Hergatha

Hergatha
Basic Information
Aliases	Storm Maiden
Home	Norland, Moonshae Isles
Sex	Female
Gender	Feminine
Race	Human
Ethnicity	Northlander
Patron deity	Tempus, Umberlee

Hergatha, commonly known as the Storm Maiden, was a young woman who became a leader among the Northlanders on the isle of Norland in the late 15^th century DR. She had shown clear signs of being blessed by the gods every since she was young, and she (erroneously) believed herself to be the reincarnation of Viledel, an ancient Northlander warrior.

Personality

She was an inspiring leader who urged the Northlanders to abandon the peaceful and sedentary lives they had known under the United Moonshae Isles and return to once again be feared raiders and rulers of the sea. She also struggled with homicidal compulsions, specifically a desire to see anyone and everyone, even her followers, drown beneath the sea.

She expected her followers to prove their worth to her, and at the same time, she strove to prove herself to them.

Abilities

Unknown even to herself, Hergatha was blessed at birth by two deities: the sea goddess Umberlee made it impossible for her to drown but also gave her a compulsion to drown living creatures, while the war god Tempus made her a mighty warrior, although some believed that this second blessing had come from Valkur.

History

Hergatha was born to a young woman on Ruathym. About to give birth, the woman sheltered under Yggdrasil's Child in the forest. She carved her daughter's true name into the tree and asked the god of war Tempus to bless her child. The god answered her prayer but so did the sea goddess Umberlee, who struck down the woman with a lightning bolt and carried the child to the shore of Norland island in the Moonshae Isles. She was found by fishermen and raised by a childless couple, who gave her the name "Hergatha".

Hergatha showed great martial prowess at an early age, and was a peerless swordmaster by the age of sixteen. Believing that the Northlanders should return to their old ways of raiding and pillaging, she adopted the title of the "Storm Maiden" and began rallying the Northlanders of the Moonshaes to cast off High King Derid Kendrick and follow her into battle. She argued that the Moonshaes could never be successfully governed by Ffolk kings, and that the Northlanders had to establish their dominance for the sake of guiding the islands toward a glorious future. By the Year of the Ageless One, 1479 DR, and a large number of Northlanders from Norland to Ruathym swore fealty to her: she had tapped into a cultural desire for conquest, with many abandoning their lives as fishers and traders to take up arms.

On Norland, she called for a campaign to drive the firbolgs of the South Jotunhammer Mountains from their lands to restore the Northlanders' access to the entire island. She launched successful attacks against the giants' patrols, inspiring hope among the people that she could succeed where so many past attempts had failed. Although her rhetoric was anti-Ffolk and pro-Northlander, she did not direct her followers against the Ffolk settlers who lived on Norland, and instead preached that the island belonged to whoever the Northlanders invited to live alongside them. She instead set her followers against Amnian interests and merchant vessels.

On Ruathym, the more savage culture compared to the Moonshaes meant that she was widely popular. She had secured the loyalty of the leader of the largest settlement, Dagh Lahrskald, after besting his three best berserkers in combat at the same time. She tasked him with quashing any dissent and uniting the whole island under her promise of raiding and pillaging abroad.

Her growing popularity threatened the leadership of Jarl Rault the Wise, the vassal-king of Norland under High King Derid. As the Storm Maiden's followers called to cast off the rule of the weakening House Kendrick, Jarl Rault relented, and seceded from the United Moonshae Isles. However, pressure remained for him to stand aside and allow the Storm Maiden to lead Norland, and he remained acutely aware that she would soon demand the same from him. A similar realization led his son, Olfgaut, to make plans to assassinate her if she ever returned to his father's seat at Stormbanner Hold.

As the number of her followers grew, she turned her resources toward securing the settlement of Farview on the lycanthrope-infested island of Moray in order to gain access to enough timber with which to build the needed longships to transport her army. As the threat of her uprising continued to grow, High King Derid remained unsure of how to deal with her. Some on Norland, including Jarl Rault, felt that it was likely that the Storm Maiden would one day claim the throne of the High King for herself.

Shortly afterward, she evidently went mad with the power of Umberlee, and seemingly abandoned her focus on assuming control of Norland and instead led her followers in an effort to conquer the Sea of Swords. The ensuring battles resulted in the deaths of all male heirs of Rault the Wise and weakened the Northlanders' control over the northern Moonshae Isles. Hergatha was ultimately defeated at sea when her ship was sunk, although she was assumed to have survived as she could not drown. Many continued to fear her return as of the Year of the Warrior Princess, 1489 DR.