Agdu-Ise, the Halls of Frost, the farthest north of the Agdu, reflects the nature of the Frost Giants: three peaks, huddling together in the eternal blizzard, into which are carved the hideaway lookouts of those hardy survivalists. The Frost Giants wander north into the ice of the polar caps for the summer months in Endon, but in the winter the Halls of Frost are perfect for them. 

The Halls of Frost are made of a combination of stone – carved from the very mountain peak, as all of the Agdu are – and the near-mythical material, vetrarstal. Also called cold-iron or the winter metal, vetrarstal is believed to be a type of frost, packed and pressed for thousands of years in the presence of magic. There are so few examples of cold-iron that its properties can only be guessed at, but the Sword of the Winter King was made of vetrarstal, able to freeze whomever it touched. Such a property makes the walls of the Halls of Frost more than a mere fortification: they are a weaponised defence as well. 

Few outsiders ever venture to the Agdu-Ise; for few could withstand that terrifying cold. But it was not built to be hospitable. The Frost Giants and the Stone Giants share a philosophy that the Fire Giants and the Storm Giants do not – their cities are fortresses. Should any army wash against the walls of the Agdu-Ise, they will suffer the true meaning of cold. 

Migratory Custodians

For six months of the year, the city on the three peaks stands almost empty: the Frost Giants make the long march up to the polar ice, for the night which lasts for months, but they always leave a guard. Mostly the custodian left behind is a Frost Giant, but occasionally a goliath hoping to earn their name will volunteer for the duty.

This relaxed guard has sometimes fooled a hopeful thief into making the attempt to break into the Hall of Frost, but there are more than Frost Giants  guarding those peaks, and the way to them is perilous indeed. 

Waysteppers of the Wanderers

There have been few giant children in the last few centuries – their people know that their time on this world is coming to an end – but the relics of those times still exist, kept safe in their fortresses in case of need. In the youth of the world, when the Frost Giants making their way to the polar caps numbered in the hundreds, or even thousands, the young giants struggled to stay apace with their elders. So the Frost Giants appealed to the invention of the Fire Giants, who made the waysteppers.

The waysteppers, kept in the armoury at the lowest level of the Icetower, consist of a pair of bronze bands, hinged to clasp around the upper arms of a young giant. Tales of the use of the waysteppers have died out in the last few hundred years – perhaps due to the efforts of the Frost Giants themselves, who responded with force and without pity to the foolhardy thieves who attempted to break into the Icetower. 

Libraries of Ancient Lore

Ice preserves, or so it is said. Ice keeps safe from the summer all of the fragile dwellers in the cold. Creatures from long hence are said to have been found trapped in the ice for millennia. And in the glaciers above the mountain passes, it preserves the Frost Giants themselves. 

But the Frost Giants are charged with another duty: they preserve, encased in crystals woven from the frost, the very history of the giants and the Elder Giants. Down at the deepest levels of the Icetower, the fortress delved into the taller peak of the Agdu-Ise, a latticework of ice crystals tells the stories of the oldest race left alive.