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

[MrAbdiel]

The Saga of Jorunn
Part 1 - "That Which Remains"


Prologue - 5 Marks

You became a man the day your father died.

The events were not related; not by skeins woven by men, at any rate. But the gods, fickle and sometimes cruel as they are are not prone to gentleness when they move in the lives of mortals. Men may build on sand and stone; and the savage sea rises and smashes down all that is not well founded. That which remains is what is destined; that which is lost to the sea was destined not.

Your thirteen winter was approaching. You had begun to mature before many of your peers, and enjoyed a defacto ruler status among them as a result of your size; but now most had caught up to you, or near enough. There was enough strength in your arms and legs that you felt like a warrior, but custom forbade anyone taking you seriously in such a manner until you had walked through the Seax-dalen - the Valley of Knives.

You remember it well. A ritual with many similarities to the other blooding rituals of other clans, and tribes. Your tribe, Bjornling, has its throne and King in the city of Skjold, at the far south western tip of the Norscan peninsular. Your Clan, Osgaer, is part of Bjornling; and your village, Urjarki, is one of four costal villages that host the bulk of your clan's warriors. All four - Urjarki, Loergen, Nathvir and Vaelmar - participate in the Seax-dalen ritual. Before the ritual day, hunters from all four tribes harass and chase hostile beasts into the calderra in the forest clearing with the jagged dark rock edges like great teeth, or knives. The only passes easilly in or out are watched to keep the creatures within. Sometimes, odious troublemakers from the villages are hobbled and tossed in, too - one more beast, among beasts.

All the young men of the villages, and those handful of young women who think themselves strong enough to run and fight and die with men, enter the Seax-dalen. No one may leave without a trophy of a kill. Typically, these kills are the pelts of the confused, cut and starving wolves and snowcats driven into the crater before the ritual. But often enough, they are the skulls of the outcasts thrown in; and just as often, just as encouraged, a child will bring back the head of one of the other aspirants from another village. All the mothers of Clan Osgaer hate this day; the fathers both dread and look forward to it. An unworthy son will die, and not be thought of again. A worthy son will emerge, blooded and victorious. Your father, Aegir Vulbrakker, had much hope for you. He pressed your shield into your hands, the morning before; and instructed you not to take the sword with which you had been practicing, but a hatchet instead used for the logsplitting for the fire.

"The axe will fare you better, out there. Better for pulling shields; better for the task. I have not made you cut firewood all these years because I am too lazy to keep my own hearth warm!" He smiled, when he said this. It was the last of its kind. Your mother had called you Jorunn, after her grandfather. And after this trial, after this test, you would be a man, and your father would give you your second name, and you would no longer be the boy Jorunn, but the warrior Jorunn Aegirsson.

You did not know that when you returned from the trial, he would be dead; and no man of your family would be present to give you your blood-name. All you knew was the fire in your blood, and your thrill to be permitted, encouraged, demanded to take life and spill blood for the first time. You knew you and your clan-kin, Aran, Byjan, Harald, and the girl warrior Ylva would honor your pact to each other and watch each other's backs. None of you would leave before the others were blooded and ready. The boys of the other villages might try; but you would give their eyes to the crows, and livers to the hounds, and guts to the eagles, and tongues to the serpents. By bloodshed, do the gods make known their will.

How naive, so young, to think the gods felt any need to make their will known at all.

Spoiler: The First Mark

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Alright, my man Bramble; you're up. How does the 12 year old Jorunn fare, in this Hunger-Games-esque gauntlet of worthiness? Does he get isolated in a brawl and have to fight on his own? Does he stick with his team and deflect all comers?

Most importantly, what is the nature of his kill? Does he take the life of another aspirant child from another village? A tired and lean wolf, trapped in the calderra?
A shebear, large and threatening, that required his whole gang to fell? Write as much or as little about that as you like, and I'll show you what I mean afterwards about this being his first of five "marks"!

[bramblefoot]

jorunn and his friends entered the caldera at dawn, as was the custom. the sun crept above the horizon, and the dark pines stood like fingers against the oncoming dawn. jorunn was focused, senses straining to see and hear anything past the wind and the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. he saw a flicker of movement, and the blood surged as a hefty youth with swirling tattoos up his arms came out of the woods, howling madly and wielding a two-handed axe. this was a rival chiefs son, thrasvangr and a worthy kill

jorunn caught the axe on his shield, and buried his hatchet deep in the youths unarmored torso. the youth coughed a mouthful of blood onto jorunns face and collapsed, hands clutching at the hatchet embedded in his torso. jorunn wrenched the hatchet free as a broadhead arrow skimmed his shoulder, adding a trickle of blood to the mass of blood and bits of lung dripping down his face.

after all was said and done, jorunn was now a man, and the skull of the rival chieftans sons head was put on a spike outside the longhouse for the crows to peck out the eyes

[MrAbdiel]

It was as quick, and brutal as you were warned it would be. Thrasvangr's father, the chief of the village of Nathvir, was respected and known; a fierce warrior of whom much was expected and to whom much was owed by others in clan Osgaer. Thrasvangr himself was a third son, the two before him already grown. But this boy, desperate to prove himself, had thrown himself at you rashly. He had down so with honor - the hound barks before it bites, and so Thrasvangr's howl as he engaged you was, in retrospect, somewhat respectful. It alerted you to his attack, and also warned your friends that his assault on you was an invoked, and almost sacred thing. But all that was for naught; his axe bit your shield, your axe bit his heart, and with a face full of his blood you had your prize. Thrasvangr's son had died in the proving ritual, and his family had no right to see revenge; so you were safe from that reprisal - that was the theory, anyway.

"Glory to you, Jorunn!" Aran announces and laughs; the shorter of your friends, and the most excitable. "I had hoped for a wolf; but you have killed a rival. The gods favor you today! They favor us all!"

Then an arrow clipped you shoulder, and once again you were under attack. Byjan, taller and broader than you, catches another arrow on his shield, and spots the vector of attack - two figures in the trees yonder. "There! Cowards! Come down and fight, if you dare! Or throw down your bows, and be spared."

"I spare no one!" Ylva shrieked; lowering her voice by effort as she worked herself up and sprinted with grace and pace to the trees as arrows whipped around your group. You had your trophy; but your friends needed their own, and you stayed until it was done.

In the end, Ylva wrestled one of the boys with bows from the tree, and he broke his neck on the way down before the other fled. Aran got his wolf - a large, healthy one too, though pared away from his pack, and encircled to die by yours. Byjan lost an eye to another arrow, though its shooter was never found; your friends helped him, bloody and half blind, to a blind alley of stone where a panicked elk had exhausted itself and cut itself badly on the black stone edges of the pit. Not the most glamorous kill; but Byjan paid his price with his wound, and the beast's antlers were prize enough. Harald, the fifth of your group, did not do so well. He called out a passing group from one of the other other villagers, demanding a champion to duel him; and they sent out the only girl of their number, longspear in hand. Harald was the better warrior, of your friends; lithe and quick and deadly, probably better than you. But astonishingly, the girl was quicker; with a sword in one hand and axe in the other, he could never get around her jabbing spear guard; except the one time, when she wanted it. She let him juke around, swept up the spear's butt to strike his chin and stagger him back, then rammed its point through his chest and pulled it out again. With a spurt of blood, Harald died; and you could do nothing but allow them to take his head, just as you had taken Thasvangr's.

Byjan and Aran had to hold back Ylva. She raged and swore oaths of loathing; she had eyes for Harald, you all knew. So you won your manhood, and lost a friend; and returned before the sunset with your prizes, and Haralds things - his body left for the beasts.

Byjan became Byjan "One-Eye" Ivarsson.
Aran became Aran Hvarrsson.
Ylva become Ylva Eruksdottr.

But when you returned, your father was not waiting for you. Your mother, tearful and alone, ran to you and embraced you, bloody as you were.

"Jorunn! Jorunn, he's dead, he's dead; I feared I would lose you too!"

No warrior's death, for your father Aegir. No glory on an enemy field; but some awful, unknowable malady. Your mother Innora said he became distressed as they walked back to the encampment where the parents awaited the fate of their children. He stumbled; his left side seemed to numb, and sag; and he could not speak a word but to slur and fall, dragging her to the ground in the frozen grip of his hands. An hour later, he was gone; blue face, having swallowed his own tongue. This, while you were taking another boy's head from his shoulders in the proving place. The village wise women had no help for you - it was no poison they had seen; but as violent and short as life is in the cold lands of your home, there are some who die for no obvious reason at all. This is no comfort at all. If it had been an enemy, you might have sought to kill him; if a god had stained the ground with a cursing mark at his feet, you could atleast have loathed the god. But there was neither; just an empty space in your house where your father had been, and a head on a pike out the front - your prize, with no one to validate it. You had not been named Aegirsson. You held no standing among your people except as your mother's son; and she held only the standing as a widow, which was no standing at all.

But your friends, at least, did not abandon you. You snuck out with them one night and went halfway to the village of Loergen, and met a skin-marker they had arranged to come and mark you. Marks in your clan were not given frivolously; wise women and war leaders could command them to be given, as could prophets of the gods; but beyond that, only scars were recognized as earned marks. That's why they could not involve any of the skin-markers from Urjarki - none of them would give you such an honor-mark without being permitted. But this mercenary tattoo-artist was happy enough to do so for coin, and once marked it could hardly be taken from you. So you were not given a name, on the day you earned it; but you were the first of your friends, the first of those young warriors in your village, to receive a mark: a stylized rendering of a great axe, broken against a round shield over your heart, in the same place you had cut down Thasvangr.

A man with no name was as good as a thrall, in Norsca. But a man with a mark - well. Such a man had to command at least a little respect. Just enough, as it would turn out.

Spoiler: OOC:

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The Mark of the Shield - Gain the talent "Mark of the Shield".
It's a custom talent I'm creating for this purpose. It goes like this:

The first fate point you spend in a day to reroll a failed parry check causes the re-roll to gain a +20% bonus.

Years later, your fortune would have changed a little. The debacle about your naming was a fact of life, and you had faced prejudice and disrespect; but you had survived, and grown, and no one could deny you were a man just by dint of your physical presense, and your mark. Your mother had married again - to become the second wife of your father's brother, bringing you and your mother into his larger home in the traditional act of familial care for a dead brother's spouse. The nature of your mother's actual relationship to the man who was now her husband was mysterious to you; but best kept out of your thoughts. He treated her kindly enough, and his first wife was not overtly hostile; and that is as good as a widow and her son could ask for. Theoretically, it was within his power to name you whenever he wanted - then you could be Jorunn Ominsson, and would stand to inherit a portion of his wealth along with your newly acquired step-brothers, Garn and Vardren. But Omin's kindness did not extend that far. He did right by your mother by keeping her; and right by your father, too - Aegir's skull was cleaned and kept in his brother's personal effects, now. You wondered what it would be like to have a brother who would be so devoted to you as to take your skull, rather than leave it for the sea, or the wolves, or the worms, if you were struck down in such a way that it was in question if the gates of the the Neverwar were closed to you after death. Perhaps your friends would do so; almost certainly.

You thought of Harald, whose skull was someone else's trophy, now. What would the gods make of his spirit, then? Would he become that girl's thrall, after the Neverwar? Her prisoner? Was his spirit banished and lost forever, for his failure in life? The gods may know. They do not say; atleast, not clearly.

But you saw her again, that girl with the spear. A riotous festival of Clan Osgaer saw most of the population of all four villages come together in Vaelmar, each bringing two effigies out of the eight to worship the gods of Clan Osgaer together with a sacrifice - eight bulls, eight goats, eight horses, eight sheep, eight snakes, eight dogs, eight men, eight women. The slaughter is quick enough, as you witness it; a semi-circular ramp leads up to an earthen platform high enough for the godsmen of the village to slit the throats of the slaves one at a time and hurl them into the huge firepit. The animals are killed on the ramp too; though they are butchered and cooked for the feast, only their blood offered to satiate the gods while their flesh is left for men. There is dancing, and there is drinking, and there is no shortage of excess; couples sneak away from the festivities to secret corners of the village and the wood surrounds, to do those things drink disinhibits them to do. Others use the event as an excuse to brawl barehanded, biting and twisting arms as those around them roar and jeer.

Here, surrounded by your clansmen most of whom are not from your home village, it is a refreshing reprieve from folk knowing your unnamed state. Most of them just see a young man, feasting and revelling like so many others. Aran, still the least of your friends, has a way of cunning about him; and he flakes from your group early in the night to pursue the affections of the painted-faced girl dancers of Vaelmar.

"Lucky boy," Byjan comments, and not for the first time. Scars are not unpopular among your people, but the loss of his left eye has badly impacted his ability to fight well, and removed almost entirely his skull at hurling javelins. He has spend the last five years learning the shipright's craft, which suits him well enough; and will carry him in wealth even if he ends up doing little plundering himself. He staves off the melancholy of his half-blindness most of the time, but you know him well enough to detect it in him - and he has little stomach for festivals like these.

Ylva as not so restricted. She had grown lean, and almost as tall as you; she kept her hair short in blonde braids close to her skull. She was not being courted as a wife - no one was brave enough to countenance the possiblity - but she gained plenty of attention from the other young men, and was happy enough to entertain it with varying seasons of fickle harshness and muted appreciation. But she struggled when it came to the other villages in the clan. She never shook Harald's death from her mind, and could not trust easilly when it came to other villages like this one. You watch the sustained attempts of the local youths trying to entice her to the firelight dances. She resists; but her fortification is slowly yielding to the eroding power of mead, and attention.

But there was another warrior-woman, there; one whom you recognized all too well. When you saw her first, the bloodrush of the proving ritual and perhaps your own youth had made you fail to notice, but she was starkly beautiful; black haired, pail skinned, with a single braid falling between her shoulderblades and sharp, elegant features. She and her own coterie of lads, who orbit her in hopes of winning her attention before spinning off and settling for that of one of the freeholders' daughters, all clustered on the other side of the massive fire ritual, with the feast tables between and plenty of obstructions. These are the reasons that Ylva had not seen her. If she had, there would be blood spilled already; she killed Harald after all, duel or not. She possessed your fallen friend's skull, somewhere in her belongings wherever she was from. But she was also more fair than the other women; one of the few who could keep up with the young proven men, or exceed them as you witnessed yourself; and radiating her awareness of that fact.

Byjan dwelled in his melancholy; Ylva slowly conceded towards the advances of the local lads; and the spearwoman kept her own counsel, and that of her kinsmen. You ate, and drank, and participated in the festivities honoring the gods - but when the time came, there was only one choice where to focus your attention.

Spoiler: The Second Mark

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It's Viking Prom - time to choose your date.

Ylva has been your friend since you were children. She's a warrior like you, though not as skilled; plenty savage, fiery spirited, and blessed/cursed with a changing temperament that is not for the easily discouraged kind of friend, or companion.

The Spearmaiden you do not know the name of. You know she was a superior warrior to a friend of yours whom she slew, whom you had considered your better, in the mastery of combat. She is deadly cool in temperament, as far as you can tell - but more than this, it's hard to know. She is mysterious - but you could spend this ritual night pursuing her company, if you can pry her away from her hangers-on.

Alternatively, if you choose the noble path of the bro, your boy Byjan has a bad time at events like this and you could forsake the youthful pursuit of pretty women for the noblest alternative - the ancient fantasy viking equivalent of playing COD with a friend who could use the distraction.

How do you spend your time, this evening? If Jorunn is chasing the attention of either of the girls, how does he try to gain their attention above that of the varying competing guys? If you choose to the path of the bro, what do you do as an alternative to all this nonsense - sneak off to drink and fish, or set fire to a local shrine as a prank, or something else?

[bramblefoot]

"cmon byjan" jorunn says, taking him out to the old fishing spot on the docks where they used to fish so many summers ago. he baits the line, and they fish in silence, until there is a mighty tug on jorunns line. jorunn braces and fights the fish for what seems like an eternity, until he's able to pull the fish close enough to harpoon it. the harpoon sinks in, and together byjan and jorunn heft the fish out of the water.

the fish is more like a long eel, with a mouth full of serrated teeth, and a powerful tail that thrashes violently when hauled out. its lambent eye stays locked on jorunn until it dies. the boys together hold it until its motions cease, and they bring it back to the festival

the festival falls silent as the boys bring the fish in, and then the shaman claps his hands "you boys clearly are blessed, as i was hoping someone would bring one of those in"

jorunn and byjan are allowed to attend the shaman as he does a ritual. the ritual goes smoothly, but jorunn grunts as his head throbs for a split second, followed by a cackling in his mind

[MrAbdiel]

Byjan helped you haul the monstrous eel into the festival, and the local Vikti congratulated you and gave the sea-thing a perfunctory rebuke. You felt something like a sharp wind whip past your right ear, and the strain of pressure between your temples. Byjan asked if you were alright; and you weren't, at that moment. But the pain soon passed; and the 'fish' was carved up and added to the feast.

The eye of the eel stares at you from the flames that roast its body, and you can't help but wonder if it would have been better to let it remain riverbound - but Byjan brings you from you reverie. "You are a good friend, Jorunn." He is rubbing his bad eye as he says so; always drawn to that blinding scar when speaking of friendship. And perhaps you are; you are strong, and young, and you might have spent the evening chasing the girls of the clan and vanishing off into some cleft in the woods. But there would always be girls, and bonfire lit escapades to chase them; but the arrow that took Byjan's eye might have easily been yours, had things turned out a little differently. And clear and inexplicable instinct tells you that he will give more than his eye, before his hairs turn grey. Best to show brotherhood to him now; perhaps that would please the gods as much as a sacrifice.

"Hey. Hey, I remember you boys." The new voice comes from a grinning, blond man with a wiry build; his arms and legs covered in elaborate inking. You remember him too - Ravki, the skin-marker Byjan and the others rustled up from you from Loergen village. He's here for the gathering in Vaelmar, like you; and only a little drunk.

"That's a black loach you pulled up there. Curses the water; blesses the land. You ought to be rewarded, eh? Vaelmar will keep its bones for charms; but here... I am bored, and my woman hates me until she is two more hours drunk. Come; let me mark you for it, so the gods do not forget it when they look upon you."

An hour later, you and Byjan each have a matching mark - a black loach coiling up in an S shape, pierced through by a harpoon. Byjan gets his first, you get yours after. The mark is on your right shoulder blade, so you cannot see it - but you can see your friend's mark, and he can see yours. And that's alright. As it would turn out, he would not forget.

Spoiler: OOC:

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The Mark of the Loach. Gain the talent "Resistance to Magic".

Years passed. The time came for you to seize your birthright - not as anyone's son, but as a Bjornling, and as a man of the North. A new dragonship is finished, and the village veterans go about selecting those worthy for this new endevor; seeking youths to mix in with the seasoned killers, so the latter can learn from the former. You almost didn't make the cut - the old wardogs know the circumstances of your father's death, the lack of naming, and openly do not want you on the ship. You are a bad omen, they have decided; they will not bring curse onto their ship. Even the protestations of your step-brothers, Garn and Varden, do not move them. You have never heard them stand up for you before - relations with you in their house have been tense, though not violent; but you have lived with them long enough that they have some level of fraternal thought for you. But it's Byjan who makes the difference; Byjan, who in these years has not striven to become a warrior through training and hunting and wargames against the other villages, but a shipwright with the other dragonship makers. This is the first such boat he has worked on as a fully respected crafting hand; and he pitches a fit when you are to be excluded from the crew. He breaks the haft of his mallet in a dramatic display during an argument, throwing it to the hard earth and stomping hard on it just below the weighty head. "You fear that curse? Fear my curse instead! Cursed be the work of my hand, except that my friend Jorunn take an oar!"

It's a rash declaration, and one that will cost him esteem among his fellows; but a craftsman's curse is not disrespected. They were bound by ancient rules among the Bjornlings, who trade more with the other tribes and nations than any other northmen, who value and admire the skills of makers throughout the world, and prize them as slaves. Hushni, the stunted, dwarvish maker-god, is part of your pantheon; and his ways forbid men from using a crafter's creations in defiance of him. So there is nothing they can do, except resent him, and take you on; and you become part of the warparty.

Your destination: Truskholm, a village of the Skaelings east down the jagged coast of Norsca. The relations with the Bjornlings and Skaelings have gone up and down forever; but now they are down, and while the Skaeling ships are away attacking the coast of far Bretonnia, Bjornlings are seizing recompense for ancient slights. Sixty warriors in your clan's ship, from all four villages; ten ships from different clans in the tribe; six hundred fighting men coming to seize wealth, and set fire, and teach the vaunted Skaeling raiders their need to appease their neighbours, not just sack their enemies.

Your ship's crew receives a long blessing, in the name of the eight gods of your clan.

Hound, vicious and furious.
Crow, persistent and stubborn.
Eagle, cunning and sighted.
Serpent, wise and wicked.
Hushni, dwarvish master of made things.
Bjarna, denmother bear of the hearthfires.
Straamval, shark-toothed king of the wild sea.
Old Jormung, who is death, and the road for ancestors.

Byjan bids you farewell, from the beach; and with Ylva, Aran, Garn and Varden by your side, and fifty five others with axes in hand and blood on their minds, you row and ride the wind to Truskholm.

Spoiler: The Third Mark

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Jorunn's first raid. What's it like, for him? The target is another Norse village, with people who largely cry out in his language when he strikes them. The bulk of their warriors are away, and the defenders will be men too old, young or injured to go on the raids. Does he find he likes the despoiling, and thrives in it? Or does he find that this kind of slaughter is, necessary as it might be to his way of life, tasteless, or even morally wrong? Don't feel the need to go nuts on the gory details - we can abstract the worst of the pillaging behaviour. But a slice of his experience, using his weapons for the first time on a raiding scale, would be great.

[bramblefoot]

jorunn takes his oar well, and hangs with his friend group as they travel the waves to the settlement. It's dawn when the ships approach the settlement. the beat of the drums is fire in jorunns blood as men pull hard on the oars, pulling the shallow-drafted dragonships into the bay on beaching them on the sand. jorunn is the first over the side, sword and shield out. an arrow notches his ear, and he charges, the red rage boiling over as he bellows his devotion to the warband.

"forward brothers" he bellows stridently, hewing through an old man fleeing for his life. his blood sings as something darker calls to him. he sees a horned individual beckon as his blade becomes soaked in blood

[MrAbdiel]

It's like...

It's like hunger. It's not exactly hunger; but it's like hunger. And this raid was the first time you felt it; gnawing inside you, desperate to be slaked. And every swing of your blade that found purchase in skin slaked it, but caused it to leap up again stronger than before. Your first deadly exchange in the raid with an opponent who fought back was over quickly - a one armed man, who tried fairly to defend with his short sword - stood no chance. A vicious humour steered your actions, and you hacked off his remaining arm and let him stagger back in shock, with Aran laughing wildly at your artistry. Only when you put the man out of his misery did you realize Aran was elsewhere on the field - it had been your laughter, somehow sounding alien to your own ears.

After that, the memory of the raid dissolves into foggy red flashes. A horned man - a daemon or mutant - had called you out, and you answered the challenge; exchanging clashing blows and fighting back and forth while trading cuts, and knicks. At the end, you had disarmed each other; but you had cut your enemy so badly he was weak from bloodlessness. You seized him by the horns, and with a mighty wrench twisted off the head entirely.

Or rather, you didn't. When the haze passed, you were panting and gasping from exhaustion, splattered with blood. Your friends were around you, worried in expression, maintaining careful distance; and in your hands, you held a horned helmet that one of the Skaeling marauders might wear. And at your feet was your opponent - a boy, no more than fifteen winters into his life. How he had given, as you fought him; how mighty a champion he might have been, if he had lived. How little glory there was, in killing someone younger and smaller than you. But it wasn't your choice - you hunted all those who defended, and he came to defend. May the gods succour him; whoever he was.

"Jorunn... What happened to you? Are you... touched?"

A strange question, when you heard it. You had gone into the berserker rage - to put on the bear-pelt, as many Bjornlings did. Many of the other raiders had, too. But the rage wasn't what they meant; you didn't understand until you had seen yourself in one of the silver plates you looted from a longhouse. Guided by a clear and inexplicable instinct. You buffed the platter to a shine and gazed within. Your hair, from roots to tip, had gone snow white. Your eyebrows, your eyelashes, too. And now that you're looking, your irises too; pearl circles in the centre of bloodshot sclerae. A gift? Perhaps so. Bjarna, the den mother bear and her cubs, have snow-white fur like those ice bears that live on the northern glaciers.

Your father did not name you; but henceforth, your people claimed that the gods did.

Jorunn Isbjørnsson; Son of the Bear.

Spoiler: OOC:

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You have 'gained' the Mutation: Bizarre Coloration. Your hair and eyes are ice white.

I was nice to you on this one. Those 3d10 you rolled were the D1000 for the mutation you earned when you rolled above the 80, since all Norscans have a 20% chance to start with a mutation. I decided, since this is a solo game and a protagonist should feel good, that I would take the 3d10 you rolled and arrange them in a whichever combination produced a mutation that was interesting and distinctive, but would not preclude your ability to go places and do things in the world. You rolled a 3, 6, and 1.

So the options were...

631, what you actually rolled. Multiplication - but bursting into 10 little versions of yourself and merging together later is kind of weird as hell, and hard to take seriously.

613 - Mindless. You need a brain to be a protagonist, not to be a warpstone zombie.

136 - Bestial Appearance. Classic, but a little dull and beastmanish.

316 - Extra Limb. Too bizarre and non heroic to have a vestigial foot sticking out of your buttcheek.

361 - Fast. Would have given you an extra point of Movement, so it's just good; but frankly, too good, since I'm being so nice and giving you all these options. If it had been the number you rolled, sure; but with this second-chance draw, it's too good.

And finally, 163 - Bizarre coloration. Strictly speaking, what you rolled up was "White Face/Head", but playing a berserker mime sounded a little wonky, so I used my powers as DM to make it a little cooler. A little more Geralt of Rivia or Elric of Melniborne, a little less Marcel Marceau.



ADDITIONALLY!

You gain another Mark when you get home - a tattoo of a rampant bear, taking up most of your chest that is not occupied by the shield tattoo.

The Mark of the Ice Bear. Gain the "Mark of the Ice Bear" Talent.

Mark of the Ice Bear: If your head is fully visible, you unnerve people as if you possessed the Unsettling talent.

There were more raids, as you grew in skill and reputation. But finally, fatefully, your half brother Garn had the idea that you would so deeply regret; the idea that would get him, and so many others, killed far from home.

A dark emissary came to your village, speaking promises of glory and gold from the gods; a realm of battles to be fought against contenders from many nations, for treasures laid up in ancient tombs.

"Albion." Garn says with a grin, to your retinue and yourself. "Albion, the isle of mist and old magics. Something's going on there, now; soon there will be ships from all over the world coming to the isles. The southern kingdoms; the elves; monsters from all places coming to claim powerful treasures and win glory. We must get there before the Skaeling - we will write the names of the gods on the giant standing stones, and they will reward us!"

Needless to say, it was not so glorious. Six hundred men arrived; and no sooner did you land in a marshy harbor, but you found yourself fighting for your life not against men, but against lizards that walked as men. A hundred of you died, that day; before you could fortify your landing. Your older step-brother, Varden, was one of them; your elders cut off his head and gave his skull to Garn, for keeping and honoring. Two weeks later, a clash with a warband of dark clad elves with bladed armor went badly indeed; not only did you lose another hundred of your band, along with many of the leaders you had come to admire and learn from, but some of those were not killed in battle but carried off with hooks and nets. Ylva was lost, this way; dragged off to wherever the elves made camp, never seen again. All her screaming and uncommon woman's strength was naught, against such deadly and swift foes.

Greenskins. Dwarves. Giants. You saw, and fought, so many things; and very little of it was glorious, but frightening and desperate and unrewarding. But no enemies were deadlier than the Tileans. Surprisingly, men of a kingdom "Remas" you had never heard of were the hardest to overcome and outmaneuver. You were tasked with leading a midnight raid to burn their boats; but having succeeded, returned to your own camp to find they had run through it and burned yours. On the field, your kinsmen were superior killers and warriors; but not superior soldiers; and when the swarthy men with their terrible long spears blocked up, it was soldiering that mattered. Trying to fight up through a pikewall was like trying to work your way through the teeth of a dragon to strike at its tongue; desperate, bloody, painful work; it gave you many scars, and cost many Northmen. A steel-eyed officer on a huge and admirable warhorse trampled Garn to death, in one engagement; so much for his dreams of Albion, and glory.

You had come with your friends, and six hundred kinsmen; but later say around small fires in your broken encampment, with no more than seventy of you capable of fighting, and another seventy who would never stand to fight again. Elsewhere on the isle, the armies of the other factions were withdrawing in shame and glory, concluding their business. But with no boats to get home, and no strength to take one from an enemy, it seemed despairingly likely you would die here on this cold, boggy lump of land; a graveyard of hubris, where the gods had abandoned you.

Help would come from an unlikely place - the Tileans send an emmisary who spoke the norse tongue to call our men to speak for your warband, and you were among those to make the meeting. The Tilean - the handsome, but now hard-worn captain who had ridden down your step-brother - had a proposition for you: both you and they had been whittled down to fragements of strength. But together, with forces combined, you had the strength atleast to escape this awful island. They knew the location of a diminishing Imperial host from Nordland, with a functional ship remaining - but without your kinsmen's strength, they could not take it, and would die trying.

Tilean mercenaries, and Norscan berserkers; an unlikely alliance was struck, and the desperate gamble was run: a night raid with 65 Norsemen and 88 Tileans, to ambush and kill 344 Imperial soldiers, knights, handgunners.

If only that bloody battle had been the worst thing you had found, in Albion.

Spoiler: The Fourth Mark

Show

This is your offramp into the Mercenary career! The Tileans need your night-raiding skills to pull this off, but you also start learning from them. What part does Jorunn play, in this night raid? How close to death does he come? What does he learn from these men of the far south, that improve him as a warrior?

[bramblefoot]

jorunn did not like this, but it was escape or die here, and he always fancied living. the night battle was gruesome and slogging, but they prevailed. jorunn was in the first rank of the column, an honor rarely afforded him, and narrowly escaped death thrice. the first was when a pistol ball ricocheted off his helm, stunning him and making him stagger out of the line of crossbow fire from the imperial lines.

the second was when an imperial knight attempted to reform the line after norscans made a gap in the imperial center. a tall man astride a muddy courser thundered towards jorunn, lance couched and ready. jorunn let out a bellow, and the horse dumped the man, lance going just a hair under jorunns armpit. jorunn coolly finished the man, and stalked onwards

the third was when they made it to the ship. sailors fought bravely, but were outmatched and unready for the ferocity of the norscan berserkers. a gaffe kissed jorunns stomach, opening a small bleeding line that would heal after the battle ended

the ship was theirs and they set sail, thanking their various gods for a ticket off this rock. jorunn found tileans useful. they dont fight like norscans, but when pushed, they do good enough killing

[MrAbdiel]

It's a bloody toll you paid, but bloodier that you charged. That growling, snarling not-quite-hunger lit your veins on fire and drove you in the heat of battle into dangers your undriven mind might desire you flee from.

"Aaaugh!"

Aran, your last living friend in this wretched place, caught a halberd's point to the stomach; and having followed your primal urges and a clear and inexplicable instinct to hare off alone in the combat, you were too deeply engaged with the enemy to attend him. But the Tilean captain, Ronaldo, was there; with a flash of his blade as he rides by, he scythes off the head of the halberdier and keeps going. By the time you got to Aran, he was blacking out, but alive; and the enemy breaking around you, fleeing their camp and dooming themselves to the strange sufferings of the bogs, and the fen beasts, and the damnable Dark Emmisary's promises. When you see that craven seer again, you'd cut his head off - or so you'd sworn.

Aran slipped into an unwaking sleep. You were carrying with you now the skulls of your two half-brothers; you had no desire to carry a third. The skull of a kinsman is heavy indeed; and you fought bitterly with the handful of surviving Norscans - a little more than a score of them - to take him on the ship, rather than put him to the axe here, as a mercy. In the end, the Tileans, who now outnumbered you two to one, sided with you vocally, drawing upon the bonds forged in this strange alliance, and their southern sensibilities that did not tend towards, in their words, "killing men like maimed horses."

The ship was alien to you - you knew how to row, but even then you didn't have the accumulated, tireless rower's skill that the older warriors had. But you knew little of sails, and knots, and a brig of this size; the Tileans seemed to know what they were doing, and your unhappy lot of berserkers boarded at their mercy. You did, atleast, get to fill the hold with loot - Imperial swords, and halberds, and armor. Guns were fascinating weapons, but they were limited use to your people - with no way to make their fantastic burning powders, they soon would be clubs, and bad clubs at that. But the weapons and armor were good steel; not the tool-grade steel your people knew how to forge, but the beautiful, silvery metal that the men of the southern lands knew how to make because the dwarves taught them. These treasures would not make up for the catastrophe of the voyage; but it was a small comfort.

The plan was to drop your people back at your village, and the Tileans would take the ship and their share of the loot with them. Outnumbered in this way, it was a fair deal. They had won your respect, a little; especially Ronaldo, who had proven himself a fierce combatant as well as a commander, and not a quisling hiding behind his champions, as many southern commanders were. With Aran comatose, you became uneasy friends with the Tilean captain; you took to his language as easilly as he took to yours. On the voyage, he taught you things about combat you had not considered, and attributed them to his goddess, whom he called Mur-Mid-Jar; a warrior woman and tactician who dwelled among men before returning to the realm of gods. Your people were very practical, about gods; they would worship all those who came through on their promises, and Mur-Mid-Jar had been responsible for your life, today. The mark you gained on the ship, at the hands of a Tilean skin-marker; was different in style to those others you had from your own people - but if it brought you the favour of their exotic goddess, you could hardly complain.

Spoiler: OOC:

Show

The Mark of Myrmidia

You gain Common Knowledge: Strategy and Tactics.

But if only you had followed your first thought, and demanded they throw it overboard! Not the stolen arms or armor or guns, but the main prize that was already in the hull of the ship when you boarded, and only discovered beneath the heaps of empty Imperial supply crates when you were at sea.

A stone box. They must have used clever tricks with rope, and logs, and mighty men to get it into the hold, as heavy as it was. It was the length of a man's body, and the width of a man's shoulders; and such a box could only contain one thing - a dead man, and one worth boxing. It was worth nothing to you, but apparently something to the Imperials; and the Tileans thought some of their scholars would find golden value in its like when they returned to their enviable sunny climate and, so you'd been told, rolling green fruitful hills. And you owed nothing to the vulgar gods of Albion who had cost you such losses - why should you have cared for the disturbance of their dead one?

But if you had cared, if anyone on the ship had been sufficiently willing to risk the blasphemy of tossing it overboard instead of the blasphemy of keeping it, things might have turned out very differently.

Frozen Norscan winds blowing off the mountains into the Sea of Claws fought your ship as you approached a familiar shoreline. High in the night sky, the gods announced their interest in your return - the white moon, Straamval's moon, was half full like a winking eye; and the pallid green moon (which Norscans call the Black Moon, but your clan also calls the Omen Moon) was full and bright. The Omen Moon kept its own calender; there was no telling when it would come, or go; but it heralded the intervention of the god, or some great changing event.

From below deck came a great cry, dragging you away from your contemplation of the two moons. When you went below, it became clear the omens were against you.

The stone coffin had smashed itself apart; within the wreckage stood the withered, bony remant of a man with a crown of black stone and two precious stones in his eye sockets; a huge pearl like you'd never seen, the glittering, eye-watering brightness of the green crystal that the rat-men so desperately traded for. He stood as a man alive; a man angry, and confused; hunched, wheezing angrilly; his body bound up in slowly unravelling green-crusted silver chains which were themselves tethered to hunks of broken stone that once composed the coffin.

With a soul-wrenching howl and the swipe of a wrist, the dead man swing a spar of stone at the end of one of its tethers, and smashed in a Tilean onlooker's chest - then all was bedlam, and desperate violence.

Spoiler: The Fifth Mark

Show

You're almost home, but this revenant of ancient Albion rises to assault your Norscan companions and new Tilean allies.
It is powerful and hideous, but there is nowhere to run - no where but to the freezing ocean water. How does Jorunn respond to this strange new threat? Does he retreat to the upper deck to regain his bearings?
Does he try out some of the imperial weaponry on the undying monstrosity, before realizing it takes almost no damage at all? Does he lose himself to the berserker rage and throw himself at it, heedless of the outcome?

[bramblefoot]

against this monstrosity, discretion was the better part of valor. jorunn snagged as much good imperial steel as he could, and retreated to the top deck. "we need to make it to the shore, and nothing more!" he barked to the sailors in norse and tilean. below, he could hear the creature finishing off those below, and would shortly come up to kill the rest. "hold until the ship makes it to land, and then bail" he bellows, exhorting the crew to keep the ship going until shore

with a grinding crunch, the monstrosity came up through the wooden hull, and those capable of fighting held the line to ensure that the ship made it to shore. jorunn took a hit to the head as the ship beached and was thrown to the surf. shaking his head to clear it, he decided that the ship was lost, and he fled into the night with his imperial steel

Spoiler: ooc

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can we work something out to say that his compatriots think he's dead instead of fled

[MrAbdiel]

Spoiler: OOC:

Show

can we work something out to say that his compatriots think he's dead instead of fled

I do not suspect that will be a problem, my friend. >:)

A block of ancient stone on a chain's end clips your head, and the stream of hot blood in your eyes is half blinding as you tumble into the water with your arms full of fine bracers and gorgets and sheathed, filigreed swords. It takes a great deal of effort to thrash through the rocky surf, the sand just under your toes when your head is just below the surface, and you fight your way to land as the screams echo behind you. Ronaldo is in there, somewhere; perhaps dead. Aran, too; lost in his dreamless sleep. You were a warrior; but this was a fight for daemons and champions of the gods. Could you save either of them? Likely not. Clear and inexplicable instinct told you there was nothing more to do but escape onto the frosty cold sand with your limited loot.

But the dead-thing, howling bitterly in the night, would not allow you even this. The land gave way beneath you; and you plunged into the water of the bay.

How it had been so, you cannot say to this day. You were on the land; the ship had beached; but then it hadn't. Without a sense of motion but a mind-churning sense of displacement by forces beyond your ken, the land shot out from under your feet to the horizon and you and the ship hit the water again - and the ship, wracked from its impact with rocks now ripped away from its hull, broke in two with a thundercrack and began to sink. Beneath the freezing waves, trying not to swallow the sea, you felt something burning on your forearm - something searing in your skin, boiling the water around it. And there, beyond you, the bodies of the other mercenaries and warriors sagged and bobbed and sank in the water; torn and ripped and broken. There was Aran - his eyes flashing open as the shock of the sea struck him from his sleep into this hideous nightmare. And there, beneath, was the dead-man; his chains and stone shards which served as weapons before now serving as anchors. One skeletal arm strained out and seized Aran's ankle, and your friend - always the cheerful and light-spirited one - did not have the strength or the clarity in the moment to contest it. The revenant sank into the dark, Aran with it; and with them, all hands who sailed on that doomed ship back from cursed, cursed Albion.

All but you. It cost you everthing. You could not swim with steel. You could not even swim with the sword you had looted from the Imperials, or the axe your father gave you, or the wooden shield with the hammered iron rim that your step-father had passed to you before your voyage (even if he would never give you his inheritor-name). You shed your treasure, and your weapons, and your leather armor, and all your earthly things; and blood-blind, shocked and desperate not to die, swam like a madman through the freezing waters toward the land stolen out from under you once already.

When you got there, you crawled up onto the harsh, gravelly sand and looked at your arm under the light of the Omen moon. There was a mark, on your inner forearm; a circle, within a circle, within a circle; and each circle marked with strikes at mysterious intervals; three concentric rings with unknown indicators on their edges. It was of a style common neither to the Norscans, nor the men of the Southern Kingdoms; but you had seen similar shapes and marks on the giant stones of Albion. What was it? A promise? A threat? A gift? You knew only that the now sinking monster had given it to you. But you knew also that the omen moon was not bright enough here to make out the details you could see upon yourself - or over the landscape around you. Had it changed you in other ways? What affliction was this?

The only way to answer these questions was to live; the first, and final trial of men. Freezing, soaked, alone on a dark beach in the middle of the night on the Norscan coast, you make a bid to survive.

Spoiler: OOC:

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Mark of the Revenant.

Gain the Nightvision talent.

It also does other things, which I am not inclined to tell you about at this juncture.

Remove all the items from your trappings - we're starting out at the bottom. Later, you will be able to say that you did so; and now you are here.

You begin play with a poor quality set of clothes, and two ritually cleaned skulls on your belt - Garn's, and Varden's - that you are theoretically obligated to return to their father, or else keep yourself as a kind of guardian. The skulls of those you respect ought not to be destroyed, or lost and taken as a trophy for an enemy or a home for vermin.

[MrAbdiel]

The Saga of Jorunn
Part 1 - "That Which Remains"


Chapter 1 - Ruin

The wind is low; if it were high, it would strip the heat from your bones very quickly indeed. It is bad enough as it is, stalking over the hard and sharp gravel-sand to the thin covering of snow over the permafrost of land. Behind you is the sea - chunks of broken, waterlogged wood from the wreck of the ship bob about in the surf. Ahead of you, in the dark, is a thick treeline of hearty pines that look not to have been forested by a tribe in many years. To your left, the beach carries on and hooks up around the treeline towards elevated ground. To your right, it continues in a roughly straight run - level, easier travel.

You need to find somewhere warm. Then, when the relative softness of morning comes, you can figure out where you are, and how to get somewhere else.

Spoiler: OOC:

Show

Alright, we're rolling, bossman. Sorry to rob you of your trappings - I promise it's more satisfying to claw up from nothing. For now, you can head left (to elevated ground along the coast), right (sticking flat along the coast) or try your luck in the forested land ahead. Alternatively, think of something else you want to do, and make a pitch! This is your game, after all.

[bramblefoot]

shivering and soaked, jorunn took the level ground path. it was easier terrain, and simpler for traversal. "gods its cold" he swore, moving fast enough to keep himself warm

he refused to believe he would die here, as there was always a way out. as he walked, he absentmindedly pressed the concentric circle marks in different patterns, seeing if they did anything, and remembering the results

[MrAbdiel]

You lope along the coastlike as your skin grows numb; trying to keep your blood hot. Prodding at the strange new mark seems to provoke no reaction - whatever mystery it denotes, it is not pressure (or cold) that will expose it. Still, having this foreign mark put on your skin unsolicited, by whatever strange Albion magics caused the disaster of the ship is disconcerting to say the least.

You go for hours; fingers growing stiff forcing you to ball your hands into fists and relax them over and over again; and you try to ignore your wet tunic frozen to your chest. Finally, though, your instinct begins to pay of: you smell smoke, on the wind; and then after a few more minutes, you notice the glimmer of a campfire. Moving into the shadow of the coastal trees, you get close enough that you can see the small encampment - two rough, hide tents; a roaring fire being fed by a shivering, burly man sitting on stump while two more stumps sit empty by the fire. A scrawny deer carcass is opened, beside them; gutted, some of its meat hung up on sticks to freeze in the night, half the work of skinning it done so far. A hunter's camp - presumably, one or two more men sleep while this one keeps watch.

Unfortunately, you notice one more thing - the tattoos on the man are of a kind you know well. Skaelings - the tribe your Bjornlings have been feuding with, or were when you left on your doomed mission. If they are still at throats with each other, meeting them and expecting kindness might be a way to die, or be made a slave.

A skinner's knife pokes out of the stump next to the one on watch; but there's no way to know if there are more or better weapons in one of the tents without commiting to sneaking in. Atleast, under cover of night and with this unusual clarity of sight in the dark, the gloom is your ally.

Spoiler: OOC: Rolls!

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Alright! A few rolls to come, and then you can decide how to approach this.

First: give me two Toughness Rolls at +20. You've a lot of walking in the wet and cold to do, and without the trees as a wind break it's brutal; but you grew up in these conditions so you can power thing. For each failure, take a "fatigue" level, like we use in the other game - a cumulative -10 for the blistering cold.

After that, I'll ask for a Perception Roll at +10 to scan the area visually for opportunities and then, depending on what you want to do (sneak into a tent?
Creep up on the guy and try to steal the knife? Throw one of the skulls you're carrying and hope he goes to investigate?) I will ask for more rolls!

[bramblefoot]

jorunn will stalk silently into the camp, eyes scanning for something closer to hand then that skinners knife. if there is nothing closer, he'll stalk in, and bury said knife in the mans heart

silent move tn 21
(1d100)[19]

[MrAbdiel]

You skulk into the modest Skaeling camp, scanning around for a better weapon. As you stand in the unsuspecting man's shadow, hand reaching for the skinning knife, you spot a woodcutting axe lying at the foot of a pile of split and prepared wood on the other side of the fire. Too late, now - the man before you is too close for you to withdraw safely, so you grab the knife, clap your hand around his mouth and pull him back against you, and ram the blade swiftly between his ribs. He cries out under your hand, but the muffled sound dies away with his physical protests.

What you didn't see, what you couldn't, was the inside of the tents; where another hunter around the age of the first sleeps, and a third with the scars and grey showing him many years their senior - resting, but not asleep, and able to see the spectacle of murder unfold.

"AaaAAH! AAH DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! AHHH!"

His hysteria has certainly woken the other man; but that one is taking a few moments to comprehend. No time for him now. At a man hands-and-knees scramble, the elder man lurches out of his tent towards the axe. You're closer; but he's already in motion.

Spoiler: OOC:

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Roll Initiative! And if you do better than (1d10+4)[8], you can go first. You could, for example, move to the axe - I'll let you 'quickdraw' it from the ground - and then attack. But if he beats you, you can bet he's going to scoop it up first.

The skinner's knife is sharp, but it's not a weapon of war - for the purpose of combat, it's a poor quality dagger, so it's -5% to weapon skill. The axe would be a poor quality hand weapon, since it's more a tool than weapon itself. But if you end up with both, you're dual wielding dagger and axe, and get a free parry!

Initiative for the startled sleeping hunter, too: (1d10+3)[7].

[bramblefoot]

jorunn scrambles for the axe, easily beating the hunter and scooping the axe up. he'll make two attacks against the veteran hunter

(1d10+4)[11]

19 and 30 in the ooc, for 13 and 12 wounds respectively

[MrAbdiel]

Before he can get close to the axe, you move like liquid death, snatching it up, using the 'chin' of the axe to hook his ankle out from under him so he collapses on his back; then bringing down its block-splitting edge onto the crown of his head, winking out the light in his eyes instantly and requiring a boot of leverage to pull the axe free.

The younger hunter in the tent is just awake enough to witness this, and can only bray in delirious horror as he thrashes out from under a pile of furs, trying to find his feet.

Spoiler: Brutal.

Show

Two down. The one that was in the tent is recovering from being asleep; you were silent enough coming into the camp that he's going to miss this turn, and he's still unarmed. You can charge and make an attack if you like; or if you're feeling merciful, let him get up and run.

[bramblefoot]

jorunn will drag him out and finish him off. no point in ruining a good pile of sleeping furs. after that, he'll rub a tad bit of blood on the mark, warm up by the fire, and go to sleep

[MrAbdiel]

You stalk into the tent, stooping to dip below its frame, put the still bloody knife between your teeth and drag the last Skaeling hunter out of bet by his ankle. In a moment of bleating panic he swings at you - and you pull your head back as a fistful of arrows, grabbed awkwardly from his quiver inside the camp, miss your face by an inch as they're stabbed at you. Dumping him on the ground, you put the boot in; then the axe in; and then that's the end of that - three dead Skaelings.

A father, and two sons, maybe? Still; Skaelings. And none of the four war gods, Hound, Crow, Eagle or Serpent, demanded you ought to permit yourself to die easily. Survival was the ultimate act of worship, for your people; martyrdom was for the followers of the southern gods - let them die for their gods, and you live for yours.

With the beach not far away, you strip the bodies and drag them to the shore's edge so the tide will take them, and perhaps deliver them elsewhere. You took them by ambush, and they were not prepared to fight; neither were they your kin or kith, and so their skulls are no prize. But you help yourself to what they had. That much is yours, by right of conquest.

Spoiler: OOC: Loot.

Show

You gain a hatchet (woodcutting tool, counts as a poor quality hand weapon).
2 skinning knives (a very sharp skinning tool; but in melee, a poor quality dagger.)
2 sets of poor clothes.
1 set of rags (bloodstained and stabbed-through)
1 good quality coat (bearskin)
2 bedrolls
2 small tents
1 waterskin
1 days worth of rations
1 bow, with 18 arrows
1 small trap
1 large trap
1 quarterstaff
10 yards of rope
1 set of leather bracers and hide vest (leather jack)
2 large sacks
1 backpack
2 untanned deer skins.

You feed the fire with logs your foes harvested for you; dry out your wet clothes, change into some dry ones; feel the heat coming back into your limbs and body. You drag some blood over the strange mark on your arm - the blood beads and runs off it like water on wax, weirdly repelled by it. You are no shaman, but none of your gods decline blood in any fashion. Strange.

Gaining your bearings, you cast your eyes down the shore, the way you were going. That way is east. If there are Skaelings camping here, you are a good deal further east than you thought - probably in the unpatrolled wilderness between Bjorning and Skaeling territories. That means it's a longer trek back the way you came to Bjorning territory, but atleast you would soon be in the homeland of your tribe, and from there could navigate back to your village. On the other hand, the Skaeling must have a village less than a day along the way you were already going. If your marks are covered, they may not know you are Bjornling; and if you are lucky, the politics between tribes will have changed while you were away, and there will be no tribe-war to worry about anyway. But east will definitely take you to the closest village, with the risk of it being possibly enemy territory, and the reward of being able to trade some of what you've looted there. West will take you back towards friendly ground; but it's going to be a three day journey atleast before you hit a village, if you are where you think you are.

You sleep in the diminishing warmth of the fire, rugged up in furs taken as blood gelt. In the morning, the tide has taken the bodies of the men - perhaps to the deep, where Straamval will feast on them. But the tide has brought something, too. Guided down to the waterline by a clear and inexplicable instinct, you notice a dark, waterlogged circle of wood with its hammered iron rim laying in the sand. A shield - your shield, in fact, tossed onto the sand with a few scraps of driftwood from the wreck. Perhaps Straamval, that hungry shark who swims in the dark and whose passage causes the shearing tides, appreciated your incidental offering, after all.

Spoiler: OOC: Which Way, Northern Man?

Show

East to what is likely the Skaeling village this hunters were from; west for a much longer journey back toward home territory. Or north, into the woods, seeking adventure, now that your situation is less desperate!

Oh! And you gain 150XP for this brutal and efficient overcoming of your first obstacle.

[bramblefoot]

jorunn thanks straamval for the shield back, dresses, and heads east, packing up his kit before leaving. he keeps a weather eye for any tracks or such, and keeps an ear for sounds. no reason to get cocky, after nearly freezing his buns off, and killing three men

[MrAbdiel]

Spoiler: OOC:

Show

With a night's rest in warm conditions and nothing spoiling it, you can clear off that fatigue.

In the morning, with you gather up the camp. It's too much to fit in the one pack you have; but with the quarterstaff lashed to the top of it with the rope and the sacks counterbalancing either end, you strike out with your loot jangling either side of you. The shield given to you by your step father has improbably returned to you; though the injustice of the wreck has still taken the axe your father gave you, not to mention poor stricken Aran, and the loot you had won from the Imperials with your Tilean allies. Still, if the trajectory can be trusted, the gods have tested you harshly and now they are releasing their fickle grip, tightening on someone else - the Skaelings in your path, it seems.

Setting off took longer than you wanted; getting the fire to start to cook some of the deer left overnight in the preserving cold is the kind of task usually kicked to less capable warriors on such a venture who need to prove their value in ways not measured in iron. You pass some men casting their nets into the surf to catch the shallow water fish; they give you minimal glances, but focus mostly on their work, and let you pass by without comment. You consider asking them where you are; you weigh the benefits of knowing that item versus needless interaction with the Skaelings and the chance of something going awry. But before you need to decide, a crawling recognition makes its way up your spine. You round a spar of dark coastal stone to see the coastal village; the steep slope into the town square... the fresh, unweathered longhouses, some still under construction.

The cluttered piles of burned junk wood, cast to piles around the village.

This is Truskholm; this is the first settlement you pillaged. Time has passed, and they have rebuilt. It is strange that fate should throw you here; but with your tribe markings covered, the likelihood that any of the Skaelings here recognized you as a Bjornling, let alone the raiders who came on the sea for them, is low. But not nil.

Spoiler: OOC: Options!

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You're in the rebuilt village of Truskholm, mostly recovered after you plundered it as part of your rite of passage as a warrior. It likely has a trader with wares, village elders with local information, and most things you can imagine a village might have. It also has houses and homes that ostensibly belong to a tribe you've been in conflict with, so you can decide if you feel bad about taking from them.

If it factors into your imagination, the village looks like it can accomodate between 50 and 100 people. It's a big spread, but that's longhouses for you; without more info, that's the guess you have.

If you want to find out more information, you can give me a Gossip roll at +20 and give me an idea what you're trying to find out!

[bramblefoot]

jorunn walks into truskholm, playing it cool. he stops to sell the deer hides, and to try find a blacksmith with a better weapon then the axe he got from the hunters. he'll chat up people, face always concealed behind the bearskin cloaks hood

gossip roll
(1d100)[37]

[MrAbdiel]

You're treated with suspicion, as an outside in this place; but you have the stature and the shield of a warrior, and despite distrusting looks, you are mostly left to your devices. You find one chummy drunk who doesn't know better, however; with a skin of mead in his lap, he chats your ear off about the woes of his life - his woman ran off with an Aesling skald - before being coached to answer your questions.

"Eh? Blacksmith? Ehhh... Decent enough, but not a talented one. Thralls with the secrets of steel in their hands are hard to come by, and expensive to trade for. Some of the raiding boys came back with good steel weapons from the Nordland raids, but they're mostly keeping them. But hey, my father used to say if you want a good weapon, you trade with the dwarves. Har har!"

You don't get the joke. More than that, it's less than useful advice - you have no idea where the closest dwarf hold is, and classically the sons of the mountain do not have ideal relationship with Norscans, even clans as affably progressive as yours. They do not forgive a little opportunistic raiding, like sensible folk do. But the drunk seems to suggest that there are good weapons on the warriors, and presumably in their homes in the town - just not being fresh forged, for the secrets of steel are not widespread among your tribes.

You see one such weapon on the wall, mounted above the trader's display when you go to sell the hides - a short, sharp, polished steel blade with barely any nicks at all; and its matching ruddy red scabbard.

"Not bad hides, traveller. Untanned, but I can have Jorgen and his sons sort them out when they get back from their own hunt." He offers you a seven silver sceatta for the four hides. Having no skill for haggling nor wish to draw extra attention to yourself, it feels like a good enough offer.

Spoiler: Currency in Norsca!

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I know seven silver sounds very low, but bear with me! Norscans do not mint gold coins; they melt gold down to make jewelry, and crowns, and embellishments for armor. But if you ended up carrying enough silver it became obnoxious, you might find a gem trader, and carry your excess wealth in that convenient way. If you wanted to spend a lot of your adventure in Norsca and become wealthy, that's going to involve probably keeping large amounts of lumber, thralls, livestock, and mammoth ivory!

They do make use of silver coins, though coin currency is still somewhat novel among them. Lots of their trade is done with barter; but for simplicity in our campaign, we'll probably do most transactions in silver sceatta, and the bronze pfennig. There's 12 pfennigs to the sceatta, just as their are pennies in a shilling. But the purchasing power of a sceatta in Norsca is roughly that of 15 Shillings in the empire - so a Handweapon (if you found someone willing to sell), worth 10GP in the empire (or 200 Shillings), is worth about 13 sceatta (sc) and four pfennigs.

Are you confused yet? I know, I know. Bear with me for a while, I think it'll add a little to the depth of the setting. If it gets too janky, we'll just convert to regular currency later and I'll get over it; but I like all these little culture details.

The shop keep, a short but barrel chested man named Gunnr, notices you eying the sword.

"Fair, isn't it? I will give it to my son, when he is of age. Barely takes to the teat, right now; but eventually. Can I interest you in anything, as you pass? I have dried meat, and saltfish. If you're heading west to the thrallmarket at Zagdhelm, you'll want to take extra rations. It's a rough cold, out there; keep the furnace full of tinder, I say."

[bramblefoot]

"how much for three days rations?" jorunn asks calmly. at the news of zagdhelm, he'll press the man for any extra info he may have

[MrAbdiel]

"It would run a single sceatta, and some copper; but I'll wave the copper, if you speak well of me to King Death if you see him first."

This is a Skaeling expression; or more properly, a seafarer's expression common to a great raiding clan like the Skaeling and pirates in the seas all around the Old World. King Death is just their icon for the god of death, whom your clan knows as the ending dragon, Old Jormung. But to give someone a favor to speak well if you meet King Death first is a simply hospitality blessing for strangers; wish well of me, as I wish of you, and perhaps the gods will hear.

Surrendering back one of your precious sceatta leaves you with six, but now you have all you need to travel for three days. But six is still a good amount; enough to buy a couple of strong thralls, perhaps with useful skills to navigate the wilderness. Crossing overland back to Bjornling territory will be a difficult trek indeed; having made your way that distance by ship before, and having some idea of Norsca's bitter landscape, it is likely to take ten or more days. You have trained to be an asset in war at the shoulders of other warriors, themselves supported by the uplifting apparatus of the clan; you have not been afforded the time or mentorship to live well in the wild and cold places of the land. Without a companion, or a hireling, or atleast a thrall with some survival skills, it is likely to be a very difficult and taxing trek indeed.

You press for information about Zagdhelm; and Gunnr's reply is short, and wondering. "Yes, Zadghelm - with the thrallmarket, west and between the forest and mountains. Though they are beset by - er..." He trails off, having grown suspicious of the hooded stranger asking these questions.

Spoiler: OOC:

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You can press for more information about Zagdhelm, and what it is beset by; but if you want to press, make me a Charm or Gossip check, at +0. Failure means, even supplying you information, the storekeep Gunnr seems to you to have grown wary of your hooded, solitary appearance and questions. That may bear fruit later.

[bramblefoot]

jorunn will drop the subject, and leave after collecting his rations. he'll head west, to zagdhelm

[MrAbdiel]

Now that you know east takes you into Skaeling territory, striking out west must necessarily bring you closer to Bjornling land; though admittedly tracking east and west is a little difficult with the overland path you are forced to take, even with the loose directions of Zadghelm and the occasional sniff of a beaten path.

Spoiler: OOC: Give me some dice!

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Give me an outdoor survival check, for this first day's travel; to keep on track, to find a safe site to camp, etc.

In addition to that, give me a straight d100; a general fortune of the road check, which cannot be fate-pointed.

[bramblefoot]

jorunn beds down for the night

(1d100)[41]

(1d100)[16]

[MrAbdiel]

You struggle to find any game or forage to sooth your stomach after a day's hard hike west, even if you're confident you've navigated correctly. Fortunately, you bought rations to deal with this eventuality; and they're not even the worst you've eaten.

You're disappointed in yourself, though, when you wake; for you are not alone. A scrawny wolf, missing clumps of fur and sporting scratches and bite marks from a combination of mange and conflict with other creatures, has joined you. Unable to battle the cold with its compromised coat, it has snuck into your tent and fallen asleep in its contained warmth. It sleeps, shivering a little; quite desperate indeed to have risked this partnership. It's vulnerable - you could kill it, and its meat would feed you for the day even though the meat of predators isn't particularly flavorful. Or you could show it mercy - not a traditional virtue of your people, but one present in your array of human feeling all the same.

Spoiler: OOC: Options!

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A fail on the Outdoor Survival roll, so you use one day of rations but you didn't pike it so bad you got lost. But the luck roll came out pretty good; so that'll work for you.

If you want to kill it, you can do so for free, and you'll be fed for the day. If you want to try to befriend it, that'll be an Animal Care roll. Normally you'd need Charm Animal; but it's pretty desperate. After that, give me another Outdoor Survival, and then a Perception roll for certain events of the next day.