Sir Osric Cunningham

Osric is a stocky, thick-set farmer from Goldenfields with fresh scars on his face and a pierced eyebrow, knighted by the local lord a couple of weeks before the mist came, for fighting off bandits and saving the lord's daughter. "Just the good and honest thing to do." When the mist took him he was walking in from the farm to ask the blacksmith to start on armour fit for a new knight. The DM wondered whether that blacksmith would ever get the message.

He had a couple of rounds of training and hit a lot of sandbags. He'd beaten some ruffians unconscious and never killed anyone. "I've been a knight for a couple of weeks now, so just getting used to it." He is plain-spoken and kind, good with animals ("a bit of a dab hand"), the only one of us who can't see in the dark, and the one who puts himself between whatever is coming and whoever is small. Sirius, on meeting him: "I like this man. Everything he says seems true, reasonable, and honourable."

The banner

A tattered banner with a bird-like design, which his Uncle Steven gave him. Uncle Steven was a farmer, a teller of tall tales, and the man who taught Osric which mushrooms go in a stew. He talked about "some noble blood somewhere on the lines". The banner was "probably nicked from somewhere". Osric treasures it anyway. He'd wanted his tabard styled after it. When the mist came it streamed out of his pack like a windsock and pulled him to the stairs.

What we know about it:

• The letter we found in the Durst house was headed with a crest. At the Gates of Barovia, carved above "Welcome to Barovia, the crown jewel in the Strahd empire", was the same sigil. Osric unrolled his banner, and it bears it too. "Banner has the symbol of the Strahd House."
• He'd never seen that sigil anywhere else, and he doesn't think he's related to Strahd. Somebody suggested we go and find Great Uncle Strahd.
• At Tser Pool, Osric, who'd once had his fortune told at a fair, drew the Dictator and then the Tempter:

"Ah, you carry an old conquest at your back. Your blood marched beneath that banner." "Temptation is contemptuous of weakness. You carry your banner to the house of the fallen dragon where the shadows do the cruellest work. Cast off temptation. Kneel and answer for your blood, and win an honour that is yours alone."

His answer was the most Osric thing anyone has said in Barovia: "All right. I will."

Our Protection card spoke of "the house of a dragon" too. Wherever that house is, his road and ours seem to run the same way. Since the gate, the banner has stayed rolled in his pack, and nobody in Barovia has said a word about it. See The Reading.

In Barovia

• Death House. He swore to protect Lancelot with his life. He told Fëanor his harpsichord playing was "very nice in this hour of darkness". He shoved the animated armour flat with his bare hands and hit it for twenty-one on a natural 20. He spotted the spiked pit ("Why would you do that? You live here"), took the vermin swarm's bite, and held the dais at the flesh mound until he was nearly down. Then, on his second natural 20 of the fight, he drove his sword into the crystal heart and shattered it. The Cloak of Protection went to him by acclamation: "Yes, you earned it." At the graveside he pointed out that none of us had actually told each other our names.
• The village. He supplied our vampire folklore from his mother's spooky stories. He took on Ireena's escort as "a knightly thing to do". In the crypt he shoved Doru flat and would not strike him, then lowered his sword and asked what he needed, and told the boy's father the truth: "I'm sorry, but he's a vampire, too."
• Strahd's visit. He was the first to fall under the charm. "He is a good man." He went downstairs to say hello.
• The road. A riposte into the wolf that Clover then burned. He skinned it, pristine with a char modifier, and found the cart ruts to Tser Pool.
• The windmill. He held the doorway against all three hags at once, took a nightmare to the head and Morgantha's claws, and hit back hard. Then Morgantha turned him into a frog. (He caught a fly.)
• Lily's withdrawal. He led her on her rope "like a child lead", and ran the test with the pie that wasn't there. He is our treasurer, "the learned keeper of the law", and somebody in this party is carrying twelve torches.
• The orphanage. He checked the unconscious Felix was breathing ("We'll be back, Felix") and vaulted a banister to stand in the shadow demon's way. It put its hand into his chest and took a quarter of his life. He tried his silvered blade on it as an experiment.
• The Coffin Works. He drank the bard's potion against the dead's touch and waded in. "Get off her." With his surge and a natural 20 he hit the spawn on Lily for thirty-two, then forced his own healing potion into her mouth.
• The burning town. The toppled wagon across the church road was too heavy to shift: "Someone's put some bricks in here." He found a lost toddler's parents in the crush ("Stay in school"). In the church he ran the full length to stand in front of Lily, and when a spawn bit him, a natural 20: "Not today. Get off me." He pinned the fleeing spawn twice. To Father Lucian: "You all right, Father?" "Remove these fiends from this holy place, please." "Righto." He killed the last of the six. (Duncan was away getting food at the time, and the table rolled for him.) Then two more natural 20s on the skeletons in the Wachterhaus cellar.
• Wachterhaus. He proposed taking Lord Wachter's corpse as collateral, since she'd hardly attack us while we had her husband. He has seen a stage play called A Weekend at Father Bernard's seven times. He climbed out of the window that opens.
• The festival. He brought Father Lucian forward as the witness nobody could argue with, and said it first: "The Baron has spoken and said that all is well, but all is not well." He asked the Baron, under Sirius's spell, why his son had missed a mandatory festival. In the riot he cut down Lady Wachter's imp with four strokes and his surge ("Oh, my compact," she cried), and then ran for Sirius: "I'm coming, Sirius."

What Barovia has done to him

It turned a knight of two weeks into a veteran. The man who had never killed anyone has now killed a great many things, and most of them were trying to kill somebody smaller. It also handed him a family question he never asked for: why a farmer's uncle's banner carries the sigil over the gates of the devil's country, and what his blood is supposed to answer for.

In his own words

"You a blacksmith?" "Of a sort." "First thing I've got right this evening, it seems."

"I will fight the monster until I die or until the monster dies. And make space for the dog to leave."

"Spikes. Why did someone do that? Honestly, you live here. Why would you do that?"

"It is 8:00 in the morning. I've just struggled to get this little creature not on my pack. I'm not thinking too hard about prophecy at this point. You've nicked something."

"I'm not the smartest man in the world, but I'm sensing a pattern here. People who go into the room with the boy come out with strange memories."

"Some of these people are not gonna go down quietly, so I'll back you up."