OSR Commentary - Beyond The Ice Falls By Joseph D. Salvador From Raven God Games For Swords & Wizardry - Hyperborea rpg Session Report

 "In the village of Askibakken, the winter has been harsh and an unnatural blizzard has gripped the area. The village chieftain has called upon young warriors to search for a missing supply ship, but this endeavor leads the adventurers into a mysterious adventure. Will the party discover what lies Beyond the Ice-Fall?" 

Wayback in 2017 Raven God Games sent me a copy of Beyond The Ice Falls By Joseph D. Salvador for Swords & Wizardry. But tonight I'm not running this deadly little adventure instead I'm playing Scotta Berarus last viking theurorist noble to the tribe of Odin's rabble. Scotta Berarus has fled to his cousin Gunther Blood Bear's tribe after his was wiped out by an orc raid in the lower ice flows of Hyperborea. Gunther has sold our party's services to  the village of Askibakken in exchange for a Winter's store of fish, sea greens, and other food stuffs. With the unnatural Spring weather the village of Askibakken is deep trouble! We came into the village & observed that the village was in poor shape with everything covered in snow. 

Beyond the Ice Falls has quite a bit of talent behind it; "Features cover art and an interior piece by Del Teigeler! Writing, cartography and additional art completed by Joseph Salvador. Included in this 28-page product are a mini-setting, a dungeon crawl, two maps, new monsters, new magic items, new spells, and a viking name list!"We sat with the chief to find out particulars and while the catch was amazing the hunting around the village had suffered as animals were found flash frozen, beheaded, and destroyed in ways that spooked even the hardest of the village of Askibakken's hunters & trackers. 

So I'm a party of a party of hardened Viking mercenaries & warriors having joined up with my cousin's band in a fit a promise of a life of plunder & adventure. So far things had worked out. We were recruited to go on patrol with the village fishermen as monster patrol because of problems with sea serpents & the like. Next we were asked to help as monster patrol with a hunting expediation. Something wasn't right & finally we asked the village headman why didn't the village's warriors help out?! Then it was revealed that they had been found dead flash frozen by some mysterious force?! 

The woodlands & waters around the village of Askibakken are highly unnatural. There's few sounds, the spirits are quiet as in too quiet, and there are highly dangerous monsters in the woods around the village. Darr The Brave our scout & tracker found the tracks of a highly dangerous monster! We got into it hot & heavy with a Hyperborean  owl bear! And it wasn't even our first session! The monster was pretty dangerous & highly violent! He took out two of our hirelings & almost one our fighters but I got off a magic missile spell to distract him while Gunther got Valt out of the monster's reach. We were barely able to get our wounded back to the village. 
And now we've got to track down the owl bear back to it's lair to put the monster down! It's wounded, dangerous, and a terror to any other villages in the area. 
So DM Pual was incharge of tonight's Hyperborea rpg session. He's got a slightly different style to DM Steve's killer DM style of play. Being a forever DM being on the otherside of the screen for once has been both enlightening & very dangerous. We're all 2nd level PC's and there are six of us at the moment.