Nordic Warrior - Nils Olav

[Medium Sized Model - 25mm Base]

[Presupported with LYS files in 32mm & 75mm Scale]

Orphaned by war and raised in the confines of a dilapidated orphanage, Nils swore an oath of vengeance against the Alimrothi who slew his parents and raided his home, year after year. Now a man, Nils led the resistance against their Alimrothi attackers in his home city of Steadfort, successfully driving them back for a time, before their crushing might and technological superiority left the town almost completely vanquished. After narrowly escaping with his life, he has fled to the west, seeking solitude and guidance in the mountains, rumours drawing him there of powerful gods who have made their home among mortals. Nils hopes their aid might allow their people to reclaim Steadfort and the lost eastern front.

Steadfort was the home of Nils from birth, a city scarred by decades of ransacking from the Alimrothi Raiders, raining death and hellfire from their steel ships of the sky. Like many others, his parents were lost in the attacks, leaving the young child to the mercy of a dilapidated and overcrowded orphanage in the crumbling ruins of a city. In these years, a fiery hatred began to burn in the young boy’s heart, and this impassioned bitterness was passed on to many of his peers within the orphanage, riling them up to become the next generation of warriors when next the Alimrothi would attack. Yet as years went by, skirmishes and blitz raids by the Alimrothi would further dwindle the town’s population, and the orphanage’s, as children were snatched away by the soldiers, indoctrinated into Alimrothi society and sicced against their kin when their loyalty to Alimroth had become clear.

Yet for a decade, there was a tenuous peace, one brought by a cohort of mercenary spellmages whose powers kept the Alimrothi Airships at bay. In that time, Steadfort rebuilt, recovered. Though the threat lingered, a sense of safety returned. Though safety was fleeting, dependent upon the tenure of the battlemages whose presence was only guaranteed by gold. When the gold dried up, or a better job came their way, they would leave, and as Nils predicted, they did. It didn’t take long for the Alimrothi to realise, and wage their war once again on the people of Mayreth’s eastern frontier.

Though Nils led his people in resistance, holding off the menace for as long as they could, with the help of a few remaining mercenaries and the local resistance he had trained, whilst a small cohort searched for an ancient artefact that might keep the raiders at bay, or deter them entirely. Yet even with the artefact, it could only tear ships from the sky so many times before it fell inert. It was several years after this that the Alimrothi became aware of Steadfort’s renewed vulnerability, and launched an all out assault on the city, aiming to make an example of it. In hours the city had been razed, many of its inhabitants engulfed in infernos poured forth by the airships above. Nils himself nearly perished in the halls of his old orphanage, leading out any children he could into the escape passages leading north. When they emerged, he collapsed in defeat at the site of his home, swathed in flame. It had been razed to the ground, and almost the entire populace he had spent his life protecting had perished with it.

Westward he travelled, bringing the children with him to the capital of Broerda, bringing them before the incumbent and complacent king, one who refused to acknowledge the ceaseless pillaging and war raged in the east by Alimroth. For disturbing the peace, Nils was exiled, told to leave Broerda under threat of death should he return. Disillusioned, he wandered aimlessly into the woods northward, only driven by some obscure rumours of town locals, whispers of Gods who had manifested themselves in these woods. He wondered why the divine would walk the land of Mayreth, but do nothing to allay her troubles in the east, but instead cower in the forest like the decrepit king that ruled over him. Hoping to find out, and perhaps sway their minds, he braced himself and journeyed into the dense forests of Nordheim, a place steeped in legend of creatures of old.