Maud from the north

Maud from the north, Maud the dreadqueen, the frozen one. You really want to hear that tale? Well then, but dont blame me for your nightmares.
There is A LOT that has been told about Maud. And yes, as far as I know, most of it is true.  

Her younger days

So, lets start from the beginning here. Where did she came from?
 

Her Youth

Her story begins in the dock district of Freyas Havn. Maud was the daughter of a fisherman and his wife who sold the catch at the market. When she was thirteen years old her father died in a terrible storm like many others. Since her mother suddently had no more fish to sell and the family wasnt very wealthy they soon lost their house and ended up on the street the next year after they sold everything in order not to freeze during the grim winter.
Both of them knew that they probably wouldnt survive the winter so her mother started to look for work at the houses of the wealthier crowd of the city. In the end she landed a job in the kitchen of a rich shipowner who controlled most of the ambertrade in the region.
At first everything went fine, but since her mother was a quite beautiful women she soon caught the eye of one of the younger sons of said shipowner who tried to land between her mothers sheets. After some time, he was supposed to be quite charming, he succeeded and a small affair unfolded. Tales say Maud once spoke of this time of the only time since her fathers death that she felt safe - due to her affair her mother had enough to eat for the two of them, they had clean bugfree beds and even recieved a small payraise so her mother could afford to send Maud to one of the templeschools in the hill district.
At this point her life was doinhg a sharp turn for the better - in the following two years she learned simple maths, reading and writing and overall thrived.
It all came to a sudden end when her mother got into a fight with one of the kitchen aids - the girl was lazy and accidently burned Mauds mother - and as revenge for screaming at her the girl turned to the fiance of the shipowners son and told her how her soon to be husband wanted to run off with the sous chef. The fiancé, seeing red demanded that Maud and her mother were punished and kicked out of the house imidiatly.
The shipowners son, he never really learned to show a spine, at least had the curtisy to warn the two of them and prevent them from any physical harm, but they had to leave the house the next day - in the midst of winter which basicly was a death sentence in a city like Freyas Havn where the sun barely crept above the horizon during winter and all water that wasnt surrounded by fire would imidiatly freeze into a solid block.
And if that wasnt enough, the hateful fiancé stirred poison into the last dinner Maud and mother were recieving there. Maud had lost her appetite and didnt eat, her mother forced her part down and sacked Mauds part for the next day. Only a few moments after she got up she started to cramp, foam appeared at mouth and she started bleeding from her eyes. Other employees came running but there was nothing they could do than watch the woman twitching and screaming until she collapsed after a few minutes and died.
 

The Birth of Maud the frozen one

You remeber when I said that Maud went to a templeschool for nearly two years? Yes? Good. Well, she also enjoyed breaking into the libraries of some of these temples because the priests most of the time didnt like to hand out many of their books to children who would probably just destroy them. So one day she decided to break into the archive of the temple of Rabunlak, the god of knowledge. It mostly was a challenge from herself to herself because the temple - it guarded one of the biggest libraries in the known world - resembled more of a fortress than a temple. But in the end she got around the guards and into the library.
And this is where she stumbled across the section of dark magic and necromancy. She was as fearless as she was curious so she started reading and came back once a week during the night to continue studying what every normal person would consider crimes agaist humanity. One faitful sommereve she came across a book about wraiths and how to bind them.
For Maud these books were just an interesting and morbid entertainment - she never would have dreamt to actually use that knowledge one day.

  But the moment her mother died, she knew who poisened the food and what to do about it. Her mother was gone and she had nothig to loose. In the ensuing chaos - screaming paniking people, a patrole that heard the screams came into the house as well - she slipped out and started her preparations. The next morning she first chocked out the kitchen aid that ratted her mother out to her lovers fiancé, then she slipped a strong narcotic into the morning tea of said fiancé. After she was out she put the unconcious women into two seperate boxes, loaded them onto a cart she "borrowed" and wheeled them of to next sewerentrance before the shipowners son realised his fiancé wasnt stuck in the bathhouse, but seemingly left the house.
When she arrived at her tentative altar deep in the sewers, she quickly got to work. As I mentioned elsewhere, wraiths are allways around us, but without beeing summoned they are in 99% percent of the cases to weak to interact with the living realm. Maud knew exactly what she was doing as she tied the two women to the altar and muffled them. Then she lit up the bonewax candles, cut her palm and filled a small jar with her blood. While the bloodfilled jar slowly heated up over another candle she stitched up the the cut in her palm and watched the unconcious women slowly waking up. The fiancé was the first to wake up, her struggeling and muffled screams woke the kitchen aid who strarted struggeling as well. Maud just grinned at them and smeared an healing ointment on the wound in her hand. She didnt wanted to murder the two somewhere out of sight, she needed their souls.   While the blood started to boil she told them laughing what she was going to do. First she was conjuring two wraiths, one frostwraith, those were omnipresent durig winter and a bloodwraith, that ironically was originally lured there by the murder commited by the financé. Once she was done with that she would pour the boiling blood down the throats of her sacrifices to bind the wraiths to their new hosts. The easiest way to bind a wraith is to lure him into a host and then subjugate the host and take over the wraith. The two victims nearly lost conciousness again as Mauds boiling blood was flowing down their throats, the next thing they knew was the icecold burning of the wraiths rushing through their veins and the cruel voice apperaing in their heads thanking them for their hospitality.

  Maud was now speaking an odd sounding language and cut a rune into each womans forehand, than pressed her hands on the runes. As soon as she did this, the two possesed women started shaking and screaming uncontrolably while aging and famishing within seconds - it was only a few heartbeats until their former young bodies resembled old dried out mummies. Maud on the other hand was showing a strange contrast. Her eyes were now pitchblack while her irisses turned as white as snow and her body showed black veins on one half of her body, while the other half was seemingly frozen underneath her skin which combined with the looks of her mother gave her a terrifing yet strangely alluring appearance.   Within her she fought a raging battle with the two wraiths that were trying to take over her body. She collapsed and lay on the ground twitching for what felt like an eternity for her but in reality were just a few seconds. Then she rose again. She had defeated the wraiths and taken back the total controle of herself while the wraiths were safly locked away in the back of her mind, ready to be used when she would need them. Which in fact was quite soon.   The moment she saw her mother die she decided to not only kill her muderers in a very gruesome way but also extinguish the bloodline of her mothers spineless lover that allowed his fiancé to act like a bratty spoiled princess. And for that she needed the powers of the wraiths.   The bloodwraith gave her the abbility to sense living things through solid walls and absorb their life upon touching them while the frostwraith made her immune to the cold and gave her complete controle over ice and snow. So she waited until nightfall, then left the sewers and sneaked back to her old temporary home. Thanks to her new vision she easily got around most guards. And those she couldnt avoid didnt saw the small woman as a threat - until they felt icecold hands on their faces and their life flowing out of their body. In this night Maud killed almost everybody in the estate, then she vanished into the night. She just left a few servents and others alive she liked before the incident to tell the tale.
 

The rising

After her revenge she disappeared for quite a while. It took her 15 years until she suddently reappeared on the deck of pirate ship that terrorised the trade along Nandaahrs north-western shores. From then on it only took 4 years until she comanded a whole fleet and plundered settlements, smaller cities as well as the ships of everyone who dared to enter the cold waters of the north. Nobody knew their original port - their ship allways came from the open ocean, attacked and vanished again behind the horizon. That went on for about 30 years. After a few more prosperous years Olims traders guild and a union of the bigger cities of the north combined their powers, involved a bunch of sorcerers from the Arcaneum and plotted to trap Maud who at this point was called the real queen in the north when no authorities were listening.
  It took them a few years, but in the end their combined forces caught her and sacked her after a battle that dragged out over two days on land and on sea. Those who survived spoke of blizzards, thunderstorms and raining fire - Maud and her mages against the Arcaneum. In the end Mauds troops were scattered and most of them were killed, but she herself was finally caught. Some wanted to execute her right on the spot - the wizards wanted to take her to the Arcaneum for studies - there were only few people who could controle a wraith, let alone multiple ones like Maud. In the end the Arcaneum won. The traders guild didnt really had hard feelings, they saw her as a threat to their wealth that now was out of the picture and the union was happy that somebody else had to deal with her now.   So after a few days of gathering the remaining troops and materials the winners of the "War of wizards and the witch" returned to their homes.
  But the way to the arcaneum is long and on new moon suddently a blizzard of gigantic proportions rose and annihalated the camp. Everybody knew who was behind this but Maud was gone.   And she stayed missing for another couple of decades. Most people had forgotten about her at that point and the tales of her dealings were used by parents to discipline their bratty offspring - Maud is allways out there waiting for misbehaved children...    

Maud today

  But in reality she hid in the Jotunheimen mountains, worked on her powers and preyed on adventurous miners and golddiggers who ventured too far into the mountains.   There she had what some might call a midlife crisis. In her blind wrath she bound two wraiths. Something that cant be undone and that certainly makes it pretty impossible to live a normal life among rightious townsfolk. Remember, the right half of her body was covered in frostburn, while the left half sported a gruesome black net of veins. And dont forget the black eyes with their white irisses. It took her a while but in the end she went back to piracy. But this time on a small scale level, she learned the hard way that with more power your enemies become more powerful as well.   Rumor has it that she currently is the high captain of three ships and commands around 70 men. She is supposed to have an alliance with the odd folks from the twilight archipelago who seem to host her and her crew in exchange for slaves.