Sigrun and Agnir

 

Accompanying Ingvar to the Giantdowns is his great aunt Sigrun, her husband Agnir Stoneshield, and their young daughter Liv.  Sigrun knows that Ingvar’s half-brothers will resolve the succession dispute when their father finally passes.  She pleaded with her husband to move his farm to the frontier that is the Giantdowns, and convinced Ingvar to seek his fortune where his mother and Sigrun grew up.  It’s a desperate move to protect her only child and by extension her nephew if chooses to travel with them.   

Agnir knows the danger his family is in and the decision to move to the Giantdowns was neither a quick nor an easy decision.  He explored the Giantdowns with Lief decades ago where both found wives but not before facing constant threats of bandits, humanoids, and restless dead.  He’s under no illusion about his daughter’s future in such a hard place, but Lief’s once united family is separating into armed camps.  Agnir is taking his family, his livestock, and the freemen willing to brave the Giantdowns to the lands of his wife and Ingvar’s mother. 

Ingvar Liefsson

 

The first player character in our duet campaign is Ingvar Liefsson, a young mercenary and adventurer from Dhoesone.  Ingvar grew up near the border with Stjordvik and was exposed to both the traditional way of Rjurik life along with the more progressive culture of farming and city life that is settling into the Highlands.  Like most traditional Rjurik upbringings, Ignvar learned to hold an ax and shield from an early age.  As befitting his elevated social status in Dhoesone, he is also a capable horseman and can fight mounted.

Ingvar has his sight set on exploring the Giantdowns where his mother Ylva was born and raised.  Ylva died young and Ingvar has few memories of her.  She was the third wife of Lief Stoutspear, an older upper-class warrior and successful herder originally from Stjordvik.  Ingvar has several half-brothers and sisters from his father’s previous marriages, most of whom do not want to see their inheritance go to Ingvar.  Knowing his father extreme age and poor health, it will only be a matter of time before his brothers make their move to seize control of the family’s wealth. 

Barrows for the Giantdowns

 

Nearing completion on some terrain items for the Giantdowns.  I ordered four 3D printed barrows off of Etsy in December.  They have playable interiors if you lift off the roofs.  Once I finish them I'll post some additional shots of what the interiors look like.  Next up for these is some flocking and static grass after a little interior work.  I think using the two different grey tones for the stones really paid off.  The larger cairn stones would done in cold grey tones topped off with an off-white highlight.  The worked stones and the bricks were done with grey green colors and topped off with a green that was almost white.  

The Giantdowns

 

For our return campaign to Birthright and the lands of Cerilia, we’re going to start the adventures in the Giantdowns.  The Downs are perfect because there’s not an established kingdom there, giving a non-regent character the opportunity to build a kingdom from the ground up.  It’s also an old land with a lot of history that is detailed in the 1997 supplement King of the Giantdowns.

The Giantdowns are located in the Northern Marches of western Cerilia which is the main continent for the setting.  The Northern Marches is a somewhat wild area that serves as a buffer between three of the four human cultures.  In this buffer area, there are several small baronies and kingdoms and that includes non-human kingdoms like Thurazor (Goblin), Tuarhieval (Elf), Mur-Kilad (Dwarf). 

The Downs themselves are an uncivilized and settled region claimed by no one but still home to both human and non-human inhabitants.  Humans, Dwarves, Oroks, Goblins, and others all survive here.  The Rjurik made the region home when they landed on the shores of Cerilia almost 2000 years ago and pushed inland.  They live there still eking out an existance in the small family farmsteads of traditional Rjurik life.  Rumors say the Dwarves make the Silverhead mountains home, but no one knows for sure.  The non-human tribes roam the full length of the downs raiding human farmsteads and each other.

The living inhabitants of the Giantdowns aren’t the only inhabitants.  The Downs themselves get their name from row upon row of low evenly spaced hills.  Adventures and grave-robbers have found tombs and treasures in those hills.  They’ve also reported seeing ancient dead walking about – meaning the living are not the only ones to call the Downs home.