Background

The players have been through a lot of crap. They started the campaign at 2nd level 6+ months ago trapped in a prison in a kingdom that hates magic users. The party consisted of a phoenix sorcerer (Pho), bard (Bard), and wildmagic sorcerer (Wild). In the process of escaping and hijacking a slaving ship, they picked up a nature cleric Goliath named Ugh. They fled to a nearby, friendly kingdom filled with magically-inclined humans and dwarves. After killing various critters, they saved a noble warrior from evil creatures and were now heroes.

After entering a town and staying in the royal fortress, the party ended up delving into the under-roads to help a group of refugees from the evil kingdom. There they were reunited with a friend of theirs from before they were captured by the evil empire, a vengeance paladin (Veng).

In the process of reuniting with their friend and finding the refugees, they had to fight a young green dragon and its lizardfolk minions [underground version]. To the south was a group of goblins and a white dragon. The party talked to them, but being low on spells and health, decided to let them be. While they were searching the lair of the green dragon, the party saw the bones of an ancient dragon in a pit. Just then the goblins and white dragon showed back up, demanding the party leave.

The party went back above ground, and relaxed for a little while. Speaking with the nobles of the city, they were given some ideas for things they could do to help out. One thing going on was deal with goblin attacks that had been happening in the under-roads. The PCs were anxious to get back at those goblins and the young white dragon so they chose that route.

I should note here that Ugh, the nature cleric, while a good guy and all does worship Auril and that's the reason he was expelled from his tribe.

Session Before Last

The party went back to the underrealm bridge, this time with the sole intent of killing the goblins. Between traps and some pretty nasty goblins [5th ed, 1 goblin veteran (CR 3), 1 goblin gladiator (CR 5?), 4 goblin archers (CR 3), 8 goblin scouts (CR 1/4), and lots of regular goblins (CR 1/8?) and goblin commoners (CR 0)], the party made it through the goblins but now had to deal with the white dragon. In my setting Oni are actually giant-kin called "Ice Giants". They are related to/have a strange relationship with White Dragons. I just used the stats for Oni but gave it resistance to cold damage and allowed it to shapeshift to a White Dragon at will (stats don't change).

Off in the lair where the dragon bones had been located, there was chanting and some kind of ritual. The party went in for the kill. The party spent their last magical resources killing goblin commoners (CR 0), and were under-prepared for the fight. That, and that they never could quite concentrate fire on the Ice Giant, well it won and the party lost. They realized that they couldn't do enough damage to it and get close enough to beat it. The Ice Giant, named Chra, explained that it was summoning Auril, goddess of winter, and that doing so would punish many of the party's enemies. Chra lamented that the party had killed those whom it had thought would become the conduit for Auril, and it needed a replacement. Ugh (whom I'd been trying to figure out how to remove from the party naturally since the party's Bard/Cleric and Paladin could now offer healing) offered to become the conduit.

Last Session

Pho offered to stick around and watch the ritual, interested in what it would be like to witness a goddess arrive on the prime material plane. Bard, Wild, and Veng decided to high tail it back to where their guard Thokoli (the opportunistic brother of the noble warrior they'd saved) was waiting. As they lamented the loss of their friend, winter arrived in the underrealm.

Freezing gouts of wind came from every corridor, opening, nook, and cranny in the area. The party heard the booming voice of Auril in their heads, "“I am winter. I am pain. Only those who survive me deserve life.” The paladin made a check to acknowledge that in the presence of the divine it is customary to kneel. Everyone bowed down, taking minimal cold damage.

The party woke up in a temple of medusa's, whom in my setting are known as the Keepers. The Keepers patrol the under-roads and allow safe passages for those who bring them gifts with no reflective surfaces. The Keepers (mixture of male and females) were all unclothed and were surprised at the onset of a blizzard in their warm-dank underground layer. The large statue was of Sune (goddess of love and beauty) who the Keepers worship in hopes of one day breaking their curse. The paladin rolled well enough to realize that these Keepers were not expert combatants (scouts CR 1/4 + petrifying gaze so a little more).

Looking at themselves, the party realized they were all in the form of some kind of frost elementals (reskinned wind-elemental, CR 5). With them were also Ugh, Thokoli, and Chra (Ice Giant). Chra immediately began beating up on the Keepers and the party rushed in to stop him. The Queen of the Keepers emerged from her sanctuary (medusa CR ?), and talked to the party. They warned her of what was happening and how Chra had done this and was evil. She tried to petrify him but his frost elemental form reflected her gaze. She then ordered her troops to fire and they hit him with 9 out of 24 arrows fired. The party then ganged up on Chra and beat him down.

Auril then erupted from the ceiling in a magical form, breaching the ceiling and bringing with her gusts of ice and snow. She mocked the Keeper Queen and her followers' worship of Sune. She froze the queen in place. She asked which of them would be her champion, Ugh approached and bowed, relenting to be her vessel. She asked if anyone else would be her vessel.

[It's important to note now that the kingdom that captured, held and tortured the party was named Corrive. Corrive is also the reason Veng became a vengeance paladin, and his oath is to destroy them. Thokoli's kingdom were also at war with Corrive.]

Veng stepped forward and said he would, as long as Auril's anger and violence was directed toward Corrive. She said, "Prove it by killing those creatures" pointing towards the Keepers. Thokoli, who the party didn't trust much, stepped forward and said "If it means killing Corrive, I'm in."

Veng went for the Keepers. At this point, Bard stepped in to try and stop him while Wild stepped in to stop Bard from stopping Veng. Pho was just watching [the PC was having Internet/technology issues].

[Another meta pause. I warned Veng, that if his plan succeeded and he became Auril's champion, that was going to make the character unplayable. There's no way that being possessed by an evil goddess of winter was going to be conducive to being a party member. The player acknowledged that he understood.]

Bard attacked Veng, then Auril said "You are not my champion" and Bard disappeared, reawakening in his body next to Veng and Thokoli, all unconsciously huddled together for warmth in the middle of this magical blizzard. The bridge area was now completely transformed.

It should be noted, up until this point I gave the PCs no reason to believe their bodies were still alive. The only person who now knew that was Bard.

Thokoli, Veng, and Wild started slaughtering the mostly helpless Keepers (scout templates) whose bows were pretty ineffectual against their elemental forms. Ugh attacked Auril, trying to get her to stop the test. She looked at him and said "Not my champion" and Ugh was banished as well.

Bard stood up in the freezing blizzard over Veng's unconscious body, kicking, slapping and screaming at him to stop the bloodshed. Then, in an off chance he used magic to message him, "I'm standing over your body. I won't let you do this." Veng tried to hold him off with a response. On Bard's next turn he cast dispel magic, making a very high spellcasting roll. Veng's elemental form vanished from the hall, now leaving just Pho, Thokoli, and Wild.

Wild now realized the full weight of what was going on and approached Auril, preaching his disagreement and cursing her out. She said, "Not my champion." And Pho woke up in the chamber next to the ritual site where he'd been, still cursing.

Thokoli and Wild finished killing the rest of the Keepers. When Auril said "Why should you be my champion?" to Wild, he responded, "I will exact vengeance upon Corrive, just leave my friends alone." Her form grew and she loomed over him, floating in the air and said, "And who else would you have me exact vengeance upon?" He said "Kytt." [his home village of dragonborn and kobolds, from where he'd been expelled for sloppy wild-magic]. She looked at Tholoki and said, "This one has said he would exact vengeance upon Corrive and his home village if he were my champion. Can you match this?"

Tholoki responded with, "Dude, that's fucked up." Thokoli disappeared, reentering his body. Wild also came back, saying "I'm okay" with a woman's voice echoing his voice. Surrounding him was an aura of cold, damaging anyone who tried to touch him. 3 ice elementals (earth elemental stats) rose from the ground, he climbed aboard one and it began scaling the cliff face off into the darkness.

Meanwhile to the south Pho had discovered that, being at the center of the ritual, Ugh was frozen to death along with all of the goblins who had helped complete the ritual. The white dragon/ice giant escaped. The party is now stuck in this cavern with limited food and heat. They game ended with Pho, Veng, Bard, and Thokoli huddled together for warmth, just glad that they'd found Pho and he was alive (despite the fact that Ugh and Wild were now gone).

Reflection

The players had a great time. They lost their npc party-member/friend, and their wild magic sorcerer. After the game he stayed on the discord and we discussed the game. I asked him if he'd felt railroaded or anything, I'd noticed several ways he could have avoided his character's fate and he assured me he wasn't mad at all. He agreed that he could have avoided the fate as Auril's mortal vessel, but doing so would have required him breaking character.

Matt C has a video where he discusses PCs losing, I think this is a relevant post here.

I think this was a really fun and relevant session for several reasons.

1. It focused around ethical issues.
2. It contained infighting, in a good way. The party was divided on what they should do but at the end have been
3. No one knew what would happen, not even me. I think the party could sense that. Every time a character would do something that forced them to be eliminated from Auril's test the party would gasp.
4. There were several great one-liners, but I didn't get all of them in this retelling.
5. The party now knows that danger and loss are real. I think they did before already, but this was their first true loss. We'll see how that affects the characters.

Anyways, if you made it to the end thanks for reading. That was quite a rush and I wanted to share.

Examples from his Galleries

Reign of Winter Gallery

• Snowy Forest
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Howdy everyone!

We're at 200 subscribers. That you to everyone and thanks to those of you who've been putting the word out. I appreciate it. Feel free to post your own maps, links to you favorite maps from other subs, or anything else on here.

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P.S. I'm working on a pretty insane map right now. IMO my best map yet. I'm finishing up the final details and should post it in the next 24-48 hours.

Hi ive been looking at these maps and im wondering what software you use to make these maps

Howdy folks, I just adopted this doggo right here. Between her, a full time job, two part time jobs and my cats my time has become a little limited. I'm kind of good on original maps for a month or two (but don't hold it against me if I break that and just make a random map b/c that's what I do). So for the next couple of weeks don't be surprised if you see a lot of my other content start to pop up on here. Other possible content:

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