This is a write up of the second session of By Endurance We Conquer, a Carved from Brindlewood scenario written by Harald Eckmüller. The players were Ian (Willem), Gemma (Tove) and George (Isaac). We completed the scenario, though there were thoughts we could have carried on.

We catch up with the rescue party. Willem (boatswain and now in charge) has taken charge; Redwell (first mate) is unconscious and tied up, and De Lanvier (Physician) is badly injured after a gunshot wound. Tookoolito (local guide), Tove (photographer), Issac (musher), Lars (ice master), Norlund (scientist) and Samuels (crew) complete the party

Willem decides that making for the Supply Depot is paramount, even though it is late and with snow and wind visibility is poor. Tookoolito scouts ahead; they see her framed against the whiteness, a dark silhouette. The wind brings snow, scattering across the ground; when it clears, Tookoolito has gone.

Isaac sends Wolfgang forward; he reaches the spot where Tookoolito was standing and barks and scratches at the ice. Isaac hurries forward, looking down; he sees Tookoolito, eyes wide, under the ice, a moment of recognition and resignation before she is swept away by the current. Isaac rushes forward, slamming his axe into the ice, again and again - following Tookoolito. Willem joins him, smashing at the ice with his pole. The ice breaks; they grab Tookoolito, pulling her up through the ice, her face blue, eyes closed.

Willem makes the call to set up camp; Norlund disagrees, saying they should push on; Tookoolito, her type, is of no consequence. This angers many of the crew, who have come to trust and rely on Tookoolito’s knowledge and calmness. Tookoolito breathes, teeth chattering, “I am marked; you should have left me. Isigaruk will claim me.” She opens up her coat; there is a black V-shaped mark across her throat.

Two tents are set up with the dogs and sledges in between. Watches are organised; it is 2 am, they’ll wake at 5 am and make for the Supply Depot.

The First Watch

Lars and Tove take the initial watch, upset by what had happened to Tookoolito. The wind is strong; sounds carry far. Lars hears a moaning cry, but Tove is unconvinced, suggesting it is just the natural elements. They discuss Lars heading off to find whoever is in distress, but eventually Tove’s logic impresses upon Lars the need to stay with the group and be on the lookout for threats.

The Second Watch

Isaac takes Wolfgang round the perimeter of the camp. As they come back towards the light, they see two dogs lying motionless; the other dogs whimper and shy away from them. Wolfgang’s low growl shows there is danger near. Isaac peers at the dogs, then jumps back as they are pulled into a hole in the ice with a splash. Wolfgang looks up at his master, an anxious whine.

Isaac moves forward, then falls back as a twelve-foot-long sea leopard bursts out of the hole and lurches forward on the snow, making its way at speed towards Isaac, teeth barred, the smell of fermented kelp nearly overwhelming Isaac.

Isaac fumbles with his rifle, pulling it off his shoulder, clicking off the safety and pointing it forward; even as he does this, he realises the creature is on top of him. He lines up the barrel with its descending mouth and fires.

There is a roar of both gun and beast, and then Isaac is showered with snow, only the barking of Wolfgang and the whistling of the wind. Isaac turns his head left and right, no sign of the animal. The others come out of the tent, staring at Isaac sprawled on the ground, Wolfgang across his chest, a smoking gun in Isaac’s hand.

The Third Watch

Willem takes the most junior member of the expedition, Samuels, on to the last watch. Samuels is bullish, says he is a dead shot and that he fears nothing. Willem eyes him with a cool look.

All is quiet, even the wind and snow have died down. Suddenly, there is a creaking and then a crack like a gunshot; the ice is breaking and begins to lift up. Samuels falls, crying out in fear. Willem slams his marlinspike into the ice, pulls out a gun and fires into the shape pushing up from below. Again, the smell of the sea, the kelp, rotting. The shape beneath him, a whale or an orca. Willem fires again, reaches out across the ice to Samuels, grabbing his sleeve before he slips into the dark water, the black shape below, a flash of white teeth, then it sinks into the darkness.

The group has rolled like demons, barely a condition and no need to invoke a Burden of the Icebound Dream, i.e. invoke a memory of Strangford to improve a dice result.

Later, the group breaks camp; Tookoolito shows Tove her throat; the mark has gone. She says, “The Isigaruk has claimed someone else.” Tove ponders; perhaps it was the dogs, but Tookoolito thinks Isigaruk would need more than those animals. As they rouse the rest of the tent, they come across Redwell, lying stiff, a look of horror frozen on his face, clearly dead and with a black mark across his throat. As they stare at him, the mark fades, then something miraculous happens: a vision of a network of glowing nerves and firing neurons lifts up from the body of Redwell. Norlund shouts out, “Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!” They watch in wonder as the creature, a phenomenon, steps through the crowded tent and out of the side; motes of light scatter as it does. Norlund starts to babble at once, unable to explain what he’s seen, but also speculating on what could have caused this. He seems the most animated since he joined the expedition.

Supply Depot

The whole expedition is on high alert; nerves are strung out; Lars in particular is upset about the death of Redwell; he insists they cannot leave the body, not whilst some creature hunts at the periphery. So they pack everything, including the body of Redwell and move on to the Supply Depot.

Two hours later, they reach the depot. They immediately spot fresh, bare footprints heading off to the east. Out in front of the depot are a series of odd mechanical and electronic devices. The depot looks well stocked, a welcome relief.

Isaac and Wolfgang follow the footprints; at one point, they change into a large groove, as if something is sliding on its belly, before they are just bare feet again. Isaac turns to signal to the group, then stares up at what they are also seeing. Above, in the sky, the aurora, but the pattern is strange, like slashes from claws, or angular writing; hard to make out the exact words, but Isaac is in no doubt that the message is for them.

Meanwhile, Willem has been sorting through the various pieces of equipment and has found an eyepiece that illuminates lights below them, below the ice, the twinkling lights of a city. Willem draws in a breath, looking around; he puts the eyepiece into his pocket, but cannot stop thinking about the welcoming lights beneath his feet, smiling to himself.

Tove has gone inside the depot and is looking for useful items, or more clues as to the whereabouts of Captain Strangford. She pulls open a drawer, inside an array of brand new children’s shoes. Tove stares. Hears Lars on the other side ask, “Found anything? Tove?!” Tove pushes the drawer closed. She replies shakily, “No. Nothing here. Nothing at all.”

The Answer to the Question

At this stage, the players have eight clues and are now prepared to answer the question, What happened to Captain Strangford? This would be a straight forward roll of two six sided dice, a result of seven or more would confirm their theory was correct. Their theory has to include all eight clues. These clues are added to their roll, if explained, but the difficulty of the question, in this case eight, is then taken off the roll, so eight minus eight plus the result of the dice.

At this juncture, Tove, Isaac and Willem gather in a corner of the depot, trying to piece together what had happened to Strangford. Eventually, they propose the following: no matter how unbelievable it seemed, this must be the truth.

The expedition concluded that Captain Strangford had not simply vanished into the Arctic, nor had he merely perished in the cold. He had become Isigaruk.

The transformation began with Norlund. His obsession with the lost city and its forgotten knowledge set the expedition on a course from which there could be no return. The page recovered from Strangford's journal, written in the language of the city, suggests that he had begun to understand its secrets. The strange eyepiece was more than a navigational aid; it allowed him to find his way back to the city again and again, each journey drawing him further under its influence.

At some point, Strangford realised what was happening to him. In Norlund's photograph, he had carefully scratched away his own face. It was not an attempt to hide his identity, but an acknowledgement that the man in the photograph was no longer the man he believed himself to be. Whatever looked back from the ice was already becoming something else.

The vision of spectral energy experienced by the investigators was no illusion. It was a glimpse of the force that had overtaken Strangford, revealing how his humanity was stripped away. His abandoned coat marked the point at which ordinary human concerns had become irrelevant, a relic discarded by something that no longer needed it.

The claw marks within the northern lights marked the final stage of the transformation. There, in the silent landscape, Strangford ceased to be a man and became the purest expression of the Isigaruk, energy or light, the culmination of Norlund's ambitions. The ritual teeth found nearby were not part of the transformation itself, but an older defence, placed in the hope of driving such creatures away. Whoever left them had recognised the danger long before the expedition arrived and ran for their lives.

The baby shoes provided the cruellest clue of all. They were not evidence of a forgotten family, but another deception. Like so much else surrounding the city, they were a mirage, an impossible memory of the children Strangford never had. Isigaruk did not merely reshape the body; it reached into the mind, constructing a life that had never existed until memory and illusion became indistinguishable.

In the end, the investigators believed the greatest horror was not that Captain Strangford had become Isigaruk, but that he had recognised the transformation as it happened and had been powerless to prevent it.

The players rolled a three, a fail. Such a brilliant series of ideas to then say that was wrong, felt like a downer, we discussed carrying on, but as a group agreed this was the best place to end things… almost. We played out a brief GM reaction and then a series of epilogues.

Screams echoed through the building, and standing at the door was a massive polar bear, its eyes staring straight at Willem. Curiously, Wolfgang just stared at the animal, not moving.

Willem moved forward, talking quietly, “Captain? Captain, are you there?” The creature scooped up Willem and turned and lumbered outside; the rest followed. Willem was on the floor, the creature above him, breathing hard. Then it roared, turned and loped off into the distance.

Willem actually failed his roll and was about to be torn apart before invoking a Burden of the Icebound Dream, recalling how Strangford realised he'd miscalculated the distances he'd sailed, all the charts for discovering the Northwest Passage were wrong. But he could not admit to this. Norlund convinced him not to admit to it, so that they could go back to the ice and the location, the city under the ice that they had discovered, so he could continue his experiments.

This flashback was greatly influenced by their answer to the main question, Norlund becoming the evil or misguided genius at the centre of the story.

Epilogue

Tove stays on after the expedition, going back to Tookoolito’s village and remaining there, the thirst for adventure drained from her, the comfort and wisdom of Tookoolito and her fellow villagers all she needs.

Isaac is seen moving slowly across the ice; years have passed, another dog by his side. He pauses, consults his compass, then sees, in the distance, a light shining up from stairs in the ice; he changes direction and heads towards it.

Willem hides the eyepiece under the jacket; he takes on the role of Captain, leading everyone safely back to The Fang. They wait for the ice to thaw and return home. Three years later, Willem is on another Arctic expedition, another captain. We see Willem leaving the ship, again stuck fast in the ice; he neatly folds his coat, laying it down on the ground. Naked, he walks onward into the snow and wind.

So a satisfying conclusion to the game, we did consider carrying on, getting more clues and trying to successfully answer the question, but the group were so happy with their original answer, that they felt this would not be satisfactory.

The group praised the game and in particular the atmosphere, especially that the side characters added, Tookoolito a firm favourite.

As a GM I really enjoyed the improvisational elements, many of them invoked or encouraged by three excellent players.

A lot of fun and we are likely to carry on with the same group to play Beach Blanket Body Bag, sometime soon. The Gauntlet are about to release a Backerkit to fund a print compilation of all three games of “The Gauntlet Presents…” series, see here.