Barbarian Warrior
Son of a chieftain from north Of Halas. Vagner left the Everfrost Mountains to seek his destiny. Marked with the vigor of youth and armed with a blade handed down to him by his father, he fought his way past the gnolls of Blackburrow and into the lands of Qeynos.

Though his reputation as a fierce slayer of gnolls grew, his destiny urged him to greater things. Joining with Halwain, cleric of Rodcet Nife, Vagner sought to cross the great continent of Antonica In search of his higher calling. With the hills of Qeynos to their backs, they entered the Plains of Karana.

The journey turned perilous when the two found themselves face to face with a beady-eyed werewolf that had found their campfire. Outmatched by the snarling foe, the two stood their ground until Halwain had run out of healing prayers and Vagner hung onto life by a thread. One arrow shot from the darkness, and then another flew forth, until finally the beast slumped to the ground with a shudder. A wood elf stepped quietly into the firelight, and then he kneeled before them to bind their wounds. “These lands are not safe for ones so young, and ones so … stubborn to retreat,” he chuckled. am Fyodor, “he said. “Rest tonight and tomorrow I shall guide you through the plains.”

Fyodor proved an invaluable guide, and once the two were safe in the Commonlands near the city of Freeport, he vanished as quickly as he had first appeared. Freeport provided a new source for adventure as Vagner’s company grew in number. Gifted in the ways of leadership, Vagner led the Wolves of Freeport — a company of heroes bound by common dreams and destiny — back to his homeland to answer the threat of oncoming war. The dragon Vox had assembled an army of ice giants and goblins to assault the barbarian city of Halas.

Victory, however, came at a price. After the bittersweet triumph. the Wolves of Freeport disbanded from his company one by one, returning home or seeking out other destinies. Wanderer. warrior and reluctant leader. Vagner now seeks to bring hope where only darkness exists. Though his enemy knows no specific name, his sword serves the greater good of Norrath and defends her against the persistent forces of evil.

The Scroll of the Burning Dead

Halwain clutched the symbol of Rodcet Nife at his neck. The Prime Healer would have much to say through his vessel this day, Halwain would see to that. The other man was much larger, not only for the thick furs that bundled him. A massive sword in each hand, Vagner asked few uestions and required fewer answers. There could be little doubt that monsters like those now before him were the foes his dreams bade him seek.

But for the moment the two listened, crouching where the wind-blown sand of these arid lands met the worn rock of the sunken and haunted tomb of Befallen.

There were six skeletons ahead of them, including a leader, a foreman of sorts. The creature’s hollow voice carried clearly to them: “Dig faster, fools. We are close. This ost alone stands in the way of the great one’s return. ncover his hiding place so that the forces of the Burning Dead might destroy him and restore the legacy.”

Vagner and Halwain locked eyes, their scowls barely visible in the deep shadows. The big warrior nodded almost imperceptibly, then leapt to his feet and rushed forward, choking back his howl so that other fell beasts of this place would not be alerted to their eventual doom.
Halwain stood, somewhat obscured by the dust left swirling in the warrior’s wake. He bowed his head and said a prayer, extending his hands, and a soft glow spiraled toward Vagner. When it reached him, the light covered the barbarian’s body, which grew even larger, muscles swelling to the limits of the flesh.

The warrior crushed into the group of skeletons, three or four of them ending in a tangle at his feet. One that remained standing prepared to plunge its pick into Vagner. but was cut short when a blast ot magical energy from Halvvain washed over and destroyed it.

As the other skeletons clambered back to their feet. Vagner hacked one in twain and then smote another’s fleshless skull. The skeletal foreman rose to meet Vagner, but another blow clove away the skeleton’s arm. Un- daunted. the foul creature drove face first at Vagner, surprising the normal ly imperturbable warrior. The barbar- ian felt his shoulder burn, and realized belatedly that the skeleton’s teeth had been filed to razor-sharpness.

Vagner kicked the undead foreman out from such close quarters, striking downward with both swords, crushing the already dead being into a truly lifeless pile of bones. Halwain then closed to smite the final skeleton, wielding his mace with desperate strength. As he fended off the creature’s blows, however, he stumbled over a fragment of old stone; he grunted in pain as the skeleton’s heavy pick punched through his armor. Then, in a blast ofbone shards, the skeleton was gone and Vagner stood in its place.

Halwain inspected Vagner’s injury, and with a mur- mured prayer, the wound was gone. His own wound was too minor for concern.

As Vagner began to kick the piles of bones to one side of the tunnel, a glowing mist began to issue forth from a small vent in a rockfall that blocked one portion of the tunnel. Vagner shoved Halwain back three steps and stood his guard between the cleric and the billowing mass that slowly formed inro a humanoid s . When the mist resolved, it was clear the warrior and c eric faced a ghost, for it pos- sessed a soft white luminescence and hovered a foot off the grime-covered floor.

The benevolent, clearly elven face put Halwain at ease, but Vagner was not impressed and remained poised to counter any attack.

Halwain nudged the warrior aside and spoke directly to the apparition. “l sense a deep pain within you, ghosu Is there some way I might assist you so that you may find eternal rest?”

Turning, the figure inspected Halwa in for a moment, and then replied in a taint, reverberating voice, like that of one who spoke only softly and from the opposite end of a great hall. ‘Our time is short, hero, for the minions of rhe Burning Dead will soon sense something amiss here. Will you perform a task so we might lay to etemal rest the evil that dwells within Befallen?’

Over Vagner’s growled warning, Halwain hurriedly re- plied, “l will perform any task that will cleanse this place.” “Then take this,” the ghost said, bringing forth a rolled archment from the deep recesses of its faintly glowing Form. “This must be delivered to the paladins of Marr in the city of Freeport. It details a terrible plan to restore to life a foul necromancer called Marnek. The Burning Dead must not be allowed to achieve this goal.”

Halwain accepted the scroll with some surprise at its weight, and then responded. “But who or what are you?’ “1 was Sir Ariam Arcanum, a paladin of Tunare. There is no time for my own story, which in any case is of little account. ” The ghost paused. “But if you wish to know more of me, and to do me a personal favor after you’ve traveled to Freeport, then please seek out my family in Felwithe. Will you travel there?”

“There is evil enough here to busy us — but, yes, we will travel to Felwithe as soon as we are able,” the cleric answered smoothly.

“Then deliver to this my family. It is my love for them that binds me here. Deliver my sister’s token,” said the ghost. The ghost carefully removed a necklace and handed it to the cleric. Immediately, the post van’ ed, though its gentle radiance shimmered faint y for several moments afterward. “May your journey take you through the Plane of Health. there to lighten your soul,” Halwain intoned, “and then on to your place beside the Mother of All.”

Soon, the ghostly paladin’s glow was gone entirely, and the grip of the dank tomb closed in on Halwain and Vagner. Both men squinted, muttering oaths to return some day, and then turned their backs on the evil and prepared to seek a paladin in the city of Freeport.

To Bind A Soul

The wind played coquettishly with her azure robe, and Arrialla wondered, not for the first time, whether the Oracle could possibly have inconvenienced her more than by requiring her to make six separate trips to his island in these past few months. She doubted it. She alsodoubted that even the extensive travel in which these visits had resulted might reveal to her even a portion of the enlightenment she had left Felwithe to seek. Certainly, her brother had been unsuccessful in the quest he had undertaken at the Oracle’s insistence.

How appropriate, the young high elf thought as her slender finger dabbed a single tear from her cheek. She stood on the prow of the Siren’s Bane as it plowed eastward across the vast and as yet largely unexplored Ocean of Tears. She sailed in the same direction her ancestors had traveled as they fled from Tunaria to the continent of Faydwer, where their new civilizations would rise. If the tears of those elves had not formed the ocean, they had at least christened it. How appropriate, then, that Arrialla should mourn her brother here.

And also how strange it seemed that the Oracle, one of her earliest mentors, should prove to be the link that brought her brother and his quest back into her life. It seemed only a handful of years ago that Arrialla had won the trust of the Oracle of K’Arnon. As the Koada’Dal thought on the matter, she smoothed the silken fabric of her elaborate robe, loosening it from where the sea breeze tangled it around her lean, graceful legs. The robe had been her first gift from the Oracle, a gesture of thanks all those years ago for her contributions to his library, the same collection she had come to increase now.

Her recent journeys had started with a message her father received, addressed to those two men who’d brought news of her brother’s fate. However, Vagner and Halwain could not be located. Her father assumed that the message, sealed with the mark of the Paladins of Truth in the city of Freeport, must be urgent, so Arrialla had searched for the men, but could not find them. Rumors suggested only that the two were traveling the breadth of Norrath in search ofshadowed men, evidently sensing some connection between that mysterious folk and the evil tomb of Befallen where they claimed to have met her brother’s spirit and received a dire warning from him.

Although her father had felt it a gross violation of the humans’ privacy, Arrialla had opened the message. The contents easily justified her prying, however, and she set out at once to find Sir Artanis in the walled-off northem section of Freeport. “I received your summons,” she’d told him, and explained her arrival in the place of the human cleric and the
barbarian warrior. The knight had offered his sympathies regarding her brother’s death, but in that peculiarly human way did not long linger on the past. He indicated that Vagner and Halwain’s assistance had been requested, but that he would accept hers if she was willing and capable. Arrialla, still misty-eyed in her reverie, nearly smiled as she recalled the flicker of surprise on the paladin’s face as, before his eyes, she had transformed into a human woman. The lithe form was every bit as lovely as her own, in its own way, and no doubt stirred even the dour paladin’s interest, but that wasn’t the effect Arrialla had sought. The man understood her point immediately: Arrialla, an enchanter, was indeed capable.

Arrialla was invited at once to meet with Sir Artanis and several other senior paladins; the council took place instantly, such was the priority of the matter. Arrialla soon understood why. The knights shared with her information they had gained from a Tier’Dal wizard they had captured as he attempted to slip through the Freeport sewers, which all too often
served as a place ofmeeting for the fell-minded. Under magical coercion, the wizard admitted he had been trying to contact the leaders of the Dismal Rage, a cult dedicated to the Prince of Hate, Innoruuk. The cult had nearly completed the construction of a phylactery, a near-legendary device that could serve as a soul receptacle for a powerful necromancer,
whose body might thus live on endlessly in a sort of undead state. The dark elf identified himself as a follower of Solusek Ro, with whom (as the paladins knew all too well) the necromancers of the Burning Dead were also affiliated.

Consequently, Sir Artanis and his fellows feared a connection between these activities and the warnings of Arrialla’s ghostly brother, Sir Ariam, regarding the imminent resurrection of the necromancer Marnek.

The Knights of Truth normally counted the Oracle of K’Arnon among their allies, but in this instance the Oracle had apparently turned them away. They had sought answers elsewhere, but Arrialla suspected that the Oracle must know something of the matter and had told the knights as much. “He likely expects you are unwilling—” Looking at Sir Artanis
with a friendly smile, she continued, “or unable to meet his price.”

So, with their blessing, she had set sail for the Oracle’s island in the Ocean of Tears. If indeed he could not help her, then she would retum to Felwithe and seek Vagner and Halwain so that they might know of the quest she’d taken up in their name. The weather had been stormier on that first voyage, more like her thoughts both then and now.

Salt water spraying around her, Arrialla finally spied the Isle of Erollisi in the distance. Here dwelt the Sisters of Erollisi, and it was also where the enchanter would disembark. She relinquished her position at the prow, strolling now to her quarters below deck. She traveled exceptionally light; she had little need for anything beyond a small amount of food and
water. If some emergency beyond her skill presented itself, she could always use her magic to teleport herself to the safety of her ancestral home.

She did bear one unusual possession: a book bound in red leather, one the very few known or even rumored copies of the so-called Sanguine Tome. It was a volume of immense power that told of unspeakable magics from the ancient past.

Source: Page 89 – EQRPG Players Handbox