This was a lesson that the women of the isles learned more intimately than most, and why wouldn't they? The isles promised a hard life for the faithful and the faithless alike, and it was a place where the kaldurhafen feasted on young and old without scruple.

Why would the miracle of childbirth be any different?

To be born as Wiir meant to be born in a world that boasted in no uncertain terms as to how suffering was a virtuous thing, how their struggle pleased the Dark Gods. How truly blessed they were to endure their lot in life, for it meant that those who did survive would inherit the earth as wolves, rather than southern lambs.

This was the only reality they knew, so how could they possibly deny such a patently obvious truth? The evidence was irrefutable; the answer for all eyes to see. They were the playthings of a childish game between the divine, and they knew nothing else. So why would they think to avert their eyes to this fact of life? Why would they question whether one or a hundred women died in a welter of blood during childbirth?

This was natural. This was Wiir.

Dagny was no different, nor could she avoid the consequences of that immutable truth. What she was.

All this to say that she was born in similar circumstances; her mother died like all the rest of those too weak to inherit the world, and so survived in the way that many other children did - by the communal effort of her village, where the women and the infirm all made an effort to raise the next generation of youth in the village of Suytr.

This was something she'd learn was not uncommon. Not only when it came to the risk of death, but also the disdain of life. As her own father had sometimes liked to remind her, in his own pathetic attempts at rationalizing the hurt he was not supposed to feel and could not hope to conquer.

Not that it mattered to Dagny what it was he felt, for whatever pain they shared was vastly outweighed by a father's casual neglect; his own failings was yet another symptom of a harshly individualistic culture that preferred to cannibalize its young rather than raise them as their own. The burden of childrearing was for the community to take responsibility for, and rarely, if ever the parents.

The island of Suður, Dagny's birthplace, was a little more civilized than the rest of the isles, for it boasted the most trade and in turn was influenced the greatest by outside influence. Because of this, they were different from their kin in many small ways. They ate better than those upon the mainland, for example. They also made concessions that others could not afford to, living less rigidly by tradition than the northernmost tribes did.

It was why she survived, in a world that abhorred weakness.

She was too sickly of a babe, the midwives had tutted. Why, look at that pinched face, look at how she rejects milk! Could she be another one chosen by Spotta, they had asked? That was the prevailing logic for any child who was not destined for long life, and who eventually succumbed to one wasting sickness or another; the god of misfortune was always lonely, after all. For who would dare break bread with misfortune?

Better that they take the little ones instead to nurse as their own, rather than a fit and healthy adult.

Most simply viewed it as another price of their faith.

The alternative was a plague, or perhaps an infestation of drukr; swarms of short-lived crop defiling insects that had a way of darkening the sky in the warmer months, always searching for an easy food source. Either way, there was no shortage of rationale to justify ridding themselves of the weak. Why waste the milk?

Thankfully, Dagny recovered. She even thrived, in time.

No longer sickly, she was still a spindly, unassuming thing, and so had to push against her own limitations harder than most. To compensate where she lacked, Dagny found her own niche as a tracker rather than a fighter, and a dexterous hand at the rigging of a ship rather than a shield wall. And while most youth played with sticks in the longhall's training yard in reenactment of a deadly dance, she instead spent tireless hours playing the role of logistician to an indulgent cart driver, who in turn showed her best how to steer unruly kaldabatur through wild tundra.


For all of the countless hours that went towards improving herself, finding her niche with what she had to work with. Adulthood in the lost isles was seen as a privilege, not a right, and even the island of Suður was helpless against such deeply rooted tradition. It was not enough to survive childhood; they had to prove themselves worthy of being seen as adults, as equals.

The Great Hunt was one of the oldest traditions they still practiced, with most seeing it as a way to renew their most ancient of pacts with the gods they worshipped. It was a coming-of-age rite, and it did just that. Those that return from their hunt would return as equals, blessed by The Dark Gods. Suddenly, all the child's play had a deadly purpose beyond the learning of skills essential to survival in their harsh home.

When the day of her trial came, Dagny did not hesitate to walk out into the tundra with little more than her collection of paltry stone tools, an old bow, and two weeks worth of food. That was, only if she ate sparingly. She always made an effort to be useful, to endear herself to others where she could, but all that she ultimately possessed was given out of charity.

It was almost everything she had, pitiful as it was.

But it had been enough.

She embarked upon her trial confident in the fact that she had already been blessed, and had seen her abilities come naturally to her as the years went by. At first she had been honored to be chosen at so young an age, for who else except the precious few in their sagas could say the same? To someone as desperately young as the sixteen year old Dagny, this was a sign. All her struggles had been vindicated since the very beginning. The Great Hunt merely a formality, was it not?

To this day, the origin of her blessing was a mystery; the reason she had been chosen was an even more unsettling question that remained unanswered still.

Whatever the answer might've been, it hadn't made a difference. At least not yet. No matter the source or the unresolved questions, her Gjöf remained the same. She was never to lose her way, and until the ill fated odyssey in her later years, it always led her true.

When had it come to her, exactly? In retrospect, she had remembered a hundred different signs, but never one defining moment until the day she departed her village. When she could finally touch the snow beneath bare fingers and feel in an instant what she felt most her life; the beating heart of an entire ecosystem fluttering under her fingertips. She could feel the rushing of countless icy streams as if they were arteries.

The same way she could hear the melting of the snow thumping in her ears as if was the breaking of some massive glacier. It responded to her touch eagerly, bidding her follow the trail across a frozen landscape and so she followed blindly, guided only by instinct.

To follow a path dictated by the whispering of the ice and the snow.

They had always called her a cold fish.

She had left with a purpose, and her supposed blessing had showed her the way from the darkness of an early morning, beckoning her with each step to discover what it was that the gods had wanted to show her. Why they had chosen her of all people. The gift she had came with a price, and all Wiir knew that a price would always have to be paid, and so she went willingly.

Many of her peers were committed to performing great deeds during their Hunt, while others had no objective beyond surviving long enough to prove themselves worthy of adulthood. Dagny's task was different altogether, and it had been chosen for her; the lone footfall through the depths of a harsh tundra winter was purposeful, driven onward by the sounds of trickling water, the echo of her snowshoes beating in her ears, and the cry of a whistling wind.

One night she finally found her answer, inside of a cave tucked in one of the many coastal cliffs of Suður's stony shores. Utterly unremarkable in everything except for what was found within. The woman she had found in that cave - who had brought her there - lay in deathly stillness, and yet spoke all the same, referring to herself as a prestsfrú and a worshipper of all the gods, without exception or exemption.

Was it any surprise that Dagny found herself in awe?


Those who did remember found little reason to speak of it, and Dagny herself cared even less than they did for idle reminiscing. There were far important things to do than dwell upon past mistakes that belonged to another, younger version of her. So very haughty and full of pride. So desperate to believe herself chosen by a cause she hadn't quite understood, at least not then.

Her humility found at sea had yet to arrive, so instead she succumbed to juvenile hubris.

Dagny had found herself to be a commodity, for her ability to never lose her way attracted attention from many Æðri who coveted her skills at tracking and scouting; she was a well-trained bloodhound for all who desired her services, and she quickly learned to become a capable navigator at the sea, as well.

Of course she still paid obeisance to her newfound tutor, always on one secretive task or another that left many confused and wary of where this strange young woman had disappeared to for months at a time.

She had not told others of who she had met upon her Great Hunt, not even her own kin, and so left them with little other choice but to fill the unknown with wild speculation and gossip. The young woman had been far too giddy and enthralled with the seduction found in personal, discreet tutelage to divulge the true identity of the prestsfrú that she'd met all those moons ago.

Did she even understand it herself? Why she continued with this taboo relationship?

Perhaps she did, but perhaps not; her willingness to see herself as unique blinded her.

The fact remained that these clandestine meetings and tasks continued. Uninterrupted by logic, reason, or even discovery. Dagny had wondered about the last part, of course. Why wouldn't she? The reasoning behind her mentor's refusal to leave the sanctity of seclusion had always been odd, but no explanation would ever be offered. Nor one ever freely given.

Then again, she did not question too often. The motives of another was rarely another Wiir's business, so her silence in the matter was not too shameful of a thing to admit. Not when she was always rewarded for that silence, in both knowledge and continued favour. These were things she always lacked in her life, until now. More than even gold or blustering renown.

For a civilization that had always embraced a tepid, stagnant ignorance, the opportunity to learn more of their world was intoxicating. The chance to transcend these limitations was a gift in of itself. Especially since she possessed neither the confidence nor the strength of her kin to force her way into the echelons of Wiir society.

The means of proving herself to her people and her faith through conventional means never appealed to her in the slightest, and so she was more than happy to follow this alternative path that her newfound mentor had laid out for her. Even if it meant straying from the tenants of her own religion to do so.

Still, all things come with a price.

The lost voyage of Súfko was that price, and why wouldn't it be?

She had been sent to join on a task for her mysterious benefactor, after all. And the old, dark gods knew it.

So she went to sea as a navigator to a fleet of four ships, intent on pillaging the mainland.


The kind of scars that forever changed how she viewed what she had left behind; the little cuts of doubt, the wounds of bitter truths, and the fractures in the walls of past convictions. All these things were left upon her skin as a lasting testament, and could never be healed as the scars of a body could be healed.

Her physical beauty remained, but what lay underneath was a new face.

A face that few could truly see, and none could predict.

The kind of damage that forever changed how she viewed the old world she had a neat, tidy place in. Those little hints of cynicism that would peek from all that scar tissue from time to time to reveal something ugly and hateful; the bitterness of living a lie she knew to be false. Many things can happen to a person when separated from the only reality they lived.

Dagny had changed, in some ways irreparably; they all had. All who survived the voyage of those four ships who had left to distant lands were changed, in one way or another. Only a couple dozen left of a Hæfurkappi twice that number upon their departure had returned to the lost isles. Those who were young were now old; those who were naïve were now impossibly jaded. With lessons learned and scars earned.

And as was customary of their people, there was little consolation to greet them.

There was storytelling, however. For a people with very few written words they still loved their stories greatly, and they referred to these stories as efra - and so told the efra of those who had returned home from a lost voyage. So many stories, so many tall and impossible tales, so many fantastic feats, so many untruths.

There was even a segment all for Dagny; the navigator who returned as the master of the crew that remained, and who could have expected such a thing? She was certainly not the first choice, nor the second, nor even the third - yet there she was - leading her own Hæfurkappi of what remained from Súfko's voyage.

Another fantastic detail of the story, to be sure. She could not blame them. Her people were of a wild, often unconquerable breed; their discipline had always been questionable and the strongest ruled through a unique brand of violence. This lanky woman was neither strong nor particularly prone to violence, so why her? Why indeed?

There were even some retellings of the efra to explain this.

She had bewitched them, and why not? Whether it was through her own personal charms or through the mastery of their great new longship they had brought with them, capable of fielding nearly forty crew and a broad hold specifically for cargo; some bewitching tale had to be spun for the benefit of a people so mistrustful with what strayed from established truths.

So many lies were spoken, because of that.

They had to make it make sense, and that's what made them so easy to control - like cattle, rather than humans - and why their Dark Gods swayed them with such simple words. Dagny could see it so clearly now.

How they were asked to believe, and how they had rushed to do so. All without a single thought of their own.

All for what? Some promise of a wonderful afterlife? A life without all the cold, without all the hunger, without all the need? Where existence was good and sweet and uncomplicated, because how could they possibly live a life where there were complicated answers to be had?

So yes, she was bitter. To say the least.

How could she be anything else upon discovering how so much and yet so little had changed after all those years abroad? How her mentor and dear friend had abandoned her; had not even left any hint of where she might have went, and so made it abundantly clear that she had not expected Dagny to return at all.

She didn't stay long in Suður, however. Leaving only a year after she returned.

Most notably in the wake of an attempted coup by several groups in the capitol of Eyrr, with the conflict having seen the streets awash in the blood of multiple clans; including Æðri and prestsfrú alike with little prejudice of who fell underneath the axe or sword.

Whatever might've happened that night, little came of it in the aftermath; those responsible had not been victimized in return, nor were they rooted out and punished, with the people of the isles for once preferring peace instead of a cyclical spiral of violence that would have seen hundreds dead.

Still, she found it best to leave.

The land of Sund was not terribly settled save for some coastal villages upon the southern tip of the region, and they were always willing to take in strong, healthy Wiir without too many questions. Here, Dagny and the remainder of her crew from the lost voyage found a new home that welcomed them unreservedly.

Honestly, it didn't come as any surprise that Sund welcomed the odd two dozen warriors who had strong hands and healthy arms with which they could help with the summer's ploughing of their village's rocky, hard earth. For a time she was even content in this simple, unquestioning life; the acclaim she had earned from her stories far outweighed the more unappealing and much more recent events.

But would she ever, truly be content with this?

A life of tribulations and what seemed like endless trials did not endear one to a peaceful, simple life. Not to an atheist and attempted revolutionary, certainly. But the land of Sund had welcomed her and so she tried in her own way in the years that followed to help them. To do what she tried to do her whole life:

To make change, to prove to her people that they were worthy of change.

That they could change.

Otherwise she would be forced to admit what she had learned during her tutelage with the strange prestsfrú, and upon her long voyage. She would be forced to confront the reality that their way of life was founded upon a sad, jealous lie, and that her people were ignorant and violent at best.

At worst they were inconsequential.

HEXCODE:#ec9754