Leader of the Knights of Ukko and defacto king of Taurdain.
Utgar VanMorian, Lord of Taurdain.
In the ashen wake of the Harvester War, Taurdain—once proud, once serene—was left broken. The gods of the Tal-Shie pantheon, enraged by their defeat and the death of one of their divine progeny, unleashed a curse upon the land. It was not enough that the island nation had endured the fire and steel of war. For daring to claim victory—for daring to survive—they would be punished.
In the final, searing moments of the war, the cursed blade known as the Harvester struck down D’Josso, Lord Commander of the Tal-Shie war host. And with his death, the blade’s doom was fulfilled. Prophesied to be destroyed only by divine blood, it shattered in an explosion that claimed all nearby—among them, the valiant Rasputin Von Blitzkrieg. The ruins of the capital still whisper of that blast, the ground itself scarred with the memory.
And then, Taurdain lost its heart. Lord Blue—the ancient dragon, cobalt in scale and spirit, protector of the realm—fell from the sky, torn from life while shielding his people from the Tal-Shie’s flying death machines. His fall was the end of an age.
In the silence that followed, a sickness took root. A slow, relentless malaise—the retribution of a grieving god. It seeped into soil, into spirit. No magic could cure it, only delay it. The land ached. The people withered.
Isthul the Seer, last of her line and the trusted oracle of Lord Blue, offered the final truth before the sickness took her: the only salvation lay in the waters of Glimmermere, high on Deathwatch Mountain, within the cursed region known as The Burn. Lord Blue had journeyed there yearly, returning each time with the sacred waters to renew the nation. But he would return no more. That duty, now, must fall to others—not the people of Taurdain, but allies, friends, those still willing to believe in the worth of a dying land. If none came, then Taurdain had no right to survive. Those were her final words.
And then she passed. The first of many.
But Utgar VanMorian, Lord Commander of the Taurdain military, did not falter. He did not weep. He moved.
He gathered what remained—refugees, survivors, broken knights and grieving commoners—and began to rebuild. From the ruins of Ravensmoor, he raised a rallying cry not of glory, but of endurance. His knights spread across the scarred land, not to conquer, but to save.
Near the shattered gates of the harbor city, he called his people to him: nobles and farmers, soldiers and smiths, children and elders. No titles. No hierarchy. Just survivors.
He entered the camp, unarmored, but flanked by a dozen knights. Dust-covered and hollow-eyed, the people stepped back in stunned silence as he approached. A boy sounded a horn. A makeshift pulpit—an overturned wagon—became his altar.
Utgar raised his hand to the storm-heavy sky, voice rumbling like distant thunder. “Truth.” The word shook the air, and above him, the symbol of Ukko—the storm god—blazed in radiant light.
“People of Taurdain,” he called, voice like iron, “hear me now. What I say, I say with truth. Let Ukko take my eyes if I lie. We are not broken. We are tested. And we must not fail.”
He turned to Lord Hollingsworth, his tone sharpened like a blade. “Your manor stands. Its walls were spared while others burned. We need it now—for the wounded, the sick, the dying. You will open your doors. You will provide your staff. This is not a request—it is your duty.”
The noble blustered, but Utgar cut him short with a glare that could split stone. “All of us—lord or laborer—stand side by side now. We will live or die together. There is no more ‘yours’ or ‘mine.’ There is only ours. We rebuild as one.”
The crowd, too weary for cheers, watched in stunned silence. But a spark of something ancient stirred: hope.
He continued, his voice carrying like a commandment. “Lady Gavashoon sends her healers and mead from the north. By nightfall, the ship Hag will arrive, bearing what aid she can. Until then, we work. Hardtack and pickled fish will keep us on our feet. Tonight, we eat together.”
“Miller Tarkth!” he bellowed. “That windmill must turn again. Take who you need. Woodsmen, salvage that barn. Give the mill what it needs.”
“Farmers, shepherds—gather the livestock. Preserve what breathes. Do not slaughter. We build from what we still have. Hunters, forage with care. Healers, ready your salves. Brewers, begin to make heavy brine. Fishers, take to the north sea. Catch what you can. Seamstresses, mend every net. Harbormaster Hagith, secure our boats and send word to every captain still breathing.”
Then Utgar knelt, lowering himself to the level of the smallest among them. “Children,” he said gently, “you can help too. Find what crawls, what hops, what hides in the sand. Eggs, worms, clams—bring them to the Keeper. There’ll be a treat for each of you. But mind the stingers.”
A smile—rare, but real—touched his face as the children scattered on their mission. Then he rose again, taller than any man could remember.
“To the rest—if I have not named you, help where you see need. No bartering. No hoarding. What we build now is for everyone. Injured? Go to the tent. Strong? Come with me.”
He clapped his hands, each sound like a war drum. “We need firepits. Ovens. Kilns. Bring stone from the shore. We start now.”
He turned suddenly, his eyes scanning the ruined city beyond. “Stay clear of the capital. There are still enemies among the ruins. Few, but deadly. Hunter Rhyll!”
A giantess stepped forward, half again as tall as any other there, silent and formidable.
“You see that outcrop?” he pointed. “Can you watch all the camp from there? You see danger—signal us. If you can end it, do. But above all—protect the children.”
She nodded once and strode off. Murmurs rippled through the crowd; they had not realized she was there all along. Her size mimicked their foes but her garb and markings showed her to be a Namresh, an ally a terrifying one.
Utgar turned to his knights. “Split into threes. Ride to every camp. Spread the plan. Beg the druids if you must. They are of this land, whether they love us or not for what this war has wrought.”
Then, with no fanfare, he joined the laborers, hauling stone beside them.
An old man, gray-bearded and weather-worn, looked at him curiously. “But… you are our king.”
Utgar paused, the weight of the world in his hands. “I am what the people need me to be. War forged me. But stonework—I knew in my youth. I can build. So I will. We all must do what we can.”
The old man nodded slowly. Handed him a fresh stone. “Didn’t think I’d live to see it,” he muttered, and turned back to the quarry.
That night, the camp was still half-starved, half-shattered—but they had begun. Lord Hollingsworth, now quiet and purposeful, began cataloging all supplies and survivors. The children slept with bellies not full, but not empty. And as the tide rolled in, the bell of the Hag echoed over the waves—salvation arriving in the dark. Honey mead, hardtack, and battered crates of salted fare thudded onto the dock, the sound of resupply mingling with the groans of timbers and the mournful cry of gulls overhead. The warship loomed like a black leviathan at anchor, its hull scarred from battles too recent to fade. A trickle of passengers disembarked—ashen, weary, some too hollow-eyed to speak—while the wounded were lifted aboard in silence, bundled in wool and resignation.
Captain Grebdin stood at the gangway, a mountain of muscle and menace cast in black iron and old blood. The Minotaur’s breath steamed in the cold air, his horns wrapped in battlecloth, his gaze locked on the Harbormaster like a hammer waiting to fall.
“Two days,” he said, voice like gravel ground under heel. “Innarlith sails were spotted on the fringe—ghosting us like wolves in the fog. They did not engage, but their silence speaks louder than steel. The Lady’s gaze is upon Taurdain… and it is a covetous one.”
He stepped closer, the dock creaking beneath his hooves.
“Tell Lord Utgar we depart before the tide turns. We’ll guard what seas we can, but make no mistake—shadow moves on these waters. Be vigilant. Whatever mercy we buy with our cannons… may it be enough.”
Without waiting for reply, Grebdin turned and strode back toward his ship, the wind catching his cloak like the wings of some great and grim omen.
A flicker of life stirred in the ashes of a fallen nation.
And on a jagged rock above the camp, a granite-skinned sentinel watched without sleep. Two of the enemy emerged from the city ruins, they caused no harm, nor would they ever again.
Mercenary Uprising
“LORD UTGAR!”
The cry pierced the heavy air just as Utgar pressed the last coil of clay into the seam of the kiln. He paused, straightened, and in the next heartbeat, the keening wail of a Clarian distress horn shattered the calm. Trouble. And close.
A farmer sprinted toward him, wild-eyed and breathless. Utgar, already wiping the clay from his hands onto the earth, seized a sword from the nearby tool rack. Steel in hand, he stepped forward with unhurried purpose.
From a tent across the field, Lars—Utgar’s brother and second—burst into the light like a storm given form. His armor, emblazoned with the sigil of Ukko, glinted beneath a wind-blown tunic. His blade was already drawn, his jaw clenched with the fury of impending battle.
“What is it? Speak.” Utgar’s voice was steady as he caught the staggering farmer.
“The well… taken! Lombard’s brigands have seized it. They demand silver for water!”
“Bastards,” Lars hissed, his voice edged like the blade he held. His weathered face, carved from years of battle, twisted into something grim and righteous. It was not bloodlust—it was the wrath of a man whose oathbound patience had limits. His wind-tossed hair framed eyes blazing with fury.
Utgar exhaled, low and calm, and raised a hand. Around them, the laborers—masons, farmers, builders—saw the signal and wordlessly took up tools or weapons. None asked questions. They simply fell into step.
“Walk with me, brother,” Utgar said as he strode beside Lars. “Let not wrath dictate your hand. We do what must be done—but no more.”
Lars nodded, his shoulders tightening. “My patience dies quickly with men like these.”
“And yet it is our oath that binds us. We are stewards of life, not harvesters of it. If blood must spill, let it be the last choice.”
He turned and gave a subtle signal. From the rear emerged a towering figure—Rhyll, the giantess. She moved with the predatory grace of a stalking lion, silent despite her immense frame. Her bow, taller than most men, was already strung.
“If I give the word,” Utgar said softly, “kill Captain Lombard. Quick. Clean. One death, if it spares many. I ask not lightly.”
Rhyll gave a single nod as was her way and melted back into the formation.
As they neared the well, the mercenaries formed a sloppy semblance of a line—more a mob than a force.
“Sloppy,” Lars muttered, contempt dripping from the word.
Captain Lombard stepped forward. He was the embodiment of faded arrogance—old nobility clothed in stained finery, equal parts pomp and rot. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore his years like medals, but his eyes held nothing of honor.
“Well well,” Lombard sneered. “The lord himself comes down to parley. A surprise, I must say. Still, glad you see sense. Let’s talk silver like civilized men.”
Behind him loitered his misfit company: bruised sellswords, weary and wild-eyed; two ogrekin, hulking and slack-jawed, flanked by a red-haired dwarf with armor scarred by years of hard battle. The dwarf alone stood with any real discipline.
Utgar raised his hand and spoke a single word. “Truth.”
Above his palm, a sigil of burning light erupted—Ukko’s flame writ in the air. Several of the mercenaries flinched, stepping back as though burned.
“Ah, the usual theatrics,” Lombard said with a sneer. “But no army to back them. Just pay us and we’ll be on our way.”
Utgar’s voice was quiet, but it hit with the weight of stone.
“You have been paid all you will receive. You stand on our land, stealing from the thirsty. Your life is spared only because no blood has yet been shed. Step down. Join us. Lay down your arms, and you will be fed, healed, and treated as equals. Refuse, and you die. I speak plainly. You all know I speak the truth.”
The wind rustled the grass. Utgar did not raise his voice. He did not threaten. He simply declared.
“Equals?!” Lombard spat. “You rule nothing! You—”
“Kill him.”
The words were cold. Final. Without emotion.
Before Lombard could react, a thunderous thwack split the air. A massive arrow punched through his chest, hurling him back like a broken puppet. He struck the earth with a sodden thud and did not rise.
Chaos rippled through the mercenaries. Some stepped forward, fury flashing—then froze. Utgar’s men stood unshaken. Still. As if daring them to test their mettle.
“Lay down your arms,” Utgar said. “Come with us. Let us treat your wounds, feed your bellies, give you honest work. Or follow your captain into death.”
From behind the group, Rhyll stepped forward with silent menace. The creak of her bowstring echoed like a warning bell.
The dwarf moved next, stepping over Lombard’s corpse without pause. His axes hung untouched at his sides. The ogrekin behind him—mountainous brutes, each nearly ten feet tall, giggled and elbowed each other like children, oblivious to the tension.
“M’lord,” the dwarf said, removing a parchment from Lombard’s cloak. “He held our oathbond. Me and these two lummoxes. If you’ll have it, I’ll turn it over to you and serve until our debt is met.”
“I am Egreshi of Drandubar. These ogrekin? Mine since babes. They’re daft as posts but loyal. Good for smashing boulders. Or heads. They like work… just don’t let them near chickens.”
Utgar studied Egreshi for a long breath, then offered a rare smile.
“Keep your bond. You owe us nothing. But if you wish to stay and work, you are welcome. We build a future here, not chains.”
One by one, the mercenaries dropped their weapons. Some departed in silence. Others chose to remain, joining the people of Taurdain in the labor of healing and rebuilding.
By sundown, the well was free, and the brigands were no more. That night, under a sky strewn with stars, Lord Utgar broke bread with farmers, stonemasons, and former mercenaries alike.
And among them, the two ogrekin sat cross-legged beside their dwarf, laughing over mugs of cider and accidentally breaking the table in half.
Utgar’s Offer to Rhyll
“Rhyll.” The voice outside the tent was low and unmistakable—Utgar’s familiar timbre, steady as worn stone. “May I enter? There is something urgent we must speak of.”
Inside, the scent of oiled bowstring and tanned leather mingled with smoke from the nearby forge fires. The Giantess sat cross-legged on her cot, stringing her massive longbow with quiet, deliberate movements, as if she’d been expecting him.
“Aye,” came her reply, without looking up.
Utgar ducked into the tent, tall frame shadowed by the flickering lamplight. He looked like the land itself, scarred, weatherworn, and streaked with the filth of toil. Dirt clung to his boots, smoke blackened the cuffs of his coat, and his hands bore fresh burns from laboring beside smiths and builders. He wore the debris of the day like armor, not with pride, but with grim purpose. His people saw him not on a throne, but in the trenches beside them—and they loved him for it.
He wasted no time.
“You’ve no doubt heard,” he said, voice like iron under strain. “The expedition is likely gone. No word since Gravik returned, and that was two days past.”
Rhyll gave a slight nod, eyes still on the bundle of arrows she now began to fletch. Each movement was slow, precise, ritualistic.
“I know your contract is nearly done,” Utgar continued, stepping further into the tent. “But I’ve come to ask something more of you. Not as a commander to a mercenary—but as a man staring into the edge of the world and wondering who will stand with him.”
Still no reaction. The silence in the tent stretched, taut as bowstring.
“I’m asking you to stay,” he said, voice quieter now but no less firm. “To stay and help build what comes after this. To become a citizen of New Taurdain—if we live to see it. You heard the prophecy. The Seer spoke plainly: Taurdain will not save itself. Others must find it worth saving.”
He let the words hang in the air, like a sentence already passed.
“Ukko has granted us a moment—nothing more. A breath before the next blow. We must prove ourselves, not to gods, but to those still watching. Worthy not of pity, but of standing. Of rebuilding.”
Utgar began to pace slowly, his boots whispering across the rug. His eyes met hers, unwavering.
“I don’t offer gold. You can ask for that from any half-witted prince on the mainland. I offer a place—belonging. Not just for you, but for your whole clan, should they wish it. Land, yes—we have land aplenty. But people?” He stopped. “People like you—we are in desperate need.”
“You’ve walked among them. They may not know your name, but they see you. The way you are with their children. The dolls they carve, the games they play—pretending to be you. That’s not worship. That’s hope. You’ve become something they aspire to.”
He stepped closer now, standing nearly eye-to-eye with the seated giantess. His voice lowered again, edged with gravity.
“The Blackclaw goblins have added three to the company—one ancient, touched with seer’s fire, and two warriors as different as night and noon. A phoenix monk has come from Kadath. But we need a scout. Someone to chart a safer path, avoid pitfalls and make speed.”
His jaw clenched for a moment, but he did not falter.
“Rhyll… what I offer—land, kinship, a place in what we’re remaking—it is yours, whether you ride with us or not. If you stay and help rebuild, You and your kin will be welcome here, no matter your answer.”
A long breath, weighted with all the things he didn’t want to say.
“But know this. Without you… our odds grow thin. The expedition will go on, with or without your bow. But if you stand with them—if you go—there’s a chance this doesn’t end in fire and mourning. A real chance.”
His voice dropped to a final, solemn murmur.
“You could tip the scales, Rhyll. Maybe the only one who can.”
Rhyll’s Response
The giant turns Utgar’s words in her mind, weighing them as her hands do the same to the fletching. Enormous pinion feathers for such large arrows as she wields; the griffins she sources them from so rare she dare not kill one, only scavenge their territory. There are other ways to make her tools of course, but these arrows are her favorite; her best.
Flattery is not a currency Rhyll trades in. She puts Utgar’s compliments aside and selects another shaft from her pile.
Maybe his desperation is true. Maybe his love and honesty as well. Rhyll ignores these, considering only the facts of the deal. Utgar has asked only outsiders; non-humans, creatures that are not his to protect. Naturally. The mission is suicide. And there is a prophecy, but Rhyll is as disinterested in prophecy as flattery.
Utgar is steady against her silence. She likes that about him.
She applies resin to the arrow shaft and begins to run the numbers. Utgar offered her something she truly wants. More valuable than gold, if only she lives to use it. Surely the others got something similar, whatever that might be for them. None of Rhyll’s business really.
Her hands work the resin, and for a moment she loathes and respects Utgar’s gift for character assessment. She does not trust him. She does not like his knights, his paladins, or Taurdain’s history of insular humanism. But the children outside DO play pretend at being her, mimicking these very fletching movements without understanding. Tiny hands, some of them more shallow in totality than the callouses on her palms.
At last Rhyll begins to speak, her mountainous timbre so low as to be hard to understand when spoken quietly. “My kin are large, and large in number. Land for the lot of them is a generous offer.” With a grace defying her size she rises to her feet, towering but not imposing on Utgar’s space.
She smiles, an expression that reads to Utgar more as a social contract than a genuine emotion. It’s always that way with Rhyll; easygoing appearance, never fully exposing her true feelings. “I will go. But Utgar…” for a moment the firelight catches her silhouette. Gold eyes shine as her tattoos blend into the stripes on her strange cloak, making her look more like a spirit than a woman. Then the effect is gone. “…you can trade land for a bow, aye. But to trade for my belief? That New Taurdain is worthy? That’s extra.” She lets him absorb that, then smiles affably again. “A seat at the table. That would be something that makes this place worthy of being called ‘new’. Of my kin, I’ve got an eldest sister; she’s right sharp. Offer her a knighthood This place won’t regret her wisdom.”
Utgar VanMorian’s reply to Rhyll, Scout-Mercenary of the
Namyl Giants:
“Done.”
He didn’t hesitate. His voice was like stone, weathered, firm, without tremble or artifice.
“If we live through this, if Taurdain rises from the ash then your sister—Eldest of your blood—will sit at the table. Her voice will be heard as your own. Your clan will not be ghosts in the halls of power. I give you my word, and I do not break it.”
He stepped closer, the firelight casting the deep shadows onto his work cloths. In his hand, a thick parchment rolled and bound in gilded thread—an old map, edges scorched, the ink faded in places by smoke and rain. He held it out to her without flourish.
“This is the whole of our island we may yet reclaim.”
He let the weight of the moment settle. His eyes—gray, hard, unflinching—met hers with the clarity of one who had buried friends and kings alike.
“Tell me, Rhyll—where would your clan wish to settle?”
Shermans fantasy world 