Pathfinder Society Record
- Known Name: Astrid Olofsdotter
- Race: Aasimar (Azata-Blooded)
- Apparent Age: Late-20s
- Birthday: 18 Neth (November) 4688 AR
- Height: 5'11"
- Alignment: Chaotic Good
- Affiliations: Pathfinder Society
- Character Class: Skald (Dragon Skald)
- Place of Origin: Halgrim, Battlewall, Ironbound Islands [Lands of the Linnorm Kings]
- Player/Type: NPC
Appearance
Astrid is a athletic and attractive woman in her prime. She is taller than most avistani woman, just shy of being 6' tall, although the claims that she is about average height for an ulfen female. Although compared to most women she would be quite muscular, her figure is more toned than bulky, with her overall frame being quite slim, though well built; showing that she is a woman used to living a very active lifestyle and refusal to take an easy way out. She has blue eyes and ash-grey hair so pale that in the sunlight it looks almost white, and pale skin tone common to the ulfen. To all extent and purposes she appears normal human, but in moonlight or under the stars her aasimar heritage betrays her, and her hair turns an inhuman silver and glows with radiant light. Her hair is usually braided along the sides in ulfen style and self-serves as a knot for her hair to be contained but fall loosely behind her. It is usually maintained around shoulder length.
Astrid usually wears her signature armour, mostly a combination of midnight-blue leathers, chain shirt and mithral breastplate, with cold-weather furs. When there is appropriate need she will change into more socially-appropriate attire but, accustomed to northern lands, is more likely to favour more rugged and practical dresses in the ulfen style than the more slinky and stylish southern-avistani styles.
Background
Origins (4688–4700 AR)
They say Astrid Olofsdotter of Halgrim was born to the sound of oars counting time, the longhouse smoke already plaiting itself into songs above her cradle. She grew where the quays are classrooms: mornings were spear forms and round-shield drills on frost-whitened boards; afternoons were watch turns under sky that nips the ears; evenings were sagas until the rafters stooped to listen. She learned to splice by lantern-light, to haul in sleet without complaint, to trust the clean rhythm of work. And all the while there was a sheen to her—at first just a pearly cast to the hair, then, as adolescence took the tiller, an unarguable glimmer: ash-silver that gleamed like moonlight when the night ran clear. No one in Halgrim mistook that for a trick of weather. The aunties called it “luck,” the old salts called it “a sign,” and the skalds, seeing how she sat quiet as a harbour to a story, began opening the chests of memory and lineage so she could trace the thread that tugged at her.
Turning to the Stars (4701–4703 AR)
The winter she turned thirteen, the sky looked like a road. Astrid stood on the headland and the sea breathed in, breathed out, and did not crash—holding still as if to listen. Then came a presence like harp strings across water: a lillend with scales the colour of enamelled dusk and hair threaded with constellations. She did not command, this ancestor; she invited. Sing for the road as well as the shield. It was a soft sentence that struck harder than thunder.
Halgrim is Gorum’s ground, and Astrid’s kin were warriors by generations. There was a firelit night of straight talk: her father laid the family shield on the bench and said, “Choose with your feet, not your fancies.” Her mother, who knew how song turns fear, braided the silver and said nothing at all. Her grandmother fished a little tin star from an old chest and told of a woman who sang so truly the heavens answered back. In the end they did what good families do: they put honour first and love beside it. Astrid stepped toward Desna and the road, promising to marry courage to mercy, verse to vigilance.
The next year she took the first formal steps—skaldic lessons in Halgrim’s halls, then Kalsgard for a season under dwarf and Ulfen masters. She traded verse for maps at Iceferry Lodge, listened to the quiet pride in Pathfinders’ road-tales, and began to look south toward Absalom. “If the stars align,” she thought, because a skald who serves the Starsong does not hurry—after all, it is not the destination that matters to a Desnan, but the journey.
Estrid’s Muster & the Absalom Turning (4704 AR)
At sixteen, mid-apprenticeship, a call went through the mead-halls like a drumbeat: White Estrid was mustering. Astrid’s master signed her writ of passage—learning by doing is a skald’s oldest lesson, and to be part of great deeds rather than retell others' stories is a skald's dream—and she went aboard on a junior berth to sing hands steady and keep oars in time. She saw the black knives of Nisroch’s rooftops as Estrid raided in Nidal, then felt every board in her bones when they broke the Chelish blockade at the Arch of Aroden and ran into Absalom with spray whitening the braids along the rail. Harbour lights lay on the water like spilled stars. She looked at the Grand Lodge gates and knew. When the fleet made fast, she took her leave with honour and enrolled with the Pathfinder Society.
Grand Lodge Years & Confirmation (4705–Late 4706 AR)
Grey kit. Cold courts. The Masters of Swords, Spells, and Scrolls. Astrid took the drills like weather—square on, without complaint—and in two years earned early testing, credit given for the sea-schooling with Estrid and the craft learned in Kalsgard. The test itself came late in 4706 AR and smelled of brine: a sanctioned delve into the Shackles, a longboat riding the skirts of the Eye, pirates with more greed than sense. A valkyrie came on the storm the same hour Astrid made contact; what followed was a night of iron and hymn the sea still remembers. At dawn there were fewer freebooters and a bundle of Besmaran relics that didn’t belong in their hands. Astrid brought the bundle and the tale back whole. The Society put a wayfinder in her palm, set her to Iceferry Lodge, and the road opened true.
Iceferry Wayfarer (4707–4712 AR)
These were her proving years, and good ones. She marked safe channels on winter coasts and wrote the names of shoals the sea forgets every spring; she walked snow-roads with trappers and post-riders, singing pace into numb legs; she hauled survivors off wreck-lights and learned that a verse held at the right breath can still a crew faster than any drawn blade. When the Venture-Captain asked, she filed blunt field notes that smelled of salt and lamp-smoke. When the road demanded, she waded into causes—most often against slavers and petty tyrants—and left behind a steadied town and a song that remembered who had helped. Folk began introducing her as a skaldic wayfarer first and a Pathfinder second, and she did not quarrel with either name.
The Sword in the Fog (4713 AR)
The Omen on the Jetty. On a night when she was ready to sign for another northern run, the tide carried harp-bright music under the pilings. Valtyra, the lillend forebear, stood where the planks meet the dark water and spoke as sure as a compass: a Desnan blade of Astrid’s line had been taken long ago when servants of Lamashtu slew its bearer, and since then its light had been turned to wicked use. “Set it back upon the star-road,” said Valtyra. “Find it—the flash that cuts through darkness, the light that breaks the night—and carry its shine where the night is thick.”
The vision thinned to ripples, and a tiny figure settled on a mooring-post: Spivey, a lyrakien of Desna, bright-voiced and gossamer-winged. “I know the old shrines west and the scratch-marks Lamashtu’s lot leave on rock,” she said. “You pick the hour and the approach; I’ll fly a step ahead and point the signs others miss.” A blue moth-ribbon for luck, a seven-pointed star sketched in salt, and the road was set: Varisia, then the high passes.
The Road to Varisia. They travelled light, as the best tales do—verse traded for ferries, a mended toy here, a blessing for a mule there, a map bought with a stanza and a smile. Rumour narrowed to a high saddle where travellers went missing and to a pack that boasted their caves were lit by a stolen dawn.
The Mountain Pass of Breath and Mist. At dusk the wind fell and the pass held its breath. “Now,” Astrid said—not to a god, but to the steadying drum in her ribs. She cinched her board to buckler for speed, hummed her gear into quiet, and spent her one spell-kenning for the day on fog cloud, calling a deliberate bank of white up from the ravine and over the stones. It would blind her too, aye—but there were a dozen of them, and one Astrid. She fixed the slope in memory and stepped into the world she had made.
The Monster with the Starblade. Something big moved ahead with the carelessness of power, and in its hands a longblade spilled a pale, treacherous glow—the stolen light of a star-forged sword, shining for its rightful bearer even when misheld. The wielder proved a priestess gone bestial—horns pushing through hair, shoulders knotted wrong under ritual scars. Rage made her clumsy; the fog made her blinder than most. Astrid whispered bladed dash, became a straight-line streak through mist and shadow, and struck in the same heartbeat she arrived. Steel answered with the finality of a struck bell. The creature reeled, chopped at echoes, and the blade rang on stone—almost free.
The Sword in the Fog. The sword woke. Blue-white ran along the fuller like dawn under ice; the fog brightened so every cultist showed as a dark cut-out against a field of stars. The blade answered her grip like a lullaby finally remembered—cut, turn, bind, release—each motion rhyming the next. Those who had seemed many were suddenly few. Those who had seemed fearsome were suddenly only men. Astrid was a skald reborn, and the flash that cuts through darkness, the light that breaks the night was in her hands.
Quiet After. When the shouting spent itself, the pass went still. Astrid cleaned the blade, spoke the traveller’s blessing, and burned what ought not be carried. The mist thinned to honest weather. She walked out with Stjarnabrandr at her hip and the old life paying out behind her like a cut rope. By the time she reached the next house, the tale had outrun her; the lodges wrote it down, and the mead-halls learned the chorus.
Present Standing (4715 AR)
Now the road runs ahead and she runs with it. Astrid is a confirmed Pathfinder in the ledgers and a wayfarer by choice—officially attached to Iceferry Lodge, in practice turning up where the star-road drops her: sometimes on an Ulfen quay with a song that calms hard hands, sometimes at a border-post where a slaver learns the price of fear, sometimes at a lonely shrine where a moth-wing shadow says, “this way.” She files blunt field notes when there’s ink-worth, keeps the wayfinder warm in her palm, and answers Society calls when need is great and the road is kind.
Personality
Astrid is reportedly a free spirit, proud ulfen and dedicated Desnan. As would be expected from a skald, she loves tales and legends, song and poetry, although any who would think this makes her soft would be mistaken. As an ulfen she loves little more than to drink mead, get into physical challenges, and claims that it is not a good party until at least half a dozen people are unconscious... whether due to fighting or drinking is of little consequence. She despises it when avistani people call her a bard, which she will usually respond to with a very un-bardlike (and certainly un-ladylike) string of intense, vulgar expletives. In fact, she is well renown for becoming aggressive and rude, and some have commented that her letting off impressive tirades of humiliating insults is an art form for her. Those with familiarity with ulfen folk will simply state that that is common for ulfen people. As can be expected, patience and subtlety are not her strong points and, although she is capable, it is common to see her bite her lip in frustration when she must do something with finesse that she feels could and should have been resolved faster and easier with a good blow to someone's head.
Astrid loves travel almost as much as she loves song. She rarely has a specific group that she travels with, but has many friends all over the place as she travels often, and with many different short-term companions. She seems incapable of remaining in one place for long and invariably at some point moves on from wherever her current companions are if she feels their movements or area of operation have become too static.
As is common for dedicated Desnans, Astrid has a strong respect for other religions, especially those of good faiths. She particularly enjoys the company of Caydenites and Sarenites. She tries to follow the Desnan belief in avoiding conflict unless there is no choice - but cynics will be quick to point out that it appears the list of what constitutes her having no choice appears rather long and fickle.
Astrid is not known for her patience or subtlety, and tends to make decisions very quickly. People often mistake this as thinking that she is rash and impulsive, although she states that she is neither. She states that there is no point dwelling on the past, and wasting time debating, and that as you never known when opportunities may rise again, opportunities should be enjoyed when presented.
Church of Desna
Astrid doesn't advertise it for the world to hear, but she is a priestess of Desna. When asked she will be quick to point out that she is a priestess, not a cleric, and thus not to expect divine powers from her. As a skald, however, she does have arcane talent and, perhaps because of her lillend ancestry, limited arcane magical healing is within the scope of her abilities.
Although, to quote her Pathfinder Chronicles feature: Just don't call her a bard, or you may end up having a reason to need that healing magic.
Combat Style
Many would assume that as a not-bard, Astrid is likely in combat to stand back and let allies engage the enemy whilst she plays a tune to inspire them, and provide some rear-guard support. They would be wrong, as Astrid is more likely to ask someone to hold her rotte (ulfen lyre) for her whilst she goes and cleaves some gnoll's head in with her longsword. She is a trained shieldmaiden, and in combat primarilly relies on her own skill-at-arms than magic. She principally fights with a light shield and longsword, although she only seems to draw her shield when she feels there is a need. She otherwise prefers not to use it, often intimidating opponents when she brazenly displays an arrogant lack of respect for their credibility as a threat to her that she does not feel the need to use her shield. Whilst she prefers melee combat, she is a competent archer and understands there are times when her hornbow is more valuable - such as whittling down superior numbers of approaching enemies with arrows rather than simply charging at them and facing greater numbers needlessly.
Astrid does commonly sing or otherwise orate during combat - usually heroic tales or other encouraging words - but unlike typical bards that inspire courage or competence, her performances cause the blood to boil and overflow in heroic rage, filling her allies with adrenal passion and nullifying fear. And she does this whilst killing anything that dared threaten her and her companions.
When she does use her magic, it is usually to bolster herself or her allies in combat or provide emergency healing. She has a preference for using bolstering magic before combat, however, and healing after (if required) as opposed to during.
Social Style
Astrid can be very easy to get along with and befriend, or very difficult, depending on a person's temperament and sensitivities. From an ulfen culture, she is brash and aggressive, quick to insult others or physically manhandle them. Many cultured avistani would take offence to this barbaric mannerism, and many others would be intimidated and be wary not to provoke her. But those who know the ulfen know that they respect strength of character, and she will more quickly gain respect for someone who insults her back (especially if they are creative) or is willing to physically engage her, than those who are conciliatory. She has been known to pummel a punter half to death, then buy him drinks the rest of his night and treat him as if a long-time friend. However she will claim there is a fine line between showing courage and character, and being an ass, and the latter will enrage her.
The ulfen lead hard lives with many dangers, and whilst they may argue and fight, they depend on each other as a unit. Astrid likewise respects team-workers and those who put the well being of the troupe over themselves, which is an ironic sentiment for someone who rarely stays with a troup for long. Whilst she has a good heart, she is used to being with people who are less noble, but cannot tolerate those with an evil heart or who oppress others. She sees denying someone their freedom as abhorrent, which some would find hypocritical considering ulfen propensity for (and her acceptance of) taking thralls (though she would claim that thralls and slaves are completely different things - though most would fail to appreciate the difference).
Signature Equipment
Armour & Weapons
- Starsong Breastplate: This midnight-blue suit of breastplate and chain shirt armour is made out of mithral and allows the wearer to cast expeditious retreat once per day, and automatically casts dream feast each night on the wearer whilst they sleep.
- Hǫggskjǫldr: This light quickdraw wooden shield once belonged to White Estrid herself and has a reinforced boss for extra durability, as well as specially-designed straps that allow the shield to be drawn or put away much faster than a normal shield whilst moving. It is magically enhanced so that, when used to shield bash, it has the same impact strength as a much larger shield.
- Stjarnabrandr: This longsword is made of of sky metal (commonly also known as numerian steel or adamantine) and is unbelievably sharp. It has the words the flash that cuts through darkness, the light that breaks the night; inscribed in celestial script on the blade. When drawn it is outlined by a pale glow and leaves a trail of starry motes that shed light in her space and trail as strong as common torchlight. When the sword strikes a creature affected by magical means of concealment (such as an invisibility spell) the sword covers the creature in starry motes for a brief period, making them easy to locate for a precious few seconds until the motes fade. When wielded by faithful of Desna, it also allows them to make a potent leap or fire a blast of motes, both once per day.
- Ulfen Borðǫx: this ulfen-style mastercrafted bearded boarding axe is commonly employed for utility purposes such as ship rigging and other sailor's activities, rather than as a backup weapon. Although she relies mostly on her longsword, she has been known to employ it as an off-hand or secondary weapon, especially as it is balanced and can be thrown.
- Ulfen Knifr: this ulfen-style mastercrafted dagger is intended for utility rather than combat, like the more combat-oriented seax knives. Nonetheless, it sometimes finds use as a backup or quick thrown weapon.
- Ulfen Hornbogi: this mastercrafted ulfen composite horn bow is adjusted to cater for Astrid's respectable strength and would be hard for most average and above average strength users to use.
Magic Items
- Ring of Spell Knowledge I: This ring allows Astrid to store a level one spell into it, after which she can access it as if it were one of her spells known.
- Ulfen Boots: Popular with ulfen vikings during their heavy-raiding days that involved sailing in perilous waters and sometimes harsh environments, these simple leather ulfen-style boots grant the wearer increased proficiency in acrobatics, climbing and swimming, protect the wearer as if under the effects of an Endure Elements spell, and once a day can cast the spell Spider Climb on self for a duration of 30 minutes.
- Wineskin of Quenching: At the user's command, this simple ulfen-style leather wineskin fills itself with cool, fresh drinking water, cheap ale or watery wine. The wineskin can create up to 2 gallons (9 litres) of liquid per day.
- Wayfinder: given to her by the Kalsgard Lodge when she became a member, this is a traditional magical tool given to members of the Pathfinder Society. At will it can shine light as powerful as a torch, and the mundane compass assists the user in avoiding getting lost. It has an empty slot that can hold one ioun stone, if Astrid ever finds one.
Mundane Items
- The Eight Scrolls (holy text of Desna)
- Silver symbol of Desna
- Ulfen Rotte (lyre-like instrument)
- Cold weather outfit
Signature Quotes
- "I do only fight when there's no choice. He said that ulfen are uncultured heathens... he gave me no choice!"
- "There is a fine line between showing courage and character, and being an ass!"
- "This reminds me of the tale of the legendary King [insert name of yet another Linnorm King]..."
- "Any Troll's arm comes off" - an ulfen saying that if you persist long enough, you will succeed at any task (also cynically used, as troll's regenerate lost limbs, to imply that there is always another task to take its place)
- "Go sow the whitecaps!" - ulfen expression meaning you are wasting your time, so go elsewhere and stop wasting mine!
- "He'd scare the sea away at low tide!" - ulfen expression meaning that a person is either ugly or fearsome; both are usually an insult, although not always
- "A pass is best seen from the top of the mountain" - ulfen saying advising not to look for the easy way out as the wise accept a challenge and learn by reflecting upon the experience.
Gallery
Astrid normal look
Astrid in casual attire
Astrid in combat
Astrid in a tavern
Teenage Astrid
