Pathfinder Society Scenario # 10-03: "Death on the Ice" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Death on the Ice is a great scenario set in the frozen north of Golarion.  It features excellent writing, a meaty story, and a great climactic encounter.  It tests the PCs in all the right ways, and introduces them to some of the lore of the setting that they've probably never been exposed to before.  I ran it at low tier using the four-player adjustment and had a really good experience.

SPOILERS

The scenario starts at the Pathfinder Society lodge in the Land of the Linnorm Kings, with half-orc Venture-Captain Bjersig Torrsen delivering the briefing.  Torrsen (accompanied by his adorable dog Mahki) explains that a PFS field agent named Svala Ice-rider has encountered difficulties while doing historical excavation work of ruins found further north in the Crown of the World.  The ruins are believed to be a settlement of the Erutaki (one of the indigenous peoples of the north) that was abandoned mysteriously and that is referenced cryptically as a ominous location in their oral folklore.  Communicating through her snow owl, Svala has reported that the site is contaminated with blackfrost (a toxic and corrosive substance that blows from the north pole) and contains a surprisingly large number of undead creatures buried in the ice. Concerned that she might be in over her head and acting on information that has been poorly translated from indigenous languages, Svala has asked for help verifying the translation of the oral histories of the Erutaki and for reinforcements to finish the work before the spring thaw comes and makes travel across the ice pack far more difficult.  The PCs are thus charged with travelling via longship to the fishing village of Aaminiut, conferring with the elders there, and then arranging land transportation to the dig site.  It's a journey that will take several weeks altogether, which gives a good sense of the vast distances through unforgiving landscapes that one envisions in the Crown of the World.  There's a lot to take in with the briefing, much of which will be new to the PCs (and most GMs).

I'll just flag as a note here that there's more information on the area in the Jade Regent adventure path, and that I used the map folio to that AP to good effect, as one of the maps covers the area where the scenario takes place.  Later in the scenario, the PCs travel by dogsled, and I found the dogsled tokens in the Vehicles map pack worked really well.

The sea journey to Aaminiut is largely uneventful (with a couple of brief landmarks provided for flavour), with the first encounter starting once the longship reaches sight of the fishing village.  Due to large drifting icebergs in the harbor, the longship can't approach the docks directly; instead, villagers come to meet it in canoes to ferry the PCs over.  This is when "playful" orcas appear, threatening to capsize the canoes and dump everyone into the freezing cold waters!  PCs who can't swim or with poor protection against the cold could be in trouble here, and when I ran the encounter it worked out to be pretty exciting.  There's no map provided for the encounter, and I may have made it too easy by allowing the PCs to swim and climb easily onto nearby icebergs to await rescue.  The point of the encounter isn't really to drown the PCs (which is hard to do in Pathfinder) but to see if they react violently against the orcas--which are the totem animals for the Erutaki clans of Aaminiuit.  If the PCs act aggressively, they'll find the elders in the village far less amenable to conversation and aid.

Once ashore, the PCs can arrange a meeting with the elders of the village, where they'll hear a well-described story (told through both dance and song) of how the village that Svala Ice-rider is excavating once belonged to an evil, cannibalistic tribe infected by malevolent spirits called the Pilungak ("flesh eaters") and was sealed away by the Winter's Favored (spirits of the north) to stop its corruption.  The Winter's Favored buried the village under the ice and placed a magical seal over it--but if that seal has been disturbed by Svala's digging, the Pilungak could be released!  The elders give the PCs a custom wand of ice shaping to help them repair the seal.  I liked this scene, and I appreciated the attention paid to non-Western conceptions of storytelling and symbolism.

After this, the PCs essentially have two options: they can head directly to the dig site, or they can take a detour of a couple of days to seek out a shrine where the Winter's Favored are propitiated in the hopes of making contact and finding out more information about the seal and the evil spirits trapped underneath.  If the PCs do reasonably well in impressing the elders, they'll be provided with a local guide, dogsleds, and supplies for either journey.  Either journey requires checks to avoid getting lost, with could start to deplete supplies (food and firewood) and make the return journey to Aaminiuit far more dangerous (it's a few weeks to get there and a few weeks to get back).  In addition, the PCs have to take the cold into account, and the scenario strikes a reasonable compromise here by asking for Fortitude saves only just prior to each encounter (but making the consequences more severe than normal).  My group did a good job with each of these challenges, but they know I'm a stickler for travel hazards so they didn't take the matter lightly.  I do wish endure elements didn't trivialize the challenges of travelling in the cold to such an extreme degree, but that's a complaint about the system, not the scenario.

If the PCs head directly for the dig site, they'll have a couple of days' journey before encountering an ambush set by a sort of winter hag called a Qallupilluk (and, at high tier, some aquatic ogres).  The encounter takes place on a frozen pond with thin ice that could easily crack and pull in dogsleds, making the encounter far more dangerous.  My PCs chose the other option, but this one looked like the most fun to run.

If the PCs head for the shrine, they'll reach it without incident.  A giant polar bear is sniffing around and will attack, but I don't think it'll be much of a challenge to most groups.  One of the Winter's Favored appears to watch the battle, and here the PCs may get the first glimpse as to what they are: a sort of tribal arctic giant.  Interestingly, the Winter's Favored only spoke Giant (not Common), and my PCs failed the checks to use pantomime to explain why they had come and what they had wanted, so they got no assistance from it.  If they had, the Winter's Favored accompanies them to the dig site and makes the encounter there far, far easier (because he can fix the seal quite quickly and is effectively immune to the undead's cold-based attacks).

The big climax to the scenario occurs when the PCs reach the dig site.  It's very cinematic and exciting, as Svala and her assistances are under assault by several "blackfrost mummies" and their barricades are failing.  (depending on how long it took the PCs to arrive, the archaeologists will be more severely hurt or even dead)  The PCs can see where the seal has been damaged, but they know the archaeologists will be overrun in just moments, leading to some exciting decision-making and crazy dogsled driving.  The way that repairing the seal works is interesting, as using the wand effectively to repair one of the five damaged sections requires a Dexterity or a Craft (Sculpture) check, and the wand has limited charges.  Plus, every few rounds, another blackfrost mummy emerges from the ice and attacks anyone trying to repair the seal.  PCs with bad luck using the wand can prolong the encounter, and the mummies carry a Constitution-damaging poison effect that can get pretty nasty if the exposure/duration rules for poisons are followed literally (there's some conversation in the forums about this).  I thought it was a well-conceived and memorable ending to the scenario, as I like situations where there's a race against time, escalating hazards to deal with, more than just one enemy to handle, and encounters where the PCs are torn between multiple goals.

There's a *lot* to like about Death on the Ice.  The writer handled (the fictional) Indigenous cultures and worldviews well, the journeys through the arctic landscapes were reasonably challenging, and the encounters were solid.  The ending was fantastic.  I've never run or played anything set in this area of Golarion before, but it's definitely something I'll look forward to doing now.