Nepty
Biji YPG!
There is a killing cold in the winters of the north. Even today.
Ahhh...college life. Make friends, hook up, go new places, meet new people, try not to die in a wintry valley in eastern Europe...wait...what?
Greetings all! I’ve got a pretty interesting game lined up for you. Here's the pitch. Bear with me, it might be a bit long, but I expect this to be both a very fluid, player-driven story, and a great character driven one. Hope you enjoy mystery/horror! Now onto The Premise.
(Short Summary) (Long Summary below cover image)
You play a group of multinational students from an american college on a semester abroad to a remote valley in Poland, where the university sends some of its most out-of-the-box students for unconventional study during their semester abroad. Horror tropes may be played straight or averted depending on the situation (mostly averting silly tropes though) and there is a story and background, but it is incredibly fluid, and the flow of the story will be dictated by player actions. The mood will be serious, but IC humor is encouraged. Please commit. Multiple characters are encouraged. Have fun
)
Baron Bronimir Kazpar, resident of Rojek Castle, in the Zima Valley, deep in the Karkonoze mountains passed away last new year's eve. In his will, the childless baron left his lands to Androscoggin University, in Maine, in the United States, where he studied in the 1940s, after fleeing nazi-occupied Poland as a young adult. Androscoggin University has a high proportion of international students.
Surprising everyone, the Educational Foundation of Androscoggin College decided to use the castle not as a money sink, or convert it to a tourist trap, but instead take the fantastic opportunity for a study abroad. It’s an extremely well preserved castle, hardly renovated since the 14th century and instead kept meticulously maintained. The locals, in the village of Stary Miasto, the small settlement near the mouth of the Zima Valley are also an extremely well preserved artifact. Their local customs and traditions date back to the pre-christian era of polish-Lithuanian paganism, providing a wonderful opportunity for students of social sciences, such as anthropology, and even history, as the community apparently has ‘extremely well kept records’ of everything from the Baltic Crusades to the Holocaust.
The local flora and fauna are also in almost untouched conditions. As Stary Miasto does not have any internet connections, factories, fire stations or any other trappings of an ‘industrial’ village, the area has experienced very little pollution. The only internet access in the valley is a Wi-Fi network within Rojek Castle itself. The people live almost medieval lives, and most of them are farmers, hunters or blacksmiths. The society here is self-sufficient, though they do depend on the larger town of Sneizka Miasto, a town about 40 miles away, for medicine and police services. (Stary Miasto has a total constabulary of 2) There is only one way in or out of the valley by car, a narrow gravel road through a pass at its mouth. The road stops just past Stary Miasto, and Rojek Castle must be accessed via footpath.
This semester’s visit to the Zima Valley will be the third visit thus far. Previously, last spring and this fall, others from AU have come, but this is to be the first winter semester in the Zima Valley.
The route there is rather complicated, as the valley is inaccessible by both plane and helicopter. The Plane will land at Ostrava Int’l Airport, in the Czech Republic. The students and their professor will travel roughly 80 km on a bus, as per usual, to town of Sneizka Miasto, just over the Polish border, where they will change from a bus and be picked up in a small van by Wiktor Jarakz, the castle’s keeper, who formerly worked for the Baron and brought to the castle itself.
Over the rest of the semester, the students will conduct various efforts to learn more, be it humanitarian aid, cultural anthropology, historical research or anthropology or even science.
Of course, nothing’s never as simple as all that. No students have been in the Zima Valley for Christmas yet.
No students have felt the killing cold of a mountain winter, where dreadful tales are told huddled around dying fires of a terrible secret buried in the valley’s past, under the snow and ice.
THE ROLE OF PLAYERS
You the players will take the roll of between 1 and 5 college students each (I.e. multiple characters are allowed. This is advised. I don’t have to tell you why, haha. My mates can vouch for me when they say I'm an extremely fair GM, but I also make George RR Martin look like Dr Seuss when it comes to pulling punches with players. Therefore, feel free to have multiple characters who are siblings, significant others, best friends, cousins, etc.)
Your characters will be the main characters of the story.
Here’s the character sheet I’d like for each character
Player Name:
Character Name:
Facial Appearance: (Describe their face)
Appearance: (What they look like overall)
Major: (What his or her study major is)
Reason for coming on this study: (Why is your character here?)
Background: (life story, more or less)
Family: (Please include at least names of mother and father, siblings if your character has any)
Relationships:
Belongings: (Specific items brought. May not include any dedicated weapons like firearms.)
-MAP OF THE ZIMA VALLEY
The Zima Valley
+Very light green: Open grass, shrubs, etc
+Green: Woodlands, forest
+Dark green: Very dense forests
+Note: All of this will be covered in snow of course, as it is winter ingame.
KEY: To all locations in the Zima Valley known to the college board.
1: Stary Miasto
-A small, very isolated, very rural and low-tech village at the mouth of the valley.
2: The Downland Pasture
-Here is where some of the locals pasture the livestock in the downland
3: The Upland Pasture
-Here is where some of the locals pasture livestock in the uplands
4: The Fields
-The crop fiends, that mostly grow corn, pumpkins and grain these days
5: Rojek Castle
-Rojek Castle
6: Teutonic Monastery (Unsafe, please do not enter)
-An old, fortress-monastery, a relic of the occupation of the Zima Valley by the Teutonic Knights. Currently the outside has been explored, but not the inside, as it’s falling apart
7: The Clearing
-A large clearing, evidently cleared some time within the last century, with a long sunken trench running the length.
8: The Glade
-A small glade dotted with stones from an old pagan henge, frequented by deer.
9: The Zimno River
-A wide, deep, cold river that bisects the valley.
10: The Forest Center
-A very tangled section of dense forest
11: The Collapsed Bunker
-A collapsed german bunker from the second world war that remains unexplored.
(final note: Please keep to a relatively high writing standard. Thanks guys!)
Ahhh...college life. Make friends, hook up, go new places, meet new people, try not to die in a wintry valley in eastern Europe...wait...what?
Greetings all! I’ve got a pretty interesting game lined up for you. Here's the pitch. Bear with me, it might be a bit long, but I expect this to be both a very fluid, player-driven story, and a great character driven one. Hope you enjoy mystery/horror! Now onto The Premise.
(Short Summary) (Long Summary below cover image)
You play a group of multinational students from an american college on a semester abroad to a remote valley in Poland, where the university sends some of its most out-of-the-box students for unconventional study during their semester abroad. Horror tropes may be played straight or averted depending on the situation (mostly averting silly tropes though) and there is a story and background, but it is incredibly fluid, and the flow of the story will be dictated by player actions. The mood will be serious, but IC humor is encouraged. Please commit. Multiple characters are encouraged. Have fun
)
Baron Bronimir Kazpar, resident of Rojek Castle, in the Zima Valley, deep in the Karkonoze mountains passed away last new year's eve. In his will, the childless baron left his lands to Androscoggin University, in Maine, in the United States, where he studied in the 1940s, after fleeing nazi-occupied Poland as a young adult. Androscoggin University has a high proportion of international students.
Surprising everyone, the Educational Foundation of Androscoggin College decided to use the castle not as a money sink, or convert it to a tourist trap, but instead take the fantastic opportunity for a study abroad. It’s an extremely well preserved castle, hardly renovated since the 14th century and instead kept meticulously maintained. The locals, in the village of Stary Miasto, the small settlement near the mouth of the Zima Valley are also an extremely well preserved artifact. Their local customs and traditions date back to the pre-christian era of polish-Lithuanian paganism, providing a wonderful opportunity for students of social sciences, such as anthropology, and even history, as the community apparently has ‘extremely well kept records’ of everything from the Baltic Crusades to the Holocaust.
The local flora and fauna are also in almost untouched conditions. As Stary Miasto does not have any internet connections, factories, fire stations or any other trappings of an ‘industrial’ village, the area has experienced very little pollution. The only internet access in the valley is a Wi-Fi network within Rojek Castle itself. The people live almost medieval lives, and most of them are farmers, hunters or blacksmiths. The society here is self-sufficient, though they do depend on the larger town of Sneizka Miasto, a town about 40 miles away, for medicine and police services. (Stary Miasto has a total constabulary of 2) There is only one way in or out of the valley by car, a narrow gravel road through a pass at its mouth. The road stops just past Stary Miasto, and Rojek Castle must be accessed via footpath.
This semester’s visit to the Zima Valley will be the third visit thus far. Previously, last spring and this fall, others from AU have come, but this is to be the first winter semester in the Zima Valley.
The route there is rather complicated, as the valley is inaccessible by both plane and helicopter. The Plane will land at Ostrava Int’l Airport, in the Czech Republic. The students and their professor will travel roughly 80 km on a bus, as per usual, to town of Sneizka Miasto, just over the Polish border, where they will change from a bus and be picked up in a small van by Wiktor Jarakz, the castle’s keeper, who formerly worked for the Baron and brought to the castle itself.
Over the rest of the semester, the students will conduct various efforts to learn more, be it humanitarian aid, cultural anthropology, historical research or anthropology or even science.
Of course, nothing’s never as simple as all that. No students have been in the Zima Valley for Christmas yet.
No students have felt the killing cold of a mountain winter, where dreadful tales are told huddled around dying fires of a terrible secret buried in the valley’s past, under the snow and ice.
THE ROLE OF PLAYERS
You the players will take the roll of between 1 and 5 college students each (I.e. multiple characters are allowed. This is advised. I don’t have to tell you why, haha. My mates can vouch for me when they say I'm an extremely fair GM, but I also make George RR Martin look like Dr Seuss when it comes to pulling punches with players. Therefore, feel free to have multiple characters who are siblings, significant others, best friends, cousins, etc.)
Your characters will be the main characters of the story.
Here’s the character sheet I’d like for each character
Player Name:
Character Name:
Facial Appearance: (Describe their face)
Appearance: (What they look like overall)
Major: (What his or her study major is)
Reason for coming on this study: (Why is your character here?)
Background: (life story, more or less)
Family: (Please include at least names of mother and father, siblings if your character has any)
Relationships:
Belongings: (Specific items brought. May not include any dedicated weapons like firearms.)
-MAP OF THE ZIMA VALLEY
The Zima Valley
+Very light green: Open grass, shrubs, etc
+Green: Woodlands, forest
+Dark green: Very dense forests
+Note: All of this will be covered in snow of course, as it is winter ingame.
KEY: To all locations in the Zima Valley known to the college board.
1: Stary Miasto
-A small, very isolated, very rural and low-tech village at the mouth of the valley.
2: The Downland Pasture
-Here is where some of the locals pasture the livestock in the downland
3: The Upland Pasture
-Here is where some of the locals pasture livestock in the uplands
4: The Fields
-The crop fiends, that mostly grow corn, pumpkins and grain these days
5: Rojek Castle
-Rojek Castle
6: Teutonic Monastery (Unsafe, please do not enter)
-An old, fortress-monastery, a relic of the occupation of the Zima Valley by the Teutonic Knights. Currently the outside has been explored, but not the inside, as it’s falling apart
7: The Clearing
-A large clearing, evidently cleared some time within the last century, with a long sunken trench running the length.
8: The Glade
-A small glade dotted with stones from an old pagan henge, frequented by deer.
9: The Zimno River
-A wide, deep, cold river that bisects the valley.
10: The Forest Center
-A very tangled section of dense forest
11: The Collapsed Bunker
-A collapsed german bunker from the second world war that remains unexplored.
(final note: Please keep to a relatively high writing standard. Thanks guys!)
