[FR] Horror on the Spine of the World

[Jürgen Hubert]

The party in my campaign wants to travel north of the Spine of the World Mountains to see the Great Glacier - just because they think the view would be great (yes, they are like that). The party consists of a human ranger2/cleric3, an elan psychic warrior1/psion4, and an aasimar druid4 with a celestial wolf companion

Currently they are north of the Moonwood and have pretty much left the last human outposts behind them. Their plan is to follow the small river they have found until they reach the pass through the mountains.

I know what will happen once they reach the Glacier, and I have planned an encounter with an orc tribe that will be mostly humorous (one of them gets to fight the tribe's champion, and if he wins, they are adopted by the tribe and married to the chieftain's daughters), but I'd also like to do some side adventures that have a genuine element of horror in them on the way.

Any suggestions?

 

[Numenorean]

Yes.

At some point they will learn of a place high in the crags called "Bregor's Hold". Here it is said a crazed and evil Barbarian dwells with his pet wolf and a band of gnolls.

Bregor (Barbarian 7, Human, CE) is a mountain of a man, wears a coat of enchanted scale mail, and wields a hefty battle axe and shield.

He either has something or someone the PCs must retrieve. They must find his lair, penetrate it, and recover what they are tasked to retrieve. His lair consists of a fortified cave complex at the end of a gully high in the mountains. His gnolls are loyal and fierce defenders. His pet wolf is aslo capable, and will make suprising the hold tough to do. Depending on the capability of the party he may have a half-ogre ally as well .. powerful brute fighter, or you can toss in a Gnoll Shaman (Cleric 2/Sorcerer 3) or something?

 

[Soel]

Isolation. Bleak isolation.

This is a place where nobody is around. No help for miles on end. If they run into any threats, you should really hit them with the question "what is this thing that can thrive in such a place?" You can really get their nerves and wits on end with mysterious wanderers, or unknown creatures that prowl the area. You can further cut them off with avalanches or rockslides. Might even want to go with the theme of them being hunted.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

To expand on Soel's suggestion of isolation, how about playing up the northern aspect with the lack of regular day/night cycles. I haven't seen the movie Insomnia (either the original or the recent Pacino remake), but I'm thinking something along those lines. You could work the disruption of their regular waking/sleeping cycles into things to really disorient them and throw them off, in addition to whatever other scenario you might devise.

Another idea, off the top of my head, is something from the Hyperborea cycle of stories by Clark Ashton Smith. Perhaps there is a sort of "living" ice atop the glacier that is (in its alien way) seeking to cover and dominate everything around it. Something Cthulhianic like that- after all, this is a wilderness and a place that man was not meant to live in/on, and is somewhat alien to anything the PCs might have known before.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

You want to marry them to orcs and want more horror?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The real horror is that these orcs don't know how to make pie.