for as far as the eye can see. The mountain routes remain entirely impassable.

Of course, the routes to Icehold don’t open on a tight schedule so no one worries… at first. But when May arrives, and there’s still no sign of even the slightest thaw? Jokullnaf citizens begin to measure the food left in their larders, and notice that the ice fishing hauls are getting smaller and smaller. Not only is the ocean not thawing, the ice fishers say their drill-holes are now deeper than ever, and the ice continues to thicken…

Food grows short. Hunting is dangerous under the best of circumstances. And if the PCs expected to be able to leave during the summer, they need to find a safe place to operate out of, possibly for a year or more. And safe needs to consider the chance of riots within Jokullnaf, raids from minor enclaves, and the risk of undead or other creatures from the colder deep north taking advantage of Icehold’s weakening position.

(This idea was the spark that caused me to create Icehold, and can be used as a jumping-off point that then incorporates one or more of the adventure hooks below.)

*As the long night of winter sets in, a massive fleet of Njor raiders going wolfing arrives. They haul their ships up on shore miles from Jokullnaf, and turn them into permanent buildings. These Njor paint skulls on their faces, and carry torches made of freezing blue light. Are they here to raid Jokullnaf for riches, beginning their own settlement, or is there a darker purpose to their arrival?

*Though rare, white ice dragons from the boreal north, and even red ice dragons from nearby mountain volcanos are known threats. But scouts are now reporting what appears to be a group of sickly gray dragons, who kill plants with their very presence and are surrounded by a poisonous fog that travels with them. One nearby enclave is already destroyed, and the scouts report the gray dragons are moving closer and closer with each day.

*In the depth of the long Winter Night, a bright green star appears, shining more brightly than even a full moon. To the far west, one of the volcanoes has gone from a dull red glow to the same hue of green. And when old man Gurthor died last week, he stood up and began trying to eat people, his eyes glowing with the same green. Has some ancient undead lord risen in a volcano lair? Is the green star a harbinger of destruction? Is everyone who dies now going to become an undead?

*A PC buys an expensive item in Jokullnaf, and is told doing so makes them officially a merchant. When the Councilor in the Merchant Seat of the Council of Principals is murdered, the PC is randomly selected to take the seat, and told they can’t leave until the murder is solved.

*A firestone mine has begun to burn uncontrollably, and miners are trapped beyond the flame. Their families offer the PCs a large payday if they can put out the mine’s fames, or save the trapped miners.

*Scouts and hunters claim yeti are becoming increasingly aggressive, and a minor enclave is wiped out with signs of claw marks on the bodies and walls. A new craftsman-merchant with the cheapest prices on blue iron gear begins a campaign for Jokullnaf to wage war with the closest yeti clans.

But while going about their normal adventuring, the PCs find a cave with a pile of burned bones, and partially-burned yeti bodies. Weirdly, all the yeti are missing their hands and have been skinned, and there’s signs of a camp sitting here for several days, and scraps of leatherworking and woodcraft work refuse.

In truth, the new craftsman-merchant has discovered blue iron in the waters near a yeti settlement, and has killed some young yeti to make fake yeti-claws and cloaks for brigands he is paying to pretend to be yetis to attack local enclaves. The yeti are preparing to make an actual attack in response to their young being killed, and if the Pcs are going to stop a bloody and pointless conflict, they need to find a way to communicate with the yeti and prove the craftsman-merchant guilty, and satisfy the yeti’s quite reasonable demands for juistice.

*When the long Trade Summer begins, the Silken Hearth guild house of courtesans receives word its owner died over the winter, and the guild is disbanded. Only three courtesans stayed at the Silken hearth to maintain the building, and now they have no patron, no funds, and no guild workers coming to keep the doors open. If they don’t find a way to turn a profit, they’ll lose the building and end up working in menial jobs. But, if someone wanted to turn their building into the headquarters for an adventuring guild…

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