ap Oweyn
07-02-2004, 08:36 AM
This scenario was inspired by Beowulf, The 13th Warrior, and The Atlas of the Walking Dead, in which the draugr appear.
Thanks to urbwar for talking with me at length about AFMBE before I ran this, my first game. And to the Viking Answer Lady, for maintaining an excellent website on all things Viking.
Special thanks to RPG.net's XaosHeruka for supplying virtually all of the cool cultural elements of this scenario (sumbel, the disir, hamingja, etc.) as well as a couple of the more disturbing scenes. ;)
I'm hoping that Gentrification (who played Gamli) will chime in as well.
Lastly, forgive me if the account is a bit jumbled. I wrote it right after the game (about 1:30 this morning).
---
The party is made up of a skald (bard) named Gamli inn Skjalgi, a skogar (woodsman) named Inkyrri Orn, a berserker named Oddmar Hausakljufr, a thrane (warrior) named Ragnar Austmannaskelfir, and a skjaldmeyjar (shield maiden) named Sieglinde.
The party has been ordered by their chieftain Grimr to travel to the hall of Bjolfr, a drighten (war chief) in the lands ruled by Ketill. Ketill is the uncle of the young prince Sveinn, who’s parents have died leaving him heir to the throne. As the brother of Sveinn’s mother, Ketill’s sacred duty is to protect and guide Sveinn until he comes of age to rule. (Ketill, however, has taken the opportunity to rule himself, seeking to make Sveinn so reliant on his guidance that Ketill will effectively rule for the remainder of his days.)
Unbeknowst to Bjolfr, Ketill has conspired with his two other drighten, Snorri and Geirr, to do away with Bjolfr and claim his hall. A raiding party, made up of Snorri and Geirr’s men, were sent to attack Bjolfr’s hall disguised as raiders from another land. The raiding party was drowned at sea, though, by a terrible storm. A week later, Snorri’s chief advisor was killed en route back from Ketill’s hall. Only the group’s scout survived to tell the tale. A week after that, an emissary sent by Ketill to Snorri’s hall failed to return. So now, Bjolfr (the intended target of Ketill’s treachery) has asked the party to investigate Snorri’s hall on behalf of Ketill.
At Snorri’s hall, the party finds hastily constructed defenses and the corpses of warriors and villagers alike. In the hall, Snorri sits dead on his throne. Unlike everyone else in town, Snorri shows no visible evidence of trauma. He appears to have died of fright.
Leaving the hall, the party hear the furtive scuffling of feet. From all directions. As they attempt to move away from the hall, they are confronted by the ragtag remains of Snorri’s warriors. Believing the party to be among those responsible for the slaughter here, the warriors threaten the party. Oddmar the berserker, having heard enough, attacks. Hitting his opponent with enough force to drive his axe through the warrior’s head and into his shoulders, Oddmar begins what proves to be a brief exchange. When the party are finished, seven warriors lay dead and two unconscious.
As they leave the village, the party notices a grey horse in the distance. Inkyrri, being possessed of unusually acute vision, notices that the horse has no tail. And no ears. As the horse gallops away, it doesn’t take acute vision to see that it moves very oddly. As if its back were disjointed somehow. (The grey horse is in fact an alternate form for the draugr, revenants of men drowned at sea. Its back is broken.)
The party give chase. They lose the horse in a clearing. Inkyrri is able to track the horse to the middle of the clearing. There, the tracks disappear.
The party decide to head for Ketill’s hall, being both the closest and the hall of the man in who’s service they are ultimately performing.
At the front entrance to Ketill’s village, there stands a sacrificial boar’s head mounted on a spear. As the party nears, the head animates, telling them to “distrust he who will come into power over all the Danes, for he is not to be trusted.” It’s message delivered, the boar’s head disintegrates in time lapse, leaving only a skull balanced precariously on a spear’s point.
The main gate is barred from the inside, forcing Inkyrri and Sieglinde to throw ropes over the battlements and climb down the other side. Once there, Inkyrri uses the rope to pulley the large wooden cross beam out of the door and open the way for the rest of the party.
Inside, the fog is thick on the ground. More substantial defenses exist here. But the ground is still littered with the bodies of dead. Warriors and villagers alike. Moving to the main hall, the party finds the throne empty this time. They hear the muffled sound of a child wailing nearby. It’s not long before they locate a saferoom behind and below the throne area, in an earthen-floor cellar. When they call out, they hear the child inside immediately muffled. Listening more closely, Inkyrri hears a woman’s voice, beseeching the gods to grant her the strength to end the children’s lives should the “drowned ones” come for them. And to end her own.
Sieglinde tries desperately to convince the women inside that she and the party can protect them. Seemingly, she succeeds, as she hears the faint noise of a latch shifting. Then the screaming starts. On a nearby shelf, three small figurines of the disir (protective mother spirits) begin to vibrate violently. The latch is still in place, so Ragnar and Oddmar begin desperately trying to hack down the wooden door. As the screaming reaches a crescendo, the disir figurines explode, sending splinters of stone flying in all directions. Everyone inside the room is dead.
Frustrated by their failure, the party contemplates their next move. They hear, suddenly, footsteps on the floor above them. Being of a reckless sort, Ragnar and Oddmar both bolt up the stairs to confront the intruders. They find themselves facing down seven of Ketill’s warriors. After a tense standoff, the party is able to convince the group’s leader (Ulfvarinn) that they have been sent by Bjolfr to help. They ask Ulfvarinn to identify the bodies below and confirm that the prince Sveinn is not among the dead. He is not, but the warrior identifies one of the women as the wife of one of his comrades.
The decision is made to travel together to Geirr’s hall. After a proper Viking burial is performed. (Improper burial being the leading cause of undead in the Viking world.)
Arriving at Geirr’s town, the party’s entrance is aided by the fact that the town’s guards recognize the party’s companions from Ketill’s hall. Ulfvarinn, Falgeirr, Vekell, Rafn, Skaldbjorn, Eyjarr, and Dagr. Ulfvarinn claps a hand on the guard’s shoulder in greeting and is told to head straight to Geirr’s hall, where Sveinn and Ketill now preside.
In the great hall, the party stands before Ketill and the young prince Sveinn. The berserker, Oddmar, is quick to condemn Ketill’s actions as cowardly. Ketill counters that, were it not for his fleeing the city with Sveinn, the rightful heir would be dead. He further points out that he was able to save Sveinn where the party was able to save noone.
Gamli notices the drighten Geirr (whose hall this was before the exiled Ketill and Sveinn arrived) sitting at a nearby table and asks him if he might walk the defenses with him. He senses that Geirr is unhappy with his lot and might offer some insight on the situation. Geirr sullenly replies, “clearly the hall is no longer mine; perhaps the walls remain so.”
Sieglinde presents herself to Sveinn, detecting some distrust of Ketill in the young prince. She pointedly pledges her services to him and him alone. Sensing her attempts to make a connection with Sveinn, Ketill interrupts her and signals the beginning of sumbel, the drinking ritual.
As the lady of the hall brings a flagon of mead to Ketill, he boasts that no harm shall come to the young prince as long as his uncle Ketill draws breath. And that any who should try to harm Sveinn would find themselves buried in a place so dreadful that even the spirits wouldn’t dare haunt it.
The sumbel continues, with each party member offering a boast of deeds to be performed or a brag of deeds already completed. Even Gamli, abandoning his planned walk with Geirr, takes the opportunity. His boast is so grand that the hall’s thule (responsible for the hall’s hamingja or luck) calls the party on it. To do otherwise would potentially bring the party’s bad luck upon what is now Ketill’s hall. When Gamli persists in his claims, the thule asserts that there is one way that hamingja might be preserved. Holmgang. Ritual combat.
Volunteering to fight in the holmgang, Ragnar chooses the berserker, Oddmar, as his second. Oddmar, having little interest in ritualized combat, opts not to participate. So Sieglinde steps in as Ragnar’s second. Hildir, his opponent, is quickly beaten as Ragnar breaks his three shields and then draws first blood, cutting Hildir across the arm (though not seriously). The seconds quickly stop the fight and Gamli uses his quick wit to diffuse ill feelings. Ragnar and Hildir leave the ring as quick friends.
Hamingja having been secured, the party members pass the evening in preparation for tomorrow’s battle. Inkyrri keeps watch on the battlement. Ragnar secures the company of one of the ladies of the hall. Oddmar sleeps. And Gamli and Sieglinde endeavor to sing of brave deeds and raise dangerously low spirits. Poor Gamli is off his game, but Sieglinde is in rare form and is able to rally the hall of warriors.
Having failed to bolster morale as he’d hoped, Gamli instead convinces Geirr to walk the walls with him at last. He can tell that Geirr has a story to tell. And tell it he does. He tells Gamli of Ketill’s plan to form a raiding party disguised as foreign soldiers to attack Bjolfr’s hall and secure it. Such an act would leave the hall open for occupation by Ketill and give him good cause to invade several neighboring kingdoms. Geirr tells that they made offerings to Aegir, god of storms, for quick passage for their raiding party. Angered by their violation of their sacred duty to the young prince, Aegir raised a storm, drowning the raiding party. Now they have returned as draugr to seek their revenge on Ketill and his co-conspirators.
Reasoning that only the hall’s thule might know of some way to settle accounts with Aegir, he seeks the old man out. He relates Geirr’s account of their planned betrayal of Bjolfr. The thule, being Ketill’s man, seeks to discredit Geirr’s story. “Ketill is not complicit in this plan. They were Geirr’s men. And Snorri’s. If Ketill is killed, then Geirr can step up as Sveinn’s guardian, effectively claiming the rule for himself. And who better to kill Ketill on his behalf than a group of warriors not known in these lands?”
Unsure what to do next, Gamli calls the party together to discuss their plan. The consensus seems to be that killing Ketill, Geirr, or both will put an end to the draugr curse. But they get no chance to plan beyond that. The horns sound as the fog rolls in.
Inkyrri rushes to the battlements to see the enemy. In the fog, he can see the outlines of warriors. Impossibly large and appearing “hel blar”, the colour of death. As the draugr advance through the fog, the guards open fire with arrows. The arrows find their marks but fail to slow the draugr, who phase into the earth as they near the town walls. Where the draugr pass through the earth, the arrows are left on the ground.
As the fog rolls into the city, the battle is joined. Draugr assault each of the party members. The first hero to bring down a draugr is Oddmar the berserker. Cleaving the draugr’s chest with his battle axe, Oddmar finishes it by beheading. He neglects to jump back and forth between the body and head three times. But nothing comes of his oversight. The draugr appears to be properly dead.
Ragnar manages to finish another with his axe. Inkyrri and Sieglinde fight to stalemates with each of their opponents. Meanwhile, Gamli is severly wounded by a draugr. Falling to the ground, Gamli prepares to meet his fate. At the last moment, Dagr (one of the survivors from Ketill’s hall) takes a running leap from a nearby embankment, aiming to land on the draugr’s back. Instead, the draugr catches Dagr in midair, grabbing him by the neck. It slams Dagr downward onto the sharpened poles nearby, ending his life. Gamli gets to his feet and attacks the draugr again. Unfortunately, he is no match for the creature. The draugr grabs Gamli by the back of the head, punches him with the pummel of his sword, throws him to the ground, and drives his sword downward, pinning Gamli to the ground and snuffing his life.
Breaking from combat, Sieglinde resolves to find and kill Ketill, hoping to end the curse and the onslaught of the draugr. Finding the saferoom in the great hall, she can hear Ketill’s plaintive “help me” from the other side of the door. She calls out to Sveinn, saying that she knows what he’s planning and that he’s chosen correctly. With that, Ketill lets out a desperate “Noooo!!” promptly reduced to gargling as Sveinn cuts his throat. Moments later, the door to the saferoom opens. And Sveinn, the future king, emerges drenched in blood and carrying a dagger. Ketill lies dead in the middle of the room.
Kneeling, Sieglinde pleads her allegiance to the young king. Gratefully, he accepts her gesture.
Meanwhile, Innkyrri makes a similar decision regarding Geirr, who has donned his armour and taken to the battlefield, presumably in an effort to quell his guilt and perhaps restore his honour. Running toward Geirr, Inkyrri draws his bow and shouts “behind you!” As Geirr turns, Inkyrri lets fly with two arrows, both striking Geirr in the back. The drighten slumps first to both knees, then tumbles face first into the mud. Dead.
Immediately, the draugr cease their attack. They turn and begin walking toward the main gates. And the sea. As they near the gates, they phase back into the ground. The fog dissipates.
Thanks to urbwar for talking with me at length about AFMBE before I ran this, my first game. And to the Viking Answer Lady, for maintaining an excellent website on all things Viking.
Special thanks to RPG.net's XaosHeruka for supplying virtually all of the cool cultural elements of this scenario (sumbel, the disir, hamingja, etc.) as well as a couple of the more disturbing scenes. ;)
I'm hoping that Gentrification (who played Gamli) will chime in as well.
Lastly, forgive me if the account is a bit jumbled. I wrote it right after the game (about 1:30 this morning).
---
The party is made up of a skald (bard) named Gamli inn Skjalgi, a skogar (woodsman) named Inkyrri Orn, a berserker named Oddmar Hausakljufr, a thrane (warrior) named Ragnar Austmannaskelfir, and a skjaldmeyjar (shield maiden) named Sieglinde.
The party has been ordered by their chieftain Grimr to travel to the hall of Bjolfr, a drighten (war chief) in the lands ruled by Ketill. Ketill is the uncle of the young prince Sveinn, who’s parents have died leaving him heir to the throne. As the brother of Sveinn’s mother, Ketill’s sacred duty is to protect and guide Sveinn until he comes of age to rule. (Ketill, however, has taken the opportunity to rule himself, seeking to make Sveinn so reliant on his guidance that Ketill will effectively rule for the remainder of his days.)
Unbeknowst to Bjolfr, Ketill has conspired with his two other drighten, Snorri and Geirr, to do away with Bjolfr and claim his hall. A raiding party, made up of Snorri and Geirr’s men, were sent to attack Bjolfr’s hall disguised as raiders from another land. The raiding party was drowned at sea, though, by a terrible storm. A week later, Snorri’s chief advisor was killed en route back from Ketill’s hall. Only the group’s scout survived to tell the tale. A week after that, an emissary sent by Ketill to Snorri’s hall failed to return. So now, Bjolfr (the intended target of Ketill’s treachery) has asked the party to investigate Snorri’s hall on behalf of Ketill.
At Snorri’s hall, the party finds hastily constructed defenses and the corpses of warriors and villagers alike. In the hall, Snorri sits dead on his throne. Unlike everyone else in town, Snorri shows no visible evidence of trauma. He appears to have died of fright.
Leaving the hall, the party hear the furtive scuffling of feet. From all directions. As they attempt to move away from the hall, they are confronted by the ragtag remains of Snorri’s warriors. Believing the party to be among those responsible for the slaughter here, the warriors threaten the party. Oddmar the berserker, having heard enough, attacks. Hitting his opponent with enough force to drive his axe through the warrior’s head and into his shoulders, Oddmar begins what proves to be a brief exchange. When the party are finished, seven warriors lay dead and two unconscious.
As they leave the village, the party notices a grey horse in the distance. Inkyrri, being possessed of unusually acute vision, notices that the horse has no tail. And no ears. As the horse gallops away, it doesn’t take acute vision to see that it moves very oddly. As if its back were disjointed somehow. (The grey horse is in fact an alternate form for the draugr, revenants of men drowned at sea. Its back is broken.)
The party give chase. They lose the horse in a clearing. Inkyrri is able to track the horse to the middle of the clearing. There, the tracks disappear.
The party decide to head for Ketill’s hall, being both the closest and the hall of the man in who’s service they are ultimately performing.
At the front entrance to Ketill’s village, there stands a sacrificial boar’s head mounted on a spear. As the party nears, the head animates, telling them to “distrust he who will come into power over all the Danes, for he is not to be trusted.” It’s message delivered, the boar’s head disintegrates in time lapse, leaving only a skull balanced precariously on a spear’s point.
The main gate is barred from the inside, forcing Inkyrri and Sieglinde to throw ropes over the battlements and climb down the other side. Once there, Inkyrri uses the rope to pulley the large wooden cross beam out of the door and open the way for the rest of the party.
Inside, the fog is thick on the ground. More substantial defenses exist here. But the ground is still littered with the bodies of dead. Warriors and villagers alike. Moving to the main hall, the party finds the throne empty this time. They hear the muffled sound of a child wailing nearby. It’s not long before they locate a saferoom behind and below the throne area, in an earthen-floor cellar. When they call out, they hear the child inside immediately muffled. Listening more closely, Inkyrri hears a woman’s voice, beseeching the gods to grant her the strength to end the children’s lives should the “drowned ones” come for them. And to end her own.
Sieglinde tries desperately to convince the women inside that she and the party can protect them. Seemingly, she succeeds, as she hears the faint noise of a latch shifting. Then the screaming starts. On a nearby shelf, three small figurines of the disir (protective mother spirits) begin to vibrate violently. The latch is still in place, so Ragnar and Oddmar begin desperately trying to hack down the wooden door. As the screaming reaches a crescendo, the disir figurines explode, sending splinters of stone flying in all directions. Everyone inside the room is dead.
Frustrated by their failure, the party contemplates their next move. They hear, suddenly, footsteps on the floor above them. Being of a reckless sort, Ragnar and Oddmar both bolt up the stairs to confront the intruders. They find themselves facing down seven of Ketill’s warriors. After a tense standoff, the party is able to convince the group’s leader (Ulfvarinn) that they have been sent by Bjolfr to help. They ask Ulfvarinn to identify the bodies below and confirm that the prince Sveinn is not among the dead. He is not, but the warrior identifies one of the women as the wife of one of his comrades.
The decision is made to travel together to Geirr’s hall. After a proper Viking burial is performed. (Improper burial being the leading cause of undead in the Viking world.)
Arriving at Geirr’s town, the party’s entrance is aided by the fact that the town’s guards recognize the party’s companions from Ketill’s hall. Ulfvarinn, Falgeirr, Vekell, Rafn, Skaldbjorn, Eyjarr, and Dagr. Ulfvarinn claps a hand on the guard’s shoulder in greeting and is told to head straight to Geirr’s hall, where Sveinn and Ketill now preside.
In the great hall, the party stands before Ketill and the young prince Sveinn. The berserker, Oddmar, is quick to condemn Ketill’s actions as cowardly. Ketill counters that, were it not for his fleeing the city with Sveinn, the rightful heir would be dead. He further points out that he was able to save Sveinn where the party was able to save noone.
Gamli notices the drighten Geirr (whose hall this was before the exiled Ketill and Sveinn arrived) sitting at a nearby table and asks him if he might walk the defenses with him. He senses that Geirr is unhappy with his lot and might offer some insight on the situation. Geirr sullenly replies, “clearly the hall is no longer mine; perhaps the walls remain so.”
Sieglinde presents herself to Sveinn, detecting some distrust of Ketill in the young prince. She pointedly pledges her services to him and him alone. Sensing her attempts to make a connection with Sveinn, Ketill interrupts her and signals the beginning of sumbel, the drinking ritual.
As the lady of the hall brings a flagon of mead to Ketill, he boasts that no harm shall come to the young prince as long as his uncle Ketill draws breath. And that any who should try to harm Sveinn would find themselves buried in a place so dreadful that even the spirits wouldn’t dare haunt it.
The sumbel continues, with each party member offering a boast of deeds to be performed or a brag of deeds already completed. Even Gamli, abandoning his planned walk with Geirr, takes the opportunity. His boast is so grand that the hall’s thule (responsible for the hall’s hamingja or luck) calls the party on it. To do otherwise would potentially bring the party’s bad luck upon what is now Ketill’s hall. When Gamli persists in his claims, the thule asserts that there is one way that hamingja might be preserved. Holmgang. Ritual combat.
Volunteering to fight in the holmgang, Ragnar chooses the berserker, Oddmar, as his second. Oddmar, having little interest in ritualized combat, opts not to participate. So Sieglinde steps in as Ragnar’s second. Hildir, his opponent, is quickly beaten as Ragnar breaks his three shields and then draws first blood, cutting Hildir across the arm (though not seriously). The seconds quickly stop the fight and Gamli uses his quick wit to diffuse ill feelings. Ragnar and Hildir leave the ring as quick friends.
Hamingja having been secured, the party members pass the evening in preparation for tomorrow’s battle. Inkyrri keeps watch on the battlement. Ragnar secures the company of one of the ladies of the hall. Oddmar sleeps. And Gamli and Sieglinde endeavor to sing of brave deeds and raise dangerously low spirits. Poor Gamli is off his game, but Sieglinde is in rare form and is able to rally the hall of warriors.
Having failed to bolster morale as he’d hoped, Gamli instead convinces Geirr to walk the walls with him at last. He can tell that Geirr has a story to tell. And tell it he does. He tells Gamli of Ketill’s plan to form a raiding party disguised as foreign soldiers to attack Bjolfr’s hall and secure it. Such an act would leave the hall open for occupation by Ketill and give him good cause to invade several neighboring kingdoms. Geirr tells that they made offerings to Aegir, god of storms, for quick passage for their raiding party. Angered by their violation of their sacred duty to the young prince, Aegir raised a storm, drowning the raiding party. Now they have returned as draugr to seek their revenge on Ketill and his co-conspirators.
Reasoning that only the hall’s thule might know of some way to settle accounts with Aegir, he seeks the old man out. He relates Geirr’s account of their planned betrayal of Bjolfr. The thule, being Ketill’s man, seeks to discredit Geirr’s story. “Ketill is not complicit in this plan. They were Geirr’s men. And Snorri’s. If Ketill is killed, then Geirr can step up as Sveinn’s guardian, effectively claiming the rule for himself. And who better to kill Ketill on his behalf than a group of warriors not known in these lands?”
Unsure what to do next, Gamli calls the party together to discuss their plan. The consensus seems to be that killing Ketill, Geirr, or both will put an end to the draugr curse. But they get no chance to plan beyond that. The horns sound as the fog rolls in.
Inkyrri rushes to the battlements to see the enemy. In the fog, he can see the outlines of warriors. Impossibly large and appearing “hel blar”, the colour of death. As the draugr advance through the fog, the guards open fire with arrows. The arrows find their marks but fail to slow the draugr, who phase into the earth as they near the town walls. Where the draugr pass through the earth, the arrows are left on the ground.
As the fog rolls into the city, the battle is joined. Draugr assault each of the party members. The first hero to bring down a draugr is Oddmar the berserker. Cleaving the draugr’s chest with his battle axe, Oddmar finishes it by beheading. He neglects to jump back and forth between the body and head three times. But nothing comes of his oversight. The draugr appears to be properly dead.
Ragnar manages to finish another with his axe. Inkyrri and Sieglinde fight to stalemates with each of their opponents. Meanwhile, Gamli is severly wounded by a draugr. Falling to the ground, Gamli prepares to meet his fate. At the last moment, Dagr (one of the survivors from Ketill’s hall) takes a running leap from a nearby embankment, aiming to land on the draugr’s back. Instead, the draugr catches Dagr in midair, grabbing him by the neck. It slams Dagr downward onto the sharpened poles nearby, ending his life. Gamli gets to his feet and attacks the draugr again. Unfortunately, he is no match for the creature. The draugr grabs Gamli by the back of the head, punches him with the pummel of his sword, throws him to the ground, and drives his sword downward, pinning Gamli to the ground and snuffing his life.
Breaking from combat, Sieglinde resolves to find and kill Ketill, hoping to end the curse and the onslaught of the draugr. Finding the saferoom in the great hall, she can hear Ketill’s plaintive “help me” from the other side of the door. She calls out to Sveinn, saying that she knows what he’s planning and that he’s chosen correctly. With that, Ketill lets out a desperate “Noooo!!” promptly reduced to gargling as Sveinn cuts his throat. Moments later, the door to the saferoom opens. And Sveinn, the future king, emerges drenched in blood and carrying a dagger. Ketill lies dead in the middle of the room.
Kneeling, Sieglinde pleads her allegiance to the young king. Gratefully, he accepts her gesture.
Meanwhile, Innkyrri makes a similar decision regarding Geirr, who has donned his armour and taken to the battlefield, presumably in an effort to quell his guilt and perhaps restore his honour. Running toward Geirr, Inkyrri draws his bow and shouts “behind you!” As Geirr turns, Inkyrri lets fly with two arrows, both striking Geirr in the back. The drighten slumps first to both knees, then tumbles face first into the mud. Dead.
Immediately, the draugr cease their attack. They turn and begin walking toward the main gates. And the sea. As they near the gates, they phase back into the ground. The fog dissipates.