LONGWINTER: Winterwhite's Price (part 1 of 3) (Patreon)

It's done!

I ... it ended up 52 pages long after layout. I did not expect that. And that's without the faux-travel guide to the barony of Brezim. I'm not sure what to say right now, so I'll let the excerpt (p. 36) from the "true history of Brezim" talk:

"A hundred years ago Verdek and Ivan Greencorner came up the valley with four hundred civilized soldiers. The oldsettlers met their muskets and maces with bows and traps.

That first summer the Greencorners burned oldsettler villages and fields, tore down the henges and crucified the men, bayoneted the babies and kidnapped brides for themselves.

That first winter the oldsettler shamans called and the wolffolk and the skintakers came. Children and grandmothers crawled out of mass graves to drown the soldiers in their own blood. One after another the wood-whispered invader forts cracked and broke.

At last the oldsettlers pushed the Greencorners to the great barrow hill between the Rushka and the Krasna rivers.

...

That third summer Ivan and Mira returned to the valleys with the Brezim Burners. White birch gibbets full of oldsettler savages greeted the first snows that year.

Every year after that the gun and the axe pushed the savages further into barren highlands and dark forests.

The whispered wood pallisades and the warding runes went up. The second baron of Brezim sacrificed her youngest nephew to Winterwhite. The mule-roads were built. The third baron of Brezim sacrificed his twin sons to Winterwhite. The great ancient silver mine was reopened. The fourth baron of Brezim quietly sacrificed her younger sister to Winterwhite. Traders and craftsfolk came. The fifth baron quietly sacrificed his baby niece to Winterwhite and said she had died of measles. Guesthouses and spas opened. The sixth baron, Soren Greencorner II, ascended to the silver-bone throne.

Soren did not sacrifice his daughter to Winterwhite. His vizier, old Negra Falconsbrood begged him to reconsider.

Soren refused and Negra died in an unfortunate motoring accident. Her nephew, Ibrahim Falconsbrood, a well-traveled ethnologist from the Eastern City took her position."

Longwinter was in some ways a surprising beast to write. I worked from notes for one of my favorite campaign sand ... iceboxes. I hope you like it. If you want more content to bolt onto Longwinter, Frostbitten and Mutilated and Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark Night Of This Cold Winter are great options.

Now, enjoy.

-Luka

P.S. Thanks and Promotions

Again, thank you so much for your support. You are truly heroes, making it possible for me to take the time to write and illustrate works like this.

I'm trying to make writing and illustration something I work at full time, patreon is a large part of that and one of the things that really makes a difference is word of mouth. If you enjoyed the first part of Longwinter, tell your friends, put flyers up on your local social media account, and share screenshots and passages from the book. Every little bit really does help.

I feel like I wanted to say something sharper and more succint, but I've been doing layout for a few days straight and my brain is now a potato. A heavy metal potato. A rocktato.

\m/

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Edits:

2018.11.27.21:48: 1.1 of 3: fixed document info. The previous version said the document was "Witchburner," inadvertently letting everyone know how I used the poor man's template.

2018.11.28.07:41: 1.2 of 3: fixed ToC error. Replaced "houselay" with "houseleit" to indicate neuter form. Thanks for the catches, folks!

2018.11.28.10:21: 1.3 of 3: fixed error on inventory sheet. 25 coins per 'soap,' not 250. Thanks for the catch, Max! Seriously, if there's a small and less silly item than 'soap,' but that still starts with an 's,' I may well consider it.

2018.12.24.10:29: 1.3b of 3: made map layer visible. Gods, this was a big muckup! Sorry everyone!