The ongoing playtest of Bodil’s Gap continues! In part nine, Mundr faced Olaf Mangler—the son of the party's hated enemy Kettil Sea-Strider, and a famous raider in his own right—in a duel to the death. Though Mundr emerged victorious, it remains to be seen if Olaf's men will abide by the terms of the duel...
The Cast
Ingvild Scoreslayer, Dýrsark - Ingvild is an old and bitter warrior, cunning but prone to the rage of a berserker. He was brother-in-law to the murdered Þejn, Arnolf, and was once a close advisor to the Laxbrynjung clan's leadership. However, he has since had a falling out with the new Þejn, Trond—Arnolf's younger brother—over the execution of Arnolf's will.
Mundr Ivaldisson, Óttimaðr - Mundr is a promising but untested young man endowed with the strength of giants by a mysterious incident during his travels abroad. A Laxbrynjung by birth, Mundr is the only child of the late Ivaldi, the youngest of Arnolf's brothers. Since Arnolf's death, he has ingratiated himself to his uncle Trond in an effort to keep the family from splitting apart.
Ylva Blood-Cup, Seiðkona - Ylva is a sorceress endowed with the power to see and speak with spirits, and uses her magic to curse her enemies with great misfortune. Though dwelling apart from the clan in the woods, Ylva is an ally of the Laxbrynjungs, having been a close friend and confidant of Arnolf's murderd heir, Steinar.
Hrafn, Skald - Hrafn is a travelling merchant blessed by a drop of the Mead of Poetry. Left with neither trade goods nor coin by an accident on the road that destroyed his cart and belongings, Hrafn has joined the Laxbrynjung raiders to avenge their Þejn and enrich himself.
The Game
As Mundr stands over the body of his fallen foe, Olaf's shield-bearer throws that self-same shield down and surrenders. Though Mundr's arm has been hewn to the bone by the Mangler's axe, he still musters the strength to tip his enemy's corpse off the edge of the small island on which they fought; clad in his mail shirt, Olaf quickly plummets out of sight, lost to the waves and kept from any proper burial.
More concerned for Mundr's health, Rurik, his kinsman and shield-bearer, comes to support his injured cousin while the rest of the party row out to collect their companions. Returning to the Shore, Ylva begins to patch Mundr up with bandages from her pack while the group collects their men and prepares to meet Olaf's warriors.
The duel between Mundr and Olaf was clearly visible from the deck of the fort, and plenty of Olaf's men were watching. As the party approaches aboard their longship, one of these warriors steps forward, clearly elected as some kind of spokesperson by his fellows.
Ingvild takes the lead in speaking with the raiders, and learns that the men who once fought under Olaf have little interest in further conflict. If the party will guarantee them safe passage away from the battleground, they're more than happy to abandon the fort and village—all they ask in return is that their ship be returned to them so they can actually leave.
This proposal sparks some debate among the PCs. On the one hand, taking over the fort without any further fighting—and potential loss of men—is an attractive prospect; on the other hand, so is keeping the ship they captured. Weighing the number of sailors they have to crew an additional ship against their desire to keep it, the party ultimately decides to retain the ship, and begins ferrying Olaf's men back to the shore so they can depart on foot.
As the warriors abandon the fort, however, their spokesman warns the party that Olaf's wife Torhild remains, refusing to abandon the fort and having locked herself in her workshop. He cautions the PCs that she will almost certainly seek revenge against them for the death of her husband, and asks that they remember that he warned them and had no part in her plans.
Hearing this, Hrafn of course sneaks off to confront her alone while the rest of the party is still dealing with offloading the men.
Finding the workshop on the upper floor, he knocks politely on the runed door, and is invited in by Torhild's cold voice; at her words, the door opens under his hand, and he is able to enter unharmed. Within, Torhild paces like an animal, her body vibrating with cold fury. Though Hrafn tries to talk her down from her vengeance, she dismisses his words and tells him that she only allowed him in to serve as bait for the rest of her husband's murderers. As he argues his case, she tries to cow him with her power over the runes, assaulting him with a supernatural wave of terror emanating from the inscriptions on the pillars holding up the roof and reminding him of the lingering weakness in his limbs brought on by her curse of the day before.
Hrafn is able to shake off the terror, but the weakness does indeed sap him. As Torhild goes to close the door through which he entered, trapping him in with her, he acts, lunging as best he can despite his supernatural frailty to stab her in the back with his sax. Unfortunately, in his weakened state his blow lacks in force. He and Torhild both fall to the floor, his blade in her back, but the sorceress still lives. Cursing, she invokes the runes again, and the lamps of her workshop flash with dazzling light to blind her attacker. Gritting his eyes shut, Hrafn stabs her again, finally managing to dispatch her.
The other PCs, having noticed his absence, arrive to find him getting to his feet, his weakness fading now that Torhild is dead—Mundr likewise finds the blindness in one of his eyes receding as the enchantment upon him fades. Hrafn tells his comrades only that Torhild fell, without elaborating on how, and the PCs make ready to depart—except for Ylva.
While the others begin looting the rest of the fort, having already picked over Torhild's workshop, Ylva begins working her magic to leave behind a grim message for Kettil Sea-Strider, left where he'll find it should he ever come to visit his son. While burning her taunt about the slaying of Olaf and Torhild into the wall, however, the magic roils out of her grip. As Ylva looks on in horror, the ghastly shades of Olaf and Torhild are drawn out and bound into her inscription, their angry ghosts trapped in her hateful message. She quickly turns tail, and urges the others to hurry up and get ready to leave without explaining why or what she's done.
Finally everyone is prepared to depart. Consulting with Rurik, the party decides to split their forces. Rurik will return back to Ymafjord, his name bolstered by their victory over Olaf Mangler. There he'll stash their plunder, fetch fresh supplies, seek reinforcements to fully man the new ship—which now has only a skeleton crew—and gather any news of the other ships from the raiding fleet separated by the kraken's attack. Meanwhile, the PCs will take their ship to the giant's barrow, seeking to plunder any additional treasures that may aid them in their campaign of vengeance against the Sea-Strider.
Promising to reconvene back at the now-empty fort in ten days' time, both groups set sail. Ahead of the PCs, the water grows cold as they journey toward the burial place of one of the oldest creatures in the universe.
Behind the Scenes
Hrafn's confrontation with Torhild was interesting to run. As a practitioner of rune magic, her spells rely on a lot of preparation and are limited by the runes she knows: in this case blinding, terrifying, and weakening. When it comes to combat, her magic can really only debuff, and she has to rely on her knife to actually injure anyone. As a duo paired with her husband Olaf, the two can be very dangerous, but having been separated she was much less trouble to take in a straight fight once Hrafn was able to overcome her sorcery—especially as he had her somewhat off-guard. Getting hit by that blinding flash before he was already grappling her might have made things go very differently!
With the party headed off to plunder a giant's barrow, I get a chance to play with the world of spirit primordial powers—which is one of my favourite aspects of the setting—and the PCs have the opportunity to do some actual dungeon crawling, which is always nice. All in all, something to look forward to!
And when they return, surely the angry ghosts bound into the fort won't cause any kind of trouble at all.
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