Strength +4
Dexterity +3
Constitution +1
Intelligence 0
Wisdom +1
Charisma 0

Ancestry Human (Absalomian)
Heritage Versatile human
Background Miner
Class Ranger 1
Age 22
Height/Weight 5′7″ (170 cm)/154 lbs (70 kg)
Deity or philosophy Erastil (family, farming, hunting, and trade)
Languages Common, Elven

Saves Fort +7/Ref +8/Wis +4
AC 18
Hit points 20
Hero points 1

Light pick +7/1d4+4
Shortbow+6/1d6

Two light picks
Shortbow
Arrows × 40
Studded leather
Backpack
Bedroll
Flint and steel
Healer’s toolkit
Rations
Rope
Sack
Torch × 3
Waterskin

None.

Potions
None.

Copper 0
Silver 5
Gold 1
Platinum 0

Ancestry feats
Natural ambition

Background skill feats
Terrain expertise (underground)

Class feats
Twin takedown
Initiate warden

Class features
Hunt prey
Hunter’s edge (Flurry)

Gravity weapon

“You’re a daisy if you do.”

Gardner Barnes was born and raised in Galizhur, a mining settlement on the southern coast of the Isle of Kortos. Like his father and brothers, he has been a miner and lumberjack most of his life. From an early age, having already spent months on end in isolated work camps in the wilderness, he knew how to patch up wounds, repair broken bones, and stop bleeding cuts.

Life at home was equally harsh, sometimes brutal, and his parents taught him not to cry. Gardner was a sensitive child who grew up fast, simply because he had to.

During his years laboring underground and hauling timber through the woods, Gardner has seen and experienced many strange things that he cannot understand. It all began years ago when he, as a young boy, discovered a face in the tree that he was about to sink his axe into.

After that, there were all sorts of sightings, or signs, as Gardner chose to call them. For some reason, they always seemed to find him. Runes and other mysterious carvings in the mines, overgrown stone circles that were not there before, massive slabs too large for any man to move, crude dolls and disturbing stick figures left behind in eerie abandoned huts, skulls resting on wooden stakes by the waterline, that kind of stuff. And sometimes a sudden glimt of the creatures, rarely seen but their presence always felt, living and crawling within the dark bowels of the earth.

A few years ago, Gardner found a tiny black stone in an oily creek. The stone was covered with signs, or letters, that appeared to spin around on the smooth surface when he was not looking at it. The same evening the stone began to speak to him, a silent voice inside his head urging him to do the most hideous things. Terrified yet intrigued, Gardner showed the stone to Wrin Sivinxi, the eccentric collector and owner of Wrin’s Wonders in Otari, a town further up the coast with the largest lumber mill in the area. Without a word, the horned woman put one hand on his forehead, grabbed the stone with the other, and promptly placed it in her pocket. When Gardner finally came to, waking up dazzled on the shop’s floor, Wrin paid him handsomely, and then made him swear never to tell anyone about his find.

When Gardner left the shop, his curiosity was piqued. Apparently, there was money to be made here, and he knew a lot more places like that creek. He has been a regular visitor to the shop ever since, and while most of Gardner’s recent bringings have been of no interest to Wrin, he enjoys listening to her accompanying stories, typically about great people, dread secrets, and distant places far away. However fascinating these tales may be though, most of them Gardner does not understand. Lately, he has become desperately aware that he has seen very little of this island, and nothing else for that matter.

Another frequent visitor to Wrin’s shop is Chet Wilkington, a well-dressed nobleman obsessed with artifacts and old ruins who has recently returned home from Absalom. He usually carries an over-sized book (his “tome”), and he definitely reads a lot. Gardner has even watched him visiting the library. Chet obviously knows a great deal about the island’s history, as he likes to give long lectures on the subject.

Gardner has an identical pair of miner’s picks tucked in his belt, a rare gift from his proud father given to him and his twin brother Sawyer on their much anticipated fourteenth birthday, the day when they would be old enough to work beside the men, and prove themselves as able miners. The following morning, Sawyer was killed in a cave-in when the mountain floor collapsed beneath him, and a giant black hole swallowed him forever. Sawyer’s death was a momentous loss that Gardner has never been able to get over. He keeps his brother’s pick to remind him, lest he ever forgets, that it should have been him instead that walked into the mine on that fateful day.

Gardner has an unhealthy habit of brooding about the past, especially when there is nothing else to do. He still mourns his brother, constantly blaming himself for not being there when Sawyer died all those years ago. Riddled with guilt and self-doubt, he is certain of his own imminent death. The omens are everywhere, as they always have been.

Along with his two picks, Gardner carries a small backpack and a shortbow for hunting.