D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Frost Worm Tunnel Collapse of Pale Cliff

# Wilderness# Intrigue# Dungeon# Beast

Pale Cliff was a thriving mining outpost until the earth shuddered, swallowing half the settlement into the glacial maw of a newly revealed frost worm lair. Now, two desperate groups vie for control of the unstable, ice-slicked ruins: the displaced human miners who lost everything, and the nomadic frost giant clan whose ancestral hunting grounds have been irrevocably violated. The air smells of frozen blood and raw magic. Every step forward is a choice between survival and atrocity.

Chronicle Prelude

The party arrives at the precarious, half-collapsed 'Settlement Edge' of Pale Cliff. Tents and broken structures cling to the cliffside, overlooking the yawning, frost-veined chasm where the mines and half the town once stood. The air is thick with the sounds of arguing voices and the low, resonant hum of something massive moving deep below the ice.

Environmental Traits

The tunnel collapse has awakened a primordial frost worm, a cataclysmic territorial threat. The two factions—desperate miners and displaced frost giants—both believe they have the sole right to the caverns and the ancient artifacts within, and both are willing to go to extreme lengths to secure their claim, forcing the players to navigate a brutal conflict over a collapsing, monster-infested frozen labyrinth.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Forewoman Remma Stonefist
A stout, scarred dwarf woman with frostbitten ears and eyes that burn with desperate intensity. She wears a patched miner's leather jerkin over layers of wool. A worn pickaxe is always at her belt.
Shaman Korgun of the Frozen Peaks
An immense, ancient frost giant, his white hair and beard crusted with icicles. His skin is the pale blue of a glacier's heart, and his eyes glow with a soft, inner light. He moves with a slow, deliberate weight, carrying a staff of gnarled ice-wood.
Silas the Half-Frozen
A human geologist, his body gaunt and one side of his face and arm frostbitten black. He shivers constantly, wrapped in a ragged blanket, his eyes darting with paranoid alertness. He clutches a battered map case.
Hilda the Devoted
A miner whose eyes have taken on a frantic, blue-white sheen. Her skin is pale, and frost patterns seem to creep from the corners of her eyes and mouth. She wears a necklace of worm-chitin teeth and carries a pickaxe stained with a strange, luminescent fluid.
Thrym, Grave-Bearer of the Ancestors
A towering frost giant warrior clad in ancient, frost-etched plate armor made from mammoth bone and blue ice. He carries a massive, rune-carved greataxe and has a grim, sorrowful set to his jaw. He moves with the implacable force of a glacier.
Worm-Kin Swarm
A skittering, clicking mass of insectoid creatures, each the size of a large dog. They have segmented, chitinous bodies of blue-grey, multiple spindly legs, and a single, gaping maw filled with needle-like teeth that drip with freezing saliva.
The Dying Frost Worm
A mountain of living ice and flesh, its body filling the frozen cathedral of the Sanctum. Segments of its colossal, worm-like form are cracked and weeping blue ichor. Its head is a massive, armored battering ram of chitin and ice, surrounding a circular maw of spinning, glacial teeth. Its many eyes glow with a fading, furious light, and at its core, visible through translucent plates, pulses the brilliant Tundra Heart.
Corpse of Ulfgar the Unheeding
The frozen body of a dwarf, propped against an ice wall as if merely resting. His beard is crusted with frost, and his wide eyes stare blankly at a point on the ceiling. He wears tattered scholar's robes and a heavy belt from which hangs a peculiar hammer. A leather journal is clutched in his stiff hands.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Reckoning of the Blood-Soaked Bracers

Ankheg Sand-Burrowing of the Yellow Sand Valley and the Rogue Coalition of the Caravan Guide