May the Aesir, the Vanir, and all the other divine beings bless my patrons Todd, Jaina Bee, Ferny, Casey, Dave, and Darius! Truly their honor is great and their virtue impressive!
Bandlaik, rigger and returned einheriar in service to Freya (dreamshade)
Half of all who die a good death go to Valhalla, as modern memory still records. The other half, forgotten by current trends, is chosen by Valfreyja, Freya of the Slain, to join her in Folkvangr. Freya’s many-seated hall, Sessrumnir, lies within that land, the central governing place of that field. Bandlaik lived there for a millennium or more. Time passes oddly in the dream-places, and it was quite long.
In life, Bandlaik was not much different than the many children of the fjords. Sure, practicing seidhr cast aspersions upon him that he might enjoy the rough pleasures of a bottom, but ergi or not, the matter was settled with a series of holmgangs and anyone who watched him fight while a-viking. He often spoke, too, of Odin hanging himself from Yggsdrasil as a sacrifice of himself to himself so as to learn the secrets of the seidh. What harm was there, he argued, in learning and teaching in Glad of War’s own way?
Bandlaik sharpened the blade of his dreams every night, the whetstone of the day scraping down their length with ever-present force. Many mourned when a Slavic warrior caught a lucky strike on Bandlaik’s back during a raid. The seer-warrior lost the use of his legs that day, and rumors flew down too-well-worn ruts to claim that his glorious days ended when the Slav chose not to kill him. The Norseman laughed at these rumors.
Shifting his focus to more domestic martial pursuits, Bandlaik became an expert in fortification and defense, a master at extending the longevity of the few Norse colonies. The Kievan Rus’ felled him when they overran his settlement’s walls and shields by sheer weight of horseflesh. His last dying thoughts seized onto those sharpened dreams of Folkvangr and Sessrumnir, and before he knew it, his soul was snagged upon his queen’s realm, not yet ready to give up the fight and move on to a final reward.
It was good for a while. A long while. Death was everything Bandlaik had hopd it would be, fighting when he chose to, singing when he chose to, the most delicious food and drink he could imagine, available to him with the simple effort of imagining it. Then the angels came.
With a black-winged zealot at their head, angels of all choirs came rushing through the lands of the gods like the very locusts they had sent against the Egyptians. This was no war for territory or argument or glory or loot. It was a far more ignoble kind of war, one fought for purity, which is to say: this was murder wrapped in a war’s clothes and called by the wrong name.
First, Olympus fell, and then Fair Ament. Thor, of course, wanted to fight. Many agreed, but Odin called for a more defensive tactic, a stand at Bifrost Bridge to draw the line, and then fortifications to hold back Heaven’s dogged forces. Bandlaik helped prepare those battlements, and imagined into being the mechanisms that would allow them to surprise the angels with their appearance.
Bandlaik saw Thor ignore Odin’s hornblow call to retreat.
As Asgard withdrew from the Marches as a whole, becoming insular and infected with a centuries-long cabin fever, Bandlaik’s afterlife grew less and less fun. More than once, he considered loosing his bonds to Sessrumnir and moving on to his final reward. He was a good man, and knew he would go to Heaven, and that was why he kept refusing. He wasn’t going to give Uriel the satisfaction.
His malaise was not aided by the trickle of Essence which began to return to Asgard a thousand years after the Crusade and picked up speed a century after that. This Essence smelled wrong, tainted as it was with the same ridiculous and disgusting idea as those of the Heavenly Host who had felled Thor that day. Although Bandlaik was one of the few einheriar that still served the Aesir unfelled, he began to forsake a canny Odin who saw only Essence that could be used against those who would oppress or kill the Aesir.
Bandlaik spent more and more time with Valfreyja, learning more of the ways of love and the valkyrie. The 1970s brought with them the first steady trickle of Essence untainted with purity. Accepting and universalist, this was the mountain stream that braced Bandlaik’s despairing soul. Almost five decades later, he has petitioned his queen to grant him a vessel that he might walk among the mortal dreamers, recruiting new einheriar to fight beside him and furthering the cause of Freyja and Asgard in the corporeal realm.
And, after discovering what the modern world meant by “dungeon”, just plain enjoying himself occasionally.
Corporeal 2 // Strength 5 Agility 3 // Body 20
Ethereal 2 // Intelligence 3 Precision 5 // Mind 6
Celestial 1 // Will 2 Perception 2 // Soul 2
Vessel: Human male/2, Charisma/1
Role: Photographer/2 (Status/1)
Skills: Area Knowledge (Small Town in Scandinavia/3), Artistry (Rope/2), Dreaming/3, Escape/1, Fighting/4, Knowledge (Engineering/3, Farming/3, Bondage/1), Languages (English/1, Old Norse/3N), Large Weapon/4, Sailing/1, Survival/1, Swimming/1, Tactics/3, Throwing/3, Tracking/3
Attunements: Ethereal Connection
Songs: Attraction (Ethereal/1), Dreams (Corporeal/3, Ethereal/2), Nimbus (Corporeal/1, Ethereal/2), Souls (Ethereal/2)
Discord: Disabled*/6 (paraplegic; uses a wheelchair)
* “Crippled” is a slur.
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