by Ryan "Orion" Welch
After Action Report
Events of 24 June 1018 (B.M.R.)
Midgard Summer Festival
Upon crossing the Bifrost and arriving in Midgard, we were greeted by Jarl Thorafin and his people. They had pitched several tents adorned with their brown banners under the damp gray sky. Strung between the canopies, earth-toned ribbons set against the muted clouds spoke truly of the shadow cast across this dying world. The Jarl introduced himself to the gathered adventurers and again spoke of his goal to rebuild his land instead of destroying it in Ragnarok. As promised in his letter to us, he invited us to celebrate his people’s culture with food and games. In my experience, the adventurers of the Realms will never turn down a free meal, so we settled in for the day.
Most of the provided entertainment took the form of cultural board and field games, most of which were based on a common theme of throwing small projectiles to score points. In typical Realms fashion, the adventurers immediately ignored the real (and admittedly difficult) names and started using (simpler) nicknames of their own invention. Knifey-Spoony was a crowd favorite, so named for the woven basket on the end of long sticks--the spoons--which a few team members used to throw a ball across the field towards the goal zone of the opposing team, and the blades wielded by other teammates to cut a path towards the goal. This particular game ended in a tie after all of the so-called spoons had broken and the ball was lost in the dense flora that bordered the field.
Other games included Kub (throw heavy sticks to knock down wooden blocks), “Bones” (throw sticks and try to stack them in a pile), “Boulder Ball” (run a boulder across a field and throw it across a line), and something which required the players to slide wooden disks towards the center of a round board. Despite their characteristically foreign names and odd obsession with challenges of dexterity, these games were enjoyable and our hosts were civil. We had even been gifted with a large bowl full of wooden tokens which we could use to make wagers with our opponents. Jarl Thorafin claimed that the trinkets had no other use or value to his people, however…
Just beneath the surface of the festival, tensions were running high. The Jarl openly and unquestionably opposed our party’s mission to save Ragnarok. He was likely the one using the Bedlam lab in Hel before we destroyed it. The small group of Norlanders we met seemed to follow the Jarl, but the majority of other Norlanders we have met in the past have wished to see Ragnarok refresh their world. Furthermore, we discovered that the “worthless trinkets” which we had been using as betting chips were in fact scrying implements which had been plundered from the temple in a nearby village; this information came from a priest of that temple who was now disguising himself as one of Thorafin’s followers. Although he did his best to discreetly pass us information throughout the day, he was discovered in the late afternoon and subsequently executed as a “traitor”. Immediately after that, the Jarl closed the Bifrost and all of the adventurers were kicked back to Rhiassa, where we passed the rest of the evening with a burrito dinner, special Cold Springs mashed ice cream, and discussion of our next moves.
Conclusions:
The problems which plague the Nine Worlds are physically, magically, and socially complex. In many ways, the adventurers of the Realms bear a great deal of responsibility for causing these problems--of that there is no question. But after this encounter with Jarl Thorafin, we are left with more questions than answers about the role we should (or must) play in the resolution of these troubles.
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In Service to the Realms,
Captain Orion Mars, Chimeron Militia
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