[WFRP2e] The Saga of Jorunn - Part 1 - "That Which Remains"

Spoiler: OOC:

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It seems appropriate that Outnumbering should kick in, now.

[roll0] for Ortel to confirm, for maybe or [roll1] more damage.

After that, it's gonna be Rogvir again...

Rogvir is up to 38.

Your allies pile on their attacks, but the tension is high; you are all one bad blow away from messy death. Ortel, wheezing painful breaths, takes up his great axe and howls with bloody lips, swinging recklessly and chopping deep into the giant's forearm... a good blow, but it doesn't slow the beast down before it swings again...

"ortel, play it safe" jorunn barks, making two attacks on the giant. one misses, but the other one bites deep

[roll0]

[roll1]
[roll2]

parry

[roll3]

dodge

[roll4]

Spoiler: OOC: Rogvir's last attacks:

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On [roll0] at [roll1] for [roll2] or [roll3]
On [roll4] at [roll5] for [roll6] or [roll7]
On [roll8] at [roll9] for [roll10] or [roll11]
On [roll12] at [roll13] for [roll14] or [roll15]
On [roll16] at [roll17] for [roll18] or [roll19]

Two great blows hammer into the Vanaheimlings, throwing them off their feet and back into the snow; but perhaps by miracle of Ulric or some more local diety, none of the hits seem mortal. Not until yours.

When the last blow hammers down into the snow where you were standing, you make your move by instinct. One step on the back of the giant's fist, the next on his huge ropey bicep, until your foot slips with its movement and you go to your knee on its shoulder, within the miasma of breath that smells like the rotting, tooth-trapped remnants of his last dozen meals. Trusting the giant has the same weakpoints as a human, you lunch forward, dropping your shield to use your hand for extra stability, and ram Witherbrand into the corner of Rogvir's neck and shoulder. The arterial spray that washes out onto you is hot and bright, and the giant bellows and thrashes such that you tumble off and almost into the pit - but Byjan and Torf are there to snatch your arms and drag you back as the giant goes through his death throes. Once it is still, you are clear to retreive your blade.

"All still here?" Rogvir calls. Two of his men, and one of yours, are battered; but everyone seems to have survived. Once that seem to be the case, a slow excitement ripples through the group, and that becomes a cheer. Today, you have all plucked glory from the mouth of tragedy. Such days are worth celebration.

"ortel, take a breather" jorunn calls, moving over to check on him. after the check in, he'll head up to the den of the giant with torf and the others, looking for loot

Ortel will be alright. He might have cracked a rib - he tells you if it's broken there make be problems, but as best he can tell, his ribcage held up to the wallop he absorbed. He has the flimsy boughs the Vanaheimlings used for their trap to thank for his life being in tact; a more solid branch, or even the giant's fist, would have crushed him utterly.

After a short celebration, the Vanaheimlings get about their grisly work; chopping away at Rogvir's neck, and lashing together a large sled from branches to skid it across the snow back to their village. Torf gestures up the slope. "The way is clear. I got close enough to see the entrance to the old dwarf ruins, and hollered from there; and out he came. He will have no guards - these giants are great, idiot vagabonds, not kings with kingdoms. May the gods grant you fortune in your finding."

It's an easy enough ascent, and you clamber, with Marlene and Byjan in tow, over a ridge to see the peak of this low mountain. A dwarven hold, to be sure; a huge shelf has been cut from the stone and a small fortress built into the cleft. It's squat, square, and defensible; but you see at once huge breaches in the outer walls and places where the stone has melted and run like wax. You walk over scattered bones picked to the point of being unrecognizable in the snow on the way to the entrance way, unable to imagine an army that could lay siege to such an isolated and defensible fortress and win. When you get to the open archway, you find it is not quite open - a massive iron portcullis has been broken and twisted inwards hundreds of years ago by a massively powerful blow, and the tormented metal has since rusted and frosted over. Marlene lights a torch, and you proceed inside together cautiously...

Spoiler: OOC:

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Give me three search rolls. No time pressure and you have help, so +20 to each of them.

jorunn will poke around through the wreckage, looking for things of value and usefulness

search rolls

[roll0]

The hold has been mostly picked clean over the years; but such places always have their little treasures even many years on.

Byjan spots a crack in the wall in what was once an ancient feast all; the slow rot of wood inside the stone has split the wall in a way he as a craftsman is familiar with, and levering open the face of the wall he finds a hidden coffer of some ancient dwarf's stash - a box of gold coins. Such coins are not useful currency here, but the metal itself has no shortage of value.

Marlene finds a rotting leather wrap inside of which is concealed three tough, black scales the size of her hand, each of which bears an identical, graven rune in the likeness of the dwarven script. A clear and inexplicable instinct tells you this is not just dwarven writing, but some of their magic; and a dwarf could tell you the nature of such things... but they may take offense to you having them, certainly.

You, in your personal search, find the ruins of what must have been in ancient times a set of massive, building-sized brewing tanks for the dwarves to make their much vaunted ale. Now broken, aged and decrepit, not even the smell of the old drop lingers in this place. Still, you follow a hunch and climb up the wreck, and fish around in between the ruined tanks to discover and pull out an oddity of dwarven make - bundled leather you strip back to find a beautifully preserved, silver book. Its pages are bright, unstained squares of silver one hand long and high, and they are bound together on rings of gold down one side, with a gilded frame denoting the front and back covers. Given that the pages are an eight of an inch thick, there are only twelve pages in the lot; but it clearly has some kind of wonderous significance, and perhaps prize value. The writing inside is all carefully graven dwarven, with occasional diagrammatic designs that mean nothing to you.

Spoiler: OOC:

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Well, that's three successful search rolls, lol.

You find:
1* Good Quality Small Wooden Chest with 5d10 Dwarven Gold Coins.

3* Mysterious Graven Black Scales

1* Dwarven Platinum Book.

At the terminus of your search, you find where the giant once slept - a place that was once a throneroom, now with a heap of detritus packed in one corner as a makeshift mattress. You are drawn by two things - the smell of the giant's sweat pervading the room, and the sound of two voices bickering.

There are two dwarves in this room. Obviously not the old owners of this place, but some explorers, perhaps, who ran afoul of the giant. They are trussed up, with their bodies in sacks cinched around their necks uncomfortably, leaving them with their heads poking up over the drawstring ridiculously. Those sacks are hung on sconces fifteen feet up a sheer wall, and the dwarves - one with short coppery hair in a fluffy mess, the other with a fantastic, if now somewhat crooked, mohawk of gold - are none too happy about it, but are jolted by your arrival.

They start shouting to you in dwarven, until Marlene calls to them in Reikspiel, and they switch up to be comprehended. The mohawked dwarf hollers.

"Ay! Northman! Northman, get us down! I've got to show that giant his own guts, I do!"

"giants dead. i killed him with some help" jorunn calls back in reikspiel. he'll look around for a ladder, or something to get the dwarves down with, preferably having them not break a leg, as that would be bad

"...What?!" The mohawked dwarf and his companion shout at the same time; the first sounding annoyed, the second relieved. The copper haired captive adds: "Well, thank the bloody ancestors; I thought we were fodder for sure. Help us out Northman - dwarves honor their debts!"

You look around for options; but there seems to be no ladders, or obviously useful tools. The giant has hung the dwarves here like bags of onions in a larder at a comfortable height for himself, with no thought for how they might otherwise be gotten down without him. There are plenty of small peices of masonry scattered about; the giant's bed is a heap of furs and old tapestries bunched and stained to make a mashed-flat mattress; and there is the odd piece of decaying wood furniture which you would not trust to hold much weight. Aside from that, there is only a difficult climb and a problem that may require your full wits before you.

"spread out, see if you cant find a long, unrotted length of wood, maybe ten feet in length" jorunn says. "im gonna try something i heard from a traveler once"

assuming they find one to suit the build, he will try to pole vault up and cut the ropes holding them

jorunn, after the pole is leaned against the sconce, will shimmy up the pole and attempt to cut the drawstring. he'll then grab and toss the bag onto the giants mattress in hopes that it will cushion the fall

[roll0]

It's an awkward operation, but you pull it off; once you shimmy up, hang off the sconce with one hand and handle a knife with the other, Byjan and Marlene rush to grab bundles of the sweat-stained furs the giant had been sleeping on to make a cushion for the coming fall. One after the other, you cut the dwarves down; they drop, and fall into Marlene and Byjan's combined grip as well as the mattress to slow their impact further when they blow through...

Spoiler: OOC:

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[roll0] for Othskin
[roll1] for Athrangund

... And both come away with bruises, but nothing broken. You drop down to them, still trussed up in their sacks to the chins.

"You've done us a good turn, Northman!" The mohawked dwarf grumbles, "Now let us out of these sacks!"

Spoiler: OOC:

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You could!

"before i do that, do i have your word as dawi that you will not harm me or mine?" jorunn says. assuming they agree, he'll untie them one at a time, and let them stretch. he will keep a firm eye on them, and see if he can get their story out of them

fyi, are these norse dwarves or empire dwarves?

"Yes, yes of course ye do! Grungi's sake, I can't feel me bloody feet!" Hastilly agrees the copper haired dwarf; his mohawked companion somewhat more hesitant. But he looks to your companions, past you and Byjan, and to Marlene - and having what sounds like a native Reikspiel speaker in your group seems to add needed credibility to your honest. "Fine, I give me word - contingent on finding no madness or betrayal in ye or yer band. I'll not be bound to serve evil reprobates by my word, or by chains!"

Not being an expert on dwarves yourself, you cannot tell whether these are 'norse dwarves', the harsher, more isolated hold dwellers from Karaks in Norsca, or dwarves from the greater Karaz Ankor diaspora in the mountains around the Empire of Sigmar. But their conversation reveals the answer as they wait to be freed.

"Wretched bloody peninsula - the whole thing ought to sink into the sea. This whole expedition was madness, and I oughtn't to have let ye talk me into it, Athrangund!", gripes the copper haired dwarf.
"Damn your whinging lips, Othskin - I didn't hold a knife to yer throat; you could be warming your hands indoors back in bloody Zhufbar if ye wanted, but I made ye and offer and ye took it and I'll not be made to feel bad of it!"

"thats all fine" jorunn says, moving to loosen the drawstrings. he'll keep his hood up, and generally see what happens next. "we mean you no harm, if'n you mean us none"

he'll let the dwarves relax, and then ask what they were looking for

They appreciate their freedom immensely, and it goes a long way to thawing their distrust of you an yours. Inside the bags, their bodies are bound up in long, clumsy but effective loops of rope with hasty knots; tight enough to leave bruised, black grooves in their skins which they tenderly prod at as their circulation returns.

Othskin, it turns out, is a journeyman brewer and amatuer cartographer. His companion, Athrangund, is a dwarven 'trollslayer', which is some manner of dwarf berserker by your limited ken of such people - though a warrior who claims to be able to find and kill trolls competently enough to take that mantle must be quite fierce indeed. They both speak Reikspiel with their heavy dwarf accents (leaving Byjan out of the loop somewhat, as that language is unknown to him; Marlene keeps him catching up); the more animated they get, the more their 'you' and 'your' become 'ye' and 'yer'; but it's all comprehensible enough.

"Othskin here had come into possession of a map used by a previous expedition to this place - Highhold, a once proud if modest part of the dwarven empire." Modest does not describe these huge vaulted halls, these mighty stone houses - but apparently, it does for dwarves. "The rumors were that a giant haunted the halls, and I happen to be in the market for slaying such a creature, or dying in the effort. And Othskin had his own designs to find the lost secrets of Highhold ale, here amongst the broken brewery. Cursed luck when the giant found us and did not even deign to kill us, but snatched us up and asked at great strain of its brain about us and our plans! He wanted Othskin to make beer for him - and I admit he would have eaten me if not for Othskin bargaining with him for cunning promises, hoping for a miracle."

"Ye're not the miracle I had pictured, Northman," Othskin says, rubbing his bruised wrists and looking around the room, picking through the mats and furs but finding none of his lost possessions "...But I'm not too proud to take the one I'm offered. Thank ye. But it seems out effort here has been in vain. The ancient brewery stills are here, but all treasures have been picked away; and there is no scroll or scrap or book of their operation or recipes to be found."

jorunn will consider for a second, and then ask "if perchance the book could be found, would there be some benefit to my warband?"

he'll wait and read the dwarves faces, seeing what they think

Both dwarves react to this oblique suggestion. Athrangund narrows his eyes and frowns - he has just forfeit his ability to make threats of his own, so he can't try to shake Jorunn down. Othskin looks warily hopeful, but somewhat outflanked. If he came here with possessions, the giant has done away with them - perhaps tossed them off the mountainside. With just the clothes on his back, he can only make promises.

"Well, erm... no immediate benefit to speak of. But - but you'd be entitled, certainly, to the first barrel of Highhold ale when it's brewed for the first time in centuries. I err - know you northmen tend to be mead drinkers, but I assure you, you can be saved away from the Norscan honey-water!"

If they take the book back to Zhufbar to make this brew, wherever that is, it would be quite a venture to get a barrel back to you. But that's a them problem, not a you problem. If you give any credibility to dwarven honor, they would be obliged to try very hard.

jorunn will proffer the book he found to othskin. "it's more use to you than to me" he says. "all i ask is you get me a barrel, and take the first swig in my honor"

with that, he will pat othskin on the shoulder and let them talk

Othskin is astonished. "It's - Valaya's Skirt, it's the Master Manual!"

The dwarves huddle and paw over the platinum book for a while, and you and your companions watch them. "Funny people, dwarves," Marlene remarks quietly. "...but they do know beer."

Athrangund stalks about the room looking for some kind of weapon, and ultimately settles on the shaft of wood you used to get them down. He snaps it in half, borrows Byjan's knife, and shaves the ends of both halves into spearpoints; apparently, good enough for their purposes for now. They take a few of the least offensively giant-sweat-stained furs from the heal and tie them around themselves in preparation for the journey back down the mountain. Marlene tries her luck, showing one of the rune marked scales to Othskin. He squints at it, and purses his lips - he would prefer to have it, but can hardly decry you the right to keep such things after giving up the book.

"I'm no runesmith; but 'tis a Rune of the Furnace, I can tell without scholarship. Snap the scale in your hands, and for the pass of a minute, fire and flame will hold no menace to you. If I were you, I'd keep it safe." You have three such scales in your warband's possession, you know; three instances of a minute of immunity to flame sounds like a decent treasure to have in the back pocket.

"Right. Well. We will stay here for the night, out of the cold," Athrangund decides, "hunt some much needed food, and boil some snow for water. You can stay if you like, I'll not raise objection; but we've not much to share, indebted though we are." It's not a bad plan. Ortel needs rest and recovery, certainly. Marlene manages to bring in a few buzzards to roast, for the evening; they are already gathering at the giant's corpse for a feast of their own. Othskin warns they won't be pleasant eating, but if they're properly gutted and if you really roast the hell out of them, it'll kill all the parasites; and beggars cannot be choosers in such a circumstance. You gather your party; you eat, you rest; and in the morning after, the dwarves set off back the way you came, while you and your party prepare to continue on your way to the Graeling lands.

Spoiler: OOC:

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Give me a Navigate roll. +20 for detailed travel advice previously offered!

jorunn nods and the party leaves in the morning. they walk for a few hours, before stumbling on an overturned wagon. blood is splashed liberally around the wagon, and it looks like two large beasts dished it out over whatever was inside this wagon. jorunn will look to his party, and then move to search the wagon "keep an eye out. whatever did this could come back at any time"

[roll0]

You and your companions approach the wrecked cart with caution. A huge welter of gore is frozen into the snow before it; the remnants of what ever beast had been pulling it, before this fight broke out.

"...An ox, I think. Like the ones Haggur had; though just the one. Or... Er... Well, none now, I suppose. It's hard to tell." Marlene peers at the blood in the snow, scratching her head. "Looks like the driver of the cart took off... this way." She tracks her eyes over almost vanished prints, and points off to a thicket of dark trees west of the road leading up the flanking mountain slope. "...While... something tore into the ox. I see paws, and claws, and cloven hooves. It's a mess. But it looks like two fighters. I don't see much ox left, so they must have... carried it off, or eaten it, or something. Maybe they worked out their differences in the end - but they both headed off the other way, away from the trees." She gestures in the opposite direction. A path about ten feet wide curls around the face of the mountain that way, away and out of sight.

If the cart driver survived, he might know what's going on more than Marlene can tell; but going that way will put whatever did this at your back, and expose you if it, or they, are coming back for a second sniff at the wreck. You could follow the monsterous tracks around the mountain, which would atleast prevent them, or it, from sneaking up on you; but you'd be doing so without any information the possible witness might provide.

Or you could carry on your way - this is, after all, not necessarily your problem.

"lets check wherever the wagon driver went" jorunn says. "follow the trail, keep your head on a swivel, and be prepared for anything"

with that, he lets marlene lead, and takes the last position in the trail, senses straining

Your warparty stalks into the nearby wooded area, carefully picking through and seeking signs of the cart's operator. It's only a couple of minutes work before you find him - dead, curled up in the crook of a tree's coldly cradling roots. His furs, and the skin underneath, are a bloody ruin; the trail of gore left by his escape covered by a light snow in the interum.

"...Slashing claws; like a bear, or great cat..." Marlene speculates as she looks over the poor fellow, "...But this looks like a goring here; like a bull's horn. What creature could do such a thing...? A mutant creature, perhaps. Your first instinct might have been right - perhaps we should just push on and hope to get distance before it, or they, get hungry again."

The cart driver doesn't have much in the way of worldly goods. A small hand-pick for breaking ice and depending himself, never drawn in the fight. A petty few Graeling tattoos marking him as a common man, not a bondsman. His cart had been empty - perhaps he was selling the cart itself, since he has no money to be buying goods as a trader. He seems, to all the world, to have been a man alone in the world, set upon by mutants and killed - very much like you almost were, if not for a slightly more favorable turn of fate.

Ortel, of course, wants to bury the poor man. For a priest of a warrior god, his compassion is growing by the day for the stricken wanderers of this frozen land. Marlene would prefer to push on; Byjan's interest, as always, is agreeing with your call, be it avenging this stricken stranger or leaving him be with the briefest blessing of the foreigner's god.

"agreed" jorunn says. "lets bug out and move on"

You put the grisly scene behind you, and hustle on at double time for a half hour before you are sure nothing is pursuing you. Nothing gives chase. The evening moons light up the mountainscape beyond your campfire and you keep watch, but no clawed and horned spawn comes to find you. Ortel despairs of it, a little; there is precious little to 'like' about this life, but he seems to like the least the triviality of death in these wild places. But he has made a commitment to you, and seems still willing to honor it, despairing or not.

A few hard going days of travel through the mountain pass leaves your arms and legs aching from the strain of the scramble over hard ground; but soon you start seeing the signs Haggur mentioned. A party of young Vanaheimlings on a cliff above and across from you shimmy their way on a narrow ledge around toward a jutting cavemouth - boys, on their Provings. The smallest of them waves at you, and pumps his fist in the air - some kind of regional blessing of 'good hunting' to you, you suspect. Giving the gesture back, he seems satisfied, and they go on their way.

Later in that same day you find the mountain stone begins to shift color- you are changing ranges from the Vanaheim mountains into the Helspire range; and the next day, after a sharp descent, you come to a great frozen river that must, in warmer months, run free from the mountain. Here it is locked rigid, and no threat to your passage; but you begin crossing it with some caution, all the same.

And just as well. Half way across, your eyes strain and focus to discover movement. Just below the surface of the ice, a figure in slick black steel cracks up and through the river's crust, and rises slowly, almost mechanically, to his feet. He is not wet; he has broken out from some deep space far below, tunneling up through a dozen feet or more of ice. Black iron spikes festoon his armor; but a golden shackle around one ankle leads back into the icy tunnel beneath, where it is pulled taut preventing him from moving more than a few feet from his place of escape.

From a helm flanked by two great horns, eyes that trail blue smoke peer at you; and he plunges the tip of a massive great sword into the ice beside him, leaning on it as you gaze on from a distance.

He seems to be waiting for you. But he also seems to be chained to the hole he crawled out of; and does not seem rabid or wild in demeanor. The chaos knight of the river watches, and waits.

For once, your companions have no opinions on what to make of this.

jorunn will motion for his warband to stay back as he approaches the chaos knight, staying out of blade range. "hail stranger" he calls. the chaos knight will stare impassively, and gravels out. "beware the crossing of the rivers, and the she-bear howls at the moon." jorunn will nod, and eyeball the chain

Spoiler: ooc

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does the chain look breakable, and should i break it?

The cryptic warning offers only more questions - this river, or the river Kaasmoas, to which you know you are eventually bound to follow then to the Graeling Moot? And the she-bear - a reference to Bjarna? Or the beasts you just bypassed? He does not offer much illumination.

He does, however, spontaneously offer some illumination about the chain; the knight seeming to gain some coherance and focus as the frost shakes off him.

"Lo, warrior - have you might and pity? Here stands a brave champion, Artuas, who sought the favour of the gods he knew, but earned the ire of those he did not. Many are the gods and their servants. Rashly, I made a vow that my valor was the equal to all challengers; but struck down, my defeator gave me not a warrior's death, but a curse. Tethered here, I am, by her god; until I am slain once again. To the slayer goes the glory, and my treasures - they are no used to me, un Old Jormung's belly, but at least it is warm therein."

Ortel, your bound holy-man, marvels at this. "...Bound beyond death by a divine chain - some kind of revenant. His armour and armament seem mighty - all the more reason not to fight him, but leave him to his damnation. And if one day you feel strong enough to overpower such a warrior for the glory of it... Well. You know where to find him."

The deathless warrior radiates misery, loneliness.. and physical power. And if there is any breaking that chain, it is done by breaking the curse, and the slaying of that knight. But there must have been many who fought him before, thinking such things; and their bones must be at the bottom of the icy pit from which he crawled.

Spoiler: OOC:

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Artuas the Damned is a powerful opponent, and my yield powerful rewards. You can risk attacking him now, if you want - but he will remain on ice until you are ready to test him, if not.

Otherwise, I can move you along to your next location!

"i shall return to slay you one day" jorunn calls, moving past the revenant. him and his warparty walk for another few hours, but as night starts to fall, a large fiery comet sails overhead, impacting into the distance with a large rumbling crash sound. as the party settles down for the night, the beat of drums is heard in the distance

The frozen knight releases a baleful sigh, and crawls back into the pit of ice from which he crawled out earlier. Marlene nods, approvingly - she had no desire to be even nearby such a fight, even if it meant, theoretically, the early release from her contract.

* * * * *

The shooting star's impact, and the subsequent drumbeats, all happen in the far distance; and your part keeps their eyes and ears open in caution in case either causes ongoing complications. But neither do; after first watch in the evening, the drums stop, and there is no threat finally offered to your warband. But in the morning, that is the direction you are bid to go. What you come upon is a scene of carnage; two dozen Graeling bodies twisted and cut down in some monumental battle here, with a wardrummer one of the last to fall. They seem to be a warparty mustered from one of the nearby villages sent to investigate the cometfall; but whatever emerged from the huge scar in the permafrost did so with viciousness and murder in its limbs; attacking with some manner of bladed weapon that burns as it cuts, based on the injuries you see. All that remains in the crater, which is haloed in the region by trees flattened outward for half a mile around, are the shattered, faintly glowing shards of a man-sized egg; the shell now a ruin of sharp shards of radiant green stone.

"Wyrdstone!" Ortel warns, making a sign of religious significance lost on you, with one hand. "I know the tribes of Norsca do not fear such things... but I warn you, Jorunn, we ought to leave it alone. Let the local tribes come and snatch it up for all the wealth it may bring them; it is not worth the dooming that comes with it."