The Fantasial Freeze/The Story So Far

Prologue

Session 0: The First Night

Session Tags: Survival

Characters: Adebimpe, Mr. Putney, Rosamund, Kara, Savile, Quimbleton

DM: James (12/5/2024)

Important NPCs: Captain Crezzerin, Bidwell

XP Gained: 3

Important Things that Happened:

• Players left the city of Ravel onboard the SS Exodus after taking on a small contract to work the ship on its voyage south towards Galik in Amusa.
• We learned that Whales are elusive around Osugbo and that some sailors believe that Birds ward off Whales.
• After meeting and making rough acquaintance, the captain invited the crew to the Captain's dinner, where they were told to protect the precious and dangerous-sounding cargo which lived in a lock carriage on the deck.
• After hearing that a possible whale was nearby, Mr. Putney hesitantly left dinner and got some fresh air, getting a first row seat to the beginning of the Arctic Autumn as a mysterious force on the horizon seemed to zoom by, freezing the ocean water in its wake.
• When the ice reached the ship, the jostle nearly killed the lowly (Level 1) crew, but after getting their bearings, the team left the cabin and were shocked to see the dangerous creature...a dire turkey...had been thrown off the ship and was scrambling quickly away into the frozen sunset.
• Getting onto the Exodus' dinghy, the team took off into the night, kept safe and warm by Kara's fire-bending elementalist powers.
• Avoiding a near-death collision with pirates (whose cover was blown when Rosamund's mystic powers revealed their emotions and thoughts), the team sailed into the next day, freezing and huddled around a precarious fire on the dinghy.
• Finally catching up to the sleeping turkey, the team's Aarakocra tried some bird-like rituals to coax the beast back, but instead imitated a challenge to the alpha Turkey. In the quick brawl that ensued, Rosamund was nearly killed, but quick thinking from Kara, Putney, and Quimbleton put the bird into an exhausted state, ready to return back.
• Once they returned the bird, the team learned that there would be no voyage to Galik...indeed, the realm had frozen over, and a strange winter had begun: A Fantasial Freeze.

Session 1: Cold Feet

Session Tags: Survival, Onomancy, Boss Battle, Blowted

Characters: Adebimpe, EltoLinda, Luv, Clover, Lairus, Jaxzo'Ilan

DM: James (1/3/2025)

Important NPCs: Nhart, Otto Bremer

XP Gained: 3

Important Things that Happened:

• Working and staying at a shelter in Ravel to stay away from the cold, the heroes are imposed upon by a group of thugs who were looking to take blankets to stay warm from the arctic conditions outside.
• After Luv paid the thugs off, the team convened at a local Quest Board, noting a few of the crazy things happening in town at the moment, including:
  • A bone dealer named Otto Bremer who wanted whale bones
  • A baker whose fires seem to be magically extinguished by an unknown force
  • A citizen who gets the uncanny feeling they are being watched via Elemental Scrying
  • Reports of a vision from the Onomancer's Guild of a Kaiju-Sized Penguin
  • Worries from citizens about local tortle Captain Kronch
  • Several notices about Pirates in the region.
• Eventually the team settled on investigating the mysterious penguin vision, and went to the Onomancer's Guild where they met with Nhart, an onomancer who showed them his visions: A massive penguin breaking through the ice sheets of the ocean, sending locals fleeing in fear, while an unknown group of 6 stand vigilantly opposed to it.
• The team got along well with the Onomancers, though team Mystic Lairus was highly suspicious, going with the popular thought that Onomancy is an "invasive" form of mind magic that shouldn't be practiced.
• After being given rations and a warm place to sleep that night, the team awoke refreshed and ready to hit the road. However, once they reached the city's frozen harbor piers, they ALSO caught the glimpse of Something Large, Monstrous, and Whale-Shaped, lurking in a back alley.
• As one of the team members was Clover, an infamous monster slayer, an order was given and the team pursued the beast. Eventually it gave an ominous warning to Adebimpe via telepathy: "You all will pay for the sins of the past". Which was enough reason to go ahead and fully kill the beast in an epic battle across Ravel city rooftops and parks.
• Once the beast was slain and the team totally exhausted, it was decided to backtrack and instead sell this Whale-Shaped corpse to Otto Bremer, the whale bone dealer, who rewarded the team with a Magic Swimming Ring of the Princes, and A Portrait of a Spoon.

Session 2: Burnale & Whale

Session Tags: Bastion, Blowted, Wilds, Burnale

Characters: EltoLinda, Luv, Clover, Jaxzo'Ilan, Seven, Quimbleton

DM: James (2/10/2025)

Important NPCs: The Burnale Clan, Otto Bremer

XP Gained: 3

Important Things that Happened:

• Jaxzo'Ilan lost control again and nearly killed Quimbleton in the dark streets of Stalled-For-Thyme, the merchant's district of Ravel (Quimbleton having another Absinthe inspired late night conversation with a lampost)
• The team is attacked by a Dragonfly Blowt in the streets, forcing everyone to seek shelter nearby, where they notice the piling up problems in Ravel on the bulletin board.
• As much of the group had helped Otto Bremer before, they decided to assist him in another mission, delivering Bone Flutes carved from the bones of the Whale Blowt they had previously slain.
• While taking the bones to Manquel, the team was nearly ambushed in the night by members of the Burnale Clan who were looking to loot them. In an inspired move, the team instead decided to challenge the Burnale to a drinking contest, using Quimbleton's Absinthe as the drink of choice.
• Having built up a tolerance (or otherwise using magic) the team was able to stay on their feet longer than the Burnale leader, allowing them to loot his body instead. EltoLinda claiming roughly 100 GP worth of gold in doing so.
• Before arriving in Manquel, the team receives a message from the city (delivered by a freezing Jaxzo'Ilan) that the Flutes may be cursed. The team attempts to confirm if they're cursed by...playing the flute. By doing so, the massive and deep tones of a whale burst over the countryside, unknowingly summoning any nearby Blowt to the area.
• In Manquel, it appears the town was recently under attack by a Blowt summoned to the area (I wonder by who???), but the team fights hard to trap the blowt in its own mind through Luv's mental magics. Once it was trapped, it was a trivial matter of ending it.
• To avoid having to now deliver the flutes to the townsfolk and further cursing people, the team decides to instead pay the city merchant the full value of the flutes (roughly 80 GP), which he seems happy with.
• With the Whale defeated and the mission finished, the team begins to set up a headquarters, a Bastion, in Manquel.

Session 3: Blood on the Ice

Session Tags: Boss Battle, Blowted, The Unravel, Escort

Characters: Adebimpe, Lairus, Sevile, Asimi, Cavii Kero, Kara

DM: James (2/16/2025)

Important NPCs: Aiken, Mayor Berry, Captain Cronch, Breakwater

XP Gained: 3

Important Things that Happened:

• In a town meeting at The Kaleidoscope (the city's center), it is revealed that more Blowt attacks have been happening, and the city guards are not enough to protect the people in the streets.
• After some "negotiation" from Kara and Savile, a deal is brought to the table in which the city's Thieves' Guild, The Unravel, would pad the city's forces and patrol at night. However there would be a team up: 1 guard for every Thief, to ensure accountability.
• With the meeting adjourned, the team decided to investigate the poor tortle Captain Cronch who had been frozen for at least a week, and who had people so worried about him that they were posting for help on the notice boards of the city.
• On the way to Cronch, the team encountered a massive Squall which nearly destroyed their ability to survive the cold, if it weren't for Kara's firebending abilities. Surviving the blizzard, the group encounters Breakwater, a bright eyed Grung in the region, they give him a coat and send him to safety.
• Arriving at Cronch's cabin, the crew find that Breakwater had buried Cronch in a "Burial Mound", after evacuating Cronch from his burial mound (don't worry he was just hibernating), it would open up into a portal to another world, through which a massive turtle-like blowt would emerge.
• After nearly TPK'ing to the turtle (in part thanks to Asimi's uneducated use of Cronch's staff Rumblewood) they would be able to push the turtle back into the portal and close it for good, saving Cronch's life and taking him back to Ravel for a more permanent safety.

Session 4: Are we the Balabaddies?

Session Tags: Exploration, Balabag, Survival, Lush Pocket

Characters: Sevile, Clover, Jaxzo'Ilan, Quimbleton, Silent Wind, [Paul's Goliath]

DM: James (2/28/2025)

Important NPCs: Balabag's Heroes (Thaddeus, Tim the Aarokocra, ??? the Goliath, ??? the Kitsune), Fergus the Manquel Merchant

XP Gained: 3

Important Things that Happened:

• Having set up the Manquel Bastion, Jaxzo'Ilan begins to employ the Barracks with other heroes of the realm, recruiting a Goliath and an Aarakocra who were taking shelter in the area to help in saving the world.
  • The Goliath has daddy issues, and struggles in his nightmares.
• After others arrive in from Ravel, a team of 6 is founded, and the decision is made that since Manquel is already in land, they're in the perfect position to search for the rumored "Lush Pocket" that Ravel was hunting down.
• Thanks to the insane survival abilities of [Paul's Goliath], Silent Wind, and Jaxzo combined, they were able to find the Lush Pocket in record time, stumbling upon a warm spot after only 3 hours of trudging through the snow.
• After discovering that the Lush Pocket thrived due to a greenhouse effect on the lowlands (scientifically backed!), the team snuck down, only to discover that the Lush Pocket had already been claimed by Rival Adventurers hailing from the city of Balabag
• The leader of these rivals was revealed to be Thaddeus of the Drycræft Drifan School of Magicks, a rival school to Quimbleton's Xerneiros.
• When Quimbleton realized that the valley was south of the Balabar River, and that due to the geopolitical fallout of The Cavalry Rush, this particular pocket has every right to be claimed by Ravel and NOT by Balabag, which exists on the north side of the river. However, once he began to elucidate the historical and political reasons why Balabag should give up its claim on the land, the rival adventurers figured it was going to be a better idea to just fight off our intruding heroes.
• After an epic waterside combat (and the death of half of the enemy team) the Balabag heroes forfeited, offering themselves up to be arrested and taken back to Ravel or Balabag.
  • This included Tim the Aarakocra, as well as an unnamed Kitsune and Goliath.
• Jaxzo'Ilan lost control again and once again needed to be talked down by her friends.
• The heroes were rewarded in gold, and political machinations were set into action.

Session 5: End of the RimeSession Tags:

Characters: Seven, Cavii, Lairus, Kara, EltoLinda, Quimbleton

DM: James (3/12/2025)

Important NPCs: Farmer Lyle, Professor Alfonz Mordecai, Ennui, Althia, Bartlett

XP Gained: 3

Important Things that Happened:

• An appearance of the followers of Amaun, said to have been apotheosized from the freezing citizens of Ravel to wards off the cold, move into the Fresna (the Outer District of Ravel)
• Narrowly saving Farmer Lyle's farm by using mysticisim against the minds of Amaun's believers, it is discovered that among their ranks is Serg, a former lover of Dark Silvio.
• They interrogate Serg and discover the Amaun forces believe that Amaun's flames cleanse an area of the perpetual cold, and they were trying to bring life back to the frozen farmlands, almost destroying the entire crop of Sour Lingenberries growing there.
• Farmer Lyle thanks them by giving them a pig, named Turkey Bacon, who now belongs to Cavii
• Worse for wear, the group travels into the city for warmth and shelter at Cavii's bastion, where they meet 6 unique NPCs who have been staying there as shelter from the storm
  • Pierre Robes, local tailor
  • Ennui, a mysterious tielfing
  • Hermis Rangina, a minotaur
  • Alfonz Mordecai, a kenku professor
  • Althia Arcanethia, a scholar elf
  • Zugon Montane, a fisherman
• Althia and Quimbleton take a moment to go over what the scholars have determined about the "Blowt", which includes references to something called the Subsoil Air, and rumors that the Blowt are coming from either under the frozen ocean, or from under the now-barren continental shelf
• After taking on a mission to take down pirates on the Ice, the group of heroes PLUS Althia and Mordecai head out on the ice. Mordecai goes because he's a healer, Althia goes because she's researching the ice and the possible Blowt under it.
• On their way out on the ice they encounter a Carrion Crawler which had devoured a group of Merfolk.
• Finally arriving at the pirate's stronghold, a series of ice structured erected on the ocean's ice (and a number of ships that go with it), the group takes out the pirates AND the spies. claiming the gems and rewards left there, and claiming the bounty in the name of the Xeo Family of Ravel.

Season 1

Session 6: Unraveled

Session Tags:

Characters: Savile, Luv, Silent Wind, Yoko, Sven, Red

DM: James (3/15/2025)

Important NPCs: Farmer Lyle, Peatro, Ennui, Althia, Bartlett

XP Gained: 3

Important Things that Happened:

• A group of good Samaritans (New PCs Yoko, Sven, and Red), working together to clear snow on the streets of Ravel after a recent squall discover that Farmer Lyle has been sheltering in the historic district, which is now known as [James look this up again, it's the petroglyph one].
• The house, which was located on the riverbank, then collapsed down into the bank, crumbling the structures and sending everyone down under a massive avalanche of soil and wood.
• When the dust clears, the group finds that under the riverbank was a portion of The Unravel.
• Shortly aftewards, two heroes dive into the avalanche to pull out any survivors, they themselves becoming trapped. The confused and anxious group, stuck in what appears to be a dungeon of a hideout, find their way to the next room where Silent Wind is interrogating Ennui,