Name:
Norna Eir'Sigrun Tor

Gender:
Female

Ethnic Origins:
From the "barbarian" clans north of the Forest of Sorrows, in and beyond the Ice Wall Mountains.

Age:
12

Physical Description:
Height: 5'3

Hair: Black as pitch and shiny under the dirt, it reaches her waist when loose. Norna's hair isn't particularly tangled, but it looks as though it's been in the same braids for a week (and probably has). It also has the distinct well-trimmed look of a child who was recently well-cared for.

Eyes: An almost unnatural shade of bright blue, they're startling in their resemblance to the color of thistle, and are wide and long-lashed.

General Appearance: Norna is built more like a young boy than a young girl, lean and straight rather than delicate and slender. Where other children her age have baby fat, she has sinewy muscle from hard work. Although she once had a general look of good health about her, now her pale cheeks have become hollow and she's just a bit underweight from recent starvation. In a few years, her heart-shaped face and high cheeks will make a pretty child into a pretty young woman, but only if she learns to groom herself better.

Personality:
Norna has the fierce determination of any young person who has no other choice but to endure many hardships, and thus, she rarely complains about work. She's always been a spitfire and clever to boot, and it was only by sheer force of will that she convinced the only literate priest for miles to educate her in reading, writing, and mathematics. It was a mixture of curiosity and a need to be useful that made her the second literate person in her entire family. Fresh trauma, however, has made the once-obedient girl hostile, rude, and difficult to deal with overall; add her pride to that mix, and she's almost impossible.

Brief History:
In the Ice Wall Mountains, close-knit clans scattered over the land make up the population. Norna's father, Tor, was the chief of the second-largest clan, Filgrier, and so had many villages and holdings under his rule. Although life in the north is hard, Tor always made certain that his wife and children were treated well, and ruled firmly but kindly. To ensure that his lands would always be safe, he raised each of his children in the warrior tradition, his four sons as well as his young daughter. He'd hoped that Norna would grow up to be a great warrior chieftainess like his mother had been, and so trained her in the use of small melee weapons, the bow, and the short sword.

Norna loved her father very much and always accompanied him and her brothers on trips to defend their boarders from other clans, so she began to worry when Tor would no longer allow her to come. Her mother was ill, and so he claimed that he needed Norna to stay to care for her, but the naturally suspicious child knew that couldn't be the reason. The attacks on their boarders were becoming bloodier, and eventually, raids reached Tor's villages. He did everything he could to stop them, but one day he did not return from battle. Norna's three eldest brothers were with him, and they shared their father's fate. Soon after, her mother hung herself from the rafters of their Great Hall in despair, and Norna's surviving brother took over the clan.

He viciously beat back the attackers, but both sides had lost so many in the year-long war that they decided to hold a Council to come to a peace agreement. Clan Filgrier gained several thousands acres, and to seal the treaty, the invading clan's chief would marry Norna. Enraged that her brother was selling her like a horse when her father would never have done such a thing, Norna had to be physically dragged to the other clan's Hall, where she proceeded to spit on her husband-to-be. Her brother gave her a sound beating to chastise her, and the next day she was hauled before a priest of Lyr and forced to "marry" the neighboring clan's chief. She was eleven years old.

Three months later when the mountain passes had finally opened up, just after her twelfth birthday, Norna abandoned her twenty-four-year-old husband and stole what she believed to be one of his prized horses. It was, in fact, a Companion, her Companion, Ilfyn.

Ilfyn brought her safely through the newly-opened passes—the reason Norna had waited three months to escape—and out of the Forest of Sorrows before revealing herself to the girl. By then, Norna could only scream "Devil-Horse" at Ilfyn. She had no choice but to go with her, the several-week journey only taking a short week on Companion-back. By the time Ilfyn had revealed herself, after all, Norna's sense of self-preservation was telling her rather sharply that going with the blasted horse was better than dying in an unfamiliar wilderness.

Goals in life:
To learn to read better than anyone else, and to learn to speak Valdemaran with an accent that doesn't mark her as a barbarian.

Gifts:
Strong Mindspeech and a lesser Gift of Farsight.

Position:
Herald Trainee

Author's Comments:
A note on naming practices. In Norna's culture, the first name is the proper name, the second is the mother's proper name ("Eir'Sigrun" means "daughter of Sigrun"), and the third is the father's proper name. Norna could certainly use some deportment classes.