Jarl

Overview

To an Iron Valley Captain, the sea is a means to an end, a road to ports and trade, a path to harbours to raid. It is of little concern beyond the ways in which it can put your life to an end. To a Jarl, it is far more than that. The sea is a place of ultimate mysteries, of depths so far they can crush the body and freeze the blood. Beneath the surface are mountains taller than those that make the Valley, creatures that dwarf dragons and magicks that are as unknowable as they are inhuman.

The sailors that take this mantle, that explore the oceans and return are changed by their travels. They wash in salt water, adorn themselves in the detritus of the sea, and behind their eyes lies the cold gray of storm clouds. Jarls become mystic guides and skilled warriors who are regarded well for their experience and hard lives. To ask a Jarl to solve a problem is often seen as a last resort. To ask a Jarl for aid to is ask them to resolve your woes in a manner that cares not for tradition, honour, or sacrifice, as the sea has no such qualms.

Need:

Naval Investment

A Jarl with no ship is no Jarl.

Shouldn’t:

Divine Lore (Any)

It is said that to see the eye of the storm, or the underside of an iceberg or the maw of a Kraken is to lose sight of the Spheres. Regardless, while many Jarls hold the faith of the Spheres, none are priests.

Costume Marker:

The Frostburn Mark

The only seas that truly belong to the Jarls are the Icereach. Everywhere else there is competition. And while they wander far, they are in their element in the southern ocean. The wind and waves whip across the icereach day after day and curse the skin. While recovery is slow, it leaves its mark on those who experience frostburn time and time again. The fingertips of Jarls are all a rotten blue-gray from repeated exposure, with most having ‘Jarls-hands’ from the last knuckle onwards. Particularly experience Jarls from the middle knuckle. Once it reaches the palm, closing a fist becomes difficult and your time at sea is coming to an end. Jarls are a proud sort and refuse to wear gloves that hide their mark, less their experience is doubted.

Becoming a Jarl:

It is not enough to command a ship and claim a home port in the Iron Valley. To become a Jarl, you must look into the depths of the sea and have the sea look back. You must know the whip-crack of sails under impossible strain, the leeching cold of winter waves, and the truth that your life is bound to the keel beneath your feet. The path to Jarlhood is not written in charts or contracts. It is written in scars and stories. Yet the Jarls have sailed this tide for generations, and their traditions have hardened into something close to law.

It is said that Jaskira the Jagged first named it:

“You are a Jarl when the Sea has killed you, loved you, and given you truth.”

These three trials still stand.

When the Sea Has Killed You

No one becomes a Jarl without nearly dying for it. Every true Jarl has been broken by the sea at least once,by storm, monster, corsair, or sickness. Whatever the cause, it must leave its mark, not only on the sailor but on their ship. A scar on the hull. A limp in the walk. A story that cannot be forgotten.

Those who have never been pushed to the edge are not yet Jarls.

When the Sea Has Loved You

A Jarl lives by the sea alone. Anyone who must rely on land for food, coin, or protection is seen as unbalanced; one foot on deck, one foot ashore, and ready to fail.

A would-be Jarl must support themselves entirely by shipwork for a time, traditionally a year or more. Trade, raiding, salvage, fishing: it does not matter how, only that the sea provides. This is enough to see the would-be Jarl well regarded but it must also continue to be their livelihood, the sea must always be the primary source of life and wealth for a Jarl.

If the waves do not feed you, they do not claim you.

When the Sea Has Given You Truth

The sea is not only a place of danger and wealth. It is a mirror.

Some find their truth beneath the frozen stars of the Icereach. Others in the vast black eyes of a hunting great-squid. Some in the stillness after a storm, when they realize what they are, and what they are not.

When the sea gives you truth, you will know it. And it will change you.

The Telling

When an Iron Valley sailor believes they have met these three trials, they may call for a Telling.

As many Jarls as can be gathered come together, and the would-be Jarl stands before them. They speak the three stories: how the sea nearly killed them, how it sustained them, and how it revealed their truth.

Then the newcomer walks the line of assembled Jarls. If a Jarl believes the claimant is truly one of them, they splash the newcomer with seawater. If not, they rub dirt on their skin, marking them as still of the land.

If every Jarl present accepts them, the sailor is named a Jarl at last and the celebration that follows is loud, long, and wet with salt and ale.

History:

In the ancient history of the Valley, it is said that the first Jarl was Ander Whalespine, a great hunter of seabeasts who culled the waves and rose to power by his ability to feed his people in deepest winter. He taught the skills needed to sail the southern oceans to his people and they became rich. Their ships were armoured by the bones of these frost-sea giants and charged with the horns of even stranger creatures. Jarl Ander was not of the Valley, his people were simply known as The Jarls, and while the joining of the Anderslee into the Valley is a tale lost to time and obfuscation, their name lives on in the profession they founded.

Other great Jarls came after Ander during the age of Stone, such as Dori the Narwhal who swam east never to return, and Jaskira the Jagged, who raided every port on the east of the world.

Throughout the Age of Steel the creed of the Jarls became set in ice and stone. The Jarls would wander the oceans in search of lore, wealth and food. They would return their fleets to find a new banner in their home ports and the many Mountain Wars shifted and waged. Sometimes they would even return to find the twisted wooden wreath of the Forest Kings of the Bailes atop their homes. It mattered little to the Jarls, who knew that all could fall beneath the waves if the waves only wished it. They were a distant people, apart even from their own ports, courted by the landed Reeves for their knowledge, violent skill, and stable supply of meat.

It was Caldreda Seacaller who put an end to this weary separation. Once a Jarl herself, Caldreda had lost her ship “The Skintaker” to the predations of winter and treachery and had taken up the Reeves position in Singarls Bay, the largest port in Anderslee. When Baelag the Ninth came to Anderslee he told Caldreda to swear fealty to the High Valley once and for all. The Jarls would be remade into a great fleet to raid the world and bring glory to Valley in the northern seas. They would become a fleet of Iron and Gold. When Caldreda threw Baelag the Ninth from his citadel, Caldreda is said to have corrected him “We are Salt and Ice.”, a phrase that has come to signify agreement and the sealing of deals between Jarls in the years since.

It was Caldreda’s unorthodox involvement in the matters of the High Valley that finally bound the Jarls to the land. While they were each enthralled in the mysteries and currents of the great seas, all would need to return to port to rest and rebuild. They could no longer see their ports as separate from themselves. The Jarls became reeves of their own Buroughs, some extending to just their ships, others to whole fleets, and the Jarls of Anderslee became full members of the Valley in the close of the Age of Steel.

The Age of Stars flowed over the Jarls, the whims and Spheres came to their ports and onto their ships same as into the halls of the Valley folk. But deep in the ice storms and cracked glaciers, there are no gods, Sphere or otherwise. It was the Wars of the Age of Stars that were of most note to the Jarls. It is the matter of war that divides Jarls even to this day. Some argue that their calling is to the deep sea, to its secrets and bounty. They owe the people of the land their assistance but not their lives. While others argue that to be absorbed by the cold darkness of the sea entirely is to lose sight of the land and its love for their cold hearts. Many Jarls of this latter persuasion would fight alongside the Valley, transporting raiders from Anderslee to the colonies or Artebazzan during the war, even attacking Posta Lerona on two separate occasions, both horrific failures. But just as many Jarls avoided the war, traveling deeper south and further north.

As the Age of Heroes dawned, the Jarls have been unmade not by the slow tide, but the colossal crash of the waves. A thing from the deepest darkest Icereach has finally looked back into their prying eyes. The Illsevir, the Living Wave, the Creeping Ice have come for their trespasses. Anderslee is lost, the Jarls are scattered to the winds, if they survived. Many retreat into the mountains, and their vessels sank. Most are dead beneath the waves or even worse, sail with the Icewalking Illsevir now.

But the tide does break, as do all things. In Bolsterlee, there are quiet gatherings of the saltborn. The sound of carved wood and tales of deepest ice. The smell of seaweed and blood. New vessels are being lowered into the water and the history of Ander Whalespine, Caldreda Seacaller, and Sytrkar Fairwind will not go quietly beneath the waves.

Salt and Ice.

Three Things Jarls Are:

Deep Sea Loremasters

To be a Jarl is to hear the call of the depths. To swim in water with no seabed. To pass silent icebergs larger than mountains. Jarls seek to learn and understand the depths of sea, storm and ice not as academics, but as some strange mixing of shaman, sailor and secret keeper. Jarls should be wisened, hungry for knowledge and seekers of secrets in all things.

Sailors of the Strange

Seasons upon the waves, the sight of comrades consumed by unknowable creatures, and looking into a depth that takes something from you as you do leaves all Jarls odd. All of them are consumed by strange rituals and a way of looking at the world that could be charitably called fatalistic. Jarls should have a handful of rituals that bind them to the sea (washing in salt water, carrying seaweed, or consuming ice as a snack) and Jarls should have a certain oddity around them in an alien, haunted manner.

Laconic Pragmatists with Steel in Hand

Jarls are rarely people of long speeches, flowery words or graceful tongues. Aboard a ship orders are shouted clearly over the din of the waves. The only time they have breath for words is when describing what they have seen and learned (even then it is better saved for carving or the quill) or when they are planning expeditions. This laconic nature spreads to their actions. Jarls resolve their problems (and the problems of those who ask them to) with an ice-cold efficiency, with little regard for honour, tradition or perception. Such is life on the sea.

One Thing Jarls Aren't:

Vikings

Since the time of Jaskira the Jagged, the Jarls have not been raiders or pirates themselves. Jarls are still skilled fighters and sailors (the sea demands it) but piracy and larceny are no longer their purviews. To leverage the skill gained that way is seen as hubris, as it demands the land seek you out to hold you beneath the waves. Jarls who take up piracy quickly find themselves spurned by all others.