Dagny the Unbound

Biographical information

Birthplace Suður, The Lost Isles Born Died Age 26 Home Sund, The Lost Isles Sexuality Pronouns

Physical description

Race Nordwiir Sub-Race Gender Female Height 6'4 Mass Lanky Hair color Blonde Eye color Chilly blue Skin color Ridiculously pale

Political information

Affiliation(s) Occupation Æðri Clan(s) Caste Domain Masters Apprentices Alias(es)

Out-of-character information

Writer Feryke Created on Avatar https://www.artstation.com/kme

By the accounts of all, Dagny was all that one might assume - and more besides - from a Wiir living in the far southern reaches of Eyjarnar, for she was blessed with all the things one had come to expect from her ancestry; the most prominent example someone might point to was the existence of her golden tresses, almost a platinum in coloring. Typically braided and held in a loosely knotted ponytail.

They were a pleasing contrast in the framing of those intense blue eyes, signifying her as unmistakably Wiir to those who held portents within such little details.

What was unmistakable to all, prophetic grandmothers or otherwise, was how she most certainly stood at a height that marked her as a woman entirely unlikely to have been born upon the continental mainland.

Nobody amongst her kin scoffed at the fact that she stood proudly at six feet and four inches, nor did anybody think it passing strange, for it was normal enough for even the women of the lost isles to aspire to such lofty expectations.

And tower as she might over the multitude of their sad, sparse crops that grew like mushrooms in the warmer months, it was still a height that lent little credit towards physical intimidation. The gaunt, harsh planes of her face and unassuming features gave little indication of an unyielding warrior.

This fact was more surprising to others of her kind by far.

For she was never destined to walk the simple path of embracing her martial birthright; to claim it through overt violence and effortless belligerence like so many of her peers, who had in turn mocked her where she lacked, and held little esteem for this inherent failure that she played no hand in the causing of.

No matter what, there was also little to be done about the way her hands and skin always seemed to shine an unbroken porcelain. More unfortunate still was how it made her appear perpetually fragile in a world that abhorred weakness, devoid of callouses found in hard work in a world where few men or women had the luxury of not knowing what those marks left upon one's body meant.

What it had taken to earn them. The kind of life spent laboring over unyielding ground and fending off the nearly ubiquitous permafrost from their pitiful crops, something that so often left a permanent testament upon the old and young alike.

Proof of hardship lived each day for every day of their short lives.

Where her people found a degree of morbid satisfaction in these scars upon their skin, a testament to their pride in suffering as their people so oft suffered, she only saw further proof that her people should find ways to thrive without the steep price the harshness of their cold, barren lands demanded.

Not that she voiced such petulant thoughts aloud, not when her kin and others of their village saw things otherwise. Most especially not when they made every excuse for what she lacked; the girl was a southerner, was she not? And didn't all Wiir already know how soft their brethren of the coasts were? How worldly and naïve in the ways of customs and tradition?

Yes, she was; and yes, they did. They had never been as blessed as the Wiir of the mainland, nor had they ever been granted the same favour by the dark gods of the isles. Their blessings were weak, for their faith was weak.

So they believed. And for these reasons did the people of Sund decide to ignore her odd features and her idiosyncrasies, and told themselves that this Dagny was simply of an alien nature. Yet another example of a Wiir disconnected from their roots, and would live or die by the grace of her kin regardless.

This was how her people made an allowance for weakness and frailty, better than to cast a pair of capable hands into exile as some of their neighbors were inclined to do. Perhaps had she sought the path of a prestsfrú, and found purpose in the cradle of faith, all these things might have been overlooked with far more tolerance.

However, it was never to be. For she seemed to be as ambivalent about the gods as she was vain about her own handsome looks.

Perhaps she once had faith in a childhood where everything seemed so very simple, but that childhood was a very distant memory now - and one estranged from her heart by the cruelty of living in a world where dark and old gods expressed their favour and disdain alike in fickle, capricious ways.

Dagny's Gjöf As with many children of the Wiir, Dagny also possesses a blessing, a boon known as her Gjöf and an indication of her favour with the Dark Gods of the isles. This was something that was supposedly granted to the young girl as she set out upon her own trial to prove herself worthy of adulthood in a society so intent on their old, outmoded ways. This was referred to as the Frábærveiði; the great hunt.

This came in the form of being almost supernaturally talented at tracking; most notably when it came to feeling the faintest tremor underneath her bare fingers upon laying them onto the ice and snow and little rushing rivers of her home.

She could feel the ice melting from an impossibly distant campfire in the same way she could feel the pawing of the snow by countless little feet finding their burrows made in the earth.

Was it any wonder why Dagny possessed a soul that was destined to be torn between the reality of her culture and the potential she saw in her people? And from root to stem she remained conflicted about a great many things, at times she even felt at odds with herself; so often did she play two roles instead of one. Wherever they converged, disaster had always lain quietly in wait.

The same way the kaldurhafen of the skies circled dying prey, waiting for their fill.

Those who knew her well could see where the facets of this dualistic existence diverged; the part that spoke of lofty ideals and motivations and a destiny not yet defined by the simple, orthodoxic lives of their forefathers was the one she wore almost exclusively in private, only showing itself in the company of friends and those whose confidence she held dearly. This was a side of her that gave way to the earnest, yearning optimism of a woman who truly believed the words she spoke, regardless of whether or not she was greeted with easy ridicule.

There was a passion behind those blue eyes of hers in those quiet moments; she believed, truly believed, that if others could see with the same clarity as she did, then they would come to the same conclusions. That they could see as she did how the circumstances of their birth and faith in fickle gods did not mean they could not strive for more, that they could break free from the stagnancy of this way of life they so stubbornly clung to like children, ignorant and so very afraid of a future not defined by tradition and repetition.

To seek more meant looking past the familiarity of their world; of their gods.

But honesty was often unwelcome, and dreams were a brittle thing in a reality so easily determined by casual violence and superstitious devotion. It was more than that; it was dangerous. Dagny knew better than to speak openly about her atheistic beliefs in a community that dreamt little and questioned even less. Any degree of admission to the kinds of heretical thoughts she possessed carried an explicit threat of exile, or worse yet. The prestsfrú of their isles punished with the same zealotry as the dark gods they served, and they were always watching.

It was why she concealed this side of herself so meticulously; the part that her community and people would have shunned without a moment's hesitation. What they saw of Dagny in public was the disguise she so often wore, hidden beneath layers of responsibility and obligation to her community as well as her people.

What did it matter so long as they prospered?

She came to this conclusion eventually, but not without a great deal of personal turmoil over the years. Only with age and lived experience did she learn a more subtle kind of pragmatism. The rationalizations that allowed her to accept that their people's change might have to come from within; for the revolution she sought could not possibly hope to survive against the willingness of her kin to confront all of their life's problems with bullheaded ignorance.

Yet, no matter what she initially thought of their outmoded, brutal culture, nobody could deny how effortlessly she adapted to the Wiir tenets and to the way of life she once scoffed at. The failed expedition that saw Dagny cast adrift for nearly three years only served to cement the metamorphosis.

She boasted when she had to, walked with a swaggering arrogance in the way that most warriors did, and no longer fell victim to the frowning and lamenting and brooding she was once so relentlessly teased over. What few scars she possessed, she now wore shamelessly upon pale skin. She learned to hide her doubts well, for the years in becalmed waters had left scars of their own; the kind of marks that did not have to join the ones displayed upon her flesh to leave behind permanent damage.

They often said that the merciless sea was the finest anvil for an untempered youth, and that the waves and the wind was the hammer wielded by Uratash.

Dagny knew it better than most, the odyssey had sharpened her resolve into something edgy, deadly.

She was once a mystery; her survival in a society that loathed nonconformity was a puzzle begging to be solved. After she returned, that mystery became an enigma that few could reliably guess at. Few trusted her. Those initially under the delusion that she was somehow more tractable in the wake of her apparent submission to tradition were promptly disabused of the notion.

Even when she could confidently boast with the best of the warriors of her village Æðri, or command the loyalty of her own small crew, or be entrusted with important tasks; the keeping of the peace; the delivery of correspondence; the presiding over impromptu court judgements and property disputes, it still wasn't enough.

Not for those who whispered with suspicion and envy.

What reason was there for anyone to trust such an intensely private and contradictory woman? Their cynicism, fueled by their own biases, was nonetheless a sensible stance to take. She hated them as much as they hated her, and those who eventually fell victim to their own carelessness were exposed and branded as fools, one by one.

Only when they learned that her newfound arrogance also harbored an ambitious sort of opportunism, as well as a calculating mind that waited patiently to repay old slights, did they finally grant this strange woman a reluctant measure of respect.

The acknowledgment, however late, had helped her stand a little taller, and she proceeded to ruthlessly take advantage of this concession to lift what the saga of her lost odyssey had started into greater heights still.

How odd of a fate for a woman known as 'The Unbound' to aspire towards the title of Æðri in a land that was not her home, with people that were not her kin. But she clearly had a goal, despite it being known by few, if any.

Like an innocent game of Jhakr to be played with friends, they all waited on her next move.

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