Signy's page

Signy, gazing through the bear's empty eyes, seems just as unwilling to break eye contact with the wolf. She releases the haft of the bryntroll with one hand, fingers fumbling a moment at a strap on her chest, unbuckling it to let the circular shield on her back thump behind her in the snow. That done, she raises both her arms slowly, spread wide with the axe held aloft one-handed; the bear's white pelt draped from her arms making her figure seem suddenly broader as well as taller.

The berzerkr leans slightly forward in the red snow, swaying her lowered head slowly from side to side, still without breaking eye contact.

Signy's own jaws gape beneath the bear's ivory daggers, a mouth within a mouth, teeth within teeth. The gape-jawed head-sway is a threat language, but not of wolf, nor of man. The bear's skull lends her own growl a hollow, rumbling echo, and while she twists her head slightly as it sways, displaying her ready jaws, her wild-eyed gaze never leaves that of the white-marked wolf.

After a drawn-out moment the growl forms raggedly hoarse words. "I...am Signy. These died by my hand. These...men." She will give the boy that honorific, whether his mother hears it or no, whether his clan agrees or no. To Signy he became a man when he faced her in the hólmgang on his father's behalf, unflinching. "...Interrupted a story to which I listened."

She lowers her arms slowly, points with the axe...And it takes some sinew, in those bones, to hold the bryntroll by its haft untrembling at arm's length, even for the short moments she does so. "You..." she almost coughs it out. "Your leader calls for a story. Will you interrupt?"

The berzerk swears softly under her breath as Baelgrin makes even more noise. She keeps her own voice lower, shifts her grip on her axe minutely.

"There are more to our side, possibly to both sides, and if they're that clever, they may well be behind us."

Signy wrings the bryntroll slowly, tilts her head slightly back and shakes it, letting the bear's skull come down around her own, and looks again through the dead bear's eyes. Yes, the wolves are still there. "If any of you have offered sacrifice to the goddess of bloody corners, now might be a good time for prayer." She growls.

"If not, look to your weapons...They, at least, you may rely upon."

I don't know why it didn't make the rest of the post OOC, but since I don't know if it'd mess with the die roll, I'm just leaving it. On a 7, so "What is about to happen?" is all she gets, and there's liable to be some cost to the knowledge.

Signy purses her lips slightly at mention of talking to the wolves. The man's question could be either wise or foolish; anyone can talk to a wolf, but there are few to whom a wolf will answer, and fewer still who'd be wise to try the conversation.

Is Tofa? Signy doesn't know.

What she does know is that Bael's cry was more like to draw attention from the wolves than any gods, and if those who left the Red Banner are still about, then, well...

Signy'll deal with that as best she can, should it happen.

For the moment, she's remembering every whit she can of the craft with which she stayed alive when she first went out into the cold and dark. Between herself and the gods, though, it was more likely luck or the still-lively scent of the bear-hide that kept her alive the first nights, and she stood more often by her axe than by any subtlety.

Still, Signy looks about the red-lit snow near the graves, trying to ascertain if there's ought but wolves to be feared...And if wolves, how many? It'd take more than a few to try the double-handful and some of the burial party's number, but then if the wolves have found a corpse they can get at, they'll want to keep it.

Signy's Discerning Realities, yes.

Discerning Realities (Wis 9): 2d6 + 0 ⇒ (5, 2) + 0 = 7

In order of importance:
1. What is about to happen (Ambushes suck!)?
2. What happened here recently?
3. What here is not as it appears to be?

Sorry folks, had a rough couple of days. Posting something now.

Dammit, I storied. Won't happen all the time, believe me. I am usually more terse.

Who did what was left vague specifically so names (PC or otherwise) could be inserted later if perhaps it made things more interesting. I'm writing as if there's enough of a clan here for men to crew a longhall-sized ship as well as the families of said men.

The coffins bore a fool and his fool son, and it gnarled Signy's heart to have to walk alongside them. It was a waste of wood and time to give the two rites in this unending winter, but at this moment more than any since she's joined the people who called themselves Berrywine, Signy knows she must be careful of how she treads.

Still, in the old days, by the old laws, the fool and his son would both have been left to lie in the valueless field by the crossroads.

The berzerkr had strained her patience to its limit; in some dark little corner of her mind she was quite proud of herself for not giving arms to her anger - but how to explain to these half-men who cowered around their fires the amount of strength it took to have kept things from becoming worse than they were?

She'd been with the clan some weeks now, and she'd mistakenly thought that the time when some might challenge her was gone. Perhaps now it would be; most of the clan hadn't seen the beast yet, but they'd seen what happened when the hólmgang was invoked.

She didn't need the beast for that.

Fiǫlvarr was the fool's name, but Signy couldn't, just now, think of the son's. Fiǫlvarr's wife was pregnant, visibly so, and had been struggling visbily, ay, and Signy had even marked it. The promise of a child was a rare enough thing in these years that surely the entire clan had marked her every stumble. When he glowered and made comment about the berzerkr eating a man's share, that was insult enough, but Signy'd hunted often enough alone in the dark woods...She'd survived alone, and she knew how far she was from being truly hungry. She let the comment pass long moments, didn't even look at him, as if she hadn't heard. She simply finished chewing the bit of fish she had, then set the bowl down and spun what was left across to rest before him. That could've been the end of it, and a peaceable end, but he'd had something to say about not being a beggar. Alright. She hadn't called him a beggar, she'd just slid her meal to another, but then he had to say "...one who'd come scrabbling like a dog to honest folk, like you." and the "you" had been Signy, and for that alone, she could've killed him, but she still wasn't looking at him, she was watching Baelgrin trying to conclude a tale, the old man hesitant and uneasy as he became aware of Fiǫlvarr's disruption.

She could yet pretend she hadn't heard the man. But when he hurled the bowl back at her, well. That was not a thing anyone could ignore. To throw down food, in these times? That was the end of Baelgrin's tale, and the end of all words around the firepit, and in that silence Signy'd stood up and told him to find a cloak he didn't mind dying on.

They'd pegged the cloak out properly, with all the rites, furrowed the frozen ground perhaps twice so wide as they should, measured from the outside of each furrow to the next, all while shooting fearful glances towards the woman (was she a woman?) who sat with the long axe balanced across her knees, still and silent beneath the ice bear's skin, with its head pulled down now over her own.

Did they think giving their companion some extra space would matter?

Did they think she didn't know what they were doing?

The shields they brought out for her were trash, but that was to be expected. She carefully didn't watch to see who offered shields to Fiǫlvarr. It might be that she could still stay, if they at least respected the hólmgang's outcome. Signy simply sat facing the field as it was prepared, lowered her head beneath the warm, white fur and, after a time, deliberately snored. She almost had dozed in truth by the time one had come and called to her from outside the great axe's reach (what the fool thought was outside the great, back-spiked axe's reach; the bryntroll would've taken him if she only leaned a little to the side as she swung).

They wouldn't permit the bryntroll within the hólmgang. Noone ever did. It would've made a mockery of a duel meant to have survivors, biting through shields and the arms and chests behind them. Someone loaned her a sword. Signy weighed it in her hand, found it was adequate. She didn't look at it closely, nor did she look into the face of the one who handed it to her. If it failed her, well, it failed her. If she lived, the last thing she wanted was another reason to leave this clan. How many times does one get a second chance?

She shed the great bear-skin as well, deliberately. No beast here, and no question of whether it protected her. And when the hólmgang was called she simply walked forward straight into the middle of the square, planted her feet on the pegged cloak which a shieldless man could not abandon, and twisted her strike in midair as Fiǫlvarr came to her, plunging the sword into his throat rather than his thigh as he dropped his shield to block where she'd seemed to first aim. A lot of effort and preparation on their part for nothing, that was the message she meant to send. An hour or so's labor so she could kill a man in a moment. The first blood that hit the cloak was the last that Fiǫlvarr would ever bleed. There were no laws against killing in the hólmgang, only that it must stop when blood touched the cloak. Signy was turning away even before he fell, the borrowed sword left behind in his throat. She had no patience for shieldbreaking and her own throat was acridly dry, tight with trying to keep the beast's roar restrained. Well, the widow had a son of man's age to help her raise her coming child. That was more than some people had.

But then the curst son ruined it all and stepped into the hazeled ring, demanding to avenge his father. There was no vengeance for what happened in the hólmgang! That was what the hólmgang was. Differences were settled. It was done. The laws had been observed, and there were plenty of older, wiser, cooler heads to restrain the boy, and if only they had restrained his tongue!

But no, and no, and she had to go fetch the borrowed sword out of his father's throat, while the mother screamed and wailed and the world got greyer and greyer as the beast tried to have its way. She gritted her teeth against its voice, grunted once when the boy finally was allowed entry to the ring, and if they thought that was the beast talking then they were more foolish than she could believe possible. She left her shields where they were, hammered the boy's off of him as quickly as she could, and when he stood on the cloak still stained with his father's blood she feinted him with the same damned move she had his sire: glance low, swing low, arch it high over the shield.

The difference this time being that she leaned and stepped back as she did so, rather than stepping forward and punching in with her weight behind the blade. She didn't even take the boy's ear, just lopped loose a tuft of hair as she glanced the flat of the sword stunningly from his scalp. Head wounds bleed a lot, and there was no question of getting more blood on the cloak as he buckled. She doubted the clan - eager to put an end to things - had even waited for the drops to fall, and she almost couldn't pass the sword away quickly enough to the poor bastard who'd worked up the stones to come and take it from her. Was it his? She had no idea.

Honor was served. If the idiots had eyes, they could see that, and they could see that she could control herself and pick and choose the deaths she gave.

And if the healers had been a whisker better, perhaps that would've been the end of it. The boy shouldn't have died from it. She hadn't cloven his skull, probably not even knicked it. She was fairly sure of the flat of the blade and she didn't think the sword had twisted in the previous fight. But even if it had been the best mercy-blow she could give him with the bear gnawing at the back of her mind, for some reason it simply wouldn't staunch. The blood wouldn't stop; the boy fevered and died in the night. And thank whatever gods still watched the foolishness of men that she'd struck the blow with another's blade, handed to her but a moment before entering the ropes, or no doubt the wife would accuse her of witchery.

Well, let them go talk to him whose blade it had been. She'd chopped the gods-own parcel of wood while burning off her anger, just far enough from the posted men that there was no question in anyone's mind how she'd spent the dark-hours, and they could warm themselves with it and not thank her if that was what they chose. It was unintended (for how could she know?) but likely just as well that she'd been watched all night being so angrily noisy while doing something that clearly wasn't laying curses or invoking spirits, all the while the boy lay dying on the far side of the camp. Her anger, disgust and frustration weren't at all feigned when they told her of his death, either.

Some days it seemed that everything she touched was doomed.

And so here she was, trying to show in earnest her honest regret for the boy's death (though it was hardly her fault) while walking with one parcel of fools to bury another. She was as far from the rest of the burial party as one could be while still being a part of it. Most of the others huddled on the far side of the coffin-bearers, clustered around the widow, but there were those who stood as if between Signy and the mourners (who she ignored), and then there were a few who walked behind and beside Signy, who she had not yet marked, unwilling to raise the bear's head enough to see if they were there as companions or guards.

Signy stops at sight of the scarlet banner that licks the air like a serpent's tongue. Her great axe, until now mostly serving as a walking staff on the treacherous ice and the deep snow, she takes in both hands and looks about as best she can between the trees and great stones.

I am a slow writer, and I'd hate to put an hour and more in on a post with complicated background and turn around to find someone else had answered the question I meant to, so...Signy is going to answer the question about the coffins.

Also: Bonds, since we discussed but I didn't settle Signy's.

Baelgrin has seen me lose my temper and rage without an enemy to vent it on. It's the gods' own fortune that they're unhurt, and they know it.

When one of my rages passed and left me weak, Tofa defended me and I will not forget it.

I'll work out one for Eldar when I know a touch more about the character.

Tofa's ultimately a defender. She's neither smart nor wise, but she does listen. She understands that people are vastly different, so she may support you one night, then give you space the next.

*Chuckle* This was less meant to be about "giving someone space" in the 'personal distance' sense and more about having enough sense in the middle of a fight to realize when to get clear of the berzerker.

Well, I have to say that I'm glad I just picked up the PDF for cheap, because not a lot has changed except the page count...And that's mostly due to a large, wide font and a LOT of whitespace on the pages. Yeah there's new monsters, better explanations, and new treasures, but mostly it's what I already had plus about 50 pages worth of content...Not 180.

Oh well.

Alright then, Bonds!

The recommended defaults from the Berzerker sheet are:

__________ is surprisingly tough for his kind, he has earned my respect.

I will push __________ to be harder, or I will break him.
__________ is always making me angry, he’d better watch himself, or else!
I have shared songs of glorious battles with __________.

But frankly, I think better can be had.

Berzerkers were dangerous folk to know. More than one researcher has theorized and presented a fair bit of textual and linguistic evidence that the tale of Beowulf vs Grendel is a battle between two berzerkers, one of whom was an outsider, a monster who didn't control his rages, and the other of whom was an accepted war-leader of his tribe. A lot of the more "monstrous" characteristics of Grendel in the original texts are described with the same words as characteristics of Beowulf, but later translators have 'interpreted' them differently. There are also many stories about berzerkers who were too uncontrollable, too dangerous to keep around...And those who were loyal, respected, and still kept at a slight distance and avoided. There's a reason berzerkers tended to group with other berzerkers.

Signy got punted out of her original village. Now she's part of this community. She had to've impressed someone for that to happen, so I'm going to kick a few possible Bonds out there for people to consider.

• _________ spoke up for me when I came out of the snows and dark, and I must remember this when their words or deeds anger me.
  
• I saved _________'s life, but to hear them tell it I'm the one who put (him/her) in danger.
  
• When one of my rages passed and left me weak, _________ defended me and I will not forget it.
  
• _________ has seen me lose my temper and rage without an enemy to vent it on. It's the gods' own fortune that they're unhurt, and they know it.
  
• I've fought beside _________, and they had the good sense to know when to be my shield-arm, and when to back away and give me space.

Just ideas. If something suits, say so. If something seems a bad idea, say that, too!

For that matter, Mog, if you'd prefer we stuck to the 'stock' starting Bond list, just say so. :)

If it looks like a duck, and talks like a duck, and walks like a duck, then I'm calling it a duck, because clearly it prefers the idea of duck-hood. :P If calling it a duck offends the duck-pretender, then I may change my stance.

Oh, no doubt Signy is most safely addressed as "you," and from outside arm's reach. But in referral is probably "he" as Norse gender roles were scary iron-clad, and women weren't warriors (though they used weapons once or twice in the sagas, they didn't carry them as a matter of course).

...But really I was referring more to our dear GM's "...assume Tisiphone is as well, though he's dealing with some family stuff." and "I really hope that Tisiphone is still around as well, since he's had some really interesting twists in the way he describes things." Flattering and amusing all at once, but everyone knows There Are No Girls on the Internet.

And speaking of GM-things, I've found a couple of peculiarities in Peter Johansen's Berserker playbook. It lists weapons as follows:

Choose your weapon:

 Sharp long sword (+1 damage, close, 2 weight)
 Hefty warhammer (forceful, close, 3 weight)
 Massive battle axe (reach, +1 damage, two-handed, 2 weight)

...rather than the dice given in the DW book. I'm assuming these are meant to be exceptional weapon-types, so it's an "X" that is +1 damage, or an "X" that is "forceful." Ergo, a Massive Battle Axe would use

Vicious Sword, Maniac Axe, Stupid Big Hammer

Damage 1d10, Requires Fighter, Cost 4

...and would be 1d10+1, two-handed, 2 weight?

And that brings up another problem! The berserker rage move allows you to make all attacks "forceful" and "messy." "Messy" is from AW and is usually used to describe things like grenades or fully automatic weapons

Messy (cue): it’s loud (cf ). Furthermore, it might hit every person in its area but might miss any given person in its area; and it leaves a mess behind — cosmetic property damage, blood and gore, barf or ____ or other bodily produce, or some other kind of mess as appropriate.

My version of DW doesn't mention it at all. Nor does it have "Forceful."

I say "my version" because elsewhere on the internet I found a definition of "Forceful" from p.104 as

Forceful: It can knock someone back a pace, maybe even off their feet.

Well, my version of Dungeon World (Version 10.08.25) only HAS 19 pages! My copy of AW has 303 pages, but word search doesn't find "Forceful" anywhere, so I'm a little unsure of what's going on...

EDIT: So somehow between 2010 and 2012 Dungeon World went from a 19-page AW "hack" to a staggering 408-page softcover...Fortunately the PDF is available on DriveThru for $10 and I am much less confused now.

My apologies for being so far behind, hopefully I can catch up in good style. We had not one, but two deaths in the family in the past month, and an always unpleasant situation was made uglier by questions of inheritance.

GM Mogthrasir re: Questions about how Signy acquired the bear skin: you mean beyond what I put in the background I posted when I asked the question? Also, I like the moves that you've added so far. VERY colorful and appropriate to the setting, IMHO.

Signy is a Dominator...But once she was a Rager. She was not trained to be a warrior until well after the first time she had gone berserk. Now that a few years have passed and her initial ostracism has been replaced by some guarded acceptance in a new community, she has made up for lack of youthful training and a surfeit of desperate anger by blending into it some mixture of what she has learned from other warriors. Signy has learned that there is a time and a place for unleashing the spirit of the bear if she is to be accepted in this community, and that there are limits to how much she can lean on displays of anger or (what appears to be) lack of control without being considered a danger to those around her. Her rage is something she keeps as a constant threat, a core element of her social identity and a fallback in battle, but she chooses it now, rather than it choosing her.

A younger sister, Signy has given over being a housemaid (separated from a bondswoman only by being free, but having fairly similar duties) and taken quite solidly to the axe. It's a more manly calling, and she wears more manly garb, with even her hair cut short to her shoulders...But she dreams of when she had long, beautiful hair, and of her dead husband, and sometimes, most terrible of all, of the children they would have had. But the bear is always there, cold as the enveloping whiteness of old ice that brings all dreams to a close, to rend and destroy what she has loved.

Hotaru: I'm pretty sure that's the story I mentioned earlier, Poul Anderson's The Tale of Hauk. :)

What incredible signs have occurred that indicate the end has come? How do people know this is Ragnarok?
As Tofa has noted, the waves of the swan-road are more wild than ever, but at the same time, further to the north whence Signy has come, the ice locks more of the sea for more of the year, so that in the height of what was once summer a man may safely walk to the far side of a bay which, in living memory, was hardly ever frozen in deepest winter. The cold does not retreat. The ice does not thaw. There are fewer fish to be caught, and fewer fishermen return from the difficult journeys to catch them, as none can now cut through the ice in the bay where she was born. The light of the sun is dimmed by day, and the moon's glow is fainter by night. The great fires of the gods are burning low, and who has the strength to kindle them?

What rumors have you heard regarding the gods and the reason for the sudden silence?
Some say that the final battle is upon the gods, and they are hunted now, as men are hunted upon the earth. Men always reflect their gods, and if we are doing so poorly, then in what stead must be the gods' home? Desperation replaces honor. Communities are withered things, bound together by wretched skeins of gut and gristle that chill and crack with the cold, rather than by the golden haired-ropes of shared joy and purpose. Once, we hunted beasts, and now they hunt us. So, too, the gods must be hunted. It could be that they no longer dare to seek victory in battle, but rather only to stave off defeat as long as they may. Is it any wonder they will not show us their faces?

What taboos have long been respected by your culture, but now are beginning to wane with the end?
Once it would have been unthinkable for a man not to be buried with his axe or sword, a woman with her tools and knife. Now, other hands grasp for them, for who has such plenty that they can spare good iron? The old trades in iron, in furs, in wool, silk and amber...They have all gone, and the price of such things may now be measured in lives. So grasping hearts send the dead into the darkness, hungry and without what they need to make their way in the next life. Still worse are the tales...Never in this community but always the next community, or the next, whoever last did battle...of those who eat the flesh of the dead in the desperate hunger of the winter nights, and doom themselves to walk with the same hunger in death. Where once a man might be jealous of his neighbor's coat or sword, now it is a full belly that catches his eye, and begins the whispering of evil works among those who know. Beware any who seem well-fed without cause, while their neighbors starve.

When the Wise Women interpreted the strange visions you've been having, what did they warn you against? My dreams are my own counsel since I met the bear, but I'd dreamed of him when I was younger and foolish. The bear will be the death of me, the Volva said. Well, it was the death of me as they saw me. Perhaps it will be the death of me yet, but it's seemed content to keep me alive so far. But other wise women have since listed other undoings, so unless I die a dozen times (and I am mortal as any), some of them must be wrong. I've been told to only eat bear flesh and to never eat bear flesh; to never eat the flesh of a raven; that I must never lie with a man, for I am no longer a woman; that there is a fish in the sea that will be my death; that Thor has forged a bolt of lightning for my accursed self; and that I will die to a friend's betrayal. Some of the Volva must be false...But which? There are days I worry and chew over my dooms, and others when the cold and hunger is too busy trying to end me for me to worry about any other ends.

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I've drawn a bit of inspiration for Signy along the way, some of which you probably would easily guess (the Wendol from Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, filmed as The 13th Warrior), or Bjarki from Hrolf Kraki, the Icelandic saga, who transforms into a great bear who "went before King Hrolf's men, keeping always near the king. He slew more men with his forepaws than any five of the king's champions. Blades and weapons glanced off him, and he brought down both men and horses in King Hjorvard's forces, and everything which came in his path he crushed to death with his teeth, so that panic and terror swept through King Hjorvard's army..." (Bjarki is very probably the inspiration for Tolkien's Beorn, yet another werebear/berzarkr), and others which might be more obscure, such as Heather Alexander's song "Don't Call My Name in Battle." It's an entertaining bit of music, hope you'll enjoy.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't point everyone at Kipling's "Song of the Red War Boat" while we're discussing honor and obligation and superstition and tabu.

P.S. You keep saying "he..."