The One Eyed Wanderer - Odin

[Medium Sized Model - 25mm Base]

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

A mysterious stranger who wanders the forests of Nordheim, a raven ever-perched on his arm or shoulder. The wanderer is an old man, one who speaks in riddles and anecdotes for the most part, bestowing wisdom as best he can on those who have the patience to listen. Stories of his appearances crop up at villages from time to time, whereby they find themselves in times of peril or crisis, with no answers from the divine. Yet the One Eyed Wanderer will appear, and do his best to remedy whatever ails the village, before leaving into the woods thereafter.

There was a time when the Himlingr family walked among the men and women of Nordheim as equals; before they pronounced themselves as divine, or became drunk on their rapturous powers. In these days, the One Eyed Wanderer was an herbalist, living in a remote cottage in the western reaches of Nordheim, nestled against the forest’s edge with farmland reaching out to his west. There he tended the land with his wife, son and three daughters. They were outlanders, freeholders, answering to no lords or nobles in the untamed wilderness of Nordheim, given a pittance to settle the region which for eons had been marked with superstition of monsters and witchcraft in its alpine woods.

For two decades the family had settled there in their homestead, far away from the war that was plaguing Mayreth’s east, where all troubles began and ended in the acres of land afforded to them. Though it was not from the war that their plight began, but the stars. A violet star wreathed in a strange fell from the heavens six years ago, landing a few hundred yards from the homestead of the Himlingr’s. When their son investigated the strange phenomenon, the aura emanating from the star’s core engulfed him, burning through his skin and bathing him in a violet fire. Though the flames burn as quick as they set upon him, and as quick as they had devoured him, they faded, leaving the agonizing boy wailing on the ground. No herbs or remedies could avail his suffering, and for days the wailing continued, bedridden by the excruciating pain. His skin grew calloused and black, taken by some sort of maleficent growth that was calcifying skin, muscle and bone, starting at his hands and feet, creeping towards his torso. Eventually, his entire body was covered in the blackened calcification, as though he had become petrified by this mystery ailment from the stars. He died thereafter, his organs turned to the same hardened state as the rest of him.

Stricken by grief, the family held a funeral pyre for their only son and brother, though as his mottled flesh burnt, the flickering flames of the pyre gained a purple hue, and a wave of nausea washed over the family as they watched. Under the cover of night, they collapsed in the warmth of the pyre, as the burning flesh of their kin filled their lungs. Days later, they awoke. Yet no hunger stirred in their bellies, nor thirst parched their throats. The only telling of time was the thick grass reaching around them, though barren beneath where they slumbered. Though they deemed it strange, the father aimed for them to continue on in their lives, working through their grief rather than dwelling on it or the peculiarity of their days-long slumber.

Yet as grief settled in their hearts and weighed them down, other peculiarities began to manifest through the Himlingr family. Their youngest daughter, Frøya, claimed the sudden ability to understand and speak to animals, who obeyed her commands and seemingly began to befriend her. Skadi, their middle daughter, was suddenly blessed with the strength of a giant, able to lift an entire ox with ease and bend steel with her bare hands. Hel, their eldest daughter, had begun to commune with spirits, able to reach into the realm of the dead, yet in all her searches she could not find the spirit of her brother. Their father too manifested his own powers, as did his wife, though they were played more cautiously. Yet it took only months for the newfound abilities of the family to ensnare their minds, with the daughters likening themselves to gods, believing that the fallen star was sent by a cosmic force to ascend them, and it had judged their brother as unworthy.

The truth, as their father would come to learn, was far more mundane. For the fallen star was in fact the arcane core of a Flying Fortress in the High Elven land of Leacianus. While the fortress tried to flee in battle, its core teleported, yet was untethered from the fortress it powered, leaving it to crumble. This core was ultimately destroyed when it made contact with their son, and the powers that manifested in them was simply the final burst of Minera’s Breath pouring from their son’s burning corpse, which had absorbed a large contingent of the power. It was through this that their powers were manifested, and the father came to realise that their ascension to godhood was merely an act of chance, not divine intervention.

Though this was years after they had declared themselves as the pantheon over Nordheim, and his daughters would not listen to his pleas to denounce themselves and leave the woods. They were enamoured with the followers they had garnered, and his wife, still distraught from the grief of their son’s death, had long ago exiled herself hundreds of miles away. The revelation of the power’s source left the father disillusioned, lamenting the true purpose of such a seemingly random act. Ultimately, he relinquished his powers, after Hel told him that her and her sisters would do the same. The act brought him great pain, and marred his form as the years of immortality quickly caught up to him. Hel, thus rescinded her promise, having seen the damage inflicted upon her father. Now her and her sisters continue to rule, while their father, no longer referring to his old name of idolatry, wanders the forests and paths of Nordheim, doing his best to sow dissent and disbelief into the populace, in hopes that the dwindling belief of the gods might release his daughters from their eminence.

Yet also, he dwells as a wanderer, a stranger with tall tales, idioms and anecdotes, imparting wisdom and knowledge from the many lives he lived and remembered through his time in godhood. Though now as he sees Hel in the final throes of madness, he has set in motion a series of events that will restore her mortality, or so he hopes, before she can wreak utter devastation on Nordheim, and her own soul.