Hello fellow knights,

I read rave reviews of this adventure and also grim warnings of its deadliness. Sounds like an adventure I'd love to run, but I have a serious story line question for those of you much more experienced than I. Tales of the Spectre Kings features Hengest and Horsa and discusses their fates in detail.

My problem is that Hengest's fate contradicts the GPC. Now, this could be explained by changing Aesc to already be the King of Kent (instead of Hengest) when the Uther GPC starts in 480. In fact, that might be something that has already been changed, considering the Book of Uther calls him the King.

Okay no issue, right? Well.... Spectre Kings tells us the fate of the brothers comes not long after Vortigern meets his own fiery fate at Snowdon. This put us at the early 470s. It seems that Aurelius fought and lost a great battle to the Saxons in 473. The fate of the Saxon Kings however seems to be rooted in a story from Historia Regum Britanniae and its pretty awesome. It would fit in the KAP5.1 timeline well if Aurelius in fact won in 473 and the following years were Saxon reprisal raids instead of "victory" raids.

So what I'm asking is, what would you do in this situation? Would you reverse the fates in 473 and make Aesc King of Kent? Or is there another answer... perhaps making Hengest not part of the Spectre Kings adventure at all and instead a different Saxon? Originally I would have used his brother Horsa, but he is also involved in an adventure in the same book.

If you go by the Spectre King, Hengest dies after the Battle of Conisbrough, 469, executed by Duke Eldol. (Vortigern burns 468.)

(There are actually two battles in 469: Battle of Maisbeli and Conisbrough, which follows right after Maisbeli. The Spectre King mistakenly puts Hengest's capture at Maisbeli and ignores Conisbrough.)

Since the Spectre King is such a nice adventure and that whole Eldol and Gorlois working together to drag Hengest out of the shield wall at the Battle of Conisbrough, while making Book of Uther we decided to use this date for Hengest's death. Hence the GPC Expansion talks about King Aesc. (Unfortunately, the mention of this change seems to not have made it to the Expansion intro, grr. Will have to errata it.)

The 488 date is based on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Aesc becomes King, and hence Hengest is assumed to have died. However, Aesc dies in ASC in 512, not at Badon Hill 518, so why not use the more awesome story if we are going to contradict ASC anyway? So that is what we decided to do.

So, simply change all the references to Hengest post 469 in KAP 5.1 to refer to Aesc instead. So it is King Aesc of Kent being reinforced by the continental Saxons in 469-472, for instance. And simply ignore Hengest's death in 488; he has already been dead for almost 20 years.

Or rather, have 469 event those two battles and Hengest's death, and 470-472 is Aesc being reinforced by continental Saxons. Off the top of my head, looking at the other battles, something like 30x1d6 Glory for Maisbeli and 30x2x1d6 for Conisbrough should do it. Roll 1d20 for each, 1 is a Glorious Death (+1000 Glory) and 2-5 is Death, and extra 50 Glory for seeing Hengest executed.

Thanks Morien.

That will explain that, and even make the ~470 date exactly right, since its a 469 event. I'll change my NPC information to reflect this as I ran 480 with "Prince" Aesc at the Battle of Salisbury because Hengest was still kicking. Not a big change at all. Always good to have these things sorted while I'm still in the first few years of our campaign.