------------- Lost Angel – Namesake

When they came together, it wasn’t for some grand scheme. They hardly knew each other, and yet they were thrust into danger together. None of them had planned any of it.

Halgir had run across Gilthander before. To hear the Zeigus tell it, everyone should know the name of Gilthander Fairbrother, and if they didn’t, they soon would. Julie Eichorn had come here on business for The Hidden. In her dealings with the Duergar that ran the elevator and ruled the passages below, she’d met the dislocated Cliff Dwarf priest, Gwyldorf. And Chandra was here to look into buying a riding Gryphon, though she had hardly any money. In a chance encounter in a back alley, with the vampire clans out for Gilthander’s blood, they met. It was quickly decided that there was strength in numbers. They went together to the estate of Trajan Kantu, a Tarkanian Weaponsmaster that Halgir wished to petition for training. They had no thought of forming a Venture Company.

Trajan set a task for Halgir and arranged for him and his new companions to travel north, past the valley of Palleurevalla, into the frozen peaks of the Frost Giants. There was a treasure that had to be retrieved. In an abandoned ice cavern there was a strange gemstone. It was created by the Rime Witches during the dark days of the Wolf Hordes. What the Rime Witches were doing on Callona, none knew, even Trajan. But the stone was something special to them, and he needed it for a sword he was forging. And unlike the rest of his newfound companions, Trajan knew Halgir’s secret.

Before their first adventure was done, the rest would learn as well. For only in his true form, could Halgir overcome the ring of Rimefire within the cavern and secure the stone. But there he found something he had not expected, something even Trajan’s contacts within the Temple of Hephaestus had not revealed. Frozen for what would have been an eternity, a statue of Frost Steel stood holding a mighty sword, clutched tightly in one hand, its delicate wings wrapped around the blade. The statue was a woman of incredible beauty, a Valkyrie by the looks of her. Halgir was smitten. Not by the ice statue, but by the sword she held.

He pondered how to take it and eventually retreated from the ice chamber with the stone to collect the others and ask for their aid. He didn’t know that removing the Rimefire stone from the altar had broken the magic that kept the chamber frozen. The ice began to melt, and so to did its frozen captive. Before Halgir could break the sword free from the statue’s grip, Gwyldorf stayed his hand. The statue was alive, and as she thawed, she began to move.

Ygrid had many questions, and they had even more for her. Her father, it seemed, had been a Winged Folk warrior, lost in a planar rift and rescued by her mother, a powerful Valkyrie in the service of Sif. Ygrid was born in Valhalla, raised with the Valkyrie, and sent to battle against the dark forces of Fenris during the War of the Wolf Hordes. She had never been very lucky, and her first encounter had nearly proved her last. She’d ran afoul of a Frost Giant Rime Witch and had been frozen into Frost Steel.

Once back in Xanthius, the six of them decided to form a lasting partnership and become a Venture Company. It was Halgir who decided their name. He named the company after their first rescued damsel, though Ygrid proved her strength and skill with a blade a dozen times over. Seems her luck had changed for the better. They became the Lost Angel.

------------- Credits

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