Meet Kargun Stonevein
Kargun Stonevein, an orc paladin with a shovel across his back, has been part of this world since before The Saga began.
He was once a man who measured justice by the enemies left standing. Now he measures it in graves dug, wounds bound, tempers cooled, and burdens carried before they break someone else.
Kargun is a secondary character through the early books, but never a minor presence. He is one of the people who helped Rishi understand that mercy is not only the hand that stays a blow. Sometimes it is the back that keeps lifting after everyone else is tired.
In Book 1, Mercy and Wards, Maeril and Rishi find him outside Beregost, holding together a refugee camp that is sinking into mud, sickness, and bad water. He has no grand solution. He has a shovel, two hands, and the stubborn conviction that being unable to save everyone is not permission to abandon the person in front of him.
That is Kargun at his best: large, tired, practical, and already reaching for the next weight.
From Vengeance to Glory
Kargun did not begin as a merciful man.
After his younger sister was killed, he swore the Oath of Vengeance and spent years hunting raiders, necromancers, and outlaws along the Trade Way. He became very good at finding someone to punish. The oath gave his anger direction, but it never taught him what to do after the sword fell.
That certainty began to fracture when he met Grandmother Jarna, an undead abjurer trying to preserve the minds of people consumed by undeath. Kargun first saw a monster. Then he saw her work: restraints instead of executions, names kept in ledgers, prayers spoken by mouths that should have forgotten them.
For the first time, his vengeance bent toward protection.
When Rishi, Elisa, and Silent-Quill came to Jarna’s mausoleum, the argument became a battle. Kargun stood against them. Elisa’s dawnfire destroyed Jarna, Quill’s arrows broke through Kargun’s defence, and Rishi brought him to his knees.
Kargun expected the killing blow.
Rishi stayed his hand.
“You sought to save,” he told him. “Now save yourself.”
Kargun laid down his weapon and asked to be shown how.
At the table, that choice changed him from an Oath of Vengeance paladin into an Oath of Glory paladin. Glory, for Kargun, was not applause or conquest. It was the courage to become an example worth following: to use strength openly, accept the harder burden, and leave other people standing taller.
As the story developed, that idea became his own vow: the Oath of Bearing. Kargun travelled south without sword or title, worked in an Ilmateri hospice, buried plague victims, and learned that strength could hold without hurting. The hand that had reached first for a blade learned the weight of a shovel.
He no longer seeks redemption as a prize he might someday earn.
He practices it as work.
D&D Build
Kargun began in the original campaign as an Orc Paladin with the Soldier background. His first subclass was the Oath of Vengeance; after the mausoleum, his change of purpose was represented mechanically by the Oath of Glory.
His current 2024 rules reconstruction uses the Oath of Devotion as the closest available expression of that later life, while the story names his personal vow the Oath of Bearing.
At 5th level, his ability scores are:
STR 18 · DEX 8 · CON 16 · INT 8 · WIS 8 · CHA 15
His Soldier background gives him Savage Attacker and training with smith’s tools and a dragonchess set. At 4th level, he takes Charger, raising his Strength to 18 and turning his instinct to move toward danger into part of the build.
He fights with a greatsword and the Great Weapon Fighting style, using Graze mastery to keep pressure on an enemy even when a blow does not land cleanly. His javelins use Slow mastery, helping him control who can reach the people behind him.
His Orc traits give him Adrenaline Rush, Darkvision, and Relentless Endurance. The last is especially Kargun: when he should fall, he remains standing—not because he cannot be hurt, but because someone still needs him in the way.
Mechanically, he is built around strength, endurance, movement, healing, and protection. Narratively, every version of the build asks the same question: what happens when a man made for vengeance decides that his strength belongs to everyone carrying too much?
If you’d like to meet Kargun in the story, you can find him in Book 1 of *The Monk & The Witch*:
Read the chapter on the Saga’s website
