Velahoondelar's Wagontamers
Velahoondelar hails from distant Turmish. He spends as much time cleaning his ornate breastplate as he spends on necessities like tending his horse, eating, mending and washing his clothes and taking baths. Every morning he carefully applies two horizontal marks on his forehead with chalk, in keeping with the traditions of his homeland.
To his adventuring companions Velahoondelar is a beacon of trouble; his armor is too bright—it can be seen for a mile or more over flat ground—and he cares not for bad weather. Indeed, Velahoondelar welcomes the thundering storms of the North for the chance it affords him to stand naked under the sky and bathe, no matter how cold the wind or freezing the rain. Worse, he will bury small amounts of found treasure once a tenday. Velahoondelar states such burials are offerings to Chauntea, and that doing so will sow the seeds for greater wealth and prosperity in the future. He claims it was this habit that brought wealth to himself and his adventuring companions, in the days when he was a proper wagon tamer in service to merchants plying their wares along The Trade Way and The High Road.
On the Sword Coast, the term “wagon tamer” is understood to mean an outrider that serves a traveling merchant by keeping watch for oncoming threats, and by riding at a moment’s notice to catch and bring under control a wagon whose draft animals have become spooked. Merchants all over Faerun fear the loss of goods, animals and helpers when their wagons go barreling off the road into places dangerous. Thus, Wagon Tamers are expert riders, have the ability to calm panicked animals, and the strength at the reigns to guide draft animals running wild through difficult terrain until the beasts calm and eventually stop.
Velahoondelar could not keep a pair of frightened horses pulling a wagon from falling nose first into a sinkhole, but fate kept him alive as the cart stuck in the hole and Velahoondelar tumbled between the horses to land flat on his armored back. By the dim light shining past the cart, Velahoondelar spied a hungry Umber Hulk making for the horses dangling by their harness. The horrified shout Velahoondelar gave as he drew his sword and charged the Hulk sounded like a muffled battle cry to the outriders who’d given chase, and these same outriders gave shouts of surprise after they’d attached ropes to the back of the wagon and hauled both it and the horses out of the hole.
The scene below revealed Velahoondelar on his back once more, the bulk of the beast atop him, and a hand’s-length of steel protruding from the Umber Hulk’s squat head. None but Velahoondelar know the Umber Hulk stumbled over goods fallen from the wagon in its haste to eat him, his instinct to squat low and extend his sword in a final act of defiance resulting in the beast impaling itself on his blade. From that day until now, whenever an unexpected success occurs or is observed by Velahoondelar, he can be heard to say, “The gods grant victory how they will”
Velahoondelar convinced his fellows to follow him back into the sinkhole by telling them the horses were likely spooked by the Umber Hulk tunneling near the road, and surely more beasts will follow to harass other travelers. Velahoondelar and his companions did not return to the surface until the next morning, but they carried their fresh wounds and newly-won treasure with pride. As well their stories of battle with the creatures of the Underdark and the discovery of lairs filled with the half-eaten corpses of dead travelers.
The caravan arrived in Neverwinter without further incident, but did not move on to Luskan until new outriders could be hired. Velahoondelar and his companions left the City of Skilled Hands a tenday after arriving—this time equipped with torches and gear common to adventurers— and rode straight for the Umber Hulk tunnels.
The Wagontamers number ten men and six women. All are human save for a pair of half-elves from Highmoon beyond the fabled land of Cormyr. Of the humans, all except Velahoondelar are natives of the Sword Coast. They are forever on the move in search of adventure. In the cold months they travel south as far as Baldur’s Gate, while the warm months see them further north on The High Road as far as Neverwinter. (Never onward to Luskan. Velahoondelar sees Luskan as a place of illiterate thieves, selfish wizards and boatmen lacking in tradition and honor, and unworthy of the Wagontamers.)
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