D&D Takes On The Thing In New Rime Of The Frostmaiden Preview

There’s some Thing familiar about a recently revealed crashed Netherese city in the frozen reaches of Icewind Dale… somebody better call Kurt Russel.

In Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, heroes will have to take on a powerful curse that has afflicted the wintry realm of Icewind Dale… but there’s more than one kind of horror lurking in the frozen North. Secrets and paranoia and isolation are at the heart of the new adventure, as the book takes a shift into moments inspired by horror movies. Every adventurer will have an opportunity to have their own hidden secret that they can keep from the party or reveal as they see fit. But some secrets should stay buried.

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is full of terrifying secrets, some of which lie buried under ice and snow. Cartography by @staceyallanart and @BeholderPie (AD: Kate Irwin). #wotcstaff #dnd pic.twitter.com/Jw0tWtR0l2

— Christopher Pumpkins 🎃 (@ChrisPerkinsDnD) August 13, 2020

That’s Chris Perkins, Senior Producer for D&D, revealing a mysterious new artwork that… wait, we’ve seen this before, haven’t we? Let’s take a closer look.

Now, that’s probably another angle on the crashed Netherese city that the designers mentioned before. It’s a potential source of Chardalyn, the Faerunian magical material that can absorb spells and was used by the ancient empire of Netheril in their flying cities (some of which don’t look to be so flying anymore). If you look at some of the artwork, you can see the same sort of purple glow and twisted towers reaching up towards the ice cavern.

But we’ve seen this before–let’s pull back just a bit…

Boy, when they said they were drawing on The Thing, they weren’t kidding:

“One of [Perkins’] big inspirations for this adventure was John Carpenter’s The Thing,” said principal rules designer Jeremy Crawford, “We can’t say much more than that […] but I think it would be good prep work for our DMs to go watch that film to really get into the mood for the wintry horror of this story

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Guess you’d better get yourself some blood tests and a flamethrower.

Because Rime of the Frostmaiden is gonna be tense.

Happy Adventuring!

Author: J.R. Zambrano

Bell of Lost Souls Staff Writer and DM, J.R. covers RPGs of all stripes and on occasion eats sandwiches. You can ask him about either at [email protected]