Ersklan Ghostfang, called Fang, was a Human rogue who broke free of the Mirror of Life Trapping in the Tomb of the Nine Gods and joined the party on the second level so that he could go back down for the companion he called the Paladin, Savriel Tirinath.1 He died before that day was out, in the maze of Unkh’s tomb on the fourth level, the first of the party to be killed in the Tomb.2
Fang, on the Grand Staircase
“Don’t let them collar you! They drag you away, you don’t come back!”3
Description
Fang stood five feet seven inches, a Human of average build, and wore the hooded, practical clothing of a rogue.1 When the party first saw him he was haggard and bleeding, and his clothes glittered with crushed silver glass.3
Personality
He thanked the party at length for pulling him out of the fight on the staircase, then gave his reasons without ornament: he had come up from the lower levels, and he meant to go back down for his companion.1 Nothing in the Tomb seemed to turn his stomach. At the rite for Kubazan he offered the spirit a handful of maggots as a snack while the others gave a candle, gems and a mouse.4 When the allure of the maze cut him off from the party he kept fighting alone.2
Abilities
Fang fought with a pair of daggers and carried a dungeoneer’s pack, and he was quick. When Taenae walked into the jaws of the Lord of the Feast, the severed boar’s head in the Veils of Fear, he struck and destroyed the head before it could close on her, which also broke the charm that had drawn her to it.4 In Unkh’s tomb he found his way through the shifting maze and came back with its gold key while the minotaur skeletons hunted the party through the corridors.2
Possessions
The party recorded no item of his by name. He recovered the trinkets lodged in the boar’s teeth in the Veils of Fear: a bent pair of gold spectacles, a leather eye patch set with a bloodstone and a platinum hair pin.4 The gold key of Unkh’s tomb was on his body when he fell, and Vogal later used it to open the sarcophagus.25
Relationships
Savriel Tirinath was the reason he gave for everything he did. He named her only as the Paladin and made her rescue his whole purpose.1 He died before it was done. When the party freed her the next day they gave her the ashes they had gathered from the maze.6 She went back to the spot with Vonara and performed a Watcher’s rite over him,7 and when the Tomb’s blind painters put his death on the throne room wall she said, “They made art of him. Fine. I will make a ruin of them.”8
Taenae owed him her head. He destroyed the Lord of the Feast an instant before it would have taken it.4
Vonara and Glade each brought him back from the floor of the maze once before the third and final fall.2
History
Before the party
Nothing is known of Fang’s life before the Tomb. He told the party only that he had come from the lower levels, that he had just broken free of the Mirror of Life Trapping, and that the Paladin was still down there.1
On the Grand Staircase
On the morning of the fourteenth of Eleasis, the eighty-second day of the expedition, Fang arrived on the second level as Takhesis Calva left it. He was hurled backward through the archway onto the frost-covered steps of the Grand Staircase, bleeding and glittering with glass, and spat out a warning about the Tomb Dwarves and their mancatchers as the ambush closed.3 He fought beside the party against the Dwarves and the tomb guardian that Withers had set on them, introduced himself when the fight was over, and joined them.1
The third and fourth levels
That afternoon, in the Vault of Reflection, two tomb guardians ambushed the party and beat Fang to the floor before the others destroyed them. He was stabilized, and the party caught its breath.9 At the rite for Kubazan he offered his maggots.4 In the Veils of Fear, Taenae failed to resist the Lord of the Feast and put her head between its jaws; the head bit down, and Fang smashed it before it could finish.4 The party then took the spiral stair down to the fourth level.4
Unkh’s tomb
That evening, beyond the throne room and the blood door, the party entered the tomb of Unkh, where a shifting maze held colored keys for a color-changing sarcophagus.2 They split up to search it, and ten minotaur skeletons charged, some into the maze and some at those left outside. Glade brought back the green key; Fang, after the party had lost a long stretch of time in the wrong corridors, brought back the gold. Glade then pushed the green key into the sarcophagus while it glowed purple, and the key vanished back into the maze.
With the puzzle reset and the party scattered, Fang was cut off. He was beaten down twice and healed each time by Vonara and Glade, and the third time the bone axes finished him.2
After his death
The party cleared the tomb without him that night and opened the sarcophagus with the gold key he had carried.5 The next day, when they freed Savriel from the Mirror on their second pass through the fourth level, they gave her the ashes they had collected from the maze.6 At the spot where he died she performed a Watcher’s rite and found that his soul was not at rest: it was caught in a current that pulled it down toward the bottom of the Tomb, as every soul that died there was.7 Valindra Shadowmantle used the same current as a threat against Vonara, saying that destroying the Soulmonger would send her parents into the dark alongside Fang.7
That night, when Snib brought the party back to the throne room, the wall carried a new painting, the pigment still wet: the maze, the horned skeletons, and Fang going down beneath them, alone.8 Snib pressed the party to harm the painter as a token of loyalty and they refused. He died in the next room to Vogal’s javelin.8
Appendix
Notes
Behind the screen
Fang was the first player character to die in the campaign, in Session 75. Where his body went between the maze and the ashes the party carried out is not recorded.
Appearances
Session 70 · Session 71 · Session 72 · Session 73 · Session 74 · Session 75
Mentioned in Session 76, Session 79, Session 80, Session 82 and Session 83.