Old campaigner

A Old campaigner is one of the Wanderers. It let its core go in one of the earlier Unsealings, and a heart demon settled where the core had been. It comes out of the Mist each Turning and signs on wherever there is pay. Its kind holds no affinity and serves as Plain, like any drilled soldier.

Wanderers keep their memories from world to world. The oldest campaigners of its kind claim they fought in the devouring of the Age of the First Sealborn, when great kingdoms ate small ones, before Daegred, the Sunward made the Law of Equals. They remember what war was like without it.

It fights hand to hand, endures much, and grows stronger and harder to kill the longer it serves. In time it lends the army courage before battle. Later, the hired companies in its employer's army strike and strike back harder beside it. Sealborn say hired soldiers trust one of their own before any lord. The card shows what each stage adds.

It asks very little geld and no mana, and its pay rises only slowly as it grows. Campaigners say it is low in cost because it has nothing left to buy: every world it ever saved money in was unmade. When the pay stops, even so, it leaves. Kill one, and its service ends for the Turning, but its soul goes on, and so does its kind.

The campaigners say the demon wants a war that ends, and has never been given one. Whether a campaigner can be freed is not known.

Player-visible facts