Every so often, the Tavern fire burns a little brighter when one of our regulars takes up the storyteller’s chair. Today we’re proud to share a guest post from Winterswolf, one of the Black Dog Tavern *OGs, who has been shaping worlds for campaigns, exploring them with players via dice rolls, and building lore for years. What began as a campaign has grown into a novel, and I am beyond delighted that they’ve chosen to share a glimpse of that journey. *
So, settle in, pour yourself a glass of your favourite drink, and step with us into the snowbound trenches of Crask’s story.
@Winterswolf
“For the last five years, a story has been taking shape in fragments, scribbled notes, midnight ideas, and hours spent playing around on Inkarnate drawing my new imagined world. What began as just an idea developed into a Dungeons & Dragons campaign and then slowly grew into something larger: a tale I couldn’t stop returning to. Characters who were once born of dice rolls and improvisation kept following me long after the sessions ended, asking to be given more than the fleeting breath of a few hours a week.
The novel I’m now writing carries the echoes of those nights, of tense battles fought across Roll20, of serious and hilarious roleplay of equal amounts through our Discord server. But it has also grown far beyond its origins. Where the campaign gave me scaffolding, the writing has given me depth. A chance to linger in the quiet moments, to carve out the inner struggles of characters who began as players’ creations but have since become something of their own.
In this blog, I want to share a small snippet of that story that has finally settled down on the page. This section is from Chapter 3 and explores the backstory of Crask, a dwarf fighter, and his experiences during the great war between man and dwarf.”
(This work is still in development and is subject to change.)
The snow came down in sheets the night they met.
Real snow. Dry, brittle, and stinging. Carried on a wind that cried through the passes like the grieving mothers of so many buried beneath the ice. Dwarves did not name storms. They simply endured them. But this one was different, it had been earned.
They called it the Long Cold. A simple name, yet it held both the ferocity of the weather and the war that had stood locked in stalemate for years. Men began it - men always do. They speak of dwarven greed in their southern courts, draped in silks and perfumed with lies, but that is their way. Truth is simpler, uglier; men were not content. Not with their green valleys, their fields fat with grain, their rivers broad and sweet. They hungered for what lay beyond their borders, for what lay beneath the mountains, buried deep in stone and shadow... They came first with parchment promises, words etched in ink and honey. When those failed, they came with fire. A war born in whispers, struck like a knife in the dark - swift and treacherous. They believed it easy. A single season, the kings of men said. A single campaign. They were wrong.
Crask drew the wool tighter about his shoulders, though it did little against the storm. The cold here was a living thing, a clawed hand digging into the marrow, hollowing him out. He hated the sound the wind made, that keening cry that wormed through the trenches and along the ropes strung with ice. It sounded too much like loss - too much like her. He opened his tin once more. The hinges had gone stiff, crusted with frost, but he knew the motion by heart. Inside lay a strip of cloth, pale green once but now faded to the colour of old moss, and a letter folded to softness with age. The ink had blurred where his thumb pressed it too often.
’Alina.’
He mouthed the name but made no sound. They had been wed only a month when the call came. Now her face was something he summoned from memory, worn like the edges of the letter, something else this eternal winter would one day claim. Crask had been in this trench so long that time no longer felt like a river but a stagnant pool, thick, unmoving, frozen at its surface. A year, perhaps more. The seasons had bled together into the same endless grey, punctuated only by distant howls and the occasional whistle of an officer no one remembered to salute. The enemy did not come often anymore. Their advances had become like rumours - heard, dreaded, but rarely seen. The watches grew thinner with each passing week, as his brothers slipped away into the earth or into madness, leaving hollow-eyed ghosts behind to fill the gaps.
Crask was one of those ghosts now. Once, he had been Crask Barrelbrew of Clan Barrelbrew - second son to the royal brewer, a man who could coax warmth from a winter cask and laughter from the lips of kings. His hands had known the weight of oak barrels, the curve of staves, the scent of malt heavy in the air. Before this war, the only blade he’d held was for felling trees to feed the great fires of the brewing halls. Now his axe lay across his knees, a different kind of work staining its edge. He traced a finger along the nicked iron, wondering if it had taken more men than trees by now... The blood had blackened into the steel, a memory the metal would never relinquish. Each notch spoke of a life ended, though their faces blurred together in his mind like raindrops on glass. But he remembered the first. The shock of it, the way the man’s eyes widened, the way the sound left his throat like a question cut short. He had hoped it would be the last, that the war could not possibly ask for more. But the war was greedy. And now, as he stared at the axe, he wondered what it had made of him. Brewer’s son no longer, but butcher, scavenger, killer of strangers he might have shared a drink with in another life.
A sound drew him from his thoughts - a crunch of boots in the frozen sludge. Crask lifted his head to see another dwarf picking his way along the duckboards, shoulders hunched against the cold. His beard was rimed with ice, and the mail across his chest had lost its shine beneath a film of rust.
“Crask,” the dwarf muttered, voice low and raw from the chill. His name sounded brittle in the stillness, like something that might shatter if spoken twice.
“Aye,” Crask answered, though it came out flat, little more than breath. He did not look away from the axe. The other dwarf stopped beside him, settling on the edge of the trench wall with a grunt. For a time, there was only the drone of wind sweeping over the sandbags and the distant moan of timber as the frost gnawed at it.
“You eat?” After a pause, long enough to feel heavy. Crask shook his head. The other dwarf gave no answer, only reached into his coat. His fingers emerged clutching a small square of cloth, folded with a care that felt almost sacred. He laid it across his lap and opened it slowly, corner by corner, until the contents showed a strip of meat, grey and stringy. For a long moment he stared at it, as if even he doubted its worth, then tore it in two with a crack like breaking ice. He held out the larger half toward Crask without looking at him, eyes fixed on the mud floor between his boots. Crask accepted it, though the thing felt wrong in his hand - too light, too cold. The other dwarf chewed his share slowly, jaws grinding with the same rhythm as the wind creaking through the timber.
“Fresher than the last,” he muttered, though it sounded like he was talking to the mud more than to Crask. His jaw worked slowly, eyes dull and unfocused, as if the earth might answer something neither of them had asked. Crask didn’t eat. He only turned the meat over in his fingers After a moment, he spoke.
“Saw another one go under. Down at the western watch.” The Dwarf said nothing. He only shifted his gaze, barely turning his head towards Crask. “Didn’t even scream,” Crask added, as though that detail meant something. “Just… slumped. Like the weight finally got him.” He let the words hang, then shrugged, the gesture small and tired. “Guess he’s warmer now.” He placed the unappetising piece of meat in his mouth and folded the tin shut and slid it back into his coat. “Wind’s shifting,” the other dwarf said at last, rising with a grunt.
“Could stop snowing before nightfall.” He looked down the trench evaluating the path but chose to move up the ladder on the back earthen wall, the crunch of boots breaking the frost-bitten silence.
Crask watched his gaunt figure moving along the lip of the trench, stooped low, yet not with any real urgency. No arrows had flown here in weeks. No horns, no charge, no roar of war. The fighting had ebbed into a stalemate so long that even caution had begun to rot. The dwarf above moved like a cleric performing an old prayer he no longer believed in, keeping his head down, one hand brushing the rim of the timbers as he went. Pausing. Scanning the horizon. A ritual without faith. He looked back once, gave a brief nod - just a flicker of shared endurance and turned forward again.
And then the world cracked. A sound like ice splitting in spring. His head jerked sideways, helmet blooming iron petals where the bolt punched through. For a heartbeat, he stayed upright, a crude marionette against the white, before folding bonelessly down into the trench. Snow swallowed the sound of him hitting the boards.
The Black Dog Tavern isn’t just our corner of the roleplaying world; it’s yours too. If you’ve got a tale to tell, a world you’re building, or a reflection on gaming that’s itching to be realised, we’d love to feature it here. Pull up a chair, share your draft with us, and let the Tavern crowd hear your voice. Who knows, your story might be the next one to echo through these walls. - Ed