A working Rime Lord shrine ·
hanging valley under the ice falls in the
Whitefang Mountains,
two days east of
Barrier Pass
· 10 nodes, one major arcanum
Truth
Some things cannot be destroyed. The
Hec’tumel Codex
is one: copper does not burn, and the
Pale Serpent
only needs the next pair of hands. What cannot be unmade can still be stilled. The
Rime Lords
froze pockets of the world where nothing rots, nothing dreams, and nothing calls out;
dark ice
is a wall even a spirit cannot cross. People still carry great evils north and leave them here.
Underfalls is a working stasis-vault under a frozen waterfall — lamps lit, floors swept —
tended without a break by the Vigil: nine mountain-folk who took the Rime Lord discipline and never left.
The
tulpas
that guard it are dangerous the way a mill-wheel is dangerous: they are working.
Deep winter opens the shrine’s cistern cave as one of the mouths of
the Bear of Winter’s
domain. One of his retinue camps there every year the drifts hold:
Hush-of-Snow. She waits at the only door that opens for her, charming to the nine keepers,
ready for whoever climbs the stair with something they can no longer keep.
Underfalls takes deliveries — things too dangerous to keep and too durable to destroy.
Some of it is the best hoard in the north, and none of it can be stolen: Fae cannot cross the vault threshold;
a thing like this has to be given. Most winters nobody comes. When someone does, Hush is already at the door.
How she knows what’s coming answer this when they ask
She rarely knows a month ahead. Often she only knows a day out. Pick what fits the trail they left —
and let them work out how she heard. That is the first real handle they get on her.
Carried unwrapped: the plates dream loudly, and everything with a nose for the arcane between
here and Dhaar has been having the same dream. She followed the dream to the stair.
Word at Barrier Pass / Dhaar: a fortress-monastery is a noisy place, and Hush buys news the way
other people buy bread (a song; a boy’s middle name). Somebody sold her the shape of travellers on the road.
The Vigil paid her news (without meaning to). They have been buying her politeness in small things
since the first snow. One of those things was gossip. Dorji knows he did it (the Stilled Meadow).
Wrapped well, no word out: she simply is at her camp, as she is every winter —
and works out what they carry from how they behave at the cistern. Her advantage is patience, not prophecy.
She never claims foresight. Asked directly she is delighted to explain, at length —
every explanation is also an advertisement for what she can do for them.
“You can’t burn it, you can’t drown it, and you already know what happens to the one who keeps it.
But there’s cold up north that stops things. Old cold, with people still minding it.
Carry it up, ask them nicely, and walk home lighter.”
The wordSthira — Hall of Chants, or study the
Vault floor-runes (column-of-ice craft).
The Vigil’s token, a bronze tally given at the Cloister if they’re honest about what they carry.
Hush’s leave, bought at the Cistern. Cheapest at the table, most expensive later.
Or force it. The Warden is a made thing and can be broken. The Vigil will never forgive it.
Hush-of-Snow travels by snowdrift
She can show up at any room, once, whenever it would be interesting — sitting on the stair, walking
the meadow, waiting in a room they already cleared. Use her early. She never strikes first.
She only fights at the Vault, when the rite actually starts.
Before you leave
Cold kit: warm clothes, fuel, climbing rope. No fuel = every camp costs a provision or a debility.
Iron. Few pilgrims bring it to a holy mountain — and iron is the one thing
Hush and her Billies genuinely fear
(Fae lore).
A plain iron nail is worth more up here than a sword.
Gifts. The Vigil takes no coin. They take salt, ink, lamp oil, and news. Bring some and the Cloister opens like a door.
Whatever they bury, wrap it. Unwrapped on the mountain, a living evil (Codex plates, a bound spirit,
a curse that still speaks) gets a soft move each night — dreams, whispers, frost-writing.
Do not work the thing on the mountain. Casting from the Codex (or anything similar) above Dhaar is a shout.
The Vigil closes the shrine to them; Hush raises her price one step.
Fae prices & debts — run it like this
Pressure is obligation — promises and prices. Use
HAGGLE
whenever they dicker with Hush or her Billies.
Every favour she does them has a price, and she is happy to let them name it later.
“Later” is how Fae eat.
Hush’s ladder. Each time they take her help, refuse her, or insult her, move one step down —
and tell them where they are: (1) she is charmed → (2) she is owed → (3) she is impatient →
(4) she is offended. At 4 she calls the Billies at the Vault, and she names one PC’s promise out loud in front of the Vigil.
Iron in hand changes the conversation — she will not be threatened, she will simply leave and
raise the price. Iron in a wound is what ends her.
The pressure is debt, not curse or transformation. The worst thing that happens here is that someone
agrees to something.
Hush-of-Snow the antagonist
A tall woman built out of drift-snow and good manners, in a coat of white goat-hide, who leaves no prints.
Sometimes a white hind at the edge of sight. She is unfailingly warm, remembers everyone’s name and their
children’s names, and is never in a hurry. She has been here since the first snow, and she is going home with
something.
Solitary, large, fae, magical, devious, hoarder; of
the Bear of Winter’s
retinue
HP 22; Armor 4 (resilience, ice), 0 vs iron Damage grab (reach, forceful, grabby) Special qualitiesFae nature; never strikes first Instinct to be owed
Weave snow and glamour
Call the Billies
Be somewhere else
Same tracker wherever she appears. She cannot cross the vault threshold (the Vault) — that is the whole
shape of the climax.
What she offers (escalating)
First: passage, warmth, a guide through the shrine, the Gate opened. Small prices. Charming.
Then: she will take the Codex off their hands entirely and swear it will never be read again
— which is true. She will not swear it will never be lent.
Last (her real ask, when she is out of patience or they refuse the Codex):
a true name — not a nickname. Someone living that a PC loves or is bound to: child, spouse, parent, dog.
She phrases it as a trinket for her hoard: “Only to keep. I won’t call them. I won’t hurt them.”What that means: Fae who hold a true name can find that person, speak into their dreams, bind a promise to them,
or sell the name on. She may not use it today. She will own it forever. That is the price.
Travel — Chart a Course
Stonetop → Highway → Foothills → Barrier Pass (5 days) → Dhaar valley (2 days) → the falls.
Run 2 stops. One hard choice each.
1. Barrier Pass
“The pass is a wall, and the wall has a gate that hasn’t opened for southerners in living memory.
Above it, prayer-flags snap over cliff-houses, and something you can’t quite see keeps pace with you along the parapet.”
Ask the road to Underfalls: Parley. Tell the truth and they give the road, a warning
(“the drifts are open this year — do not eat anything you did not carry up”), and a letter to the Vigil
that makes the Cloister friendly on sight.
Lie: they give a road a day longer that comes out at the Ice Falls instead of the Stair.
Skip the Pass: no letter, no warning. The first person who offers them food up here is Hush.
2. Dhaar valley
“Terraced barley under snow and a dozen roofs. Every lintel has a nail hammered into it, cold iron,
driven deep — and the newest one is very new.”
Ask about the nails: a white lady has been walking the valley since the first snow.
She is polite. She has bought two things from them already: a song, and a boy’s middle name.
Nobody will say which boy.
Ask for a guide: old Lhamo will walk them to the stair for lamp oil, and tell them
the Vigil are nine and count everything.
Take iron from a lintel: the valley will let them, unhappily. It is the single best decision
they can make and they will not know why for two days.
Prayer-Flag Stair
Way inFight
“A stair of cut stone climbs the headwall, swept clear this morning by somebody.
Rotted prayer-flags hang across it in ropes — and the drifts to either side are lumpy, and breathing.”
HP 3; Armor 0 Damage claws, beak, or wing-buffet (hand) Special qualities cold-proof, camouflaged, winged Instinct to spook easily and overreact
Burrow/dig into snow or ice, to forage or hide
Shake off a blast of clinging, freezing mist, damage (close, area, reload)
Scatter and flee to the skies
Kill the flock: loud. The Vigil comes out to see who is shouting on their stair — the Cloister opens
cool and formal instead of warm.
Walk through slow: Defy Danger +DEX or +WIS. The flock lifts off downhill and nobody knows they’re here.
Loot them: a full flock renders to a ◇ jar of ice drake oil (Value 1 up here) — and it is
exactly the gift the Vigil wants.
Hush is sitting on the top step if this is where you want to introduce her. She helps with the drakes.
That help is a price.
Exits
Up through the gate-arch → Cloister: “The steps end at an arch with no gate in it, and beyond, a swept courtyard,
lamplight behind a window of oiled hide, and someone in grey standing very still, watching you arrive.”
West along the headwall → The Ice Falls: “A goat-track cuts away west under the drifts toward a roaring you can feel
in your boots — and then a wall of green-black ice four storeys high, with the roar stopped inside it.”
The Vigil’s Cloister
Talk / the token
“Cells around a swept square. Nine bowls on a shelf, nine cloaks on nine pegs, one of them very old and never taken down.
A woman with a shaved head is scraping ice off a step that has no ice on it, and she does not stop when you come in.”
The Vigil — nine living disciples of the Rime Lord tradition
(order,
not a fortress). Master Dorji (blind, 80s), Tashi (the step-scraper, speaks for them),
six adepts, one novice: Nobu, fourteen, desperate for news of anywhere else.
HP 6; Armor 0 Damage staff with disadvantage (close) Special qualities inconsistent spirit sight; will absolutely follow them home Instinct to veer between his masters’ teachings and his base needs
Do what his superiors ask
Hesitate, balk, flinch
Show great promise, or great weakness
They often know what is being carried before anyone says it — Dorji has spirit-sight and no manners about it.
They are not shocked. Things are brought here to be put down. There is a
procedure, and the procedure is the point.
Ask properly (Parley, or the Barrier Pass letter): they give the bronze tally —
the Gate token, Key 2 — and the shape of the rite. Gifts of salt, ink, or lamp oil make this automatic.
Ask what it costs: nothing. But one of them comes down with them and watches, and if the visitors
does anything to the shrine, that witness is what the mountain remembers.
Warn them about the white lady: Dorji’s face changes for the first time. They have been feeding her
at the cistern all winter because turning her away costs more. That is the first honest fear in the place.
Push past / draw steel: six adepts, staves, nets. They aim to disarm and carry out, not kill.
Losing means waking up outside, unhurt, with the shrine shut. Winning means the shrine is open and
every tulpa inside now treats them as vermin (Nodes 7, 9 and 10 hostile on sight).
Dialog (pick 1–2)
“You brought it up the stair unwrapped, didn’t you. No — don’t. I can hear the answer.”
“We are nine. We were nine when my teacher came and nine when hers did. Nothing here is dying, southerner. That’s the whole discipline.”
“Put it down and you may never take it up again. That is not a warning. That is the offer.”
(Nobu, later, alone) “Is it true there’s a lake down there so big you can’t see the far side? — Don’t tell Tashi I asked.”
Exits
Back out under the arch → Prayer-Flag Stair: “The wind has already filled your footprints on the steps. Somebody is watching you leave.”
The chapel door, north → Hall of Chants: “Under a lintel carved with a closed eye, a dark doorway breathes out air warmer than the yard,
and from inside, faint and steady, a hundred voices holding one note.”
The store-room stair, west → Apes’ Hoard: “Down two flights past sacks of barley to a door standing open —
which Tashi says has been open since the apes decided it was theirs, and no, the Vigil will not be discussing it.”
The Ice Falls
Way inClimb / spirit
“The waterfall stopped mid-fall a long time ago — a curtain of green-black ice, and the daylight through it is the colour of a bruise.
Behind it, a dry hollow, and the ice is carved with names, smallest at the bottom, layered deep.”
A
cold spirit
lives in the falls — patient, bitter, dislikes exuberance, and has opinions about everyone in this valley.
It does not attack. It tells.
Climb the face: Defy Danger +STR/+DEX, or rope-work and a real plan. Miss =
and dangling. This is the way in for anyone avoiding the front door.
Talk to the spirit (offer stillness — sit, shut up, wait): it will answer three things.
It knows: the white lady sleeps in the cistern; the Vigil are frightened of her; the vault door does not open for Fae,
and she knows it, and she is not trying to open it.
Be loud, chip the ice, take a souvenir: the spirit freezes their water, their food and one held weapon.
Nothing is destroyed. Everything is inconvenient.
Exits
Down the goat-track east → Prayer-Flag Stair: “The flags come back into view below you, and the swept stair, and whoever is standing at the top of it.”
The sluice channel, behind the curtain → Hall of Chants: “A cut stone channel that once fed the shrine, dry now, sloping into the mountain —
and out of it, warm as breath, a hundred voices holding one note.”
The plunge basin, below the ice → Cistern Cave: “Under the frozen fall the basin has gone hollow, and a drift has piled against a cave-mouth
that is deeper than the mountain has any business being. There are goat-tracks going in. None coming out.”
Hall of Chants
Key 1 — the word
“A long hall, and the chant is in your chest before your ears catch up — a hundred voices, none of them here.
The pillars are carved with mouths. Pass a mouth and its part of the chant gets louder.”
A
thoughtform
— not real, but real enough. No attack, no HP, no malice. It has been reciting the same instruction for centuries.
The instruction contains the stilling word, Sthira
(the same command-word craft as
a column of ice).
Getting the word
10+: they hold it and its use — spoken at a made thing, it stops it dead for one exchange.
Also the line the Warden wants: “nothing out.”
7–9: the word, but rough. First use each scene, roll
— 4+ it takes.
6−: they mishear a syllable. It will fail once, at the worst moment, and they will not know why.
Advantage for: spirit-sight, Rime Lord script, the Vigil’s teaching (the Cloister), or one PC who will sit down and
listen for an hour. Smashing a mouth-pillar ends that voice permanently — the Vigil will hear the gap in the
chant from the courtyard, and Master Dorji will weep, and that is worse than being attacked.
Exits
South, under the closed-eye lintel → Cloister: “Cold clean air, a swept square, and nine bowls on a shelf.”
Up the sluice channel → The Ice Falls: “The chant thins behind you and the roar that isn’t moving gets louder ahead,
until you step out under a wall of standing water.”
The pushed-out wall-block, behind the last pillar → Apes’ Hoard: “A gap where a block was shoved out from the far side.
White hair caught on the stone, and a smell like a wet dog that has been eating flowers.”
The Long Stair, end of the hall → Gate of Quiet: “Steps going down into a cold with teeth, and at the bottom,
a blue light that does not flicker, and something seated in it that has not moved in your lifetime.”
The Apes’ Hoard
Block / talkFight if pressed
“A vaulted store-room, every surface stacked: finger-bones sorted by size, scraps of writing flattened under stones,
and at the centre, on a folded blanket, chips of purple ice laid out like a meal nobody is eating.”
They do not attack first. They will die for the hoard. The Vigil have quietly let them stay for forty years.
HP 12; Armor 1 (thick fur, hide) Damage grasping hands (reach, close, grabby, forceful) Special qualities never leaves the hoard Instinct to protect the hoard
In the hoard: a
dark ice knife,
a disciple’s wax tablet naming the vault below — and, sitting on top of the purple chips where anyone can see it,
a single iron nail. Nobody in this valley leaves iron lying around by accident.
Trade: they collect bones, writing, and dark ice. Offer any of the three and the alpha lets one item go.
A page of southern writing buys the knife outright.
Steal: Defy +DEX at disadvantage. Miss = the whole band, and they trail the thief through the site,
hitting once per node at the worst moment.
Kill them: it works, and it is four animals dying over a bone collection in a holy house.
Tashi will not speak to them again.
Exits
Up the store-room stair → Cloister: “Barley sacks, then daylight, then the swept square and somebody counting you as you come up.”
Through the pushed-out block → Hall of Chants: “Back into the chant, and it has not noticed you were gone.”
The apes’ own crawl, down and north → Cistern Cave: “A belly-crawl that comes out on a lip of rock above still black water —
and a warmth down there that has no business being warm, and someone humming.”
The Cistern Cave
Way inKey 3 — her leaveFight if refused badly
“The shrine’s cistern: still black water under a dome of natural rock. Except the far wall is gone.
Where it should be there is a snowdrift, indoors, going back further than the mountain allows —
and past it, firelight, and goats laughing, if goats could laugh.”
This is a mouth of
the Bear of Winter’s
domain, open while the drifts hold. Hush camps at the threshold with a handful of
White Billies.
Standard
domain hazards
apply past the drift — do not let them go in unless they insist, and then let time do what time does.
HP 7; Armor 4 (resilience), 0 vs iron Damage headbutt (hand, forceful) Special qualitiesFae nature Instinct to suppress their grief
Drag someone into their revels
Get huffy if refused
Lash out if forced to face the past
The Billies are drinking, dancing, and grieving something they will not name. They will pull PCs into the revel
— that is their whole move, and it costs a night and a debility. Armor 4 makes them nearly unkillable with bronze
and trivial with a nail. This is a good place to show what iron does.
Deal with Hush here:HAGGLE.
She will open the Gate for them (Key 3), guide them, even carry a lamp. Every yes moves her ladder one step.
Refuse politely: costs nothing. She smiles and says she’ll ask again lower down. She will.
Refuse rudely / draw iron: the Billies stand up. She does not — she watches how they fight
and adjusts her price accordingly.
Steal from her camp: the fastest way to Ladder 4 and the only way to make her genuinely dangerous early.
Dialog (pick 1–2)
“Sit down, you’re cold. No — sit down. I’m not going to ask for anything while you’re cold. That would be rude.”
“Those nine upstairs will put your book in a hole and forget it, and in a hundred years someone will dig it up because it is in a hole.
I would keep it. I keep things beautifully.”
“I don’t want your hand, or your years, or your firstborn. Aunties in stories want those.
I want a true name — someone you love. Just to keep in my pocket. I won’t call them. You have several.”
(If they mention the Vigil’s fear) “Frightened? Of me? I’ve been fed at that door all winter.
Ask yourself what they think they owe me, and why.”
(Asked how she knew they were coming) “Knew? Dear, I’ve wintered in this hole eleven times.
Nobody climbs to the top of the world in the snow to look at the view. You all come up carrying something,
and you all come down lighter, and I am simply the only one who ever asks what you’re putting down.”
Exits
Up through the plunge basin → The Ice Falls: “Out under the frozen fall, into daylight the colour of a bruise, and the wind takes the humming away.”
The apes’ crawl, up and south → Apes’ Hoard: “A belly-crawl that ends in a room that smells of wet fur, and something big and white going very still when it hears you.”
The siphon, down under the water → Gate of Quiet: “The old overflow, half-choked with ice, dropping into the dark under the shrine.
Two lungfuls of black water, and then blue light and a seated shape that turns its head as you surface.”
The Gate of Quiet
Gate — three keysFight if forced
“A gate of dark ice, and standing in it a shape made of cold — a tall seated figure that is not sitting on anything.
It performs the same courtesy it always has, and it performs it now, for you.”
The Warden —
tulpa,
purpose protection, tethered to the gate, cannot leave it. Not mad, not corrupt: literal.
HP 17; Armor 2 (0 while stilled) Damage cold (reach, forceful) Special qualities tethered to the gate; unmanifest and reform; never pursues Instinct to protect
Ask its three questions
Unmanifest and reform (twice at 6 HP unless stilled)
Its three questions
“What do you carry?” — the truth, or it knows.
“Who sent you?” — “no one” is acceptable. Naming the Vigil without the tally is not.
“What will you take out?” — “nothing” is the answer it wants. See the Reliquary.
Key 1 — the word:Sthira stops it for an exchange; walk past. It remembers, and it will not help
them in the Vault.
Key 2 — the bronze tally: show it and the questions are a formality. It opens the gate and
names the vault’s rite in order, which is worth a whole roll later.
Key 3 — her leave: Hush walks them to the gate and says one word into it. It opens.
The Warden does not like this and says so, in a voice like a door: “That is not yours to give.”
Force: it fights, reforming twice at 6 HP unless stilled. Breaking it means the gate cannot be shut behind them —
and in the Vault, Hush’s Billies can come through.
Exits
Back up the Long Stair → Hall of Chants: “Up out of the teeth-cold into the warm hum, and the mouths take up their parts as you pass.”
Back up the siphon → Cistern Cave: “Black water, two lungfuls, and then firelight and goats and somebody who says
‘back so soon?’ without looking up.”
Through the gate → Stilled Meadow: “The cold changes character — not hostile now, just total —
and past the arch there is light, and grass, and, impossibly, the smell of cut flowers.”
The Stilled Meadow
Judgement
“A meadow in high spring, under a mountain, in winter. Grass to the knee, rhododendron in flower, a bee stopped
mid-air over a bloom. Nothing here has moved in living memory — except the old man sitting in it,
who is blind, and who says your names in the order you came through the gate.”
Master Dorji is here (he came down ahead of them, and no, they will not learn how), or
Tenzi, a
shantyara,
if they made an enemy of the Vigil. Either way: this is where somebody looks at them and decides.
HP 18; Armor 2 (thick hides/furs, skill) Damage orichalcum sword w/advantage (close, messy, 2 piercing) Special qualities spirit-sight; counters what she sees coming Instinct to cleanse the world of the Howling Curse
Stalk a suspect with perfect patience
Deftly counter an attack she sees coming
Mercilessly cut down the condemned, and any who protect them
Only if the Vigil were wronged.
Dorji’s question is not whether they may bury it. It is what they promised the white lady on the way down,
and whether they intend to keep it. He can hear a Fae bargain on a person the way you can smell smoke.
Tell him everything: he tells them the thing the Vigil has never said aloud —
the Vigil have been paying Hush all winter in small things, and they are out of small things.
If they bury the Codex and refuse her, she will be the shrine’s problem, not theirs, and Dorji
is going to let that happen, and he wants them to know he chose it.
Lie about a bargain: he says nothing, and the meadow’s stillness stops applying to the liar —
their breath fogs, alone in the whole valley, for the rest of the adventure. Everyone can see it.
Ask him to do the rite instead: he cannot. Eighty years of stillness means his will can’t
grip a thing that wants. That is the whole reason a shrine full of masters needs three loud southerners.
Wronged the Vigil? Tenzi is here instead, and she is not interested in the Codex.
She is interested in whether they leave.
Dialog (pick 1–2)
“Sit. The flowers don’t mind. Nothing here minds anything — that is what we made it for.”
“You said yes to her. No, don’t look at him. You said yes to her. What did you say yes to?”
“We have fed her since the first snow because turning her away costs more than feeding her.
That was cowardice. I have had all winter to name it.”
“Put it under and she will stay, and she will ask us, and we will have nothing left that is small.
Do it anyway.”
Exits
Back through the arch → Gate of Quiet: “Grass, then no grass. The seated shape has not moved and asks nothing on the way out.”
The low north door → Reliquary: “A door of dark ice with a hundred names cut into it, and cold coming out of it like water from a jug.”
The stone throat under the grass → Vault of Quiet: “Steps going down into a dark the meadow’s light won’t enter.
Nothing is waiting at the bottom. That is somehow worse.”
The Reliquary
FightMajor arcanum
“Nine alcoves, nine kneeling figures of clear grey ice, hands cupped and empty — all but the ninth.
Hers holds a torc of fine metal with a fist-sized ball of dark ice set in it, and looking at it makes the room feel further away.”
Noruba’s Ice Sphere
— a major arcanum, held in trust here, not lost. The kneelers are
tulpas
made in the shape of nine dead disciples — working guardians, not restless dead. It is simply not theirs.
Horde, spirit, construct; working guardians, not restless dead
HP 11; Armor 2 (0 while stilled) Damage grab (hand, grabby) Special qualities they will not kill; five more stand if the party persists Instinct to disarm and put it back
Grab, disarm, and carry the Sphere back to the ninth pair of hands
Stand when it is lifted
Lift it and they stand. Their whole purpose is “nothing out.” They grab, disarm, and carry the Sphere
back to the ninth pair of hands. They will not stop and they will not kill.
Sthira: stops all nine for one exchange — enough to reach the stair.
Ask the Vigil for it (the Cloister or the Stilled Meadow) first: Dorji will say yes, actually — the Sphere is a tool and
tools are for using — if they bury the Codex first. Promised, then earned. No fight at all.
Take it by force: nine ice statues of dead monks, broken up in a holy house, while their order stands
upstairs. It works. Tenzi is at the top of the stair afterwards.
Exits
Back through the low door → Stilled Meadow: “The flowers are exactly as you left them, and the old man is facing the door already.”
The inner stair, down → Vault of Quiet: “A short flight cut straight down through the ice, and at the bottom a round room
with a cupped hollow in the floor, open, and waiting, and lit by nothing.”
The Vault of Quiet: burial + boss
Climax
“A round chamber walled in dark ice. In the floor a cyst of it stands open like a cupped hand,
set in a ring of rune-etched stone — the same craft as those lonely meadow pillars further north.
It is clean. It is swept. Somebody comes down here every week to sweep a room almost no one enters.”
This is a worked vault built on the same principle as
a column of ice:
speak the command word near the dark ice, and it answers — opens, expands, seals, traps even spirits.
Here the word is Sthira (Hall of Chants, or a few hours studying the floor-runes if they have Rime Lord script).
Nothing lives in the chamber. The fight comes to the threshold:
Hush-of-Snow arrives the moment the rite begins — now the thing must be given or lost.
She cannot cross into the chamber. Neither can the Billies.
HP 22; Armor 4 (resilience, ice), 0 vs iron Damage grab (reach, grabby) Special qualities at the threshold only; same tracker as above Instinct to be owed
HP 7; Armor 4 (resilience), 0 vs iron Damage headbutt (hand, forceful) Special qualitiesFae nature; only if the Gate of Quiet was broken, or her ladder is at 4 Instinct to suppress their grief
The shape of the fight
One PC has to stay in the chamber doing the rite. Everyone else is at a doorway holding off something with
Armor 4 that cannot come in but can reach in, grab, glamour, drag, and talk. She goes for the rite-worker
every time, and she goes for their ears first.
Iron ends her. Armor 0 against it. A nail, a horseshoe, a lintel-spike from Dhaar, the one in the ape
hoard. Without iron this is a grinding, losing fight and they should feel it by the second exchange.
She will not fight to the death. At 8 HP or less she stops, brushes herself off, and makes her
last offer as though nothing happened.
She keeps every promise made to her — that is the trap. If a PC owes her, she spends it here:
“you said you would hand me the next thing I asked for. I am asking.”
Nobody has to fight at all. If they simply give her the Codex, she takes it, thanks them warmly,
and the drift closes. That is a real ending. It is also a major arcanum in the hands of the Bear’s retinue,
and the Vigil will have to be told.
Burial steps (in order)
Same move as the outdoor discovery: when you speak the command word near the dark ice, it expands or yields.
At Underfalls the word opens the floor-cyst, receives what is set in, then knits shut — stilling what cannot be destroyed.
Open the cyst — speak Sthira at the floor-runes (or +INT/+WIS with the
Vigil’s rite / the
Warden’s recital if they only half-know the word).
10+: the ice cups open.
7–9: opens; pick 1 —
cold (ignores armor) · Hush gets a free reach-in now · the word is spent for this scene.
6−: the floor doesn’t answer. No opening this beat, and she starts talking.
Unwrap and set the Codex in — hands on it, +CON or Defy Danger. This is where the plates speak.
Trigger Hec’tumel’s offer now if it hasn’t landed.
10+: plates in, face down.
7–9: in — pick 1: the bearer marks a Codex consequence · Hush has them by the wrist ·
someone else must pull them off it (an action).
6−: the bearer doesn’t let go. Not dropped — held. Ask them why, out loud.
Seal it — pack the cyst and speak the stilling over it: +INT, +WIS, or the dark ice knife driven into the seam.
10+: the ice knits shut, purple-black, and the room goes quiet in a way they feel in their teeth.
7–9: shuts, pick 1 —
from the threshold · the knife is spent · a hand frozen into the seam (Defy +STR, damage and a debility).
6−: the seam won’t take, and Hush names her price into the gap.
Hold until it takes (only if she is still at the door) — +CON, or Defend the cyst one more exchange.
10+: it locks. She stops mid-sentence, and the sentence never gets finished.
7–9: locks; mark a debility or lose gear into the ice.
6−: the seal sets crooked — buried, but she knows exactly where, and so does her aunt.
Hush at the threshold (dialog)
“Oh, don’t. Don’t put it in the ground. Something that old, and you’re going to bury it like a dog.”
“I can’t come in. You know that, I know that. So we can both stop pretending this is a fight and start talking about the price.”
(To whoever owes her) “You said yes to me at the cistern. In front of your friends. Are you a liar in front of them too?”
(At 8 HP or less, brushing snow off her sleeve) “Well. That was undignified. Last offer, and it’s a kind one.”
Hec’tumel’s offer use this
From the plates, to whoever is holding them — once, at step 2:
“She will keep me on a shelf. You could keep me working. Refuse her and refuse them, and I will teach you,
tonight, the word that closes a Fae’s mouth. You may bury me tomorrow. You will not want to.”
Accept: Hush is silenced and driven off outright. Mark a Codex consequence.
The Codex is not buried; it is theirs now, with the Vigil watching them carry it back up the stair.
Refuse: the scene continues as it is. Dorji, upstairs, already knew which they’d pick and is unbearable about it.
If the Codex goes down
The vault seals purple-black and the mountain is quieter than any of them have heard anything be.
Hec’tumel has no mouth in the world tonight, and whoever carried the Codex loses it —
and any Codex spells with it, like a language you stop being able to hear.
The Sphere:Noruba’s Ice Sphere
is theirs if the Vigil gave it or they took it. Cold, quiet, and a much politer road to the same appetite —
deliberate.
Hush goes home owed nothing — a wound, for one of the Bear’s retinue.
She knows the southern road they came by, and any promises spoken in her hearing. Winter is long.
The Vigil: the shrine took something in and the order held. They are nine, and may now count
southern allies. An adept walks the road down before spring — a mountain
trade partner
if their home steading will believe it.
Nobu: if anyone was kind to him, he is two days behind them on the road, with a bowl and no cloak.
5 Ice Drakes
