Campaign Log

Campaign Log
Kind	Play log
Part of	Heralds of the Cycle, Aenarch: Last Winter
GM canon
first cited: [heralds-a#5]

Campaign Log is the running record of what happened at the table across the three recorded conversations from which this wiki was assembled. ^{[heralds-a#5 · heralds-b#27 · last-winter#43]}

How to read this

Editorial note. This log was reconstructed from chat transcripts, not from session minutes. Its numbers — such as heralds-a#146 — are message numbers inside a conversation, not session numbers: one message may cover several evenings of play, or none at all. Entries are listed in the order the conversations record them, which is the order the table learned about things, and that is not always the order in which they happened in the world. Preparation between sessions is included where it settled canon, and is written as preparation. Material the players should not have is replaced by a spoiler notice.

Session thread: Heralds of the Cycle (first conversation)

• The thread opens on the GM's recap of the state of play: the Shadow Rescue had succeeded and Kaelen had been brought out of the Shadow Annex to Moonward, where Draven was also present and a coup was being prepared. ^{[heralds-a#5]}
• Dark Crescent had by then become known as Moonless Night, its people readying themselves for the coming war and for the tearing down of the imperial order. ^{[heralds-a#5]}
• The Temple of the Red Seal had been broken: the temple destroyed, its guardian killed, and the Rakshasa Breath Reaper freed to return to its own realm. ^{[heralds-a#5]}
• Blackice had been purged, and Pale withdrew into silence so as to be forgotten, waiting for the Winter Elves to win and to take losses in winning. ^{[heralds-a#5]}
• Snakecross faced an undead threat while Rosereach had become wholly hollow, desecrated ground walked freely by undead and angry spirits. ^{[heralds-a#5]}
• Bella Worthmore accepted that she had failed, dropped Snakecross, and prepared to cross with the god-splinter into her own realm, the Elemental Plane of Ooze. ^{[heralds-a#5]}
• Naevys Duskbloom, the Arcanum officer responsible for the war in the region, commanded Rosereach's undead, had already begun sending them to destroy Snakecross, and meant to press on from there to Winter Elf-held Grayhost. ^{[heralds-a#5]}
• In the same recap: Grizzleflame, having bargained with the pact maker Aaron and given him his soul, attacked the elves migrating south and killed Elnaril's childhood friend, after which the elves fell back to safe ground. ^{[heralds-a#7]}
• Leon, a boy whose sister Grizzleflame had killed, joined Dark Crescent in Moonward and was trained in fire; he burned down the inn the party was staying at and killed a new member's uncle with it. ^{[heralds-a#7]}
• Two years have passed since that fire, and one member of the party now wants Leon dead. ^{[heralds-a#7]}
• When winter began to destroy the world, the Summer Elves — out of balefire — tried to break it by burning the forests, and resolved to use goblins, hobgoblins and other goblinoids to reach the unquenchable fire of an old dwarven temple in the region. ^{[heralds-a#11]}
• The party slaughtered Grizzleflame's entire band and kept hunting him; roughly seventy of his people were killed, and he escaped three times. ^{[heralds-a#11]}
• After the third escape his flames turned blue, Aaron having given him cold fire; since that day he has hunted elves, his true target being vengeance on Broodkiller, who slaughtered Elnaril's people. ^{[heralds-a#11]}
• Between sessions the GM worked out the county-level danger of the Rosereach plague, the state of its mage tower, and whether anyone in the city had survived. ^{[heralds-a#23]}
• He fixed the local guard question as well, correcting that Captain Thorsen was one of the Iceverf guards and not of Rosewatch. ^{[heralds-a#29]}
• He then settled that Iceverf's guards were not tied to the other affairs, that the real matter there was Blackice, and that Thorsen's abduction had happened in a trivial way and did not need to mean anything. ^{[heralds-a#31]}
• Background for the arc now in play: the Winter Elf invasion reached the plains outside Rosereach, and Naevys began a modified cloudkill ritual to stop both that army and Baroness Bella's. ^{[heralds-a#51]}
• The ritual killed most of the enemy army and raised its dead as a defensive force, but the magic evolved unpredictably and both the dead and the Remains slipped out of Naevys's control. ^{[heralds-a#51]}
• The Winter Elf army pulled back from the Rosereach plains, and Rosereach became Deadreach — a dead city that still moves. ^{[heralds-a#51]}
• Naevys and some surviving Arcanum mages were left trapped in the city's tower, working on a ritual to bring their own network of dead back under control — a ritual that requires someone who has died and returned. ^{[heralds-a#51]}
• The deeper history of that ground was fixed too: the Petal Gate, opening onto the threshold of the Flower Goddess's domain, was built beneath Rosereach, and behind it lay the Golden Rose. ^{[heralds-a#129]}
• House Rosamendus, one of the Seven Great Families of Magnus Arcanum, settled in the region and began studying the Golden Rose's properties. ^{[heralds-a#129]}
• Bella Worthmore, a yuan-ti in Belial's service, went after the Golden Rose, and raised Vaelithra — a dark elf girl she had saved from a massacre — as a druid-thief. ^{[heralds-a#129]}
• Vaelithra went under Rosereach with thieves Bella had hired, but the Roseguard drove her off before she could take the main flower, so she left with a fragment of root only. ^{[heralds-a#129]}
• Bella experimented on that fragment in Snakecross, accustoming it to dead tissue with the old baron's blood and the city's corpses, then had the resulting graft smuggled into the old Rosamendus observation chamber beneath Rosereach. ^{[heralds-a#129]}
• When Naevys's modified cloudkill killed Rosereach and the Smoker and Remains organ-colonies formed, the graft took hold in those organs and in the leftover minds; graft, Rosamendus mind-runes and colony together gave birth to the Reminder. ^{[heralds-a#129]}
• Between sessions the GM commissioned the arc's bestiary: a Plague Smoker stat block, then a Cataclysm Smoker. ^{[heralds-a#57 · heralds-a#59]}
• He defined the Remains — drawn from symbiote and body horror, including an abnormally fast and strong Walking Hulk of Remains — had the Remain Stalker and Hulk blocks written, and then added a death-burst infection effect and stealth with a Flesh Camouflage rule to both. ^{[heralds-a#61 · heralds-a#66 · heralds-a#69]}
• He tuned the infection to a DC 15 Medicine check and a DC 14 saving throw, and had the Stalker's final block tie its origin to Naevys's ritual. ^{[heralds-a#63 · heralds-a#73]}
• Last he asked for the Reminder itself: a CR 12 gargantuan colony creature controlling all the Remains, written as a hive mind made from the memories of the city's dead, and then raised to an epic encounter with lair and legendary actions. ^{[heralds-a#75 · heralds-a#77]}
• Play resumed with the party meeting Sir Caelion Vireth and reaching the gates of Deadreach. ^{[heralds-a#103]}
• They entered through the harbour, where there were almost no undead, and found aboard a ship the first ritual Naevys had performed; Mila stayed to study its marks and symbols, and Caelion stayed with her. ^{[heralds-a#107]}
• Setting foot on Rosereach ground, the party was caught by the ancient magic guarding the city and two members were charmed; that magic now answers to the Reminder, and those who made their Wisdom save saw its eyes. ^{[heralds-a#107]}
• The charmed members were left calm and were not attacked by the Smokers; they walked to an old place where Autumn Elves had served or been sheltered by Elnaril before the siege, and were let inside. ^{[heralds-a#107]}
• The Reminder opened a mind-link between the charmed Smokers and the city's people so that they could understand one another, took no hasty action, and knew that other, unlinked members existed. ^{[heralds-a#107]}
• Learning that Elnaril's company was in the city, Naevys invited him to the Arcanum Tower, meaning to go on with him to the dragonborn Lucerion, whom she did not know — and she did not know that Elnaril and Lucerion had both died and come back. ^{[heralds-a#120]}
• The party got inside the Vault and was reunited with the survivors. ^{[heralds-a#124]}
• Underground within Snakecross county they met a plant monster and first took it for a feral magical creature feeding on the city's corpses; the GM had already told the players that the Reminder was trying to reach the vault below. ^{[heralds-a#128]}
• The party reached the Flower Goddess temple beneath Rosereach, met the survivors, and turned back out to clear the Hulks breaking down the door. ^{[heralds-a#138 · heralds-a#149]}
• They talked with Naevys but could not agree on a common purpose, and lied to her that only three of them had come. ^{[heralds-a#138]}
• Meanwhile the Reminder's branches and roots forced their way into the temple; the party freed the druid trapped inside and, as the growth pressed in, shut the last door and were sealed in the temple's heart. ^{[heralds-a#138]}
• Their plan was to burn an incense that keeps undead off and push straight through branch and root to the Reminder itself. ^{[heralds-a#138]}
• Naevys watched all of this and intended to come along if the party attacked, with a purpose of her own.

Players, stop here. What is hidden behind this point is game-master material. The full detail is on GM:Campaign Log.

• Caelion took no part in the final fight, having gone to speak with his goddesses. ^{[heralds-a#146]}
• The Reminder was killed. ^{[heralds-a#146]}
• Naevys's side — Naevys, Selvara and her arcanists — had been following the party, and when its plans collapsed they attacked while the party was waiting for Mila to be raised. ^{[heralds-a#146 · heralds-a#149]}
• Odran Vey, his apprentice — probably Ilyra Fen — and Pell Voss died in that fight; Naevys and Selvara survived. ^{[heralds-a#144 · heralds-a#149]}
• Mila died and was brought back with the Golden Flower; the flower was then plucked, and the temple it was bound to collapsed. ^{[heralds-a#144]}
• Lucerion tried to strike a bargain with Belial, but Oxphideus — Asmodeus become a god — intervened and severed his bond with his own god, so that Lucerion is no longer a paladin. ^{[heralds-a#146]}
• Elnaril shattered his necklace and turned into a snowy horror; the power did not destroy him but released the cold of the high realms over the city, where it settled as a cold cloud and left Deadreach a frozen quarantine wound. ^{[heralds-a#146 · heralds-a#149]}
• Scuto lost one of his souls there and came close to losing himself. ^{[heralds-a#146]}
• With the Reminder dead the Remains network collapsed: the Hulks scattered and the Stalkers hid, while the Smokers — born from a separate spell-matrix of Naevys's — did not vanish but were left as frozen sentries, broken patrols and pockets of hazard. ^{[heralds-a#146 · heralds-a#147]}
• The people left in the city were evacuated by ship, and the party decided to settle the survivors near Heartpoint, which closed the Deadreach arc. ^{[heralds-a#144 · heralds-a#149]}
• The party then set out for a place connected to Nycoris's demon; the transcripts call him "Nico". ^{[heralds-a#146 · owner-form-2026-09-17]}
• Pell Voss's own end was filled in afterwards: he fled the Deadreach Arcanum Tower with Naevys's ritual notes and what he had learned of the Reminder, caught the Remains infection near the collapsed bathhouse, held his left arm in check with abjuration seals, and died inside the arc without ever reaching the Flower Vault. ^{[heralds-a#156]}

Session thread: Heralds of the Cycle (second conversation)

• This thread opens earlier in the war, with the party defending Rosereach while the enemy refused a direct assault on the city — which left the players feeling passive. ^{[heralds-b#27]}
• An assassination team locked onto Elnaril while he was on duty on the wall, waiting in a house for its moment, and two party members were sent down into the sewers where another of the killers waited with escape routes ready. ^{[heralds-b#27]}
• Scuto, the party's monk, began to receive visions concerning the Rakshasa Virsakha. ^{[heralds-b#24 · heralds-b#27]}
• The GM fixed how professional the assassins were: they leave nothing behind in the sewers and use no unnecessarily lethal technique. ^{[heralds-b#29]}
• The death of a member of the Ursa family came out as the reason the team had been sent. ^{[heralds-b#34]}
• "Inkveil" was settled as a GM-side code name for that role only, and not the name of a real in-world assassins' guild. ^{[heralds-b#32 · heralds-b#36]}
• Caerwyn Ursa's Winter Elves destroyed the Grayhost forest in a combined northern and eastern offensive; the Spring Elves lost the front and went over to guerrilla war. ^{[heralds-b#40]}
• The party staged a false assassination attempt in Rosereach in order to get the Count out of danger. ^{[heralds-b#43]}
• Naevys, sent there with wartime powers, used the staged attempt as her pretext to evacuate the Count, and pursued her own ambitions while doing it. ^{[heralds-b#43]}
• Every servant in the Rosereach palace was killed on suspicion of being a changeling, and both the Count and Naevys disappeared. ^{[heralds-b#43]}
• The party split again: some went down into the sewers to check the route an assassin might have used, the rest held the city walls. ^{[heralds-b#46]}
• Rosereach's local high mage decided to open formal contact with Magnus Arcanum over Naevys's actions and the Count's fate. ^{[heralds-b#46]}
• The Regency's Arbiter formally granted Naevys the title Arcane Protector of Rosereach; with that authority she took a token from the Count's blood, and the Count was secured in Timbermire. ^{[heralds-b#49]}
• The party set out for Hollowbridge while the Snowshield Count moved the same way independently with fifty soldiers. ^{[heralds-b#64]}
• The Count reached the town, found it abandoned and ruined, and camped for the night in the buildings still standing. ^{[heralds-b#67 · heralds-b#71]}
• During the night gnoll ambushers slipped in and set off explosives in those buildings, and in the confusion the gnolls also began killing the Winter Elf archers outside the town. ^{[heralds-b#67 · heralds-b#71]}
• The party arrived in the middle of that fight and intervened. ^{[heralds-b#67 · heralds-b#71]}
• For it the GM raised the bomb damage on the combat event table to 3d6 fire, turned the "opening" event into a single extra attack instead of advantage, and limited the enemy side to gnolls and Winter Elf archers. ^{[heralds-b#88 · heralds-b#92]}
• The party finished the tunnel task in the crypt and came through its encounter with the Worm God's Scion safely, without fighting it, then decided to return to Iceverf. ^{[heralds-b#139 · heralds-b#142 · heralds-b#144]}
• In their absence a guerrilla war ran on the Iceverf border, and the Spring Elves, having taken heavy losses at Grayhost, were drawn back inside the city. ^{[heralds-b#148 · heralds-b#149 · heralds-b#155]}
• Iceverf was politically unstable at the same time: its ruler was absent, the daughter was holding the city, and Blackice went on gathering strength. ^{[heralds-b#148]}

Needs a decision: How Iceverf lost its count is told two ways: that he disappeared during the Rosereach and Naevys evacuation, and that he set out in answer to a summons from Altia and died on the road.^{[heralds-b#149 · heralds-b#166]}

• After that death the nobles began to quarrel over whom Astrid Frostweave should marry, while the winter deadlock and the outside threats went on. ^{[heralds-b#166]}
• The Duchy of Swanhall, held by House Ironwing, fell entirely to the Winter Elves, which left Iceverf's southern and south-western flank uncovered. ^{[heralds-b#150 · heralds-b#151]}
• Commander Greywind and twenty archers held the first line during a Winter Elf attack, got the retreating troops into Iceverf, and killed about fifty enemy soldiers. ^{[heralds-b#170]}
• The GM ruled that the Worm God and crypt line belongs only to Snakecross and Baroness Bella, and has nothing to do with the Swanhall or Winter War story. ^{[heralds-b#152]}
• He named Lady Emyl, the Spring Elf leader in the Velfald regency, the campaign's most important NPC and the Winter Elves' principal enemy, and had a deep background and a CR 13 sheet made for her. ^{[heralds-b#154 · heralds-b#155 · heralds-b#158]}
• He corrected her later: she is not a Frostweave but a Spring Eladrin and the leader of the Everbloom Court. ^{[heralds-b#190]}
• The hero of Grayhost was named: Eryndor Vaelanthas, war-name Greywind. ^{[heralds-b#173 · heralds-b#175]}
• Swanhall's origin, geography, culture and fall were written up together with a surviving NPC, Ser Caldreth Velbrune. ^{[heralds-b#178 · heralds-b#181]}
• The GM set out the Winter Elves' strategic position against Moonward and Timbermire — the aim being to destroy the Regent's legitimacy, with Moonward wanting to stay neutral — and asked how they would take Iceverf against the Spring Elves, the Frostwood Rangers, the Antler Knights and the Velfald forces near the Timbermire border. ^{[heralds-b#182 · heralds-b#186]}
• Magus Elara Candleworth was defined as the mage Magnus Arcanum had appointed Magus of Iceverf, and Timbermire was clarified as the Regency's capital. ^{[heralds-b#192 · heralds-b#198]}
• Kaelen followed his old friend Draven, who had opened a portal to the Shadow realm from the forbidden section beneath Graymond Library; Kaelen cut off Draven's right arm, but Draven escaped and Kaelen was left stranded in the Shadow realm. ^{[heralds-b#255]}
• The Elves of the Shining Leaf would enter the war, with elven civilians sheltering in Lady Emyl's keep. ^{[heralds-b#257]}
• Grizzleflare, who had made a pact with Levistus, prepared a trap for those elves, and Leon was written into it to make the conflict three-sided.

Players, stop here. What is hidden behind this point is game-master material. The full detail is on GM:Campaign Log.

• Elves able to escape that ambush would make their way south toward the Moonward lands. ^{[heralds-b#257]}

Needs a decision: Whether Grizzleflame and Grizzleflare are one character under two spellings or two figures is not settled; the first conversation writes Grizzleflame and the second Grizzleflare, both for a fire-wielding goblin leader hunting elves under a fiendish pact.^{[heralds-a#11 · heralds-b#257]}

• Stat blocks for Grizzleflare and Leon were requested and approved. ^{[heralds-b#261 · heralds-b#262]}
• The players chose the rescue of Kaelen as their first mission, with the town of Graymond and Iceverf open to explore; the GM asked for the ruins under Graymond to be larger and for the way in to come from a mysterious source rather than from ordinary townsfolk. ^{[heralds-b#263 · heralds-b#265]}
• He rejected the first draft of the rescue, built on memory and time loss, and clarified that the Shadow Annex has nothing to do with mind or time but is simply an in-between place, and that Kaelen will not be lost forever although getting out may take years. ^{[heralds-b#275 · heralds-b#277]}
• He then asked for Act I alone, worked far deeper and more personally, and it was rewritten with civic, natural and lore vectors and an event clock. ^{[heralds-b#279 · heralds-b#280]}
• A ballad, "Stone Humming Thrice in Silence", was written and then rewritten around Draven's legend — his search for power, the loss of his arm and of his bonds, and the epithets "caller of the moonless night" and "Avenger of the Forsaken" — keeping its original first two lines. ^{[heralds-b#281 · heralds-b#283]}
• Draven's look was settled step by step: a dark elf in black armour with a deep purple cloak and arms drawn out of darkness. ^{[heralds-b#349 · heralds-b#353]}
• The Elvynstar Inn, where humans imitate elves, was described from the inside. ^{[heralds-b#355 · heralds-b#356]}
• Act I, "The Whisper of Absence", set in Graymond, and Act II, "The Breach of the Annex", in which the party first enters the Annex and hears Kaelen's voice, were laid out. ^{[heralds-b#357 · heralds-b#358]}
• The GM then set the next objective: the party would raid Blackice's main base beneath Iceverf. ^{[heralds-b#359]}
• Outside the walls the party beat a group of bandits who were trying to prove their loyalty to Black Ice. ^{[heralds-b#361 · heralds-b#363]}
• The GM clarified that those bandits were not official agents of the organization but men seizing land outside the walls on their own account, and that the party's aim was not to show loyalty but to get on good terms with Black Ice and bind that land to itself. ^{[heralds-b#363]}
• The party decided to find Black Ice's under-city inn and base and catch them unprepared, keeping a captured bandit as a guide to the hiding place in the sewers. ^{[heralds-b#365]}
• The bandits who had escaped were expected to report to Black Ice that the party had weakened its authority, and the GM took the view that the organization would either kill the two children it was holding or keep them for some other purpose. ^{[heralds-b#365]}
• Resting at an inn outside the city with three bandits and the Demon Slayer — one player character's father — the party saw him attack them and beat one down, while the other two fled toward the city to report; the party kept Rook in hand. ^{[heralds-b#367]}
• The murals of the Temple of the Red Seal were made canon in six panels telling the transformation of the Ten Thousand Breath path and the imprisonment of the Rakshasa. ^{[heralds-b#392 · heralds-b#393]}
• Asked who really led Blackice, the answer given was Godwin "Pale" White, the organization's hidden architect. ^{[heralds-b#396 · heralds-b#397]}
• Beneath him the GM wanted three figures, and the organization was laid out in three independent arms: the City Hand under Crowcoin, the Deep Hand under Vaelis, and the White Veil under Aurelian. ^{[heralds-b#398 · heralds-b#399]}
• Crowcoin was rewritten from a class-based card into a CR 8 NPC block, and the Frost Claws — illusion-using assassin-mages who pass like phantoms and know where their target stands — were built at CR 6 as his guards. ^{[heralds-b#402 · heralds-b#404]}
• Vaelis was redefined as the last of the Elkborn, a fallen paladin and undead, written up at CR 11 with an origin story; old soldier-skeletons that rise again after being destroyed were requested for the Old Iceverf ruins. ^{[heralds-b#406 · heralds-b#408]}
• Godwin himself was designed as a legendary lich, with a full stat block and a detailed themed spell list. ^{[heralds-b#422 · heralds-b#424]}
• The orders in which the party might kill Crowcoin, Vaelis and Aurelian before reaching Godwin, and the way it would find him afterwards, were worked out in advance.

Players, stop here. What is hidden behind this point is game-master material. The full detail is on GM:Campaign Log.

• In play the party began questioning former Blackice agents and the city's significant figures. ^{[heralds-b#438]}
• The Faith and the Arcanum raided a manhole in the city and took Black Ice agents in the sewer connection; those caught said their orders came from the innkeeper, and the innkeeper admitted that he only received letters and passed them on. ^{[heralds-b#438 · heralds-b#439]}
• The chain of command above him was not fully exposed. ^{[heralds-b#439]}
• Believing they had indirectly caused Black Ice to fall apart, the party discussed going straight to Godwin's cave refuge. ^{[heralds-b#440]}
• Through an underground opening they saw the enormous entrance of the Old Velfald ruins. ^{[heralds-b#442]}
• Returning to the abandoned Black Ice inn they had already raided, they found a hidden lever behind a painting; it opened a concealed door in the holding cells onto a man-made tunnel running to Old Iceverf. ^{[heralds-b#444]}
• That tunnel leads to Old Iceverf, a place full of dead waiting to rise which holds Pale's phylactery. ^{[heralds-b#444]}
• The Guard Captain, bound to Black Ice by blackmail, saw what they had found, said he had to report it, and fled — with Crowcoin missing he could reach only the goblins or the woman at the funeral home. ^{[heralds-b#444]}
• Rather than attack, the party planned to turn back and report what they had found. ^{[heralds-b#444]}
• A long recap of the Snake Cross expedition followed: the Heralds of the Cycle went with the Snowshield Count and his soldiers into the artificial tunnel north of Snake Cross, reached the burial ground, and found Legion remains and a cleric's notes. ^{[heralds-b#446]}
• Deep in that burial ground they fought the being called a splinter of a god. ^{[heralds-b#446]}
• In Scuto's village they met a glacial giant with a runic weapon, which withdrew when threatened, and Lucerion lost consciousness there through drink. ^{[heralds-b#446]}
• In the middle of nowhere they found the floating glacial fragment connected to Kelruun, and Mila had a vision. ^{[heralds-b#446]}
• Passing from a cave under the ice into another realm, they fought a six-armed creature hard; it fled and was destroyed in its own realm. ^{[heralds-b#446]}
• On the way back to the village they found a smashed cart thought to belong to Harlaan Reeves, and three bodies. ^{[heralds-b#446]}
• They made contact with a Black Ice skeleton that showed itself in order to warn them; when they tried to take it prisoner it tore itself apart. ^{[heralds-b#446]}
• They went through the research Rados had left behind, found magical items in his old manor, and followed the trail to a cave of ice mirrors and a shadowed suit of armour. ^{[heralds-b#446]}
• Lucerion delivered his report to the High Priest, who took him off the city assignment and turned him toward other problems. ^{[heralds-b#453]}

Session thread: Aenarch: Last Winter

• The party interfered with the sacred rituals of the Flaming Banner goblin tribe, and its chief, Emberlord Griknash, sent them a furious message of revenge in return. ^{[last-winter#43 · last-winter#44]}
• Much of this thread is world-building between sessions rather than play; the GM stressed that he wanted world notes over image prompts and that the setting was being built together. ^{[last-winter#308]}
• The surnames of the Brothers and Sisters of the Antler branch of the Antler Knights were revised, the GM catching and correcting a repeated surname, and he fixed himself that Sir Bertram Frostgaze's sword is named Mirror and is silver-plated so that it throws light back. ^{[last-winter#78 · last-winter#86]}
• Thistle Bramblefoot was made leader of the Frostwood Rangers, and the druid Eira Whisperwind was created to bring the Rangers word of danger. ^{[last-winter#131 · last-winter#132]}
• The GM defined a secret society that protects Iceverf's old history from the Empire and, after several attempts at a name, settled on Blackice. ^{[last-winter#134 · last-winter#141]}
• The Countess's uncle, Lord Garrick, was created as a figure mixed up in Blackice's business and given the same surname as the Countess; after confusion between Frostvale and Frostveil, the GM insisted that the correct surname is Frostweave. ^{[last-winter#142 · last-winter#148 · last-winter#162]}
• The canon so far was summarized at his request, covering Aenarch, Iceverf, House Frostweave, the Frostwood Rangers, Blackice and Seren Frostbloom. ^{[last-winter#163 · last-winter#164]}
• He stated that the Antler Knights are canon as well, and the order's history and its leader Sir Boros Whitelion were summarized. ^{[last-winter#165 · last-winter#166]}
• He identified the Frostlord as Lord Godwin "Pale" White, a mage of House White who betrayed the Frostweave family. ^{[last-winter#167 · last-winter#168]}
• Places in Iceverf for the party to visit were listed: the Citadel, the Frostwood, Sunbell Hill, Graymond Library, the market, Antler Keep and the Blackice hideout. ^{[last-winter#169 · last-winter#170]}
• For the soldiers of the Moonward Duchy the GM refused a named character and asked instead for a generic guard description, which he meant to use as an image-generation prompt. ^{[last-winter#258 · last-winter#260]}
• In play the party tried to kill a badly wounded target out of mercy; the target resisted and was killed in the end, and it was then revealed to be Faetheus, sent back by Levistus in the guise of Vex. ^{[last-winter#286 · last-winter#288]}
• The GM defined the barony of Snakecross inside Rosereach county: built around volcanic mountains, famous for its rose gardens, and giving passage to the sea. ^{[last-winter#300]}
• He added its winter and bird's-eye aspects and a druid who turns the dead into roses. ^{[last-winter#304 · last-winter#306]}
• He later had the Black Ice and Tincrabs references struck from the Snakecross description, because those organizations belong to Iceverf. ^{[last-winter#376]}
• Kaelen's shield, established as an ordinary one, was given the Deflective Barrier, Lion's Roar and Regal Presence properties, and his sword, shield, armour and face were illustrated before his character sheet was issued in a fifth version. ^{[last-winter#350 · last-winter#354 · last-winter#372]}
• Draven's background was detailed: an old dark elf who founded the Dark Crescent guild by agreement with the Duke in Moonward, he turned grey like the other dark elves when the leader of the Dark Court in the Fae realm was killed, could not accept it, and seeks to regain his dark powers through a grimoire hidden in a lost library in the Iceverf region. ^{[last-winter#382]}
• Lady Emyl noticed that change and charged Kaelen with finding out where Draven was, and the GM proposed Kaelen's search for Draven in Snakecross as the subject of play. ^{[last-winter#378 · last-winter#382]}
• The four quarters of Dark Crescent were mapped in text and then as images, and Shadow Crescent was described in detail. ^{[last-winter#419 · last-winter#421 · last-winter#429]}
• During the Tincrab Tribe's leadership crisis the gnome Tuva Stoneshine was killed in the blood feud between the Razorbacks and the Greencaps, and the Crystal Consortium began looking for an Advocate. ^{[last-winter#460 · last-winter#505]}
• The GM built the story of Marcus Virelius, a soldier deserting the Legion, who stole his commander's amulet of immunity to disease for his sick brother and is trying to reach his village near Snakepass, with Sergeant Antonia Forester and the warlock Vilas Scorcher hunting him in Shadowgate. ^{[last-winter#464]}
• The true nature of the Gloomy Grog was defined.

Players, stop here. What is hidden behind this point is game-master material. The full detail is on GM:Campaign Log.

• Lord Avadric Mordeus, a wealthy collector come to Moonward, was introduced after the GM changed his surname, and three districts — Academia, Argentia and Gloria — were added to the city. ^{[last-winter#490 · last-winter#493]}
• A draconic riddle about the two moons and the primordials was written, made more cryptic at the GM's request, and then translated. ^{[last-winter#495 · last-winter#499]}
• Four figures from Moonward's past — the Elkborn empress Laerel Reghart, the deep gnome counsellor Gavrim Deepdelver, the commander Tarik N'dalu and the owlin priestess-librarian Valeria Greytalon — were detailed to the GM's specifications, and he decided that their ice statues would fight the party with powers reflecting their strength in life. ^{[last-winter#507 · last-winter#509]}
• In Ironwood a goblin gang leader who owns land in the district paid workers to murder the gnome manager of the tin factory in order to seize its ground. ^{[last-winter#537]}
• The company sent a lawyer, an investigation into the murder began, and the goblins were accused and hunted while denying the crime. ^{[last-winter#537]}
• The party searched the factory by night and set off a trap; one player was spotted by the guards and attacked one of them before the party fled. ^{[last-winter#537]}
• The party then recognized the goblin gang leader who had actually ordered the killing and struck a deal with him: they would help him win the land, and he would shield them from the guards. ^{[last-winter#537]}
• After that infiltration the Crystal Consortium put the Argent Wardens mercenary company in charge of guarding the factory, and a common uniform was designed for Seraphis Gale, Vrenna Ironbrand and Daxil "Fox" Lorrik. ^{[last-winter#541 · last-winter#543]}
• The GM defined the Ursa family — thirteen members, matriarchal, seated at Oavenia — asked for the command structure of the Winter War campaign in the Velfald Regency, and then corrected the family tree so that Veylin, Tyrlan, Drella and Eryndor are Frelya's children. ^{[last-winter#643 · last-winter#645 · last-winter#648]}
• He asked for the significant non-Ursa officers and special threats on each front of the Winter Campaign, said the peoples he had listed were only examples, and had a second list produced from entirely different peoples. ^{[last-winter#652 · last-winter#654 · last-winter#655]}
• He asked that everything written in the conversation be categorized into a transferable file, and a moonward_campaign_lore document was drafted but left unfinished. ^{[last-winter#656 · last-winter#657]}
• He also asked for a sheet of the elven side's plans for the Winter Campaign, and an elven_winter_campaign document of strategy, phases, key figures, logistics and contingencies was produced. ^{[last-winter#659 · last-winter#660]}
• He refused the creation of a new behind-the-scenes coordinator, rejected the proposed Vaeryn Ursa outright, and pointed instead at Cassius Dravenhall, who already existed, asking who really directs House Ursa from behind. ^{[last-winter#798 · last-winter#802 · last-winter#803]}
• He asked for the full list of House Ursa's thirteen members and was given a roster of Frelya and twelve children, confirmed as carried over from earlier sessions rather than newly invented. ^{[last-winter#806 · last-winter#808]}
• A family tree image was produced, Tyrlan Ursa's abilities as a spy behind enemy lines were worked out, and two more members were introduced: Yvanna Ursa, the eldest daughter and heir, a druid who commands the main invasion army and rides Frostfang, and Drella Ursa, the fifth daughter, a healer with a staff of icy light. ^{[last-winter#810 · last-winter#818 · last-winter#821]}
• Seraphina Stormwatch, Regent of Timbermire, and the city itself — set above a cliff, reached by a lift, misty and cold and ringed by forest — were described. ^{[last-winter#814 · last-winter#816]}
• The GM stated that the party would set sail on a stormy sea and be attacked by water elementals summoned by elven mages, asked for NPCs aboard the Blue Sails ship, and then made the proposed traitor aboard canon as a changeling. ^{[last-winter#693 · last-winter#695]}
• He changed Captain Doran Blackwake's race from triton to human, keeping the name, and had character cards made for the Blue Sails crew. ^{[last-winter#705 · last-winter#708]}
• He defined the structure of the Legion Division of Rosereach — a team with three sergeants, two warlocks and one Seer — and noted that this would be learned and used later. ^{[last-winter#725 · last-winter#733]}
• Six Rosereach knights were created, three inside the city and three at the fronts, along with three rumours: Adrien's search for a wyrm, Valeria's love scandal, and the city's argument over siege or surrender. ^{[last-winter#735 · last-winter#737]}
• Five further rumours the party could uncover — the lost fleet, the split in the War Council, the wyrm, suspicious cargo and a traitor — were produced together with five pieces of city trivia. ^{[last-winter#747 · last-winter#748]}
• The harbour captaincy changed hands twice in preparation: Doran Blackwake was renamed Vaelor Ironfathom, and the post then went to the human Aldric "Ironhook" Vexmoor. ^{[last-winter#743 · last-winter#745 · last-winter#746]}
• The GM corrected two proposed NPCs, requiring that an arcane officer come from Magnus Arcanum and a priest from the Knight faith of Aenism. ^{[last-winter#791 · last-winter#796]}
• In play a player used his ability to read fate on a runic stone, trying to see a hidden star, and saw it in a dream: an omen of the death or sealing of the highest angel in the universe, in truth Samael / Sariel Fellsun. ^{[last-winter#856]}
• Having seen the omen the player went blind, and a Legion Seer nearby took him to the Legion barracks in Rosereach. ^{[last-winter#860]}
• The GM clarified that there is no Cardinal in Rosereach and that the report must go to the Cardinal in Timbermire. ^{[last-winter#862]}
• Background from an earlier campaign, already played out at this table, was set out: Samael / Sariel Fellsun went to Hell to manipulate Ezekiel, the son of his niece, who bore his uncle's surname and who died in the attempt to kill Mephistopheles. ^{[last-winter#868]}
• With Ezekiel's death the Gates of Heaven opened and the Angel of Death, Azrael, came for his soul; Sariel killed Azrael with the Reaper, the angel's own weapon, and by the prophecy this brought to light — that whoever dares kill death with its reaper shares the same fate — Sariel died as well. ^{[last-winter#868 · last-winter#869]}
• The vision the player character saw is of Sariel's death before it has happened, and it sets a tremor in Fate. ^{[last-winter#870 · last-winter#871]}
• The Rosereach Legion Seer tried to suppress the vision, failed, began recording it in secret, and reached the Cardinal in Timbermire with a proposal for containment. ^{[last-winter#872]}
• The omen-bearer was placed under what is in practice surveillance in the name of protection, designed so that the character stays playable through party access, missions and new abilities. ^{[last-winter#873 · last-winter#874]}
• The Cardinal summoned the omen-bearer to Timbermire to see the curse with his own eyes and to learn what he could about the omen tied to Sariel Fellsun. ^{[last-winter#875]}

Related pages

• Campaign Log (appendix) — the session-by-session detail that did not fit on this page
• Heralds of the Cycle — the party of the first two conversations
• Winter War — the war these sessions are fought inside
• Deadreach — the city at the centre of the first thread's closing arc
• Blackice — the organization the second thread's Iceverf arc turns on
• Naevys Duskbloom — the figure whose ritual and ambitions drive the Deadreach arc
• Godwin White — the hidden architect the Iceverf arc is aimed at

Unconfirmed ideas

The source conversations contain proposals for Campaign Log that the campaign owner never confirmed. They are collected on Idea:Campaign Log so they cannot be mistaken for canon.