The ongoing playtest of Bodil’s Gap continues! In part fourteen the party arrived in the great port city of Songheim and met the prospective mercenaries available to be hired for their mission of vengeance against Kettil Sea-Strider. Now they continue their stay in town as their preparations continue—but trouble has a way of finding them.
The Cast
Ingvild Scoreslayer, Dýrsark - Ingvild is an old and bitter warrior, cunning but prone to the rage of a berserker. Having fallen in combat with the ancient ghost of a long-dead giant, Ingvild now lives only by the grace of his bargain with that giant's spectral kin, and his soul bears the giant's mark as evidence of the deal they struck.
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.
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
After their meeting with the Jarl of Songheim and his son, the party is pretty much in agreement that Arvid the Younger and his huskarls are their best choice for hiring mercenaries—after all, Kettil Sea-Strider is notorious for his piracy in Songheim's waters, and both Jarl Arvid and his son share the Laxbrynjung clan's animosity towards him. Even so, Kettil is a fearsome opponent with a loyal following of fellow outlaws, and with the remaining ships of the Laxbrynjung's raiding fleet still missing, the party fears that their one band of mercenaries may not be enough.
Thoughts of securing a second band are delayed, however, by Ingvild's business at the great temple of Songheim, where the phantom giant Gottyr has bade him go and await further instructions. Arriving at the temple gates, Ingvild's ear is filled with the low and rumbling whispers of the giant as it makes plain its request.
Gottyr speaks to Ingvild of one of the priests of the temple, a woman named Audgunn Erlandung, who is renowned across the region as a mediator and settler of disputes. Desiring only dishonourable death and the swelling of the phantom giants' army of ghostly slaves, Gottyr promises to absolve Ingvild's debt to him should Ingvild end the priestess' efforts to quell disputes and forestall blood feuds—and offers him even greater rewards should he do so in a way that results in the temple's defilement.
Ingvild stands in the temple's gate and refuses. Though he owes Gottyr his continued existence and promised him the destruction of a temple to the gods, he will fulfil that promise on his own terms with the destruction of whatever temple is most favoured by his enemy, Kettil Sea-Strider. Gottyr is displeased but withdraws, his ire yet to manifest.
While Ingvild visits the temple, Hrafn and Ylva set out on a different errand. In their plunder from the giant's tomb, Hrafn gathered the nearly ephemeral bones of fallen elves, buried with the giant to show his dominion over his enemies. Now, Hrafn intends to have their essence infused into his cloak, hoping it will allow him to vanish from sight as the elves themselves do. This act of magic is beyond him, however, and it is to Ylva that he turns.
Calling on her knowledge of seiðr, Ylva quickly determines that the project will require a loom crafted of wood taken from a place of dying—from a gallows tree or a home that burned with people inside, for example. Considering the matter, Hrafn recalls that in the past Songheim suffered an attempted invasion that was rebuffed, and suggests that there may still be wrecked ships sunk below the harbor.
Timber from such a ship would suit Ylva's magic perfectly, so while Hrafn goes to find Ingvild and fill him in on their plans, Ylva takes Mundr down to the waterfront to search for a suitable wreck. Arriving at the docks, however, Mundr is quick to spot a familiar figurehead. The proud wooden head of a wild-maned horse stands out among the prows of other ships, marking what can only be Vágarhlaupna, the Wave-Leaper. The famed ship is Mundr's inheritance from his fallen Þejn, Arnolf, but was stripped from him before he ever set foot on it by the machinations of his uncle Trond and given to his cousins Gunnar and Finnar—and was then stolen from those same cousins by mutinous cowards who had preferred to draw Laxbrynjung blood than face the kraken to rescue their kin.
At this sign of the traitors who slew one of his cousins and nearly killed the other, Mundr immediately forgets all else and storms towards the ship. There he finds the crew hard at work unloading casks of wine—the fruit of profitable raids on the southern coast undertaken in preference to their sworn mission of vengeance against the Sea-Strider. His ire growing, Mundr mounts the gangplank with Ylva following resignedly behind and confronts the former steersman of his cousins, Sindri, now claiming the captaincy of the famed ship.
Sindri is obviously displeased to see Mundr, but surround by his crew of fellow mutineers, his discomfort doesn't last long. When Mundr threatens the man, he is quick to react by seizing Ylva and putting his knife to her throat, while his men advance on Mundr with hefty oars raised, prepared to beat a lesson into him.
Drawing on the power of the primordial flames, Mundr attempts to fight back—but is soundly clubbed in the head for his troubles. Dazed and reeling against the side of the ship, he draws deep to spew forth a thick and choking cloud of smoke to obscure the deck. While Mundr struggles through the smoke, dodging half-blinded sailors, Ylva calls her magic to briefly transform Sindri's hand into a crab's claw, forcing him to drop his knife and release her.
Vastly outnumbered and with panic starting to spread in the harbour at the sight of a ship that appears to be fire—filled as it is with Mundr's smoke—the two PCs bail out the side of the ship to splash into the cold water. Turning herself into a shark, Ylva drags Mundr away from Vágarhlaupna while the crew aboard begin fanning the smoke away and making ready to leave port again. Her sense attuned to the landscape beneath the water, she quickly locates a wrecked ship, and with little other choice, Mundr agrees to help her recover some of its waterlogged timber even as he plots his vengeance should Sindri and his mutineers ever cross paths with Mundr again.
Ylva's cursed wood acquired, the party reconvenes to find a place for her to work her magic. Seeking cooperative spirits, she decides to venture out of the city proper into the surrounding wilderness. Journeying into the woods, she calls out to the spirits, but is nearly skewered by a mistletoe-tipped spear when they answer her—for emerging from the trees themselves come two elfin tree spirits bristling with anger. Incensed by the party's intrusion, the spirits demand that Ylva and her companions leave, citing a disastrous wildfire that spread through the forest the last time seiðr was invoked beneath its canopy.
Not eager to press the issue, Ylva agrees to depart—but leads the group to merely skirt the forest rather than leaving it entirely, recognizing that the hostile spirits cannot follow them any farther than the edge of their grove's root system. Reaching the border of their influence, the spirits are forced to watch as the party penetrate back into the forest's shadow, now outside the spirits' reach.
As the party travels, they begin to see the truth of the spirits' words, for the forest shows more and more signs of the fire they spoke of—trunks stand scarred by flames, patches of underbrush are burned away, and ash carpets more and more of the forest floor. Seeking the heart of the conflagration, the party at last comes to a towering tree blackened to little more than charcoal, split down the middle as though by a lightning strike. The echoes of seiðr hang in the air, and it is here that Ylva calls for the spirits a second time.
Hearing her call, the spirits answer. The ashes of the split tree kindle to a slow smoulder, its great crack filling with smoke and fire—fire that then leaps free of the tree to caper about in the shapes of little goblin men of crackling—and cackling—flame. Decrying their great boredom ever since they came down to earth in a lightning strike and ran free through the forest, the fire spirits agree to aid Ylva's work of seiðr. While she bargains with them, Ingvild, Mundr, and Hrafn put their heads together to dredge up what they know of carpentry in order to assemble the loom from Ylva's shipwrecked planks.
The loom erected, Ylva sets to work unweaving and reweaving Hrafn's cloak while the fire spirits leap up to perch on the loom's crossbar. Under their feet, the wet wood smokes and smoulders, and Hrafn's powdered elf bone burns into the fabric'swarp and weft. When the work is done the loom shudders and falls into ash, and Hrafn tries on his newly enchanted cloak.
Looking right at him, Hrafn is plain as day, but as soon as Ylva's attention is drawn away from him by the spirits' departure, he vanishes from her sight, reappearing only when his words draw her gaze right to him again. It seems that Hrafn's cloak hides him only from those who aren't paying attention, rather than turning him truly invisible, but even that is a mighty piece of magic indeed.
Now armed with his cloak, Hrafn plans his next move, and considers paying a visit to the Hall of Riddles, the premier hall of skaldic learning in the Gap, located right here on an island on Songheim's bay.
Behind the Scenes
Bringing back the mutineers who killed Mundr's cousin Gunnar and almost filled Finnar as well is something I knew right away that I wanted to get to. When they showed up, though, I expected Mundr to go and get the rest of the party and maybe the crew of their ship, not storm up to Sindri with just Ylva to accompany him. Needless to say, two PCs agaisnt thirty mutineers isn't exactly a winning proposition, and Mundr's consistently poor rolls in the resulting brawl didn't help either. I have no doubt Sindri and his men will show up again later—we'll just have to see when and how.
This was a fairly short session, coming in the middle of the party's stay in the big city—next session is their last one in Songheim before setting out properly, and also the last session that has already been run. After that we'll have caught up with and even overtaken the campaign itself, since I post these weekly but only run every second week. I'm not sure what I'll fill the gap with, but I'm sure I'll think of something.
In any case, next time we'll see the party engaging in a bit of spying and doing a favour for some of their mercenary contacts, hoping to secure their services with payment in kind rather than cold hard cash. Seeking vengeance is never easy!
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