Story
They had been walking for twelve days.
The wreck of the Southwatcher was far behind them now, broken on the jagged ice like a snapped spine. They pulled what they could salvage on the sled: rations, a tent, a few tools, and the black iron case Captain Merrow had chained shut before they left the harbor. No one dared open it. No one wanted to.
The cold was inside their blood now. It crept past the layers of fur and wool, sank into their marrow, and hollowed them out like old trees. Their breath came slow and ragged, frosting their beards and lashes. The sun, when it rose, was white and merciless. The night brought no darkness, only the green ribbons of the aurora, curling like smoke over the horizon.
And the wind.
The wind never stopped. It screamed and whispered, it laughed and howled, it spoke.
The others didn't hear it. Or if they did, they lied.
It began on the fourth night. Just a word, maybe two, coiled into the gusts that scraped across the ice. Something about warmth. About hunger.
By the seventh day, it spoke more clearly. It had learned his name. It curled around his ears like breath on skin, close and warm.
They will not live. You know it. You feel it. They are slow. They are tired. You are strong.
Jarn, the quartermaster, had slowed to a limp. His boot was full of blood. The girl, Nella, slept with her knife gripped so tight her fingers were going black. And Bren, old Bren, he cried in his sleep now, softly, like a child who has forgotten his own name.
You could survive. If you stop pretending. If you stop dragging the dead weight.
The whisper came when the wind rose. It never spoke when the others were near, only when he walked behind the sled, holding the rope, feeling the strain in his back, the gnawing in his belly. He could almost hear the crackling of a fire, taste the meat on his tongue.
Last night, when Nella turned away to piss behind the ice ridge, he caught himself watching her with a knife in his hand.
He had not remembered drawing it.
Tonight the wind is louder. It circles the tent, rustling the canvas, sliding under the seams. It speaks of marrow, of fat, of smoke. It tells him that only one can leave the ice, and the others know it. That they are waiting for him to act. That they will eat him if he does not eat them first.
He lies awake, eyes wide, listening to the wind speak truths he already knows.
Out here, in on the ice, there is no right or wrong. Only the cold. Only the hunger. Only the survival offered by the whisper in the wind.

Description

Borealia is a harsh and forbidding land, locked in ice and silence for most of the year. During winter, the only light is the common auroras, during summer, the sun and ice will relentlessly burn the eyes. It is a landscape of jagged stone, black cliffs, and endless snowfields. Wind shrieks across the plains like a living thing, carrying with it the voices of lost souls and the howls of beasts that should not exist. No one lives here. Few charts exist, and those which do aren't accurate and contains many white spots.

The continent is technically made up of several large land masses, shattered, hidden under ice, but the frozen seas between them are almost always locked together by thick, shifting pack ice. These ice bridges stretch from horizon to horizon, creaking and groaning with every shift in the wind. Every third year, on average, the summer manage to break the pack ice into huge, drifting islands and opening narrow, treacherous channels. These windows of open water last only a few weeks before the cold reclaims the sea.

The Spirits

Legends speak of spirits that roam the white wastelands. Some are whispered to be guardians of ancient truths, while others are hunters of the living, drawn to warmth and sanity alike. There are tales of the snow beasts, snatching travelers away in the night. Ice spirits whisper to wanderers, nibbling away their sanity. Forgotten gods are said to sleep beneath the mountains, stirring only when disturbed by foolish mortals. Then again, others claim that even gods fear this land.

Few sane people go to Borealia, and those who do seldom return sane, if at all. Those who do often speak in riddles, their minds shattered by what they witnessed. Some return with pale skin and frost-bitten eyes, claiming to have spoken with the dead.

Valthurak and the Black Run

The one place where the snow does not rule is a narrow region in the center of the continent, where Valthurak, a volcano, still burns beneath the ice. Its molten heart creates a muddy flow that runs for miles across the snowfields, keeping a narrow path of land free from the eternal freeze. This place is known as the Black Run, and though the heat wards off the frost, the air is toxic, heavy with sulfur and ash. Strange plants grow there, twisted things that seem half-alive and half-stone. It is the only place where the earth is bare, but the price of warmth is the risk of corruption.

Some claim the volcano shelters something older than the world itself. A gate, a prison, or a womb, no one agrees. But there are stories, always stories, of a city of obsidian hidden beneath the mountain, built by the first fire and sealed in silence.

Borealia is not merely a place. It is a test, a whisper from the old world, and a graveyard of forgotten dreams.

Possible Secrets

The Ice is Watching

Some believe the ice itself is alive, not just inhabited by spirits, but sentient in its own right. It remembers those who walk upon it, marks them, and calls them back, even decades later.

Borealia is a Prison

The continent was not made by nature, but by gods who chained something world-ending beneath the glaciers. The pack ice, the storms, the madness, all part of the warding. Melting the ice would break the seal.

The Snow Beasts are People

Every traveler who goes mad and dies in Borealia becomes a snow beast, not reincarnated, but twisted, their souls shredded by the whispers, their bodies reshaped by the cold. You can still see the eyes if you look.

The Spirits Lie

The whispering spirits that haunt the ice aren't remnants of the dead, they are something else, mimicking voices to lure the living into ruin. They feed not on flesh, but on hope and memory.

Valthurak is Not a Volcano

The heat that flows from the Black Run is not geological. Valthurak is a wound in the world, where something burns in a deeper layer of reality. What bleeds from it is not magma.

The Auroras Are Signals

The constant lights in the sky are not natural. They form patterns, pulses, code, as if a distant intelligence is trying to communicate. Or warn. Some believe it is a call to return home.

There Are No Native Inhabitants

Despite its vastness, no one has ever found a living civilization in Borealia. Some say that's because the original people were wiped out, others believe they never left and are watching, unseen.

Every Third Year, the World Opens

When the pack ice breaks, not only do channels open - but so do things long sealed beneath. Something always escapes. Some believe the cycle is part of an ancient countdown.

Adventure Hooks

The Wreck of the Ivory Gale

A merchant vessel crashed into the ice two winters ago during the brief thaw. The ship was carrying rare ores and precious goods. Now the ice is shifting again, and scavenger crews are racing to find it, but they're not the only ones out there.

The Last Trail of Jarkka Ironhide

Jarkka, a legendary explorer, disappeared with her sled team while attempting to cross the Black Run. Her journal has surfaced in a coastal town, ending mid-sentence. The pages hold coordinates and strange symbols. Someone wants it badly enough to kill.

The Stone That Burns

A hunter drags into camp a fist-sized stone that gives off heat, real heat, enough to melt snow in a ten-foot radius. He says he found it embedded in the skull of a frozen beast. Now he's dead, and others want that stone.

The Skyfall

Something fell from the sky last night, a streak of fire that landed in the far white. Locals say it's a sign of change. Several groups are racing to reach it. So are things that live in the deep ice.

The Tower of Iceglass

Rising suddenly from a glacier, a perfectly smooth tower made of translucent blue ice has appeared. It's hollow inside, with stairs spiraling down. It wasn't there last month.

Trapped Below

A fellow expedition team has fallen into a collapsed cave under the ice. They sent out a flare before vanishing from magical contact. A rescue mission is organized, but the path is unstable and time is short. You're their only chance.

Trapped in the Ice

You tried to take a shortcut, and your ship is trapped in the ice. There is no knowing how long it will take before the ice release the ship, or if it will simply crush the ship.

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