Design & Canon Appendix

This appendix preserves the GM-facing operating principles and the boundary between established setting material and campaign proposals. It supports preparation without asking players to read design notes before choosing a campaign.

Canon discipline. Recovered or working setting material remains separate from campaign invention. Contradictions stay visible, and no proposed outcome becomes canon until play or later reconciliation establishes it.

Icebeach: The Wyrmroads of Himmelsrand

GM Principles

• Let the dragon roam. Its whereabouts change local dangers, displace monsters, interrupt plans, and generate rumor.
• Give every settlement a need, a grievance, a custom, and something it can contribute beyond coin.
• Make travel consequential through choices, weather, distance, and broken infrastructure without reducing the north to repetitive attrition.
• Place clues where action occurs. Maps, oath-stones, remains, and contradictory testimony should point toward people to confront and places to venture.
• Make every faction's offer attractive to somebody honorable. The dragon movement grows through promises kept as well as crimes committed.
• Show the wake of previous campaigns through memorials, institutions, resentments, survivors, and official lies; do not resurrect settled villains for borrowed grandeur.
• Allow the party's early allies, omissions, and failures to determine which delegates heed them later.

Canon and Proposal Boundary

Recovered setting material supports Icebeach as a sparse northern confederation with council government, poor roads, maritime trade, giant ruins, and a fish, sheep, herb, and maple economy. Windrich's tyranny belongs to its past, and the Endless Winter ended in 71 BEC after Morena's defeat. Numerous settlements exist in the archive, although several names and details conflict.

The current Elect, council configuration, Castgate's precise condition, and surviving institutions remain date-sensitive or under review. Himmelsrand's present political form, the roaming dragon, rival excavation, missing scholar, buried way-station, broken oath-stone, draconic crown, and nascent sovereignty movement are proposals for this campaign. Any claim that ancient Icebeach willingly accepted dragon rule remains disputed evidence until play decides what becomes true.

The Kingdom of Nwt: The Azure Return

GM Principles

• Present evidence, never an authorized biography. Each site establishes something concrete while leaving room to dispute its meaning.
• Let inscriptions flatter, enemies condemn, households remember, and material remains complicate them all.
• Divide every restoration faction internally. Loyalists may seek the sovereign, a hidden child, a vessel, a regency, or merely the force of her name.
• Treat Astrousia as a continent of particular peoples and polities, not an undifferentiated exotic jungle.
• Make travel demand choices concerning routes, alliances, time, safety, and promises rather than trivial privation.
• Keep the Lost Caverns dangerous and rich enough to tempt prudent people into folly.
• No trap or monster answers the political question. Resurrection, preservation, succession, dispersal, and destruction remain possible until the company acts.

Canon and Proposal Boundary

Source-backed material establishes a dragon-ruled Kingdom of Nwt in Astrousia, Beccin's killing of its ruler and razing of the palace, colonial ambiguity, surviving loyalty, most palace treasure remaining, and the removal of Cataclysm--Horus' Unwreckening. Working material associates the Azure Sovereign with Caerulean, storms, wisdom, protection, Stormwardens, and hidden children. An archived Lost Caverns adventure establishes a proposed lair, surviving defenses, lesser and greater caverns, dangerous inhabitants, and a legendary hoard.

Sources disagree concerning the ruler's name, pronouns, death, and moral character. The realm is Nwt while the dragon is often Nut; this frame treats Nut as an older or alternate form without settling the spelling. Competing accounts of her death become rival histories unless later canon review settles them. The speaking dead, royal road, seven sites, rival expeditions, reconstruction rites, and specific outcomes are campaign proposals; no supernatural voice is authenticated as the singular mind of Nwt before the players can test it.

Fearledell: The Chains Beneath the Lake

GM Principles

• Make the city's condition respond visibly to player choices. Saving a granary, bridge, healer, witch, or prisoner alters later possibilities.
• Every infernal offer is useful, costly once understood, and refuseable.
• No single bargain, relic, royal heir, or famous non-player character is the ordained solution.
• Keep citizens active: districts organize, argue, cooperate, profiteer, worship, and panic according to their interests.
• Let Wyss's new dominion and Lilith's older hierarchy remain competing claims rather than resolved cosmology.
• Transform infernal war machines through Fearledell's arrival: iron sledges, chain-crawlers, and engines racing across newly frozen wastes.

Canon and Proposal Boundary

Fearledell's geography, island capital, Circle Rock Port, Candlelight festival, Seelie incursion, Marron's death, Einare's victory with hedge-witches, winter-elven invitation, and rumored royal winter power are source-backed but presently unconfirmed. Wyss's killing of the Cave Mother and accession to Hell's first layer are confirmed; Lilith's title as Queen of Hell is separately recorded.

The city's descent, chains, blackened lanterns, Candlelight's occult function, the bloodline's infernal significance, and conflict between Wyss and Lilith are proposals. The frame exploits their competing titles without deciding whether Lilith rules above Wyss, has been displaced, recognizes him as a vassal, or contests his accession.

Farnears: The Harvest Crown

GM Principles

• Give every political dispute a face, place, and material stake.
• Make roads, granaries, mills, seed stores, and river crossings worth fighting over.
• Let every ally request terms and remember whether those terms were honored.
• Permit monarchy, federation, republic, partition, or stranger settlements to emerge honestly.
• Make Alistair dangerous through institutions and supporters, not merely secret wickedness.
• Allow seasons to change circumstances without introducing bespoke campaign rules.
• Return the party's decisions as prices, refugees, harvests, garrisons, laws, songs, and grudges.

Canon and Proposal Boundary

Recovered material supports Farnears as Fair's breadbasket, a loose farmer confederation resistant to central rule, and a former rebel against RossWin taxation. Archived Lost Thrown material establishes Stephen's death, a child heir, and Alistair's radical measures, but sits uneasily beside the older confederation description. Attergo's status is only suggested.

The recent monarchy-over-confederation reconciliation, crossroads keep, grain seizure, forged orders, party wardenship, negotiated compact, elderworks, factional sequence, and possible constitutional settlements are proposals. The campaign should not declare its preferred government before the players discover what each form demands.