Alsgor Crimsonhorn

Alsgor grew up in the snowy northern hold of Crimsonhorn in the Redspike Mountains. He enjoyed more privilege than most, being a scion of an influential clan, the hetman-apparent, and a handsome, well-loved lad. He was trained in the arts of war and educated in politics, molded from childhood to fit the position of leadership. His life seemed charmed. Behind the affable smile and seemingly-confident words of Alsgor’s public persona, however, he was deeply troubled. Secretly, he felt that his charisma amounted to superficial sophistry and manipulation, not worthy of praise, and that his status was unearned and given to him only through birth and circumstance. He felt his learning was spoon-fed to him in manageable amounts, and stresses carefully doled out to him to test him but never deeply challenge him. Oppressed by the looming obligation of leadership, he spent years fighting the Hold’s enemies and trying to keep it out of his mind. When his parents were laid to rest and he became the hetman of Crimsonhorn, Alsgor scarcely had time to grieve before being thrust into a world of political maneuvering and ruthless power-mongering, surrounded by flatterers he could not trust nor truly confide in, with the wolves of rival clans and holdfasts at his door as well as the constant menace of monsters, Undead, and natural disaster. Even though it was the role he had been prepared to take for all his life, he found it demanding and unpleasant. While he maintained his facade of a perfect leader, knowing the people expected it of him, in private he lurched from crippling sadness to red fits of rage. Were it not for his meeting with Jetni the Giant, his reign may have ended in a spectacular downfall. Jetni was a Jotunn bent on making a name for herself bullying outlying settlements on the verges of habitable land. With Crimsonhorn the closest hold of sufficient strength to defeat a rampaging giant, it fell to Alsgor to deal with her. His councilors advised him to assemble a warband, or put a bounty on Jetni’s head so that sellswords would bear the brunt of the inevitable casualties from a clash with the Jotunn. For the first time, Alsgor rejected the words of the wise people his forebears had carefully chosen to advise him out of hand. He did not wish to use the power of a state’s military violence against her, criminal though she was. He decided to parley with Jetni personally, in spite of the immense danger. His courtiers were shocked but could do nothing but placate their liege and agree. The meeting devolved swiftly into a brawl, with both Alsgor and Jetni disdaining their weapons in favor of a more primal duel of fists and feet. Locked in solo combat, heart pounding, Alsgor felt focused and untroubled in a way he had not experienced since becoming hetman. But his training as a statesman still prevailed upon his hard-pressed mind even in combat. As he and Jetni clashed, Alsgor tried to reason with her, and when the tempo of their battle lulled he gasped out a heartfelt argument on the glory of civilization and the folly of blind aggression. Between punches he told her to cultivate friends and family, and a place to love and protect. When she struck him with the force of ten men, he wheezed through his broken ribs that she needed a higher power to faithfully serve and rely on in times of trouble, doubt, and weakness. As he said these things he did not know if he himself believed them, or if he was simply relying on what he knew would be effective rhetoric. Perhaps his speech was meant to persuade himself and the Jotunn alike, a message from his higher self addressing the frightened child within him. Alsgor and Jetni fought to a standstill, at which point Alsgor’s honor guard intervened and bound the exhausted giant in massive chains. When Alsgor had recovered from the fight he was asked to render a verdict at Jetni’s trial for the harms she had done to all the outlying settlements of Crimsonhorn and beyond. Most assumed that execution would be the giant’s fate. But, for reasons of his own that might never come to light, Alsgor decreed that Jetni would perform a tour of penitentiary service throughout the lands that she had once terrorized, and onward from there all across Frostheim. He called it a journey of punitive redemption and rehabilitation for the wayward Jotunn, but it was just as equally meant to be a journey of self-reflection and self-discovery for the troubled ruler himself. He had made a righteous speech to her, but could he live up to his own exhortations? If he could not manage to improve the nature of one individual, how could he be fit to rule over the masses?