Character Background: Magnus McKracken

The story of Magnus McKracken began while he was a boy living in Karnath. His father, Angus McKracken, was a proud and honorable man. Angus served with distinction in the Karnathian military until a fateful day when he was ordered to destroy a small village that had rebelled against King Kaius III. Angus chose to disobey and was apprehended by the undead soldiers he formerly led. McKracken’s father had long distrusted the skeletons and zombies in his ranks, and often told his son “What is buried must stay buried. No good comes from these abominations!”

Instead of a hanging, the military stripped Angus McKracken of his commission and banished him from the kingdom. Undead troopers tossed the family’s possessions into the street, as onlookers watched and laughed. Though just a boy, Magnus remembered the emptiness behind the glossy eyes of the zombies that brought such shame on his family. Left with very little, the McKrackens departed Karrnath and headed south in a tattered wagon, hoping that the Plains of Talenta would lead to a better future.

Sadly, this was not the case.

Like sharks swarming in a sea of tall grasses, bandits descended on the exiles. Angus tried to defend them, but he was outnumbered and soon fell. One by one, Magnus watched as bandits cut his family down. Only he managed to survive after a blow to the head knocked him unconscious. The boy awoke to the burning remains of the wagon and his family’s bodies.

Drawn by the smoke, a local tribe of halfling barbarians found Magnus and nursed him back to life. Still small, the young McKracken was nearly the same size as his halfling hosts. Eventually, Magnus grew to tower over his fellow tribesmen, but by that time he had learned the ways of the barbarians and had become one of them.

One day, an old halfling in the camp told of a place where skeletal dragons walked with impunity. The other halfings shuddered at the thought. They considered it a cursed place that only a fool would enter. Young and bold, Magnus stood and demanded to know the name of this land. The old halfling looked up at the enormous Human and said but two words: “The Boneyard.”

The next morning, McKracken collected his gear and set out for the place no other tribesman would approach. In time, he arrived at the Boneyard. Slowly, he unsheathed the enormous axe he was carrying and what followed was the greatest slaughter of undead that the Talenta Plains had ever seen. When Magnus returned to his tribe, they revered him as the destroyer of the undead!

Many years later, McKracken found work as a mercenary at a Zilargo-lead excavation site, far from his adopted homeland. The peaceful work of the gnomes was interrupted one day by the thundering crash of fireballs slamming into the encampment. An airship called the Stormcrow descended from above like a fire-breathing dragon. With Tyrna Wyborn as captain of the vessel, the airship rained doom onto the people below. In the end, McKracken and only a few others (including a helpful cleric) were all that remained. Perhaps due to their bravery in the battle, they were spared by the crew of the Storm’s Edge and taken aboard as prisoners. It was as prisoners they remained until an encounter with an unnamed airship led to the destruction of d’Lyrander’s vessel and freedom for McKracken and the cleric. They found passage with the men and women of the airship with no name and remained as crew members aboard the ship.