The Frozen Crown
"…we sent one thing ahead of you, and we left one thing behind — at ____ [signal lost]" — the Last Transmission · 31% decoded
A large, open sandbox for Wanderstar, set in the Driftmarch — a frontier sector of the Shore. A moon-sized Sleeper ark, the Concord, has drifted in dead and full of the frozen; the crew comes into a contested claim on it, and every power in the sector means to take it. There is no scripted plot and no ending written in advance: the sector generates its own pressure, and the campaign is what the crew makes of the ark — a salvage payday, a kingdom of the woken, or a crown they may or may not take.
In the Sunless Saga (WC03 of four). The frozen crown — the widest sky the saga reaches: a sector entire, and the largest thing ever to drift into it. The last and largest of the four-part arc (WC00 → WC01 → WC02 → WC03), and complete on its own.
Built to run a year or more of regular play, with recurring room for every pillar — personal combat, ships and the jump, trade, salvage and exploration, intrigue and investigation, and faction politics. Everything is assembled from the core rulebook and cites the owning chapter at every roll, with one flagged, optional exception: the base-building subsystem for rebuilding the ark (file 03a). Runs GM-led, co-op, or solo (Rulebook Part X); party-agnostic, with the canon pregens aboard the Long Account as a fast-start option.
Reading order§
Read 00 and 09 first; everything else is reference you reach for as the crew turns toward it.
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| 00 — Campaign Frame | The whole campaign at a glance: premise, the "now," the Concord, the seven powers, the metaclock, the on-ramps. Read first. |
| 09 — Running This Sandbox | The GM's how-to: the weekly loop, the faction turn at scale, the phases, downtime, solo/co-op. Read second. |
| 01 — The Driftmarch (Region Gazetteer) | The ten systems and the board the campaign plays across. |
| 02 — Faction Dossiers | The seven powers, their clocks, and the inter-faction map. |
| 03 — The Concord | The ark itself: zones, the cryo-decks, the dark decks, the question of the crown. |
| 03a — Restoring the Concord | The optional base-building subsystem (the one place new rules are added). |
| 04 — The Node Web | The relationship graph — people, objects, and the leads that tie it together. |
| 05–08 — Scenario Waves | Twelve ready-to-run situations: Salvage & Ships, Trade & Pressure, Intrigue & Investigation, Combat & Heritage. |
| 10 — Handouts & Leads | Player-facing documents, a rumor table, and three ways to open play. |
Running the campaign§
- Start with one thread. Pick an on-ramp from file 00 (broke at Saltgate, aboard the ark, or working for a power), hand the players one document and one rumor from file 10, and let them pull.
- Run the faction turn between sessions. A few minutes with the Appendix A4 checklist (file 09) keeps the seven powers and the metaclock moving on their own — the sector lives whether or not the crew is looking.
- Reach for a scenario when its pillar fits. The waves (05–08) are modular and reorder freely; each hangs on the nodes and clocks already in play.
- Solo or co-op? Use the Part X procedures (Rulebook Ch 42–45) and the A4 solo/co-op sheet; every scenario carries a GM-less note.
The Frozen Crown is WC03 in the campaigns line, and stands entirely on its own — it assumes no prior campaign and sits beside the canon worlds of Rulebook Ch 30, not on top of them.