Adventure of Halfdan (Play Report #1)
I joined a newer campaign of Wolves Upon the Coast run by a friend named Lewis who I have been a player alongside and he was a frequent player in the Reavers campaign. He decided to run a Wolves campaign on our server starting in the Belgic regions and I agreed to be a player seeing as it was a region we never reached in Reavers. I drew up the character Halfdan and this is his story. In these reports I will seek to show my thought process of how the character develops as I play him as they start as blank slates and become developed.
Halfdan is a Belgic man though long removed from the lands having been taken as a thrall and held by Norsemen for most of his life. He has a loose grasp of the gods of the Marches and is fluent in the language and not much else. He speaks Belgic from his upbringing, Norse from necessity of his life, and Latin from teaching of a traveling missionary whom taught him words but got the faith to stick when all else surrounding speaks of gods of home and wood rather then gods of foreign lands.
Halfdan joins the crew as they decide to travel to a black tower to the east of a town where the crew had run afoul of the law due to piracy and as they travel and see this spire of black stone 3 stories tall jutting above the surrounding trees he vows "I shall stand atop the Black Tower and surveil the land" it is only after this vow is made that I decide that a driving motive of Halfdan is to discover things about his homeland that where stolen from him.
I have an extremely fortunate roll of the dice here and end up with 12 HP following the new HP roll and know I can take a bit more risk then usual in pursuing my oath.
We go to this tower and find it to be made of course stone stacked tall a door large and heavy made of squared beams of trees difficult to break through or burn down bars our way locking us out. 2 of my compatriots having heard of undead skeletons within from a previous crew make a competing oath to take the most skulls from this tower. We decide to use our oaths to differing goals they will seek to enter the front door and in the ruckus I will climb the tower and surveil the land.
We look to cut down the door but find it would take days of work with a single axe, bashing it down seems infeasible as well. So we decide to burn it. Going into the surrounding forest we gather up a dead tree and cut it for timbers then set fire to the door using torches, timber and flint and steel. We know it will take many hours to burn and despite the intercession of a pair of bickering caravans unwilling to cede the road to each other (until threats forced one side to give way) we stay about our work.
During this time we decide to climb up the tower and despite a short fall dealing a few points of damage due to the planning of a net to catch me if I fall after 2 attempts I make it to the top.
On top we find a mechanism of blue green metal with cogs and gears all around its base. The mechanism cone shaped with a crystal or bulbous glass in one end pointing toward the sky. A trap door off to one side. I surveil the land and see evidence of fires to the north east and see the river of my homelands to the west.
The mechanism being too large to steal in its entirety is one I decide to steal a trinket from. A wheel off of the side of it. As I pull it off and toss this trinket down to my compatriots the trap door bursts open and a strange man with malevolent eyes and an odd description (my internet crapped out a bit during the description but later player descriptions make it more mysterious and weird having heard both serpentine and centipede like) my eyes met his and I failed some save and soon found myself enthralled and charmed by him.
My allies do not see this happen and I am sent with 2 instructions. Return the wheel and get my compatriots into the tower. My new friend wants to meet them. Do not leave.
I go down and saying I had seen a great host coming our way I convince them to kill the fire and the door being unlocked from within we enter. I tell them I unlocked the door and came back unable to pass through the flames.
We go in and I lock the door behind us before the group is ambushed by a total of nearly 100 undead. Skeletons and Shadows. Realizing they where deceived one of the party turns on me stabbing with a spear which significantly injures me leaving me at 4 HP but the shock of the situation does allow Halfdan a 2nd saving throw against the Charm Person to which he was subjected as now he knew he had betrayed his friends. He manages to make the save but not until after he had defended himself against his attacker. Rhun stood against the hammer throw. His head did not.
Again in control of his faculties Halfdan reopens the door and flees outside. One last attack from another once ally deals a single point of damage and leaves the attacker still in the tower long enough for shadows to pull him down. Thus was the fate of Amleth.
The only other survivor of the tower to escape was Kettil now called Elusive. We return to the ship sorrowful of our losses but now 2 boasts up and decide to go to a village north of the tower that we saw.
Halfdan decides to give thanks to the Gods of this land for delivering him from the foul magic that held him. He swears to "give a great offering to Ludeks (Lord of the Mind) as thanks for delivering me from the sorcerers control"
Traversing across land we find the corpse of the merchant that had went north stabbed many times and naked.
We eventually reach the town of Brigande and gain access under promise of employment with a local lordling that wants us to fight some Noos warmakers. This is where our session ended.