You think you’ve looked death in the eye? Wait until you’ve stared into the empty sockets in the skull of a dragon turtle, after it’s capsized your ship and it’s coming right for you. I’m telling you now, you get too close to the Sunless Isle and pirates are the least of your worries. I know you’ve heard these stories before, but have you ever wondered where the Bloodsails got these bones so they could animate ‘em? I can tell you in two words: Haeldar Krakensbane.
That elf was a legend in life, a dragonslayer who fought alongside the rebel elves just for a chance to fight dragons. So he gets himself exiled for his troubles, and sails north with the rest of ‘em. His ship runs afoul of a bloody great kraken, which demands tribute from the fleet. The elves, they’re rightly terrified, and they all agree to pay its price. But Haeldar, he’s not having it. It’s his ancestor, see? Never would bend to a beast. So he seizes control of his ship, and no surprise, kraken sinks it and kills everyone aboard—including Haeldar’s children! You’d think that would be the end of it, but weeks later, as them elves are camped out on the sunless shore, they see a monster on the horizon. It’s the kraken; after it swallowed Haeldar, he refused to die, dug his way up through its heart and out its eye. Now here he is, riding the damn dead thing home.
That beast still patrols the waters of Farlnen
today. And Haeldar … well, he spends much of his
time mourning his lost children, but when the mood
is upon him, he goes back to sea. He won’t force his
own on the hunt, not again—so he boards a stranger’s
vessel, assumes command, and takes it on another
monster hunt. If he comes to your ship, hope you’re
one of the lucky ones, that he takes down his prey
with your vessel still intact. Haeldar Krakensbane
never misses his mark … but the ships he sails rarely
make it home again.
In life, Haeldar Arrael was a Tairnadal of the Draleus Tairn. He fought alongside the line of Vol not because he believed in their cause, but because it gave him the opportunity to fight dragons. Over the course of the conflict, he fell in love with an elf of the Vyrael line, and following the defeat of the line of Vol, he sailed north in the company of his wife and kin. As the story says, when a mighty leviathan threatened his ship, Haeldar put his dreams of glory ahead of the safety of his family. He lost everything, including his own life—but his hunger for victory was so great that he returned as a death knight in the very belly of the kraken, slaying his enemy and animating its corpse.
Personality
Haeldar’s eternal quest for glory is the only thing that distracts him from all-consuming guilt and shame. He's always searching for a greater, grander challenge, something to overshadow his pain. He's the source of many of the great beasts bound in undeath as guardians of Farlnen. Haeldar slays these creatures—serpents, dragon turtles, and his eponymous kraken—personally, and his unique gift animates those he slays; however, he turns control of these sentinels over to living necromancers upon his return to the island. And as the tale says, when he's in the mood for a hunt, Haeldar sets out on board a Bloodsail vessel—but he then boards and seizes control of some other ship, ensuring he doesn’t place more elves at risk in his relentless pursuit of challenges at sea.
Using Haeldar Krakensbane
Adventurers on the water could encounter a vessel that’s
been seized by Haeldar and is in the midst of a hunt—or
they could be aboard a vessel when Haeldar commandeers it, and have to decide whether to fight the death
knight or to assist him and hope to survive his hunt.
Source: Chronicles of Eberron