D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Frost-Vault Gambit: Chart of the Drowned Corsair

# Wilderness# Dark Fantasy# Undead# Intrigue

The frost-choked port of Winterport is dying. Not from starvation, but from a chilling, deliberate dismantling. Ice trolls, driven by an ancient and terrifying hunger, are methodically tearing apart every ship that dares enter the harbor, consuming the wood and iron as if it were sustenance. The town's only hope lies in a legend whispered by the mad survivors of the ship *The Drowned Corsair*: a chart leading to a vault frozen deep within the glacier that spawned these trolls, a vault said to hold the trolls' original, chilling purpose and the means to end their siege. But the chart is incomplete, and the trolls are not the only faction desperate to find the vault first.

Chronicle Prelude

The players arrive at the ice-locked harbor of Winterport, a once-thriving trading post now a ghost town of splintered masts and frost-rimed ruins. The air smells of salt, fear, and something ancient. The few remaining townsfolk, led by the hardened Harbor Master Kaelen, are barricaded in the fortified Icehouse Inn, their hope dwindling with each groan of wood being torn apart in the night.

Environmental Traits

The glacier known as the Frostspine Maw is awakening. The ice trolls are not merely beasts; they are geological agents, their hunger a symptom of the glacier's own slow, unnatural movement toward the sea, consuming all that is not ice. The ancient nautical chart is a key, but to what? The players must navigate the shattered remains of the port, the hostile wilderness of the glacier's foothills, and the labyrinthine depths of the glacier itself to uncover the truth behind the trolls' hunger and the vault's true contents. The ultimate victory condition is to decide Winterport's fate: appease the glacier, destroy it, or claim its power.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Harbor Master Kaelen
A grizzled man in his late 50s, with a face weathered by sea-salt and sorrow. He wears a thick, patched greatcoat over a dented breastplate. His hands are calloused and missing the tip of his left index finger. He carries a heavy, utilitarian crossbow at all times.
Elder Liora
A serene woman of indeterminate age, her skin pale and frostbitten at the edges, her hair white as the glacial ice. She wears robes of woven frost-moss and carries a staff of crystallized wood. Her eyes hold a calm, unnerving clarity, as if seeing things far beyond the mortal veil.
Spectre of First Mate Garrick
A translucent, blue-white figure of a sailor in tattered officer's garb, covered in frost and rime. His face is a rictus of frozen fury and betrayal. He haunts the icy waters around the *Drowned Corsair*'s wreck, his form flickering in and out of visibility with the blizzard's gusts.
Ice Troll Matriarch
A towering, muscular troll female, easily 12 feet tall. Her mottled blue-white hide is scarred from countless battles, and chunks of ice are frozen into her mangy fur. She moves with a deceptive, ponderous grace, her yellowed eyes filled with a primal, protective fury as she guards a clutch of shivering troll whelps.
Captain Maren Vargo
A human figure encased in a core of perfect, clear blue ice, his posture one of supplication rather than plunder. His face is visible, contorted in a final moment of desperate communication, one hand raised. He wears the fine but practical garb of a ship's captain, and around his neck is a captain's seal on a chain.
Primordial Ice Elemental
A towering, vaguely humanoid form composed of living glacier ice. It does not have a face, but its body is etched with ancient, swirling patterns that glow with a fierce blue light. The air around it screams with psychic pressure and the temperature plummets to lethal extremes. It is the glacier's immune response given form.
Mad Prospector Grend
A gaunt, half-frozen human wrapped in layers of torn furs and hide. His eyes are wide and unfocused, darting constantly to the walls and ceiling as if seeing things others can't. His skin is blue-tinged, and his breath comes in rapid, panicked puffs of steam. He clutches a pickaxe like a security blanket.
Cult Enforcer Voss
A tall, powerfully built man clad in repurposed, frosted Winterport guard plate armor, adorned with crude ice-crystal talismans. His face is hard and fanatical, his eyes burning with zealous conviction. He leads a small squad of similarly armed cultists, moving through the warrens with a purposeful, aggressive stride.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Frost-Melting Verdict

The Bay of Chitin and Lees