How to use the new artifacts from Into the Northlands quest.

[SirRick]

If the Zargon player is lazy to place the artifacts, just put them all in the “Into the Northlands” quest.

The Longsword could be swapped out with the Ice Queen’s Spear,
The Bracers could be replaced with the Cold Iron Plate,
The Helmet could be replaced with the Spiked Shield,
The body with the Tool Kit could instead have the Horn of Command.

To justify this you could say the Barbarian elders chose their best warrior currently in the village, and gave him all the treasures and sent him off on a suicide mission to prove himself. It ended badly, so they finally decided to summon their long-errant Barbarian who became famous in the South, wandering around collecting artifacts and healing potions. Perhaps they know that Mentor is actually Zargon, but whatever their reason they wanted to try and solve the problem themselves before getting Mentor and his heroes involved.

[Kurgan]

The Elders sold the Barbarian out... after the Frozen Horror has been conquered, he has to return home and clean house!

[Alby87]

Made a deck out of them, draw out one after the "into the northlands" plus the three solo quest.

[SirRick]

The Elders sold the Barbarian out... after the Frozen Horror has been conquered, he has to return home and clean house!

This is starting to sound like a sequel to the FH pack, or it could at least be an online quest. For a single quest, the Elders know the Barbarian discovered their treachery, and hole themselves up in their fortress with their followers. The quest would have 4 or 5 boss fights, each one a separate elder, and one an emissary of Zargon who is helping them out. The mercenaries would work as the human followers, while Zargon’s emissary could have the last remaining Polar Warbears at his disposal. It would be an epic struggle with all the Arnold Schwarzenegger one-liners you can cram in.

Edit: I am actually designing this quest now. I’m using Hquestbuilder, but until the AtOH assets become available, I won’t share the final version. For now I will do what I can and use place holders until these other things become available.

[Kurgan]

Excellent. A bit like the Scouring of the Sh-- Barbarian's town.

[Kurgan]

Another, perhaps less dramatic way to introduce them is after the first of each instance...

Perhaps as a reward for defeating the first Yeti, you get the spiked shield. The Ice Queen's Spear after defeating your first Polar Warbear. The Cold Iron Plate after defeating your first Ice Gremlin. And the Warhorn of Command could be found after recruiting your first mercenary?

Or you could make it like a video game, and just have these things be "conveniently" found right before each of those instances are encountered. "you notice out of the corner of your eye an object that appears to be a piece of equipment..." "Actually it is a long lost Artifact... a Spiked Shield!" (then you open the door and see the Yeti). This might be a little easier but less satisfying than the above proposed solution.

I loved "Into the Northlands" for all this useful stuff included! It's a shame people are scalping those free cards online for ridiculous prices (whether they "made" them or just cut them out of the paper printouts provided for free at GenCon 2022).

[LucaRocks]

I'm planning on giving them away as prizes for beating ROTWL. The final WL fight will be brutal!

Can you say second WL form is a dragon??? Believe it!