Icewind Dale

Icewind Dale

What it is
Icewind Dale is the northernmost explored frontier of Faerûn: an arctic tundra wedged between the Spine of the World to the south, the Reghed Glacier to the east, and the Trackless Sea to the west. It is famous for lethal cold, sudden blizzards, months of dim daylight, and a thin scattering of hard-won settlements known as the Ten Towns. Survival shapes everything here—politics, trade, faith, and the kinds of stories people tell about heroes and monsters.

Land, Weather, and Ways Through

The land is a broad sweep of snowfields, wind-scoured plains, and frozen lakes broken by two signature mountain masses: Kelvin’s Cairn, the highest peak (its melt briefly feeds the lakes at Midsummer), and Mount Shatterglass. The tundra is mostly treeless; true woods are rare and precious. Most travel is by dogsled, snowshoes, or riding axe beaks. Avalanches, white-outs, and crevasse-hiding drifts complicate even simple journeys.

Climate: Summers are short, wet, and cold (11–70 °F / –12–21 °C). Winters plunge to –40 °F/°C with relentless storms. Snow that falls on the Dale often blows east onto the Reghed Glacier. The weather is not just dangerous; it’s a constant actor that blocks roads, buries supplies, and isolates towns.

Water and Lakes: Three mineral-rich lakes—Maer Dualdon (largest/deepest), Lac Dinneshere (whose surface hue foreshadows incoming weather), and Redwaters (named for old bloodshed)—anchor the settled zone. The Redrun links Dinneshere to Redwaters; the Shaengarne flows year-round to the Trackless Sea but freezes over on top in winter. Access from the south typically follows the Northern Means road from Luskan; within the Dale, the Eastway is the only paved route, and the Ten-Trail ties Bryn Shander to lands beyond the Spine.

Beasts, Monsters, and What Lives

Game includes hares, arctic foxes, reindeer, and elk; predators include crag cats, polar bears, snowy owlbears, saber-toothed tigers, and yeti. Hardier horrors range from remorhazes and frost giants to white dragons. Bands of gnolls, ice trolls, and Icewind kobolds haunt the margins. Stranger threats include air weirds and dead that glow with cold light. Plant life is sparse—lichen and winter herbs cling on—making any tree a communal asset.

Beneath and beyond lie sites like Dwarven Valley (caves fanning out of Kelvin’s Cairn), the Fields of Slaughter (an ancient battlefield), and scattered Netherese and dwarven remnants. Tales persist of spirits on the lakes (the “White Lady” of Lac Dinneshere) and of things moving under the ice where no current should be.

Who Rules and How People Live

The Dale is a confederation centered on Bryn Shander (the largest settlement and de facto capital). Each town governs itself but coordinates defense, rations, and justice through speakers and alliances. Virtues are practical: community over pride, labor over luxury, and the understanding that a warm hearth today might belong to a rival tomorrow. The harshness creates social glue; it also drives desperate acts when stores run low.

Work and Trade: Fishing is king. Knucklehead trout feed towns and, more importantly, supply bone dense enough to carve into pale “ivory” for scrimshaw—a regional art and export prized far to the south. Whale oil from the Sea of Moving Ice substitutes for scarce firewood. Imports—herbs, spices, textiles, fruit, wine—come on risky caravans and brave coasters. Timber is exported when the rare stands can be harvested without gutting a community’s windbreak.

Chardalyn: This native crystalline stone absorbs magic and releases it when shattered. The artifact Crenshinibon’s demonic energies once tainted local deposits, creating black ice—a corruptive, madness-tinged variant that has repeatedly fueled tyrants’ schemes.

People of the Dale

Populations have swung from ~8,000 (1365 DR) to over 10,000 (1372 DR). Most residents are humans and dwarves: fishers, scrimshanders, loggers, rangers, miners, traders, and outcasts seeking new starts. Reghedmen barbarians range the tundra in tribal bands, following herds and seasonal weather. In famine, entire communities cooperate on grim survival strategies—like rothé stampedes driven over cliffs to create emergency meat caches—then share out hides and smoked flesh town by town.

Notables include Markham Southwell (Bryn Shander’s sheriff, late 15th century), Ravisin (a frost druid awakening beasts and plants), Vaelish Gant (an Arcane Brotherhood abjurer imprisoned at Revel’s End), Hedrun Arnsfirth (Auril’s chosen), and Arveiaturace, an ancient white dragon who claims swathes of sky and ice.

The Ten Towns (and Friends Nearby)

The confederation comprises lakeside hamlets on Redwaters (Good Mead, Dougan’s Hole), on Lac Dinneshere (Easthaven, Caer-Konig, Caer-Dineval), around Maer Dualdon (Lonelywood, Bremen, Termalaine, Targos), and inland Bryn Shander, the walled mercantile hub binding them. Satellite sites include Shaengarne Ford (logging), Karkolohk (a fortified goblin camp), the prison of Revel’s End on a northern cliff, and—just south of the Dale across the Spine—Kuldahar, a village sheltered by a vast, life-giving great oak.

Conflict and Catastrophe — A Short History

Before living memory: Illuskan settlers reached the Dale by –2100 DR, blending later with Northlanders to seed the Reghedmen. Early tyrants and archmages repeatedly tried to rule the cold: Arakon with mercenaries and fiends (thwarted by shaman Jerrod’s sacrifice), and Kresselack the Black Wolf, who briefly unified tribes by conquest. Far earlier, frost-giant Jarl Kelvin Duarol sought a new Ostoria with the Crenshinibon, drawing Tempus’s wrath and burial beneath the cairn that bears his name. The white dragon Icewind (Ixbillailzakzillimiliax) gave the region its name.

13th century DR: The necromancer Damien Morienus triggered the Great Thaw, a hellfire-driven disaster that melted permafrost and drowned settlements; later that century, the devil Belhifet raised armies from Easthaven’s doorstep but was banished back to Avernus. The same years saw the false reincarnation claim of Wylfdene (secretly ridden by the white dragon Icasaracht), whose war against the Ten Towns ended with the dragon’s destruction.

14th century DR: The Legion of the Chimera (cambions Isair and Madae) rallied monstrous half-breeds at the Severed Hand and were crushed by hired adventurers. In 1356 DR, apprentice Akar Kessel found the Crenshinibon, allied with the demon Errtu, and proclaimed himself Tyrant of Icewind Dale—until the Companions of the Hall, Clan Battlehammer, and the Ten Towns shattered his army in the Battle of Icewind Dale. The artifact’s destruction left a stain in local chardalyn, echoing through later centuries.

15th century DR: Storms wrecked Easthaven’s docks (1473 DR). Black ice surfaced in 1485 DR, corrupting minds and drawing a lich-reborn Akar Kessel and packs of undead dwarves. Soon after, Auril cast the Everlasting Rime, blinding the Dale in two winters of near-total darkness. Under that cover, Xardorok Sunblight, a duergar warlord twisted by chardalyn, forged a flying chardalyn dragon that ravaged the Ten Towns before a coalition of locals and adventurers brought it down. The Rime lifted, but the memory of empty larders, frozen dead, and ash-strewn foundations remains fresh.

Sites, Ruins, and Roads

  • Bremen’s Run and Icewind Pass: classic overland lines through wind-traps and ambush country.

  • Jarlmoot: a frost-giant ring where the old jarl spirits judge the living.

  • Dorn’s Deep and Dwarven Valley: layered dwarven complexes with forges and secrets.

  • Lost Spire of Netheril: a fallen sky-tower from the enclave of Ythryn, jutting from the ice like a broken fang.

  • Black Cabin and Damien’s Tower: lone refuges turned into cautionary tales.

Economy and Dangers in One Breath

Trout, scrimshaw, whale oil, and the occasional timber sale keep bellies full and lamps burning. Imports—medicine, spices, fruit, cloth, and wine—lift morale as much as markets. But every caravan lures wolves and worse; every prosperous winter invites a would-be tyrant with a shard of black ice; every road is tomorrow’s snow-buried rumor. In good years the Dale thrives on stubbornness and craft. In bad years, it survives on that and nothing else.