From publisher blurb:
“for he had brought up that which no gusts of icy terror could quite efface ... a terrible survival dwelling on unvisited Alpine peaks”
December 1916 sees one of the bitterest winters in living memory, with record snowfalls in the Italian Alps. Conflict in the Alps is already brutal enough, but these harsh conditions make it much worse. One period estimate calculates that two thirds of casualties in the White War were from exposure and the cold, and only one third from enemy action.
The Protagonists in this scenario are a forward patrol of Alpini, the elite mountain troops raised from Italy’s Alpine communities to defend its northern frontiers against Austria-Hungary and France. They have been ordered forward at first light to reconnoiter the stalemated frontier with the Austrians, after reports of firing and explosions in some of the highest mountain ice fields. They soon discover, however, that the conflict has shaken more loose than rockslides from the ancient ice.
"The White War" is a short scenario which places a small patrol group of Italian Army personnel in an eerie and icy No Man's Land. Austrian forces have (seemingly) abandoned their posts in this remote Alpine region, after curious sounds were heard coming from the forward position several nights ago. What events transpired that made the enemy withdraw from a impassible and defensible place up on the glacier? Or is this all some kind of elaborate trap?
The scenario can be played with access to just the open-source Cthulhu Eternal World War I SRD, which (for your convenience) we've bundled with the scenario. The adventure also comes with five (optional) pre-generated Protagonists which can be used to quickly set up for play.
A NOTE ON PROTAGONIST GENDER & PRONOUNS: The set-up for this scenario presumes that the Protagonists are all members of a World War 1 era Alpine Italian soldiers. As such there is a default assumption Protagonists are male, based on the historical composition of such crews. This is not to say that the scenario could not readily be run with Protagonists from a more diverse range of backgrounds, however this would require a (probably very small) amount of effort on the part of the GM to create an appropriate circumstance for other character types to be included. We thoroughly encourage and endorse such adaptations, however!