Stenhållare

Name	Stenhållare
Race	Troll
Type	Witch Hunter
Faction	Dark Forces
Premiere	Desideratum: Blood Bonds
Relative(s)	N/A

Stenhållare

"If you don’t try to answer my riddle, I’ll pop her pretty skull like a grape."

Biography

Pre-Desideratum: Blood Bonds

Stenhållare, Son of Dovregubben was born almost two millennia ago under the Dovrefjell mountain range. There in the massive subterranean halls of his father, Dovregubben, known as the Mountain King, Stenhållare grew. Born, as all trolls, from a mother that had been human and bewitched into a troll; he was mean, cruel, and heavy-handed. His father, being from an earlier generation, was three times Stenhållare’s height and size, and occasionally would snack on his countless sons. Most lost limbs only to regenerate them, and Stenhållare was no exception. The pain and suffering only caused him to grow stronger. One day, in the Age of Myths, an army arrived in the mountain halls. These heroic forces were composed of dark elves, dwarves, and nearby humans who came to end the reign of Dovregubben forever. Most of his sons were slain, but Stenhållare was one that managed to escape. Travelling at night to avoid becoming stone, he eventually set upon a Viking village. The brave mortals fought well, but they could not slay the troll. Every night he would come, take a maiden and leave only to find that she would die during his attempts to reproduce.

Finally, the men concocted a plan, and they managed to trap him. Once trapped, they left the mighty troll to the sunlight and he turned to stone. However, when the sun next set, he returned to flesh. Now, the men managed to subdue him again, and again, at the next dawn, he turned to stone. This time, during the day, they used their axes, picks, and hammers, to smash the troll to bits. When the sun next set, the troll regenerated. Finally, a group of their bravest warriors found the magical artifact, Gleipnir. This unbreakable rope was used to bind Stenhållare under their ship. They loaded other artifacts into the vessel and swore that they would take the troll to the end of the Earth itself. These Vikings left and were never seen in their homeland again. They travelled the seas and eventually crashed on the island known as Sauvie Island in Portland, Oregon. With the ship crashed and broken on the rocks, Stenhållare escaped. He plundered much of the treasure of his captors and took it. The rest, including some artifacts, went down with the ship and her crew. The crew drowned becoming draugrs, guarding their sunken treasures. It was these very draugrs that Absinthe Van Gothen would later fight on the docks. The rope, Gleipnir, found its way to the dryad, Draeope. And, Stenhållare, himself, found the Marble Halls caverns.

There he set about building a new kingdom for himself where no Viking warrior dwelled. The local American tribes did try to fight the troll, but as with the Norsemen, they had no luck in defeating the beast. Eventually, Stenhållare had crafted magical gateways and set ingenious puzzles into his lair. He also built his tunnels and caves much, much smaller than his father had. These puzzles and smaller areas were intentional to keep large armies from being able to assemble and defeat him. Little did the paranoid creature know that trolls were eventually seen as merely legendary creatures and he had nothing to fear for centuries. Stenhållare did desire to mate but had become frustrated at his inability to do so. However, a goblin shaman informed him that if a magical stone known as an Adder Stone was placed into the woman’s sex, then the semen going through the hole carved inside the stone would always impregnate the female. He gathered a barrel of his amassed treasure and sent a goblin and a kobold to the House of Haggle, a monster shop owned by the hobgoblin, Hobs Hornswaggle. Hobs sold Stenhållare an Adder Stone which he intended to use to finally create an army of troll sons.

Desideratum: Blood Bonds

In Desideratum: Blood Bonds, Stenhållare is the final boss of the Caverns hunt. Two nights after Stenhållare purchased an Adder Stone, the Night Stalker, Selena Santana, offered to take the fledgling hunter, Absinthe Van Gothen, on a goblin hunt. Absinthe had already visited the House of Haggle. The nosferatu, Brone Lorcan had informed Absinthe that in the other direction of the cavern was a lair of goblins and to avoid it. Together, the pair made their way to the place. Stenhållare felt the women enter his domain. He had just purchased an Adder Stone and was eager to use it. Summoning an immense amount of his power, he created a stone hand to grab one of the women. As the hand reached for Abby, Selena pushed her out of the way and was pulled through the very ground and deposited hundreds of feet below the surface and deposited in the troll’s chamber. While trapped, he disarmed the woman of her adamantine weapons given to her by Guðmundur Sigurdsson, forged by his father, Sigurð. Though exhausted from his magic spell, he was going to use the Adder Stone on Selena and impregnate her.

Then, he received word from his minions that her companion, Absinthe, was wreaking total havoc among his forces. Intrigued, he decided to rest as she exhausted herself. If she managed to actually reach him, he would simply smash her into submission and then use the stone on her, ensuring that his sons would be as fierce as she. She did manage to reach him, and he sorely underestimated her. Thanks to the Blood Suit, a suit made from the very blood of Vlad Țepeș and her own inherent blessed Van Gothen bloodline, she stood her ground against the massive troll. She realized that none of her weapons were cutting Stenhållare. He laughed and gloated as the wounds sealed shut. However, the night before, Abby had acquired the artifact, Dyrnwyn, a mystical sword of fire. Having disarmed Selena, the troll thought any true threat to his life was absolved, but as Absinthe hacked him with the sword, the wounds cauterized, and Stenhållare eventually fell dead. Absinthe collected Selena’s discarded swords and helped the woman flee to safety as the enchanted section of the Marble Halls collapsed around them.@@

Appearance

Stenhållare is a green tall troll. He is very muscular, and he has curved horns. Curved, horns.

Abilities

• Unholy Strength
• Earth Magic
• Unholy Endurance
• Regeneration

Notes and Trivia

In the Caverns Hunt, Stenhållare is present in a few of the Bad Ends, as the hunt's primary boss.

Dovregubben was the troll king from Henrik Ibsen's 1867 play Peer Gynt. “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (Norwegian: I Dovregubben’s hall, lit. ‘In the Dovre man's hall’) is a piece of orchestral music composed by Edvard Grieg in 1875 as incidental music for the sixth scene of act 2 in Henrik Ibsen's 1867 play Peer Gynt. It was originally part of Opus 23 but was later extracted as the final piece of Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, Op. 46. Its easily recognizable theme has helped it attain iconic status in popular culture, where it has been arranged by many artists.

The English translation of the name is not literal. Dovre is a mountainous region in Norway, and “gubbe” translates into (old) man or husband. “Gubbe” is used along with its female counterpart “kjerring” to differentiate male and female trolls, “trollgubbe” and “trollkjerring”. In the play, Dovregubben is a troll king that Peer Gynt invents in a fantasy.