Author's Note

Wizards of the Coast owns the general concept of Dungeons and Dragons, from which this story was devised. However, The New World and its principal kingdoms of Mardan, Urhal, Utrecht, Tourant, the Island Duchies, Arhneim, Trzebin, and Argent Forest, are mine. Likewise, the characters, while ostensibly created through the use of the Dungeons and Dragons character generation rules, are also mine. While I am not completely averse to someone requesting to use The New World as a backdrop for a campaign or story, ask my permission first. Chances are you'll have my blessing; after all, I'd be interested to see what someone can do with the political and social backdrop I've created. Finally, Hounds of Winter is the title of a song by Sting, but that's about all this story has in common with tantric British pop stars. Sorry, Stacy. I won't tell you anything about The New World; that's for you to find out through the stories. However, even though I thought I made it pretty obvious by page three, I will give you this one bit of information. The New World is based in the southern hemisphere. That means it gets colder as you go south, not north.

The New World has only once seen use in a campaign. One day, while wondering if my Goblin Wars(also known as The Campaign Where Three Hobgoblins Can Scare the Bejeezus out of a Party of Seventh Level Characters) campaign would ever get restarted, I was leafing through the Dungeon Master's Guide, and came across page 138, One Hundred Adventure Ideas. I thought that quite a few of the ideas were actually pretty cool, but the problem with running a war campaign is that you tend to be limited(especially when the enemy is just about all goblins and hobgoblins, although this is also the campaign where one ogre nearly killed a fourth level dwarven fighter with one shot) in the types of enemies and encounters you can run. I idly wondered if I could write a story for each of these hundred ideas. So, naturally, I created a whole new world, complete with nations that didn't really like each other all that much, and picked Idea #45 as my starting point. What is idea #45? Well, either you have to read this story, or you have to break out your Dungeon Master's Guide to find out