--- name: "Corwen Hale" slug: "corwen-hale" tier: antagonist axis: vendetta # wants the party DESTROYED role: "antagonist — veteran, inheritor, aggrieved" species: Human class: Fighter subclass: "Battle Master" level: 3 ruleset: "2024" proficiency_bonus: 2 grudge: null # FILL AT CAMPAIGN CREATION — one line, party-relative grudge_seed: "He was given a dead man's gear, and the dead man walked past him in the street." exit: killed escalation: | 2 — he has learned how they fight. Brings the counter, not the rematch. 3 — he stops trying to win the fight and starts trying to take something. 4+ — he cannot be talked down and he knows it. He says so, which is the last honest thing he does. attaches_to: [jornis-the-forgotten] fallback: "If Jornis is not in the party — the gear he carries came off SOMEONE in the party's past. Every sheet has an item with no story attached (architecture §2b, provenance). Use that." abilities: { str: 16, dex: 12, con: 14, int: 10, wis: 13, cha: 11 } saves_proficient: [str, con] skills_proficient: [athletics, intimidation, survival, perception] ac: 18 # chain mail 16 + shield hp: { max: 28, hit_dice: "3d10" } initiative: 1 speed: { walk: 30 } passive_perception: 13 languages: [Common] stat_block: "built — see Actions" plausible_combat: yes commands: "three or four men who served with him. They are tired and they are still here, which tells you what he is like." --- # Corwen Hale Human Fighter 3, Battle Master. **He is carrying a hero's kit he did not earn, and the man who earned it threw it away.** ## Voice / Want / Tell | | | |---|---| | **voice** | Flat. Short sentences. No threats — threats are for people hoping not to have to. | | **want** | For it to have meant something. Failing that, for someone to answer for it. | | **tell** | **Cleans the weapon while talking to you.** Not menacingly. Devotionally. It is the only thing he owns that matters and he did not buy it. | The war ended badly. Afterwards a man who had been the reason it did not end worse gave his gear away in disgust and disappeared under another name. Corwen got a piece of it. He built twenty years around what that meant. **Then he found out the man was alive, using a different name, and did not want to discuss it.** That is the grudge. It is not about the party — it is about one of them, and the others are in the way. **`exit: killed`, and it should cost.** He is the one antagonist here with no good ending, deliberately: one of six should be unresolvable, or the exit field becomes a promise that everything can be talked through. Killing him should take something the party wanted to keep — and the interactions log is what makes it land, because by then they will have several sessions of him being *almost* reachable. ## Actions **Extra Attack does not arrive until 5.** At 3 he gets one attack and makes it count. | attack | range | hit | damage | |---|---|---|---| | **Longsword** *(Sap mastery)* | 5 ft | **+5** | 1d8+3 slashing | | **Handaxe** *(Vex mastery)* | 20/60 | +5 | 1d6+3 slashing | **Sap** — on a hit, the target has disadvantage on its next attack roll. He opens with this on whoever hits hardest, every time, and it is why he survives round one. **Superiority Dice** *(4d8, short rest).* **Menacing Attack** *(DC 13 WIS or Frightened)* · **Trip Attack** *(DC 13 STR or Prone)* · **Riposte** *(reaction, on a miss against him)*. **Second Wind** *(2/long rest, 1d10+3).* **Action Surge** *(1/short rest).* ## Equipment **A weapon that is not his** — the inherited piece. Name it at campaign creation, not here · chain mail, repaired many times · shield · handaxes x2 · a token from a unit that no longer exists · no money worth counting > **Transpose the inherited item, do not invent it.** The master sheet is the > source of what *kind* of thing it was. Architecture §2b. ## Knows ```yaml - fact: The name the man used to go by, and what he did under it. visibility: true note: He will say it aloud at a moment of his choosing. It is his one card. - fact: How this party fights, from appearance 2 onward. visibility: true note: Accumulates in the interactions log. That is the mechanism. - fact: He was given the gear rather than earning it. visibility: known note: He is not hiding this. He says it first, to control how it is heard. - fact: The war was lost for reasons that had nothing to do with one man leaving. visibility: false note: He believes it turned on that. It did not. Never let the DM correct him gently — the wrongness IS the character. ``` ## Scaling **At 1-2:** Fighter 1-2, no maneuvers. He loses, and he leaves, and the whole arc is built on that appearance. **At 3-5:** as written. Extra Attack at 5 roughly doubles him. **At 6-8:** Fighter 7-9 — more maneuvers, Know Your Enemy, a +2 weapon. **Give him Precision Attack here**; it lands the hit that matters. **At 9-11:** Fighter 11-13, three attacks, Indomitable x2, and **a reputation**. By this tier he does not have to find the party. **Cheapest single dial:** the men with him. Corwen alone is a duel. Corwen with four veterans is a problem, and it costs nothing to add them. ## The interactions log `LIVE//canon/antagonists/corwen-hale-interactions.md`. **Log his tactical reads specifically.** Corwen is the antagonist whose accumulation is *mechanical*: appearance 2 opens with a counter to whatever beat him in appearance 1. Fought at range? He closes. Concentrated? He goes for the caster. **Write down what worked, because next time it will not.** ## Provenance Authored 2026-08-24. Hangs on a character-level fact from the JSON audit: Jornis the Forgotten carries a discarded name, **Zytharin** — a war hero who gave away his magic gear in disgust (`characters/ROSTER.md`, audit §1). True about Jornis in any campaign. **The war itself is deliberately unnamed**; naming it would be writing a front.