Old alliance soldiers recognize Halvard's scars and unit marks; he may draw on shared veteran experience in Accord Hall taverns and barracks. Campaign hook for 'The List of Names' personal quest.
Human adaptability: +1 to three ability scores (STR, CON, CHA); size Medium, speed 30.
On hit, target has Disadvantage on next attack roll before start of your next turn.
Reroll weapon's damage dice; use either total.
+1 bonus to Armor Class while wearing armor.
Regain 1d10 + Fighter level HP.
Behind the character
Halvard Rook is a weathered human fighter in his late thirties, broad-shouldered and heavyset with the permanent carriage of a man who has spent more years behind a shield than out of one. His iron-brown hair is cropped short, his nose has been broken at least twice, and a deep scar runs across his left knee — the one that ended his soldiering and started his guarding. His chain shirt is scored with pale orc axe gouges he has never had hammered out, partly from poverty and partly from superstition: he believes armor that has held once will hold again.
A battered round shield bearing the faded three-shield sigil of the old alliance hangs on his back, and a plain longsword rides his hip, unadorned and razor-kept. He wears a faded alliance cloak, muddy boots, and the expression of a man perpetually sizing up a room's exits before its people. His gray eyes are tired and unimpressed, missing nothing, and they move constantly — doors, windows, hands, knives. He speaks bluntly and rarely, allergic to speeches and to anyone who gives them, and his patience under fire is the kind that unnerves people who have never been shelled.
He is Lawful Neutral not out of philosophy but out of scar tissue: rules held the line at the Burning Ford when heroics got men killed. He counts exits before he counts friends, keeps his debts written on the inside of his shield arm, and drinks only what he can carry. Underneath the flint is a man terrified that the three years his squad spent dying meant nothing — and he would burn down anyone who makes that true.
Before the adventure
Halvard Rook was born in a border village in the Sundered Marches that no longer exists; it burned in the first year of the orc war, and his family scattered to relatives who did not want them. At seventeen he took the queen's shilling because it came with bread, and at nineteen he was transferred into the 4th Mixed Company — one of the experimental units where humans, elves, and dwarves were welded into single squads to hold the alliance's worst ground.
He hated it at first: elves were too quiet, dwarves too loud, and he was too blunt for any of them. Three years and two hundred miles of trenches changed that. His squad sergeant, Corwin Bale, taught him shield work, patience, and the habit of counting exits; a dwarf named Hulta Ninefingers taught him to drink; an elven scout whose name he never learned taught him that silence could be a kindness.
The 4th held the Burning Ford for six hours in the war's second summer while three thousand refugees crossed a knee-deep river under orc fire. Halvard was the last man standing on the third shield when the fall-back order came — an hour before the last refugees crossed. He refused it. An officer's boot, not an orc axe, broke his knee, and Corwin dragged him out of the fire line with both their shields locked.
The squad did not all make it. Halvard mustered out with a pension, a ruined knee, and a muster-book page he took without permission. He took caravan guard work on the Marches road because it was the only job that let him keep facing the direction he was already looking. Three years of guarding taught him that the peace was rotting: forged orders, wrong-colored wax, veterans going quiet when certain names were mentioned.
When the human envoy died in Accord Hall and Captain Eldrin Voss sent for him, Halvard did not ask about pay. He counted the exits in the Broken Banner, sat with his back to the wall, and waited for Eldrin to show him the folded list of names — and his own sergeant's handwriting on it. Now he is a neutral man in a town that is running out of neutrality, the only surviving witness who can name names, and the only person in Accord Hall whom both the veterans' taverns and the Remnant's officers will still listen to.
He carries the Accord's last chance in his shield arm and his squad's ghost on his back, and he has not yet decided which one he will save if he can only save one.
Threads to follow
Beneath the surface
What haunts them
What drives them
Personal quest · 1
Eldrin Voss keeps a folded list of Accord soldiers who have taken Ashen Choir coin, and Halvard's old squad sergeant, Corwin Bale, is on it. Eldrin will not act without a witness who can name names, and Halvard is the only surviving member of that squad. He must work the veterans' taverns, the treaty stone, and the old barracks of Accord Hall to find proof.
Gather testimony in the Broken Banner and the veterans' barracks about who paid Corwin.
Personal quest · 2
Halvard's squad held the Burning Ford for six hours while refugees crossed. He was the last man standing when the order came to fall back, and he has never told anyone what he saw in the water. Returning to Burning Ford forces him to face the survivors, the graves, and Sister Elian, who has been tending veterans of that day for three years.
Speak with Sister Elian and the ford survivors about the day the squad held.
Personal quest · 3
Every trail Halvard follows ends at a gray-hooded man who pays in Crown silver and buys wax in Deepforge Outpost. He is the Choir's recruiter, the forger's contact, and the hand behind the forged orders. Halvard must hunt him across the Marches, from the veterans' taverns to the mountain pass, before the man vanishes into the capital.
Track the recruiter through Deepforge Outpost's wax merchants and the Scarfall Bazaar.
Eldrin Voss shows Halvard the list of names. Corwin Bale, the sergeant who saved his life, is on it.
Handing him over gains Eldrin's trust and a permanent +2 to Persuasion with Accord officers but severs Halvard's last tie to the squad. Warning him makes Halvard a fugitive's accomplice and costs the Accord's trust, but Corwin becomes an inside source. Proving the frame requires exposing the Choir's sleeper in the town guard and grants the Accord Signet and a permanent lead on the recruiter.
At the Burning Ford, Halvard can save the temple and refugees or hunt the arsonist priest.
Saving grants Sister Elian's blessing, permanent resistance to Frightened, and +1 hit point per level, but the priest escapes with the sigil. Hunting recovers the Ashen Choir sigil immediately and gives the party a head start on the trail, but villagers die and Halvard's nightmares return, imposing disadvantage on his first Wisdom save of each day in the Marches.
The gray-hooded recruiter offers Halvard his squad's full record in exchange for one night of blindness.
Taking grants the squad's record and +1 to History but gives the Choir permanent leverage — once per arc, the DM can compel Halvard to withhold one piece of evidence. Refusing grants permanent immunity to Charm from Choir agents. Betraying yields the recruiter's ledger and Corwin's exoneration, but Halvard permanently loses the ability to swear binding oaths without disadvantage on the related Persuasion check.
Completing 'The List of Names' by clearing the squad.
Halvard gains the title 'Witness of the 4th' and can call on any Accord veteran in the Marches for shelter or a favor, once per settlement.
Accord Remnant trust rises to Trusted; veterans' taverns treat him as an officer.
Choosing to burn Eldrin's list.
Halvard loses the Accord's trust and becomes a man the Remnant watches. The Remnant's relationship drops one step, and Eldrin will no longer share intelligence.
Accord Remnant trust drops to Wary; Eldrin closes the archive to him.
Telling the truth at the ford.
Halvard's guilt becomes testimony. He gains resistance to Frightened and the survivors' loyalty.
Permanent resistance to Frightened condition.
Ally
Eldrin Voss commanded the 4th Mixed Company at the Burning Ford, and Halvard held the third shield in his line for six hours while refugees crossed. Eldrin wrote the commendation that got Halvard his pension and the discharge that let him walk away with a ruined knee instead of a flag. When the human envoy died in Accord Hall, Eldrin did not send for a knight or a spy — he sent for the one man whose name still meant something to every veteran in the town, because he knew Halvard would count the exits, find the truth, and never give a speech about it.
Eldrin keeps secrets the way Halvard keeps scars, and the list of names is the heaviest of them. He trusts Halvard with it because Halvard is the only surviving member of the squad on it, and because he has watched Halvard hold a line when holding it meant dying. Their bond is not warm — Eldrin is gruff, Halvard is blunt, and neither has said a kind word to the other in three years — but it is load-bearing. If Halvard burns the list, Eldrin will not have him arrested; he will simply stop trusting him, which is worse.
Enemy
Corwin Bale was Halvard's squad sergeant and the man who dragged him out of the fire line at the Burning Ford with a shattered knee and both their shields locked. Corwin taught Halvard how to count exits, how to hold a shield wall, and how to keep quiet when an officer was wrong. After mustering out, Corwin could not find work — the Marches had no use for a sergeant with no land and no patron — and the Ashen Choir's coin found him first.
He is not a believer; he is a hungry veteran who took money to look the other way, and the Choir has been tightening the leash ever since. Corwin's name on Eldrin's list makes him Halvard's enemy only in the sense that the truth makes them enemies: Halvard must choose between the man who saved his life and the institution that gave his dead friends meaning. Corwin, for his part, knows Halvard will come for him, and he is terrified — not of Halvard, but of what Halvard will decide.
If Halvard proves he was framed, Corwin becomes the party's most valuable witness. If Halvard hands him over, Corwin will not resist arrest, but he will never forgive the man whose life he bought with his own body.
Faction
Halvard served three years in the Accord's 4th Mixed Company, one of the mixed human-elf-dwarf units that made the alliance more than a treaty. He mustered out with a bad knee and a worse temper, but the Remnant never stopped being the thing he believes in — the proof that the soldiers he served with did not die for nothing. When Captain Eldrin Voss called him back the day the envoy died, Halvard came without asking what the pay was.
The Remnant's officers recognize his scars and unit marks in the taverns and barracks of Accord Hall, and old soldiers buy him drinks and talk too freely, which is exactly why Eldrin keeps him close. The Remnant is undermanned, underfunded, and politically isolated, and Halvard knows it: he has seen the ledgers, counted the guards, and watched the treaty stone crack a little more each season. His loyalty is not to the institution but to what it is trying to hold together, and he will defend it with his shield, his testimony, or his fists — but he will not defend its mistakes.
If the Remnant asks him to bury the truth to preserve the peace, Halvard will refuse, and that refusal is the fault line the Ashen Choir is trying to widen.
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