Signe, the Bog Witch
Appearance
In her appearance, Signe plays to the storybook notions of how a Bog Witch should look that everyone has come to expect. Her robe and hood are composed of patchworks of burlap and leather, accented with animal fur and bones. Her belt and staff (when she carry it – if not, the hilt of her dagger) are adorned in all manner of hanging pouches and runes and bones and trinkets and animal parts and vials, conjuring up the unsettling mysteries of why she had them and what she can do with them and what all of this means for you. She likes to pretend she’s older than she actually is, and the fur at her back and collar are designed to create the illusion of a hunchback that she does not actually have.
Not to mention, her voice is that of a Disney Princess, rather than their evil stepmother.
Having been a Nordenfiir (Did she stop being? And when?), she has affection for her Svalen markings, which she reapplies in charcoal for emphasis.
Skills and Abilities
AP Bio – Due to the necessity of animal parts for her craft, Signe is an absolute surgeon when it comes to on-the-fly retrieval of organs, flesh, digits, etcetera. If she needs and its part of something’s body, she can retrieve a very good sample of it.
Illusion/Shapeshifting – Signe is able to shapeshift into most animals or create illusions, but it is only truly effective when the target is already experiencing the effects of a hallucinogen. The only true shapeshifting she can manage among sober subjects is that of a shift between her Mother/Maiden/Crone aspects -- ages 17, 32, and her current age, respectively.
Potionmaker/Poisoner – Signe makes potions and poisons and drugs. She does this with local ingredients. She is typically versed enough in recognizing these plants and that to sometimes improvise, should she be in a foreign region.
Age – Signe has been around longer than most. She has a lot of experience and its accompanying insight. However, her body is on the decline – She is not nearly as fierce or strong a combatant as she once was. Really, though, this just means she uses the poisons more.
Witchcraft (Eretejeva Tundra Edition) - Signe is of the witches of the tundra. As such, she is very knowledge in the occult application of many of the native flora and fauna, she knows the old stories and lore of varying interpretations, has connections within her community, and is even versed in localized Nature magic. Unfortunately, this makes her a bit of pariah.
Soul poacher - Though a Nordenfiir by biology, Signe can no longer enter her Svalen-form, as she literally cannibalized her soul for magic.
Personality
Of the two of Vand’s companions, Signe acts more as the cruel devil on Vand’s shoulder. She offers wise council to compliment Doggrave’s, but hers often veers off in the direction of righting injustice usually through vengeful means. As a Nordenfiir and an embittered outcast, she is roused by the suffering of those who don’t deserve it and loves to see painful agony brought to those who do.
Having been intimate of Vand, she holds more of his secrets than Doggrave might. She acts as confidante and support. She loves him, yes, but Nordenfiir are polyamorous by nature – so it’s not a covetous thing.
Biography & Lore
Signe was born into a degree of privilege in Nordegaard proper. Beauty, education, health, the works – She wanted for nothing, and her life was, by and large, mapped out for her as much as it could be. She was not bound to it, mind, by strict traditions – There’s just a way of things. Pretty people orbit pretty people, wealthy people to wealthy people, strong people to strong people. She was all of these, and wound up in the harem of a promising Jorn and Champion.
Signe enjoyed the benefits of her status, despite the sometimes aggressiveness of her host and the microaggressions of the male minions in his flank. They were something she could tolerate because, for all intents are purposes, she had won the game she had been raised to play – these were just minor inconveniences that came with the territory…like weeds in your beautiful garden.
The years would pass, however, and Signe’s looks began to wane. While her peers in her age group would split-off, contented to raise the children they bore, Signe had had none. She was a disappointment to her patron, and was systematically phased out of his rotation, preferring younger models on which he could inflict his impregnation fetish. When Signe realized she had become little more than the harem nurse, she decided it was her time to leave. And so, she did.
Unfortunately, the world had no use for a crone. While she was only 35, her visage was not deemed as pleasant for shopfronts as a younger maiden might have been, and Men would often be appalled that she show any interest in them. Signe took this rejection poorly (Read: Appropriately), turned into a bear, and decided to go live in the woods.
There was a whole year and a half of her life where she never reverted back to humanoid form.
Eventually, she was found and welcomed amongst the nomadic witches that drift about the tundra. Welcomed, initiated, and given new agency, Signe would revert to her humanoid form and begin to right old wrongs that had been bugging her over the years. While never pinned directly to her, that old champion she served dutifully fell quite ill and vomited his guts out at the dinner table. Over the weeks, his male sons all seemed to catch the same pathogen.
She pursued adventure, she killed time. This new liberation too exciting to take in moderation, she burned the candle at both ends, gladly paying the cost of magic because, really – she grew up in privilege. She didn’t understand the idea of finite resources, of lasting consequences.
Eventually, her magic-use had completely devoured her Svalen.
Crestfallen and empty, Signe’s exciting world-tour became something more of a nomadic wallowing in a state of constant mourning, until eventually she would set down roots in a small cottage on a small island surrounded by bogs and otherwise understood to be invested with giant spiders or spider-like demons or whatever.
Still, however, she was no monk, no priest, no saint – She was a human-being with needs, often social. Periodically, she would shapeshift into some version of herself in her younger years and participate in the orgies that these sinful bear-pagans would engage in for whatever excuse they found to make a holiday out of.
This is where she met Vand, in Withereach. He was only 15 at the time, but he was kind, and progressive, and had that little bittersweet darkness and sorrow to him that she had always found so charming. They hooked up, she disappeared, and they would not see each other for another half-decade.
Vand, as a 20 year old, eager to prove himself and yearning adventure, decided what morning that he was going to brave the sinking bogs and meet the Bog Witch. His cleverness and ingenuity got him through bog traps, made short work of some of the peripheral spider-things, and made it through the door – where his feet were promptly bound to the floor.
Signe threatened to eat him, to make him into a pie. Vand scoffed, confident he’d taste like garbage. She remembered him, of course, but what she did not expect was that he remembered her, too. He recognized her despite the years she now war versus the maiden she had been before. It was not that big a deal…or, really, it shouldn’t have been…but it caused Signe to drop her act just enough to be a human being again. There was a reason they had gotten along at the party, and here they were, getting along again.
She let him go, but after a week or so, he visited her again. And then again.
Until, eventually, she decided she would just save him the trip and join in on the adventure.