A scream in the night, and a roar of triumph was the DDC’s introduction to Vasselack the Dwarfbane – the slayer of Bentane Amberhammer. He escaped justice by running through walls and out into the night – and was an enemy unlike anything encountered by the group before. Vasselack is a spirit troll – a rare offshoot of the species that has survived an unusual death and been reborn in a new and unusual form.
When the mindflayers took over the Amberhammer Hold, they scoured the lands around for materials to craft misshapen aberrations. They created dolgaunts and dolgrims from dwarves and goblins, hobgoblins and ogres – from anything that they could warp in the service of their daelkyr master.
Vasselack was a hunter who saw an opportunity to strike at his tribe’s old enemies while they were vulnerable. He hunted and slew refugees from the Hold by the dozen, but even this hate-filled monster paled before the mindflayers who tracked him down and stripped the soul from his body with psionic blasts before eating his brain.
And yet this was not his end. Trolls are hardy creatures almost beyond relief, and enough of his angry spirit remained to grow a new body of pure psychic energy. Insubstantial as a shadow, he crept back into the darkness and would have become a lone horror had he not been found by Irreck. Irreck brought him to the Circle of Rot and they re-bound his essence through the power of the Eye of Khyber so that he could take on physical form again for periods of time. Grateful, he swore himself to Irreck as his personal assassin.
And so, hearing that the Amberhammer Clan had retaken its Hold, and keen to strike down its leaders before they could properly settle, Vasselack was sent to strike down the old Chief Bentane, who had led his people to drive the trolls off all those years ago. Accompanied by necromantic shadows conjured by Missy Lambrot, he slipped through the walls of the Hold and began a murderous spree.
He escaped the Hold’s defenders and slipped away into the night. The first real blow of the fight has landed. Who know what will happen next?
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