Stornir (STOR-ner)

The Wolves of the Winter Sea

To understand the Nord Sea is to understand that it does not want you alive. It is a gray, churning expanse of ice and salt that tests the timber of every ship and the soul of every sailor who dares to trek north of the Eleysian Islands. And the people who call it home—the Stornir—are exactly like the sea the call home: unforgiving, relentless, and shaped by a cold that bites deep into the bone.

I have spent a lifetime fighting them. I have chased their longships through the fog of the Eleysian Islands and watched their fires burn on the horizons of Therysia. I know them not as monsters, though they often act the part, but as a people forged by a hard world. Yet, even among the hard, there are those who break, and those who sharpen.

Herein, I set down the truth of the Northmen, from the farmers who plow the frozen earth to the fanatics who seek to drown the world in shadow.

The Stornir: Children of the Ice

The Stornir are not a single nation, but a people born of the ancient Angval stock that wandered out of the White Sea millennia ago. To the uninitiated, they are all "Nordir"—a mass of pale-skinned, red and fair-haired reavers who descend from the north to pillage. But the truth is more complex.

The Stornir culture is defined by the struggle for resources. Their homelands, the rugged coasts of the Nord peninsula and the jagged Blood Isles, are barren places where the moss barely clings to the volcanic rock. Survival there is a daily war against the elements. This has bred a culture that values strength above all else, where a man’s worth is measured by his ability to take what he needs to keep his kin alive.

However, not all Stornir are raiders. In my time as Protector, I have seen many who have chosen a different path. We call them the "domesticated" Stornir—those who have settled the northern fringes of the Eleysian Islands. These people have turned their axes to felling timber and their spears to fishing the deep banks. They are farmers and fishers, their fury tempered by the soil. They trade with us, they warily welcome our patrols, and they look back at their northern cousins with a mixture of pity and fear. They know better than anyone that the old ways are a path to an early grave.

Yet, even these settled folk retain a fierce reputation. You do not cross a Stornir farmer lightly. The blood of the reaver still runs in their veins, and they remember the old songs, even if they no longer sing them with a sword in hand.

Structure

• The Storm King: The supreme charismatic and military leader, believed by some to be the bodily incarnation of Storn.

• The Nottbrir (Night Brothers): The ideological and spiritual core formed of dark-skinned "Sun People" from the south who brought serpent worship to the Nord exiles centuries ago. They frequently serve as an upper caste among Stornir, making up most of their priests and shadowmancers.

• The Nottsver (Night Swords): An elite, brutally violent warrior sect established around 1000 AV dedicated specifically to hunting the Silver Blade. Many are tattooed with shadow-ink or Elowyn blood honoring their devotion to their dark god.

• Raiders/Warriors: The general populace dedicated to warfare and pillaging.

by Val Saraven

The Nottbrir: The Night Brothers

But there is a core within the Stornir that has not softened. They call themselves the Nottbrir—the "Night Brothers".

If the Stornir are the body of the north, the Nottbrir are its dark, beating heart. They are distinct, not just in their zealotry, but in their very blood. While the typical Nordir is fair and ruddy, the Nottbrir are marked by skin as dark as rich earth. They claim to be "Trueblood," the purest of their kind, but history suggests a stranger origin.

The learned say these Night Brothers are the descendants of the "Sun People"—exiles from the burning lands of the far south who migrated north long before even the Vesprians came to the Five Seas. It is a strange irony: a people born of the sun who have embraced the deepest winter.

The Nottbrir formed the elite caste of the Stornir centuries ago. Descended of an outcast cult from the Sun Peoples of Svijashe, it was they who introduced the darker rites, the blood magic, and the worship of Storn the Devourer in his aspect as the World-Eater. They were the ones who agitated the tribes into violence so profound that the other nations of the Nord Sea finally banded together to banish them.

Driven from the mainland, they fled to the most inhospitable place on the map: the volcanic archipelago in the north-central Nord Sea. There, amidst the smoke and the ice, they built Stornheim, their capital. In that isolation, their resentment festered and hardened. They became the keepers of the old grudges, the architects of a theology that sees civilization not as progress, but as a weakness to be culled. They are the ones who whisper that the world has grown soft and ripe for the harvest.

The Nottsver: The Night Swords

From the ranks of the Nottbrir rose a faction that terrifies even their own kind. They are the Nottsver—the "Night Swords".

These are not pirates raiding for gold or food. The Nottsver are zealots raiding for annihilation. They reject the domestication of their kin in the Eleysian Islands as a betrayal of their gods. They view peace as a disease and mercy as a sin. When you see the black sails of the Nottsver on the horizon, you do not pray for victory; you pray for a quick death, for they do not take prisoners to ransom. They take them to sacrifice.

They are led by King Iskar, a Nottbrir warlord of immense ambition and brutality. Iskar has united the disparate raiders of the Blood Isles under a single banner of hate. But I fear Iskar is not the only hand on the tiller. There are whispers of another influence, a shadow that moves behind the throne. Reports from my captains speak of a figure named Vorik, a man who wields shadows like a weapon. Whether he is a sorcerer from the east or something worse, he has inflamed the Nottsver's madness, turning them from a nuisance into a coordinated, existential threat.

Under their command, the Nottsver have begun a new campaign. They are probing our defenses, striking at the Eleysian Islands with a precision that suggests they are looking for something specific. They are the immediate threat that keeps me awake at night, the wolves circling the firelight of our civilization.

by Val Saraven

Culture

Nottirbar: The Shard of Primordial Ice

And what is it they seek? It is not land, nor silver. It is a myth made metal. They call it Nottirbar—"Nightbringer".

To us, it is just the Silver Blade. To the Elowyn, it is a sacred relic of loss. But to the Stornir, it is the Shard of Ancient Ice.

Their legends claim that their god, Storn the Devourer, once held this shard and used its power to cover the world in the Night Eternal, an age of endless winter and darkness. They believe that an "Alfir"—their word for the Elowyn—deceived their god. This trickster, taking the guise of a Silver Wolf, stole the Shard and hid it deep within the green forests of the south to break Storn's power and bring back the sun.

This myth is the engine of their war. The Nottsver believe that the warrior who finds the "Silver Wolf"—the bearer of the Blade—and slays them will reclaim Nottirbar. With the Shard in hand, they believe they will rise to sit among the gods and bring about Raknakor.

Raknakor. The Return of the Everlasting Night.

They do not want to rule the world, my friend. They want to end it. They want to use that sword to cut the throat of the sun and plunge us all back into the ice. That is why they raid. That is why they hunt. They are looking for the glimmer of silver in the dark, and pray the Stars help us if they find it.

—Cedrik Dawntreader, Duke of Dragondown