Vogal, also known as Vogal Kneebreaker, was an Orc barbarian, born a Goblin and raised by Orcs, and one of the five adventurers who answered Syndra Silvane’s call to Port Nyanzaru.123 He became Champion of Nyanzaru in the Grand Colosseum,45 was given an Orc’s body by the Belt of Orckind,3 and killed Takhesis Calva in the Cradle at Takhesis’s own asking.6 He survived the expedition, married Kaveth and opened a bar in Port Nyanzaru.7
Inscription on the Belt of Orckind, in Orcish
“You were not born an orc, brother. We know this. But you are an Orc all the same.”3
Description
Vogal was born a Goblin and was an Orc in everything but body.8 He stood three feet eight inches, with a stocky, muscular build, leathery gray-green skin covered in scar tissue and greasy hair tied back in a ponytail. He wore canvas pants that were too long for him, a loincloth, a Cape of Billowing that dragged on the floor and a top hat of tyrannosaur skin.
On the fifteenth of Eleasis the Belt of Orckind deepened the tone of his skin, broadened his shoulders and gave him tusks. From then on he was an Orc in body as well, though a runt.3
Personality
Vogal was an Orc, through and through, long before the belt agreed with him. On his first day in Port Nyanzaru he felt a kinship with the Half-Orcs at Kaya’s House of Repose and struck up a conversation with them.1
He collected kneecaps from the dead. He took them from a froghemoth and from the body of the party’s guide Orvex Occrammas,9 from a destroyed Tomb Guardian,10 and from Takhesis Calva,6 and he was frustrated to find that a giant crocodile had none.11 Taenae, who knew the habit, cut the kneecaps from a dead Omuan child to give to him.12 At the Grand Colosseum he signed a guard’s knee with his knife.4 He aimed for the knees in a fight, and before sleeping he tried to hide his own kneecaps.
He acted without deliberating. He walked into the stagnant pool in front of Kubazan’s shrine, where a froghemoth was waiting,9 volunteered to crawl into the mouth of a devil face filled with magical darkness,13 touched a statue whose pull he had already resisted,14 and went alone into the elemental trials of the Tomb’s fourth level while the party was still discussing them, at the end of which he chose to step on a teleport rune.8
He was blunt. Meeting the illusion of a weeping child in Moa’s tomb, he told her, “You are a skull.”14
He drank hard. He took the Skoon challenge at the Dead Fish,15 got drunk with the gladiators of the Colosseum on the eve of his duel,4 and drank Dragon’s Blood liquor with Kaveth.16
He counted his closest companions as brothers. Taban Veilthorn was his shield-brother,17 and he named both Taban and Takhesis sworn brothers.6 Asked in the Gorge of Teeth whether he served Order or Chaos, he answered Order, for loyalty.18 He called his allies “brother” as a habit.
On the fourteenth of Eleasis he decided to go through the Tomb fully naked, apart from his top hat and cape, and called what was on show the “all-night star.”19
Abilities
Vogal was a barbarian who fought in a rage. Twice the rage put him back on his feet after he had been struck down: among the minotaur skeletons of Unkh’s tomb,12 and under the sword of Takhesis in the Cradle.6 He held the front line with Takhesis for the party’s spellcasters.2021 From the fifteenth of Eleasis the ancestral spirits that guarded him took the shapes of the fallen Orcs of the Bloodfang Tribe.3
He fought with a morningstar,22 threw javelins,1323 and ended his duel in the Colosseum with a headbutt.4 The gladiator Kragga taught him to cleave.154
He was strong and agile. He and Glade paddled a canoe fast enough to escape a tyrannosaur,11 he beat Kragga at arm wrestling,15 scaled a warehouse in the Harbor Ward to look through its upper windows,24 showed off the height of his jump,20 and performed acrobatics with Takhesis launching him into the air.25 He scouted for the party,11 spotted a trail beside a dead beholder and chose to leave it alone,20 and noticed a thief working the room at the Dead Fish.15 He could move quietly: he stealthily took Alice’s sending stone from the party’s hut,26 and crept through Shagambi’s tomb past forty-eight sleeping terracotta soldiers.8
He resisted magic that overcame others. He withstood the grasping shadows in the devil face,13 the magnetic pull of the attraction room and the charm of the fountain beyond it,14 and the vision of his own death in the Chamber of Opposition.19
At the Sunken Temple he balanced the pressure plates of the entrance hall with waterskins, and mixed the yellow and blue liquids of the garden altar in the silver cup to make the green draft the altar demanded.18
In the Tomb he attempted clairvoyance, which the Tomb blocked.13 The sarcophagus of Unkh gave him the Charm of Treasure Sense.12
Possessions
- Morningstar of the Kneecapper, taken from a statue made in his likeness beneath the throne of the lich known as the Hungerer.27 The morningstar hung over his fireplace after the expedition.7
- A lighter and twenty rations of hookah, bought from the tobacco merchant Begär in the Grand Souk.15
- A hat of tyrannosaur leather, ordered at the Jaunty Tune on the terms that he paid three hundred gold pieces if he won his duel, saying that the hat had helped him win, and four hundred and fifty if he lost.28
- An outfit ordered from the clothier SURE for the gala.29
- The Shield of the Eternal Brothers, a large bronze shield showing two warriors locked in combat, one poised with precision and the other in mid-swing with rage. He woke to find it after dreaming of Taban, and it hung over his fireplace after the expedition.307
- A pair of sending stones, bought to keep in touch with Kaveth.3113
- An Immovable Rod.255
- The Champion’s signet, marked “VK.” It was atomized when he touched the statue in the attraction room.14 It was a silver ring set with a citrine, his trophy from the arena.
- The Belt of Orckind, an old leather belt studded with iron and dark bronze, found in the beholder’s hoard.3
- The Chained Flask, the gift of The Boy.32
- Three cured fingers of his slaughtered Goblin family, returned to him by the Sewn Sisters.326
- Vigil’s End, the greatsword of Takhesis Calva, taken from his body.6 It hung over his fireplace after the expedition.7
- His collection of kneecaps, which included those of Orvex Occrammas, Takhesis Calva and a froghemoth, the right kneecap of a Tomb Guardian and a kneecap from the Hungerer’s throne.91067
- A Cape of Billowing, which hung over his fireplace after the expedition.7
- Bracers of Defense and Sekelok’s Star, a morningstar with a head of black iron spikes.
Relationships
Kaveth was his wife. She was the tall, thin Half-Orc proprietor of the Dead Fish. On the twenty-first of Flamerule he flirted with her and waited at the bar for her shift to end.15 The next night the two of them and Taenae spent the night together.28 By the twenty-ninth she was his partner, and on the thirtieth he bought a pair of sending stones to stay in touch with her.1631 For a short while, he spent some time away from the party with her and returned on the fourth of Eleasis.33 Before he crawled into the devil face on the Tomb’s first level he sent her the message, “I hope this is not the last hole I ever crawl through.”13 At the camp above the caldera he went straight to her, and they married sometime after.7
Taban Veilthorn was a gladiator who joined the party in Port Nyanzaru on its first day,1 and Vogal’s shield-brother.17 Vogal killed him in Valachan and faced him again at the Sunken Temple. When the party woke from Valachan, Taban appeared, and Vogal tried to speak with him, but he was distant and faded into the jungle. This was his departure from the party.2 In Port Nyanzaru Vogal paid Zitembe of the Temple of Savras to divine where he was, a task Zitembe agreed to finish even after he broke with the party.3435 On the night after the Sunken Temple, Vogal dreamed that he stood with Taban one last time. Taban thanked him and said that Vogal’s support had given him the courage to fulfill his purpose.30 On the thirtieth of Flamerule Vogal told Taban’s brother Kaelar Veilthorn that Taban had given his life to preserve the balance. Kaelar accepted it and offered the party intelligence in the future as a debt of honor.31
Tharn Veilthorn, called Tharn Bloodfist, was another of Taban’s brothers and Vogal’s rival. He was enraged to learn that Vogal had slept with Kaveth, and lost to him in the Colosseum.284
Kragga was a Half-Orc gladiator whom Vogal challenged to arm wrestle at the Dead Fish. He won, and she promised to teach him to cleave. She then challenged him to drink three cups of Skoon, a volatile Chultan spirit; he downed two and failed the third, sputtering flames in front of the tavern.15 She taught him as promised.4 She was among the dead when the Death Curse began to take the strong.16
Takhesis Calva fought beside Vogal at the front of the party.2021 He hauled Vogal out of the devil face by the rope.13 Takhesis was taken from the party on the fourteenth of Eleasis.36 Two days later Vogal spoke of him in the past tense, as a hero,37 and then killed him in the Cradle.6
Vonara bet on both fighters in Vogal’s duel and then helped him win it.4 She twice carried him out of danger with dimension door.2638 On the Tomb’s fourth level her teleport rune sent her after him into the Mirror Room as a bat. Vogal, who was hungry, caught the bat and killed it while eating it, and Vonara returned to her own shape.8 He called her “Fancy Lady.”
Glade wrote the Book of Wellness with Vogal and Taenae,39 and put haste on Vogal and Takhesis for the fight with the Red Wizards in Omu.26 Vogal bought gifts for Glade and Vonara to thank them for their magical and moral support in the duel. He did not know how far their help had gone.40
Taenae spent a night with Vogal and Kaveth,28 and congratulated him when the Belt of Orckind transformed him.3 When the party feared a doppelganger among them, Vogal proved himself by bringing up that night.41
Unkh, the flail snail among the nine Trickster Gods, inhabited Vogal from the fourteenth of Eleasis, when he attuned to her vessel.12 On the Tomb’s fifth level she offered to decipher the controls of the machine, and Vogal consented. After an hour of study she found that the controls were a mystery and should be left alone.5 She left him without a word after the death of Takhesis.6
The Boy, a child clone of Takhesis held on the Tomb’s sixth level, recalled to the party the sight of Vogal crawling into the devil face.37 The Chained Flask was his gift to Vogal.32
Savriel Tirinath was locked in a sealed room with Vogal and Glade for an hour on the fifth level, and beat Vogal at arm wrestling. Vogal protested that he was the Champion and should be respected.5 He later assigned her and Glade to the control room to protect Inete and Vonara while they worked the panel, and stayed there with them.42
Alice lost her sending stone to Vogal in Omu and did not know that it was gone.26
The Sewn Sisters, the night hags of the Tomb, destroyed the Bloodfang Tribe.3 They returned to Vogal three fingers taken from his Goblin family.32
History
Early life
Vogal’s Goblin family was murdered. He was rescued and raised by the Bloodfang Tribe of Orcs after he went berserk and kneecapped the Elves who had killed his family. The tribe was later destroyed by the Sewn Sisters. 3
Chult and Valachan
On the thirtieth of Mirtul, 1492 DR, Vogal and four others accepted Syndra Silvane’s commission and were sent to Port Nyanzaru. At Kaya’s House of Repose he and Vonara heard two rumors: that “terror folk” nested on the spire of Firefinger, five days up the Tiryki River, and that the city of Mezro had not been destroyed and its ruins were an illusion.1
On the sixth of Kythorn a giant crocodile ambushed the party on the river, and on the way back from Camp Vengeance a tyrannosaur chased their canoe.11 On the seventh, in Port Nyanzaru, he demonstrated how high he could jump while the party shopped. When the canoe was destroyed in the rapids of the Tiryki, Takhesis flew to safety carrying him, and he and Takhesis then held off the su-monsters that had nearly killed Vonara and Glade.20 On the eighth he and Vonara were separated from the others. With the sorcerer Fenro Silver they refused to hand over Finethir Shinebright, a wizard trapped in the form of a dinosaur, to the enforcers of Master Noke, and Vogal and Fenro cut down the enforcer Guz and his wolves.43
On the road to Firefinger the party found two triceratops stuck in a tar pit. Taenae carried Vogal as a giant eagle, and he tied ropes to the hadrosaurus Gooye to pull them free.44 He and Takhesis caught up with the rest of the party on the spire.45
On the twenty-ninth of Kythorn Vogal stepped onto the bridge at Ataaz Muhahah and woke its stone panther guardian. Its gaze slowed him and Takhesis, and then froze the whole party.46 They woke in Valachan in other bodies, Vogal in that of Mazati, an apprentice who suffered from a pain in the chest, for which Glade’s host found him a salve.47 While foraging, Mazati realized that the group was being hunted. A wounded warrior then emerged with four displacer beasts behind him, and Vogal recognized his soul as Taban’s. Chakuna appeared and demanded blood. Vogal fought Taban and laid him to rest with a blow of his staff, and afterward fell into a deep, unresponsive depression. The next day he recognized the smell of plague-ridden zombies as the smell of the salve, and understood that he was infected and slowly turning. In the battle that ended the trial he was struck down, and he and Glade’s host were burned to death together by a mage’s fireball.17
The party woke in Chult on the thirtieth of Kythorn.2 At Camp Vengeance that day Vogal helped write the Book of Wellness, a guide to hygiene, wound care and herbs to avoid, and invented a crude vasectomy by punching a guard.39 After the party destroyed the Hungerer’s physical form, it found statues of its own members in a treasure room beneath his throne, and Vogal took his morningstar from his.27
Port Nyanzaru
On the twenty-second of Flamerule the party met Taban’s brothers Korrak, Tharn and Kaelar at the Golden Serpent. They said they did not know where Taban was. Vogal admitted to sleeping with Kaveth, and Tharn flew into a rage. Korrak Veilthorn headed off the violence by arranging a formal fight between the two at the Grand Colosseum, set for the twenty-fifth.2829 Vogal went to the Colosseum with Takhesis that day to learn about Tharn and the fighting pits,29 and again with Vonara on the evening of the twenty-fourth, when he met the gladiators Urzok and Drakar and came back to the Dead Fish very drunk. He bonded with the party before he passed out.4
The duel began as a slugfest. Quicksand, darkness and a tiger were then loosed into the arena, and the tiger ignored Tharn and went for Vogal with unnatural focus until Vonara cast dispel magic on it. It turned on Tharn, who crushed its skull. When Tharn’s gauntlets glowed with magic, Glade cast a spell that made them inert. Vonara bolstered Vogal with an inconspicuous crowd mongering, and he headbutted Tharn and toppled him.4 He was afterward known as the Champion of Nyanzaru.5
That afternoon Vogal, Vonara, Glade and Inete felt the deaths of Taenae and Takhesis in the Maw Below, hurried to the warehouse above it and went down. They found the two alive, somehow, and rescued them from the collapsing structure.48
On the twenty-seventh the party entered the Sunken Temple, a place that had been calling to them since their return from Valachan. In its heart chamber Taban appeared out of shadow and lightning in obsidian plate, with amber eyes and slit pupils, and said, “Vogal… Still swinging that morningstar like it’s all you have. Some things never change.” He said that he had spent centuries in Valachan bringing Chakuna back from oblivion. Vogal challenged him, and Taban drove his glaive into the stone and called on the party to fight him. When the scales of the temple were balanced, Taban became the Shadow Displacer Beast of Chaos. He looked at Vogal a last time and said, “When you drink at The Dead Fish… pour one out for the man I was.” He and Zitembe then vanished.22
On the thirtieth Vogal and Vonara went to the Golden Serpent to find Kaelar and came on him in the middle of an execution.31 That evening Vogal, Takhesis, Vonara and Glade went down into the ziggurat of the Temple of Euphoria.49
Omu
On the way south the party stopped at Kir Sabal, where Vogal, Glade and Takhesis called on Princess Mwaxanaré. She refused to tell them about Omu without a pledge of fealty, and they declined.50
On the tenth of Eleasis, at Kubazan’s shrine in Omu, the froghemoth killed Orvex Occrammas and swallowed Vogal whole in a single rush. The party killed it. While he was cutting it up, Vogal noticed something shining deep in its gullet.9 When Vonara tripped the shrine’s trap and poison gas filled the sealed room, she saw that Vogal was close to death and took the two of them out with dimension door, leaving the puzzle cube behind.26 That night Takhesis saw Red Wizards moving east and woke Vogal and Glade. Before leaving the hut Vogal took Alice’s sending stone. The three caught the wizards trying to break into Shagambi’s Shrine and killed them before they could mount a defense, then hid the bodies.26
On the eleventh Vogal received a sending in six parts from the Harper agent Ilia Vane: Wakanga O’tamu had sent an envoy to demand an alliance, and Tawb was out of resources with its council divided. The party told her to wait seven days.51 He then went with Vonara and Inete to Moa’s Shrine. Crossing a chasm on Vonara’s broom, he was caught in a thermal updraft that burned off his loincloth. At the shrine a jaculi compelled the three to speak the truth, and they admitted that they had come for the puzzle cube. They identified the right cube and took it.51 On the afternoon of the twelfth he was asleep when the rest of the party regrouped at its camp.52
That night, at the entrance to the Fane of the Night Serpent, Ishmakahl persuaded the party to split into false converts and false prisoners. Vogal went in as a prisoner with Inete and Taenae, shackled and without his gear. Ishmakahl, a doppelganger in the service of Thay, offered to escort the prisoners himself and meant to execute them. As the two groups parted Vogal received a sending from Vonara: “Vogal, stop. Ishmakahl is evil. Walking into a trap. Don’t go. Tell everybody.” He exposed Ishmakahl at once, and in the scuffle Takhesis beheaded him. After parlaying with Fenthaza, the Party made plans to incite a prison riot. Glade, posing as a guard, then took the three to the prisoner pits, where they persuaded the warrior Sekota to lead an uprising if they could supply weapons.53 In the fighting that followed, Vogal and Takhesis held the front line against an adamantine hydra.21
On the morning of the thirteenth the party tried the false entrance of the Tomb. Gas vents opened and a stone slab came down to seal the room. Vogal jammed his Immovable Rod under the slab and held it long enough for the others to get out.25
The Tomb of the Nine Gods
The party entered the Tomb of the Nine Gods on the thirteenth of Eleasis. On the first level Vogal fell into the spiked pit of the lever room with everyone but Taenae.13 He went into the devil face with a rope around his waist and was attacked in the darkness by a greater shadow demon.13 He broke the crystal window of Obo’laka’s tomb with a javelin.13 In the attraction room he lost his signet,14 and he was the first into Moa’s tomb, where the weeping child became a flameskull and undead spiders dropped from the ceiling.14 Vonara’s dimension door carried the two of them past the fan of the wind tunnel into Wongo’s tomb, where a skeleton with a triangular skull came out of the wall and attacked them until the rest of the party caught up. For the tomb’s puzzle he climbed into the rusted chest and endured its rot.38 On the second level he took the right kneecap of the Tomb Guardian destroyed in the forge of the tomb dwarves.10
On the morning of the fourteenth the tomb dwarves ambushed the party from the ceiling and the stairs. They bypassed Vogal and dropped among the spellcasters behind him with iron mancatchers.36 On the third level the shadows of the Chamber of Opposition showed him a vision of himself being hurled into a lake of boiling lava.19 At the rite in Kubazan’s tomb he gave precious gems.54 On the fourth level he and Vonara opened the serpent door by bleeding into the serpents’ mouths.55
In the maze of Unkh’s tomb he and Taenae were lost, and each came separately on the body of an Omuan child. Vogal found the blue key and was teleported back to the main chamber alone, ahead of the others. The minotaur skeletons waiting there fell on him and cut him down, and he got back to his feet in his rage. The rest of the party returned to find him making his stand, and destroyed the skeletons. They had Vogal put the gold key into the sarcophagus, which granted him the Charm of Treasure Sense. With it he found the Robe of Scintillating Colors at once, claimed it and attuned to it, and Unkh entered him.12
On the fifteenth, in the fight with the beholder Belchorzh in the Vault, Vogal took most of its eye rays and several times narrowly escaped disintegration. In the hoard he found the Belt of Orckind, whose inscription ended, “Wear it. Walk as one of us. The tusks will come.” On attuning to it he saw his past in a vision and was brought to tears, and the belt transformed him.3 During the rest that followed the others admired the change, and Vogal was unusually quiet.56
That evening he went through the elemental trials alone and passed them, crept through Shagambi’s tomb, and stepped on the teleport rune. It turned him into a quipper and dropped him on the silver floor of the Mirror Room, where Savriel Tirinath had been imprisoned for fifty years. He suffocated as a fish before being returned to his own body.8 After Vonara arrived the two made their way back to the party.8 That night, in the crypt of Napaka, the clerk Snib sprang the trap of the golden sun on the party. With the trap spent he flailed and teleported about the room, and Vogal killed him with a thrown javelin.23
On the sixteenth, on the fifth level, slime flooded the sealed control room, and Vogal hung from his Immovable Rod above it.5 When the party split up to map the machine he went with Glade and Savriel to the acid cog, which the machine sealed for an hour.5 On the sixth level a dust mephit’s death burst caught him, Raiketsu and Glade.37
During the rest that the Boy gave the party, in a likeness of the Dead Fish, Vogal spent the night in quiet introspection, turning over everything that had happened on the adventure. The Boy died soon after the party woke. Over the body, wrapped in Raiketsu’s cloak, Vogal said, “He looks like a hero… he was a hero.”32 After the gate was opened the Sewn Sisters came with their tapestry and, as their last act before leaving, returned three cured Goblin fingers, taken from the family he had lost. Vogal took them and said, “Not sure how to feel about it.”32
The Cradle
On the stairs down to the Cradle the Belt of Orckind grew warm.57 When the shadow formed behind Raiketsu, Vogal stood ready, and nothing the party did was fast enough to stop it.57 When the first wave of necrotic energy came down from the Atropal, he went into his rage and stayed in it.57
In the last stage of the fight Takhesis lifted and held Vogal with his soul-pull and struck at him inside it. Vogal was struck down twice, and both times his rage brought him back up.6 After Takhesis had killed Inete his strength gave out. He said that the Atropal was dying because he was dying, set his sword against his own chest and asked to be finished. Vogal took the offer and killed him, noting as he did so that it was the second time he had had to kill a sworn brother.6 He took Vigil’s End and one of Takhesis’s kneecaps from the body before the floor gave way.6 Vonara carried him and Taenae out on her broom. In the last moment before the Cradle was destroyed he thought of the brothers he had lost over the adventure.6 He brought the sword, the kneecap and the Goblin fingers out with him.6
Epilogue
On the morning of the seventeenth of Eleasis Taenae flew Vogal, Vonara and Glade across the caldera to the camp of those who had waited for them.7
Vogal married Kaveth and stayed in Port Nyanzaru, where he opened the Broken Knee Bar, a sister bar to the Dead Fish known for its rowdy gambling and its welcome for barfights. Elves paid double there, and Orcs drank for free. Over the fireplace he hung every knee he had collected, with his morningstar, Vigil’s End, the shield Taban gave him and his Cape of Billowing.7 He likely kept the three fingers, as he kept everything he collected.
Appendix
Notes
Behind the screen
Vogal lost his loincloth to the updraft in Session 56, hilariously, and was naked from the waist down from then on. Cam first rolled for his anatomy then. After the Belt of Orckind transformed Vogal in Session 78, Cam rolled again, and the “all-night star” came out at twelve inches.
Vogal’s look, with its Danny DeVito ponytail, was settled only when Cam was asked outright what Vogal looked like, after Vogal had acquired his tyrannosaur-skin top hat.
Vogal was likely the best known member of the party, for his astounding win over Tharn Bloodfist, which made him Champion of Nyanzaru.
Although Vogal missed the most mainline campaign sessions, Patrick, the Dungeon Master, still dubbed him the “Heart of the Party.”
Appearances
Session 1 to Session 6 · Session 8 to Session 33 · Session 35 · Session 36 · Session 38 to Session 41 · Session 43 · Session 44 · Session 48 to Session 54 · Session 56 · Session 59 to Session 78 · Session 80 to Session 82 · Session 84 · Session 85 · Session 87 to Session 91
In Session 10 and Session 11 he appeared in the body of Mazati. Cam was absent from Session 7, Session 58, Session 79 and Session 86, whose logs still record Vogal.