Friday Encounter: Runestone Treasure Hunt

This encounter is fairly straightforward, but it's intended to get players thinking in terms of self-directed exploration, rewarding them for remembering landmarks and scouring the map for points of interest. It's by design the sort of puzzle you would find in an open-world video game. It will need some DM effort in advance to lay out a good treasure hunt - to this end, I've left it deliberately vague so that DMs can add their own landmarks and trails. The inciting incident could be placed in the wilderness, on the road, in a dungeon, or even in a town as a local landmark - the townspeople may or may not know about the nature of the stone, if you want to give your players hints to set them on their way. It may still be useful for players to hear rumors of a map to buried treasure written on runestones to get them in the right frame of thought.

The party should come upon a large standing stone in which runes and images are carved. The stonework can be discerned as depicting a distinctive landmark of some kind - this should be something specific enough that it cannot easily be mistaken for somewhere else. For instance, the stone could show a tower on an island in a lake, with a tree growing at its side. This image corresponds to another landmark in the game world some distance away from the stone.

It's up to you as to how the players should figure out where this landmark is. They could get hints from asking people in the nearby area, or they could consult written records that mention a similar feature in order to get directions to it. Alternatively, a DC 15 History check could be used to pinpoint the location the image depicts (for optimal fun, you can have a successful check give the location, but a failed check still give the player hints that approximate the next step in the trail - they'll have to do the legwork themselves to see how they apply). If all else fails, it's also fun to let the PCs stumble upon the landmark by happenstance if they pass through the same point or hex it was located - hopefully they'll remember the stone.

If the party follows the trail to this location, they will find another runestone, this one with a different image depicting a different landmark. Once again, following the clues to this next location will reveal another runestone, and so on. You can repeat this as many times as you like (or for as long as you think the players will be interested) - about four to five steps will work. You can also include additional challenges or puzzles along the way. Perhaps the first stone or two can be found easily enough by just being in the area, but later stones might be in more difficult locations to reach, such as at the top of a cliff, or guarded by an enemy or trap.

At the end of the trail, the party will find a monolith with no markings at all, just bare stone. If they dig in the ground, they will discover a treasure chest buried beneath this stone; it takes about an hour to unearth the chest. Inside is 4,100 GP's worth of gold, silver, platinum, and jewels, as well as one magic item for each member of the party suited to their class and play style.

This encounter is meant to be something for the players to pursue on their own, but it could also work as a competition. Perhaps a rival group is following the stones as well, and now the PCs must race against time to get to the treasure before they do - potentially facing sabotage along the way!

It's Not The Destination

In my experiences with the DMing sphere online, there's one question I see being asked time and time again. "How do I make overland travel interesting?" And, nine times out of ten, the answer I see is "I just timeskip over it."

I've come to accept that there are a few things in the world of online TRPG discourse that I will never understand, like why people like Drizzt Do'urden or why people think rules lawyering makes for a fun time at the table. But even then, the first time I heard this piece of advice, I was completely dumbfounded. Why, I asked myself, would anyone want to skip over overland travel? That's the best part!

Ever since I began my career as a DM, I have always played out travel in "game time." I treat it as a series of scenes, challenges, and encounters, just like I would treat any dungeon. In just about every campaign I've run, half the action, if not more, has been taken up by the party getting from one place to another. And I have never gotten bored with it, or felt like I needed to - or, indeed, that I should - gloss over it.

I think a big part of this can be attributed to the stories that shaped my perception of the fantasy genre, and that I drew upon in my DMing. In my childhood, the two stories that introduced me to fantasy were The Hobbit and The Odyssey. Both of these are, fundamentally, stories about getting from one place to another. But the majority of the story is devoted to the many incidents that happen along the way. For me, that was just how a fantasy quest worked - there was a beginning and an end, but most of the interesting points happened in between those points. I just assumed that everyone ran travel the way I did. Why wouldn't they? I mean, imagine if Tolkien applied this logic, and Bilbo went from Hobbiton to the Lonely Mountain in the span of a single chapter. That wouldn't be a very interesting story, would it?

Evidently, the world needs my wisdom. So I'm coming off my mountain hermitage to share how I handle travel in my games, and how I make it interesting.

All of this in one forest!

1. The Wilderness is a Dungeon

This is probably advice you've heard before - but it bears repeating, because it's good advice. There is just as much room for interesting obstacles, challenging combat, and thought-provoking puzzles above ground as there is in a dungeon. A lot of wilderness travel can be handled in the same way one would handle a dungeon crawl, replacing rooms and corridors with landmarks and other points of interest. The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks provide plenty of good examples of how to make this work. As early as the third installment in the series, 1983's The Forest of Doom, we can see this in action - the book takes the dungeon crawl format of the previous titles, but simply rethemes it as a journey through the forest. Walls can be replaced by dense trees, and rooms by clearings, but the structure of the action remains the same: a spatially linked series of discrete zones, with encounters in each.

The Forest of Doom stands as one extreme of this philosophy. Certainly, you can run things this way, but if you don't want travel to be laborious, it may be more practical to expand the "dungeon" over a wider span of distance, with "rooms" being miles or leagues apart. This is where your pointcrawls and hexcrawls come in. As long as there's a number of points of interest in the environment, enough for players to remember and map out and want to travel back and forth between, with multiple different routes and connections between them, you're still essentially running a dungeon crawl writ large. The only thing that fundamentally changes is the scale - you can zoom in and out as needed to focus in on a smaller, encounter-dense location like a dungeon, or cast a wider lens for a wider area. All you need to do is have plenty of interesting things for your players to do.

2. Make Every Stop Interesting

If you're going to run a good dungeon, you want to stock it with plenty of interesting and diverse rooms, puzzles, challenges, and encounters. It can't just be a series of orcs guarding pies. Well, it can be, but it'll get dull fast if you don't put twists on the formula. If we treat overland travel like a giant dungeon, you'll need to do the same thing.

It's no coincidence that many entries in my Friday Encounter series are interesting things that can be found on the road or in the wilderness. A lot of them, after all, are encounters I've used in my campaigns. But they also show that there are all sorts of unique situations you can throw at players, and many of them can fit just as well in the wilderness or on the road as in a dungeon.

Of course, if the party is traveling from a designated Point A to a designated Point B - especially in a settled or civilized area - they'll likely want to stick to the road, which limits the amount of directions and branching paths they could travel in. That's not to say that there isn't room for choice - perhaps the road forks, or the path is blocked, forcing an alternate route around - but if the PCs are going to be sticking to a relatively straight line, it's especially important to pepper that line with interesting stops along the way to keep travel dynamic.

The sadly defunct Way of the Waysider blog goes into great detail about this, with an excellent guide to making road travel engaging - they had even begun to construct a "road sandbox" detailing a number of stops along a network of roads, and it makes me sad to this day that this was never completed. In an average pre-industrial society, a road in any settled region should have stops roughly at least a day apart from one another so that travelers would find a place to rest. These would mostly be towns, but there are other options, like castles, monasteries, inns, and homesteads. Each of these stops should have a hook or gimmick to them. It could be a feature of the settlement itself - a particular landmark, or even a dungeon that could be explored - or it could be something in the vicinity, like a noted visitor, or rumors of a monster or treasure nearby. You could even give the party a quest to take them on a brief detour from their main journey. Even something as simple as a peculiar local custom ("in this town, the locals observe a festival of rolling cheese wheels down hills, and this just so happens to be taking place when the party arrives") can make stops memorable and bring life to the setting.

Every time the PCs stop somewhere, there should be something that gives them reason to investigate things further, or something they can use. It doesn't have to be big, but it should at least be memorable enough to distinguish one stop apart from others, to keep them from blurring together.

Trivia: the one time this part
made it to the screen,
Stadtler and Waldorf were involved.
Look it up!

3. Don't Forget Natural Phenomena

Not all challenges in the wilderness have to come from civilization, or monsters, or other external forces. The natural world itself can be just as much of a threat to an adventurer, especially an ill-prepared one. I've always held that non-combat encounters can be more interesting than combat ones. Combat encounters have an easy and obvious solution to them - "we need to bash this thing's head in before it bashes our heads in!" But what if you have a problem you can't solve by hitting it with a sword? That encourages players to think and apply problem-solving skills. Sometimes, they can come up with solutions that even you won't anticipate. I love when that happens.

Recently, I began reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - I'm of course familiar with the classic movie, and I read several of the later books in the series in my youth, but I wanted to start at the beginning to see how it compares to the more famous film. What struck me was how similar the action in that story was to the way I like to run travel in my games. The movie adapts the important parts - Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, and they fall into an enchanted field of poppies on the way to the Emerald City. But it also cut out a lot of chapters in between that detail the everyday challenges they face along the way, like having to cut their way through thick foliage or needing to cross a chasm where the bridge is out. These are exactly the sorts of encounters I like to throw at my players.

If you're in need of encounters for overland travel, don't forget things like bad weather, rough ground, poor visibility, and of course, getting lost. They provide fun challenges that demand creative thought, and they don't stretch suspension of disbelief quite as much as throwing constant life-or-death struggles at the party does. As other luminaries have pointed out, the concept of the "adventuring day," in which an average 5e party is meant to face 6-8 peril-fraught battles per day, is completely ridiculous. 5e is unbalanced precisely because no one ever actually runs the game the way it's balanced around, because that only makes sense if you adjust every mention of "day" in the rules given with "week." As Ross Scott succinctly put it, "how many people have you fought or shot today?" Pit your PCs against the uncaring wilds, however, and you can create challenges that are refreshing and believable.

Also worth noting, natural phenomena doesn't have to be a source of adversity. Something like an advantageous lookout that allows the party to survey the path ahead can be just as interesting, and impact the tactics they employ.

4. Survival is Key

If the journey is far enough, and far enough afield from civilization, the party can't expect to rely on the hospitality of others. If you're going to make travel an engaging challenge, it helps to model the difficulties inherent in faring for oneself in the wild. Constructing shelter, navigating trails, and foraging for food can all present interesting opportunities for PCs to put their skills to the test. You should be tracking rations, and PCs should be sure to equip themselves with proper gear for the environment ahead of them - they won't do well in the cold mountains without warm clothes, for instance.

Regrettably, not a lot of systems represent this well. Which is frustrating, because the extensive literary canon of boys-own-adventure serials should well be enough to establish the precedent that this can make for good storytelling. Contrary to popular belief, Gygax and Arneson did not argue that players should break out a copy of Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival board game and just play that when their characters were traversing the wilderness; they just recommended the board as a useful game map. Regardless, I do think that there's room for house rules to fill the gaps here. My ideal system would have rules for following trails, foraging for food, scouting ahead, and making camp that would hopefully make these things more granular and in-depth than rolling a single Survival check and being done with it.

The best system I've seen handle this has been the fan-made expansion The Perilous Wilds for Dungeon World, which lists several new moves for exactly the sort of thing I just listed, complete with advice for the DM on how to apply them and how complications of those rolls could drive the action forward. I would never think of running the system without it. Dungeon World is, of course, a 2d6-based system with a standardized mechanic for rolling and three levels of outcomes for any given roll, which doesn't exactly work the same way as 5e. Maybe some day I'll adapt these rules to 5e myself, or perhaps someone out there has already done something that fills the void - I'd love to hear about it, if so!

5. Know Your Players

This goes with everything regarding TRPG advice, but it bears repeating here. Most DMs don't do things this way, and not all players will be used to handling travel in such a detailed and granular fashion. It's entirely possible that they'll find it boring if they take so long to get to the endpoint of their quest, and that they'll find whole sessions of amusing incidents along the way to be a bore. Sure, I love that stuff, but you can't guarantee everyone will.

This goes especially so if you're using house rules - if there are rules in use at your table that aren't in the core books, your players may not know them as well, and may not be used to thinking in terms of how they can apply and interact with them. If your players aren't used to packing rations for the travel ahead, rather than writing them down as part of their starting equipment and then forgetting about them, it isn't fair to punish them for failing to do so. If you want to run a campaign that makes travel a priority, it's good to make sure your players know this going in, and that they're prepared to approach the challenges of such a campaign appropriately. Ideally, they'll find the prospect just as enjoyable as you do!

If you have any additional thoughts on making travel fun, please leave them in the comments below!

Friday Encounter: Fisherman's Folly

Art by Jeff A. Menges

This encounter takes place in a village - ideally a small one by the coast. If the party is already in such an environment, it can be used there, or the village could be one encountered on the road. Like last week's encounter, it was written under the assumption of taking place in the North and includes some relevant details, but the core conflict is setting-agnostic. As always, don't be afraid to tweak the details to suit your campaign.

Background

While fishing off the coast, Hallbjorn, a local fisherman, found something unusual in his net. In addition to the usual bounty of fish, he caught a small serpent, about the size of his arm from the elbow down. At first, he believed the beast to be an eel, and brought it along with the rest of his catch to sell at the market. However, Hallbjorn's wife, Refna, was able to recognize this was no eel. He had caught a baby sea serpent!

Taking pity on the poor creature, Hallbjorn decided to raise it in the shallows near his home, feeding it fish he couldn't sell on the market. The creature soon became the talk of the town, with many villagers stopping by to see the beast - and some coming from even further afield. At first, Hallbjorn's monster - as the little creature came to be called - was merely a matter of curiosity for those in the area. However, it soon grew from a curiosity to a nuisance.

The creature quickly began to grow, and so too did its appetite. When fish alone could not sustain it, it began to swim along the coast, snatching chickens and small dogs that came near the shore. It only grew bigger and bigger, and is now the size of a newborn calf. As the creature grew to be more of a problem, and the novelty wore off, the people began to make up their mind about it - it needed to go. The problem is, Hallbjorn refuses to give it up...

The Encounter

The PCs might happen upon the village by circumstance when passing through on the road, or they might hear rumors of Hallbjorn's monster and decide to look into it for themselves. If they arrive in town, Hallbjorn will be happy to show them the serpent and retell the story. But the PCs should also become aware that the rest of the townsfolk are growing restless - indeed, there is hot debate on the streets and in the taverns. It's inevitable that they'll pick up some word.

One faction, led by the town woodcutter Agnar Giermundsson, holds that the creature is a menace and must be dealt with as such - after all, it has already killed several chickens and threatened the livelihoods of farmers. If such a thing continues, surely it is only a matter of time until it devours a child. Hallbjorn and his wife, however, maintain that the creature is harmless, and that killing it would be unnecessarily cruel. They insist that it is only a baby, and it would not be fair to it to punish it for engaging in its natural behaviors. Soon enough, they claim, it will learn to hunt on its own and eat fish further out to shore - the only problem is, the monster shows no signs of doing that any time soon. In fact, it has grown quite fond of being able to get all the food it wants so close to shore, and has stuck around.

The debates are growing heated, and it is clear that this cannot stand for long, lest it tear the village apart. If the PCs do not step in, Agnar's men are fully prepared to take matters into their own hands.

Further Developments

If the PCs do not resolve the dilemma within three days of arriving on the scene, Agnar will decide enough is enough, and rally a mob to kill the creature in the night. If the PCs are among this mob, or kill the monster on their own, Hallbjorn will be distraught, and slaughters one of his horses so that he can construct a nithing pole. Accusing the strangers of inciting the town to such an act of cowardice and dishonor, he pronounces the apparent leader of the party (if there is no leader, choose one at random) a nithingr and places a curse on them. The affected PC is afflicted with ill fortune for the next month. If they roll a natural 20 on any roll, they must re-roll it and keep the new roll (ie, the opposite of a halfling's Lucky trait).

Alternatively, the PCs may decide to resolve the feud by taking the monster with them. This has its own complications - as a sea serpent, it cannot walk on land except for short distances at a time, and must remain in the water. It will require them to feed it in order to keep it from straying back to the village it considers its home - and, as the creature gets bigger, it will only become harder and harder to keep satiated, let alone to transport easily. However, if the PCs can pull it off, they may have a sea serpent on their side, which presents its own advantages.

Either way, a month after the encounter, the serpent's mother will manage to track her offspring down. If Hallbjorn's monster remains at the village, the inhabitants may be in even greater danger than a mere feud would cause them. And if the creature was harmed, there will surely be hell to pay...

Magic Items of the Tennurhaf

The Northmen possess an extensive series of mystic traditions, and in the Tennurhaf, those traditions have been perfected through the years. The people of the Sea of Teeth are renowned as some of the greatest magicians among the Northmen, and many Northern grimoires come from this region. Magicians in the Tennurhaf have developed and recorded many sigils, or staves, in order to imbue objects with magical power. By inscribing these symbols on paper talismans and sewing or placing them into items, a consistent magical effect can reliably be reproduced. Here are a few of such items documented in the mystic tomes of the Tennurhaf.

Art by Caitlin Fitzgerald

Corpse Breeches

Wondrous Item, very rare, requires attunement

Among the more well-known rituals of Tennurhaf mysticism is that to create a set of corpse breeches - a set of enchanted trousers made from the skin of a dead man. Although the process of creating them is morbid, the breeches are surprisingly pedestrian in their use, for they are usually used by magicians to create an ready supply of money. However, they carry a curse. The art of making corpse breeches was taught to mortals by a demon known as Orkku the Bloated Prince, and as part of the pact that imparted the world with this knowledge, anyone who uses them will condemn their soul to Hell, unless they can pass on the curse before they die.

Corpse breeches are made from the entire skin of a corpse, which must have an intact scrotum, from the waist down, and are worn over the wearer's skin. Contained in a pocket made from the corpse's scrotum are 1d4 coins (roll 1d10: 1-3. copper; 4-6. silver, 7. electrum, 8-9. gold, 10. platinum) and a piece of paper with a sigil inscribed on it. When one is attuned to the breeches, the amount of coins in the pocket doubles each day, as long as it contains at least one of the same denomination it started with. If coins are placed in the pocket after the fact, they are not doubled. The coins will always be of the same denomination and disappear from the possession of others nearby, instantaneously transporting to the breeches. This means that as the breeches accrue money, it will disappear from the possession of others - who may begin to suspect something is afoot, if this continues.

Once one attunes to a set of corpse breeches, they cannot be removed unless by breaking the spell on them (either by emptying the scrotum completely of coins or removing the sigil), causing them to permanently become an ordinary (if disturbing) pair of leather pants. The only other way to remove the breeches is by passing on the curse. The only way to attain a set, then, is to either make them through a ritual or to have them passed to you.

Corpse breeches may only be made from someone who has given consent while alive for their skin to be used to make the breeches upon death. Many magicians make pacts with one another that if one of them dies before the other, the other will make corpse breeches from his body. They must be worn immediately after flaying them from the corpse, and then a coin that was stolen from a widow during one of the days of the Wheel of the Year must be deposited into the scrotum along with the sigil. Once this is complete, the pants attune to the creator and begin to summon money to them.

If someone attuned to a pair of corpse breeches is on their deathbed, they may pass the curse on to another, in which case they lose attunement with the breeches and can remove them; the breeches will then become attuned to another humanoid designated by their previous wearer as soon as they are donned. If a creature dies while still attuned to corpse breeches, their soul is immediately condemned to Hell. They do not make death saves, may not cheat Death, and cannot be revived or communed with (via speak with dead or similar effects) by any means short of retrieving their soul from Hell directly.

Nithing Pole

Wondrous Item, uncommon

In the Northern tongues, the term nithingr - often translated as "outlaw," but this doesn't capture all the intricacies of the term - refers to a person marked for dishonorable conduct. A person can be pronounced a nithingr for a number of reasons, such as breaking an oath, showing cowardice, committing murder, or failing to show up to a holmgang. The Northmen take this punishment quite seriously, for there is more at stake than merely one's social status. To be declared a nithingr involves a ritual in which a nithing pole is used, which often (but not always) marks the target with a supernatural curse to punish them for their dishonor.

To construct a nithing pole, one must sacrifice an animal (usually a horse, but a calf, sheep, or goat may be used if one is unavailable) and attach its head to a wooden pole. When the pole is directed so that the head is facing the target, and the end of the pole is beat against the ground three times with the word "Nithingr!" called out each time, the user can cast bestow curse regardless of how far away the target is. If the user does not have any levels in a spellcasting class, the DC to save against this curse is 10.

Glima Boots

Wondrous Item, uncommon

A popular sport among the Northmen is a form of wrestling known as glima, in which participants grab one another by the belt or shoulders and attempt to throw their opponents off their feet. Wrestling contests can be found at many a feast and assembly, especially in the Tennurhaf. It was rather inevitable, then, that enchantments and charms would be developed to ensure good luck in these contests. Some contests ban this, while others consider the use of magic to be a valid tactic, as one is using everything at their disposal to win.

Several Tennurhaf grimoires describe the use of a set of sigils that are woven into the inside of the wearer's boots - one under the heel of the right boot, and one under the toe of the left boot. While one wears these boots, they have Advantage on any checks made to grapple an opponent, and any grapple attacks made against them are made at Disadvantage.

Tilberi

Among hedge witches in the Lunar Lands, there are innumerable spells to steal milk from the teats of cows and deliver it straight to the caster - it allows one to have a steady source of food without needing to invest in land to keep livestock oneself. In the Tennurhaf, most witches accomplish this by creating a particular kind of magical construct known as a tilberi.

A tilberi can only be created by a woman. To do this, she must exhume a recently buried body and take a rib from the corpse, then wind it around a sheaf of stolen grey wool and keep the bundle between her breasts for three weeks. At the end of each week, she must spit wine into the bundle. After the third time this is done, the bundle develops a face at each end, and must be placed against the creator's thigh, which it will suckle blood from, leaving a wart. At this point, the tilberi is complete.

The tilberi will loyally obey the wishes of its master, who it regards as its mother. Although the first tilberis were created to contain milk, they are capable of storing any fluid substance and expelling it from their mouths on command. Some inventive witches have experimented with other uses for the tilberi, such as using them as ambulatory potion bottles, or as guardians, spitting acid at intruders or sucking blood from their wounds. It should be noted, however, that tilberis are cowardly creatures and will run back to their "mother" if threatened.

For more on tilberis, see this article from A.C. Luke.

Click to enlarge

The Frozen North

There is a land further to the north than even the domain of the Northmen. On the northern shore of the Tennurhaf, connected to the mainland by a chain of rocky islands, lies the Frozen North, or the Northern Wastes. Whatever one wishes to call them, the names this land has accrued describe it quite well. There is nothing that grows in these lands, even by the standards of the Tennurhaf. They are so far from the sun's path that its warmth scarcely touches them, and they are shrouded in darkness for half the year. Most land is buried beneath a thick glacier, but even what little is not is rough and unsuitable for growing anything - the barren soil and the frigid climes cannot sustain anything more than lichen.

The Frozen North was not settled by the Northmen until long after they charted the many islands of the Tennurhaf. It is unknown what led them to do so. Perhaps they were motivated by exile from more temperate lands, or merely driven by the challenge of taming such an inhospitable place. More likely, however, the Northmen established camps on the shores of the Northern Wastes on expeditions to hunt for seals and whales, and some of these camps, positioned at strategic locations and along important routes, proved to have staying power, growing into settlements of their own.

Those settlements are by no means great cities, of course. Even by the standards of the Tennurhaf, they are small. They have little in the way of chieftains - when each family must struggle to sustain themselves, they have no time for politics; instead, every homestead functions as an independent unit, with "villages" being more akin to several such homes clustered together due to families finding strength in numbers toward a common goal. Some feuds among those of the Frozen North run deep, but blood is not spilled - survival surpasses petty grudges. Even when a man hates his neighbor, he knows that he will not survive the winter without another spotter in his hunting party.

These buildings consist largely of sod houses or stone huts built to shield the inhabitants against the harsh winds; these are built around pits dug in the ground, as the people rely on the warmth of the earth itself to insulate them from the freezing cold. As there is nothing that grows in the Wastes, its inhabitants dine almost solely on meat - primarily that of fish, seals, and walruses, which can be found along the shores - and milk from the hardy sheep they raise. As resources are so scarce, the people must utilize every part of their kills, using hides and furs for clothing and bones and ivory to make tools. The only other source of goods they receive comes from trading furs, sealskins, and whale oil to the tribes to the south. Luckily, there is enough demand for such things to sustain their settlements. The most prized possession in the treeless Wastes is a longboat, which allows those who dwell there to venture forth to other islands and settlements for trade, or for raiding. Some tribes have a boat that they have bartered for; others have taken their ships by force. The raiders of the Frozen North are some of the most feared in all the Tennurhaf, for when their lives depend on the success of their raids, they will fight like demons to secure them.

Settlement in the Frozen North, as rudimentary as it is, is still limited to only a few small swathes of the southern coast. The interior of the Wastes are far too inhospitable, and remain uncharted by mortal men. Still, they must hold plenty of secrets waiting to be discovered. Some hunters have reported seeing gigantic white bears, big enough to tear a man in half with a single swipe of their paws, out in the glaciers. Other legends tell of stranger things yet - of castles of frost giants, of slumbering dragons, of pits in the earth that lead straight to Hell. And who knows what may be buried beneath the ice?

Friday Encounter: Thieves' Holmgang

This encounter is based on a real series of crimes noted in Viking age Iceland, offering a look into the fun that can be had in confronting your players with how people in history viewed and interacted with the world. It was written to be used in the North of the Lunar Lands, but with some tweaking, it can fit any setting where a culture of dueling exists. It is best suited to a road or settlement.

Background

The Northmen take great pride in a few things - and some of the most prominent among them are martial prowess and honor. It is no surprise, then, that they would have a formal system of arranging and adjudicating duels. The Northmen practice a particular dueling ritual known as the holmgang. These battles are fought to determine the outcome of a dispute over land, property, or personal honor; traditionally, if one person dies in battle, they forfeit all property to the victor, while if they surrender, they are obligated to pay a sum equal to half their weregild.

As victory in the holmgang means that the winner has the opportunity to advance their wealth and status, it was inevitable that the system would be abused. Some warriors were so skilled they took up challenging wealthy targets to duels they couldn't possibly win, demanding ransoms from their victims without fear of the law (as everything is, technically, within the rules of the practice). One such warrior is Osbjorn Steffanson. A fierce berserker, he is gripped by a primal warrior spirit in the heat of battle and feels no pain, tearing his enemies asunder with the blows of his enchanted axe. He has attracted a fearsome reputation among many in the area, and his name is spoken in whispers. But it is not only for his strength that Osbjorn is so feared - he has a habit of demanding wealth and land in holmgangs, and has accrued a small fortune this way. Few are able to oppose his strong arm.

Three days ago, Osbjorn issued the challenge to Thorstein Armannsson, a farmer who owns a modest but productive homestead not far from here. If Thorstein loses the duel, Osbjorn demands the land and everything in it. Though he has fought his fair share of battles, Thorstein knows he can't possibly compete against Osbjorn - yet it is his livelihood that hangs in the balance. Time is running out, and he is growing desperate...

The Encounter

The party should come across Thorstein either traveling on the road, or at a public establishment such as a town square or tavern. If he sees the PCs are armed and look accomplished, or if their exploits are known in the area, he will seek them out, relaying the situation. If the PCs are unfamiliar with the rules of the holmgang, he will explain the custom. Even if the PCs are familiar, it may be helpful to use this moment to exposit to the players how this tradition works so they have context and can plan accordingly.

Thorstein cannot simply decline the offer for a duel, as doing so would make him a nithingr - a dishonorable outlaw who would be treated with scorn and derision wherever he went, if not outright hunted down. Some duelists are known to pronounce curses upon their opponents if they fail to show up, and Thorstein doesn't want to take a chance here. He had no choice but to agree to meet Osbjorn at the crossroads at the stroke of noon, laying his farm on the line.

Hoping that the PCs might stand a better chance against Osbjorn than he will, Thorstein begs the greatest warrior of the party to fight in his stead. If they agree, he will be thankful and offer to buy the party a round of mead as a show of his gratitude - but of course, it is no time for celebration now.

Once the chosen PC is ready, Thorstein will lead them to the crossroads where Osbjorn has challenged him. There, Osbjorn - a hulking, thick-bearded man in a bearskin cloak, clutching a wicked-looking axe engraved with runes - stands upon an ox hide spread out on the ground. No matter how imposing the chosen PC might seem, he remains cocky and mocks them before the battle, promising no mercy unless they beg for it.

According to the rules of the holmgang, the combatants may not leave a circumscribed area three feet from the ox hide. The ox hide is ten feet across on each side, so the arena is 13 feet on each side from the center of the hide. If anyone sets foot outside this zone, they are deemed to forfeit the duel. Osbjorn offers his opponent no more than three wooden shields (to have replacements if one breaks - you may want to use your favorite house rule for shield damage, like this one, if you want to take advantage of this), but any other gear they wish to use is to be provided by them.

Osbjorn has the stats of a berserker, with one exception - he has a magical axe that always tends to strike true (it scores a critical hit on an unmodified roll of 19 or 20). He will remain cocky as long as he holds the upper hand, but if he drops to half HP, he will start flying into a manic rage - he will make attacks whenever possible, and uses the reckless feature at the beginning of each turn (ie. he gains Advantage on all attack rolls, but all attack rolls made against him have Advantage).

Osbjorn will accept his opponent's surrender at any time, but doing so forfeits Thorstein's right to his farm. If they do not surrender, he is fully prepared to kill them! At any point, the PCs may offer surrender to Osbjorn; if they do, he must make a DC 10 Wisdom save. On a failed roll, he submits, while on a success, he keeps fighting. Osbjorn has Advantage on this save if he is at half HP, as he craves blood in the fervor of battle. You may also use your judgment as a DM - obviously, Osbjorn won't surrender if he has taken no damage.

Further Developments

Clever players might realize that their characters can exploit the rules of the holmgang just as Osbjorn has. If they choose to fight him to the death, it is more dangerous, but they also stand to gain legal right to everything he owns, including his magic axe. If Osbjorn dies, the PCs will win his property, which includes 5000 GP's worth of gold and jewels, a potion of supreme healing, a set of gauntlets of ogre power, and his axe (stats of a greataxe, with the aforementioned enchantment). In addition, he is in possession of a few steadings that the PCs can use as bases of operation; his treasure is spread between these locations. The DM should place these on the map as they see fit.

If the chosen PC forces Osbjorn to surrender, the berserker will begrudgingly pay a sum of 250 GP instead. The stories of their triumph over this fearsome foe will surely spread through the land, but Osbjorn will remember this defeat and plan his vengeance, holding a grudge over whoever bested him. Either way, Thorstein will be grateful to have Osbjorn dealt with, and will become a trusted ally of the party, offering them the right to stay with his family whenever they are in the area.

If Osbjorn's opponent falls in battle, he will claim his right to all of their belongings, including any magic items they possess. This, too, would set him up well as a recurring adversary. Now the party not only has a reason to seek revenge, the loss will hit them in their wallet just as much as their hearts. Plus, should they seek another battle with the warrior, they may see their fallen friend's gear being used against them!

The Northmen

Among the most fearsome barbarians of the known world are the Northmen. Just about everywhere close to the coast has heard legends of their ferocity - if not experienced it face to face. As expert mariners, their ships have traveled far and wide across every sea, and they are merciless fighters in battle. Their name has passed into legends that speak of an invincible race of giants that descend from the coast and lay waste to everything in their path, burning villages, massacring townspeople, and carrying off riches. Although these tales are exaggerations of the truth - the Northmen are very much normal humans, if tall of stature - it speaks to the imprint these warriors have made on the world.

Traditionally, the lands of the Northmen are held to encompass anything north of the Kvessian city of Mordregaard and west of Ukiah. The true boundaries are fuzzier if one wishes to split hairs - the Kvessian ruling class is of Northmen descent, after all, and their progeny can be found further south yet - but it is these lands where the Northmen practice the way of life that has sustained their ancestors for generations.

Art by Jack Keay

The North has never been ruled under a single crown. It is the domain of countless kings, jarls, and tribes that hold stead over a few villages - some rulers are more powerful than others, but none have united the realm, and to do so would be a task not even the gods could perform, according to Northman tradition. Despite this, they share a common culture, and their languages are mutually intelligible. What unites the Northman clans are their belief in honor, martial valor, and their culture of raiding.

While they pay homage to Kerne and Kord, and while Old Faith practices are common, the Northmen hold Olmo, the god of the sea, as their chief deity, fearing him as a wrathful bringer of storms who must be appeased and placated. Many clans attempt to do so by human sacrifice, and many an unfortunate captive of the Northmen has met their end beneath the icy waters, where it is believed their soul will take the place of a Northman's in Olmo's quota so that the Northmen will not be harried at sea.

One of the most influential - and the most infamous - aspects of Northern life is the tradition of raiding. The lands of the North are poor in resources, with rocky soil and frigid winters; as such, the growing season is short and temperamental. In order to supplement their wealth, the Northmen turned to raiding along the coast during the summer months (taking advantage of warmer temperatures and longer days to navigate more comfortably), attacking seaside settlements and hoarding their treasure. The Northmen do not see such actions as immoral, as long as they do not bring harm upon one's own family.

Art by David Lozeau

As such, the Northmen began to value strength and bravery in battle to succeed in their bloody business. They became renowned as great warriors, some of them even channeling mystic power to shrug off pain in the heat of battle. It also became a point of pride for the Northmen to commit great deeds of bravery in combat, and to boast of them to advance their own status. In some Northman clans, strength alone determines authority, but even among those with traditions of nobility, it is expected that kings reward their most accomplished warriors with wealth and power. Many of these exploits pass into legend, and the Northmen are proud to count a storied hero among their ancestry, recounting familial sagas through a rich oral tradition.

In fact, the Northman tradition of raiding has led them to travel quite far from home. Most commonly, their targets are other Northman clans, or cities on the coasts of the Sea of Bartel and western Vardessy down to Sonderlund. But many Northmen, driven by greed, wanderlust, exile, or any combination of the three, have captained ships far afield. Their legacy is storied along the City-States and even as far as Quel'Ahma, and Northman treasure hoards have turned up in unexpected places.

The Northmen have a reputation in foreign ports - not entirely undeserved - as figures of terror and destruction. However, it should be noted that not all Northmen travel with hostile intent. Their expertise in seamanship and navigation has also made them great traders, and their longboats are a frequent sight at some of the richest harbors in the land. When their ships display shields on their sides, that is an indication that the Northmen have come peacefully to trade. But if there are no shields, that signals they are being held by the warriors on board - and that they have come to shed blood. That is a sight that strikes fear into many a heart.

Background: Northman

Suggested Names: Old Norse or Anglo-Saxon names.

Skill Proficiencies: History, Intimidation

Tool Proficiencies: Navigator's Tools, Vehicles (Water).

Languages: Northern

Starting Equipment: A drinking horn, a tunic and fur-lined boots, a seax (stats of a dagger), 50 feet of rope, and a pouch with 25 GP.

Feature: Ancestral Saga. You have been taught of the heroic deeds of your forefathers throughout the North and beyond. If the DM mentions a location, you can declare (with the DM's permission) that your ancestors have visited that place before; the DM will tell you any relevant information you would have gleaned from the sagas. This feature can be used for three locations in the North and one location beyond the North per campaign.