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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mtheurer" data-source="post: 4333483" data-attributes="member: 57398">We're playing again this weekend and I thought I'd toss up the backgrounds of each of the characters currently in the party...Siguard Jarlson - Human RangerAs told by Siguard Jarlson after imbibing about two dozen ales and a huge dinner at The Drunk Duck.  There's a crowd gathered around him, some whispering and questioning the validity of his tale while others look one with wide-eyed wonder. In the winter of my fifth year I was witness to more carnage and wanton destruction than most see in a lifetime.  Many of the older men, including my father, had left in several longboats to go downriver to trade with other peoples who lived in larger towns and cities.  Hell was visited upon us a few days after their departure.   By that time of my life I had been taught what berries and mushrooms were safe to eat and which would take your soul.  You had to be careful because an ignoble death, such as being stupid enough to eat poison berries, would not be sufficient to gain you passage into Valhalla.  On the other hand, falling in battle while fighting proud and strong will garner you entrance after your last breath leaves your body.  I had also been told bedtime stories about giants.  Fearsome creatures that do indeed grind bones into dust to make the dough for their bread and the certainly do eat all manner of creatures, especially man.  I was told these stories to keep me in bed at night, and they certainly did that, but stories rarely match with reality. A crash and screaming woke me from a deep sleep and as I awoke I could see flames already engulfing several huts and the main lodge was also alight.  Soon the few men that were left and the older boys were being rallied to the center of our village while the women tried to gather up the children.  I ran.  A coward.  A fool.  The men were quickly cut down by mighty giants easily twice their size.  Massive clubs beat some to a bloody pulp while others were crushed by stones flung from the edge of our village.  Women were cut down while trying to save the young ones and the, my friends, were gathered up and stuffed into large sacks.  Everyone fought, the men, the boys, the women, even the children.  I saw Sven bite one on the finger before he was stuffed into a sack.  I had heard tales of horrible stews that giants would make but never really believed it.  Never wanted to believe it.   I hid in a thick patch of bushes and watched my village burned to the ground.  I stayed still as a mouse as a giant set down his writhing sack next to me.   I made sure that my shame was complete by doing nothing.  To fight and die would be honorable.  To sit and bite my lips until they bled to keep from crying out has damned me for sure.  I waited until all of the brutes had left.  The left in their wake a tide of death and destruction.  My village was razed and the earth drank much blood that day.  I took what I could and headed south along the river where my father had gone.  I found their longboats after two days.  Smashed by huge boulders, everyone dead.  There were a few giants dead along side my father and his fellows.   How does a boy of five live alone in the wilderness?  Raised by wolves?  Taken in by a coven of witches?  Befriended by goblins?  Kept warm with hatred?  All of these and none of these.  I am a punisher and swordsman.  I will avenge the slaughter of my family, my friends and my village and surely I will also burn when my time to die comes.  A black wind will follow me all my days. Siguard then drops a handful of coins on the table and staggers up to his room.</blockquote>

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