ICEHOLD (A System Agnostic Fantasy Settlement) (Patreon)

Icehold is a system-agnostic fantasy settlement sitting at 78 degrees north on an Earth-like planet. It’s designed to fit in a typical tabletop RPG game world. The setting was original presented in a series of separate articles (tagged Icehold), which have been edited, revised, and expanded for this Paying-Patron Exclusive post. If any more Icehold articles are posted in the future, their content will also be added to this Compilation Page.

(Art by Cerafts)

OVERVIEW

The fortified harbor and trade town of Jokullnaf, also known as Icehold, is the northernmost walled city in the known world. Nestled in Jokull Harbor, it is surrounded by mountains, tundra, hyboreal forests, and ice. No other major settlement exists within hundreds of miles of it, and it can only be accessed by either sea or overland route for a few months a year. Icehold is under constant threat by undead, extreme storms, deathly cold, and numerous monstrous threats of the far north. With the risk and isolation, however, comes a level of political freedom rare in settlements its size.

Icehold exists only because the Drakuul Crusade built the original fortress as they sought to find and destroy the First Vampire. While the crusade was still active, rich veins of Blue Iron and Firestone were found in the mountains that stretch for hundreds of miles in all directions from the settlement. Holy pilgrimages still bring a few crusaders to its walls every year, but it is the fortune that can be made mining that has maintained the town.

Though positioned far north of any humanoid settlement on its continent, it is also on the continent's westernmost point, making it an attractive trade port for foreign nations... at least for the few months per year its harbor is not totally iced over. Even the extreme cost of lengthy travel and the high prices locals demand for labor in the harsh clime do not make it unprofitable for merchants to come to Icehold every year, buying materials outright but also trading magics, foods, preservatives, and clothing to the icelocked settlement.

The local population are a hardy folk, descended from crusaders, the tradesfolk and servants the crusade needed to survive, explorers, and researchers. The population has a large percentage of elf, dwarf, gnome, goblin, human, ogre, orc, and gnimmocs (a gnollish ethnicity adapted to arctic environments). Less common, but noteworthy, are the numbers of halflings, logith (a humanoid species with elemental fire ancestry), lyricera (a tundra-adapted ethnicity of catfolk), and ice trolls (native to the region, predating the establishment of Icehold).

The year-round population of Jokullnaf hovers around 5,000, with another 1,000 or so living in small private settlements (found mostly in caves and defensible valleys). During the summertime Trade Season, the population can almost double, as merchant ships and overland caravans rush to buy as much Blue Steel and Firestone as they can. This lasts only a few months before the surrounding sea freezes over and the long, winding mountain routes become impassible.

Ruled by a Council of Principals, the population of Jokullnaf sets high value on privacy, individual freedom, and the right to be left alone. While there are laws dictating certain antisocial behaviors are criminal there is no sect, ethnicity, ancestry, nationality, religion, or creed that is banned or outcast, as long as they play by the rules.

The combination of great personal freedom, vast mining riches, a history of undead-destroying crusades, and access to the coldest places in the world attract a specific kind of person, who is willing to brave all the risks of Icehold's harsh environment to reap its rewards.

LOCATION & ENVIRONMENT

Icehold sits to the far, far north, halfway between the lands of the Njor and the Northern Pole. Even the seas around it are frozen most of the year, and its harbor is typically only free of ice from June to September, and is always frozen solid from November to April. The average temperature of those months reaches a high of 6° C (43° F). It is below freezing nearly all the rest of the year, with the coldest month averaging high temperatures of −15.5° C (4.1° F), but sometimes getting as cold as −39.1° C (−38.4° F). On the coldest days, a cup of warm tea thrown into the air turns to powdery snow before it hits the ground.

Living With Extreme Temperatures

Snow and ice on the ground are nearly universal, which is just as well since rivers freeze and even the deepest wells hit ice rather than liquid water and boiling snow is the easiest way to acquire water. Nearly all buildings and most camps keep fires burning nonstop, year-round, with Firestone the most common source of heat (a single fist-sized hunk of Firestone weighs roughly half a pound and 4 pounds of Firestone can keep a typical stove hot enough to warm a 20 ft. x 30 ft. house for 24 hours, making it roughly 10 times as efficient as coal). This both heats an area and allows snow and ice to be melted daily for fresh water. It also ensures new fires can easily be started from the burning Firestone, should that be needed.

Those local to Jokullnaf know how to survive the deadly cold and warming magic is common, but some nevertheless freeze to death every year. Buildings are well-insulated, so much so that in the short summer most activity is taken outdoors as the buildings can get uncomfortably warm. Clothing and armor are almost always layered, and extremely thick hooded cloaks known as feldjar are common. Feldjar are made of two thick layers of furred hide, sewn with the fur facing inward to form a thick insulation. There cloaks are designed to be buttoned closed if necessary, but are generally worn just draped around the shoulders so it can be thrown off quickly for any detail-oriented work.

Conversely, there are a few regions of the areas around Icehold where heat rules. Several currently dormant volcanos are close enough to the settlement for their red glow to be visible on a clear night, and many have slow lava flows running down into (apparently) bottomless pits. Anyone coming close to the molten rock finds the air goes from freezing to burning surprisingly quickly, and when snow falls on the lava it hisses and can produce steam able to scald skin, gusts of which may twist and shift suddenly in strong winds. Even beyond the volcanoes, a few old and abandoned Firestone mines have caught fire over the decades. The entrances to these are unknown, but occasionally a vent opens in the ground with burning smoke and cinders jetting out. Such events can burn entire packs of animals to death before enough ice falls into the crack to make the ground shake enough that it closes access to the burning mine as suddenly as it opened.

(Art by Jasper W)

Long Nights and Midnight Suns

The deadly temperatures are far from the only regional challenges Icehold residents face. When the sun sets on October 28th each year, it does not rise again until the 15th of February (111 days later), and the surrounding mountains prevent the sun from being seen in town until shortly after the first week of March. Conversely, when the sun rises on April 18th it does not set again until August 23rd (127 days later). For weeks at either end of these periods there is enough glow to see in dim light even though the sun does not properly rise. These periods are called the Blue Nights.

Spirit Tides

Some nights, the sky lights up with Spirit Tides from the Ocean of Souls, the literal path spirits of the departed take to reach the afterlife from the mortal realm (also known as the Low Road). When the Spirit Tides are green, they can be safely observed, and individual spirits cannot be visually picked out. But on especially cold nights the Spirit Tides can turn blue, purple, red, or yellow, meaning the barrier between them and the mortal realm are too thin for safety. Specific souls can be seen, or if you are high enough on a mountainside even spoken to. Such nights draw undead, necromancers, and grieving beloved of the recently lost to the region, but anyone looking at the tides also risks a spirit possessing them, or even breaking free from the path to become a specter or wraith. If work must be done during the nights of strong Spirit Tides, Icehold locals wear wooden blinders over their eyes, keeping their vision restricted to a narrow band they focus down, away from the skies.

ECONOMY

For much of the year, the fortified town of Icehold is cut off from any other civilization. Sitting on the far western spur of its continent, during the summer traders can sail in from distant ports both south and east on the same landmass, but also from continents to the west and southwest. A few mountain passes lead southeast from Jokullnaf to areas well south of it (though where the passes end are still considered ‘The Northlands” by most other cultures on the continent). These routes are passable only in September, and only for a few weeks.

With a typical winter population of 5,000 people, Jokullnaf can swell up to 11,000 in the summer months as merchants flood the city to buy up as much Blue Iron and Firestone as possible, and service folk come with them to provide services the wealthy expect, but there is little need for when they are gone. Many of these belong to one of Icehold’s Service Guides, who own permanent buildings in Icehold which sit nearly empty 8 months out of the year, watched over by a skeleton staff until the work season arrives in summer and its rooms are full. This is by far the largest source of money into Icehold’s economy, though there also exists some lesser trade in furs, preserved foods, bits of destroyed undead, and relics from the Drakuul Crusade.

Though the surrounding area is mountains, valleys, and tundra, there remain natural resources Icehold locals have learned to harvest and grow. White spruce are common, many growing to more than 100 feet high, and offer nutrition in their needles, inner bark, cones, and seeds. This is most often accessed as various teas, but it can also be used to make beer, porridge, and even a flat bread. Fishing is plentiful and open sea ice fishing, though dangerous, allows that bounty to be caught year-round. Numerous shrubs and bushes flow in the summer, including crowberries which are used to make wines and jams. Other forms of lichens, mosses, and sedges, abound and ‘wyrmlichen’ can sustain a person for months, though the taste is bitter, sour, and spoiled.

Some herders manage reindeer and musk oxen, and households often raise a small number of hares or clipped snow geese to provide meat in cold months. Insect farming is also common, and considered a fine way to turn lichen into something closer to meat (and, if dried and ground, a kind of flour). Pickling food is extremely common, as is dry freezing and deep freezing in cold pits. Even so, when the Summer trade begins, the desire for honey, flour, and non-local meats is high.

(Art by Andrus Cirprian)

CULTURE

The people of the region around Icehold all consider themselves part of a single culture, generally called Icehold, but not all of them are part of the only large settlement in the region, the fortified harbor and trade town of Jokullnaf. Even so, understanding the government and laws of Jokullnaf (which, confusingly to newcomers, is also often just called Icehold) is crucial to understanding the region as a whole.

Jokullnaf was originally built some 200 years ago as a fortified base of operations for the Drakuul Campaign, a religious expedition that sought to destroy the creature believed to be the First vampire and, after several decades, appeared to succeed in destroying it. This lead to a slow conversion of Jokullnaf from a military fortress to a settlement. It is the only major settlement within hundreds of miles of its location, though a few small family enclaves exist in the surrounding caves and valleys. Most are friendly with Jokullnaf.

A few are not.

But even those who are somewhat hostile to the townsfolk accept that the closest thing to law in the land of Icehold is the Jokullnaf Council of Principals.

Council of Principals

Jokullnaf is ruled by a Council of Principals, which serves as the only executive, legislative, and judicial authority in the town. The official motto of the council is "Secure in Body, Belief, and Self." Councilors often argue about what exactly that means, but in general it's accepted that the job of the Council of Principals is to keep everyone in all of Icehold safe, without bothering them too much or asking more of them than absolutely necessary.

The council is currently 12 seats, but it has been as small as 6 and as large as 18 over the past century. Changing the council's size requires a petition be brought by the population with at least 1,000 signatures, and then a vote in which at least 1/3 of the council agree with the change.

Each seat on the council is assigned to a "Principal Interest" within the population of the city. The current seats are (in order of seniority) Crusaders, The Guard, Landowners, Masons, Alchemists, Citizens, Churches, Scouts, Fishers, Gatherers, Merchants, and Service Guilds. A single councilor holds each seat, and terms are 24 months, offset so a new councilor takes a seat every 2 months. All matters are handled by an open vote among the councilors, with the oldest councilor who has held their seat for at least one full year being given the tiebreaking vote in case of stalemate.

Councilors are not paid for their labor, but do receive a few personal assistants for the term of their membership. These are generally young members of rich families and trade groups  wishing for their children to learn how Icehold is run. A councilor is not officially required to appear for the weekly meetings of the council, but one who shirks work without good reason is likely to be penalized by the grumpy councilors who do go to meetings, and eventually thrown out of the council.

Each group represented by a Principal Interest is responsible for keeping a list of enrollment current with the names of everyone considered part of that group. Each group is allowed to petition the Council of Principals to approve a charter that defines membership in an Interest, which almost always includes being of age of majority, mentally sound, not sworn to a foreign secular government, not convicted of a serious crime against Icehold or its population, and being considered an actively involved member of the Interest. 

For example, a Citizen likely only needs be a competent adult in good standing, but a Mason must be of at least Journeyfolk skill and still an active participant in the profession of masonry. Most Interests use majority votes among their members already registered with the council to determine when to add or remove someone from their official membership.

Most of the seats are filled by sortition – each time a seat opens, a councilor is selected at random from the enrollment list of people who qualify. (This is not true for Crusaders, the Guard, or Masons). In most cases, a person cannot sit in the same councilor seat two terms in a row (although members of the Guard and the Masons can). Further, the council can dismiss any member from their seat, though that seat is then immediately filled by a new member of the same interest. For most seats this requires the agreement of 2/3 of the other councilors, though only a more-than-half vote is required to unseat a council from the Guard or the Masons. 

The general definition of each Interest is as follows:

Crusaders

Individuals with ties to a known group that still seeks to destroy the powerful undead existing in the far north. In most cases, modern crusaders are those who have been trained by someone who was trained by someone who was one of the original members of the Drakuul Crusade. Many Crusaders are also mercenaries, adventurers, or private security for local merchants.

A majority vote of existing Crusaders registered with the council can add or remove someone from this Interest. Because Crusaders often leave Jokullnaf for long periods, they are allowed to elect a councilor from within their ranks, and may select a retired member who is no longer active in crusading.

Alchemists

Access to cheap Firestone and Blue Iron, along with fauna and flora unknown in warmer climes, has caused a small but vibrant alchemist community to develop in Jokullnaf. After a few explosions in the early days, the Council of Principals determined anyone wanting to work in alchemy required the council's approval. This led to the council and the alchemists working closely together to keep the town safe from experiments and, eventually, that expertise proved useful enough to earn a seat on the council. 

Churches

Several churches have moved into Icehold, and often wish to have holy day celebrations, perform loud or odd ceremonies, or otherwise act in ways that seem questionable without some advanced discussion. The Council decided to set aside a single seat for all church leaders in the region. If a church leader fails to appropriately represent the interests of all churches in Icehold, the Council dismisses them and gets a new church leader to sit in the seat.

Citizens

As the town grew, the fact Landowners had a voice in government but other citizens did not eventually caused unrest. A Citizen's seat was added to settle things down, and remained for the past century.

Fishers

Fish makes up a huge part of the Jokullnaf diet, and after a few council decisions made fishing more difficult and led to long, hungry winters, a Fishers' Seat was added.

Gatherers

Added the summer after the Fisher's seat was created, this seat represents those who gather barks, needles, and lichens for foodstuff. It also currently covers furriers, hunters, and trappers with strong family ties to the town, who want their own seat, but aren't currently numerous enough to convince the council to give them one.

The Guard

The region of Icehold is dangerous, and Jokullnaf is a fortress town for a reason. The Guard are responsible for walking the walls, manning the watch-towers and gates, organizing defense of Icehold in times of attack, watching for and organizing efforts against fires (especially at the harbor), enforcing decrees of the Council of Principals, and generally being the armed branch of Icehold. However, there are only 30 or so full-time members of the Guard, with any major effort requiring rounding up armed citizens.

Because the Guard has a Guard Commander and a chain of authority is considered important for it to function, the Guard seat is appointed by a vote of the rest of the council, and can be held repeatedly.

Landowners

Landowners are people who own land inside of Jokullnaf, or within bowshot of its walls and harbor. Most landowners are families that date back to when Jokullnaf made the transition from armed camp to independent town. The council restricts ownership to a single person per building, and doesn't count any building too small for a person to live in, or that doesn't serve a useful function for the betterment of the region. Unlike most Interests, Landowners are qualified for Council membership if they are  able to speak the oath of loyalty, regardless of age.

Masons

The walls and towers of Jokullnaf are considered crucial for the long-term survival of the town, and they require maintenance and protection from people prying rocks loose for use in other projects. There's no mason's guild within Jokullnaf, just a very protective, skilled community of people who work on the town's stone, some of them old enough to have helped build it to begin with. The population of Masons divide their number into Apprentices, Journeyfolk, and Meisters, with a majority vote of all Meisters determining who is in which group.

Because masonry projects often take longer than two years, and require continuity of direction, the Masons are allowed to vote for their councilor, and may vote in the same person each term. 

Merchants

Only a few years old, the Merchant's Seat is a grudging acknowledgement of how much of Icehold's comfort, if not quite its existence, depends on goods being brought in by sea and through dangerous mountain passes. Most people on the merchant enrollment lists are also on the Landowner and Citizen lists.

Scouts

Dangers to Jokullnaf often begin elsewhere, and sometimes you need someone to run to outlying enclaves or put together search and rescue parties. The town Scouts are the only people crazy enough to do it all the time, and were granted a seat. Scouts often have very strong ties to hunters, who aren’t considered to be doing the same job by the council.

Service Guilds

When the Summer Trade Season opens trade ships, caravans, and merchants briefly flood the town with money and new people. Hundreds of the new people are members of foreign and distant guilds dedicated to servicing the needs and wants of the temporary influx of population. The distant guilds that normally oversee these boatwrights, carpenters, cooks, courtesans, dancers, mercenaries, musicians, scribes, tanners, tailors and so on lack enough power in Icehold to protect their members. So, groups of similarly-skilled craftsmen, laborers, and workers began to form Icehold-specific guilds that were large enough to have some political power… at least during Trade Seasons. The seasonal workers are often seen as "outsiders," which has led to unfair treatment in the past. Shortly after the Merchants gained a seat, the Service Guilds held a strike at the beginning of a Trade Summer to prove how important they were to Icehold's prosperity. The Service Guilds promptly gained a seat.

Enclaves

While Icehold itself is the only full-sized town within hundreds of miles, smaller semi-independent enclaves do exist. These are often work camps built around the entrances to Blue Iron mines or nearby caves, logging camps moving through thick sections of forest, private redoubts of lone alchemists or other necromancers studying some local mystery, or homes of large families set in valleys miles from Icehold which focus on hunting, trapping, arctic cattle, and gathering the land’ spare resources. Most enclaves are temporary, but a few truly hearty groups do carve a living out of the harsh, frozen land beyond Icehold’s control.

The people who survive in such enclaves often think of themselves as the truly free, and the citizens of Jokullnaf as not “true” arctic denizens. People who live within Jokullnaf’s walls tend to think of those who maintain a hardscrabble existence in enclaves as backward, stubborn, and likely short-lived. Such attitudes are not universal of course—many crafters and traders in Icehold have long-term relationships with enclaves that acquire the raw materials the townsfolk sell to foreign merchants.

Even so, the general attitudes are common enough to make relationships between many enclaves and the Council of Principals tense at best. Once an activity is taking place beyond a bowshot from the walls of Icehold, the town’s council consider it none of their business… until someone brings a complaint to the council. Most often such complaints are about claims of fraud or theft in business dealings, and they are dealt with by requiring the enclave to adjust its behavior or be banned from doing business within the town’s walls. However, it’s not unknown for matters to grow heated enough for small-scale violence to break out.

(Art by DM7)

THREATS

Though the First Vampire is long since destroyed by the Drakuul Campaign, other undead still dwell in the tundra, and during the Long Nights in winter these are a significant threat. While some are restless spirits of local folk who died in anger or hate, powerful undead from around the world have moved to the far north to take advantage of their immunity to the cold, and the long stretches where no sunlight can reach them. Though none have built true kingdoms, some have built their own tomb complexes, in the style of their homelands, and brought (or created) as many servants as they can. None of these major undead have lairs near Jokullnaf, but they keep an eye on the largest gathering of fresh sapient meat and hot blood, and raid whenever they feel they can.

Other threats include arctic cave bears, ice perytons, snow spiders, white chimeras, and the sparse but significant threats of boreal dragons, drakes, wyverns, and wyrms. Bandits and raiders don’t usually last long in the harsh environment, but it’s not unknown for fleeing criminals to think the lack of law in Icehold may favor them, or for pirate ships to get caught in the freezing seas by hunting fat trader ships too late in the Trade Season. Unscrupulous groups of alchemists, necromancers, and miners are fairly common, however, even sometimes working with conspirators in Icehold itself.

A troll kingdom once existed in the lands around the town, driving out or killing most other humanoids, but its population was nearly wiped out by some disaster centuries ago, and has grown only very slightly over the past years. Some trolls trade with the people of Icehold, others seek its destruction. A few cases of trolls allying themselves with a powerful undead have occurred in recent years. As those alliances proved mutually beneficial, similar arrangements are becoming more common.

Yeti also exist in the hillier and rockier regions near Icehold, apparently existing at a neolithic stage of technological development and with extremely simple language skills. These yeti are often seen by newcomers as nothing more than bipedal beasts, but natives to Jokullnaf are aware they are as smart as any other humanoid, even if their culture is less technologically advanced (at least in part because they do not need or trust fire). Most yeti groups see all other humanoids (even trolls) as interlopers in their lands, and eliminate small groups if they can while avoiding bands too big to attack, but as with any sapient creatures, there are exceptions.

ADVENTURE SEEDS

*It's April 18th, and the sun has risen for the long Trade Season. But the harbor is still hard frozen, there's no sign of open water in the ocean for as far as the eye can see. The mountain routes remain entirely impassable.

Of course, the routes to Icehold don't open on a tight schedule, so no one worries... at first. But when May arrives, and there's still no sign of even the slightest thaw? Jokullnaf citizens begin to measure the food left in their larders, and notice that the ice fishing hauls are getting smaller and smaller. Not only is the ocean not thawing, the ice fishers say their drill-holes are now deeper than ever, and the ice continues to thicken...

Food grows short. Hunting is dangerous under the best of circumstances. And if the PCs expected to be able to leave during this summer and now can’t, they need to find a safe place to operate out of, possibly for a year or more. And when deciding where is “safe.” PCs need to consider the chance of riots within Jokullnaf, raids from minor enclaves, and the risk of undead or other creatures from the colder deep north taking advantage of Icehold's weakening position.

*As the long night of winter sets in, a massive fleet of Northern Raiders going “viking” arrives. They haul their ships up on shore miles from Jokullnaf, and turn them into permanent buildings. These Northerners paint skulls on their faces, and carry torches made of freezing blue light. Are they here to raid Jokullnaf for riches, to begin their own settlement, or is there a darker purpose to their arrival?

*Though rare, ice dragons from the boreal north, and even fire dragons from nearby mountain volcanos are known threats. But scouts are now reporting what appears to be a group of sickly gray dragons, who kill plants with their very presence and are surrounded by a poisonous fog that travels with them. One nearby enclave is already destroyed, and the scouts report the gray dragons are moving closer and closer with each day.

*In the depth of the long Winter Night, a bright green star appears, shining more brightly than even a full moon. To the far west, one of the volcanoes has gone from a dull red glow to the same hue of green. And when old man Gurthor died last week, he stood up and began trying to eat people, his eyes glowing with the same green. Has some ancient undead lord risen in a volcano lair? Is the green star a harbinger of destruction? Is everyone who dies now going to become undead?

*A PC buys an expensive item in Jokullnaf, and is told doing so makes them officially a merchant. When the Councilor in the Merchant Seat of the Council of Principals is murdered, the PC is randomly selected to take the seat, and told they can't leave until the murder is solved.

*A Firestone mine has begun to burn uncontrollably, and miners are trapped beyond the flame. Their families offer the PCs a large payday if they can put out the mine's flames, or save the trapped miners.

*Scouts and hunters claim yeti are becoming increasingly aggressive, and a minor enclave is wiped out with signs of claw marks on the bodies and walls. A new local merchant with the cheapest prices on Blue Iron gear begins a campaign for Jokullnaf to wage war with the closest yeti clans.

But while going about their normal adventuring, the PCs find a cave with a pile of burned bones, and partially-burned yeti bodies. Weirdly, all the yeti are missing their hands and have been skinned, and there's signs of a camp sitting here for several days and scraps of leatherworking and woodcraft work refuse.

In truth, the new merchant has discovered Blue Iron in the waters near a yeti settlement. The merchant has killed some young yeti to make fake yeti-claws and cloaks , and he is paying brigands to pretend to be yeti to attack local enclaves. The yeti are preparing to make an actual attack in response to their young being killed, and if the PCs are going to stop a bloody and pointless conflict, they need to find a way to communicate with the yeti, prove the merchant guilt, and satisfy the yeti's quite reasonable demands for justice.

RELATED POSTS

*The long overland route to Icehold could easily have The Bridge House Tavern as one of it's waypoints.