[Lvl 22] - Winter of the Witch.pdf - Przygody - IlMOD

of the

Witch

by Stephen Radney-MacFarland

A cold winter wind blows from the

Scourge Mountains, but its origins are

not of this world. And with it come

horrifying stories of a fey who walks

the land. Cold, beautiful, and deadly,

she turns every mortal she touches into

a statue of ice, and she seems deter-

mined to blanket the entire north in a

blanket of frost.

It is the Winter of the Witch … and if

the archfey Koliada is not stopped it

could be the world’s last.

illustrations by Dave Allsop, Eric Deschamps, Izzy,

William O'Connor, Wayne Reynolds, Amelia

Stoner, Sam Wood

✦

cartography by Jason A. Engle,

Sean Macdonald

January 2009 | D U N G E O N 16 2

DUNGEON 162

2 2 27

of the

Winter

J a n u a r y 2 0 0 9

Winter of the Witch

“Winter of the Witch” is an epic-tier DUNGEONS &

DRAGONS ® adventure for 22nd-level PCs. By the end

of the adventure, the character will have reached

23rd level and be well on their way to reaching 24th.

Koliada within her fortress of Winter’s Heart. Sun’s

Sliver in hand, they battled the archfey, but before

they could use the artifact to destroy her, Koliada f led

the field, and while the knights won the day, they

knew someone would have to confront the Winter

Witch again. In preparation for that day, they hid the

Sun’s Sliver , sealing it in an isolated monastery where

a member of their order could retrieve it again the

next time Koliada walked the world. But then proud

Nerath fell, and with it went almost all knowledge of

the Sun’s Sliver and how to defeat Koliada.

Now the Winter Witch walks the world again. As

cold spreads southward, an undead and disgraced

knight tries to assemble a group of heroes that can

retrieve Sun’s Sliver and defeat the Winter Witch once

and for all, but other foul powers work against the

plan. The demon lord Orcus has become interested in

Koliada’s march, not for any love of the fey and their

motivations (though the chaos they sow is useful).

Rather he has set his agents to work behind the scenes

to retrieve the Sun’s Sliver . Not only does the Demon

Lord of Undead wish to corrupt such a powerful arti-

fact of radiant energy, he also wants Koliada’s march

to reach farther south than it ever has before, hoping

that it will freeze over a volcano to the south and free

a primordial trapped within—for what purpose only

the demon knows.

One thing is clear; heroes are needed to end the

Winter of the Witch.

meet him in his tomb under the ruins of the Keep on

the Shadowfell.

Making it back to Winterhaven, the PCs find that

in their absence the settlement has taken a turn for

the worse. An unnatural cold snap has destroyed

the local crops, villagers from the town and the sur-

rounding countryside have gone missing, and stories

of the return of the infamous Winter Witch—a cruel

and hateful hag of legend—abound. But as terrible

as things appear to be on the surface, they’re shown

to be much worse when the PCs visit Sir Keegan.

They find the skeletal knight a helpless victim of an

aggressive interrogation by a f lameskull and a pair

of demons. The undead minion of Orcus and his

demonic thugs are attempting to extract the location

of something called the Sun’s Sliver from the stubborn

knight. If rescued, Sir Keegan explains to the PCs the

nature of the blight on the surrounding countryside,

and the reasons why the minions of Orcus are inter-

ested in the return of the Winter Witch. (The PCs

might end up visiting Gloomwrought if they don’t suc-

ceed in discovering the minion’s deception.)

Armed with this knowledge, the PCs’ next task is

to find and uncover the Sun’s Sliver before the forces of

Orcus can. The Sun’s Sliver lies under the remote ruins

of the Monastery of St. Alabat, and it was bound there

for hundreds of years by a powerful seal and ward

placed by Sir Keegan’s long-extinct order. By the time

the PCs reach the place, Orcus’s minions are already

there, and they have enacted a complicated ritual that

will unbind the wards of the seal. Fortunately for the

PCs, their task is not yet complete. The PCs can fight

their way into the deeper ruins, defeat the demon

lord’s toadies, and retrieve the Sun’s Sliver , but not

before having to deal with the artifact’s guardian: a

powerful angel of prophecy named Remliel.

BACKGROUND

The ways of the fey can be mysterious and deadly.

This is especially true for the cold-hearted and cruel

fey that constitute the Winter Court. Overseen by

Prince of Frost, the various fey that make up the court

are often left to their own devices and the pursuit of

their own capricious whims.

While it is known that the Prince of Frost holds

mortals in utter contempt, he also rarely acts against

them directly, but such constraint is not known by

another member of his court. One being in particular,

a somewhat minor archfey named Koliada the Winter

Witch, makes deadly forays into the world regularly.

Every century or so, the Winter Witch launches a

campaign of frozen despair upon the mortal world.

When she comes, snows fail to recede in springtime,

and winter’s chill starts to spread southward, expand-

ing with each of her victories. Along with the chill

comes strange armies of fey and the wicked mortals

that have kneeled before the Winter Witch. As her

winter spreads, the Winter Witch freezes mortals into

statues of ice, which somehow act as grim conduits of

Koliada’s power.

The last time the Winter Witch walked upon the

world, a group of knights from the Empire of Nerath

halted her advance. These heroes procured Koliada’s

nemesis—a powerful artifact of pure sunlight called

the Sun’s Sliver —the only item in the known universe

that can destroy Koliada. The knights entered the

frozen far reaches of the Feywild and confronted

ADVENTURE SYNOPSIS

“Winter of the Witch” starts with the PCs receiving

an urgent but somewhat cryptic message from the

skeletal knight, Sir Keegan. In that missive, he asks

them to return to the village of Winterhaven and

January 2009 | DUNGEON 162

Winter of the Witch

Once the PCs have recovered the Sun’s Sliver , the

next step is to find and confront the Winter Witch.

The search leads them to a cold mountain glacier in

the Scourge Mountains. From this place, the Winter

Witch has been launching her chilly assaults into the

Nentir Vale and beyond, entering the world through

a fey passage that takes the shape of a menhir circle

made out of strange blue ice. Guarded by a cadre of

icy minions and an ancient white dragon bound into

the Winter Witch’s service, the portal leads to Win-

ter’s Heart, the domain of the witch.

Once the PCs win their way past the portal’s

guardians, they have to traverse the icy terrain of

the Feywild’s snowy reaches on the way to Winter’s

Heart. Only there can they confront the cold-hearted

archfey and save a section of the world from a wintery

doom.

CUSTOMIZING THIS

ADVENTURE

A good chunk of this adventure’s background deals

with and uses the town of Winterhaven and charac-

ters that appeared in the adventure H1: Keep on the

Shadowfell. Winterhaven is really just a placeholder

for a settlement and characters that hold emotional

resonance with your players and their characters. I

chose it because I assumed that a good number of your

epic-level characters got their start in that village, but

if they didn’t, you should tailor the starting encounters

to your own PCs by re-skinning them with a village and

NPCs they care about. This is as simple as changing the

details, but while keeping the encounter structure rela-

tively intact. The only place where this might get tricky

is having a death knight masquerade as someone who

isn’t an undead knight, but using a well-placed illusion

or making Dzrak a doppelganger in the service of Orcus

should do the trick.

Parcel 4: Magic item, level 25

Parcel 5: Magic item, level 24

Parcel 6: Magic item, level 24

Parcel 7: Magic item, level 23

Parcel 8: 1,500 pp + six 5,000 gp gems.

Parcel 9: 1,000 pp + 2 scrolls of Endure Elements, and

2 scrolls of Fey Passage, a scroll of Consult Oracle,

and 4,200 gp worth of residuum .

Parcel 10: 600 pp + two potions of recovery

Parcel 11: 600 pp + ten 5,000 gp gems

Parcel 12: 350 pp

Parcel 13: Seven 5,000 gp gems

STARTING

THE ADVENTURE

The adventure starts simply, when the PCs receive

the following note:

Heroes of Winterhaven,

I beseech you to travel back to my tomb under the Keep

on the Shadowfell. Winter is without end here, and I know

its secret. I am hoping that once again, where I failed, you

can succeed. Please make haste.

Distributing the Loot

Consult your player’s magic item wish lists, then

apportion the following parcels into the following

sections of the adventure. It’s possible that the monster

make use of the magic items in their sections. Decide

that ahead of time.

Sir Keegan,

Doomed Knight of the Keep on the Shadowfell

SIR KEEGAN?

DIDN’T WE KILL THAT GUY?

There is a good chance that the PCs killed Sir Keegan

when they played H1: Keep on the Shadowfell. Because

of his curse, Keegan suffers on, even after vanquished.

He rises again a month after his defeat. How he

learned of the heroic nature of the group that van-

quished him the first time is up to you, but given

Sir Keegan’s shame, he does not begrudge the PCs’

actions the first time they met in his tomb.

Treasure

"Winter of the Witch" uses the “parcel” technique of

treasure distribution detailed in the Dungeon Master’s

Guide. Use these “13” treasure parcels.

K1: Two parcels in the possession of Sir Drzak

M2: Three parcels in with the Sun’s Sliver hidden

beneath the seal of Remliel.

S1: Two parcels hidden in the troll cave.

S2: Four parcels in the white dragon’s lair.

W3: Two parcels and the sword of black ice in Winter’s

Parcel 1: Magic item, level 26

Parcel 2: Magic item, level 26

Parcel 3: Magic item, level 25

Heart.

January 2009 | DUNGEON 162

STARTING

Winter of the Witch

PART ONE:

WINTERHAVEN ON ICE

It’s obvious that that the strange weather is having its

effect on the people of Winterhaven, but something

worse is going on here. As the PCs enter the village,

everyone has a look of fatigue brought on by hunger

and misery, but also a small spark of hope caused by

the PCs’ arrival. News spreads quickly of the PCs’

return to the village, and it’s not long before Lord Pad-

raig comes to greet the “Saviors of Winterhaven.”

She was cold, dangerous, and beautiful beyond

imagination. She was the most perfect and most terrible

woman I have ever laid my eyes upon. My terror

overwhelmed me, and I hid among the stones as she waded

through my regulars. Though they fought bravely, engaging

the woman at every turn, she sidestepped their blows

as if they were child’s play. Then came her touch, which

transformed them into rime-crusted statues. A few, she cut

down with her black blade, and laughed. I only watched,

shivering in cold and terror.

I’m deeply ashamed of my actions. But I know in my

heart that what stalks the frozen land is a being beyond the

pale. And that is why I called upon your aid. This is a threat

that requires true heroes.

WINTERHAVEN ON ICE

While Winterhaven is not large enough to have a

permanent teleportation circle, the nearby town of

Fallcrest has one within the Septarch’s Tower (see

Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 204) and it’s relatively

easy to gain that circle’s sigil sequence, if the PCs

haven’t obtained it already in their previous adven-

tures. From Fallcrest, it takes only a couple of days of

travel at most to reach Winterhaven.

Padraig looks far older than the last time you saw him, and

he seems very haggard.

Padraig’s Story

Once Lord Padraig invites the PCs to join him by the

fire and offers them heated brandywine, he nervously

tells them his tale.

When the PCs approach the town read the following:

While the Nentir Vale is a northern region and used to

the icy chill of hard winters, that weather rarely lingers

this late into the spring. Where you were expecting to see

the verdant greens of spring on the tree limbs, all you see

is the twisted dark talons of wintershorn branches. Snow

still drapes the Gardbury Downs. The air is cold, the sky is

overcast, and every so often f lurries still drift down from

the chilly white skies.

My land is cursed by a creature called the Winter Witch.

Honestly, when I first heard the tales of the Winter

Witch, I thought it was just a long-lived superstition—a story

to explain long winters. But that’s before I saw her myself.

In the dead of winter, the refugees started pouring into

Winterhaven. According to them, the Winter Witch was on

the march, along with her armies of ice imps, frozen trolls,

and other outlandish creatures. I assumed it was a tribe of

orcs or giants from the Stonemarch, or maybe just a band of

hungry and ferocious wolves or worgs scaring the populace.

I rallied the Winterhaven Regulars to reconnoiter the threat

to the northern settlements of my dominions.

We were near the Vesk holdings, in the northern

highlands of the Cairngorm Peaks, not far from the shores

of Wintermist. The settlement was in ruins, but it was

bashed rather than burned. As the regulars explored the

ruins, I took shelter from the biting winds among the

nearby rocks. And that’s when she appeared among the

regulars, seemingly out of nowhere.

At this point the PCs might be a little puzzled. Their

missive was from Sir Keegan, not Lord Padraig. If they

bring this up to Lord Winterhaven, he is also puzzled by

the revelation. He sent a message out at great personal

expense, and he has not spoken to or conferred with

Sir Keegan about the local problems. As far as Padraig

knows, the strange skeletal knight is forever confined to

his tomb under the Keep on the Shadowfell and has no

knowledge of Winterhaven’s current problems.

Winterhaven

Village, Population 942

Ice still lingers in the ruts that dot the King’s Road that

winds its way to the broad hill crowned by the walled village

of Winterhaven. The alabaster fangs of Cairngorm tower

appear behind the snow-draped village. The settlement’s

walls and palisades are slick with clinging ice.

As you pass by the thatched homes surrounding

the village, they seem abandoned. When you enter

Winterhaven’s gates, you see that a shanty town of

makeshift huts clutters the inner courtyard. The local

populace is gathering within the walled town for shelter

from the cold.

WHAT HAPPENED TO LORD

PADRAIG’S LETTER?

It was intercepted by the Death Knight Sir Dzrak, and

the death knight still carries it. It’s just a simple plea

for summons, similar to Sir Keegan’s letter, but goes

into more detail on the nature of the threat.

January 2009 | DUNGEON 162

PART ONE:

Winter of the Witch

Lord Padraig is not above begging and using guilt

to gain PC aid against the Winter Witch. He’s down-

right scared for his own life and his people’s very

existence. If nothing else persuades the PCs to help,

he’ll even go so far as to bequeath Winterhaven to the

PCs—he’ll abdicate his title and proclaim the PCs the

lords of Winterhaven if that is what it takes to save it!

[Lvl 22] - Winter of the Witch.pdf

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