> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Blackrock Shelters > [![[Codex/Assets/Locations/Points_of_Interest/Blackrock_Shelters_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Codex/Assets/Locations/Points_of_Interest/Blackrock_Shelters.webp) > ###### Location Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Point of Interest | > Location | [[Frostway]] | > Defining Feature | Frostwarden waystation on the Frostway crossing | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Active | The **Blackrock Shelters** are a Frostwarden waystation set into the mountainsides of the [[Frostway]], the shifting ice bridge that forms each winter as the only reliable land crossing to [[Val Noren]]. A scatter of firelit caverns hollowed high above the ice, they are counted among the "Havens of the Frostway" — and to a half-frozen caravan climbing the path at dusk, the warm orange glow of their cave-mouths is the most welcome sight in the world. ## Location & Geography The Shelters cling to the flank of one of the great black spires that rise from the [[Frostway]], roughly two days' guided travel out from [[Point Blackrock]] on the road to [[Val Noren]]. They sit above the ice, not on it — reached by leaving the main crossing and climbing the mountainside on a worn path of packed snow, timber, and old stonework. The openings are visible from the ice below, a row of dark mouths in the black rock, and at night the firelight within makes them a beacon for any caravan still out in the cold. This is no single great hall but a handful of separate caverns, each with its own purpose. The largest — the **Hearthhall** — holds the communal fire and the cook-pots, its walls gone black with the soot of countless winters. Off it run the smaller **Long Galleries**, side-caves curtained with hung furs where caravans bed down by group, warm and a little private. Deeper in lie the **Deep Stores**, the supply caches the [[The Frostwardens|Frostwardens]] keep stocked against need. Near the entrance is the **Sigil Wall**, a smoothed face of rock where every crew that has sheltered here has carved or painted its mark — a living guestbook centuries deep, and where young Wardens learn to read the old sigils of those who came before. The approach itself is marked by small iron bells, hung from pikes driven into the rock, ringing thinly in the wind (see [The Bells](#the-bells) below). ## History The Shelters began as natural caves in the black rock — first sought out by desperate merchants caught on the ice, then explored, widened, and slowly refined over generations into the comfortable refuge they are now. As the [[Frostway]] crossing grew in prominence and the [[The Frostwardens|Frostwardens]] took up their role as its guardians, the caverns became a fixed link in the chain of Havens that make the crossing survivable. Past travellers reinforced them with timber and stone; the Wardens stocked them, marked them with their sigils, and folded them into the rhythm of the crossing season. What was once a place to merely not freeze became a place to rest, eat warm, and be tended. ## Life at the Shelters Of all the Havens of the [[Frostway]], the Blackrock Shelters are the warmest in every sense — the one place on the crossing where the living gather, eat, and feel safe. After days of wind, whiteout, and the constant low dread of the open ice, a caravan reaches the Shelters and is, for one night, simply *not going to die*. That contrast is the heart of the place. There is no permanent keeper; the Shelters are tended by whichever [[The Frostwardens|Frostwarden]] crew is passing through, and the duty is taken up without being assigned. A pot is always kept on the fire, and the first thing a Warden does for new arrivals is press something hot into their hands before asking any questions. No coin changes hands inside — the Shelters run on the same communal ethic as crossing-season [[Point Blackrock]], where you share or you go without, and taking more than your share from the Deep Stores is the one true sin of the place. By the fire of the Hearthhall, caravans that would never otherwise meet trade stories — and with them the news that keeps people alive: what the weather is doing further out, which stretches of ice have shifted, and which crews are overdue. It is here, in the warmth, that the worries of the crossing are first spoken aloud. ## The Bells Out on the [[Frostway]], and thick around the Shelters, hang small iron handbells on pikes driven into the rock, ringing thinly whenever the wind blows. The [[The Frostwardens|Frostwardens]] call them the **mourning bells**. Each is left to mark where a traveller or a Warden died on the ice, a memorial that doubles as an audible marker guiding the living toward refuge when the whiteout steals all sight. At the Shelters the grief is turned toward belonging. A single bell hangs at the cave-mouth, and by custom each traveller who arrives rings it once — *so the mountain knows they made it, and the dead know they have company tonight.* New arrivals are greeted by that ring; to rest at the Shelters is to rest among the bells of those who did not. ### [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 34 - Mourning Bells]] On the second day of their crossing to [[Val Noren]], the party and the refugee column reached the Blackrock Shelters and rested among the caverns. Here the [[The Frostwardens|Frostwardens]] gave voice to their growing fear over the overdue [[The Frostwarden Crews#Wolf Crew|Wolf Crew]], debating whether to take a shortcut through the mountains to search for them. The party agreed to join a forward scout team while the refugees followed behind — a decision that, the next day, led them to a vast unnatural gouge carved up a mountainside and the hot, humid cave at its end, where they found a Frost Worm's egg beneath a rift in reality and retreated. ## Trivia - The session in which the party first sheltered here, *[[Session 34 - Mourning Bells]]*, takes its name from the mourning bells the Frostwardens leave out on the ice. - The Shelters are one of four named Havens of the [[Frostway]], alongside the Old Cairns, the Singing Arch, and the Hollow Isle.