Quick facts
Party: The FAM (joined Session 28) · Weapon: axe · Sworn enemy: Khalor the Dreamreaper · Status: Alive; carried off by Khalor in Session 83 (as of C2 Session 83)
Arghen is a single-minded dragon hunter who joined The FAM at the Mercenary’s Rest and has spent most of the campaign either chasing the gold dragon Khalor or asleep. The two turned out to be connected.
Overview
Arghen is driven by one goal: to kill the gold dragon he blames for the death of the “Prince of Bureetoe” of the Dwarven Isles. He carries a petrified golden dragon talon, sketches perfectly drawn pictures of dead dragons and offered to design the party a “dead dragon” tattoo. He speaks what appears to be the dwarven language. He is famous in the party for sleeping soundly through major battles, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. In Session 83 the party learned these sleeps had been a sickness inflicted by Khalor all along.
History
Joining and the In-Between (Sessions 28–32)
Arghen was at the Mercenary’s Rest when the party got there in the aftermath of the closing festival. Steadfast in his quest for vengeance, he brought them a job posting from Kellem Stormforge to recover a family heirloom from the shipwrecked Sapphire Tide, which had been wrecked by a dragon. The party agreed to join him. He went with them into The In-Between to save Wilbur and spotted the lightning-struck tower in the distance. To pay the skeletal gambler he gave up his last memory of his mother. After the fight the party noticed he slept through battles, and Ellery took to carrying him over her shoulder.
The hunt (Sessions 33–43)
Arghen woke after several days, agitated, and demanded the party’s “magic friend” bring someone back from the dead. He meant the Prince of Bureetoe, whose death he felt responsible for. At the wreck the gold dragon stole the chest and struck Arghen with a bolt of radiant energy as it flew away. When the party traced the chest to the Velvet Truffle Company, Arghen pulled out his petrified talon and declared that his honor demanded he kill the dragon. Kip and Nelda were moved by his plea, and the others followed.
He slept through the ship heist and was laid on the deck by Ellery. He praised the cook’s stew in what sounded like Dwarvish, saying it made him feel part of something bigger than himself. He woke in Hamhock Harbor after nearly two weeks asleep, tended by Kip, spotted a dragon in the distance and set off after it at once. When a VTC official boarded the ship asking about a patron who’d overheard “Escher, did you kill somebody?”, Arghen invented a role-playing game called “Cats and Kittens” to explain it. Nelda challenged him to a drinking game and ended up sick.
In Buttermere, told the tavern only served biscuits and a “bring your own meat” policy, Arghen left and came back with a wild boar he had killed in the city. He found an informant who had seen a gold-scaled figure land on the cliffs and a skinny merchant with gold eyes and “a voice like a furnace.” On the cliffs he faced the dragon in its human disguise and accused it of killing the Prince of Bureetoe of the Dwarven Isles, declaring it would die for the crime. The dragon took its true form and asked how far he would chase it for revenge. Arghen answered: “to the ends of Arlia.”
Eggs, omens and Green Hollow (Sessions 44–56)
When Puss Wayne named the dragon Khalor the Dreamreaper and explained it was hatching its eggs with VTC technology, Arghen argued the babies should be destroyed. On watch with Nelda he saw a star in the constellation of Isidar the Conqueror flare and vanish, and took it as a dark omen for the dragon (The Vanishing Stars). In Green Hollow he stayed behind at the Farmer’s Hoe to defend the village from the “horrid plants,” cleaving through them with his axe before joining the party at the Temple of Cyrollellee. He then scouted Brinewick Hollow’s outskirts and carriage routes with Escher.
Separated (Sessions 56–83)
Arghen traveled with the party back to the Saline Coast. After the party left for North City, he woke in the back of a wagon crossing desert dunes, having been in a deep trance for six days, and Bran explained that the VTC had seized the city and the families were moving to a desert sanctuary.
At Catman’s execution in the Saline Coast, Arghen had been left asleep under a sheet near the gallows, and in the chaos he went missing. Khalor said quietly, “I thought he would follow me.” When Arghen became visible again, the dragon said, “That’s who I’ve been looking for,” closed a talon around him and carried him off. Afterward Nelda fell into the same upright sleep Arghen used to, and the party realized his sleeps had come from Khalor. They reasoned that Khalor wants Arghen alive, or he would already have killed him.
Relationships
- Khalor the Dreamreaper: His quarry and, it seems, the source of his sleeping sickness.
- Kip: Tended him through his long sleeps.
- Ellery: Carried him on her shoulder.
Notable quotes
- “To the ends of Arlia.”
Appears in
28 · 29 · 31 · 32 · 33 · 34 · 35 · 36 · 39 · 40 · 41 · 43 · 44 · 50 · 53 · 55 · 56 · 66 · 82 · 83