YNGVILDR, or simply YNGVA, was born to a fisherman and his wife in the cold lands of Forochel, in a village - if the few huts can be called that - small enough that it did not even aspire to bear a name, let alone be marked on any map. Still, if one insisted, it may have been pointed out to have stood on the southern banks of the river that flows into the southern lands. 

In this village, Yngva would help her father fish, travel with him to trade, and play with the few children, often taking to mock-fighting with great ardour and greater imagination.

Yet it would be a waste of good ink to mark this village, for the settlement stands no more, and what remains of the razed huts must be half-buried by the harsh snows of two winters. With few men-folk and none among them true warriors, it fell easily to the hands of a band of hungering fugitives who found themselves too far up North in their flight.

Yngva and her friend PILVI were stolen South, to green and unknown lands, filled with unfamiliar beasts and strange tongues. Pilvi perished, Yngva fled, and by a strange fate came upon a young man who spoke her tongue as his own.

She was mistrustful of him by both nature and nurture, but scared and knowing not how to find her way back, she let him guide her back to Forochel. On the way, a friendship grew between them, and he taught her many things.

During the journey she grew to despise the Southerners for their easy life, but was also filled with wonder at the world beyond their ice-filled lands, though she would not easily admit it.

Her family fled or perished, she went to live with an elderly aunt, ULLA, a hermit wise-woman who dwelt beneath the shadow of the forest across the running river, weaving baskets and working herbs into salves, singing and beating out rhythms on a small drum, while Yngva brought in game and occasionally ventured out to trade for supplies.

When she thought the old woman wasn't looking, she would take up an axe, wielding it as if it were a weapon, or the crude spear she fashioned for herself, imagining herself a great heroine, but simply desiring deeply not to find herself helpless again. The old woman's eyes and ears were keener than she let the young girl believe, but she said naught of her secret practice, and so Yngva has spent the last two winters, not coming in contact with people save those who would visit Ulla with their ails. 

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