But ultimately that only amounts to background flavor. It doesn't stand on its own. Any adventure where the party just happens across them would play the same with a different wacky village swapped in their place. It needs hooks and conflict.
A decade or two later I'm reading Legacy of the Bieth's Tundra Encounter Table, and I pause at the Neanderthal entry. Why does a fantasy game have Neanderthals? A realistic lense would show little difference between them and modern humans, perhaps less even than between Wood Elves and Drow; a mythologized lense would surely transform them into trolls and ogres. So what are they, here? People whose skin doesn't fit quite right, and who aren't quite as good at being people?
Then I see the entries for the polar owlbear and the orca with legs. Looks like bears wearing the skin of other animals. So: that's the Neanderthal too. The gods taught cave bears how to skin-walk and now there's these bears and they don't know how to get along with all these invasive, johnny-come-lately humanoids.
Yes, I know I'm a little late in realizing this.
Revised Winter Lands Encounters Table
- Keep the Prey (sabre-tooth rabbits, huge deer, Baluchitherium) and Predator (Wolves, Woolly Lion, Giant Walrus, Remorhaz) entries, with a 1/6 chance that it's the pet, herd or guardian of [roll again].
- Assume all People (Trolls, Nagas, Humans, etc) are nomads and prefix "Frost," "Polar," "Arctic," "Winter," "Ice" or "Snow" to their race, except for a 1/6 chance that they're foreign and lost (abandoned and alone, purposely questing alone, or an organized train of sleighs/sledges).
- Add Psychic Warrior (Githyanki/Githzerai Warlocks, if Gith were Predators from the Alien/Predator co-franchise) to the table, with a 1/6 chance of riding invisible flying manta rays.
- Condense the spirit entries into a hungry, oversize skeleton of [roll again] which will usually manipulate sound and silence to separate party members in the dark or a blizzard and lead them into deadfalls or ambush, but has a 1/6 chance of conveying a divine vision instead.
- Replace all remaining entries with a bear skin-walking as the local People, with one additional skin (owl, orca, mammoth, platypus), and a 1/6 chance of being escorted by [roll again] (if People, they are devoted cultists; if Prey/Predator, they are temporary familiars).
- Add a new entry for navigating when lost: that landmark (river, rocky hill, treeline, village) you thought you'd never see again; the wrong landmark; your own trail... I guess with a 1/6 chance of happening on a hidden and useful location the party isn't otherwise aware of.
The bears would have an additional table for what they're doing, or will try to do.
- Regally aligning large mystic stones.
- Embarking on a poorly-planned expedition against a settlement.
- Wandering around calling for whatever spirits the local People favor or fear.
- Identify something every party member has, and deprive them of it.
- Negotiate the surrender and execution of the party.
- Interrogate the party about the location of another "neanderthal."
- Lure or drive the least robust party member off into the wilderness to die.
- Learn a spell from the party and use that spell against them.
- Charm the party's champion into slaughtering the most hated local People.
- Challenge the party to a death duel in whatever the party is best at.
Though really, any mildly hostile people they encounter could probably use the same table to establish basic motivation; they just wouldn't commit with the same zeal and unsophistication.
