Pathfinder 1E Reign of Winter (Parts II, IV and VI)

I recently obtained a copy of this module, but do not have any of the five parts prior to it. We have playing characters of sufficient level for the module, and a while back the campaign had established a large ice continent setting that the characters are now connected with that could probably be adapted to the setting of the module.

My question to people who have played this campaign is, is Part VI "The Witch Queen's Revenge" dependent upon what led up to it, or can it work as a stand alone module?

Hey, I'm just about to run this series!

I suppose you could run book 6 as a stand alone - probably with a great deal of effort/re-write/etc.
(Note: I've only skimmed book 3-6 for the overall view of the whole story atm as I've still got a few weeks. ).

In a nutshell:
In PF, every 100 years Baba Yaga returns to Golarian and takes the current witch-queen of Irissen away with her in the Dancing Hut, feeding off of the deposed queens power. (of course few queens have any idea what fate is going to befall them....)
She installs a new queen & repeats the process 100 years later. This has been going on for 14 cycles.
The current queen though has suspicions & no desire to abdicate her throne. She forms a plan to take down Baba Yaga & cover the entire world in endless winter. And is in the process of succeeding. Enter the heroes.
They have to steal the Dancing Hut & take it on a journey that spans continents, planets, & planes/time to rescue Baba Yaga.

Book 1 - the heroes become involved & are tasked by one of Baba Yagas minions to reach the Dancing Hut & use it to track down and rescue her. Book 1 ends with the PCs closing the portal that's spewing unnatural winter into their homeland.

Book 2 - is a trek across the frozen country of Irrissen to hijack the Dancing Hut from the winter witches!

Book 3 - The PCs backtrack B.Y to the country of Ioboria (sp?), fight centaurs, frost giants, explore a dungeon & gather clues & keys to get them to their next stop - a different planet in the PF solar system!

Book 4 - The PCs land on the winter planet Triaxus & need to retrieve 2 clues/keys - from opposing sides in a war.
Evil white dragons! Kinda elf-like aliens riding dragon-like mounts!

Book 5 - Rasputin Must Die!
What a great title! The trail leads to WWI era RUSSIA! Yes, on our Earth. The PCs fight gun toting Russian soldiers, animated WWI tanks (including the real & very bizzare looking Tsar Tank {seriously, google the thing! I can't wait to build one!) & the mad monk himself - Rasputin.
Yeah, I gotta run this!

Book 6 you already know.

The whole point of this series is to go on a cosmic joy-ride in the Dancing Hut. Encountering various winter themed & Russian{?} myth based stuff along the way. And telling a PF story in the process....
Personally I think if you just skipped over vol.1-5 you'd lose a great deal. You'll still have some neat fights though.

If you want a high lv stand alone, try The Witch War Legacy. It's a one-shot PF module for lv 17 (though I'm sure you can scale it down to lv.13 or so like I did)
It too concerns Baba Yaga, & the plots of the current witch-queen of Irrissen. The queen & a # of rivals (a demon lord + the PCs) are trying to seize a different artifact. The queen in order to further her plans that are revealed in Reign of Winter, the demon because part of him is bound to the thing, & the PCs for any reason you like (self interest or as agents of either of the others).
Very cool dungeon/setting/backstory.
It also serves as a great prologue for Reign.
What I did was run it as a one-shot for our 13th lv, mythic characters a few weeks ago. {knowing full well that when I take over full time DM duties in a month I'm planning to run Reign of Winter )
My players failed to stop the Witch Queen from seizing the artifact. They weren't concerned though as this was just a one-shot to fill in a week or two play gap.
They have no idea that their failure is going to be very very important to their brand new 1st lv characters....

ccs said:

I suppose you could run book 6 as a stand alone - probably with a great deal of effort/re-write/etc.....In a nutshell:

Click to expand...

Extremely helpful posting, thank you! After reading this I have decided to do this as a trilogy, using the three even-numbered parts. I just found an inexpensive copy of Book IV, so will now just need to find Book II.

I've decided to skip the odd numbered ones as they sound very similar to modules that we have done before (we've been playing continuously for over a third of a century).

While Book I sounds like a good setup for this six-parter, my previously established arctic setting should enable me to transition the group directly into Book II, with the trek across the frozen country. The 1400 year history actually works surprisingly well, as they had already found a frozen city from an earlier time before the land became covered in ice.

Book III is very similar in description to a past module, with centaurs and giant as key components of a dungeon crawl. Gateways to other worlds is also a concept we have used many times before, so I will just flow from Books II to IV with the single gateway.

And while Book V sounds like fun, we've done one before that a historian DM set in a Russian-based land. They've also already done a few where they were recruited by the Time Police to intervene in Earth history, with an upcoming one already planned for the USSR during WWII (although I may steal the idea of animating the tanks).

Part IV arrived today and it looks fantastic! I find the new races to be very interesting. Love the concept of putting them on a very different world.

Silver Moon said:

so I will just flow from Books II to IV with the single gateway.

Click to expand...

Cool. Are you keeping the Hut? Or just going with the direct conduit link that channels endless winter from Triaxia as a portal the PCs can hop a ride through?

In my own game I had the winter portal that opened up in the 1st lv PCs very non-wintery homeland arrive with the 1909 Tunguska effect.
Until closed, 2 way travel between their homeland & Irrissen is possible.
Once through the portal my PCs will find themselves standing within an ice encrusted model of Stonehenge. With an ice covered Egyptian monolith - radiating lethal cold - in the center.
I kept the basic idea of the portal being on a ley line, but dressed it up (Stonehenge) a bit.
The obelisk? That's B-Ys handiwork. It's one of several throughout the country that maintains the eternal winter. It's covered in Triaxian runes (just because there's a chance that one of the characters with linguistic ranks might decipher it & I can show him something I know he's never seen in a game before. {odd how that DC isn't going to be all that hard...} And hint at something far far away if some additional checks concerning astronomy etc are passed).
The Henge is the work of the white witches. The PCs will be able to break it's effect per the module & prevent their homeland from freezing. The obelisk? No.

ccs said:

Cool. Are you keeping the Hut? Or just going with the direct conduit link that channels endless winter from Triaxia as a portal the PCs can hop a ride through?

Click to expand...

Both. I am planning to use the Hut. They will play out Part II of this Pathfinder campaign (I just found an inexpensive copy) which will have them finding a releasing the hut. We actually still play 1st Edition, so I plan to use the excellent adventure "The Dancing Hut" by Roger Moore from Dragon Magazine #83. But the open portal between the character's own ice-covered land and Triaxia will be a direct conduit link that channels the endless winter.

ccs said:

In my own game...Once through the portal my PCs will find themselves standing within an ice encrusted model of Stonehenge. With an ice covered Egyptian monolith - radiating lethal cold - in the center. I kept the basic idea of the portal being on a ley line, but dressed it up (Stonehenge) a bit. The obelisk? That's B-Ys handiwork. It's one of several throughout the country that maintains the eternal winter. It's covered in Triaxian runes (just because there's a chance that one of the characters with linguistic ranks might decipher it & I can show him something I know he's never seen in a game before. {odd how that DC isn't going to be all that hard...} And hint at something far far away if some additional checks concerning astronomy etc are passed).
The Henge is the work of the white witches. The PCs will be able to break it's effect per the module & prevent their homeland from freezing. The obelisk? No.

Click to expand...

Cool, thank you. That sounds like an excellent way to approach it. The party's leader is a Magic-User/Cleric levels 13/11 who has now set up shop in an abandoned wizard's castle on our world's ice continent and has taken on the title "Sage of the Ice" (her mentor had the title "Sage of the Sea"). One thing she is specifically researching is what caused the land mass to be covered in ice a millennia or two ago. The 1400 year time frame from "Reign of Winter" fits perfectly with that.

Part II arrived today. I think I can work this in without a problem.

Okay, I've read through Part II "The Shackled Hut". I like ccs's idea of the Stonehenge-like portals and have figured out a good way to make this work without using Part I of the adventure. Irrisen, Triaxus, and the party's world (Alba) will be three separate worlds. Baba Yaga has been drawing the eternal winter to Irrisen from Triaxus through portals on Alba, which is also why that section of Alba has been covered in ice for 14 centuries.

Nadya Petska from Irrisen will arrive on the party's world through the portal with the information about Baba Yaga's daughter having taken her. She will be followed/hunted by the Winter Wolf Norgrimm and his winter-guard Falconers (I may have to boost this group up, as the party is higher in level than intended for Part II).

The added incentive is that since captured Baba Yaga is no longer controlling the flow of the eternal winter between the three worlds and Queen Elvanna is not doing it right, so the party's ice continent is now expanding and getting colder at a time of year when it should be getting warmer. They will have to travel through the portal to Irrisen and then to Triaxus. The portal between Irrisen and Triaxus will be blocked, closed or too heavily guarded, requiring them to obtain the Shackled Hut to get to Triaxus.

I really like the tapestry-style pictures on the inside front and back covers of the module books, so am thinking to having them appear on a magical tapestry that the party will recover prior to Nadya arriving with the explanation of what they mean.