Description

44-year-old, 4'8", 200lbs, green eyes, red hair, hair is closely cropped on the head with a long and intricately braided beard incorporating a medallion of a mountain with a faceted green gem. Smokes a pipe or enjoys a strong ale when he tries to relax.

History

Regnum was scion to the prestigious Stonecutter clan, widely renowned among dwarves for their methodical mining, quarrying, and monument carving skills. During his youth, Ragnum often found himself drawn deeper into the shadows and the secrets hidden within the earth while working on the family’s current projects. In particular, he had a knack for finding deposits of gemstones and a love for the art of shaping them.

While his family indulged his interest in these small stones, they had already planned a prestigious apprenticeship for Ragnum to learn details of the family's vault-construction division, where he was expected to design soaring halls and build impenetrable strongrooms. All these plans changed one day, when a series of unsettling tremors began to ripple through the deep earth that was being worked, and a small earthquake closed off Ragnum and the excavators he was apprenticing from their exit. While no mortal could hear over the groaning earth, perhaps somewhere the whispered prayers of those dwarves to the Morndinsamman were heard, and as a stray flash of light in that darkness caused Ragnum to notice the sparkle of a vein of obsidian, moments before it sheared to open a temporary passage for the seemingly doomed miners.

As the passage closed behind them, the dwarves found themselves in an impossibly ancient, perfectly smooth obsidian vault, seemingly untouched by time or geological stress. This was the ancient tomb of a forgotten cleric of Dumathoin, who had interred himself with a cache of knowledge in hopes that it would be preserved for the future. A few hard, hungry days went by before the vault was discovered and the miners rescued, and a few more before priests of Dumathoin came to investigate. Almost immediately, the clerics recognized the blessing visited upon Ragnum and strongly suggested that the Stonecutter Clan send him to their temple to begin study as an acolyte. While this was certainly not the future the Stonecutters had planned, no one in the clan would consider risking the anger of the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain.

Ragnum took to the study of the Dumathoinic Mysteries and excelled through each of the subsequent initiations until one day he was told that the next rite would take him away from the temple. He was to go adventuring and not return until he had acquired secret knowledge of sufficient to impress The Silent Keeper. The priesthood had recently heard that the Starshard Banner was mounting an expedition into a newly discovered Tharnic rift, and they told Ragnum that he should join the company and return with many secrets.

Traits and Motivations

Ragnum is curious, mischievous, patient, and loyal. He joined the Starshard Banner to find out as much as he could about the Tharnic collapse and the Riftspan with the ultimate goal of referring this information back to the Temple of Dumathoin.

This is the letter Ragnum was handed from the Office of the High Archivist, Church of Dumathoin. Delivered with it is a slim dark blue leather bound book written in a spidery dwarvesh script.

Ragnum,

Two centuries before the Solaen Collapse, a brother of our order, Belvar Ironmantle, walked the breadth of Tharnis under the guise of a geological surveyor. In truth, he was gathering proof of a growing wound in the world — the weakening of the barriers between planes.

Belvar knew such knowledge was dangerous. He concealed it in a journal written like any traveler’s log, with observations of quarries, shrines, and stone outcroppings. The secret lay in the map of his journey. Each site he visited was a point in a greater pattern. When the map was folded just so, those points aligned to reveal the cipher key to his journal, unlocking his true findings.

When the Collapse tore the heart of the land away, the central portion of Belvar’s route — and thus the critical points of the pattern — were lost into the Riftspan. Without them, his cipher has remained unbroken for over four hundred years, and the truth he died to preserve has stayed buried.

You are to reconstruct Belvar’s travels within the Riftspan.

Confirm and record any landmark matching his descriptions.

Measure, sketch, and note every detail, for the fold-in will demand precision.

When enough points are restored, the map will yield the cipher key, and we will finally read Belvar’s true report on the world’s wound.

Treat this as your final initiation. The Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain watches closely.

— High Archivist

Routine

When not exploring the rift, Ragnum can usually be found in the Scholars' Tent helping the Eggheads to organize and explore all the materials that he has brought back from the rift. If he wants to relax, he will have an ale in the mess tent while listening for new gossip or go on a walk around camp smoking his pipe.