Rage

At a glance

Rage is a towering human soldier whose fury, thunderous drums, startling charisma, and hard-won flashes of conscience make him the company’s most overwhelming presence.

Build overview

• Rules framework: 2024 core rules
• Species: Human
• Classes: Last confirmed split Barbarian 3 / Bard 1; fifth-level class choice pending
• Barbarian subclass: Path of the Berserker
• Background: Soldier
• Starting ability scores: Strength 16, Dexterity 14, Constitution 14, Intelligence 8, Wisdom 8, Charisma 14
• Origin feat: Savage Attacker, granted by the Soldier background
• Human bonus Origin feat: Skilled, granting proficiency in Deception, Performance, and Persuasion
• Skill proficiencies: Athletics, Deception, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Performance, Persuasion, Survival
• Languages: Common, Common Sign Language, Elvish
• Current weapon masteries: Greataxe and longsword

Advancement

• Character level 3: Multiclassed into Bard after two Barbarian levels, expressing Bardic Inspiration and spellcasting through drums worn at his waist.
• Character level 4: Returned to Barbarian for a third level and entered the Path of the Berserker.
• Castle Avernus: Endured overwhelming supernatural terror at the impossible dinner; no continuing mechanical penalty is recorded.

Appearance and personality

• A massively built, weathered human with dark hair, a heavy beard, a fur mantle, and the bearing of a veteran soldier.
• Blunt, loud, confrontational, and quick to turn instinct into action.
• Smokes despite a hacking cough and treats intimidation as a form of introduction.
• Claims to seek work that will make the world better, even as fear and appetite repeatedly test what that promise means.
• Has added a performer’s rhythm to his physical force, using drums, stories, and unexpected charm alongside rage and steel.

Portrait

• Primary reference: Rage Portrait
• Canonical status: Visual baseline for Rage’s face, hair, beard, build, fur mantle, rugged equipment, and signature greataxe.

Signature abilities and equipment

• Channels the Path of the Berserker into direct, relentless aggression with heavy weapons.
• Uses drums for Bardic Inspiration and spells, bringing supernatural force to performances that are rarely subtle.
• Carries a greataxe currently enhanced by Carver’s +1 infusion.
• Bears a faintly red-tinted Sun Blade, a radiant weapon whose unusual color remains unexplained.
• Wears a gleaming armor shirt and carries a Shield of Expression and Instrument of Illusions acquired in Martira Bay.
• Still wears the crude portrait-cape he cut from a Castle Avernus painting. His remaining possessions are recorded in The Company’s Reliquary.

Important bonds and loyalties

• Ignatius and Carver — companions who have survived Rage’s worst decisions as well as his fiercest protection.
• Captain Snowmane — captain of the River Dancer, romantic connection, and the person who helped Rage give his dead proper rest.
• Hyskosa — freed seer who has used Rage’s blood for visions and now warns him when vampires draw near.
• The Keepers of the Feather — the raven order whose oath gave Rage a cause larger than appetite or employment.

Defining moments

Roots in Darkon — Sessions 1–7

Rage arrived in Rivalis through drink, violence, and a catastrophic shared vision. He survived a bat-shifting attack, allowed living plague matter to merge into his hand, and answered the dangers of the Crystal Gardens and Richten House with brutal immediacy. His appetite for trophies and his willingness to act before understanding began here, as did the claim that he wanted work capable of making the world better.

The Keepers and the falling Shroud — Sessions 8–13

Rage discovered bardic power in the drums at his waist, joined the Keepers of the Feather, and received a prophecy that the dead would haunt the trophies chained across his chest until granted rest. Fear nevertheless drove him toward further mutilation and needless harm, most painfully when he amputated Buddy’s arm without proof of infection. He carried that burden onward as the Shroud consumed Rivalis.

Castle Avernus — Sessions 14–19

The Book of Names revealed Rage’s forgotten arrival in Darkon, while the castle’s impossible dinner broke even his courage. He answered by fighting through Azalin’s guardians, turning a treasury portrait into a cape, claiming the red-tinted Sun Blade, and freeing prisoners from the Beast Prison. By the time a wounded unicorn made his cursed trophy chain vanish, the weight of what he carried could no longer be dismissed as decoration.

The River Dancer and Barovia — Sessions 20–27

Rage formed a romantic connection with Snowmane and persuaded her to carry the company to Barovia. Together they performed funeral rites for the souls bound to his trophies, ending the curse rather than merely escaping it. Barovia restored the memory that Rage himself was a discarded creation, even as a rat-swarm infection and the killing of a captured Yester Hill druid showed how unfinished his struggle with fear and violence remains. In Vallaki he rejected Fiona Watcher’s praise of Strahd, broke the preservation of her dead husband, helped destroy the cult beneath her house, and then tortured its surviving participant until the broken ritual twice rewarded him with unexplained power.

Current status

Rage questioned Two Hundred Summers about Strahd’s invitation, then helped open Rictavio’s wagon under an illusion. He commanded the escaped sabercat to flee and pursued it through a fence; Ignatius ultimately calmed it. The power that rewarded Rage’s cruelty and his rat-swarm infection remain unresolved. His selected bastion rooms at Richten House are the Barracks and Garden. See Session 30.

Goals and unresolved questions

• Discover who created him, why he was discarded, and what Darkon took from his memory.
• Identify and treat the infection left by the rat-swarm creature in Martira Bay.
• Decide what kind of protector he intends to become now that the dead bound to his trophies have received their rest.
• Identify the power that rewarded his cruelty beneath Lady Watcher’s House and determine what it changed or demands.
• Understand what his connection with Snowmane means now that the River Dancer has carried the company into Barovia.

Selected scenes

• Darkon Party Portrait — Rage stands with Carver and Ignatius in the company’s original group portrait.

• Rage and the Reversed Waterfall — Screaming Cheese carries Rage into an impossible vision.

• The Weight upon the Chain — a crone pronounces judgment upon the trophies chained across Rage’s chest.

• Mercy Born of Fear — Rage faces the wound his fear compelled him to inflict on Buddy.

• The Book That Remembered Rage — Rage finds his forgotten arrival preserved in the Book of Names.

• The Red Sun Blade — Rage claims the red-glowing blade in the lower laboratory.

• A Quiet Cabin Accord — Rage and Snowmane share a private moment aboard the River Dancer.

• Rage Lays the Chain to Rest — Rage and Snowmane release the bound dead through funeral rites at sea.

• Voss Remembers Mordenkainen — Rage witnesses the return of Darkon’s stolen memories after recovering his own.

• Twig Blight Ambush — Rage’s thunderwave tears through Strahd-aligned blights in the Svalich Woods.

• Book Club was Fire — Fiona’s magic forces Rage into flight while he struggles against her control.

• The Hunter and the Portrait — Van Richten has removed his disguise and recognizes his friends Alanik Ray and Arthur Sedgwick on Rage’s portrait cape.

Explore Rage’s complete visual chronicle →