A Swords of the Serpentine Midwinter Plot Hook

By Kevin Kulp

Some holidays you look forward to, and some holidays you want to avoid. Iceknock is a whole lot of both.

Iceknock doesn’t happen every year. It has to be cold in Eversink. REALLY cold. Cold enough to freeze the saltwater harbor, cold enough to freeze the brackish canals, cold enough to make the city’s swans migrate somewhere that they can find open water. This is the bitter chilling cold that people die from if they aren’t careful. No one should be outside on a night like this.

For most people, the holiday of Iceknock is a reaction to that awful cold. People cluster around warm fires in warm rooms and share food, drink, song, and presents. It’s common to buy your family and friends an Iceknock present every year but only give the presents away when it is cold enough to hold the holiday, which leads to a lot of hilarity as you give your friends and family presents that were a lot more meaningful nine years ago. Dinner typically features a poorly carved ice sculpture in a bowl of punch, old songs poorly sung, and a tradition where bundled-up children dash around the house in the cold and knock on icy windows and doors before being let back in. People otherwise stay inside and off the streets or canals during Iceknock, from dusk to dawn, and they start the next morn happier and better fed than they were the day before.

But in many ways the holiday is a distraction. People stay inside to celebrate because it’s taboo to be outside. On the night of Iceknock, something — maybe something not human? — is outside hammering at the underside of the ice. If you’re foolish enough to be out in the bitter cold and near the ice, you might be the first person to hear the singular hollow knocking, like a lone person hammering on a door.

The noise starts after dusk with a single rapid knocking somewhere out in the harbor. RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT. Something underneath the ice is trying to get your attention. The noise spreads closer to the docks as the night gets colder and darker, coming from more than one spot. A cacophony of staccato knocking at different speeds and volume, vibrating up from a hundred different locations. Whatever is knocking systematically advances into the city’s canals, moving slowly but terrifyingly forward. The City Watch usually try to keep people clear of the ice. People don’t need a whole lot of convincing to head back inside.

Some years the knocking trails off as dawn nears, completely disappearing by the time the pale winter sun peeks up over the horizon. If the sounds stop (usually quite abruptly), you know that someone has found a way to shatter the thick ice and confront what’s under it. No one has ever reported back what they’ve found. People who find a way to stop the knocking have a really bad habit of never being seen again.

And that’s the thing. Who or what is it? Why do they hammer so insistently and for so long? Why only on this one night when it is so cold and the ice is so thick? What do they want? Do they have a message? Do they hunt, but only take the first victim they see?

Don’t ask. Stay inside, exchange gifts, and be happy you aren’t out on the ice.

So What’s the Truth?

We have three possible answers for you: the kind answer, the cruel answer, and the complicated answer. Decide which you prefer. The most interesting answer is the one that leads to more adventure and the greatest number of changes in the world.

The Kind Answer

Iceknock only happens when the weather is terrible, which suggests there was once a tradition of the seafolk helping humans in those early days of need. The seafolk beneath the ice are bringing gifts of food and long-sunken treasure, as has been promised in a treaty that humans have long forgotten. Anyone brave enough to break the ice benefits from this so long as they don’t attack the inhuman bearer. The recipient of the gifts receives secrets, influence, and treasures meant for the whole city. Will they share it and gain public acclaim, or keep it secret and use it to their own advantage?

If you set it up so that Eversink is actually in a huge crisis during midwinter, the Heroes could be considered saviors for solving the mystery of Iceknock… or huge villains if they act selfishly instead.

The Cruel Answer

Whatever is under the ice is more horrific than you think, wants flesh and blood and souls, and wants them now. Is it a single entity with a thousand tentacles? Are they cannibalistic fish-folk who worship a hypnotic undersea god? Do they have an ancient prophecy to fulfill that involves an ice-bound surface world, and they knock to find the spot where the ice is weakest? Whatever the answer is, we suspect that it isn’t going to be good news for Eversink. Here’s hoping your Heroes get involved.

The Complicated Answer

Other coastal cities don’t have Iceknock; why does it seemingly only happen in Eversink? Is Iceknock just a huge hoax engineered by the church to remind people that the night is scary and that Denari will protect the faithful? Are small gods involved?

It’s most likely that there was a treaty as detailed above, but someone killed one of the gift-givers so NOW the exchange is hostile, and it is up to the Heroes to apologize and set things right once again. Or perhaps there is someone out on the ice right now who is going to kill a gift-giver and accidentally cause a war unless the Heroes can figure it out and stop them in time.

Is there a legend that once the tribute has been delivered its Eversink’s turn to give the undersea folk a tribute in turn, and events will quickly turn ugly if it is not given? Or has someone figured this out but keeps the secret to themselves, feeding the city false propaganda so that they can harvest the undersea treasures themselves? If so, do the Heroes keep their secret or report them?

When you play this out you can easily use seskies (SotS p. 195) or some other merfolk, such as the frost squids who call themselves the pa’gos.

Pa’gos

Predatory, tentacular, vindictive

Defense — Health: Health Threshold 3, Health 6

Defense — Morale: Morale Threshold 4, Morale 10

Offense — Warfare: +1 (icy-cold tentacle barbs); Damage Modifier +1 or the Restrain Maneuver

Offense — Sway: +2; Damage Modifier +1 (inhuman squirming)

Abilities: Malus 12

Special Abilities: Monstrous Ability (cost 3 – Anything squid-like or ice-related), Swimming, Special – Slithering Aura (Each round, anyone within Close range suffers 2 Morale damage, no attack needed)

Misc: The pa’gos lose 3 Malus every round they are not touching a sizable amount of water or ice. If their Malus reaches zero in this way, they are Defeated at the end of the combat round. Defeated pa’gos will die at the end of the scene if not re-immersed.

Refresh Tokens: 3

Description: These frost squids call themselves the pa’gos. Thirty-tentacled human-sized monstrosities that can only survive briefly out of the water, the pa’gos dwell in small underwater cities constructed from an architecture that does Morale damage to any humans who see it. These creatures are brilliant but theirs is not a human intelligence, and most humans who survive meeting them find their motivations inscrutable.

Kevin Kulp (@kevinkulp) and Emily Dresner (@multiplexer) are the co-authors of Swords of the Serpentine, out now in hardback and PDF. Kevin previously helped create TimeWatch and Owl Hoot Trail for Pelgrane Press. When he’s not writing games he’s either smoking BBQ, watching dubious shark movies, or helping 24-hour companies with shiftwork, sleep, and alertness.