Uldrick

Uldrick is a player character in the Godscar (campaign 4): a 67-year-old hill dwarf barbarian (Path of the World Tree) and labourer, chosen as the first emissary of The Citadel to the outside world. He speaks Common and Dwarvish with an old-fashioned cadence, pauses before unfamiliar ideas, and keeps reaching for Citadel devices that are not there. He believes balance must be restored and connections repaired.

Background

The Citadel is a dwarven city that vanished from the world: shrunk to a few feet across, sealed in a residuum sphere and moved into the Feywild in 1020 PC, just after the Skyfire. Inside, 250 years pass for every year outside: about 6,750 years by 1047. Campaign 2's party glimpsed the shrunken city in the Feywild in 1034 PC. Thirty years passed outside, about fifty in the Feywild, and nearly 8,000 inside, where the dwarves rebuilt their society under an elected council. For fifty Citadel years the winters have lengthened and power has been rationed. The Guild of Artificers devised the Conduit to pierce the sphere; after decades of argument and six years of building by the Wizards', Artificers', Smiths' and Labourers' guilds, it could send one dwarf out at the cost of weeks of the city's power. Guildmaster Kromryl nominated Uldrick, not because he was exceptional but because he would endure.

Since childhood Uldrick spent his free time with dwarves devoted to Yggdrasil, the cosmic World Tree they believe connects everything. He was allowed to carry The Branch, said to be a branch of the Tree itself. Crossing a sea of stars, he touched a shimmering blue branch and arrived in The Low Lantern Archive on 18 Suns Dusk 1047 PC, at the feet of a ledger showing a tree with roots in coin, branches webbed in silver thread and limbs aflame, moments before the wall burst with oil. His Citadel technology does not work here.

In the Godscar

Uldrick kept the infernal book from the flood, later identified as Stephen's Record of Infernal Spells; Branock told him all its images represent King in Yellow contracts. At the House of Amber, where his people's caravans (the Seed of Dale) once stopped before going west, the Amber Queen told him "a dark deal was made, that you must end" and to seek out the deal maker. Further communes pointed him to The Iron City of Dis for devil contracts, to Heishen the Deathless in Creatis, and revealed that Asmodeus holds the contract for the corruption beneath the city. He spends nights at the temple talking history and faith with Branock.

Uldrick retrieved The Golden Envelope at the Ember Parlour gala, took residuum glass in Rillachor and with it enhanced The Branch into the World Branch, and adopted the Salmon of Knowledge as his "therapy fish". In the Hall of Navigators the party concluded that the desertification that doomed his people was an acceleration of ancient elven terraforming, triggered by the fall of Herentor's veil (see The Great Evaporation). He died in the crypt fight against three dragons and was brought back by Brother Oils.

Uldrick was the only party member to believe Oils' preacher act at first, and is the party's wall in a fight.

Residuum. All the Citadel's magic runs on residuum. As Uldrick collects it he seems to gain faint sparks of power, and residuum is what he gathered in Rillachor. His faith in the World Tree is uncommon among dwarves.