**The Skald** - **Description:** Nameless, Measured, Merciless - **First look:** Smoke-stained, Iron-braided - **Disposition:** Curious - **Goal:** See the tale to its end — and be the one who tells it. - **Activity:** Reciting, probing, drinking - **Motivations:** Command Truth, Charge Idea, Preserve Memory The Skald is a lean old man with a smoke-stained cloak, a beard braided with iron, and a voice that carries to the rafters without seeming to rise. He has no name in this telling — he is the voice at the fire, not a player in the tale. He has spent more nights in other people's halls than in his own, and he remembers every name, every debt, and every lie he has been told. He is not cruel for the pleasure of it; he is cruel the way a knife is cruel when it is doing its work. He listens more than he speaks, and when he speaks, the hall listens. **Features** - No name he will give - A voice that carries to the rafters - A memory for names, debts, and lies - A cloak that has seen more halls than washings - Hands that mark the beat on the table, never on a weapon **Drives** - Find the true shape of a story, even when the teller would rather he didn't. - Be remembered as the voice that told it best. - Test the worthy with a question they cannot answer. **Tactics** - Ask a question that sounds like an invitation. - Let a silence do the work. - Praise the lie until the liar has to defend it. **Quest Starter** A young listener asks the Skald for the rest of the tale, and he will not tell it for free. What does he want in exchange — a secret, a service, or a seat at a table where he is not welcome? **Your Truth** What is the story the Skald refuses to tell? Who in the hall already knows it? ## Notes - Frame narrator of [[SoloFane 005 - What the Skald Sang]]. He is deliberately unnamed: he is the telling, not a player in the tale. - The mead hall's location is deliberately unspecified; it may be Stagkirk, or any hall where the tale is welcome. - Not a combatant. If forced, he talks, stalls, and looks for the door. - He keeps score. Names, debts, and lies all go in the same ledger.