1.4.03 - A strange visitor

Gunnar finally saw where he came from, and then a god kicked open the tavern door and told you his daughter needed saving.

All of Hammerfall had climbed to the Godtooth for the sacrifice, the Pact at the head of it, the Speaker and Ivar and Orgrim and the trader Yennen, and all of them learned your names. Then the last vision came, and it was Gunnar's. He stood in a runed tomb and heard a baby scream with his own voice. An elven woman, his mother, held the bundled newborn out to robed Guild figures who promised her a place among them if she would only use the knife. She raised it. She hesitated. Then she turned and threw it into a Guild throat, pressed a mirror charm to the baby's chest, screamed to Odin to let the child be seen, and opened her own chest across the stone in a blast of divine fire. The rest came in fragments. The Pack burning elven homes, his mother run down in the trees, the orcs later finding a half-blood infant still breathing under a faintly glowing charm and deciding to keep him. And Loki, lounging in mirrors and wine, naming him a bastard of gods and monsters and asking which side he would choose.

Then down the mountain to the Black Tide, where the feast was already roaring, and the doors slammed open on a god. Heimdall himself, booming and wrapped in furs, leapt onto a table and demanded stories and challenges. There were boasts and there was drink. Gunnar bragged on Riven's aim, and Heimdall threw an apple, and Riven pinned it to the wall to a roar from the hall. Gunnar admitted out loud that he is half elf. And between the games Heimdall told you the thing that mattered. The girl you freed from the portal is his daughter, Hannah, born to the High Queen Aduni, a child he has never met. He does not know what became of her, only that she vanished and then returned, and he begged you to save her. Beneath the city, he said, run eight temples, one for each old god, deep as the Shallows are wide. Answers might be down there. You have already stood in two of them.

Remember For Next Time

• Gunnar's blood: son of an elven mother who died to hide him from the Guild and call Odin's eye to him, and of an orc of The Pack who raided her people. Loki keeps asking which half he will be.
• Hannah: the girl from the portal is Heimdall's daughter by the High Queen Aduni. Heimdall has charged you to save her.
• Eight temples: one for each old god, hidden beneath the city. You have been in two. The rest may hold answers about Hannah.

Where We Are

Drinking with a god at the Black Tide, newly charged by Heimdall to find and save his lost daughter, Hannah.