THE POWERS · THE NORTHERN REACH
The Rime-Skinners
Frostbitten outcasts who den deeper in Frostmaw Cave than the rime-stalkers themselves, surviving by skinning beasts for pelts and frost-glands and — in lean winters — robbing anyone weaker on the Karth road. Half the reason House Vandahl keeps a watch on the ford.
Nobody chooses the ice-throat. The Skinners are people the Vale spat out — debt-jumpers, a deserter or two, a thief on the run — who learned that past the stalkers' den the cave goes deeper and warmer, and that a rime-stalker pelt and the cold-gland under its jaw fetch real coin from outfitters who don't ask questions. They take the beasts the watch won't go in after and live off the skins; when the snow comes down and the trapping thins, they take the road too, falling on travellers too weak to fight back, which is the half of the watch House Vandahl will admit to. They fence the pelts, the glands, and anything they strip off a victim through the Finders, who move it without naming the source. The deepest gallery holds an old shard buried in the rock — the oldest Skinner reckons an outfitter or a collector would pay handsomely for it, if anyone could ever be bothered to chip the thing loose. Mostly they just survive: eat, skin, rob, and don't freeze.
KIND
crew
CREED
Eat what you kill, take what you can — and never freeze
Connected
Type Fields
All Relationships (12)
located_in
- →The Frostmaw — The Skinners den deeper than the rime-stalkers, in the warm dark past the ice-throat.
- →The Throatfall Sink — The Skinners maintain a cache in the Throatfall Sink's flooded lower gallery, using the sound of the falls to mask their comings and goings.
- →Hessa's Reek — The Rime-Skinners run all their surface operations from Hessa's Reek — curing, rendering, fencing.
enemy_of
- →House Vandahl — Their winter raids on the Karth road are half the reason Vandahl keeps a watch on the ford at all.
ally_of
- →The Finders — Pelts and frost-glands move through the Finders, the only fences who won't say their names.
references
- →Verdigris Lung — The deepest gallery hums; the oldest Skinner's one rule is never to dig toward the ringing.
- →The Frostmaw Shard — The ringing the oldest Skinner forbids anyone to dig toward — payoff of their one rule.
- →The Korl — The Rime-Skinners are Korl of the high passes who take the cold country's beasts and barrows.
- ←quest.the-unrelieved-post (unresolved) — The quest's revelation is that the Skinners are the den's real threat, not the beasts — Veld's fork is what to do with that truth.
member_of
- ←Korsa Frost-Ear — The eldest of the Skinners; she keeps the den's one rule.
rival_of
- ←Sergeant Veld of the Cold Ford — The Rime-Skinners' road activity is the half of the watch Veld admits to; the question of what to do when he learns the den's human tenants is the quest's fork.
leads
- ←Old Hessa Rime-Skin — Hessa is the Rime-Skinners' matriarch — their oldest member, their best hunter, and the one with the rule about the shard.
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