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Name: Frygga Fears-None
Race: Nord
Age: 30
Birthsign: The Warrior
Family Origins: Ivarstead, Whiterun Hold
Appearance: Frygga is of average height for a Nord around 6 feet even, give or take, with unkempt dark auburn hair that she keeps shaved on the sides and tied behind her head to prevent it from interfering with her grim work. Though tall, she is not lanky, with a well-built chest and iron thews on her arms and legs from a lifetime spent doing physical work, bloody or otherwise. Her skin is pale and scarred where a thousand beasts or men have tried to spill her guts. She looks less than half a woman, fit to be a wife, and looks over half as much a wolf, half-feral and insatiable. Her icy-blue eyes are sullen and her looks predatory. She probably would not be considered attractive by anyone except Hircine himself or maybe a wolf or bear, semi-feral as she is. This matters little to Frygga as she eschews the typical trappings of beauty such as makeup and jewelry (aside from, perhaps, the occasional bone taken as a trophy and worn in the ear or around the neck). She does not totally shun affection or kindness however, but merely shows it with the same openness and lack of shame that suits one unaccustomed to polite society or its norms. She doles it out when and to whom she sees fit and not a moment earlier or later.
Despite her openness with affection she has not experienced a meaningful emotional relationship before, her previous encounters have all been purely physical- ways for two beings to work out the feelings of mortality and being before they face death the next day.
She moves with an easy lupine gait that speaks volumes about the type of person she is and the work she engages in. It's the tread of someone who is hunted and hunting. Confident but careful and wary, with a coiled strength that comes before a leap onto the neck of prey.
Of some note is that due to her upbringing and lifestyle she never learned to read or write, but can count. Mercenaries have to count their gold somehow.
Her voice matches her physical appearance. It is harsh and grating, easy to be heard over the din of battle, the thick Nordic accent of someone who does not spend much time in civilisation, interacting with finer folk of better breeding. This is not to say her words are always harsh or hostile, just that the voice who speaks them is. Whether the words themselves are coloured by the voice that speaks them is up to the listener to decide.
Personality: Wild and fearless, with a seemingly insatiable thirst for combat, Frygga appears on the surface to be the prototypical Nord warrior. But, much like the Nords themselves, Frygga is a study in contrasts. Her usually chaotic and strident nature in combat or in public is tied with a stoic and rather phlegmatic demeanour in other situations, even in battle on occasions (though this is rare). Her untamed nature that seemingly marries two opposite temperaments reflects a surprising depth to her that not many see (or live to see).
In truth, her dual nature unsettles some, even among her fellow Nords. Most see warriors as grim and stoic, or unpredictable and savage, not both. Beneath her shroud of iron-hard will and raucous barbarism does lie the typical Nord. She revels in drinking and the swapping of stories, she is proud of her scars, each one showing a battle she walked away from, something that cannot be said of those she has faced down. She respects strength and straightforwardness and is suspicious of those who lack it. Despite her foibles, she works surprisingly well in a group and has learned how to keep her personal problems with others from interfering. Lone bandits or highwaymen never make it too far.
The Civil War left its scars on Frygga, much like it left scars on Skyrim. While she was never a devout Stormcloak and in truth only with them for a few months she is still fairly suspicious of the Empire and Imperial intent, especially regarding Skyrim. Though she isn't particularly proud of the fact she was a Stormcloak, she doesn't really hide it either and will openly admit to it if questioned. Out of necessity she has no problems with any other races due to her work as a bandit first and then a sellsword. She has fought side by side proudly with almost every race in Tamriel at this point.
She shows little interest in the gods, claiming, "The gods have never been with me before, why should I be with them?" and is deeply suspicious of anything she considers 'supernatural' (having to do with the undead) after a barrow near Ivarstead thought haunted by a ghost was exposed as a fraud. Additionally, she doesn't consider draugr to be 'supernatural', instead considering them to be perfectly natural. Her rejection of the gods, however unsettling for her companions, does not extend to the natural spirits that most Nords consider one and the same with the Divines. Though many notice this strange contradiction, few have the courage to argue the point with her. The return of the Dragons in her youth also contributed significantly to her distrust of the Divines, though she couldn't have told you that at the time. To her they served as a sign that the gods had given up on Nirn and had sent Alduin to clean up the mess.
She has encountered few daedra in her time but find them unsettling and would rather avoid them and their worshippers. Daedric powers in general she is suspicious and fearful of, viewing them along the same lines as the Divines.
History: Born to a poor family that worked the mill in Ivarstead, Frygga picked up the axe from a young age and did what most do until they are of age to seek their own destiny. She worked under the firm but loving yoke of her parents, helping to earn a meager living working the mill. Her father had served the Hold as a guard for many years and told his young daughter of bandit raids, troll hunts, monster attacks and all sorts of adventures he had and had witnessed. These stories inspired his daughter, the young Frygga, and drove her to seek her fortunes on her 18th nameday, shortly after the dragons had returned and destroyed Helgen.
To a young Frygga, the Empire seemed weak and, swept up by promises of glory and a free Skyrim, she made the trek to Windhelm to join the Stormcloaks. If you asked her now, she would tell you she doesn't know if she ever really believed in their cause, their ideals, if they could even win. She was young and hungry for battle and glory. It didn't matter who she was fighting and why. No more than it matters now with the Stormcloaks all dead or scattered to the four winds.
What did matter was her first battle...
They had been camped out for weeks on a snowy drift that overlooked a road the Imperials used to move supplies between various outposts. But for weeks they had not seen another soul come down this particular road, only snow and rain. The men were getting antsy and the weather turning bad. Their officer decided they would ambush the next caravan that came by and call the expedition a failure. Perhaps their scouting reports had been bad. None of that mattered to Frygga. She just wanted to taste battle for the first time. Finally, a few days later, at dusk, they heard them. The telltale clank of wagons and clacking of horseshoes on a cobblestone road. The Stormcloaks roused from their camp and geared for battle, axes were sharpened and warpaint applied. The wait was agonizing. It seemingly took hours for the slow caravan to reach their prepared site. When they did, horns were sounded and men began wailing warcries and setting upon the supposedly hapless Imperial caravansary. But when the covered wagons were stopped armed men poured out of them, not supplies. The Imperials formed ranks to hold off the ambush and the Stormcloaks crashed into the wall of steel like a wave hitting breakers. The first wave of rebels were neatly put down, but the second devolved into a brutal melee, one that the less-disciplined and less battle-tested Stormcloaks were losing. This is where the iron anvil of war smote Frygga's heart with a blow that turned her youthful courage into lifelong shame. Men were dying all around her, and for what? This clearly was no supply caravan, maybe it was a counter-ambush. The Imperials having starved out the Stormcloak would-be ambushers only to lure them into their own trap. Maybe supplies never were moved down this road, maybe only troops had ever crossed this pass. But what would dying here achieve? Would the gods welcome her into Sovngarde for dying in a pointless battle such as this? No one would ever know they even died here save for the Imperials, and why would they put in a good word with Shor when it was the Stormcloaks who had attempted the underhanded ambush in the first place? Perhaps her rationalisations had a point, or perhaps they were just excuses to allow her brain to accept fleeing as an option. Who could know? Frygga abandoned her comrades to their death, taking only her shame and her life with her as he took off into the woods.
For a time she joined a group of bandits, after all, how could she tarnish honor that did not exist? The life of a bandit was hard, especially in wartime. Both factions' tolerances for banditry having dropped to almost zero, getting caught meant certain death. So they survived off of picking on adventurers or smaller patrols of Imperials or Stormcloaks, depending on who controlled the area, but it was a meagre existence and one that only really ended one way. So after a few years Frygga set out on her own, not to Cyrodiil but to High Rock to seek her fortune and honor as a sellsword among the constantly squabbling duchies and minor nobles. Her luck was better among the Bretons; Nobles loved to have a tall and fearsome Nord to guard them and intimidate their enemies. Most of her pay was squandered on drinking and travelling from one place to another, contracts changing as frequently as the seasons. She was hired to root out bandits, many of whom were just fellow mercenaries driven to desperation by septim-pinching nobles. Sometimes she was hired to slay bears or wolves or harpies or any other variety of monsters and it is for this reason she became known (ironically) as Fears-None. Very rarely was she hired to slay nobles themselves though little could stop her if she was set upon the task. A few times she has returned to Skyrim and stayed for a while taking contracts in her home province before returning to the more profitable petty wars of High Rock.
The long years of banditry and mercenary work has made her a hard woman and recently she has grown tired of slaying would-be wizards or blueblooded nobles for an identical blueblood to replace them and decided she would seek work in the south, in Cyrodiil. Honest work perhaps, more monster slaying or caravan guarding. She can feel in her breast that some of her old sense of pride has returned and that redemption might be closer than she knows.
Biggest Regret: Nords are often said to 'not to be judged on how they lived, but how they died' and in Frygga's case, the opposite is true. Frygga harshly judges herself on the way she lived when she should have died. Her first battle as a full grown woman was an ambush on a supposedly ill-prepared enemy. The enemy rallied and Frygga's group was soon overpowered and the battle turned into a slaughter. What good would her death be here? What purpose would it serve? The icy talons of logic, of self-preservation, of practicality, of cowardice crept into her chest and dug deep into her heart. She abandoned her fellows and abandoned her fate, and fled. Since that day, her shame, her self-loathing, her desire to prove her courage has fueled her reckless rage. Her inner demons of practicality and circumspection causing her tight-lipped stoicism to clash with her desire to see the brand of cowardice scorched from her soul.
Frygga‘s Goal: Frygga predictably wishes to prove to all, but most of all to herself, that she is no coward. Despite ostensibly proving it a thousand times over as a bandit and a sellsword, she feels as though her mettle has not been truly tested since her first battle and is searching for a task that will truly prove once and for all that she is worthy. She wishes her death to have meaning and not be in some frozen field or in the middle of a forest for no purpose. She wishes to show that she is selfless and willing to die for the right cause.
Skills:
Expert:
Blunt/Axe/whatever you want to call it- Frygga is an expert with hafted weapons, specifically axes, from a lifetime of practice. Her skill with an axe isn't limited to mere melee combat either, over the years she has also learned to throw them with precision.
Adept:
Marksman- Though she has hunted both men, mer and beasts with a bow and arrow, her true talents come out when paired with a hand axe.
Hand to Hand- Wrestling and brawling is a favoured pastime among people of her ilk
Athletics- Time spent in battle and travelling has given her high stamina.
Spear- A basic weapon found almost everywhere and with plenty of uses, from hunting to combat. Though Frygga typically uses a axe-like glaive instead of a regular spear, she is adept with most long-handled weapons.
Novice:
Armourer- Any warrior worth their fire salts has learned to patch basic rips and tears in clothing and armour.
Equipment:
- Fur and Leather armour
- 2x Iron War Axes
- Iron Halberd
- Emergency survival rations of dried and salted meats cut into small squares (enough for a few days only)
- Drinking horn
Misc. Possessions:
Frygga typically carries a few Blue Mountain Flowers that she crushes with the handle of a war axe for use as warpaint. She also hangs on to, but doesn't wear a broken bear pendant. Clearly a reminder of her weakness, her failure, and her shame.
-Whetstone
-Swatches of leather for use in patching holes in her armour.
-Sewing Kit
