Characters of Harthron

Bjorn Hrafnsson

aging male Northlander human barbarian — towering (JD)

Merchant guard, protector, once a farmer

Of Bjorn Hrafnsson, Called the Raven

In the far north, where the land ends in ice and the winter sun barely lifts above the rim of the world, there was born a son to a man named Hrafn, and he was called Bjorn. His father's name signified the raven, and so in time men called the son the Raven also, though he stood no more like a bird than a mountain does. For even among the Northlanders, who are a tall people, Bjorn towered over his kin. His skin was fair, and his eyes were of a strange violet hue, such as are seldom seen among that folk and were counted a sign of fortune.

In his youth he was a warrior, and he fought in many battles upon the frozen ice-sheets of his homeland, where the footing is treacherous and the wind cuts like a blade. Always at his side fought Astrid, a shield-maiden of great courage. Together they held the line in many a desperate hour, and what began as fellowship in arms became love. They were wed while still young. But in time they grew weary of war, and together they turned their faces south.

They came at last to Arnolfstead, and there they laid down spear and shield and took up the plough. They farmed the land and made a home, and three children were born to them: two daughters, Sif and Embla, and a son, Torsten. The years passed in peace, as years seldom do for such as they, and the children grew tall and strong and went out one by one into the world to make their own ways.

But a few years after the last of them had gone, Astrid fell ill, and no remedy could avail, and she died. Then the house they had built together became a place of sorrow to Bjorn. Every beam and furrow spoke her name, and he could not abide it. So he sold the farm and all its fields, and went down to the town. There he took service as a guard to a merchant of Highlocke, and traveled with the caravans that come and go along the roads and rivers of Mandor. In that labor he found, if not happiness, then at least some purpose.

He was aging now. His long hair had gone grey, and his beard was thick and grey as winter cloud. Yet his great frame was unbowed, and in the long days upon the road the skills of his youth returned to him slowly, as a river frozen through the winter wakes again in spring. He who had once fought for glory upon the ice now stood guard over others, and it may be that in keeping them from harm he kept some memory of Astrid alive.

Bonkelk Feren

adult androgynous gnome diviner wizard (Dan)

Occult investigator

Bonkelk Feren is an androgynous gnome diviner and investigator of the occult. She has a bald head, a dark muddy-grey complexion, and amber eyes. Different plaids appear throughout her clothing and cloak.

Edward Sicklexfoot of the Clouds

middle-aged male cloud goliath cleric — short (Billy)

Devotee of Ghondalist

Of Edward Sicklexfoot, Who Kept the Lights

There was a night in Edward's life by which all other nights were measured.

Before that night he had been a watchman, and after long service he had become a cleric of Ghondalist, the goddess of growing things, whose sign is the oak. In her service he learned that to keep watch meant more than to see danger coming from afar. There were wounds to bind, and frightened folk to hearten, and many small duties that brought no glory but could not be neglected without cost. He had believed that such things, faithfully done, were enough to keep a place safe. Then the dragon came.

Of that night he remembered less than he wished, and more than he could bear. He remembered the darkness above the roofs, and the sound of running feet, and voices calling names for which no answer came. But most clearly of all he remembered the torches.

While others fled, Edward kept them burning. Along the ways out of the village their light shone through smoke and confusion, showing the living where they might still go. Many times he turned toward the fighting, and each time another flame guttered, or another frightened figure stumbled out of the dark into the circle of light, and he turned back. And each time he stayed.

There were those who escaped because of him, and he knew it. Yet knowledge is a poor answer to certain kinds of grief. When he remembered that night, he did not count the feet that had found the road. He thought instead of the weapon he had not taken up, and of what might have been had he gone out to meet the darkness rather than tending the light beneath it.

So he left the village behind him, though the night went with him wherever he went.

His road brought him at last to Storn, and there he found the Frostwolves. They were a stubborn people, used to cold seas and hard losses, and they did not suppose that either mourning or winter could be hurried. Their ships went out beneath uncertain skies, and their speakers told of courage in words that asked much of those who heard them. Edward listened. Something in their refusal to yield stirred a fire in him that he had thought long quenched.

Among them was Yrsa Stormeye, sister of Varka and reader of omens for her clan. Not long before, she had seen burning torches in a vision, and she had not known what they meant. When Edward came among her people, she knew, and she took him in.

For two or three years he dwelt among the Frostwolves, and Yrsa taught him the old rites of the north. He blessed their ships before they sailed and tended their dead when the ships came home. In these labors he found a place among them, and the quiet comfort of being needed. Yet all the while, the torches of his memory burned on.

He did not come to believe that keeping them alight had been wrong. To think so would have dishonored all who lived because they followed that light. But neither could he believe any longer, as once he had, that light alone would always be enough.

Now he walked the roads beside Varka. He was a tall man of the Goliaths, white-haired, with eyes of a deep purple, and he carried spear and shield at his side. The oak of Ghondalist was worked upon his cloak, and her holy symbol lay close against his heart.

He would tend the flame when it was needed. He would show the frightened a road through the dark.

And when the darkness came within his reach, he meant to stand against it.

Elara

middle-aged female human druid (NPC)

Leader of the Whispering Grove

Elara is a beautiful blonde woman in green robes. She leads the small druid sanctuary of the Whispering Grove, east of the Blood River. Her druids are generally on good terms with the humans and loggers, but she is troubled by logging deeper in the woods. She fears that fey or trolls may begin to fight back.

Elara meets the travelers at the Hearth of the Wild Mother. She extends a hand to Night Pelt, who approaches happily, and suggests that the group speak with Maeve Two Fingers. She also mentions a warning to avoid part of the surrounding country.

Gerrick

adult male human ranger (NPC)

Leader of the Moorsmen

Gerrick is an adult human ranger who leads the Moorsmen, the rangers who patrol the Highland Woods and the Black Pines on either side of the Blood River.

Karrusk Deepfang

adult male black dragonborn barbarian — short, lean, wiry (Ethan)

Karrusk Deepfang is short for a Dragonborn, with a lean, wiry build and deep violet black scales that shimmer like polished stone. His dark coloring and unusual appearance give him a striking presence, while his posture carries the intensity of someone accustomed to hardship and battle. He wears scale mail and carries a heavy greataxe, giving him the unmistakable look of a northern warrior despite his smaller stature. Karrusk carries himself with fierce determination and the confidence of someone who refuses to be overlooked.

Kosovo

middle-aged male human (NPC)

Bandit lord

Kosovo rules a kingdom whose protection extends to Highlocke, though the independent town lies outside his claimed territory. Most settlements along the Blood River pay him protection money to keep his bandits from raiding them.

Maeve Two Fingers

aging female human (NPC)

Tavern owner; former scout; leader of eastern Highlocke

Maeve Two Fingers owns the Splintered Tankard tavern and runs the eastern side of Highlocke, where the tavern and its large stables stand. Her name refers to the two fingers she lost; she has eight remaining. She once fought a treant and formerly served as a scout for the town. She knows its history and hears much of those who come and go; a few coins may help loosen her tongue. Elara has suggested that the travelers speak with her.

Malthus

middle-aged male aasimar cleric (NPC)

Cleric of Stellina; leader of the Warden of the Iron Wood

Malthus is an aasimar cleric and leader of the Warden of the Iron Wood at the Hearth of the Wild Mother, the stone church of Stellina, goddess of the Hunt. He has long white hair and a smooth, beardless face, with a youthful, regal bearing. Blue-green robes fall about him, and a soft golden light surrounds him as he welcomes Elara and the strangers to the church. He has served there for decades and remembers a company that fought the Gannor Empire some twenty years ago before traveling north.

Orin

adult male human (NPC)

Captain of the town guard

Orin is the human captain of Highlocke's town guard. While Gerrick's Moorsmen patrol the forests, Orin commands the guard within the town.

Sága Stjǫrnuvaka

aging female Northlander human starry druid — towering, sturdy (Seth)

Stargazer; healer

Pronounced SAH-gah STYOR-noo-vah-kah.

Of Sága Stjǫrnuvaka, the Star-Watcher of the Blood River

Long ago, when the Northlanders first came south with their trade-ships and their hard bargains, there came among them a family that was ever greater of stature than its neighbors. Its sons were broad and its daughters tall, and it was said of them in jest that they had no need of oxen. Whence that strength came, none could say for certain. Sága's grandmother held that there was giant-blood somewhere in the line, far back beyond the reckoning of names. Her mother held that it was something older and less kindly, with teeth. The matter was never settled, and in time Sága ceased to care. Whatever had come into the blood long ago had come to stay, and she had other things to think on.

She was born in Tepes, three hundred miles to the north, and grew up in a trading house among ledgers, bales, and the talk of merchants. There a priest of Celebron, the god of time and stars, took notice of her and taught her to read, for he meant her for the temple. But the lessons did not go as he intended. She learned to chart the courses of the three moons, and from them the wheeling of the stars. Before long she began to see that the sky kept truer records than the priests did, and did not lie. While she was still young, she left Tepes with a borrowed star-chart, a good knife, and no intention of ever returning.

She went south and east into the wild country, and there she found her place: high in the timber far above the Blood River, several days' walk from Highlocke. In a clearing where the canopy opens upon the sky, she set a ring of standing stones. There she dwelt alone for nearly forty years, and there, when all others slept, she watched the heavens and wrote down all that passed in them, until her records filled eleven volumes. To the loggers of the valley she was the one who set their broken arms and told them which slopes would slide before the rains. To the dwarven traders she was one who paid in herbs and did not haggle. And the collectors of Kosovo, the bandit-lord, learned early that her cabin was not worth the climb.

Those who met her upon the road saw a woman of great height and greater strength, a head taller than most people of Highlocke, and broad and hard as an old oak. Even in her aging years she could bear a felled sapling across her shoulders. Her skin was very pale, as of one who had lived long under shade and starlight, and weathered by wind and cold. Her iron-grey hair fell past her shoulders, with a sprig of ivy braided at one temple. An old scar ran down one cheek, and her grey eyes were calm, and they seemed to weigh and measure all they looked upon. She wore a cloak of moss-green wool over a tunic of cream linen, its sleeves rolled back from forearms crossed with the scars of a hard life, and a long brown skirt split for walking. A heavy pack rode upon her back, and in her hand she bore a staff of spiral-grown wood, wound about with ivy that still lived. She did not lean upon it.

But in that season the heavens changed, and her long reckoning failed her. There were movements in the sky for which her books held no name, and the forest answered in kind. Beasts went where they should not, and a wrongness hung in the air that she could feel before she could name it. And every sign that she knew how to read pointed the same way: down from the mountain, toward the river, and toward the town.

Sága was not one to fear, nor to ask for aid. Yet now she bound her eleven volumes upon her back and came down to Highlocke, which she had not visited in many years. She sought any who had seen what she had seen, or any who could show her that she was wrong. For if she was not wrong, then something was coming, and it was nothing good. And whatever it might be, she meant to be standing before it when it arrived.

Samir Gamal

adult male human ranger — tall (Vince)

Hunter; guide; scout; tracker

Of Samir, Who Seeks a Hearth

In a small settlement at the edge of the wild country, there once lived a woman who knew the ways of the land better than any other in that place. Her son was Samir. His father had gone out of their lives before the boy was old enough to remember him, and none spoke of where he had gone. So it was his mother who raised him, and she taught him all she knew. He learned from her to find food where others saw only weeds and bark, to follow the track of deer and hare, to set snares, and to read the coming weather in the clouds and the wind. Above all she taught him this: never to waste what the land provides, for it gives only once.

But a sickness came upon her while Samir was still a child, and no healing could turn it, and she died. After that he was passed from household to household, never unkindly, yet never truly wanted, and he belonged nowhere. When he was yet young he went out from that settlement and did not return. He took with him nothing but his mother's old hunting knife. Its handle was worn smooth by her hand, and upon it she had carved three words: Always come home.

The wilderness took him in, though it was a hard host. He lived by hunting and gathering, and by trading pelts and meat in the villages at the forest's edge, and he learned the rest by hunger. For a time he fell in with an aging woodsman named Baldar Nearberry, who saw something in the silent youth and took him under his care. From Baldar he learned the bow, and the tracking of men as well as beasts, and the harder lessons of the deep forest, which are not spoken of in villages. But that fellowship did not last, and Samir went on alone once more.

Those who met him saw a tall man in the prime of his years, though sun and wind had weathered him until he looked older than he was. His hair was brown and his eyes hazel. He wore studded leather, dark with use, and carried a longsword at his side and a bow upon his back.

He was quiet and watchful, slow to speak and slower to trust, and his humor, when it showed at all, was dry as autumn leaves. Yet those few who won his trust found it could not be lost again, for he was loyal beyond reason once his faith was given. He prized his freedom above most things. He had no patience for food wasted, for beasts mistreated, or for any who preyed upon the helpless. Help he could not easily accept, and when trouble came his way, his heart turned always toward the trees, where no one could follow. For this was his deepest fear: not that he would never find a place to call his own, but that he would find one and lose it again, as he had lost it once before.

Now he walked the roads of the world as a hunter and a guide, a scout and a tracker, taking such work as came to his hand. But in all his wandering he sought one thing, though he seldom named it even to himself. And of all that he possessed, he valued nothing above his mother's knife, and there was little he would not risk to keep it. For its words were the last she had given him, and he had not yet been able to obey them.

Thorgar Stoneshield

aging male dwarf (NPC)

Guild master of the loggers

Thorgar Stoneshield is an aging dwarf and guild master of the loggers. The lumber guild runs Highlocke, whose livelihood depends on the forests and the mills along the Blood River.

Trell Geenblade

adult male human iltherian knight — tall, heavy (Alex)

Trell Geenblade is a human anti-mage using the Iltherian Knight class from Legacy of Mana. Tall and heavily built, he has tan skin and slicked-back hair. He wears chain mail and carries a hefty greatsword on his back. He has come to visit the place where his grandfather once lived. His family has a connection to an old knightly order.

Varka of the Icebound Vale

young female stone goliath warlock / fighter — short, sturdy (Jared)

Varka of the Icebound Vale stands seven feet tall, a little shorter than most of her Goliath kin, though still towering over nearly all others. She is broad of shoulder and long of limb, built with the strength of the northern peoples, and in her frame there lingers some trace of the giant-blood said to run through her line. Though young and little tested beyond the lands of her home, she carries herself with the easy certainty of one who has never thought to make herself smaller for another.

Her skin is warm and bronze beneath the northern sun, weathered by the hard glare of snowfields and the bright light that rises from the open sea. Such coloring is not uncommon among the hunters, sailors, and wanderers of the far north, though in Varka it hints faintly at an older inheritance, of blood touched long ago by the giants of the hills.

Her dirty-blonde hair falls in heavy braids and loose, windblown strands about her shoulders. Beneath it are green eyes, sharp and steady, and there is a weight in her gaze that can make another feel suddenly aware of how they stand before her. Dark war paint circles her eyes in stark, witchlike patterns, lending something fierce and ancient to her countenance.

Yet it is not her height alone that draws notice.

There is authority in Varka’s manner, though she bears no crown and commands no host. She speaks plainly and without hesitation, with the strong voice of one raised among warriors, sailors, and chieftains. There is little polish in it and less ceremony, but when she speaks she does so as though she expects to be heard. More often than not, she is.

She wears chainmail wrought in the northern fashion, with decorated armor shaped by the sturdy craft of her homeland. Over it hangs a heavy cloak of gray fur, broad upon her shoulders and restless in the wind. There is something in the sight of her that calls to mind the young shield-maidens of old songs, standing at the beginning of tales whose endings have not yet been written.

At her side rests a great two-handed sword, a weapon well suited to her reach and strength. She bears it with the familiarity of one trained for battle, though the greater trials that will measure her skill still lie before her.

Beside her walk the wolves she raised from pups.

Rimefang is a great white wolf, calm and watchful, his pale eyes still as a winter dawn.

Night Pelt is black as the northern night, restless and keen, with the fierce attention of a hunting beast.

They remain close to Varka and move at her side with an uncommon discipline, two silent companions never far from their mistress.

When Varka enters a hall, eyes turn toward her.

When she speaks, voices have a way of falling quiet.

Not because she is yet a great warrior or renowned chieftain, but because something in her makes others believe that, one day, she may become both.