The Frost That Stayed

Three farm skiffs fly low and sluggishly, crammed with shivering tenants, hens, and frost-blackened cabbages. An unnatural winter has settled over their valley: the irrigation ditches froze solid before the harvest was in, and the village well is a column of blue ice. "It's coming from Skerrow Keep," their headman tells you. "Since the old Warden died up at the keep, the frost has spread over every field our lord owns, and nobody can say why."

A mile behind the refugees, an armed patrol sloop flies with darkened lanterns. "That's Lady Harrow's ship," the headman warns. "She wants Skerrow emptied of tenants so she can force our lord to sell the estate cheap. Whenever one of our skiffs lands, her men are waiting on the dock with indentured rent contracts."

Wrapped in a burlap sack, the twelve-year-old girl who tended the old Warden's hearth climbs onto your deck. "Before the Warden died, he stopped eating and speaking, keeping one hand resting on a long weapon rack in the ice cellar. That's where the freeze is coming from. The lord's guards are too terrified to go down the stairs—something dangerous has woken up in the cold down there."

The sloop's captain climbs aboard carrying a coin purse and a sealed letter. "Lady Harrow's yacht is anchored just outside the frost line at Skerrow Keep, waiting for its lord to freeze out or sell. She will pay you for two things: don't break the cellar spell yet, and tell her which door leads down so her own men can clear it once she owns the keep. Take this letter to her yacht to claim the main payout."

Skerrow Keep stands locked in its own private winter. Thick icicles hang from the ward posts, and the tenant fields are frozen white up to the boundary hedge, while green autumn country lies just beyond. Outside the frost line, Lady Harrow's house yacht waits at anchor for Skerrow's lord to freeze or sell.

At the bottom of the cellar, the old Warden sits frozen solid at his workbench, one hand still gripping a launcher racked with two oar-length spears of ancient ice. He died channeling mana into the weapon, and the moment his hand is lifted away, the cellar begins to thaw.

Shivering in three layers of coats, the Lord of Skerrow offers you the ice-spear launcher as your reward—or, if you leave the weapon for his walls, asks you to deliver the Warden's spellbooks to the dead man's sister.

Bundled in heavy furs atop her new ramparts, Lady Harrow discovers that buying the keep did nothing to thaw it—and her own guards are too terrified to descend the cellar stairs. On the second morning, she summons you. "You know the cellar door, and you know your trade. Name your price to go down there and end this freeze."

The Warden's older sister is a mage herself. Standing in her doorway, she reads the first page of his notes and shakes her head. "He recorded how he sustained that ice spell—holding it nine full days after his heart stopped. No mage should ever hold a working that long." She looks past you at your ship. "Still, a safe measure of his technique would serve your Casting Room well."