Rime of the Frostmaiden: Cold-Hearted Killer Part 1

I made an old-school map for the game, inspired by those old classics like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale itself. If you look closely you'll see it's total crap, so don't look closely. If you want a high-res copy of the image, you can find it here.

 Over the past months, I've been thinking about how I might run Rime of the Frost Maiden. I bought a copy of TT Foundry, and it's pretty good. I'm not all that interested in the functionality of having the rules tied into the code of the platform, or in having it function as a kind of war game, but I like the potential to create an immersive atmosphere and combine images with music and whatnot all on the same screen. The software's ability to overlay weather (like snow), text, and dynamic lighting really make the maps seem alive, which I enjoy.

I'm also a massive fan of The Alexandrian, specifically the articles which go into great detail fixing the Descent into Avernus campaign. I read the official supplement and felt very underwhelmed by it, and I think Justin Alexander has done a great job bringing justice to what could be a great story, but which WotC left somewhat flat and riddled with inconsistencies. Elsewhere on his site, he talks at length about mystery adventures and node-based scenario design, and I thought I'd try my hand at adapting RotFM to just such a structure. By the way, if you have the time and want to delve into these Alexandrian.net links, I would definitely recommend it, they're great.

I also discovered ArtBreeder, and AI tool which allowed me to create NPC portraits and landscape backdrops with relative ease, some of which I've scattered through this article to give you an idea of what it can do. It's a lot of fun.

Lastly, I've been listening to Jeremy Soule's The Northerner Diaries, which fits perfectly.

Artbreeder uses AI to generate images of landscapes

Cold-Hearted Killer

and portraits too- this is Kaltro

Spoilers below. If you don't want to know the plot, read no further! If you're a compulsive self-spoiler like I am, read on.

Much like my reaction to Avernus, I was excited by the premise of RotFM but the initial quest seemed quite low effort. Hlin Trollbane walks up to the players and says 'here's a guy I want you to kill. I don't have any evidence to substantiate my request, but go and find him anyway.' That strikes me as pretty lazy. From the way I read it, this initial quest is supposed to draw players into the world of Ten Towns, encouraging them to visit the settlements in turn while searching for this man. However, it isn't very well structured, and there isn't anything more than 'is Sephek in this town? Roll a die and find out,' which could lead to a very frustrating sequence of walking from town to town without finding anything at all. There are other quests along they way, but if they don't make progress on this initial quest, by the time they find the guy they might not even remember or care why they were asked to find him in the first place.

So, how can we fix this? I would like to turn to The Alexandrian's explanation of node-based scenario design and try to flesh out this lacklustre quest. If you haven't read  the articles, or aren't already familiar with the idea, here it is. It's quite simple: At the start of the adventure, players are presented with a number of clues which point to certain people, places, events, activities, and so on. These form the nodes of the adventure, and each one holds a number of clues which point to other nodes. This structure works well for mystery-type quests where the ending is not known, and some thinking, investigation, and decision-making has to happen along the way. Gathering clues will lead players to investigate further nodes until they can solve the mystery and follow the quest to its conclusion. Nodes are arranged into tiers, which give players a sense of progression through a story. Eventually the tier one node clues stop showing up, new clues appear, and they are led further into the mystery.

(Lastly, I would like to quickly touch upon the idea of how much the players know at the start of the campaign. Yes, Icewind Dale has been plunged into a year-long Winter, but does anyone know why? Instead of just saying 'it was Auril, she did it and we need to stop her,' perhaps it would be more interesting if no one knew why. One night, the skies were filled with bright glowing auroras, rivers of light, and the sun hasn't risen since. People have been catastrophising and tearing their hair out over it, scouring books and digging up old knowledge to try and figure it out, but no one has a sure lead yet. I think that would lend a needed bit of mystery to the adventure. It would mean that the tidbits which the players uncover, even in this first quest, would set them on a path towards discovery and revelation, instead of a glorified manhunt. Or perhaps maidenhunt.)

For example:

Start- The players are in one of the Ten Towns. At this stage, it doesn't matter which one (except perhaps Targos, it would be helpful if they didn't start in Targos). It also doesn't matter when they arrived. Perhaps they just walked through the gates last night after a long trek and are facing the bleary, gloomy morning, or perhaps they have been staying there for some time already. They hear some gossip a body which was found outside in the snow not two days ago, frozen solid and apparently murdered, and the citizens are in no small amount of confusion over the whole matter. They can hear this in the market, in the tavern, perhaps a traveling scrimshander shakes their grizzled head and laments what Ten Towns has come to. The important part is that they learn three things:

A- Nobody knows who he was, but he was last seen alive in the local tavern a three nights ago.

B- The body, still frozen stiff, is being held in the undercroft of the town's church.

C- Hlin Trollbane, who arrived in town yesterday, is offering a 100 gold reward for bringing the killer to justice.

Now, these three clues give players three possible avenues to start investigating. They are concrete, actionable, and fairly conclusive. They could go to the tavern to ask questions about the victim at their last known whereabouts. They could go to the church to investigate the body itself. Or they could find Hlin to talk about that reward. Each subsequent node should give the players at least three clues leading to other nodes, so that as they accrue clues, the adventure builds up in a satisfying way. They feel like they are onto something. The clues found at each node should point both horizontally and vertically, so that the players feel a sense of progress, too.

The adventure looks like this so far

(A)- The Tavern

At the tavern, the players can learn that:

If the players talk to the barkeep, they learn that Hlin Trollbane (C), a retired bounty hunter, came by the inn asking questions about the 'murder.' She's been traveling around Ten Towns and got here yesterday. News travels quickly in Ten-Towns, and she came as fast as she could muster a sled. She took a room upstairs and gave the barkeep a job letter. The letter is offering 100 gold for anyone who can help solve the murders (yes, murders- that's plural).

The patrons can tell the players that the man was found frozen stiff outside a couple of days ago. Must have been out in the cold all night. They rushed The Body (B) to the church.

From talking further to the patrons, they can also learn that the man was in the tavern the night before he was found dead. He was acting very jovial and smug, boasting about how he outwitted the town of Targos (D) and escaped with his life.

Bonus Clues:

Perhaps with further questioning and a check or two, the players can learn even more clues. If they look deeply, they can learn a bit more about the man's situation, and that he spoke to several different people that night. The man was seen arriving in town with Torg's Merchant Caravan (E), a trading outfit led by a dwarf named Torrga Icevein, known as a shrewd and unscrupulous profiteer. People talk in Ten-Towns, and everyone knows a sliver or two of everyone else's business.

The man was also seen talking to a group of four strange-looking people. Out-of-towners who looked to be travelers of some sort. A man, an old woman, and a Halfling. They had a bodyguard with them too, who loomed silently by the table all evening. These are the members of the Aecane Brotherhood who have come to the Dale, and we will see that Dzaan's storyline diverges a little from the written version.

(B)- The Body

Brother Oswald

At the church, players learn that they're keeping the body in the undercroft until family can come to get him. That might take a long time, because currently no one there knows who he is. He's certainly not from around here, and that's all they can tell.

The clergy don't take kindly to gawpers, and unless the players have some kind of official mandate from the town's Speaker or perhaps the Reeve (if there is one), the will have to content themselves with talking to the cleric who stands watch over the undercroft for clues rather than seeing the body itself. The cleric in question, Brother Oswald (he isn't in the book, I just made him up) mumbles something about wanting to prevent hysteria spreading through the town. He also grumbles about Hlin Trollbane (C), who came by earlier being similarly nosy. He will reluctantly answer some of their questions, but chides them that if they simply want to gossip, they can go to The Tavern (A).

Brother Oswald can tell the players that Dannika Greysteel (F), a local scholar, busybody, and notorious tale-spinner, helped examine the body when it came in to the church. As a scholar, people often go to her with problems of a magical origin. She took some notes and went away to write a report on the matter, which she intends to submit to the town Speaker. She has a house of the edge of town where she does her work- namely, looking closely at the climate and weather of Icewind Dale.

Bonus Clues:

With some further prodding, perhaps a persuasion check or some kind of promise, an assurance of good intent and a vow not to spread gossip, Brother Oswald might let the players see the body itself. If they do get to see the body, they can see that the man is indeed frozen solid, even now. He was ostensibly killed by a stab-wound to the heart, which lies open, frosted and grisly. Brother Oswald tells them that the weapon was a Dagger of Pure Ice, which was embedded in the man's chest. Dannika (F) took it away with her to study. The man's eyes are a shade of blue like ice, cold and bright.

(C)- Hlin Trollbane

Hlin

Hlin Trollbane is a retired bounty hunter who came to Ten-Towns because the area is her family's home.
After traveling across Faerun, she wanted to return to her roots. Hlin Trollbane talks straightly to the pplayers and lays out her offer to them. She has decided to take matters into her own hands in light of the reluctance or indifference of the Speakers of Ten-Towns to do anything about these crimes. She wants to employ them to solve what she thinks are a series of connected murders across the district.

She will tell the players that she thinks this murder is connected to two other which have happened in other towns over the past month or so. Her cousin, Alrik Trollbane (G) was found murdered in Bryn Shander last month, and a Halfling in Easthaven (H) was found a few weeks later. Hlin has been unable to gather hard evidence, but hearsay surrounding the murders concerns them being found frozen solid with an icy dagger plunged into their hearts.

She tells players it might be a good idea to look for leads in The Tavern (A)- that was where the victim was last seen. She also explains that she attempted to go and have a look at The Body (B) at the church, but the head cleric wouldn't let her in. She explains that the local Reeve in charge of the militia (if there is one in this town) will sometimes deputise people to carry out the law in Ten-Towns. The cleric would probably let them in if they had an official sanction.

After all that, we see that our quest structure looks a bit like this:

The players now have loads of options to choose from, and the clues draw them deeper and deeper into the world of Ten-Towns. The quest introduces new characters and they actually have a reason for speaking to them, rather than just being approached in the street. It feels a little more organic, and thanks to the structure, a little more player-led.

I think the best way to go from here is to reduce the amount of nodes in the next tier down. I would be inclined to have the clues point more and more in the same direction so that, wherever the players end up going, they are drawn to a similar conclusion. The evidence points to the answer.

So, for example, Targos (D), Alrik Trollbane (G), and Easthaven (H) would all give information about human sacrifice in Ten-Towns. They might also all point towards Torrga's Caravan (E) because it would have been in each town when the murders were committed.

I'm going to throw this post up for now, and I'll add another on the tier two clues soon, and how that feeds into tier three as the campaign progresses, as well as how the quest might get resolved.

Bye for now,

O

At The Knight's Table

 A tavern with a reputation for stories, a meeting place for society's dawdlers and delinquents, its dusty and its disheveled. The Knight's Table plays host to a wild mixture of freebooters, mercenaries, dealers, and drifters. One goes there to look for someone with certain indispensable skills, to sell one's own particular talents, or to hear an astonishing yarn or two. Oh yes, and drink of course. Don't forget the drink.

 

 

For some context, last weekend I went on a camping trip in the Yorkshire Dales- a wild and rugged place with beautiful, bleak rolling hills and brooding skies. I really liked  the atmosphere there. I decided to take my bike, though, and when you take bikes to the second most hilly place in the country without really taking that into account, you generally have a difficult time. It was a somewhat difficult time. However, that meant I had to go extremely slowly, and I took in a lot more of the scenery than if I'd been going at a reasonable pace. I would definitely/definitely not recommend.

Anyway, when I was there I passed a sign to a pub called the Knight's Table, and for some reason this immediately conjured in my mind a pretty cool idea, and I wanted to share it.

I don't have a concrete image of what the tavern looks like on the outside, but I think that is a good thing. It could be many things, or occur in many places, and fit into a variety of campaigns or settings. This makes it feel like an almost mythical place, a legendary establishment which one can only find through word of mouth. For example:

1D6 Hidden Taverns

1. 
   A dingy set of stairs descending from an alley somewhere in a sprawling city. A door of heavy wooden planks set into a crooked stone archway. Perhaps it was a cellar once, an addend to a larger building, or perhaps the entrance to some municipal waterworks or a sewer. Inside, one might find vaulted stone ceilings and dank walls shored up with scaffolding, lined with tapestries and draped with luxurious cloths from distant lands.
2. In the back of an old, dusty antique shop. No one knows it's there from the outside unless you've been told about it by someone else. You don't have to speak to the shopkeeper to get in, you just have to tweak the codpiece of the suit of armour standing next to the tapestry of the young heroine fighting the beholder. The armour is brown and rusted except for the codpiece, which is suspiciously shiny. Once tweaked, the armour screeches into life and lifts a curtain and a stone wall slides away to reveal the tavern. Newcomers can always be recognised as they step through the door by their slightly bemused, annoyed, or droll expression. People who discover the place by surprise are obvious, laughed at most of all.
   
3. In the ruins of an old manor house on some blasted heath, a desolate moor where light from the windows spills across rolling heather. Inside, there is the raucous laughter of incredulous patrons, who gasp and groan at the stories told around the central table.
4. The undercroft of an old church or temple, hidden and quiet in the depths of dark green trees and uneven gravestones. Entrance to the place is gained through lifting the lid on the tomb of an old knight. Clues to this would be something like the Knight's effigy is holding a flagon to their chest, or their expression is one of inebriation rather than quiet, noble repose.
5. A cave at the foot of a great cliff, perhaps next to the sea. Half of the time, it's actually easier to access with a dinghy. The floor of the cave is slippery and coated with various lurid green seaweed. It smells like the ocean, that salty and stifling smell which is yet somehow fresh and invigorating. When one reaches the innermost chambers of the cave, a warm glow reaches out from the interior. The tavern is crammed into an alcove at the rear of the cave, a level perch which stretches back and back. It is complete with a single long table around which all the patrons sit and talk, swap tales, and exchange various twinkling trinkets whipped from their long overcoats.
6. Perhaps even in the depths of some forsaken dungeon or in the far reaches of the Underdark itself. It would need a hefty stone door to survive in that place, perhaps one of Dwarf origin. The tavern has ensconced itself in the shell of an old Dwarfish safehouse, a bolthole along one of the Underdark's main trading routes where the people of the dark once sought refuge- much like the bothys which dot the Scottish highlands. There is an inscription above the door, chiseled into the massive stone lintel, which reads, "Lay down thy weary bones, cousin of mine. Your path has been long and from here is longer still through the cold-dark. But now there is warmth and safe-dark to wrap thee in its folds." n.b. The ancient Khuzdish tongue has many different words for darkness, but none of them are literally translatable into the common tongue without some hyphenating nonsense. I suppose the main question here is why anyone would think to start a business in so inhospitable a place. Why indeed. Perhaps it sits upon a passage to the surface, or a passage to further down below. Who knows? Who dares to know?

<<nestled>>

The main idea of the place is that it is hidden- a haven nestled in the midst of an inhospitable or unexpected place. Perhaps the outside looks downright unappealing, or at the very best a little nondescript, almost as if to deter regular citizens simply looking for a cosy drink or a comfortable bed. The view of the owner is that such people would really deaden the mood. The Knight's Table is a place for the colourful and the strange. A fuzzy grey-market establishment for the exchange of goods and services away from the prying eyes of the Lawful-Goods and the tax collectors.

Who Goes There?

So, the question- who goes there? What can they offer the players, and what can the players offer them?

Conceivably anyone could be sat around the Knight's Table when players arrive at t he tavern. Any NPCs you may have in your setting. Recurring characters could greet them with a friendly (or a less friendly, or a seat-wettingly nervous) "fancy seeing you here." Okay here's another list:

1. A Rogue Golemancer- They were ejected from their college or their practice for engaging in ventures with questionable ethics, or for a fatal mishap which occurred. Perhaps they were caught one too many times paying body snatchers for parts. Perhaps one of their creations went berserk and killed a client. They have a companion who keeps silent and wears a long, hooded cloak. A drink sits untouched on the table in front of them.They are willing to part with their dear friend for a fee. Discount flesh/mud/clay/sand/wood golem, 200GP. The problem is that people around the nearest town might notice the face. It was someone they knew. OR the problem is that they might just go nuts without warning. It's a very disconcerting creature to stand next to, in either case.
   
2. A Ragged Hedge Wizard- Twigs and leaves are tangled in his/her hair. Sells substandard potions made from things found in hedges. A potion of transparency which he/she markets as a true invisibility potion- they'll sell it for 50GP and then slip away without being noticed. In truth, it just turns you partially see-through. Like one of those weird fish. Your heart and blood vessels wiggle and pulse with disconcerting vigour. Bags of liquid spill around inside you, uncomfortably visible. All except for your eyes and teeth, which remain totally opaque. It looks very bizarre. Lasts an annoyingly long time. 1d12 hours. Perhaps the imbiber gets advantage on intimidation checks instead of invisibility.
   
3. A Party of Chattering Halflings- No one tells a tale like the Halflings do. The adventurous types seen outside their insular communities are brimming with stories and jokes. Their stories would make them seem experienced adventurers, but the pristine condition of their equipment may betray that impression. They talk of the time they slew the vicious Drake of Gorebridge, outwitted the Troll of Fortrough, and sailed around the Findhorne through the dark and thrashing sea.
   
4. A 'Misunderstood' Necromancer- They have gleaned several small bones from the food which lines the centre of the table. They aren't doing anything, just sitting politely with a small pile of bones in front of them. Nothing seems actively wrong with them, they're just kind of reticent and weird. Perhaps they approach the players and ask to come along with them. Their motive for doing so is elusive at best.
   
5. A lvl 1 Peasant- He isn't sure how he wound up here but he's having a grand old time. What does he do? Perhaps he is a butcher, or a baker. Perhaps he makes candles. Perhaps talking about the intricacies of his craft is boring as hell, or perhaps the other patrons all find it fascinating.
   
6. A Small Band of War-Bitten Soldiers- They have come to the tavern in the wake of battle to offer their services. Fighting is all they know, and a lull in some war or another has left them without pay. If approached by the players, 1d6 of them will agree to join them, for a fee. Perhaps they can cut a deal. An even share of takings, or a flat fee- whatever they decide might be more lucrative. They are staunchly principled, though, and will not betray their contract, even for the promise of more money.
7. A Young Bard- Bright-eyed and keen for adventure, they sit with quill and paper, noodling on a lute and writing a new composition. They ask the players about a recent adventure, and propose turning it into a new smash-hit ballad.

Conceivably, the players could simply ask, "is there an x at this tavern we could talk to?" and there would be enough people sat along the length of the long table for them to make a roll for it.

I think what I'll do is write some more lists and furnish this tavern with people and services. Quests can be picked up after listening to tales of woe, or by tagging along with people headed on a treasure hunt, etc.