What is frozen skull?
A suburb in Infinigrad:
Hulking industrial storehouses and abandoned
tenements, archways dripping with icicles. Wide stone paved streets slippery
with ice. Far away, bonfires burn on street corners, and in guts and rooftops
of buildings – otherwise total, cold darkness.
Elephantine contraptions rumble away in rooftops
and basements, spewing out endless frigid icy air. Cooling devices once needed
to combat the heat of the defunct fire factories, now slowly freezing the
suburb.
d6 Factions of Frozen Skull:
1, The Singed Knaves:
- A gang of sulkers with a penchant for fire. Ever tending bonfires burning in streets and buildings. They have a great store of recovered flame jewellery, pilfered from the Old Eko Helek Factory (Building 12), these allow them to cast fire spells such as fireball and hands of flame. They are always hunting for more.
- Members wrapped in blackened, singed scarves and rags of many layers to ward against cold. Crude cloth facemasks, ceremoniously burnt. An abundance of redgold amulets and rings often adorn their bodies. They wield burning brands or swords set alight with oil.
- The Singed Knaves are currently attempting to drive the hated Dream Giants from the suburb, amassing bombs and other incendiary devices to assault The Ziggurat of Dreams (Building 15).
- Gloro the Godless leads the gang, an aging scoundrel propped up by many a rusty augmentation (clanking feet of iron, creaking metal hands, all many times burnt). Gloro is weighed down by countless flame amulets. These make his body shimmer with heat, his flesh ever red and seared. Gloro loves spouting anti-deity rhetoric, pointing to the science of his augmentations and the natural power of flame as two thing that would consume any god.
- A colony of pale giants, long ago cursed with endless sleep and sealed in The Ziggurat of Dreams (Building 15). With the decline and absence of the once powerful guild, The Flames of Eko Helek, the giants have begun to reawaken. Slowly roused by a single pale giant who travelled to Frozen Skull with a scarce supply of dream gems. These gems ignite the dreams of the giants, violently forcing them to wakefulness, not without violence and sometimes death. The Dream Giants are slow, silent and obsessed with the creation of more dream gems. These are made by slowly calcifying the brains of victims captured in endless slumber (an abhorrent practice that was the reason for the pale giants cursing).
- Awakened giants don body encompassing hooded capes, frilled with bones at the neck. Beneath the dark hoods are white masks, delicately painted as ornate skulls. Beneath these, the rotting, pale heads of the giants - translucent skin and too large eyes of hypnotic orange. The giants are loath to reveal any part of their sickly flesh.
- The giants will attempt to kidnap and put to sleep most they encounter. Sleeping victims are arranged on the outer steps of The Ziggurat of Dreams (Building 15), their brains slowly melted into crystal. Some of these victims are given to the The Far-Buried Fellowship (Building 2 in Ashen Tumble), ultimately with the goal of convincing a dream librarian of the fellowship to come to the ziggurat and assist with the awakening of more giants.
- The silent leader of the church, the traveller with the supply of dream gems, rarely strays from the innards of the ziggurat. He stalks through the ancient halls filled with sleeping giants, naked saved for a long necklace of dream gems. He is unashamed of his rotted flesh.
- A defunct manufacturer of fire magic technology defeated during the guild wars. Their monsters were of particular value to other guilds, mutations of flesh and flame. Some sabotage was initiated deep in the bowels of the Old Eko Helek Factory (Building 12), losing the guild control of their fearsome experiments. With chaos wracking the guild internally, a number of competitors were easily able to eradicate the vast majority of Eko Helek members.
- A handful of crazed and ancient Eko Helek fire encasers remain in Frozen Skull. They proudly live in their guild’s uniform: robes and long face mask of black reptilian scales. Bloodshot eyes, darkened by smoke, peer through the slits of their flame protective facemasks. All members of the guild have their hands replaced with flame resistant metal claws.
- Eko Helek fire encasers imbued beast and jewellery with flame by capturing it in diamond monofilament nets. These extremely precious and magical nets crush flame, metal and flesh alike, melding them into a roasting hot living substance. Although the art of fire encasing is lost with Eko Helek, their valuable tools and still living experiments remain.
- Warped and tortured beasts of flame, metal and flesh. Skin of burnt charcoal, infused with living iron, melting, seared and dripping. Powered by a scorching core of living fire, belching acrid smoke, parts of body replaced with liquid flame. The never-ending pain of their warped existence makes the Wild Experiments of Eko Helek mad and unpredictable.
- To the east of Frozen Skull is the suburb Wyrdwood Estate, a wooded parkland dotted with the manse’s of independent wizards. The parklands and manses are guarded savagely by the Wyrdwood Hawks, a band of violent eaglemen. While the hawks general haunt the iron gate border between the two suburbs, attacking those who get too close, they are also known to make forays into Frozen Skull – scavenging the abandoned buildings or conducting pre-emptive strikes on possible interlopers.
- The hawks are man-sized eagles, standing upright on huge, gnarled talons. Wings terminate in hand-like claws clutching sharp bronze spears. Heads encased in triangular, golden helmets - open visored, beady evil black eyes sneering out.
- The Wyrdwood Hawks are slavishly devoted to their client’s protection. The wizards of the Wyrdwood pay a heavy fee each month for the privacy and protection granted by the eaglemen. The carrion provided by defeated intruders is a delicious fringe benefit.
- Barrage Kaw, the obese, warped, leader of the hawks, rarely leaves his treehouse compound. His high wooden fortress, perched deep in the wyrdwood, is stuffed full of magical devices pilfered from a lifetime of working nearby to wizards. Barrage’s feathers have largely malted, revealing shimmering dark prismatic flesh, bubbled with gem like boils. His cracked, stained beak, smokes with green gas. He is ever eager to experiment with magical devices he barely understands, his rotted form a consequence of this. He has his eaglemen spy closely on his clients for new, dangerous treasures.
- A motley collection of communities huddled deep within the abandoned buildings of Frozen Skull. They crowd around discarded Eko Helek devices, villages existing in the dying heat of lost magic. They scavenge for items not deemed worth of collection by The Singed Knaves, sometimes finding treasures overlooked.
- Ice picks and ice hooks abound, for both climbing and excavating. Society members have no uniform, donning any furs, rags and skins they can claim to keep the cold at bay. A common feature amongst scavengers is blackened extremities. Noses, fingers and toes dead and dying from over exposure to the elements.
- The Scavenging Society is particular rough in its methods, hacking and burning all salvage not worth keeping. The trail of destruction they leave makes the group relatively easy to find. Of late the scavengers have been largely absent in the streets, focusing on digging deeper and deeper beneath the suburb. Rumours tell of the group attempting to dredge something up from the frozen sewers, a task they are willing to employ outsiders to help with.
- All scavenging villages are loosely confederated into one alliance. The overseer of this union is Grun the Wendingo, a large, white haired beast of a man. An accident with a malfunctioning Eko Helek flame devices has implanted living rods of flame within his flesh. These slowly travel through his body, searing, burning and driving him mad.
