The Snowed-In Lodge

Only the stone chimney and a single roof gable poke above a twenty-foot snowdrift. Deep beneath the packed snow, something heavy shifts its weight inside the buried lodge, making the roof timbers groan.

Adjoining the trophy room is the lodge's winter storehouse, sealed for forty years: racks of greased ballista bolts, cured meat dried hard as leather, and casks of mountain spirits. Overhead, however, the main roof beam is bowed like a drawn bow under twenty tons of snow, sifting white powder down with every step you take. The ceiling will not hold for long.

Frozen in his armchair sits the long-dead hunt-master with a clan blanket draped across his knees and a cord-bound hunting journal in his lap. On the wall behind him hang a heavy siege ballista, a wyrm-hide war drum, and a silver-banded horn. With the roof beams groaning under the snowdrift, an unbraced ceiling will only allow time for a single load.

A gray-furred lupine clan agent reads the first page of the journal and sits down heavily. "Forty winters lost—this was my grandmother's brother." By evening, six of his kin have gathered on the dock with shovels and a sled to bring his body out for a proper sky-burial. They ask what reward you wish for finding his grave and leaving it unrobbed.

Tons of snow pour through the doorway! Through the swirling whiteout you glimpse the long-dead hunt-master seated in his chair under a clan blanket, with his prized gear hanging on the wall behind him: a heavy ballista, a wyrm-hide war drum, and a silver-banded hunting horn. The wall pegs are two strides away; the escape shaft is ten strides behind you!