Hermann Çelikyüz

Hermann Çelikyüz is the leader of the Bloody Coin, a mercenary band in the pay of the Porvis house, in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. A big, heavily protected man bristling with weapons, he led the band in the days when Kemp Corvus's Company of thirty came to the Porvis forest house.^{1 2}

The Bloody Coin

The Bloody Coin was a regional company of mercenaries, a mix of old soldiers and brigands. An imperial agent told Kemp that fifty or sixty of them had been hired by the Porvis house two months earlier, which he found suspicious in a house that normally kept its own soldiers. Baron Vermont Porvis said they had been forced to hire them for protection against separatist elves and other threats, since the house trained few soldiers of its own, and complained of the mercenaries' coarseness. His wife, Baroness Ramona, claimed that although the mercenaries took their pay from her husband, they were not bound to him and served other masters.^{3 4 5}

Meeting the company

On the ninth day of the company's march, some twenty-five unbannered armed men came along the road. Their leader, Hermann, asked in whose name the soldiers came and how he was to know they were not rebels. When the centurion Malecris explained that they were legion soldiers with a Corvus, Hermann apologised, saying he had had to ask because of the drow, and rode ahead to the house after Kemp had sharply told him to clear the road.¹

At the house the steward Helmut, a well-kept man in a white shirt who ran the household's affairs, its money, letters and daily order, came out flustered to greet the company. That evening Malecris reported seeing the steward and the mercenary leader talking at a distance, though he could not tell what they said, and that the band, first counted at twenty-two, now numbered more than sixty. One night the mercenaries tried to get into the company's camp by offering drink, and were turned away.^{6 7 8 9}

When one of his men was found dead, Hermann blamed the imperial soldiers and demanded an inquiry; Kemp and the baron both thought it more likely a quarrel among the mercenaries, and who killed the man was never settled. As the company prepared to leave, Hermann's force appeared to number more than seventy, with small groups hidden in the woods. He came with one man to ask why the household knight Kleber had been arrested and whether he had confessed; Kemp reminded him that the real source of their wealth lay with the Emperor and said Kleber would be investigated, and Hermann, saying he had been treated fairly, withdrew. He explained the old blood on him and on his dagger as coming from slaughtering a sheep.^{10 11 12 13}

The fight at the forest house

Hermann's men rose and armed themselves, close to a hundred strong. While the main body threw itself against the legion's shield wall, Hermann came round the flank with a small group of picked fighters. Ephorus, invisible, wounded him in the shoulder with an arrow, and Katherine's first fireball left him badly hurt. From cover he then struck Ephorus twice with crackling bolts of force, wounding him gravely.^{14 15 16 17 18}

Spoiler: The battleRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #19; Starter Setting Guide · Say what you have read

Katherine's owl Turşu distracted Kemp's opponent, and two of her magic bolts struck Hermann in the neck and head; he fell dead. His death sent some of his men running, though others had already slipped behind the legion's line. In the end some fled and some surrendered.^{19 20 21}

On his body the company found elven gold, a magical ring that served as a focus, finer than they expected of such a man, and a separate magic dagger, but no letter. Ephorus understood from these that Hermann had drawn his power in a way like his own. The household knight Kleber had also been found carrying elven gold. Such coins bear a crowned head on one side and a red eagle on the other and are said to be struck for trade with the Empire, the elves using no money among themselves. In the cities of the Da’fat elves, trade in the usual sense hardly exists and money is rarely used, long-term debts and favours counting for more.^{2 22 23}