Vas'Drakken

   Young Vlor of the clan Drakken Wold, was in a sleepy mining town, north east of Riddermark. He spends his youth apprenticed to the garrison smith. Normally a Riddermark Garrison would only make weapons and the local smith would make the iron monger, but Drakken Wold is so small that if not for the mining of Mithral and Grey Iron it would not exist. So Vlor learns mining at knees of his kin and how to forge and shape it by the Riddermark Smith. Naturally gifted at shaping Iron Vlor has his life a head of him as the next garrison smith or as a village Black Smith.

   Until a stranger wanders through town a strange only four feet tall... and almost as wide! The smith Aeinderas laughs and tell Vlor that Bjorn Goldlust is a Dwarf. He then swears Vlor to secrecy about the Mithral for the Dwarves love Mithral more than gold and the Riddermark need it for weapons against all whom would oppose their freedom. Bjorn and Aeinderas are old friends and having hidden all the Mithral already they show Vlor some new tricks and Bjorn laughs at the anvil of gilded granite. He says that you could probally even forge Mithral weapons on it. Aeinderas laughs and says when a stone herd owes you a favor and all you ask for in a perfect anvil you get over engineered perfect anvil upon which you can forge what ever you want and not worry about it ever wearing away. They spend weeks working on armor that the dwarf wants to give to a dundane friend of his. Vlor finally asks why here instead of the halls. Bjorn chuckles and says that dwarves are horrible old women when it comes to secerts. That and humans like gild the lily or putting gilding on perfect functional items. So if it is made here he can blame Aeinderas for it and still make his Dundane friend happy. The armor is finished after months of works and Aeinderas digs out a load stone, wipes it with cobalt and marks in were the gilding goes. Taking handful of gold trade weights they dump them into a a crucible of slivery liquid and taking a fine nickle iron brush paint with the boiling gold dust over the armor, giving it a golden tone with high lights of deep blues. They then heat it once more and then temper it in cold acid wash. The resulting armor is gaudy as all and expains why Bjorn wanted to do it away from his fellows. Though Vlor is intrugied by the blue colors and the coating that stops rust. Aeinderas says that you don't need gold the cobalt and copper coating will result in a black coating that works as well without looking like your walking around in a gold suit of armor.

   During Vlor's seventeenth winter, he tries a new twist he forges a dozen trade bars of Mithral, Grey Iron, Cobalt, and Nickle Iron. The trade bars are too heavy to make a sword from so he has Aeinderas teach him how to make armor out of it. Aeinderas refuses to help him unless he is willing to learn with simple nickle iron as the bars are going to be harder to forge anything than he has ever tried before. So he spends all summer in the blazing heat before forge and anvil to learn armor craft. The Riddermark uses two types of armor, one a coat of maile with a breast plate. The other a coat of plates over mail, with a solid cuirass, complete with tassets and pauldrons. Vlor spends the next year making iron mongery and suits of Armour. He works through various iron and bronze melds. Aeinderas tells him he should visit the dwarves under the mountain to learn how to craft grey iron and Mithral. Vlor sets out on his horse with a mule carrying his trade bars and money. As the dwarves will charge his a heavy fee to teach him their ways. Vlor spends two years there learning their craft. In his trials and turmoil, he learns that he should craft the armor on the anvil where he grew up because it is special. Vlor having spend two years of his life except for swims in the lake above, agrees to go home to forge his Armour. Traveling south through the wolds, he runs across a pretty woman beset by wolves. He fights his way through only to not find the woman but a cave. Worried he is to late to save he he rushes into the cave and finds himself in a bier with the woman standing there, though it is clear she was in no danger from mortal wolves as she is a ghost or sprite of some kind. She offers him a choice...

   He takes the goblet and drinks. She tells him he has a year to return. Vlor leaves and finds that the wolves he killed were aged bones looking years dead but cracked where he killed them. When he makes it back to Drakken Wold he finds it deserted and anvil defaced but only on the surface. Apparently orks came through and thought it was an alter. The whole town is ruins and by longer years than expected. He cleans the smithy and well. Spending the rest of the time forging his armour. With all the metal gone he goes down the old shaft to get some more grey iron only to find that it is collapsed and not something he has time for and be in time for his vow. Shrugging he forges the pauldrons and tassets out of a Mithral cobalt meld. The whole armour is pattern welded in blues and greens, the helm is a simple mail coif with a leather band to keep his hair out of his eyes. He returns north.

   Ages later he wakes stiff as a corpse inside a stone coffin, with a young woman looking like she just saw a ghost. A tired looking man is dragged back in by the woman and she points rudely at Vlor and says he is alive! Vlor shakes his head and speaks in Rohirrim and both Strider and the woman assume he is a horse lord who fell a foul of the dark eye. Strider talks with him about his armour and finds out that he is a dundaen or Drakken Wonder. Vlor understands that no one has lived in the wolds in a long time it is over run with orks and worse, so Vlor pretends to be of Rohan for the time being. He finds out that he is in Archet and to prove he is free from the evil taint he is asked to help a hobbit free her friend.

   Needless to say it goes very wrong as he ends up in a trap and is caught. Being that he has only had rough training all Riddmarks get since he was supposed to be a smith not a fighter. He understands how all the weapons are supposed to work, he just has not had any practical knowledge. Well he understand hammers very well. Strider and another to help with the break out and in the process the hobbits aka firebugs, set fire to the camp and while no one gets out alive the dark rider tells the brigands what they need to know. He never gets a chance to ask why his coffin ended up in Archet, as strider leaves to soon to ask and the young women falls in the fighting to save the town. Later strider sends him a note and he tells vlor that it is better to claim to be a horse lord than explain he was found by an expatistion to the great barrows. Also the woman did not die but is being taken care of by Tom of the Trees.

   He helps out around Bree learning the sword in the hardest school there is battle for your life. He cleans up the brigand problem only to find that they are just over flow from lone lands. Strider asks him to take up the mantle of hero and fight on the side of men vs the darkness. He travels to the Lone Lands at Strider's request. After weeks of fighting goblins and bandits, he encounter a pair of adventures Dett and Lexia, who later  found the Blood Ravens following the craziest run through Troll Shaws to Riven Dell.

   Embolden by his success at adventuring Vlor wanders where he might. Vlor finds himself in Esltiln a large village hidden in escarpment through the mountain chain of the north lands. From there he wanders past fell drake and monstrous spiders into the deeps of Agnmar, only to barely escaped with he life and limbs from the red sisters.

   Realizing that his armour craft is not up to the task and his sword work needing much help, he turns to his guild mates. They suggest that he travel through the shire to Thorin's Hall, and learn at the feet of a master. He travels to the far shire and from their to dwarves great hall to re-learn smithery at a masters feet. Once he gets there, He says nothing of previous training and they require that he do something to prove that his is worthy of their training. He tells them he crafted armour in Bree and that they could teach him nothing else. They send him to north downs to learn their. In the process of his journeys he learns that Moria has fallen. He truly feels out of place by strengthen by his guild mates and by the rangers of Esteldin and the men of Bree. In time the Dwarves of Thorin's Hall open their arms as much as any dwarf does to a stranger.

   Along the way he forges a strong bond with the Council of the North in the fight against the shadow and the armies of Angmar. He travels to the cold shores of Forchell and is adopted by the tribes of Lossoth. He slays the mighty Torahammas and in homage to the tribes makes a cloak to keep him warm against the coldest night of darkness.

   In time the dwarves open their halls and hearts to Vlor excepting that he is one of the few Grandmaster Metal smiths. As such he is approached with a venture into Moria to recover it. Vlor is placed with a dilemma as he knows the halls better than any dwarf alive but canaeda admit it. As he is a man of the first age and last he saw it seems but a short five years ago. He goes with the expedition, fights off a beast in the lake he remembers swimming in. He wanders the halls and helps found some of the way points but clearing the halls will take many of foolish adventurer throwing away life in the pursuit of loot and glory. Mostly in that order. It is in the halls of Moria that he plans to build a new suit of armour as his first set was used a template for the Nazughauls, which still bother him... That there is time where he may have been a Nazughaul himself, and was only saved by some deed of light.

More to come later...

Character Backgrounds

The first two characters are the old king on hill archetypes and some of the other ones are just silly because it's fun.

Amortis Vas'Drakken

    Born in the quite village Tor, Iceland Amortis set out to find adventure. Never did he foresee, what lay in wait for him? Demented fairies, demons with ethics, killer robots and wonders to behold.

He set out with old rusty sword, a coat of mail in not much better shape, and a dingy backpack. After a close call with a daemon, his demonic heritage rears its ugly head, leaving him with bluish cast to his skin, blunt horns and sharp finger nails. He has the horns surgically removed and other the scars manages to look mostly normal. Alas the only job he can get and keep is an auto worker in Detroit, partly due to no one asking him how old he is or when he is going to retire. His demonic heritage being helping in that he has only got old then just hung around at that point. He runs a Dojo on the side to keep his archaic fighting skills intact, as the city gets more and more run down.

Then everything goes crazy with people running around with radioactive material, killer robots and what not. Amortis starts building himself some armor using skills he gained working with advanced metals and composites building what was supposed to be the cars of the future, as if we will have one at this rate...

Maybe going around beating down evil was a mistake because in the course of killing off some nasties he ran smack into a Daemon Prince. Normally this results in a pair of smoking heroic boot, but the prices seeing the evil that was rooted in his very being from his heritage decided to corrupt his instead, for every good deed he did his heritage came on stronger and for every evil deed the more normal and human he looked.

For months he was confused and torn for if he was an evil freak he looked normal and could savor the delights of humanity while his soul got darker and darker. Waking up one day in a abattoir of carnage, he tries to find his humanity again but most of strength and skills have left him. He spends months working out and re-learning ten life times skills but it is the alien invasion that brings home to him that no mater what he looks like he has to strive for good even if it damns him to eternity.

As his daemonic heritage over takes him he has to build and rebuild his armor to match his developing body as the daemonic influences warp his mind body and soul into something else. His strength grows at an exponential rate his stubby horn grow back bringing buddies with them leaving him with two rows of spikes down his head. To make things worse with them two massive horns grow out of his mastoids. His sharp finger and toes nails become savage claws. He gains mass as pure muscle some of which are clearly not human in nature and expanse. At which point he switches to hammering out frames of metal that simply will encompass he body instead of the detailed scroll work he started out with. Seeking more flexibility he wraps heavy demonically infused metal chains around his thighs.

Artorius Mort or A. Mort

    Born just before the roaring twenties Artorius Mort in the good old US of A, just at the right time or wrong time depending on your perspective to be dragging into War to End all Wars. Later it would be know as World War One, but at the time it hard war that needed every life it took. So with visions of honor and glory A. Mort ends up fighting in some of the worse battles man has known. Clearing a bunker before it gets shelled he takes shelter in a metal coffin... only it is a cryo tube...

I have a longer version of A mort as soon as I find the text doc I saved some where.