The Debt of Nine Winters 5E

The Debt of Nine Winters

A 5e one-shot manhunt in the high passes, for 3–5 characters of 3rd–4th level

The Job

You've been hired to find a man in the mountains. He is the best tracker alive. He knows the passes better than anyone breathing. He has killed two of the riders sent to bring him home, and he knows you're coming.

His name is Eirik the Red-Handed. Find him. Kill him. Bring back proof.

That's the job. It's a good job, honest silver, a masterwork knife, and the gratitude of the woman who runs the Free-Companies. Take it.

Then start climbing, and start looking at what's left on the road behind you.

The town that burned three times

Skarnfell squats where the Hravnmark road gives up being a road and becomes a climb. It is a toll station, a trade town, and the most burned place on the Koldravik Spine. The Austvellir free-companies have put it to the torch three times in living memory, and three times it has been rebuilt, a little uglier, a little stronger, and a little less inclined to trust anyone.

It is officially neutral. It collects tolls from everyone. A dozen Austvellir riders are quartered outside its walls under a truce that nobody inside the walls believes in.

This is where the adventure begins: at the blackened stumps of the old gate, outside the town's law, in the rain, with a woman who taps a silver ring against a hidden knife when she's calculating odds.

Gudrun the Silver-Tongued

She holds no title, no land, and no army. She has the free-companies, her riders, and a reputation for finishing what she starts. She has survived three assassination attempts and two formal duels, and she considers both facts relevant to every conversation.

• She will tell your players the truth about every fact.
• She will lie to them about every reason.

The whole adventure is built on that distinction, and on whether your table notices in time.

The Spine

Two days of climbing to reach the ice caves. A day of switchbacks through pine and scree; a day above the treeline on snowfield and cornice, where the cold does the work that monsters do in other adventures.

Along the way, three locations:

The Burned Train. Three wagons drawn up nose-to-tail below a cliff. The middle one burned to the axles. The other two untouched. Two dead men in the ditch, and a survivor hiding in the scrub who saw something she can't make sense of.

The Deadfall Stair. A gully of broken ledges under a held breath of snow. A tripwire. A longer, safer way up — if the party reads the mountain. And somewhere on the ridge above, a man with a longbow, counting.

The Whiteout Camp. A storm at dusk. A second fire appearing thirty feet away in the white. A voice with a Skarnfell accent calling across the snow: "Fire's here. Come or don't. Doesn't matter to us."

The Blue Throat

A glacial tunnel opening into a chamber the size of a longhouse, lit blue through thirty feet of ice. A barricade. A deadfall on a rope. A channel of freezing meltwater down the middle of the floor. A crawlway out the back that nobody's supposed to know about.

Eirik is here, with six people who chose to follow him up a mountain.

There are three ways into the Throat. Which one your players get depends on everything they did, and everything they noticed, on the way up.

What comes down the mountain

Someone is waiting below the snowline. Someone always is.

The adventure has four endings. None of them are clean. In one of them, the party is paid in full, respected, and complicit. In another, a toll-gate closes, and a truce dies before dark. In a third, a very good liar is asked to look at a severed head and say whether the hands are the right hands.

Which one your table gets is not a branch on a flowchart. It's the sum of what they carried down.

Inside the book

• The full adventure (PDF).Four acts, 4–5 hours at the table, with cut-points for 2-3 hours.
• Printer-Friendly version (PDF). The full adventure PDF in black and white (no images inside).
• Four clues. With the DCs that surface them.
• Four endings. Written with what each one costs.
• Three sequel ideas. For GMs that want to see what Gudrun does next.
• All Maps. Skarnfell, The Burned Train, Whiteout Camp, The Blue Throat, etc.
• All illustrations: Cover, NPCs, Monsters, Events, and more.

The Soundtrack

1. Main Theme (Session open)
2. Skarnfell (Act I: town)
3. The Silver-Tongued Gudrun's scenes (Both acts)
4. The Hravnmark Road (Act II: travel, day one)
5. The Burned Train (Act II: Scene 1)
6. Skarnfell Song (Act II: Scene 3 parley)
7. Above the Treeline (Act II: day two and the storm)
8. The Old Vigil (Act III: approach)
9. The Blue Throat (Act III: entering the cave / the parley)
10. Vanish in the White (Act III: combat)
11. The Reckoning (Act IV: the descent and Gudrun)
12. Nine Winters (Epilogue)

Rewards

Adventure Tier      

• The Debt of Nine Winters 5E (PDF)
• Printer-friendly Version (PDF)
• Maps
• Illustrations
• Monster Stat Blocks

All Adventures Tier (30x)    

The All Adventures Tier is perfect for GMs who want a solid library of 5E adventures to draw from, ensuring you will never run out of content for your PCs.

• The Debt of Nine Winters 5E (PDF)
• The Miller's Daughter 5E (PDF)
• The Temple of Skoll 5E (PDF)
• The Halls of Vraxith 5E (PDF)
• Orcs of the Southern Kingdom 5E (PDF)
• The King's Mercy 5E (PDF)
• Filth Below Gallows-Ford 5E (PDF)
• Under the Black Flag 5E (PDF)
• The Missing Grain Shipment 5E (PDF)
• The Fallen Cleric 5E (PDF)
• The Plague of the Queen 5E (PDF)
• Eyes of Basirah 5E (PDF)
• Maw of the Cube 5E (PDF)
• The Plane Walker 5E (PDF)  
• The Lighthouse Shadows 5E (PDF)     
• Eldfjall's Fury 5E (PDF)
• The Wreck of the Shadow Tide 5E (PDF)
• Chains of Fiend 5E (PDF)       
•  Wings of Dread 5E (PDF)        
• The Howling Gorge 5E (PDF)        
• The Unquiet Stone 5E (PDF)        
• The Tower of Fools 5E (PDF)        
• Plague of Kettlebrook 5E (PDF)         
• The Labyrinth of Fate 5E (PDF)        
• The Icebound Keep 5E (PDF)        
• The Haunting of Frostbite Hollow 5E (PDF)        
• Vor & Pal: Knights of Chaos 5E (PDF)        
• The Gem of Life 5E (PDF)        
• Terror in Ravenswood 5E - Part 1&2 (PDF)     
• All Printer-friendly Versions (PDF)        
• All Side Quests        
• All Maps        
• All Illustrations       
• All Monster Stat Blocks

Add-ons

Looking to expand your game library? 

Fulfillment

• Timeline: Backers receive download links two weeks after the campaign ends 
• Format: Digital download (ZIP file) with all PDFs, maps, and assets 
• Language: English only

About Me

Hi, I'm Eric Bleney. I've been running D&D, Warhammer, and various TTRPGs since the 90s. I launched the card game Dark Mages in 2015 and have been creating 5E adventures that respect your prep time ever since. The Debt of Nine Winters is built for GMs who want clear structure, real stakes, and adventures that respond to player choices rather than railroad them through a predetermined story.