We don't know whether the dungeon is of her design or whether it existed before she built her temple, but given that there are no ice-themed **Dungeoneer** dungeons I assume it existed before her rise to power.
Within her arctic realm are polar forests, glacier canyons, frozen lakes, and shadowy peaks of the mountain ranges that conceal her temple from prying eyes.
Not all of Cholizar's land is frozen, though.
The Erilian hot springs, with its brightly coloured stones, offer relief to arctic nomads, and a volcanic plateau looms as either a constant threat or perhaps as a grim reminder of legendary eruptions.
What we don't know is how far south her wintry realm has already expanded.
Have the polar forests and frozen lakes always been a part of her realm, or are these relatively recent additions?
Cholizar has definitely been attempting to increase her hold over Tarnys.
The game begins, in fact, after she has summoned ice demons under an infernal contract to supress the forces resisting her icy influence.
## The cultures of Dungeoneer
We know that there's a village in the arctic northlands, because that's the starting card for all adventures in **Realm of the Ice Witch**.
As with most other locations, we're not sure whether the village started in the arctic or whether the arctic has only recently engulfed it.
I get the impression that it started in Cholizar's realm, because it's naturally an arctic card.
Other cards, like Grim Juncture, Bend, and Crossway, start the game as non-frozen lands and are only converted to arctic conditions by Cholizar's **Winterize** spell over the course of the game.
If there's a village, there must be people, and I think I can identify 3 or 4 distinct cultures within the northlands.
I don't have the canonical names for each culture, so pardon the lack of imprecise identifiers.
### Kelta: Arctic nomads
The northlands have a native people, who I know only as the Kelta, although that's possibly not what they call themselves.
The name _Kelta_ appears on the character card for the hero Onoku Kai, so it may actually refer to a very specific, and lost, tribe.
A "tribe" implies plurality, because a tribe is usually a subset of a larger group.
For lack of another term, however, I'm applying _Kelta_ to all native northlanders.
Onoku is a Channeler, so I surmise that the native peoples had at least some druids (or similar magic users) as part of its social structure.
Onoku Kai and possibly Nadalia are the Kelta characters in the set.
From this, I surmise that the Kelta are either a matriarchy or has a social structure that elevates druidic priestesses, at least enough to send them on important quests.
On the **Arctic Nomad** card, the Kelta are specifically identified as nomads.
It's unclear whether only the lost tribe of Kelta were nomadic, or whether all native people were nomadic.
It's likely that all native people were at least migratory, because it's common for populations to be subject to the climate.
### Barbarians: The survivors of the north
On the **Blizzard** card, it states that the ice witch's realm is north of Gabrell.
The **Arctic Walker** card names Finla Fagerstad as the barbarian Queen of Gabrell who first learned to walk the arctic wastes.
On the character card for Bodones Ving, it's stated that he lost his family to a particularly harsh winter storm.
I believe that Bodones Ving is from Gabrell, and that it was because of Cholizar's move southward that a blizzard caught Bodones Ving and his family off guard.
In fact, I think the encroachment of winter was surprising to most, because the **Rescue Emmy** quest card can be interpreted to imply that Emmy is a small child who wandered too far into the snow and became lost (to be fair, Emmy could be a young woman who has decided to march into the snow to defeat or join Cholizar.)
The barbarians are the hearty frontiersmen of the northlands.
Bodones Ving, Enraka Tyvus, and Thaewyn Draexis all seem to be classified as barbarians, either explictly (Thaewyn) or stylistically (the horned helm of Bodones.)
They aren't identified as a nomadic people, so I assume **The Northern Village** is a barbarian settlement.
I imagine that the barbarians aren't native to the north, but have made their homes there after migration.
They wear thick furs and finely crafted armour, and they have a close relationship to the celestial realm.
Bodones is called a Warblade, Thaewyn is a Frostblade, and Enraka is a literal Valkyrie, so there's strong evidence that the barbarians are known for martial combat.
Enraka is half-celestial, so probably the barbarians fought alongside celestials in some war of old (possibly the Demon War itself, but more on that later.)
### Boreal: Subjects of the Eldritch Lords
The Boreal are the humans who dwell closest, in every sense of the word, to Cholizar herself.
The character Ryghus Gar is a Boreal Scout who deserted Cholizar's army as a conscientious (the card features a typo, citing Rhyghus's "conscious") objector.
Possibly the Boreal consist of people who existed in the north, Kelta or barbarians or otherwise, before Cholizar siezed power.
Possibly the Boreal are people who have been swayed by some dark influence to travel north, and seek out service to Cholizar.
The **Polar Patrol** card states that Cholizar has "corrupted the many men who serve her," but we don't know whether that's a neutral fact or only the way people who don't serve Cholizar see it.
Either way, I don't think that Cholizar's army consists of an ethnically coherent culture.
Instead, I think she has attracted people who honour and serve her.
We don't have the insight to know whether it's because they agree with her vision for Tarnys, or they just want to see their former world punished, or they've been beguiled by some unknown promise she has made to them.
### Nim Ozhul: Dwarves of the frozen depths
The dwarves of Nim Ozhul are mentioned only on the **Fire Bomb** card:
> The dwarves of Nim Ozhul have forged strange weapons,
> which are often found in even stranger places.
This has a ring of a lost ancient civilisation to me.
However, we know from the **Dungeoneer** set **Vault of the Fiends** that dwarves do currently exist in the setting.
It could be that the Nim Ozhul settlement has been lost to Cholizar, and other dwarves from other kingdoms exist elsewhere.
Or possibly it isn't lost at all, but they've forged weapons that sometimes get sold or carried to far off places.
Whatever the status of Nim Ozhul, it is definitely a dwarven society with skill at crafting effective weaponry.
They likely traded with the Kelta and the barbarians of Gabrell, or maybe with the Boreal, or maybe all 3.
## Gods of the north
Omnisus rules all.
I mean, except for the things he doesn't.
Omnisus is a benevolent (with conditions) god who, according to the **Omnisus' Favour** card, watches Tarnys and blesses those in need who serve him.
He has an army of celestials who are sometimes sent to fight alongside those serving his cause.
Given that both mentions of Omnisus clearly note that he only helps those who _serve him_, we might surmise that Omnisus has some pretty specific interests.
Omnisus is characterised as a healing god in other **Dungeoneer** sets, but in the context of the north we're not sure whether his priority is to push back the winter, or destroy Yeti, or to kill demons, or just to defend the innocent, or all of the above.
We have 10 cards discussing the cosmological history of the northlands in **Realm of the Ice Witch**, so here's what we know.
Long ago, magical beings known as the Eldritch Lords existed in a location known as Kal-Anon.
Kal-Anon may have been a plane of existence, a planet, a kingdom, or something else.
The Eldritch Lords discovered warp magic that granted them the ability to travel across planes, and at some point their own home of Kal-Anon was destroyed.
For a time, they ruled over the world of Tarnys.
We know they reached the north because they planted magic fruits called **Arctic Squash** to sustain them in the strange new lands.
The arctic squash thrived and can still be found to this day, and indeed has strong healing powers.
They weren't restricted to the northern reaches, because in the **Dragons of the Forsaken Desert** it's mentioned specifically that the Eldritch Lords created the desert:
> Long ago the sorcery of the Eldritch Lords transformed
> the fertile plains of Folornia into a desolate waste.
It's clear from many sets that the Eldritch Lords were obsessed with magical experimentation, and they nearly tore the world apart as a result.
They were, at the very least, consorting with demons, possibly by their very nature or possibly because they discovered demons during their planar travels.
It seems that they specifically encountered the Baul Kraek demons, and those demons ended up in the northlands as well.
A time known as the _Demon War_ began, during which the demons presumably ravaged the northern parts of Tarnys, probably as allies of the Eldritch Lords.
The northlanders developed magical wards to fight against the demons.
It seems that the people of Tarnys were successful in fighting back the demons, because the demons were either destroyed or driven out.
So were, apparently, most of the Eldritch Lords.
There was one Eldritch Lord who remained, and she was called Cholizar.
Presumably over time, the locals came to know her as the Ice Witch.
We don't know when, but at some point the Ice Witch made a pact with Lashtar, known as the Lord of Demons.
I've never made a pact with a demon before, so it's unclear what was part of the pact and what was extracurricular, but the card **Cholizar's Pet** reveals that they gave birth to a "little fanged monster."
Combined with that information, the **Snow Demon** card suggests that many of the demons Cholizar unleashes into the northlands are in fact her progeny, and that the pact with Lashtar was for her to "bring his handmaidens into the world."
Then again, maybe those are separate revelations.
Maybe Cholizar gave birth to an abomination, and separately also opened a **Combine Warp** to let the Snow Demons into the world of Tarnys.
The **Combine Warp** can be taken to imply that Cholizar is particularly good at planar travel: "The Eldritch Lords were impressed by Cholizar's affinity for the dark arts even as a young child."
However she manages it, when the game begins Cholizar has unleashed demons into the north, as confirmed by the cards **Ice Demon**, **Snow Demon**, and **Infernal Captain**.
These horrors are augmented by magic, magical beasts, and mundane beasts including **Infernal Arcana**, **Shivering Rat**, **Ice Dragon**, and **Yeti**.
When one of her human soldiers die, she'll even resurrect him as a **Skeletal Ice Man**.
## The mortal realm and the infernal realm
We know that the northlands weren't always aggressive.
The **Avalanche** card states that the north used to be peaceful, and only now punishes trespassers.
The **Slay the Winter Wyrm** quest card tells us that "An evil spell has transformed the once-peaceful Spirit of Winter into a ravenous wyrm!"
But not just a few cards in the deck conflate "infernal" with the north.
While I was studying the cards, there were several moments when I was convinced that "infernal" in the context of this game was a synonym for the northlands.
At first glance, the cards **Infernal Arcana**, **Infernal Might**, and **Infernal Captain** probably refer to the infernal realm of the demons.
In fact, **Infernal Captain** says "The problem with Hell is there are too many captains and not enough legions."
**Infernal Arcana** states that "Demons draw energy from the arcane essence of the Infernal Realm," with the capitalised "Infernal" and "Realm" being a likely euphemism for Hell.
But then the card **Warmth** conflates the terminology: "There is little comfort in the infernal realm of the Ice Witch."
It's as if the cards are suggesting that the north is literally the same as Hell, which I don't think is a cosmological asertion but a statement about how bad the north has become, but I can't help but think that there is an implication that the veil has become dangerously thin between Lashtar's realm and Cholizar's realm.
The threat isn't just an ice age, it's an ice age ruled by demonic forces from Hell.
## The real story of Realm of the Ice Witch
As mere players, we don't know the full story behind the **Realm of the Ice Witch** card set.
Maybe Cholizar was expelled by the Eldritch Lords and ended up in Tarnys, or maybe the Eldritch Lords were subjugated by her (could they be the Boreal?), or maybe the Eldritch Lords were fighting the demons when Cholizar allied with Lashtar.
Maybe Omnisus destroyed Kal-Anon, or maybe the Eldritch Lords did, or maybe the demons did, or maybe Cholizar.
The possibilities are endless and, in our pretend-archeological reflection on Tarnys, the true story is lost to time.
Whatever happened, it's a rich story filled with possible orginis and endings.
You have to play the game to add your own story, so if you can find a **Dungeoneer** deck today, buy it!
Header and card image copyright by Thomas Denmark and Atlas Games, and used exclusively as reference.