For the past couple of months, I've been running a playtest game for the setting and mechanics of Bodil's Gap, which I've been posting about for a while. What follows is a report of how that game has gone. I'd like to get through the backlog of sessions fairly quickly and catch up to the campaign where it stands, so here we go.
The Cast
When I pitched the campaign, I wanted all of the PCs to be members of the same clan—the Laxbrynjungs—whether by direct blood relation, by marriage, or by some other alliance. The idea was that they'd be bound together by common cause right off the bat, and also have a quick and easy way to figure out their place in society and their relationships with the NPCs of their starting steading or of rival clans.
These are the characters my players came up with:
Ingvild Scoreslayer, Dýrsark - Ingvild is an old and bitter warrior connected to the Laxbrynjung clan by marriage: his sister, long since deceased, was the first wife of the clan's Þejn, Arnolf, and Arnolf's eldest children and heirs are Ingvild's niece and nephew. Cunning but prone to the rage of a berserker, Ingvild is a veteran warrior and close advisor to the clan's leadership.
Mundr Ivaldisson, Óttimaðr - Mundr is a Laxbrynjung by birth, the only child of Ivaldi, the youngest of Arnolf's brothers. The death of Ivaldi when Mundr was still a child has made Ingvild and Arnolf Mundr's only father-figures, however. A promising but untested young man, Mundr has spent much of his youth away from the family holdings helping out in the surrounding settlements, and has only returned home recently in the wake of a mysterious incident in which the barrier between the Mortal World and the Primordial Realm of Fire was torn open, exposing Mundr to the stuff of other worlds and endowing him with the strength of giants.
Ylva, Seiðkona - Though dwelling apart from the clan in the woods, Ylva is an ally of the Laxbrynjungs, serving as a close friend and confidant of Arnolf's eldest son, Steinar. Ylva is a sorceress endowed with the power to see and speak with spirits, and uses her magic to soothe the difficulties of her allies in the clan, despite frequent clashes with those who see her magic as wicked or unnatural.
The Game
The campaign opens with the PCs all at home in Ymafjord, the region controlled by the Laxbrynjung clan. Arnolf and his son and heir, Steinar, are due to return any day now from their trading trip up to the coast to Songheim, the de facto capital of the province and the seat of the Jarl to whom Arnolf pays tribute. Instead of a convoy of ships, however, what returns is a lone vessel crewed by the survivors of a raid on Arnolf’s convoy—a ship carrying the bodies of Arnolf and Steinar home for burial. The survivors report that when Arnolf and Steinar’s convoy beached their ships at a pair of islands to camp for the night, they were set upon by the notorious pirate Kettil Sea-Strider and his son, Olaf Mangler, who slew the Laxbrynjung Þejn and stole their goods and several of their ships.
The PCs are immediately devastated and furious. Arnolf was brother-in-law and dear friend to Ingvild, uncle and father-figure to Mundr, and patron to Ylva, while Steinar was Ingvild’s nephew, Mundr’s cousin, and Ylva’s close friend. Their outrage is mirrored in the rest of the clan, and immediately plans for revenge begin forming.
A more pressing need must come first, however: Arnolf and Steinar must be buried.
Immediately the PCs are put in charge of the funeral preparations by Arnolf’s brother Trond, to whom the role of executor falls, while Arnolf’s remaining son, Rurik, takes charge of planning a retaliatory raid on Kettil, aided by Odd Crooked-Brow, an ally of the clan and the local hersir, whose expertise in planning raids is invaluable.
Funerals for men of Arnolf and Steinar’s station are not simple affairs, and they cannot be properly interred until a barrow is prepared for them—but such an earthwork is the labour of three days straight digging and mounding stone and soil. In the meantime, the dead must be placed in temporary graves and provided with offerings of salt and honey to keep their spirits placated until the funeral and final burial in the mound. Salt is on hand, but the honey must be gathered from the wild. Seeking the numbness of work, Mundr takes a turn at the shovel and pick, while Ingvild and Ylva set out into the woods.
Ylva, who makes the forest her home, happens to know where wild bees can be found in abundance; there’s a particular tree deep in the woods that is home to a vorðeik, a guardian spirit that dwells in the ancient ash and defends it, and the bees, from harm. The PCs arrive there in short order, but when the spirit presents itself, Ingvild has little patience for its interference and prepares to climb the tree to collect honey with little regard for the bees or branches. Ylva is forced to intervene before the vorðeik takes action against them, and bargains with the spirit, promising to weave her magic such that any harm that befalls the tree will be mirrored on her flesh. Satisfied, the spirit allows Ingvild to climb, and in his impatience he breaks a few branches on the way up, opening bloody wounds on the seiðkona waiting below.
Ingvild does manage to secure the honey without rousing the bees, at least, using a torch to smoke them into a stupor, and returns safely to the forest floor while Ylva patches herself up with the party’s supply of bandages.
That night, Arnolf and Steinar are placed in their temporary graves with their offerings of salt and honey, and the PCs sleep the fitful sleep of mourners while other clansmen stand vigil over the Þejn and his son—except Mundr, who has worked himself to exhaustion and sleeps like a log.
The next day, the funeral itself is set to begin. Everyone continues to construct the barrow in the morning, but in the evening the clan gathers to feast. Arnolf’s surviving children are all there, as is his second wife, mother to Rurik and his younger sister. Ingvild’s niece Ranveig and her husband have arrived from abroad, while Mundr’s uncle Trond and his sons are also in attendance, along with Mundr’s own mother. Countless clansmen and friends gather to feast, but it is only the closest friends and family members who are expected to toast the dead.
Each of the party members has a toast to make, and must drink to the toasts of their comrades and kin, but tonight the vigil over Arnolf and Steinar’s graves falls to the PCs, so they must take care not to become too drunk to stand watch. Ingvild and Ylva manage to keep their heads while sharing toasts to Arnolf and Steinar, but Mundr passes through tipsy directly into hungover. Fortunately, his two comrades are able to get him to the vigil in one piece, and the three spend the night standing watch over their kinsmen’s graves. Until, at midnight, Arnolf’s spirit emerges from the earth to go about his business, his death forgotten.
The three PCs are stunned, but quickly rally, engaging Arnolf’s unsuspecting specter in conversation and quickly fetching a tafl board to keep him occupied. It isn’t until he asks where his son is that they’re forced to remind him that he and Steinar both died. As the memory returns to him, his spirit disperses, returning to its temporary rest in the grave.
Shaken by the experiences of the night, the three aren’t at their best the following day when the interment proper is set to take place. During the day a bull is sacrificed, and the temporary graves are dug up so that Arnolf and Steinar can be placed in their barrow alongside their grave goods, while the protection of the gods is invoked over their resting place. At dusk, the mound is sealed, and all that remains is for the mourners to assemble on the barrowtop to drink the memorial mead, after which Arnolf and Steinar are formally numbered among the departed, their possessions and offices now free to go on to their heirs.
As the last of the mead is poured out on the soil of the barrow, Trond makes his pronouncement: that Arnolf’s surviving children cannot inherit; the eldest because she married out of the clan, and Rurik and his younger sister because their mother was a slave woman and never properly married Arnolf in a legitimate and legally binding ceremony. All of Arnolf’s wealth will go to Trond and his sons, and the office of Þejn will fall to Trond instead of to Rurik.
The PCs, allies of Rurik and each previously promised a bequest from Arnolf that has now been stripped from them, immediately descend into furiously plotting how to oust Trond and put Rurik on the throne.
Behind the Scenes
Setting up this kickoff to the campaign, I wanted to give my players two semi-conflicting goals to pit against each other. One the one hand, family honour demands revenge against the murderers of their kinsmen Arnolf and Steinar, but on the other had, Trond’s treachery divides the house against itself in the very moment it must come together to mount such a retaliatory raid. What will they prioratize? Will they play nice with Trond for the sake of gaining their revenge, or will they initiate a conflict within their own family to right the injustice done to them and their ally, potentially weakening their efforts to attack Kettil later? Who in their family can they trust, and who is arrayed against them?
For my reference and theirs, I sketched out a family tree of everybody in the upper echelons of the clan; there are a bunch of allies, tennants, and bondsmen below them, but these are the members of the Laxbrynjung bloodline, as much nobility as exists in the setting of Bodil’s Gap. For your reference, here is the family tree as presented to the players.
The image is fairly large, so opening it in a new tab is probably the best way to view it.
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