We’ve noticed that Ham Anfeald and Bald Haeri were missing VTT tokens in Pregenerated Characters 2 for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes. It has now been updated to include those tokens!
The Hermit’s Sanctuary is the ENnie-Award nominated, free, full-length, introductory adventure for the forthcoming BEOWULF: AGE OF HEROES for 5e!
Designed for one player and one GM, BEOWULF provides unique rules and support for single-player games in the Age of Heroes. Take to the Whale Road as a monster-slaying hero! Voyage to the island of the hermit, and investigate the cause of its woes!
Lavishly illustrated in full colour, The Hermit’s Sanctuary includes:
a complete, 52-page adventure for one GM and one Player
optional poster-sized PDF battle maps for all locations
optional VTT-friendly battle maps for Virtual Tabletops
4 pre-generated characters
printable accessories: inspiration tokens and inspiration pool
blank character sheet
rules reminder sheet
handy adventure flowcharts
About BEOWULF: Age of Heroes
One of the oldest recorded stories in Western Europe, the poem Beowulf is an epic tale of hero against monster. And then the monster’s mother. And then a dragon.
BEOWULF is a setting and rules set for 5th Edition, designed for duet play – one GM and one player. Set in the world of Anglo-Saxon myth, no deep knowledge of history is required – the themes are eternal and instantly recognisable, adventures occur in the story-world of the Saxons, and we’ve done all the historical reading for you!
BEOWULF presents a host of new and specially adapted rules to create epic and thematic adventures for your lone hero and his or her companions.
BEOWULF features a unique new set of subclasses: The Hero, with subclasses for each ability score. It has BEOWULF specific backgrounds, and unique rules for sea voyages, inspiration, alignment, followers, a new condition and more!
Explore mythic, migration-era Europe and beyond, solve mysteries, and do battle with dreadful monsters. Fully funded with numerous stretch goals unlocked, and with writing and rules design from hand-picked 5e and folklore geniuses, and with art from Jon Hodgson and friends, BEOWULF will be a thing of epic wonder.
Our Kickstarter for BEOWULF blew the doors off, and if you missed it, late pledges are available now – click below to find out more!
We have just released four new characters for The Hermit’s Sanctuary, the free adventure for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes! Each new character comes with full-figure character art, a unique background, a 5e character sheet, and a choice of starting points for The Hermit’s Sanctuary adventure.
Meet: Blaedswith, the Karelian Amulet Witch Ham Ansfeald, the Hero-Sailor Waelwulf, the Doomed Monster-fighter The Wolf Child
There are also new follower cards for Ham Anfeald, who is always accompanied by his hand-fasted best friend, Bald Haeri, and The Wolf Child’s family of wolves.
This new pack also includes VTT tokens, and is Pay What you Want, with a suggested price of £1.60/$1.99.
Jon: As part of The Hermit’s Sanctuary, the free introductory scenario for BEOWULF, we wanted to include a bunch of battle maps. It’s worth mentioning here at the outset that BEOWULF doesn’t rely on battle maps. Theatre of the Mind works just as well. Like in any 5e game, they’re purely optional.
But we love a good map hereabouts, and painting miniatures is something that’s been a very useful diversion in these times of lockdown.
I’ve been running a Patreon for almost 2 years now, supplying painted battle maps for people’s games. I also made a load of them for our recent collaboration with Onyx Path Publishing on the Scarred Lands Creature Collection. And so it seemed like a good idea to include some with The Hermit’s Sanctuary.
I specialise in really big maps, mostly because… I can! Digital delivery and virtual tabletops make these really accessible. But I also like to print them out and use them in the traditional way with miniatures. Today I’m taking a look at how that’s all shaped up.
So here’s the map of the Sanctuary itself.
For my games, I went to town and picked up a bunch of animal minis from Warbases. They’re just across the Firth of Forth from Handiwork HQ, so it’s nice to shop local! They do a great line in farm animals, so I’ve added some geese, Jacob sheep. I already had a couple of pigs for a BEOWULF Hero concept I’m working on – a seer who has oracular pigs as her followers. Must get on with that! As you can see, I’m no master painter, and I gave these a very quick paint job, but they’re a nice addition to the table.
For the main NPCs in the scenario, I needed some quite particular figures. These ended up coming from a wide range of sources.
The Housekeeper is a personal favourite, from Gripping Beast. She’s a cracking miniature.
The Builder is a really lovely figure from Perry Miniatures. He’s one of their First Crusade Pilgrims, which makes him a bit out of period, but civilian clothes don’t change tooooo much in this era, so I think it works.
The Provisioner is from Gripping Beast – he’s the attendant in their Saxon bishop set, who is perfect for that NPC.
The Hermit himself is a monk from Perry Miniatures. He’s not a perfect fit for the NPC description, but it’s a nice model.
The Boy was the trickiest match to find. I couldn’t find any early medieval children figures that fitted the bill. It was wonderful that an old friend Matt who runs Knucklebones Miniatures volunteered to sculpt me one. If you fancy getting your own, I’m sure Matt will send you one for a reasonable payment!
While avoiding spoilers, the Sanctuary map might feature two or three times in the scenario, depending on how it plays out, and the details of the scenery add quite a few options to the potential second and third usages.
Next up is a map for the Battle at the Standing Stone, which may or may not occur in the adventure, depending on the actions of your Hero. This is a nice big open map, set on the moors of the Hermit’s island home. Again, no spoilers, but I can imagine some running around on this one… Our Monster here is robustly played by a Red Box Games troll.
In this playthrough, we’re using the regenerated character Alys (who I always considered something like an early medieval, welsh Hermione Grainger).
We’re using a Footsore Miniatures Shield Maiden for her figure. Footsore also provided one of the followers. I highly recommend their work. Their new range of Anglo-Saxons is gorgeous.
For additional followers, Victrix Vikings and Anglo Saxons and Anglo-danes are perfect. There’s also a character model from Bad Squiddo in there, who I highly recommend! (I expect we’ll use her model for a Hero at some point in my games)
There’s an additional variant map included for another optional battle, which I haven’t set up, since I didn’t need it for this play-through, but it’s worth mentioning – it’s a flexible map that could easily see use in other games.
The Walled Graveyard map created a lot of nerves for the player in this run through! Can’t say any more than that! Physically, this is the smallest map, and I don’t know if that added to their worries?
The Ruin is a personal favourite location. It’s based on a ruined broch, not that the characters in the scenario know this. There’s one of the very few lowland brochs close to Handiwork HQ, in the form of Tappoch Broch, and we’ve very much taken it to heart, making dice trays featuring it! The broch ruin is another map that might come in handy for other adventures, It’s a nice big one!
In this image you can see the Inspiration Pool at work – you get a printable one, along with some tokens, as part of the Hermit’s Sanctuary. There will be neoprene mats and really gorgeous metal tokens available as part of the BEOWULF kickstarter.
The map of… this location, let’s call it, is filled with spoilers, so there’s not much to say. I just hope that your Hero ends up seeing this one when they’re well prepared! The stones here are from Warhead Studio.
This is probably the most useful map to use in play, even if you’re doing theatre of the mind. Printing it on A4/US Letter and using counters might come in handy, as one of the potential climactic battles is something of a mini-game to itself. This is a common feature of scenarios in BEOWULF – the battle against the big Monster always has some kind of cool twist to make it really memorable.
We have our own range of miniatures being designed right now by our dear friends at Cold War Miniatures, and the initial range includes all the pre-generated characters from the Hermit Sanctuary. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the renders!
We’re very close to having pre-production examples on hand – the last piece of character art is heading over to be sculpted today! We showed him in progress earlier in the week – here’s the more or less finished art. He’s a doomed hero archetype, searching for an enemy worthy enough to gift him a heroic death.
The Hermit’s Sanctuary is available absolutely free here. It includes all the maps in this article, as PDF posters, jpeg versions for VTT, and sliced up easy-to-print versions.
Here’s the poem that Dave composed for The Hermit’s Sanctuary. There will be more poems to be found in the core setting book of BEOWULF: Age of Heroes from Dave and others.
Hwaet!
A far flung isle
Mist mantled, Rune deep.
Surrounded by the whales way
A speck of footfall- firmly set
Upon a blue bright shield
A stone boss boldly sits
Battle-battered by billow maidens
Ancient bearer of grave and grove.
Home of bristle backed boar
Racked by wild winds keening.
Gulls wheeling screech, its scops;
Baleful beaked eagles unlock their wordhoard.
Bitter brine- not balming beer
Is lapped by that wyrd- wrought isle!
Once a holy held place
A blessing not bane to honest kin.
In hearth of deep dwelled slaughter,
Its leavings glut the grey cloaked wolf
Gorges the black ravens bent beak
Feast giver for Woden’s greedy birds.
Moon bleached, snow skinned
Shield breaker, blood drinker
A pale scabbard for a sword host
Of battle- bold warriors!
Hardened hearth-troop wreak their craft
Battle lights sing but do not sever
Blood embers swing –harmless their hewing
No war sweat stricken from war needles striking.
Forge fired, handiwork of smiths
Have no power present there.
Wyrd unravelled, blades bite dulled
Fates weave woe in warp and weft.
About The Hermit’s Sanctuary
The Hermit’s Sanctuary is a free, full-length, introductory adventure for the forthcoming BEOWULF: AGE OF HEROES for 5e!
Designed for one player and one GM, BEOWULF provides unique rules and support for single-player games in the Age of Heroes. Take to the Whale Road as a monster-slaying hero! Voyage to the island of the hermit, and investigate the cause of its woes!
Complete with pre-generated characters, maps, printable accessories, and more, The Hermit’s Sanctuary is entirely free.
Designed for one player and one GM, BEOWULF provides unique rules and support for single player games. Take to the Whale Road as a monster-slaying hero! Voyage to the island of the hermit, and investigate the cause of its woes!
Lavishly illustrated in full colour, The Hermit’s Sanctuary includes:
a complete, 52-page adventure for one GM and one Player
optional poster-sized PDF battle maps for all locations
optional VTT-friendly battle maps for Virtual Tabletops
4 pre-generated characters
printable accessories: inspiration tokens and inspiration pool
blank character sheet
rules reminder sheet
handy adventure flowcharts
About BEOWULF: AGE OF HEROES
One of the oldest recorded stories in Western Europe, the poem Beowulf is an epic tale of hero against monster. And then the monster’s mother. And then a dragon.
BEOWULF is a setting and rules set for 5th Edition, designed for duet play – one GM and one player. Set in the world of Anglo-Saxon myth, no deep knowledge of history is required – the themes are eternal and instantly recognisable, adventures occur in the story-world of the Saxons, and we’ve done all the historical reading for you!
BEOWULF presents a host of new and specially adapted rules to create epic and thematic adventures for your lone hero and his or her companions.
BEOWULF features a unique new set of subclasses: The Hero, with subclasses for each ability score. It has BEOWULF specific backgrounds, and unique rules for sea voyages, inspiration, alignment, followers, a new condition and more!
Explore mythic, migration-era Europe and beyond, solve mysteries, and do battle with dreadful monsters.
With writing and rules design from hand-picked 5e and folklore geniuses, and with art from Jon Hodgson and friends, BEOWULF will be a thing of epic wonder. It will arrive on Kickstarter soon!
As we get ready to share The Hermit’s Sanctuary, the free, full-length adventure for BEOWULF, check out this for a bit of fun – a 2 page Hall for a Hero generator! Create your hall, and King/Queen/Ruler who presides over it with a fist full of dice!
We’re making preparations to deliver you the free introductory adventure to BEOWULF! Layout is almost complete!
The Hermit’s Sanctuary is a full-length, free adventure for BEOWULF, showcasing its unique new 5e rules for play with one player and one GM in the world of dark age myth and adventure! Full of encounters, characters, maps, and locations, it’s an exciting introduction to the monster-slaying Age of Heroes!
Don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter to get the link to download first!
Our latest newsletter went out today, and it included a sneak peek at the map for the forthcoming “The Hermit’s Sanctuary for BEOWULF. Check it out:
About BEOWULF
Set in a world of Saxon myth, BEOWULF lets you play 5e with just one player and one GM, in a hellbeast-slaying world of ship voyages, meadhalls and monsters! Find out more here.
We’re working hard to bring you a taste of BEOWULF! We’re making a free introductory PDF, currently titled “The Hermit’s Sanctuary”. Here’s a look at the cover by Paul Bourne and Jon Hodgson!
In BEOWULF, one player and one GM set sail to explore mysteries and defeat monsters, with specially designed additional rules, a new class and subclasses, backgrounds, flavourful setting info for a world of dark age myth, and of course tons of gorgeous art.
We’re also working on some really beautiful accessories. Our friends at Campaign Coins have helped us with these inspiration tokens and a fantastic compass rose! Underneath them, you can see the prototype of the Inspiration Pool mat, made by our friends at Patriot Games. All our accessories are entirely optional. A piece of paper, a pencil, some coins, and some dice are all you need to play.
Find out more about BEOWULF here. Grab BEOWULF dice trays, All Rolled Ups and Art Trays here. Grab a variety of cool BEOWULF merch here.
