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Hey, all. So I had the idea recently of doing a Reign of Winter set in the Demiplane of Dread, Ravenloft. My players really love the idea, and I'm pretty interested in pursuing it.
Here's what I have so far:
Baba Yaga is an ex-darklord who managed to devise an artifact that can circumvent the Dark Powers themselves. This artifact is, of course, her famous hut. The hut can do the unthinkable: Travel between any domain, even a closed one. More importantly to her, the hut allowed her to truly break free of her own prison. This makes her the only darklord to truly succeed at the task many destroy themselves pursuing, though she doesn't seem terribly interested in actually leaving the Demiplane itself. Instead, she simply wanders from Domain to Domain, snatching up prey and generally doing whatever she pleases: Even without the power of a darklord, Baba Yaga is a mage of near godlike power, and nobody is exactly willing to challenge her. But her freedom comes at a price. There must always be a successor.
And so many hundreds of years ago, the callous witch chose one of her own daughters to be the first, and swore then:
'By my old sins, to be ne'er forgiven,
By the vast Mists that these realms e'er riven,
Every hundred falls
I will pass on this call
Or I'll take a cell far smaller than that that's been given.'
She did this because she knew that the burdens of being darklord would quickly wear her lesser daughters away into mindless wickedness. Cruel as Baba Yaga was, she did not intend to allow the powers she had worked so hard to hone to fall into the hands of an average corrupt darklord. She knew that the selfish tinkering she had done could be exploited to potentially affect even domains outside her own, especially since her daughters were being trapped in a hell for Baby Yaga, not themselves. By regularly "switching up" the rulers, she expected the damage could be safely minimized.
That was quite a few hundred years ago, and Baba Yaga sorely resents her honorable oath. Still, one's word must be kept in the Demiplane of Dread. And now it is time once again for her to remove the current darklord and install the next. But this time, something is different. Something is very, very wrong in the domain of Irrisen.
Some more general ideas I have:
1. It is ambiguous whether Baba Yaga actually broke free of the Dark Powers' influence, was simply allowed to think she had, or has actually become a willing agent of their will in exchange for a new, looser set of shackles.
2. It sucks to be a darklord. Elvanna in this story (and the original, really) is very much a classically tragic character: Someone who has turned to truly evil methods to both seek revenge and survive. She doesn't want to remain a darklord, nor does she want to conquer the world. She just wants to damage the Demiplane of Dread. When Elvanna was very young, she learned that the best way to make others stop hurting you is to hurt them until they let go.
Elvanna intends to escape the Demiplane by doing just that. She's upset that doing so means destroying so many other lives, but like any other tragic villain, she's clearly not upset enough to not do it. She makes her excuses and makes her preparations. The tragic nature of Elvanna's crime means that, if she is to be slain by the PCs, she might actually be reborn within a domain of her own.
3. The areas of Triaxus, Iobaria and Russia are actually separate domains. Rasputin's territory should be easy, of course—he's the darklord of a portion of Russia, placed there after his "death" in punishment for some unknown but horrendous crimes. The other two are trickier, especially Triaxus. How to convert an alien planet (or a part of an alien planet) to a gothic horror setting?
Thoughts?
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And only half-related, but does anybody have any ideas on how to make the vistani a little less, uh, you know, racist? I get the idea of having a race that's basically how medieval Europeans saw the Romani peoples, but it's also kind of uncomfortable to have these pseudo-human-but-still-very-much-"other" people running around. I like the vistani. I don't want to have to remove them. But I know my players aren't going to really enjoy them in this state. Any ideas on how to shift the direction? They either need to be less Romani or more human, I think.
Also, if your reflex on reading this post is any shade of "People get offended too easily these days" or "political correctness is really getting out of hand", this question is not directed at you. Take it off-thread, please.
EDIT: I've thought it over, and I think I'm going to just cut out the whole notion that the vistani are "human-but-not". They're a human culture very much removed from the rest, but they're fully playable and have no inherent differences. It's just a culture that understands stuff like the Mists and curses and the general nature of the Demiplane. I might give them a +4 bonus on Knowledge (Ravenloft) checks to show that, replacing the skill point bonus and otherwise keeping them as-is. Maybe giving them a couple points on their Outcast Rating, of course.
Half-vistani, meanwhile, are the products of a union between vistani and mysterious powers—fey, perhaps, or inscrutable celestials, or altogether worse things.
I think this is the best solution, really.
you could maybe make Triaxus work by playing up the Draconic overlord angle. So the odds are even more stacked against the Skyfire mandate; the dragon lords are about to crush the last of the resistance.
I'm not really sure what to do with Iobaria; make Kostchichki a dreadlord?
Bump?
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I'm going to break down my suggestions by topic just for sanity's sake.
Iobaria:
Looking over the material available for Iobaria, it seems like it has a long history marked chiefly by empires falling to plagues and invasions. As of shortly after 4606 AR, the latest foray to build an empire there collapsed due to an influx of fleeing Sarkorians and Mendevians from the Worldwound. The influx of refugees was too much for the Iobarians to handle, and, with some more plagues, the nation collapsed. This could be a good "seminal event" if you wanted Iobaria to have recently formed as a domain.
Iobaria's wild and woolly nature makes it a good match for the Frozen Reaches Cluster. The history of plagues (the first of which were man made) makes it
The walled fortress surrounded by anarchy motif of
The thing to do with the "Mother Maiden, Crone" module is to add some disease motifs.
Triaxus:
This place is interesting because of the (relatively, in a geological sense) rapid changes in climate and evolution to go along with the centuries long rotation around the sun.. The winterborn Triaxians know the summerborn as almost figures of myth and legend- this reverence could be played up along with the seemingly approaching "changing of the Season" This give you a bit of history motifs to play with and differentiate the Triaxians from normal human communities.
Of course, just because the planet is "alien" doesn't mean its origins have to be. The environmental conditions, the dearth of familiar humanoid races, and the heavy presence of dragons that seemingly came out of nowhere makes me think the world might almost have an artificial origin, in that it is the way a world might be if human(oild) king were allowed to muck about with the environment as they wished. Almost a little bit like a frozen world equivalent of Dark Sun. Perhaps the planet was originally populated by familiar humanoid races, but then they changed their biological structures or were rendered extinct. (As with the Cleansing Wars of Athas.)
Perhaps the reason dragons seemed to come out of nowhere is because they were artificially created, or even once humans who sought to raise them about other humanoids. Meanwhile, the Triaxians are the mixed-blood survivors of the races/peoples that were not slaughtered.
In the Frozen Stars module, you could have several lairs of mystery to discover. They might discover Triaxus is the survivor of a post-apocalyptic world, and then think the Triaxians are the descendants of humans (prhaps as githzerai are the descendants of humans enslaved by mind flayers in D&D). However, it is only later that they learn that the dragons/dragonkin are the true descendants of the humans.
The Vistani:
The Vistani could be turned into a traveling carnival(s) of circus folk and misfits from various places brought together by common survival (ala Carnival). The potion brewers could become snake oil salesman types, acrobats and performers are pretty much built in, fortune tellers might need only a few changes, etc. They could be mysterious by the fact that they don't trust "Georges" and have (usually in Ravenloft) have good reason not to. Their powers might originate from unusual patrons that protect and lead them...
An Golarion flavored alternative: Have the Vistani be a subgroup of displaced Sarkorian god-callers, who are somehow able to summon and commune with the various spirits of the Demiplane.
Online Sources:
http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Triaxus
http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Iobaria
http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lb07 (Iobaria Timeline)
http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Sarkoris
http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Category:The_Frozen_Reaches
http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Tzakiv_Korya
http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Category:Carnival_(Society)
The background article on Triaxus in The frozen stars perhaps has some interesting ideas. There are hints of smoking towers and caves which have to be guarded against misuse. Anyway, make the dragons much much creepier and more supernatural (links to the plane of shadow or any other creepy plane). You could also invent a very powerful overlord dragon (who is maybe a darklord and maybe something else altogether, e.g. from the dark tapestry).
As for the vistani: you could make them human, but from another world (and they became trapped in Ravenloft and are trying to escape, or perhaps they know/knew the secret of escape)
It all sounds very promising and interesting.
My idea about the Vistani is that they're human tribes whose ancestors set up special "agreements" centuries ago with unknown forces—the Dark Powers, strange fey, etc. Anyone traveling with the Vistani is therefore shielded from the Mists' worst consequences. To outsiders, and even some uninformed Vistani, it can start to seem like they're just innately better than everyone else at it.
Notably, these agreements only partially shield Vistani who aren't traveling with the tribes.
I like a lot of the ideas here, especially the one of making the dragons more creepy and weird. A domain plagued by huge draconian beasts seems much more Ravenloft's style.
There are is one* for-sure dragon in the Ravenloft canon, which is a shadow dragon named Ebb that formerly worked for Azalin. So shadow dragons or umbral dragons (which seems to be their PF equivalent, see Bestiary II) seem to work ok with mainline Ravenloft. OTOH, you might look at outer dragons (Bestiary IV). If you wanted to add a level of personal corruption to them, then corrupted (tarnished) metallic dragons might be a way to go. A noble in theory goal but twisted and mangled all out of proportion always for me seems like a way to be both alien (in the sense that it would seemingly undo its goal) and corrupt at the same time. You have a
*two plus eggs to be hatched, if you include the Dread Possibility that Ebb had found a mate.
Some of these ideas sound potentially useful even if you are going to run Reign of Winter in (almost) normal Golarion.
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That's the hope!
We closed our first session thirty minutes ago. Well, that was a bit off-the-rails. A bit, mind you—that's not understatement. It was mostly fine. But no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
One of our players had to cancel on us, so we ended up having only three PCs—a gnome goliath druid named Tengeziv, a human barbarian named Cyneburg*, and a human ranger who hates fey named Armilia. They met in the Silver Stoat, where the ranger received a note from Dryden Kepp, delivered by Kale, the bartender. Dryden was a sort of friend, being one of the few who sort of believed her about the fey—in exchange, the ranger "sort of believed him" about the weasel. The announced that he was going to put the weasel's head above the Silver Stoat's hearth or die trying.
He died trying. But they don't know that yet.
They get word of the arrival of the Darkonese caravan guard, who is dying. The winter-born have a magical practice of sticking slivers of ice in their victims' hearts to attack their souls. They weren't able to finish with Yuln, but there's still nothing that can be done to help him. He gives Cyneburg his trusty cold iron handaxe.
So they set out. I included a little extra encounter along the way—the party is walking through the grass and they see something bounding towards them from the direction of the woods. My plan was that it would be a small arctic hare, and be a cute little fakeout that could also warn them that things are cold and weird. And it worked great! They freaked out, drew weapons, hid behind rocks (or tried to)—
And then one of the players was like, "Oh, [gnome's player], I just remembered—you have a dinosaur."
What.
What.
So, okay, here's what happened. They'd been the one to build the gnome player's PC. And they'd missed that a goliath druid could still substitute domains, as well as that megafauna were an option.
So that's how an allosaurus made it into my serious gothic horror Ravenloft campaign. Since the timing matched too well for me to refrain, I had it be the thing running towards them, and it knocked the gnome over and started licking him. People laughed. It would be the first harbinger of things to come, though.
The group continues on and finds the massacre site. I'd added four vultures to the scene—the vultures would be initially easy to drive off, but some might later when the zombies were released. Wanting to chase them away, Cyneburg ran at them three times, repeatedly flubbing her Intimidate. She finally scared them off.
Now, inside the carriage, I had each zombie be wearing a small onyx wolf figurine around its neck—I'm thinking I will substitute these for the scrolls of lesser animate dead they see later. Put the necklace on, the corpse rises up in due time. Using them, of course, will incur powers checks and/or corruption (Taint rules). It's just a little hint for now that these zombies were deliberately restored and didn't just rise up because Ravenloft spookums.
So, uh, yeah, they completely ignore the carriages and took off down the trail. They didn't even stop to loot! Where's your adventurer mentality, people?!
Same thing happened with the chest. They just avoided that thing like the plague. Be adventurers, dammit!
They then encountered the tatzlwyrm, which I kept largely the same. The gnome flubbed his Folklore check and became convinced that very old dwarves turn into miniature dragons when they get too greedy. "The best thing to do," I said, "is just throw some money at them and back away."
It kind of ripped Cyneburg the barbarian apart. She was left at 0 HP before the dinosaur brought it down (thank goodness it flubbed its rake rolls or she legitimately could have died outright). The gnome threw a silver piece at it. That's when we realized: The gnome druid did not have any healing spells.
At a loss for what to do, they just sort of kept trudging on. I was at a loss, myself, but I decided to scramble things to make it work. I pulled the stag encounter back a little so it would be the next thing they'd faced. See, I'd previously decided to put a small hunting cabin nearby the stag, so the group could rest there after beating the atomie and the sprites. This cabin contained a piece of Dryden's ghostly soul that might be able to provide some healing in a subtle way. I figured, "In their condition, they'll probably just leave the stag alone and go rest."
The stag freaked them the f&@$ out. I'm not kidding—they were terrified of that thing. Cyneburg alone realized that it wasn't really talking, and she couldn't communicate what she knew. They decided to just leave, and try to find another shelter.
I had to invoke the ghost. It guided them back to the shack (via tralak trail signs—they still don't know there's a ghost), well after the stag had left, and they reluctantly rested there. I know, it was a bit railroady, but I was desperate and so were they. Even after entering, they really mistrusted the shack, because it was clear that something was off—when the ranger entered, the teakettle started whistling. She was convinced the tea was poisoned. Nobody would touch it. Damn it, stop being so paranoid! Damn your adventurer's mentality!
After some lengthy discussion, Cyneburg drank some (she couldn't understand the others, and her Knowledge: Nature check hadn't turned up any problems), and it healed her! Thank goodness. They slept there, since night had fallen (a party with a Disabled member moves pretty damn slow), and I had a little scene where they thought they saw a yeti out there in the darkness. They were very scared and barricaded themselves inside.
I am GMing for a bunch of paranoid freaks.
I can use this.
That night, they had dreams.
Dreams haunt those of you that sleep. You see a white deer, its flesh slowly rotting away, a needle threading fine lines through it and making it dance like a puppet. You see small hanging effigies hanging from the trees, twitching like webbed flies. You wake up that morning to the scream of some distant animal being slaughtered.
In the morning, they set out again and encountered the sprites. They recognized the raven effigies from the dream and were very spooked. The sprites went down easy—that handaxe ripped them to pieces. But I had Mist—capital M—building up in the corner of the map. See, the Mists are sort of "malfunctioning" because of the nearby portal, and all sorts of monsters are popping out. In this case, it was a butcher spirit (a creepy awesome little incorporeal monster from Creature Catalogue). They took one look at the thing, turned, and ran.
After that, they came to the river, and we stopped there for the night.
Incidentally, I had a whole plan about how to make the stag properly horrific. I reskinned the atomie as a "needle fairy", a sort of puppeteer that uses its ghost touch sewing needle and ethereal threads to turn bodies into puppets. The stag? A disguised corpse. I was really looking forward to the reveal, but they just booked it when they realized it could talk. "Nope. Uh-uh. Talking deer. Nope nope nope."
The deer will come back, of course. I'm looking forward to it.
Anyways, I know this wasn't exactly a top-tier campaign journal—it's late and I'm tired—but I think things went quite well despite the chaos. They should have a witch next session, as well as, hopefully, the Morninglord inquisitor who would have been able to heal. Next up: The Icy Crossing.
*Cyneburg hails from an Old English village that was dragged into the Demiplane of Dread by its local practitioner of the "pagan" faiths. The majority of the villagers had converted to Christianity, but when they were threatened by invaders, they turned to the shaman. He had them sacrifice roughly twenty children to his gods, believing that this would stave off the invaders. When it didn't, they strung him up there with the children. This led to their becoming an Island of Terror. Cyneburg was sent off alone to seek answers on where they were. She thinks this is Hell, and doesn't speak any of the local languages yet (save some grasp of tralaks). I'm sharing this because I think it's a really neat backstory, and because it's made a big difference in interactions so far.
I'm planning to connect Rohkar to the Wolf God—maybe he's a secret lycanthrope, or perhaps the "sickness" some of the bandits have is actually him using his Wolf God-granted powers to afflict them with a slow-acting lycanthropy. Maybe he's promising to bless the others with his gift. Maybe he's only pretending to be a lycanthrope to get their loyalty.
Allright, another Campaign Journal! I'm up for that, if you want to keep posting (here is fine; not sure, but the thread might need to be moved to Campaign Journals).
I dunno, I'm still looking for advice and feedback about how to adapt things. We'll see.
So, okay, here's what happened. They'd been the one to build the gnome player's PC. And they'd missed that a goliath druid could still substitute domains, as well as that megafauna were an option.So that's how an allosaurus made it into my serious gothic horror Ravenloft campaign. Since the timing matched...
The good thing is that a lot of the communities in Reign of Winter are fairly monstrous or at least wild and woolly. So perhaps an allosaurus might not be too out of place when you have aliens, witches, and frost giants (or at least, not as much it might be in Ravenloft's normal conservative-on-the-fantastic, pseudomedieval setting. The big thing would be keeping the beast fed and warm. Luckily, spells such as Endure Elements should also prove useful.
Conceptually, you could reskin the dino as a primitive ancestor of a white dragon, frost salamander, or some such, before those reptiles became supernatural. Alternatively, it could be a specimen the druid found in the ice and released. It could even be a malformed specimen of the dragons on Triaxian the fled through one of Elvanna's portals. (Of course, the gnome doesn't strictly have to know any of this...)
I am GMing for a bunch of paranoid freaks.I can use this.
This seems like a very adaptive reaction on your part. You're rolling with what the players give you instead of letting unexpected twists and turns disrupt you from running the game. It sounds like you're walking a balance between allowing player actions to matter the same time keeping things running smoothly.
Anyways, I know this wasn't exactly a top-tier campaign journal—it's late and I'm tired—but I think things went quite well despite the chaos. They should have a witch next session, as well as, hopefully, the Morninglord inquisitor who would have been able to heal. Next up: The Icy Crossing.
Perhaps it went well because of the chaos (and the freedom you gave them on how to respond to the situations)?
Whereas setting the scene and planning is important, there's also something to be said about spontaneous developments that emerge naturally from play. Perhaps because they arise "naturally" and thus seem more plausible.
In the morning, they set out again and encountered the sprites. They recognized the raven effigies from the dream and were very spooked. The sprites went down easy—that handaxe ripped them to pieces. But I had Mist—capital M—building up in the corner of the map. See, the Mists are sort of "malfunctioning" because of the nearby portal, and all sorts of monsters are popping out. In this case, it was a butcher spirit (a creepy awesome little incorporeal monster from Creature Catalogue). They took one look at the thing, turned, and ran.
On another note, if you can somehow fit it into the AP, the 3.5 Paizo module Carnival of Tears seems like it would be an excellent thing to fit into the AP as a sidequest.
I'm planning to connect Rohkar to the Wolf God—maybe he's a secret lycanthrope, or perhaps the "sickness" some of the bandits have is actually him using his Wolf God-granted powers to afflict them with a slow-acting lycanthropy. Maybe he's promising to bless the others with his gift. Maybe he's only pretending to be a lycanthrope to get their loyalty.
Perhaps he is from a sect of the church that actually venerate the loup du noir. This is the kind of werewolf that Gregor Zolnik from Vorostokov and his cronies are. They "willingly" change form by donning pelts. However, I think it's a maledictive curse because the urge to don the pelt is quite addicting. And Zolnik can induce the urge by biting people and then leaving wolf pelts with them. Perhaps Rohkar is doing something similar here, save that he has provided the pelts to the unknowing barbarians and they are going through a "slow burn" transformation as opposed to the more immediate bite-induced lycanthropy?
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I understand why they were freaked out by the little cabin. My players mistrust all cabins since seeing Cabin in the Woods :-)
All in all it was a pretty atmospheric first session.
We're playing again this Friday. I really like the "pelts" idea, but I also like the idea that he's actually a worshiper of an evil (or neutral) trickster, cursing those of his followers he declares "worthy" by turning them into wolves with maddened human heads. He might then set them loose, or might keep them in his room, chained up, just in case the mephit betrays him.
Otherwise, Rohkar is already a pretty damn creepy guy. Ten-Penny Tacey will become a caliban, possibly afflicted with Corruption (Taint rules) but otherwise the same potential ally.
I am strongly considering making Argentea deliberately afflicted with lycanthropy somehow. The problem is it won't have much payoff.
Any ideas on how to make the mephit a bit "spookier"?
^Go back to the 1st Edition AD&D description of Mephits -- those weren't Neutral, but Neutral Evil (and by the description, definitely leaning to the Chaotic side of that, even though it didn't say so in the stat block), acting much like Pathfinder Goblins and Gremlins, but concentrating more on directly attacking creatures than on trashing stuff (they'd still do that too if left to it), while wearing the trashiest outfits they could get their hands on.
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We're playing again this Friday. I really like the "pelts" idea, but I also like the idea that he's actually a worshiper of an evil (or neutral) trickster, cursing those of his followers he declares "worthy" by turning them into wolves with maddened human heads. He might then set them loose, or might keep them in his room, chained up, just in case the mephit betrays him.
Otherwise, Rohkar is already a pretty damn creepy guy. Ten-Penny Tacey will become a caliban, possibly afflicted with Corruption (Taint rules) but otherwise the same potential ally.
I am strongly considering making Argentea deliberately afflicted with lycanthropy somehow. The problem is it won't have much payoff.
Any ideas on how to make the mephit a bit "spookier"?
Her picture also has an oddly bat-like quality to her wings. You could describe it as carrying numerous twisting, winding, and hypnotic veins across it, yet at the same time it shows an almost reflective sheen. She might unnerve them a little bit by relying on the sight of their reflections in her wings as actually seeing them in order to make her attacks. And her wings might also eerily reflect the player characters like fun house mirrors.
I also wouldn't forget to consider the terrain. Describe the bridge as precarious and the water so cold and frigid it chills the PCs bones just looking at it from below. You could also have some kind of (ultimately harmless) shapes floating around in the water to distract them from looking for the mephit. If you wanted to be mean, you could rule the appearance of the mephit startles somebody on the bridge enough to call for a fear check. If the check fails and results in a panicked condition or some such, then the character would probably need to make a Reflex save not to fall in the water.
Heck, if you wanted to play nasty (perhaps as a last ditch effort?), she could zip over to the far side just as the party was crossing the middle and cut the ropes on the far end with her claws.
Well, that didn't go well. Skype and Discord pitched fits and refused to cooperate. We spent 1.5 hours trying to get it to work, then gave up.
Second session: Even scarier than the first.
Well, that didn't go well. Skype and Discord pitched fits and refused to cooperate. We spent 1.5 hours trying to get it to work, then gave up.
Second session: Even scarier than the first.
Did you have better luck this week? (I hope)
Yeah, we did. And, in a manner of speaking, they didn't. I'll get a summary up tonight if possible. We'll hopefully be playing again tonight to wrap up a certain very interesting combat.
Let's see if the witch survives.
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Things didn't go well tonight. Technical difficulties led us to give up and play something else. My kender occultist got feebleminded and, largely unaffected, "borrowed" the offending cleric's holy symbol on behalf of the Halfling FBI. It's...it's a different sort of game.
But here's last week's recap! Actually, the week before last. Last week will be written up later.
So the trio had just come to the river, and they were confronted by a somewhat disturbing sight: A human-sized wickerman. That appeared to be bleeding.
Nicolas Cage references and cartoon bees being drawn on the Roll20 map kept them busy for a while, but eventually—faster than I'd expected, actually—Armilia, the fey-hating, paranoid ranger, strolled up towards it.
The wickerman barked out its warning telling them to get lost. They tried to engage it in conversation. When that failed, Armilia just kept going. The wickerman let loose a horrifying scream.
Not far off, Sterris and Romo were making their way through the Border Wood. Sterris was a human inquisitor of the Morninglord, with a somewhat Spanish Inquisition-y style of converting nonbelievers. Romo was a blind witch haunted by his familiar. Remember, Ravenloft uses dread companions. He really wants to get away from the familiar. Though neither Armilia nor Romo will realize it, Romo is the young brother who was stolen away from Armilia by fey when they were younger.
The pair were accompanied by Elder Natharen Safander, Heldren's priest—who, like Sterris, worshiped the Morninglord. Safander was accompanying Sterris to the High Sentinels' Lodge, where Sterris hoped to get help tracking down the bandits who kidnapped Lady Argentea. They'd run into a wandering Romo along the way.
Hearing the scream, they ran over to find Armilia, Tengezil and Cyneburg all stunned. Introductions were extremely stilted—Armilia's player had to go (the explanation was that, having caught the full force of the scream, she was actually stunned for a lot longer), Romo couldn't see, Tengezil's player could only type and Cyneburg didn't understand anyone. Seriously, I love the concept, but I hate mum characters more than pretty much anything. As for Sterris, his player was pretty new and not very comfortable seizing the spotlight. And also could only type. It was a really awkward scene.
Eventually, they worked out who each other were and decided to team up. Sterris hacked up the wickerman, then looked inside, realizing that inside was a headless corpse. This after chopping off an arm. They set it ablaze and decided to press on, Safander taking Armilia back to the cabin to recover from her sonic injury. Crossing the river, of course, got the elementals' attentions.
I didn't change the elementals much. I couldn't think of much to change. They were big ice monsters with glowing "cores". Inside the cores were big masses of rotting fish and other river animals. The flavor was that the energy of the minute souls had been used by the wintry invaders to create the elementals, since otherwise there's only one type of elemental in Ravenloft.
This party has trouble with the weirdest fights. The elementals kicked their asses. Cyneburg fell through a patch of thinned ice, which was what got the elementals to rise up and attack. She flubbed her Reflex save, managed to climb out, then failed her Fortitude save against the cold and fell right back in. Luckily, Tengezil and his dinosaur were there in the pinch. Snapjaw fished Cyneburg out. Meanwhile, Romo proved very good at dodging despite his blindness, and spent most of his time giving people Fortune and cackling to extend it. That saved Cyneburg's bacon. Sterris was a capable warrior, and once Cyneburg was healed, they were able to mop up the elementals without a problem. Don't screw with a gnome and his dinosaur.
The group made it to the other side, where they noticed what looked like a blueish hedgehog in the snow off the path. Examining it closer, they realized that it was actually a severed human head. Old Man Dansby had been complaining about sprites of late. His head was studded with scores of minuscule icy arrows.
Cyneburg went back and placed the head on the blaze, holding a short vigil, though she didn't know the man. It was then that she remembered: She was freezing. Everyone was set to head back to the cabin so she could warm up, but bizarrely enough, a rhetorical question turned up results. You see, Sterris had actually been in Escape from Meenlock Prison before this, and he'd claimed a lot of prison garments while there. Whether or not that's still canon is up for debate, but one thing isn't: He had several spare sets of cloths. Cyneburg got to change and huddle by the fire for a little while.
Afterward, Tengezil and Cyneburg noticed a small winter-colored cat watching them from a ways off. It appeared very friendly, even to the expert judge of character Sterris (despite a massive Sense Motive, he rolled around a 3), but Romo was immediately panicked by its appearance. Calling it a demon, he demanded the group get rid of it. Everybody else found it entirely adorable and showed it great affection before moving on. It vanished back into the bushes. The group moved on, ready for one more fight before getting some rest.
The group encountered the band of Rohkar's Raiders. Unfortunately, they are not stealthy, so it came to a fairly one-sided battle (the bandits drew swords instead of bows, and in the snow, this led to them being mowed down). Still, they were cultists of the Wolf God, and had clearly been involved in the massacre of the caravan.
Afterwards, the group journeyed back to the cabin to rest, as the ice elementals had left them badly battered. Safander nervously reported that he believed the place to be haunted. That night, a creature was heard climbing on top of the shack. Armilia was paranoid, but not enough to rouse everyone. In the morning, Romo went outside to "relieve himself". He was gone for one hour. Romo's cat had spent the night sleeping on the roof, and it went out to commune with him when he emerged.
The next morning, the group would venture out for the High Sentinels' Lodge. Things would not go well.
Hm...how to make the frost pines scary?
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The frostpins aren't a treant-like species of tiny trees. They are of the living, drinking forests of Irrisen. They are sentient, and they are hungry. Even agents of the Witch-Queen herself know better than to enter the forests of Irrisen without first paying tribute—the blood of witches, or any arcane caster. It presents a visible stake—if the winter spreads throughout the Demiplane, so will these living forests.
The text I'll be reading next week (needs some refinement to look prettier, but the basics):
You hear a sibilant growl from nearby. “Where we come from, the forest drinks deep of the witch's blood. Even the Queen herself knows better than to cheat us our toll. This forest soon shall breathe, too, and it will take its toll NOW!” Two of the firs shudder. Amber eyes blink open, and the bark splits to reveal a massive maw dripping golden sap.
I'm thinking they've got saplings, too, since it's implied in the adventure that they're planting seeds in the patch of cleared earth. Perhaps watered with the body of an unknown mage staked above to bleed out?