Tromso Research Dock is a small wooden dock where the Northern Commonwealth keeps its research boat. Tromso is where the Z-Virus first spread in March 2035, after a supply helicopter from Brekka Station landed here. The city was cleared in 2042.
Brekka Station is a small permafrost research station on a bare island off the north coast of Norway. In March 2035 its scientists thawed very old ice cores, and a lab worker was infected. The supply helicopter carried the virus to Tromso, and flights carried it everywhere. The station archive may still be in the lab building, with the only records of what the scientists found. The dead staff still walk its halls.
The Northern Commonwealth keeps boats away from the island. Katrin Jonsdottir, the chair of the council, knows the station stands there. She keeps the Brekka Station files locked in the cellar of Hofdi Council Hall in Reykjavik. She thinks some things are safer left buried.
The council has refused Sofie Lund's request to go to Brekka three times. The guard on the shore road is there to watch her.
Anders Berg has been close to the island and saw lights there once. He has told only Sofie. Nobody knows what the lights were. Decide only if the players go to see.
The archive holds no cure. The vaccine question is answered elsewhere, by a girl named Nell Avery. What the archive does show is for the GM to decide.
Sofie Lund, researcher. Her mother was a nurse at the Tromso hospital when the helicopter landed, and she died in the first week. Sofie wants to know where the Z-Virus came from. She is polite to the council and does not trust it.
Anders Berg, captain of the research boat. He knows the ice and every island between Tromso and Svalbard. He likes Sofie and worries that her questions will get her into trouble.
Katrin Jonsdottir, chair of the Commonwealth council, at Hofdi Council Hall. She wants the secret kept.
The Commonwealth guards. They watch the dock and report to Reykjavik.
Ask the council. A proper request at Hofdi Council Hall. It will be refused, but the players learn who is afraid of what.
The files in the cellar. Katrin's files in Reykjavik hold the first reports from 2035 and maps of the closed island.
Go to Brekka. A night trip in the research boat, against the council's orders.
The seed vault. The research boat also supplies the guard post at the Svalbard Seed Vault. The Grange has asked for seeds.
What to do with the truth. Whatever the archive shows, someone will want it buried and someone will want it told.
The sea. Ice, cold water and storms that come fast.
Brekka Station. Its dead staff freeze and thaw every year, so some are stiff and slow and others move well.
Commonwealth patrols, arrest and exile for anyone who goes where the council forbids.
Polar bears on Svalbard and the far islands. Treat one as a Grizzly Bear.
Brekka Station, the closed island to the north.
Svalbard Seed Vault, far to the north on Spitsbergen.
Hofdi Council Hall and Old Harbor in Reykjavik.
Torshavn Harbor in the Faroes, on the ship route to Norway.
Murmansk Ice Port in Russia, which trades with Commonwealth ships.