Frostfair

Frostveil's surface has begun to settle: the sudden cold pockets have weakened, the worst winds have lifted, and stretches of snowfield once crossed only by prepared expeditions are becoming suitable for longer stays. Belowground, pressure shifts have opened seasonal routes through the ice. Aboveground, residents are clearing entrances, marking safe paths, and bringing their businesses into the daylight.

The change is part of a rare natural cycle within Frostveil's immense ice network. As accumulated energy disperses, unusual winter weather spreads across New Ognos. Snow falls in places that seldom see it, frost takes unfamiliar forms, and regional conditions produce phenomena that researchers are still trying to explain.

Cold-adapted creatures are emerging along newly accessible migration routes, some accompanied by young that have never seen the surface. Others arrive alone, gather near settlements, or turn up in snowbanks far from any known nesting ground. Frostveil's residents have established a nursery to shelter the young while their migration patterns are studied. Frostfair has grown around these efforts: an aboveground winter gathering with warm food, markets, skating paths, shared accommodations, and a nursery full of increasingly curious creatures.

Visit Frostveil, meet the snow beasts, explore the winter conditions across New Ognos, and enjoy the surface while the season lasts!

Out of Character

Duration

• Frostfair runs from November 8th to February 6th.
• The Winter Exchange stays open through February 13th.

Getting Started

Visit the Frostfair hub to play trivia, write ghost stories, browse the Winter Gift Shop, send gifts, and open Mystery Parcels. All of these work through your player account; no registered character is needed.

Register up to three characters to unlock exploration, reputation, and character-specific seasonal badges. Each registered character has their own Winter Passport.

The Passport & Rewards section on the main Frostfair page shows your balances, character passports, badges, story achievements, and reward delivery status.

Frostfair Currency

Earn 1 Snowflake (❄️) for every 500 eligible words through the usual wordclaim process, and spend them in the Frostfair Shop. Some badges and event rewards also award Snowflakes.

Frostfair Tickets are a separate currency, earned through trivia and ghost stories and spent in the Winter Gift Shop. They are not the exploration tickets used for outings.

Combine Snowflakes

Combining Snowflakes works like a Mystery Lotto: the more you combine, the rarer and more valuable the prize.

• Combine 2 ❄️ for a ✨ Frost Sprite.
• Combine 4 ❄️ for a 👸🏻 Snow Maiden.
• Combine 6 ❄️ for a 🧝🏻‍♂️ Jack Frost.
• Combine 10 ❄️ for a 🌨️ Old Man Winter.

Festival Themes

Frost, snow, ice, long nights, solstice, return of the light, hearth, firelight, evergreens, gifts, generosity, naughty or nice, mischief, feasting, togetherness, stillness, wonder, wishes, Yule, Midwinter, winter.

In Character

Above the Ice

The surface is cold, but marked festival areas are safe for winter travel with proper clothing. Shops have brought their stock upstairs, families share meals beneath the open sky, and visitors arrive to see a part of Frostveil few had reached before.

Beyond the maintained areas lie sinkholes, ice vents, predators, and unstable routes. More of Frostveil can be explored this season, but not all of it safely.

The Upper Commons

The Upper Commons is Frostfair's central gathering place. Marked paths link its market, bathhouse, communal tables, nursery, Iceworks, and descent houses. Staff maintain the main routes and guide visitors to shelter when the weather turns.

The Winter Exchange

The seasonal market sells winter clothing, travel provisions, and unusual seasonal goods brought by merchants from across New Ognos. Food stalls serve hot meals and drinks, and outfitters rent sleds, skates, and cold-weather gear.

The Thawhouse

A geothermal bathhouse with communal pools, private soaking rooms, and an adjoining inn. Visitors come to warm up after excursions, meet friends, or spend a quiet evening away from the market.

The Open Table

Long communal tables offer a place to eat, rest, and meet other attendees. Meals are served throughout the day, spare blankets and sheltered seating are on hand, and no purchase is needed to stay.

The Snow Nursery

The nursery shelters young snow beasts in enclosures suited to their needs: deep snow for burrowers, suspended snowfall for some, quiet nesting spaces for others. Staff supervise introductions, answer questions, and help carers learn what each beast enjoys.

The young are curious about visitors, and they are still learning abilities that occasionally complicate feeding time.

The Iceworks

An area for skating, snow construction, ice carving, and winter games. Visitors can work on small sculptures, contribute to larger projects, build temporary shelters, or watch increasingly elaborate creations take shape.

The Descent Houses

Staffed access points connect the festival to the mid-ice settlements below, with their homes, storage, and services. They serve as meeting places, information stations, and dependable shelter, and they post weather notices and route updates at their entrances.

Winter Across New Ognos

The cycle reaches well beyond Frostveil. Each region is experiencing its own unusual snowfall, frost, and temporary changes to familiar terrain, and new phenomena may appear as the season develops.

• Northwest — Aurora Snow: Luminous flakes fall beneath bright winter skies. Accumulated snow keeps its colors after the aurora has faded.
• Northeast — Suspended Snow: Clusters of snow hang among branches and above sheltered ground, descending when disturbed.
• Southeast — Seafoam Flurries: Snow forms above breaking waves and drifts inland, leaving branching ice formations along sheltered shores.
• Southwest — Glassfall: Transparent flakes settle into thin sheets that preserve impressions of passing creatures, objects, and travelers.

Local communities are adapting in their own ways. Some set up winter markets or viewing points; others need help maintaining roads, protecting supplies, or understanding unfamiliar conditions.

Prompts & Hooks

• Bring your shop, workshop, or household aboveground and discover what needs changing.
• Share a meal at the Open Table with someone you have never met.
• A nursery snow beast learns something useful, then starts applying it at inconvenient times.
• Borrow a sled and find that controlling it is considerably harder than expected.
• Visit the Thawhouse after an outing and encounter someone you hoped to avoid.
• Help clear a path between a surface entrance and the festival.
• Build an ice sculpture with a partner who has very different ideas about the finished piece.
• Follow unusual tracks through a region affected by supernatural snow.
• Collect observations for the nursery while traveling elsewhere on New Ognos.
• A young snow beast keeps returning to the same descent house. Investigate what has caught its attention.
• Spend an evening watching the auroras from a sheltered surface camp.
• Help someone prepare for their first experience of substantial snowfall.
• Discover that a nursery beast has begun responding to distant calls beneath the ice.
• Prepare for the returning migration and help nursery staff ready the young for their journey.
• Your idea here!

The Returning Migration

As the winter cycle nears its end, the snow beasts begin responding to changes beneath Frostveil.

Adults gather near seasonal routes. Young beasts grow more attentive to distant sounds and vibrations. Nursery staff begin preparing those returning to the wild.

Characters may help observe the migration, identify suitable routes, escort groups, prepare supplies, or investigate discoveries exposed by the shifting ice.

IC Event Notes

Head to the Events Board and create a new thread with [Frostfair] in the subject line. Each pair or group should start its own thread.

Set the Primary Location to Frostveil for festival threads. Winter-related threads elsewhere should use their actual location.

Once you've posted, you can claim reputation through Share a Winter Story, claim writing badges on Passport & Rewards, and wordclaim as usual for Snowflakes.

Winter Reputation

Each registered character can earn three types of reputation, through exploration decisions and by sharing IC posts.

Reputation	Examples
Nice	Generosity, helping others, sharing warmth, or making someone's winter easier.
Naughty	Mischief, pranks, playful trouble, or taking a less considerate approach.
Wonder	Curiosity, discovery, unusual experiences, and appreciation of the season's mysteries.

Each type is tracked separately, so earning Naughty never reduces Nice, and a character can build all three.

Share a Winter Story

Use Share a Winter Story on the hub to claim reputation for an IC post:

1. Select the registered character who took part.
2. Paste the direct post URL.
3. Choose the reputation that fits what happened.
4. Add an optional explanation and submit.

Each accepted submission awards 2–5 points in the chosen reputation. A post can be claimed once for each registered character who took part.

Explore Frostfair

Choose a registered character and a destination to begin an automated outing. Each outing contains two or three connected decisions, and later developments follow from your choices.

• Each outing uses one exploration ticket.
• Tickets are shared across all your registered characters.
• New tickets arrive weekly, and unused ones carry over until the event ends. The exploration page shows your available tickets and when the next allotment arrives.
• If you leave mid-outing, your progress is saved. Finish it before starting another.
• Every decision awards reputation immediately, and completing an outing can reveal discoveries or award a find.
• Outings don't require an IC post, though they can inspire one.

Choose the actions that suit your character. You can help someone at one stage, investigate something curious at the next, and cause a little trouble before heading home.

Destinations

• Frostveil — Upper Commons: Festival encounters among the market stalls, gathering places, Iceworks, and Snow Nursery.
• Northwest — Aurora Snow
• Northeast — Suspended Snow
• Southeast — Seafoam Flurries
• Southwest — Glassfall

Each regional phenomenon is described under Winter Across New Ognos.

Your Winter Passport

Each registered character's passport records their completed outings, regional discoveries, and snow-beast encounters. Explore all four regions to discover their winter phenomena, and keep an eye out for all six snow-beast species. Passport entries come only from outings.

Snow Beasts

Six species of snow beast can be encountered on outings, and each encounter is recorded in your character's passport. Young beasts can also be visited IC at the Snow Nursery.

Species	Appearance & Natural Capability
Rimehorn	A woolly, six-legged beast with translucent horns containing drifting snowflakes. Branching frost from its horns creates small shelters and windbreaks.
Snowmorrow	A plump, wingless dragon with velvet fur, crystalline back plates, and a curled tail. Its snow breath can be compacted into objects or loosened into powder.
Flurryfin	A hovering, plush-furred creature with four flowing fins and a fan-shaped tail. It swims through snowfall and carries small objects within its surrounding flurry.
Glasstuft	A long-eared beast with translucent limbs, fluffy shoulder tufts, and a glowing crystal in its clear belly. It temporarily makes ice transparent.
Driftskip	A fluffy creature with large hind feet, cheek frills, and three ribbonlike tails. It enters one snowbank and emerges from another nearby.
Hushcoat	A broad-faced beast with a shaggy silver-white mantle and luminous markings. It softens nearby noise and vibration.

The Winter Wish Tree

Visit the Winter Wish Tree to leave wishes, send gifts or tricks, contribute Mystery Parcels, and view your deliveries.

Leave a Wish

Choose a registered character and write their seasonal wish, shown anonymously or under the character's name. Other players can browse wishes, and you can withdraw yours at any time.

To help with someone else's wish, choose Offer help with this wish and submit an owned item or Talent, a custom gift, or a custom trick. Support reviews each offer.

Send a Gift or Trick

Send as your player account or a character, to a player or a character. You can stay anonymous or reveal who sent it.

Choose from:

• A random seasonal gift or trick: Drawn from the seasonal pool that matches your recipient.
• An existing item or Talent: Choose one from your possessions.
• A custom gift or trick: Describe your idea for Support approval.

Support reviews every gift and trick before delivery, so owned items and Talents aren't transferred right away. Track progress under Your deliveries, Your contributions, or Passport & Rewards.

Mystery Parcels

Choose one of three wrapped parcels to reveal a surprise, received by your player account or one of your characters.

• Parcel openings are shared across your account, arrive weekly, and carry over between weeks.
• The Wish Tree shows how many openings you have.
• Parcels contain player contributions or prizes from the seasonal catalog. You won't draw your own contribution.
• Revealed prizes are delivered by Support.

To contribute a parcel, choose Add a mystery parcel for someone to discover and submit an owned item or Talent, a custom gift, or a custom trick. Support reviews it before it enters the pool.

Achievement Badges

Badges track each registered character's seasonal participation. Each badge can be earned once per character. Support delivers badge prizes, which can include Snowflakes, items, or Talents.

Automatically Earned Badges

Badge	Requirement
Kind Heart	Earn Nice reputation.
Mischief Maker	Earn Naughty reputation.
Winter's Wonder	Earn Wonder reputation.
A Little of Everything	Earn all three reputation types.
A Different Kind of Day	Earn at least two reputation types within one outing.
Frequent Wanderer	Complete five outings with the character.
Winter Regular	Complete ten outings with the character.
Trailblazer	Discover all four regional winter phenomena.
Beast Friend	Encounter all six snow-beast species.
Gift Finder	Open a Mystery Parcel as the registered character.
Special Delivery	Successfully deliver an owned item or Talent as a gift from the character.
Wish Granted	Successfully deliver a contribution from the character to fulfill another character's wish.

Gift-related badges count only when the registered character is chosen as the sender or parcel recipient; activity as your player account doesn't count toward them.

Self-Claimed Badges

These badges recognize things you write or create. On Passport & Rewards, find the badge under the appropriate character, describe what happened, and optionally include a supporting link. The badge is awarded when you submit, and Support delivers the prize.

Badge	Requirement
Handmade With Feeling	Make a seasonal gift, decoration, meal, or other offering IC or through the Crafting Mini-game.
Room at the Table	Include someone outside the character's usual circle in a seasonal activity.
A Tradition of Our Own	Create or share a family, cultural, or community seasonal tradition.
Warmth Where It Matters	Provide practical cold-weather aid, such as shelter, supplies, repairs, food, or clothing.
A Little Harmless Trouble	Play a harmless seasonal prank IC.
The Scenic Route	Write about a festival journey or destination beyond the generated encounter text.
Not How I Planned It	Write about a seasonal mishap, failed plan, or unexpected change of heart.
Passing It On	Teach someone a craft, recipe, game, or tradition during the festivities.

Frostfair Trivia

Answer multiple-choice questions about Kinship's characters, bonded partners, homes, deities, and star signs. Your progress saves after every answer, so you can leave and return whenever you like.

• A correct first guess earns 2 Frostfair Tickets, or 3 for a harder question.
• A correct answer after a wrong guess earns 1 ticket. You can keep trying until you get it.
• Skipping doesn't count as a guess; skipped questions stay in the question list.
• Each question awards tickets once per player account.

Ghost Stories by the Fire

Create a story from one of the templates, write your own original story, or contribute a prompt for others to explore. Keep your stories and prompts private or share them on the community story board, where you can also read and explore other players' contributions.

Explore a Story ICly

Write an IC post exploring a saved or shared story or prompt, then submit the post link through that story's participation form. Posts of any length count, and no registered character is needed for player-account achievement credit. Each story and each post count once per player.

If a registered character took part, you can also claim Share a Winter Story reputation for the post, either through the story form or on the hub. A post already claimed for reputation won't earn it twice.

Winter Gift Shop

Spend Frostfair Tickets on Frostfair-themed prizes, including randomized prize tiers, coppers, Progression Points, pets or Companions, litter eggs or special character opportunities, equipment, and Talents. Some offerings let you request specific details; add any preferences when ordering.

Purchases go to your player account. Support prepares and delivers each order, and declined orders are refunded in tickets. Check the shop's order history or Passport & Rewards for delivery status.