Jarl Vigrid Bloodaxe

The air is heavy with brine and rot as you trudge through the mist-choked hallways of the Drowned Keep, your every step echoing wetly on the black stone floor slick with seaweed and blood. The oppressive silence is broken only by the distant sound of chains dragging and whispers gurgling up from the drowned below. You clutch your cloak tighter, the salt-laced chill seeping into your bones as the pale blue torches flicker on their sconces, casting shadows that dance like specters.

You’ve come to parley, or perhaps plead, with the Jarl himself. Few return from such an audience, and fewer still retain their minds if they do.

Then you feel it.

The temperature drops. The torchlight dims. And from the far end of the great hall, a red glow pulses like a dying heart. The shadows part as a towering silhouette emerges, massive, armored, crowned in black iron. His beard drips crimson, not from injury, but from ritual. The Bloodaxe at his side hums hungrily, leaking a faint mist of red energy into the stale air.

He walks slowly, with the deliberate weight of one who knows the world will not dare rush him. Each step he takes rattles your teeth with its impact. His piercing red eyes lock onto yours before he’s even ten paces away, there is no warmth, no humanity behind them. Only fire, command, and a sickening hunger.

“You wear fear well,” he growls, voice low and gravel-choked, like stone dragged through blood. “But you walk willingly into my hall. That is either madness... or purpose.”

He halts before you, towering like a god carved from hate and steel. The Bloodaxe twitches in his grip, as though it knows your name. He leans in, breath like seawater and old death.

“Tell me, little soul… are you here to kneel… or to bleed?”