Til våpen!
The Chaosium team are immensely excited to announce the launch of BRP Creatures, a resource in which GMs can find a wide range of animals, beasts, monsters, supernatural entities, and non-player characters that can be used in potential encounters across the full range of our role-playing games.
My new favourite Chaosium role-playing game is Age of Vikings, a role-playing game in a world of myth and adventure in the deep and vibrant setting of Icelandic sagas. At the edge of the known world, free from tyranny, heroes take bold action to preserve honour and protect property and family, earning glory through heroic deeds!
When I was writing the one-shot scenario “Sea & Salt”, there was a particular relationship between the two main NPCs: the disgraced human outlaw Sigbert Loftsson and the sea-witch Gróa of the Deep, that I wanted to bring to the story, but the Bestiary within the Age of Vikings core rulebook does not have a suitable creature to represent Gróa.
Whilst drafting the scenario, Gróa had been outlined as an entity who could forge a bargain with Sigbert, helping him forget and leave behind his past ill-deeds, his disgrace and broken oaths, in exchange for serving and protecting her. But unknown to him, I wanted Gróa to have the ability to re-weave his fate, slowly absorbing his POW and infusing him with a compunction, a magical charm effect, to serve and protect her.
In my imagination, Gróa is then part seiðkona, in Old Norse a practitioner of seiðr magic and a weaver of fate, tied to the sea and possibly the goddess Rán. From previous role-playing experience, the term “sea hag” resonated, but it needed to be pulled together in an Age of Vikings format, and the best place to start would be using BRP Creatures.
BRP Creatures, page 69, portrays the hag, and I found this a perfect starting point. The stat block for the following creature, Gróa of the Deep, shows how the basic hag was modified to evolve into our NPC Gróa the Sea Hag.
Here are the ways that I changed her statistics to fit the story of my scenario:
- Gróa is a sea-based hag tied to a dark, dank, tidal grotto and needs some form of assistance.
- Her STR, INT were toned down to human level, but she needed to have higher than average POW, and higher CHA.
- Her armour was kept low, as a caster-based NPC, but she has special abilities (spells). I kept these focused on Charm-based effects and one specific to her grotto for her to use a last resort.
- Gróa did not need as many skills as the ones listed for the hag in BRP: Creatures, so I kept it to the ones likely to be used in play. I also toned her down from the 70-90% range to 55-65%.
- Her attack weapon was altered to a more sea-based kelp-lash with a special effect.
- The sea hag can command an incomplete creature (without INT) living in her locale – this was modified to foster the pact and relationship between Gróa and Sigbert to fit the scenario.
- Once I had her stats where I wanted them, I playtested for any final refinements.
This outlines the basic thought process behind taking a hag from BRP Creatures and modifying it for use as a sea hag in an Age of Vikings scenario.
My intention when writing the one-shot scenario “Sea & Salt” was to test how easily I could step out of the standard Age of Vikings bestiary, find and adapt a BRP Creatures NPC entity to bring a new and inspiring nuance to the scenario. My playtesters really enjoyed facing this unusual foe and the symbiotic relationship between the two key NPCs.
Here are Gróa's final stats, ready for Age of Vikings.
