Like any fantasy roleplaying game, The Fury of the Northmen can seem overwhelming to beginning GMs and players, especially with the amount of detail about time, place, and the cultures involved and the number of monsters listed in this book. 

So this section will list 50 sample encounter ideas to get you started, broken into 5 categories of PC levels. These encounters can be a springboard into an ongoing plotline or can simply be a random diversion that the PCs run into while they are on their way to the more important ongoing plotline. 

Levels 1-4

• About four wrong turns ago, the PCs got lost in the forest or in the hills or in the mountains. Now they’re completely lost. Unfortunately, the pack of wolves and werewolves that are intending to eat the PCs for dinner know exactly  where the PCs are. 
• Not too far from the PCs there’s an old church, well-loved by the villagers who attend it. Unfortunately, a Hel spider has taken it over and produced an egg sac that looks disturbingly close to bursting open. The villagers can’t attend church, obviously, but none of them believe they can take a Hel spider by themselves. Maybe you, the PCs, can? 
• The PCs are waiting in an alehouse for someone to say, “I need some warriors!” so the PCs can actually go on a paying mission. Unfortunately, someone announces it, but there’s such a mad stampede of other adventuring groups to get to paying customer that a brawl breaks out. PCs have to non-lethally fight their way to the paying customer before someone else gets to him first. 
• While en route to somewhere they need to be, the PCs decide to keep marching after the sun goes down, and are surprised by an ælf patrol—an ælf witch-knight leading a bunch of ælf warriors—who think that now would be a perfect time to capture some slaves for the Winter King. 
• The Wash, on the border of Mercia and East Anglia, suddenly becomes impassable to navigate by boat, because there’s a group of mermaids and corpse crabs who drag down, drown, and feed on every sailor they can catch. 
• A lone farmstead, away off in Devon, is where the PCs find themselves stopping for the evening. The owner and his family seem distraught—and before they can really explain the farmstead is laid siege to by a group of hobs, orces, and a thyrs, intent on killing all inside before dawn comes. 
• A group of local farmers, gathered in a town square or an inn or some other local gathering place, approach the PCs and ask for help: a band of fire drakes are devastating the farmers’ flocks of cattle, sheep, and goats. The farmers offer both silver and practical goods to the PCs if they’ll find the drakes’ nest and wipe them all out. 
• The PCs, on their way north/south/east/west, are caught up in a stream of refugees so big that the PCs have to walk alongside them rather than ride through them. Unfortunately, as the PCs discover, this bunch of refugees has been chosen as prey by a group of redcaps.
• The PCs, mid-mission, are found by an Angelcynn or Viking patrol—the opposite of whichever side the PCs are on—and must fight their way free.
• The Viking ships that brought the Great Army to England are beached and under heavy guard, but somehow that’s still not enough to keep a group of mermaids and blue men from wrecking them. The PCs are hired to put an end to it.

Levels 5-8

• A necromancer has his eye on the PCs as his next set of bodies to turn into náir.
• A group of awakened trees march on a village and start killing all the humans in a miniature rebellion of nature against the tyrant man. 
• The PCs are on escort duty with a fleet of fishing vessels; corpse crabs and mermaids and blue man have been sinking the ships and preying on fishermen and fisherwomen. 
• A changeling has replaced the bishop of a diocese and is slowly warping the True Word into something profane and pro-fae. Unfortunately, the changeling has fooled the human guards of the bishop and has more guards than just humans at his command. 
• An enormous pack of wolves led by a druid, a necromancer, and a wolf-draugr is attacking travelers and refugees trying to flee to the north. 
• The PCs’ commander wants to set up camp for the night on the grounds of an abandoned and ruined Roman villa. Unfortunately, the remains of the villa are haunted by a spriggan and a big bunch of angry corpses. 
• Hunt the demon! Should be simple, right? It’s been raiding the villages along Watling Street near Brixworth. Except that there is more than one demon, and they’ve got wisht hounds with them. 
• “PCs! A bunch of hlaupar went rogue from the battle! Hunt them down and kill them. That’s an order!”
• A 9th level cunning woman, her animated broomstick, her pack of mastiffs, and the mistletoe creeper that has wrapped itself around her hut are proving troublesome to the king’s tax collectors. The PCs are sent in to do the job. 
• Several members of Hræsvelgr’s flock begin taking refugees from the middle of the road and bringing them north to be meals for Hræsvelgr. 

Levels 9-12

• An hour or two back the PCs inadvertently tramped over a grave site. The PCs couldn’t have known—the gravestone is very old and is worn down to a nub by the weather. But the draugr inside the grave is still awake and aware and doing her job, and now she’s pursuing the PCs to punish them for their disrespect. And she’s bringing some friends to help….
• On a longboat with other mercenaries on the way to England with the troops when the longboat gets attacked by something mysterious and powerful. 
• The PCs come across a small village with a big problem: a horde of draugar with a grudge are besieging the villagers. The villagers have put up a good fight, and the draugar are all reduced to 1 hit point, but the villagers haven’t been able to kill them properly, and the draugar keep coming and are beginning to wear the villagers down. 
• In Gyrwum (modern day Jarrow), Northumbria, a monstrum, working out of the monastery’s graveyard, has reduced the village’s population by half, and grown unusually powerful for its kind. 
• It was an ordinary battle, going well for the PCs’ side—and then those damned Valkyrior showed up and decided they needed to not only collect the dead but change the course of the battle. 
• A circle of dangerous stones has appeared overnight, ringing the inn/farmhouse/monastery where the PCs are staying. First person who tried to exit got squashed by one of the stones. 
• A cherub and several saints and some Mercian warriors start pursuing the PCs over something the cherub has been told that the PCs did. 
• The forest moves! A wise one, a shepherd, and a bunch of awakened trees are leading the forest of Hwicce over the Welsh border—to everyone’s consternation. 
• A unicorn-mounted ælf queen and ælf witch knights are conducting a patrol in the same area that the PCs are moving through. 
• Swan maidens, en masse, are flying low over the land, searching for souls to take, and they’re not too choosy about which.

Levels 13-16

• The PCs thought, when they got hired to guard the Mercian supply train as the Mercian army sits outside Nottingham, violently battering at its gates, that they had a cushy—and more importantly, safe—gig. The Viking sortie intent on looting the supply train has other ideas. 
• A royal order comes down from Her Highness herself: finally do something about Black Annis. Should be easy, right? 
• Good news! A barrow has been found, unopened. Should be some easy pickings for treasure. Bad news! The barrow is haunted by a barrow bróga. 
• A high-powered Priest of Ullr and a bunch of only a little less powerful Ullr priests are replaying “The Most Dangerous Game” in the forest near Coleshill and the River Avon. Next up: the PCs! 
• The PCs interrupt a bunch of dísir in mid-ritual, measuring out the lives of men on a loom like the nornir use. 
• The Wild Hunt, with the PCs playing the role of the hunted. 
• Hel’s handmaidens are looking for something in the hills west of Buckingham. Divine Falcons are watching the Handmaidens from the air. A party of adventurers is carefully following the Divine Falcons. And you, my friendly PCs, have been assigned to find whatever is the Handmaidens are looking for and bring it back to London. 
• Big battle brewing on the Yggdrasill side of one of the gates from Miðgarðr to the World Tree: an einheri war chief and a bunch of einheri berserks versus a bunch of lesser jǫtunn and clay flárjǫtnar. Unfortunately, your mission is to get the help of one side for an upcoming battle against the Angelcynn or Vikings—so you have to intrude into a high-powered battle and defeat the enemy of your new friends. 
• “You six! We’re entering the Kingdom of Lindsey. There’s a dragon somewhere along the River Welland who preys on travelers. I don’t feel like being prey today. Go find that dragon and kill it. Move!” 
• A 9-headed lesser jǫtnar and a mortal heiðr are on a rampage across Devon, headed for Exeter. The PCs are ordered to stop them before too many valuable civilians get hurt.

Levels 17-20

• A group of black elves appears in the city nearest to a large battle that will be occurring in the next day or two. The black elves are numerous (perhaps a dozen), powerful, and angry; some mortals have stolen one of the ancient wooden icons of Odin from one of the elves’ largest temples to the All-Father back on Svartálfaheimr. The black elves have tracked the humans back to this city, and during the chaos caused by the Angelcynn and Viking forces marching on the city, the black elves try to find the humans and retrieve the icon of Odin. 
• “Who’s interested in a smash-and-grab raid on Svartálfaheimr? Who wants to get some?” 
• It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World^tm-style joint competition for a named item that’s just been discovered way far up north in Northumbria, on the river Tweed. 
• The party of PCs is on a longboat being rowed and sailed north, to York, to guard or be witness or at least be a part of the coronation of the puppet king of Northumbria. En route to York, the ship is attacked by a greater jǫtunn and her lesser jǫtunn grandchildren, who have reason to believe that something of theirs is on the longboat. 
• Móðguðr is on a mission for Hel, who wants something on Miðgarðr and has sent Móðguðr to get it. She’s cutting her way through Wessex to achieve her goal. The PCs are the most powerful warriors in the Kingdom, so they get sent to stop her. 
• Scouting forces riding ahead of the troops have discovered that the road ahead leads directly into a foul oak. Unfortunately, going around it means taking some rough territory that will critically delay the troops. Can the PCs handle the foul oak so the troops can get to the battlefield on time? 
• For Reasons the PCs have to be on a longboat headed north and west, to the slave market in Dublin—there’s a slave for auction there that the PCs’ boss really, really wants to buy. But smack dab in the middle of the Noisy Sea the longboat is attacked by a kraken—who is a long distance away from its usual feeding grounds. What’s going on? 
• A necromancer, a greater jǫtunn draugr, and a bunch of less powerful draugr have taken control of the cathedral at York and are refusing to yield it to anyone unless the “Heart of York” is delivered to them. Only problem is, no one knows what the “Heart of York” is….
• Reinforcements for the Great Army are overdue, and much needed. But the far-seers say that there’s a sea trǫll (and friends) who are demanding valuables from the ships bringing the reinforcements, or else she’ll destroy the fleet—and so far nothing’s been valuable enough to make the sea trǫll stop. 
• A Yggdrasill Witch riding a hollowed-out statue of the Earth Mother which the Witch is using as a Witch’s Hut has come to Miðgarðr to find a named item. Anyone who gets too close gets blown away.