[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Hullo everyone, and welcome to the game. I appear to be fashionably late for a quest that I'm supposed to be co-hosting, but I promise a proper character introduction soon, hopefully this evening. In the meantime here is a description of the wandering axeman for your delectation.

My character is Haleg. "The Woodsman" ("The Woodsman of Hell" in full) is a nom de guerre rather than a title, as he's no more a woodsman than he is a farmer. Haleg was orphaned by border raiders when he was still a boy, escaping with only a few odds and ends tied in a bundle to his father's axe, which he salvaged from the thick of the fighting. Only narrowly escaping with his life, wounded and exhausted, he was taken in against all hope and nursed back to health. Thanks to his guardian's help he was eventually able to join the household of a land-holding warrior, rising high in his service through skill and loyalty, although his poor head for large-scale strategy and lack of self-control kept him from the top rank. When his liege lord and ring-giver was assassinated at the hands of a poisoner and his place taken by a scheming lieutenant Haleg took swift and brutal revenge. The tale of this is not for the squeamish, and is not told often or to many. Since the two men on whom he carried out his arbitrary sentence were influential members of the household, and since he observed no true law in acting thus, he has been cast out and now makes his living selling his axe to the highest bidder. He will encounter Halasan by chance in an inn.

Haleg carries two main weapons. The first of these is the sword of his former lord, stolen from the usurper along with the hand that sought to wield it. Haleg has no skill with this whatsoever and carries it in adherence to a tradition that, should the line of father to son be broken, the sword must pass to a warrior of unusual merit. Haleg seeks this man, in the hope of passing on the beautifully-worked blade to one worthy of it.

His other weapon, and that with which he excels, is the great war-axe, Durithil. This is an heirloom of his house, the only one that remains, and was made for his great-grandfather in the Iron Hills. Its blade is of black steel, inlaid with a tracery of fine silver, in which the weapon's name in Daeron's runes forms part of a stylised decorative design. The tradition in Haleg's family was that the eldest son's hand was laid on the haft in the hour of his birth to symbolise future ownership, and it grieves him that there is no-one left to whom he may pass it when he dies. He risked his life to save this weapon from his father's killers, and is very wary of allowing others near it, as it is the most valuable thing that he owns.

Haleg is named after one of Túrin's guardians, and his father brought him up on tales of Turambar and his sire. Húrin Thalion is a character whom Haleg particularly admires, and he has been known to quote extensively from the lays of his life, often to bleak effect.

Haleg is not a cheerful man, although he does have a certain rough good humour about him. He has no goal or direction beyond passing on the sword and keeping himself alive; he is prone to long and morose silences and his anger when roused is terrible to behold, breaking as it does the bounds of reason. His is a nickname well earned, for his enemies receive no mercy. Few whom he has defeated still live other than the two who murdered his lord, for whom death would be a blessing. His vindictive and merciless pursuit of those who wrong him is matched only by his loyalty to comrades-in-arms; there are few whom he would account his friends.