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\section{The Norse}

My game has a few elements from Norse in it. I shall explain the
bits I have used here.

Earth (Midgard) is the land of men and women. The Gods (the {\AE}sir)
who live in Asgard, travel to Midgard via the rainbow bridge that
links Asgard with Midgard at the village of Burfrost. The {\AE}sir
fight against the Giants and the Forces of Darkness (TM). Ragnarok
(Gehenna, armagedon) is destined to come and all the Gods shall be
slain.

Norse mythology is a black and dark piece of work. Everything is
doomed to die, but the best a hero can hope for is to combat evil
bravely and die well in battle. Everything, even the Gods were going
to die in the final battle between good and evil. It's a great read
:-).

Having said that, I should state that the norse religion is a very
amazing piece of work. The Gods were not these divine beings, but
rather fallable, human like figures.

In reality the Norse themselfs were great achievers. They developed
Parliment, an advanced set of laws and were quite civilised for the
barbarians that they are portraied as today.




\subsection{Myth}

\subsubsection{Valkiries and Daughters of Hela}

Hela was the daugher of Loki, God of mischif. She was born of him and a
Giantess, Angurboda. She has a half human, half rotted flesh form.
Because Loki was one of the {\AE}sir, they are all offspring of the Gods
and Odin would not kill them. He cast Hela down to rule Nifelheim,
realm of the dead who do not fall in battle. Her realm is across the
River Gioll and is guarded by a great watchdog.

Hell to the Norse was not the torture, fire and brimstone place of
some Christian mythology, but rather a boring place. In Valhalla, you
drank with Oden, in Hela's realm, it was boring and grey.

As Odin had Valkiries to serve him and to choose those who died in
battle, so Hela had servents to help her choose those who died in bed.




\paragraph{Odin daughters: Valkiries}

Odin's Valkiries were immortal women, who would swing the tide of battle
and choose those slain in battle to sit in Valhalla. Sometimes, they
would appear as swans and come to Earth, take off their cloaks and bathe
in rivers or lakes.  Any man who found them and hid their cloaks could
then seduce them like a mortal woman. Any Valkiri, thus wedded, becomes
an ordinary mortal woman.

In the \wod, Valkiries can be Highlanders, Vampires, Werewolfs,
Changelings or whatever. The Norse make do with whatever is available.

\paragraph{Hela's Earthly Servents}

Whenever female twins were born, one live, one dead, this was the mark
of Hela herself. The live one was said to be Hela's servant on Earth and
the dead one went to serve Hela in Nifelheim.  The twins remained
linked, the dead one able to manifest sometimes and the live one
taught sharmonistic magic to allow her to cross over the border between
the living world and the next.

Like Odin's Valkiries, they were immortal, in that they are rarely
killed in normal ways, but rather die legendary deaths. Born to walk
the Earth and Nifelheim selecting those who die in bed. They had
cloaks as dark as the blackest swan, but while great heroes of Midgard
would sometimes seduce and marry Valkiries, few were interested in
marrying the daughters of Hela.

They were feared by almost all men and women. Any who died in their
presence, they could take to Nifelheim. Any they struck down would
usually immediately be sent to Nifelheim. They were marked with the
smell of death and men and women quickly became able to pick them.
They were never forced from a village, but they were never accepted.


\paragraph{When Hell froze over.}

Hell, or Nifelheim. As I have said, the Norse saw Hell as rather
boring. This all changed when the Christian priests came and
converted the Norse. Initially, the belief would have changed slowly,
but eventually, the Christian idea won and Hell changed. No longer was
it thought of as a grey boring place it was, but suddenly it was pain and
suffering.

Hela's servants would have watched this change
and either changed over to Christian versions of their job, or stayed
and become considerably weakened.


\subsubsection{Get of Fenris}

Fenris was a {\em bad} wolf. He was stronger than any of the {\AE}sir
and they bound him to a rock by trickery. He will escape when
Ragnarok comes.



\subsubsection{Norse myth in my \wod.}

I tossed most of the stuff from \cite{ww:cbg}, keeping only the bit
about the Norse not minding what form the servents of Odin came in,
vampire, werewolf, highlander, whatever. The Norse would not have much
trust for the werewolf, as they come from Fenris, but I don't see they
would have any cultural belief that blood drinking kindred were cursed
and damned.