Embla the Risarvinni

The Greatwall Mountains in northernmost Eruna hide many mysteries of the ancient days, but that people which calls itself the Risarvinnae is perhaps the only one of those mysteries invested in revealing itself. Though an unspoken secret among its immediate neighbors in Yrrkune and Ishia, it has begun more and more to send out scouts to study the wider world; and for the first time to the continent of Farland itself has one of their Aslaug-- demagogue, priestess, lawmaker, and executioner all in one; raised almost from birth to serve the greater good of the tribes-- travelled for such a purpose. Embla is exceptional even among this rarified caste of legalist elites, seeing her life as merely one humble part of the inexorable spread of her people's nonsensical 'one true god' across the world, and the openly-proclaimed goal of casting down the presumptuous so-called deity Vornoth who would claim such a title himself. She is both berserker, intent on bringing ruin to a world festering with disbelief and ignorance, and philosopher, truly believing that only through the death of other societies may paradise at last replace them.

Though every individual Risarvinni shows their shared human and giant heritage clearly, Embla exemplifies it. She stands nearly eight feet tall, with skin the color of molten bronze, unblinking ice-blue eyes, a mane of deep gold-brown, and around and beneath the hides of exotic beasts that barely serve as clothing, a multitude of scars whispering of innumerable horrific battles. Her most prized wound is her mutilated cheeks, ripped open from lip to jaw, for this allows her to unhinge her jaw in the manner of a serpent, and dispel through terror any lingering doubts as to her ancestral inhumanity. Even the most ignorant are not so foolish as to dismiss Embla as a mere barbarian from beyond the hinterlands, for the most potent tool she wields is that of language. Though utterly illiterate, Embla has a natural facility for learning languages, and has been heard speaking both the Great and Common Speech, and Kelevan (albeit in the Davonian dialect) at academic levels of fluency; and she claims equal skill in Low Ishian, the Cen-Cenlan nomad tongue and an unknown speech she calls Nemed.

During a near-fatal encounter with an elder vampire, Embla became bonded with a certainly-magical, possibly-cursed, sword that shares and encourages her disturbing bloodlust. Unsubstantiated rumors from both the Belendale and the Wild Lands talk of great ideological conflicts between the Erunian fanatic and the murderous weapon, now resolved, and aligned towards a new shared goal. Recent reports place the pair travelling along a trajectory that would take them back to Eruna, suggesting that she has come to the end of her pilgrimage, and is now returning to share what she has learned with her people. Given the apparent course she has taken up to this point, it is clear that Embla has been able to examine much of the Farlandic continent first-hand, and has been in the vicinity of a concerning number of tumultuous events in the last few years. What news she intends to take home, and what orders she intends to issue once there, remain as much a mystery as most else in the Greatwall Mountains...

For Embla’s exploits, see the Stained Liberty Series.