Ice World Creation

Are you familiar with Würm? It's THE Ice Age/Caveman Tribal RPG.

No reason not to diversify.

OP, I wanna hear more about this setting.

Don't forget rapey sealfolk raiders.

You need to read “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing

You might also add terrain like the Antarctic dry valleys. They’re inland and get very very little snow. Seals occasionally get lost, crawl inland into these valleys, die of thirst/starvation and become mummified because it’s so dry. There are small ponds that are hyper saline because high evaporation concentrates salt. I’ve heard from people who have been there that your boots float as in the Dead Sea because the brine is so dense.

Even in a “snowball earth” scenario you’ll have wind scoured areas, areas of high solar radiation + dryness causing sublimination and areas of volcanic activity. Add tidal/gravitational heating from other celestial bodies and kinetic heating caused by currents and you’re probably not going to have 100% ice year round.

Thanks for all the advice!

Will look at those.

>You might also add terrain like the Antarctic dry valleys. They’re inland and get very very little snow. Seals occasionally get lost, crawl inland into these valleys, die of thirst/starvation and become mummified because it’s so dry. There are small ponds that are hyper saline because high evaporation concentrates salt. I’ve heard from people who have been there that your boots float as in the Dead Sea because the brine is so dense.

Fuck. Yes.
This would be great for a wasteland within the wasteland. Maybe the site of an old city, turned into a crater, and full of old tech stuff and undead salt-mummies. Prospecters come to get rich from old world relics, only to die and turn into more salt-mummies.

I imagine the Ice World as being in a really severe ice age, with most of the southern and northern hemispheres covered in ice and snow. The setting will be localized around Scandinavia and the frozen North Atlantic, where the herds of great whale-mammoths live (not sold on whammoths, though it is a funny word). The most southern part of the frozen waste does unfreeze in the warmest periods, and scavengers form the crevasse-cities gather to pick up great hoards of driftwood, and the occasional washed-up old world item.

Further south, there are areas of tundra and even fertile land where this wood comes from, but these places are basically legend to the setting's inhabitants. Tribes of 'barbarians' on wholly rhinos live here, sometimes veering north to compete for hunting the ice whale creatures.

Great ideas with the bird-creature examples , and , I can really use lots of real or imagined animals to inhabit the world!

Something I wrote up today:
>Under the ice, even stranger creatures are found. Here live the Sunless Ones, who changed their shapes to fit the cold waters of the under-ice. Their long work is to reshape the world into their own image. Seeing themselves as the true descendants of the Ur-men, the Sunless Ones labor to take the surface form the pitiful remains of the unaltered that eek out a living there. Their efforts are hindered by their aversion to the sun and the preferences for living under the water. But the Sunless Ones are nothing if not determined, and continue working through agents and mystical arts to bring about the fall of all who live above the ice.
>The Sunless Ones inhabit a strict caste society, with the Morlocks or slaves at the bottom, and the grandfathers or krakens at the top. In between serve the Illithids, the priest-administrators of the Sunless civilization, who oversee the mindless Morlocks and carry out the plots of their ocean-bound grandfathers.
The Sunless hunt endlessly for old artefacts from the world before, viewing them as their inheritance by right. To posses a working piece of world before technology is to invite the attention of the Sunless Ones, who will inevitably come looking for what they consider their property.

Mindflayers taking orders from krakens, using their Morlock underlings and mind control to infiltrate the world above the ice for their own needs.

One module you might want to check out (and strip off the alien-Appendix N stuff) is Frozen in Time for DCC. It's more of a 'caveman' or nomadic tribe sort of feel, it could easily be a base to what you want to do with it.

I'm sold. Count me in. Loving the skate ships and big animals.

So what are you looking for right now? More creatures?
Google "goblin punch Mismera Monsters" for a few.

Besides that I like ice necromancy. You can create an amry of the dead and store it not decomposing under snow untill needed.

If we are serious in building a setting I would ask: where does the food comes from?
In real north regions most of food comes from the ocean but this is not the case here. The main food supply for humans are big wooly animals. Their meat is eaten and their fat is burned to allow industrial machinery to keep working. But what does mammoths eat?
Some lichen that grows on ice? directly solar radiation?
I understand that humans do not farm them as it would take too much time, instead they are nomads. When finished eating mammoth from one zone they pass to the next, allowing the depleted zone to repopulate.
The exception are mining cities.

Actually underground makes a lot of sense. It is hotter down below. Cities of a previous civilization may survive, covered in ice but still accessible by underground tunnels. Ice is transparent so glancing from one building you can see the whole landscape.

I like the mindflyers idea but them being controlled by giant krakens is pretty meh. It the same as the original idea only you add tentacles to the elder bain and diminuish it coolness. We can do better.

Can I ask we do something cool with foxes in this setting?
Cool things have been done with wolves and cats, but not with foxes (excluding the 9 tails).

Please they deserve more love, let them be a part of the setting.

The freezing process was gradual. As the ice levels rose people slowly expanded on top of their houses.
More and more. It is possible to find really tall towers submerged in the ice.

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Lack of food will impede amazing things like bear cavalry, or stuff that requires big carnivorous animals...
Only big herbivores.

As a Russian I want to shill a russian aesthethic for this setting.

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The human in this setting are nomads. Sometime they build nomad cities while they hunt around it. But after a few month they have to leave, abandoning the city to the wolves.

Or just whole communities are werewolves and once a month turn into giant wolves and hunt around.

Actually a society of werewolves sounds pretty neat. They know what they are, their neighborhoods know what they are. Every one in cites near know that on the full moon you don't go making business into Volchij town. The city guards can't protect the city during full moon, but who would be stupid enough to assault a city full of weres?

OP I'm throwing tons of ideas. I can expand on many of them, but you need to me to tell wha tyou like and what not.
Don't hold your punches. I will not be offended. Just tell this part of the setting this is NOT part of the setting. This is the only way to make something coherent from a thread.

And I willl stop with Ruskie shilling.

last pic.
I just really liked the idea of a werewolf town everyone knows about.
It subverts the werewolves trope of the wolf hiding among the sheep.

Ice elves from Asoiaf are also pretty neat.
Horrible, clever creatures made of ice. Beautiful but deadly.
Not really low magic as you want it.

looking at this shit, you are right to do so

wrong pic.

Speaking of inuit aesthethics GoT did pretty well.

yes you did it by mistake.

riding elks and mooses is much better.
WHFB agrees. A magical elk is more OP then an Unicorn according to woodelves.

not him, but dumping some more of this artist's werewolf art

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boars still rule.

Sorry, I used this thread as an excuse to dump anything ice related I had in my folder.
Tell me to stop if you want me to stop.

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never apologize for dumping iceworld art. this shit rules.

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last one for me

speaking of GoT i remembered old Preston Jacobs videos.

He is a guy that searched for conspiracy theories inside GoT.
And his conclusion was... It was aliens.
That long winter was a nuclear winter, GoT is a post apocalyptic sci fi and Others, CHildren of the Forest etc. are a genetically engegnnered race of humans.

OP do we want a post apocalyptic setting or not. Your call.

The problem is that once a thread becomes an image dump no discussion is possible.

People already keep reindeer herds. Using them as mounts would make a lot of sense.

this are the best ones imho. The red riding hood gypsy and zombie soldiers.

Ice can be used to refract and concentrate sunlight. This means dungeon under the mountain can be well illuminated. Someone could try to focus the sunlight this way for some nefarious purposes...
Maybe not sunlight, but moonlight and then send it to a werewolf and see him go to the second stage mutation!

skiting troops!

Fighting on ice is not an easy feat. Once Russia beat a more powerful force of Teutonic knights simply by engaging them on an ice lake.

Wolfs are also a must.
So far we have
Reindeer riders
Mammoth pulling heavy weights
Skiting troops
Wolf sledge
And rhino mounted barbarians.
(and still no idea about foxes).

This could turn into a biopunk setting.

OP what do you want.
Critique on your ideas?
More Races?
More creatures?
More society building?

>when a thread you were interested in but expected to die got a ton of replies overnight

Fuckin' nice.

Personally I would try and avoid using stock DnD or related monsters. It's a pretty unique setting idea and emphasizing that makes it seem more mysterious.

I do like the idea of some intelligent under-ice kraken monsters but it might be better to go more "giant sapient squid" than "humanoid with octopus head" like the illithids.

>If we are serious in building a setting I would ask: where does the food comes from?
>In real north regions most of food comes from the ocean but this is not the case here. The main food supply for humans are big wooly animals. Their meat is eaten and their fat is burned to allow industrial machinery to keep working. But what does mammoths eat?

To build on , if you go with "giant buffalo-mammoths" that humans hunt nomadically like the Native Americans you run into this problem.

However, if they're the other option, giant whale-equivalent creatures that are amphibious and travel over ice like a penguin or seal, then it can work a lot better, with an environment sustained by under-ice phytoplankton instead of plants. After all, whales, penguins and seals all need to poke their heads up to breath, so they can't migrate long distances under thick ice and would have to do so overland.

Beyond having an ecosystem that makes some sense, this would also let the humans have permanent settlements and take their ice-ships out to the "hunting grounds", the animals' regular migration routes. It also lets you have a greater variety of species, ranging from big penguins or auks like to giant whale-sized creatures. And any environment with giant penguins or seals could also support some nasty polar bear-like land predators.

yeah the migrating animals from one pond of water to the next is nice.

and I agree in avoiding DnD established societies.

How would be on top of the world? In Dak sun there were dragon wizards that suppressed all the other magic.
If we are doing 1800 we can have pirate captains/victorian vampires and remnants of deep one alive despite their home ocean froze over (it just a temporary setback for them, in 10 000 they will un freeze and return to doing what they were doing.)

OP here. Did NOT expect this idea to get much interest. I am typing down ideas and formulating new ones based on the thread.

My idea behind the setting's background is a Former World, where technology flourished. When the ice came though, the people of the Former World were powerless to stop it. They did what they could, which was survive. They engineered new animals, the whale-mammoths, to provide them with food and materials in the new world, and laying the basics for crevasse-city society. The great iceships were invented as a means of transportation that did not need fuel or complex machinery.

Of course, not all people could agree on how to survive. A group of dissenters dug deep into the earth, trying to keep warm by going closer to the planet’s core. This became their downfall. The machines needed to sustain life underground were complex, and began to break down. In desperation, the people began experimenting with altering some of their people to better survive their new environment. The altered people were treated with disgust by their creators, and used as slaves. But they rose up and overthrew the society of the underground. Experimenting further, they made their bodies into even more grotesque shapes, far from human. Now they see their own forms as perfection, and everything else as corruption of the true path of evolution.

The idea behind the Sunless Ones was that they are in different shapes depending on their role. The grandfathers are kraken, giant sapient squids with telekinetic powers. Their immediate underlings are the human-squid hybrids (mind flayers) and their underlings in turn are Morlocks, misshapen fish-man mutants. Then you have crab-people as enforcers/elite soldiers, giant eels as watchdog-warbeasts and various other hybrids to fill particular roles.
See the krakens as the dragons of the setting. They hoard relics of the Former World, plot endlessly and see themselves as far superior of the above-ice peoples.

cont.

The whale-mammoths live by eating plankton under water, as inferred, and migrate with the currents and temperatures. When they get to the northern ocean, the ice becomes so thick they can't break through for air, and have to walk over it. They were designed that way, working as a self-sustaining source of food and materials for the crevasse-society. However, their inventors could not foresee they would grow as strong and aggressive as they did. Today, they have become fierce beasts, and require great skill to hunt while still being dangerous even to iceship crews.

Other groups in the Former World created other beasts for their particular survival style. The southern 'barbarians' (really they are just a different culture, springing from the same Former World group) created wholly rhinos to serve as biological 'engines' that could survive on a diet of tundra plants . Now their people center their whole lives around the rhinos, riding them around as nomads and surviving where they can. As the southern tribes grow in number, they slowly push north and come into contact with the crevasse-cities.

Other animals could include great flocks of flightless birds, like penguins. Only these birds are more like . Maybe intended as a food source, they now have big flocks running around. They make or find holes in the thinner ice and hunt for fish under water.

I also like the ideas of werewolves. They are humans who modified to survive the Ice, but became bestial. They are sapient, and live in small family groups, hunting animals and unaltered humans. Animals because they need food, humans for more complicated reasons. They both hate, admire and fear the unaltered for adapting to their environment so relatively well, and live in constant fear of being hunted by them. At the same time they want to learn their secrets, and hunt them to learn what they can before killing and eating them, mystically 'gaining their strength'.

Krakens as dragons sounds good. But who do they move around? Do they live in the not totaly frozen oceans? Or do they move through ice tunnels (I believe a squid can squeeze through pretty small hole if he wants to.)

I would still avoid mind flayers as overdone. And go for crab people. As far as I know no one ever did a good grab people race worth a thing.

The krakens are underwater. Hence their need for underlings.

They can operate through holes in the ice if they can break through, but their mobility is naturally limited. When a kraken urgently needs to do something above water, it might get up by way of being carried by hundreds of slaves, while being constantly drenched with seawater and its vital functions sustained by ancient technology modified for the purpose. It is then submerged into a prepared chamber filled with seawater, which must be continually changed and outfitted with certain arcane breeds of seaweed to get the right environment.

This is obviously an uncomfortable, lengthy process, and something the krakens avoid if they can.

Do we still have human mining towns?
Are they excavating minerals or old technology?

I like kraken overlords for all the Cthulhu vibes they create.

I still ask for ideas about foxes.

This is fun because I'm approaching this worldbuilding from a perspective of an scientist that wants to save the word from ice age and see how horribly wrong it can get.

>Are they excavating minerals or old technology?
Both. Old materials are mined and remade into new. Sometimes they find tech that still works, and call in a scholar to handle it. If no scholar is present, or if the miners are greedy, they simply sell it or try and use it to their own advantage. Sometimes this goes horribly wrong, especially if the tech is a weapon or similar.

>This is fun because I'm approaching this worldbuilding from a perspective of an scientist that wants to save the word from ice age and see how horribly wrong it can get.

Cool. What kind of scientist?

>humans for more complicated reasons
they need to diversify their genepool. So they rape humans.
They sound like an experiment that nailed the survival traits but fucked up social dynamics. Plausible, hence good.

I do physics, but this is beside the point.
I would make something that in extremely efficient in producing light. Burning stuff requires too much energy.
So fungi or butterflies or flowers that glow. How

Also some kind of animal that provides skins with good themric isolation.

Now ho to make this concepts go wrong...

To expand, here's how I would build this kind of ecosystem in a realistic way, before fantasy elements (and thus a little differently than OP's):

Base layer is formed by phytoplankton. Photosynthesis is possible but only through relatively thin ice, which presents a natural dilemma for humans: the most productive areas are the ones with the thinnest ice, but thin ice naturally prevents the use of ice-ships, which protect humans from large predators.

Phytoplankton is eaten by krill, which forms the backbone of the ecosystem. These are fed on by fish and large manta-like filter-feeding squid.

Fish in turn support typical penguins and seals, as well mammoth auks (), great flightless birds with a penguin-like lifestyle that exist in large numbers.
These are the primary food source for tribal humans, who hunt them from their mounts, dog sleds or from small boats where the ice allows. However this is a highly dangerous lifestyle because these species are also the primary prey of large predators like the akhlut, or seawolf (either the more realistic leopard seal-like or the more traditional "orca with legs"), huge predators extremely dangerous on land and in water, as well as bear-sized penguins with huge chopping beaks.

For inland humans the primary food source are the ice-whales, huge derivatives of crabeater seals. They lack baleen but use their huge jaws and intricate interlocking teeth to filter-feed, as well as eating larger prey. Their biannual migration makes them vulnerable to human hunting, however they are also hunted by the dreaded amaroks, large polar bear-like land predators that pose a substantial threat to ice-ship crews.

The open oceans do still have true baleen whales, which are hunted by the highly revered tizheruk, or leviathan, massive toothed whales. The highly territorial leviathans and elusive krakens destroy waterborne ships and prevent human expansion onto the water even where the ice would allow it.

As far as humans:

Ice-boats and ice-ships range widely in size. The smallest are one or two-person kayak-sized examples used for personal transport and for scouting, including locating ice-whales during the hunt. Bigger ice-boats are catamarans with a 5-10 man crew, used to transport small parties on most expeditions other than ice-whale hunting.

True ice-ships are vitally important for their role in whaling. They have crews between twenty and forty and a great deal of carrying capacity to transport their cargo. During the months between the ice-whale migrations they can be used for other tasks that require large crews or better carrying capacity than an ice-boat can provide. Oftentimes a small boat crew will discover valuable salvage too big for them to carry and race back to their home city so that an ice-ship can be dispatched to retrieve it.

(Depending on tech-level, these can be true sailing ships or also have engine-driven propellers to supplement, like an aerosani.)

Cities are independent and heavily fortified, owing to the many dangers. Other than the cold, travelers outside the walls have to contend with true wolves, keeluts (a doglike, tiger-sized predator) as well as aforementioned amarok. Amaroks are usually solitary, but they sometimes form groups during the months between migrations and this can be a big threat to a city, let alone a small group who comes across them.

Inter-city warfare is a very rare occurrence but small skirmishes and raids between human factions are common. As well as pirates, legitimate whalers from different cities who find themselves hunting in the same location may fight one another if other options are not available.

While it doesn't perfectly fit in with the way you've presented your world, I cannot stress enough how much I recommend Stand Still, Stay Silent.
It's a webcomic set in a post-apocalyptic Scandinavia where humanity can only live in places isolated or cold enough to escape from the world-ending virus. At some point magic also started reappearing in these places, based off of traditional Scandinavian practices.
It's a really good read, and you might be able to find a lot of inspiration in it.

I was shooting for lower-fantasy higher-realism, but here's some fantasy plugins:

Krakens are rare, immense, highly intelligent, and have a fierce hatred of humans. If they were able to bring themselves on land, they would have destroyed humanity long ago. Incapable of attacking their foe on land, krakens instead send their servants, the atshen, to attack them. A large, vaguely-humanoid crustacean race, these creatures form raiding bands that attack human settlements. Inland cities rely on their walls to protect them while the outer tribes must rely on spirit magic in their defense.

Other races include the selkies, a seal/mermaid-like semi aquatic people who maintain fair relations with the outer tribes; the jotnar, tribal giants twelve feet in height who use massive bows in combat; and the adlet, dog- or fox-like people, as well as the qiqirn or "werewolves" which are larger, wolflike and more aggressive, well known for attacking human travelers or even cities when in large groups.

I love the Jotnar idea, though I'm biased as hell towards Giant Archers.

Giant archers just make the most sense. Sure, a big club is cool and all, but if you're fighting humans why not just build a bow stronger than any human could ever draw and completely outrange them with no risk to yourself?

not OP. I have seen this several times here. Can you summarize neat idea from there to apply to current thread?

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Pic related can explain it far better than I can, but essentially the way that this magic works could provide a good basis for how the Ice World's magic functions. Particularly to make it different than most of the clichéd high fantasy magic systems.
This sort of personal and ritualistic nature lends it just a little bit more realism to the setting than your typical d&d style magic.

To expand a little bit more on the basics, here's what the author has written about the two practices:

>Finnish mages get their powers from withing themselves and are determined by genetic lineage. Got lots of powerful Finnish mage relatives? Well you’ll be more likely to find some mageness coming out of yourself. Birth place in this case wouldn’t matter, but the further away from their native lands a Finnish mage goes the harder it’ll be to cast spells that require help directly from the gods, since they’ll be less likely to hear you. Someone born in Finland but with Icelandic would not become a Finnish mage, but if they had one Finnish parent with notable mage lineage they’ll have a chance on getting that passed on.

>Icelandic/Norse mages are chosen and given power by the gods themselves, so the distribution of Norse magic is more spread out across families, but also more limited overall. Non-believers are lost cases in the eyes of the Norse gods, which is why there really aren’t many mages hailing from Sweden and Denmark. They will also reject anyone who they deem to be claimed by other gods, much like a mommy bird might reject a chick that has even the slightest scent of a human on it. So someone with Finnish heritage who was born and raised in Iceland.would still not have a chance at becoming an Icelandic mage if there’s a detectable connection to the Finnish pantheon hidden inside them.

Also, cats are heavily featured in the world, as they are essentially the wonder-pets of the setting.

As far as Krakens go, they should be big as fuck. Like, the "young" ones are small whale sized pull-your-ship-under types while the eldest Krakens live deep down and are super sluggish and are just unimaginably huge. They're still very much animals but basically elder gods from a human perspective. That way humans have a major incentive to stay in their icy environments and avoid traveling on the water.

This thread is sick and I want more.

Pardon that it's Skyrim, the rest is neat

Fun fact: Dark Sun was originally supposed to be a 'ice world,' but they realized that a desert world would give them more options for fanservice.

I had no idea I need this so much. Also is there a certain something I should google for all that great hyborian Russian art? I love that type of thing.

My one thing to add would be that hallucinogenics (especially mushrooms) should probably be a factor in magic/shaman experiences, because that is very Inuit.

yeah we should probably decide soemthing on magic.
I believe the idea was low magic.
Is this a D&D setting? Do we want our own magic system. Or Magic is just so rare that PCs can use whatever the fuck they want as it will not affect the setting?

that guy in particular is named vsevolod
If you find something similar but not by him please post.

Ships aside, what would be the best way to go for tech level/combat? What fits the aesthetic best? Axes and spears Viking style? Native American bows and tomahawks? Full 1700s with black powder muskets and sabres? Late post apocalyptic with improvised guns and scrap metal machetes?

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OP here. Weapons and tools are split into three categories.

First are the Ice World items. These include everything that can be made from things found above ground. Driftwood and bone can be made into harpoons, composite bows, and even simple crossbows. Clubs of wood and stone or bone are also common weapons, like those made by the Tlingit and other Alaskan natives. Aside from that, you can make a huge variety of tools with a little inginuity. Needles, combs, clothes, shoes. It’s really quite fascinating how people have made every part of everything they find useful.

Next you have the Reforged items. Miners dig on the important sites of the World Before, hauling up metals, stone and stranger materials. These things have lost their original function, but can be remade into new items. Metal it smelted (a very costly process in a world with relatively few fuel sources) and made into harpoon heads, nails and what have you. Cutlasses are common for well to do whalers, being good tools as well as weapons on ship. Metal armor is so expensive as to not even be considered, as per Dark Sun.
Stranger materials might include various sci-fi plastics, relatively light and durable. This is the main components of many iceships, as these need to be both light and sturdy.

Last we have Artefact items. These are actual, functioning items from the World Before, and fetch quite a price. Most are obscure in their function, and remade as per above. But some are immediatly useful. An entire class of scholars have arisen to study these items, and distinguish between the two. Finding out how a solar powered light source works makes it endlessly more useful than it’s value as scrap.

it hasnt been brought up, and yes, the climate of the region was a small bit warmer back then. however there is a number of archaeological findings showing dinosaurs in the arctic. enough fat, feathers, and some natural antifreeze in the blood... your not limited to mammals, just fyi.