Lady’s Sword, Herdis

Name: Herdis Unnarsdottir
Age: 164
Height: 5’ 6”
Weight: 130
Swan Type: Whooper
Weapon Specialty: Broadsword and Shield
Home Region: Greece
Parents: Unnarr and Bolla
Personality: Jokingly referred to as a keg of flour, most people don’t understand and assume that she is gentle and domestic (which she can be). In reality, it is a reference to the right spark will make her explode as badly as gunpowder, just more unexpectedly. Herdis is normally painfully quiet, refusing to talk more than a few words at a time. She moves with tense, brisk movements, and avoids any and all physical contact. But when she’s angry, she is a near-berserker, raging against her target with an intensity that is frightening. The anger is misplaced, but a near-weapon that she isn’t afraid to use. Of all the members of the Guard, she has the strongest hatred for medians. Like Eira, she is more of an all-purpose hand at chores, though she does weave elaborate blankets and tapestries.
Bio: Herdis was part of a large family located on a Greek island. She had no real desire to learn how to use a weapon, and was more than content to spend her life in the kitchen and house. Her mother and aunts taught her spinning wool and weaving, the family trade, but the family flocks were enormous, and Herdis had to spend her time watching over them like all the other children did. As she got older, she also started accompanying some of the younger girls so they weren’t on their own with just the sheep and maybe some dogs with them. For the most part, Herdis was safe and content among the numerous members of her family, if slightly bored due to how safe everything was.

They had gotten complacent.

One day, while she and a younger cousin were lunching, they were ambushed by two human boys from a nearby island. Their swan skins were stolen, and neither maiden had any weapon’s training to defend themselves. They were shanghaied off to the boys’ home island and married, Herdis to the eldest son of the family who quickly used his marriage as an excuse to set off as a household of his own. Herdis was practically his slave, with no way of getting saved until she found her swanskin. In the meantime, she suffered from emotional, physical, and sexual abuse from her husband. She became pregnant from several of her assaults, but only three of her children were live births: two daughters and a son.

It was the middle daughter who finally found Herdis’s swanskin, and the three children helped their mother to flee their father’s custody for the safety of her own family. They were welcomed back with joy, and sadness for the cousin who Herdis hadn’t seen since they had been kidnapped. A few months in the safety of her family did wonders for Herdis’s all-around health, especially as one of her brothers starts teaching her how to wield a sword and shield. As soon as he pronounced her able, she returned to her “husband’s” island, making herself a widow and finding out where her cousin was, rescuing her and her children as well.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Herdis was full of too much anger and pain to raise her children, and acknowledged it. She was able to channel some of that anger in teaching all the girls old enough to wield a blade how, but soon found that there were others who were better teachers in her family. Instead, Herdis traveled to the Lake, hoping to join the Guard and find a chance to heal away from her home, for the safety of her children. Her hatred of medians comes from her past experience, since she wouldn’t want another maiden to be stuck experiencing what her or her cousin went through.

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