Here we present a story set in Urth, or fantasy Earth as it is sometimes referred to. One of the characters, Gunnfinn Glumson, was a P.C. in a Vikings campaign. Of course the story is readily translatble into a Gloranthan setting, probably involving Orlanthi tribesmen.
This is the tale of Glum Anglfari, son of Half the Mason, son of Vigahalf Ulfson, son of Holmgungulf Beornson the Rascal. He was a man whose wanderlust and avarice were to greatly affect the life of his son, Gunnfinn Glumson, and alter the destiny of many others.
It was a cold, blustery day, not unlike many others in Norsica, on which Glum was born. The wind blew in between the Ulfstead clan's small collection of houses, keeping all the children of the family huddled inside around the fire safe from any mischevious svartalfar, ready to pull noses or blacken eyes. As Glum grew, Half the Mason thought naturally that Glum would take to the family trade and learn the skills of shaping stone. But it was not to be. Instead, Glum was a sullen, broody child. On one of the few occassions when he had not dissappeared for weeks on end in the woods, he was asked if he wished to play with the other children and look for fairies and sprites in the nearby wood. He replied that he had no time for childish games, and wanted to be a man as soon as possible, so that he could brandish an axe and ransack foreign lands as a Berserk.
Though they could never be sure it was his doing, over the long, frustrating years of Glum's childhood several family cats, not to mention a good head of sheep, seemed to dissappear whenever they strayed under his malignant glower. The clan's gentlewomen put this down to kobolds and other such evil wraiths, but this did not stop them keeping the family pets away from him. And when one of them discovered Glum returning from the woods one day, wiping the entrails of some poor beast from his hands, those suspicions were confirmed. On hearing of this, Half the Mason banished Glum from the stead, stating that Glum had dishonoured the reputation of the Ulfstead clan in wasting precious animals and had showed himself to be a cruel lad not fit to be in the company of others.
Without replying, Glum gave his father a hateful stare, venemously despising the man who had reared him. At this, Half began to tremble, a trembling that grew into a buckling and a buckling that become a plunge. Half lay, writhing on the floor. Glum looked over him, his stare intensifying to a piercing blaze of pure malevolence. As the air began crackling with mystical force, the fallen figure began clutching at his eyes, screaming. With indescribable pain, they slowly bulged out of their sockets until they dangled on torn nerves. Whilst his father lay whimpering for help, Glum whirled round, his fox-headed cloak swhirling, and strode from the room.
None of these events were known to the other members of the clan. Yet high in the mountains overlooking Red Sun Fjord sat a wrinkled, inestimably old norn enwrapped in a deep blue shroud, spying on these events. The image of this patricide appeared to her in a yellow mist billowing up from a hole in an auruch skull, surronded by rune-engraved pebbles. As she watched, a wail of dismay croaked from her thin lips. Though her heart was heavy with the sadness of this deed, she told no one. Despite being kept busy by her duties as protectress of the mountains, over the coming years she would on several occassions invoke the ritual that let her gaze on Glum as he took to worshipping demons, ghosts and then worst of all Loki, lord of all night spirits.
It was through this enchanted vision that the wart-encrused witch kept abreast of Glum's doings. He claimed to have found Half, the caring father he had cruelly slain, in the twisted, wretched state he had left him. Though the other clansmen at first had great suspicions, they slwoly succumbed to Glum's pervading influence of darkness. A melancholy aspect came over the whole of the Ulfstead clan, at first due to the sad death (at the hands of the bewitching svartalfar, or so they thought) of their beloved kinsman but later because of Glum's sorcerous dominance of their souls. It was at this time that Glum took a wife, Laefendottir, a comely woman who seemed healthy enough to raise a dozen children. And yet though she bore many children, all girls, mysteriously none survived.
Later Glum joined several Viking campaigns to Angland, a province of Albion - the Isle of the Battle Dragons. On one of these campaigns their destiny lead them to an imposing tower on the eastern Angland coast. With a roar, the Vikings assaulted its walls, tearing down its doors and slaying the brave Anglish guardsmen. As his barbarous comrades ransacked its halls in search of gold, Glum's ears caught the sound of a pitiful sobbing from the corner of the courtyard behind him. Turning, he beheld a beautiful Anglish maiden cowering in fright. With lust swelling inside him, Glum wrapped a thickly-hewed arm round her supple waist and made off with her to the Viking's longboat.
Once returned to Norsica, Glum set up hearth with this Alluria, for such was her name. He was now the head of two households. That winter, when snow lay at its deepest against the walls of the steads, a son was at last born to Glum, and was named Gunnfinn. It was left to Laefendottir to care for him, as Alluria knew naught of such matters. Though the Ulfstead clansmen questioned him repeatedly, Glum said nothing on which of his two wives had given birth to him. They took to calling the child "Blue Tooth", referring to the chance that he might be of noble birth as Glum claimed Alluria to be the daughter of an Anglish earl.
Two days after Gunnfinn's birth, the protectress of the mountains descended onto Red Sun Fjord. With her fairy entourage she first paid call to Laefendottir's stead. There she told Laefendottir of all she had seen and could foresee happen. They agreed Gunnfinn should be hidden from Glum and so the tiny infant was taken to the mountains, carried by fairy wing.
That night, the norn returned to haunt Glum as he slept with Alluria. She mocked him, denegrating the evil god she knew Glum secretly worshipped. At this Glum angered. Only now did the norn reveal her prophecy to him; "When the baby is bearded it shall slay the father-slayer in the isle across the Whale Road." Glum immediately took this to mean Gunnfinn. He searched through all of Red Sun Fjord, yet could not find the child. Such was his anger that he slew Laefendottir and such was his fright of the prophecy that, dragging Alluria by her braided hair, he set off in a knorr for lands unknown.
The protectress of the mountains cared for Gunnfinn and saw that he received teaching from a grizzled shaman who had become her lover. Thus it was that Gunnfinn learnt the ways of the wilds and of the supernatural phantoms that inhabit it. The shaman gave Gunnfinn his secret, magical name; that of Aztonn the Blue, and told him that he was a student of the teachings of Sunnon, an ancient cult of shamans dedicated to guarding the natural harmony of the earth.
When Gunnfinn reached manhood, the protectress of the mountains revealed her prophecy to him. This, she said, was the calling of his destiny, or in the language of those lands, it was Gunnfinn's Weird. He would have to confront it. With that Gunnfinn left them and set out on the greatest adventure of all; that of his own life.
lawrence@aslak.demon.co.uk