( CAPE KORE APP )

[wolfofmidgard]

[Player information]
Player Name: Crow
Age: 25
E-mail: dagnykitty [at] gmail [dot] com
Other characters played at Cape Kore:
Bethmora Fortescue | blackmagus

[Character information]
Name: Meja (as a human, Meja Urdahl), Lady Meja, Generalløytnant Meja. Commonly called The Wolf of Midgard due to her long-time friendship with both winter wolves and Fenrir. Generally she stays away from titles unless she really has to use them.
Canon: Original
Canon Point: One month into investigating the government experiments about the Bifrost.
Age: 726

Appearance:

Meja is 5'10", with a very lanky and very in-shape build. She has almost snow-white skin, and the same color hair, with dark blue eyes. Her hair is quite short. When her armor and clothes aren't glamoured to look like something else, it's visible that she wears white-grey leather and silver chain, with two gleaming silver arm guards and two gleaming epaulets that look a little like wolf heads. In addition to heavy boots of the same color leather, she also wears a hooded, full-length white cloak. There are three knives tucked into her belt, and two short swords strapped to her back. She keeps herself very tidy, most of the time, and has no scars of any kind due to her 'rebirth'. Due to being a Valkyrie, her appearance doesn't change and she doesn't age. She looks exactly as she did as a human, when she died, aside from the lack of scars. Meja also has a medium-strength Norwegian accent.

Inventory:

❆ Asgardian Armor. Made from Asgardian steel, this set of armor was a gift for her part that she played in the Twilight of the Gods. It requires wearing only its two shoulder pieces and two arm guards to function; the rest of the protection is granted by magic. As for the steel itself, it has two enchantments on it. The first is a kind of repair function that heals scratches and knicks. The second is a glamour that allows her to change it, and the clothes she wears with it, into any outfit she can easily think up or sees. This lets her blend in easily in other Realms.

❆ Runeblades. The weapons of Aesir, Vanir, Valkyrie, and Dwarves of social standing. Each race creates them a little differently, but the result is much the same: a nigh-indestructible weapon granted permanent power by a series of inscribed runes on its blade. A Runeblade can only be a bladed weapon (obviously), and they often have names that they earn from battle. Some claim that their Runeblade speaks to them, the older it gets. Meja has two short swords that she perpetually keeps strapped to her back.

❆ Throwing Knives. Three, made of Asgardian steel but nonmagical in nature. These are tucked into her belt.

Abilities:

The following are abilities granted by being a Valkyrie and a supernatural creature.

❆ Agelessness. Valkyrie are remade humans. Like Aesir, they have been blessed by Yggdrasil. They do not need to eat or sleep, though they can do both if they so wish, and they do not age or become sick from normal diseases. In general, Valkyrie are very tough and injuring them takes quite a bit of effort. They also cannot be poisoned by a mundane, non-magical substance, which makes getting drunk very difficult. But they are easier to kill than Aesir: a magical blade through their heart or their brain will do the trick. Though, standing next to a dying Valkyrie can be a very painful experience: they tend to discharge all of their energy at the same time, which is sort of akin to being hit by lightning.

❆ Combat. Valkyrie are about three times as strong as their former human selves, and their reflexes are generally much faster as well. As most are quite old, they have an expert handle on combat — Meja included. Meja is proficient with short swords, spears, great-axes and broad swords. Her weapons of choice are her two short swords. She's also very proficient with hand-to-hand combat.

❆ Storm Alignment. Valkyrie are creatures of storms, and cannot be hurt by electricity or be affected by the cold. They are able to summon storms in up to two different locations — the more powerful the Valkyrie, the bigger the storm — and use lightning to travel between them. This gives them the ability to travel great distances, and to travel between Realms. Valkyrie can take passengers, but the experience leaves their passenger dazed for a few minutes until they get used to the sensation. Meja can only take two passengers at a time. She can summon a storm big enough to cover six city blocks with torrential rain and wind, or a blizzard (due to her history), if she wants to. But Valkyrie cannot do this indefinitely and the bigger the storm, the faster their energy is depleted. She can keep a mild storm going for a day, or a violent one going for a few hours. Meja can also draw on lightning to hit her opponents with, but only outside with any accuracy.

❆ Healing. Valkyrie can use their energy to heal shallow wounds in others. If they themselves receive a near-mortal wound that would kill their former human selves (i.e. a mundane blade through the brain), they can heal this as well. But doing so depletes all of their energy and leaves them exhausted.

❆ Yggdrasil's Blessing. This is separate from being a Valkyrie. In the Realms, Meja is able to understand Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and its real voice. She was granted this for freeing its heart during Ragnarök. Being able to understand Yggdrasil means that she can sense the life and health of other trees. If they're sick, dying, or experiencing other troubles, she can sense it, but only in a general sense.

❆ Magic. Meja has lived long enough to get a firm grasp of the system of magic that permeates her Realms. While she can't do any of the large, dramatic things that some of the Aesir and Vanir (the gods) are capable of, she prefers to focus on smaller and more practical applications. Magic requires quite a bit of thought, concentration, and time to use. It's not as spontaneous as in other worlds — for Meja, at least, who needs to use runes to apply it. More on magic here.

The following are 'mundane' abilities.

❆ Languages. As a human, Meja spoke Norwegian and English fluently and Icelandic passably well. She also could speak a handful of words in a few other languages, mostly 'hello' and cursing from her time spent in her town's bar. Since becoming a Valkyrie, Meja has added French, Spanish, and Old Norse (the language of the Aesir, sort of) to her roster, and has reasonably perfected Icelandic. She has something of a natural gift for languages, but she's also had a lot of time to learn.

❆ Cards. Meja is a masterful card player and can do many tricks, due to her experiences in that same bar.

❆ Strategy. Since becoming a Valkyrie in a fairly high position within their ranks, Meja has become quite good at war and battle strategies. Lacking her magical brawn that she had in life, she usually tries to simply out-smart her opponent. (This is more important when fighting her usual enemies, the much-more-agile Dark Elves and very-huge Jotunn. Against humans with no special abilities, she can usually win a fight with ease.)

History:

General World Overview

The Nine Realms: Midgard (Earth), Asgard, Muspellsheimr, Niflheimr, Vanaheimr, Jotunheimr, Alfheimr, Hel, Svartalfaheimr. Much of these worlds reflects what is said about them in Norse mythology. (And more is said below.) The Nine Realms are all connected to each other on the branches and roots of Yggdrasil, the World's Tree, which is both a figurative and literal tree and a living force. Magic is granted to immortals and mortals alike from the life of its branches.

Ragnarök, the Judgment of the Powers and the "end of the world", was also a myth that was true. It was an inevitability to all of the powers of the nine realms. Except for the actions of one, who grew bored and restless and diverted from the "plan": Loki. Loki did not approve of an event that would kill all but one of his children, and kill him, too. So he decided to place a long wager, and to set his own plans into motion.

Loki broke enough of his consciousness away from the cage in which he had been imprisoned (underneath Midgard, specifically beneath northern Norway) to poison the minds of mortals who were, in the 1960s, engaging in a Cold War. He two agendas, though the gods were only aware of the first: one, to plunge the world into another World War, and two, to kill Odin the Allfather's favorite son, Thor. His debt to settle with Thor wasn't wholly personal, as Loki just wanted to kill someone who was very important in the plans of Ragnarök. Thor's tendency to play the hero was an added bonus that would make things easier. When Asgard figured out (half of) what Loki was doing, Thor volunteered to investigate. Knowing exactly where Thor would arrive, having plenty of knowledge of the Bifrost bridge that the gods used to reach other realms, Loki pushed his servants into nuclear war. The strike happened when Thor set foot on Midgard, and the Aesir was annihilated in the crossfire.

The Allfather, of course, was furious. Most of the human population of Midgard disappeared overnight, and the stragglers that were left fled to the north and south to escape the nuclear fallout. Odin himself came to Midgard to discipline Loki. He discovered that the humans Loki had manipulated into becoming his servants had used an arrow carved from Yggdrasil to kill Thor, soaked in the black and stagnant waters at the World Tree's base. It was such an arrow that had killed Baldr, another of Odin's sons, and Loki had been to blame in that case, as well. (Mistletoe was what they told mortals had been the cause, as they did not want mortals to know what could really kill an Aesir.)

Beyond anger, now, Odin took some of that water and poured it over Loki himself. The water had gained such potency by Yggdrasil draining all of its nutrients, over time, with only nothingness to replace it. It burned away Loki's body and left only his insane, determined spirit chained to the cage. Loki survived by possessing the body of his fellow prisoner, his wife, Sigyn, who slowly went mad herself from the strain. Now even more incensed, Loki pushed forward with Ragnarök, even though one of his key players was now dead.

The Aesir were distraught. Thor was to kill Jormungandr, the World Eater, during Ragnarök, or else Jormungandr would devour the Nine Realms (and then be killed himself, by the serpent's venom). Now someone else would need to take his place, and everyone else capable had an already-important role. So the Allfather, in his wisdom, took matters into his own hands and suggested a mortal champion. He'd long had such a line of champions on Midgard, and they were still alive; the Urdahl family was in charge of protecting Loki's cage. This was approved and everything went forward again.

Ragnarök occurred in the autumn of 1971. Some events were changed by the mortal champion, such as the deaths of Odin and Fenrir. The realms underwent a massive change and the Bifrost was destroyed, severely limiting travel between the Realms. (For more of that, see the History below.) It has been seven hundred years since Ragnarök.

The Realms are:

❆ Midgard, or the Earth as its citizens call it, was wiped clean and new. Humanity had to rebuild; their civilization is now on par with the technology level of 2012, after political turbulence and a war or two over land and resources. Humans make up 90% of its populace, but there's also a very large percentage of Dökkálfar (Dark Elves) who live underground. Humanity, for the most part, has no idea that they share their world. Ragnarök is something that they're starting to pretend didn't exist, in some places of the world.

❆ Asgard, the Realm of the Aesir, is still very much in its seat of power. Víðarr, the youngest son of Odin, is on the throne, as he was spared during Ragnarök. Aesir are the dominant race, but there are small smatterings of other races — including Vanir, who are almost identical but hail from a different Realm. Most of Asgard is covered in forest, but it also has a small ocean. Its greatest city is the one around the giant hall, Gladsheim, from which the King and twelve Judges regulate Asgard.

❆ Muspellsheimr, the Realm of Fire, is inhabited by what remains of the Fire Jotunn that limped off at the tail end of Ragnarök. Muspel is a realm of volcanic activity. The Fire Jotunn civilization rises and falls on a regular basis as they attempt to reclaim the throne left by their dead king, Surtr. It will remain leaderless until such a time that a clever enough Jotunn will step forward. Most other Realms wish that this will never happen.

❆ Niflheimr, the Realm of Ice and Fog, is the other primordial realm. It is a place of mist and cold, home to nine frozen rivers and many types of creatures and monsters — only some of them sentient. It is the ancestral home of the dwindling race of Frost Jotunn. Following the collapse of the Bifrost, they are quite cut off from the other Realms.

❆ Vanaheimr, the Realm of the Vanir, is a quiet Realm made up of mostly plains. Previous to Ragnarök, the Vanir and the Aesir warred for control of the Realms. This ended in an Aesir victory, but some of the Vanir prefer to live in their ancestral home rather than in Asgard.

❆ Jotunheimr, the Realm of the Rock Jotunn, looks very similar to Asgard and used to be separated from it by a river, Ifing. During Ragnarök, the riverbed collapsed and left a gaping void between the Realms, preventing anyone from getting across. Like the Frost Jotunn, the Rock Jotunn are dwindling and have not terrorized the world of Men or Aesir in quite some time. But theirs is a more violent reason: they stood beside the Fire Jotunn in Ragnarök, and were beaten soundly by Asgard.

❆ Alfheimr, the Realm of the Ljósálfar (Light Elves), is an ideal-looking Realm with beautiful forests, meadows, and mountains. Light Elves were peaceful, mysterious and withdrawn before Ragnarök; now, they have all but dropped below the radar. On the rare occasion that they receive a visitor, they welcome and treat them well. But otherwise, the Light Elves keep to themselves.

❆ Svartalfaheimr, the Realm of Forges, is a rocky and unforgiving place. It is the ancestral homeland of the Svartálfar (Dwarves). Unlike most other Dwarves, they have pale skin and black hair and aren't short. The Dwarves are master craftsmen, living underneath their mountains and making treasures from the ores they mine. There are three tribes, led by three kings: Motsognir, Durinn, and Dvalinn. There are three different labyrinthine kingdoms, mazes, that only dwarves can navigate due to its design.

❆ Hel, the Realm of the Dead, is the Ninth of the Nine Realms. Hel is presided over by the deity of the same name: Hel, daughter of Loki. She takes the sick, the dying, and the evil, whereas the noble and those who die in battle go to two different Realms. Most of Hel is valleys so dark that it is impossible to see anything but the road ahead of you and the slope of valley walls around you. Hel herself lives in Éljúðnir, a great hall, where she sits on a throne.

There are "back doors" that allow getting into other Realms, all of them dangerous, in the absence of the Bifrost. The only ones who can travel safely, now, are the Valkyrie, who have become a sort of inter-Realm police force, trying to prevent any wars between Realms. Some Realms can get into others much easier than vice versa, and the separation has made all of the Realms uneasy.

More information here.

Personal History

Meja was born on August 17th, 1948 to Stellan and Freya Urdahl, situated in the lonely town of Vardø, Norway. Her family was treated as the town weirdos, though Meja hardly cared or noticed until much later. From the age of one to five, she was almost exclusively raised by her mother, Freya, who would not answer her questions about where her father vanished to. Despite this issue, she was happily a "mother's girl." Her mother read her stories every day, though not typical children's fare at the time: Grimm's Fairy Tales, Lovecraft, Norse mythology. Meja dressed up as the heroes of these stories, making herself wooden armor and swords and pretending to vanquish evil. Despite not having any friends due to her family's standing, this was a happy time — full of love.

When she was five, her mother became suddenly ill and her father started spending more time at the house. She and her father never quite clicked, and his absence had always made Freya sad — Meja was rather disgruntled about this, and didn't hide it. He often made her go outside and play while he took care of Freya, and it was during one of these occasions that she met a very pretty woman in a green dress. This pretty, older woman asked a lot of questions about Meja, and Meja answered all of them truthfully. Her mother had not taught her to lie, and told her how terrible it was; she tried very hard not to. This woman left as quickly as she'd come, and it was later that Meja would realize that she'd been visited by Frigg, the Queen of Asgard.

Frigg felt sorry for her, because of what had poisoned her mother: a curse, passed on by Loki from within his Cage deep below the town. Meja's father was the latest in a line of Champions for Odin who had been charged to protect the town from trolls and all other manner of such monsters. The townspeople were unaware of such threats, and thus treated the Urdahl family with a degree of scorn for spending days alone on the icy wastes on the fringe of town. The Urdahl family had always been kept in the dark, however, that Loki's Cage was under their town, and this was the reason they'd been granted their powers: increased strength and stamina, and a magical weapon called Daybreaker, among other things. They were Loki's unknowing jailers, and because of this the Norse trickster had always engineered their deaths.

Her mother's condition worsened, but she did not die for ten years. Doctors couldn't find anything wrong. Freya spent a lot of time in bed at home, and at the closest hospital a few hours away. Meja spent so much time at her mother's bedside that she picked up a genuine phobia of hospitals and medical locations, always afraid that this visit would be her mother's last. Her happy childhood, like that, was gone. Her father balanced the best he could, but Meja often suffered for it. When he had a break from Freya and his duties as Champion, he would drown his sorrows at the local bar. Meja spent a lot of time there herself, trying to make amends with him sometimes, where she picked up Icelandic and a handful of other words in other languages (as well as card tricks) from friendly sailors. During this time, she learned to tell white lies and why they were sometimes necessary. Most of them were telling her mother that she was fine, when in fact she was anything but.

1963 was a bad year. The Cold War worsened to the point where nuclear weapons were fired, and most of the planet and its population paid the price. Norway saw a swell in citizenship as people fled the nuclear fallout. But more importantly to Meja, she was fifteen and 1963 was the year in which her mother finally died. She died when Stellan wasn't there, with Meja at her bedside in the hospital. Freya's dying wish was for Meja to look after her father, and Meja clung to her promise that she would. Her father was getting drunk during Freya's funeral, and that was the last straw between them. They all but stopped talking to each other. Meja became a disaffected loner, reading in the library or wandering the ice. Sometime she looked for her father, out there, but she never found him.

Exactly one year after her mother's death, her father came into the house covered in bruises and with a strange expression on his face. He sat on the edge of her bed, waking her up, and told her a story. Meja was barely awake at the time. When she woke up again, he was gone and she frantically tried to remember it.

I'm going to tell you a story, as my father told me. You may make your own judgments for now, but know that this story lives. Long ago, our ancestors lived in a village only a few miles to the south of here. They hated it, but they couldn't move because there were trolls in this region so thick that even going hunting was taking your life into your hands. One winter it was particularly bad, and several children were taken. A group of men got together and went to find a tree. Our ancestor, Aksel, tied himself to a tree, one of the few in the area, and said he wouldn't move until he received help from Odin. The trolls, they all agreed, needed to be dealt with.

Two days later, he was so thirsty he could barely see, and numb from the cold, but still he wouldn't move until the children received some sort of justice. Finally, a man appeared in front of him with two ravens, dressed in a ragged cloak: Odin. Aksel told the Allfather why he was there and begged him for some kind of help against the trolls. In his mind, the gods would deal the justice directly, as soon as they heard of his village's troubles. But Odin was much craftier than that. He told Aksel that he would, indeed, help him, and walked into the woods after severing the ropes securing him to the tree. But he also told Aksel that, if he helped him, Aksel would be his servant for the rest of his life. And, of course, Aksel agreed.

He returned to the village and recovered in the span of a few hours, shocking everyone. The next night he woke up to find thirty trolls assaulting the village, destroying homes and carrying people off to eat them. Aksel fell to his knees and begged Odin for help. As he did so, runes came alight on his arms, and a brilliant axe appeared in his hands: The Daybreaker, he later called it. Thanking Odin, he flew into combat, vanquishing troll after troll. The axe would flash, you see, and turn them into stone, and then Aksel — with a strength he'd never felt before — would swing Daybreaker into them and they would crumble to dust.

But it was a bittersweet victory. As he'd fought, killing most of the trolls, some of them had killed his wife and one of his two children, leaving only a son behind. The village declared Aksel their champion, and Odin had gained a servant.

That's who we are, Meja. We're the servants of Odin, and the protectors of the town.

Meja pulled on warm clothes and headed out to the wastes to find her father, checking the bar first and failing to find him, terrified that he was going to do something stupid. She found him deep in a battle with a troll, and tried to get his attention but couldn't. The troll turned the tides of this particular battle and crushed him, and the runes that had been attached to her bloodline passed immediately to Meja in her moment of grief. They burned into her palms, making it hard to comprehend anything other than how badly they hurt. But it was also an intuitive magic, and Meja was able to summon Daybreaker (a great-axe made of light, specifically for turning trolls to stone) and kill the troll, avenging her father.

From then on, it was her duty to protect the town in his place, as the last remaining member of the family. She arranged for her father to be buried in the same graveyard as her mother. Luckily, monsters had a habit of guarding relics, and she could sell these relics for enough money to keep their house and buy food. But during this particular period of time, as she learned how to fight with no one to teach her but things that wanted to kill her, Meja became an alcoholic. The town still believed that the people who occasionally died had been killed by other people, or the elements, even if they came face to face with a monster.

She wasn't completely without friends. A pack of winter wolves, from Niflheim, had been stranded on Midgard, and she was able to befriend the intelligent creatures. One of them, a pup, she named Erling, having saved him from some dökkálfar, and they in particular became good friends. Herman Gaupholm, Vardø's singular man of law enforcement, had seen a troll firsthand and knew that Meja was out there fighting them; whenever someone tried to frame her for something, or get her run out of town, he stood up for her.

Then, in 1971, came Fimbulvetr, the three winters in a row that heralded Ragnarök. The Earth began to freeze solid, including the oceans, and madness began to descend on the remaining human population. Fights and scuffles turned lethal, and pretty soon it was brother against brother. Meja and Gaupholm, who was thankfully impervious, became what was holding the little town together. Meja refused to believe what it really was, until one night the snow under their feet began to "light up" as the magic on Loki's Cage evaporated into thin air. People fled in fear, but the town was not completely empty when the Cage caved in, taking everything with it and creating a large chasm in the Earth.

Meja, too, would have died, but a root from Yggdrasil had literally "caught" her, preventing her from falling all of the way. She managed to struggle out of the chasm with Ragna, Gaupholm's mute daughter, and reunite them, but was badly injured in the process. Gaupholm turned his back for one moment, to get his daughter to the car, and discovered Meja missing.

She had, in fact, been taken to Asgard, by Frigg herself. Frigg explained that for ten years, the plan concerning Ragnarök had changed. Thor had died in the nuclear apocalypse, as it were, his death machinated by Loki, whose escape from his Cage had just destroyed Meja's down. When Thor had died, Asgard had initially panicked and put the rest of Ragnarök in runic Cages as well: Fenrir, Jormungandr, and Yggdrasil's heart. Now that Loki was out, the Cages would need to be broken, because the Norn (the giantesses who were, essentially, Fates) had foreseen that Meja would say yes to being in Thor's place in Ragnarök.

Meja told them she'd think about it, but instead she crawled out of the infirmary they'd put her in and tried to get back to Midgard. Needless to say, she wasn't successful, and collapsed in a corridor. But a giant appeared, introducing her name as Skalla — a Norn, she claimed. They argued a little. Skalla tried to convince her that accepting "her destiny" was the only way to go, and that she would be "greatly honored" for her sacrifice. Meja wanted nothing to do with it and demanded why the giantess would ask her to lay down her life, and all of the lives that would be extinguished by Ragnarök. Skalla told her, reluctantly, that if she "went along" with things, lives could be spared; not everything was set in stone.

Going to Odin, her patron, Meja made a deal. She would take Thor's place, but in return what was left of humanity would be saved. They would be taken to a safe place, and then allowed to flourish on the reborn Midgard when Ragnarök was over. Odin agreed, though it was a fairly large breach of Ragnarök's foretelling in which almost all of humanity was to die. It aggravated the Norn, but kept them in check. It was only two deviations. However, Meja and Skalla's plans were quite a bit more drastic. They went to Fenrir's Cage and broke him out, as requested and foretold, but also asked him to join their small alliance rather than kill Odin. He agreed, and at this point the Norn were besides themselves in rage. But Meja, Skalla, Fenrir and Erling (the winter wolf she'd been friends with) kept on the move so that they couldn't be tracked down as they went on their task, and Skalla maintained magical wards to keep them hidden.

Next came the Cage around the heart of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, whose Cage was protected by Draugr (Norse undead) and a Kraken. It took their combined force to destroy the runes and free it. In thanks, the World Tree gave them its blessing, allowing them to hear its 'voice'.

Lastly was the Cage for the serpent Jormungandr, the World Eater that Meja was to kill during the main battle of Ragnarök. His was at the sea floor, and was much easier to break as the destruction of his Cage was to be the beginning of the end. As he broke free of the frozen sea, Skalla transported them up to the surface in time to see black water rising from the cracks of the ocean. Black water that Meja knew would cover the Earth and wipe it clean of its nuclear infection, changing it forever. It would remove all traces that her family had ever existed, and she felt a certain numbness come over her. Happily, Skalla took them back to Asgard, then, to prepare.

Skalla argued that because they were going to save Fenrir (and by extension, Odin) they could try and figure out a strategy to save Meja from Jormungandr's venom — pure destruction and chaos. But Meja was too numb to what she had to do. In a way, she was looking forward to death, as it would reunite her with her parents. Another, related blow came as they reached Asgard. She was reunited with her father: he had been reborn as an Einherjar, a warrior of Odin, normally a feast attendee in Valhalla. He was now to be a soldier in Ragnarök, himself. Realizing that she would have to live through her father's death twice, Meja surrendered to the idea of dying after Jormungandr's death, rather demoralized that she would never be able to live up to her mother's dying wish.

Ragnarök came a few mornings later. Aesir and Vanir against Fire and Rock Jotunn, Dark Elves, dragons, and other such monsters. Meja fought hard until Jormungandr appeared, keeping an eye on her friends. But when the World Eater joined the battle, she threw herself against him in combat and didn't look back; she was determined to take him down with her. They fought each other with equal fierceness, the serpent to live and the human to prevent the devouring of the Nine Realms. Meja put Daybreaker through his skull, but in doing so was infected thoroughly by his venom and dropped on the spot. Nearby, Surtr, the Fire Jotunn who led the opposing army, was slain by Odin, but managed to mortally wound the Allfather. Both champion and patron died that day.

But life was not to let up. Meja had died valiantly and heroically. Thus, Yggdrasil brought her back to be a positive influence on the Realms: she was remade into a Valkyrie. The adjustment was difficult, at first. Meja wanted nothing to do with anything resembling a military force. She ran away, even, and found Skalla, who helped her realize that she could do some real good, even if she would never be reunited with her mother again. Reluctantly, Meja returned to the Valkyrie and was retrained. She was also taught how to properly use her new gifts. Erling, her winter wolf, had survived the battle and his blessing from Yggdrasil gave him immortality, and so her kinship with him, as well as her deeds, earned Meja her title: The Wolf of Midgard.

She remained, however, rebellious. Meja wasn't a grunt, but she was certainly below the rank of High General Ingibjörg, the military leader of the Valkyrie. Still, if Ingibjörg gave her an order she didn't like, she refused to carry it out; her independent nature became rather infamous, rather quickly. She was assigned to look after the human race on Midgard, as it began to rebuild on a world wiped clean. Along with Erling, she gained the companionship one of Odin's ravens, Muninn, and she gained the love and trust of the King and Queen of Asgard, who routinely asked for her whenever they needed aid from the Valkyrie. Meja was perhaps more loyal to the King than she was Ingibjörg, as the King was Odin's son and she had, after all, been Odin's champion.

Meja and her companions — Skalla, Erling, Muninn, Fenrir — continued to adventure and explore the Realms, as the Valkyrie were one of the few forces that could do so after the destruction of the Bifrost during Ragnarök. The Valkyrie became a sort of peace-keeping force, gathering information on their depleted but not eliminated enemies (Fire and Rock Jotunn and Dark Elves, in particular). She picked up a few more skills, also, like a few more languages, and she learned how to use proper runic magic with Fenrir as her teacher. At one point, it was thought that a Draugr was well on its way to devouring a town's entire populace, and Meja was sent to destroy it. But she discovered that the Draugr, named Tringe, was actually quite polite and had kept its own mind, and that another monster was to blame for the violence. She and Tringe became friends, Meja ever open-minded about other races and creatures.

Exactly seven hundred years after Ragnarök, a ripple traveled through the Realms, a ripple that hadn't been felt since before: someone had begun to reconstruct the Bifrost. Realizing that scientists on Midgard had done it, Meja was deployed to the Realm to discover who it was and to make sure the Jotunn and Elves didn't get their hands on it. She discovered the entire thing was a secret, conducted at a university with government funding, and befriended two professors to try and learn more about what was going on: Pascha Ivanski and Gisli Helgarson. Pascha, she discovered, was a descendant of Gaupholm, her friend from seven hundred years before. She was also being targeted by Dark Elves, which meant that there were many more secrets Meja had yet to unearth. She resolved to help them until they were discovered, and to make sure that Asgard got its hands on the Bifrost.

Personality:

Meja's defining attributes are her compassion, her courage, her open-mindedness, and yet her complete lack of confidence in herself.

She was raised by her mother to be loving and accepting of others, and in fact Freya Urdahl drilled the importance of this into her. Later, at her loneliest time in her life, when she was pushing people away and her parents had just died, her best friend was a wolf of near-human intelligence (Erling), rather than a fellow human. This continued to drive her as she added other non-humans to her circle of friends: Skalla the giantess, Fenrir the god-killing wolf. Appearance does not matter to her in the slightest, and nor does race. She knows better than most that it's what's underneath that is most important. A good soul is a good soul, and she will always try to help good people (and even not so good people) to the best of her abilities as a result.

This loneliness and isolation with her own race, however, created a rather drastic problem with her own self esteem. She was treated as a freak, and while she blew this off and tried to get on as best as she could, it did affect her. No matter her accomplishments, no matter how much she helps others, Meja rarely mentions what she does. She thinks of it as the least she could do, despite the fact that she died to save the Nine Realms from destruction. Often it looks like simple modesty, but it can be a problem with inter-personal relationships. In her darkest of moods, she can reason with herself that she doesn't deserve friends because of the promises that she failed to keep. Her broken promise to her mother, even now, continues to haunt her.

As a result, opening up to others is somewhat difficult for her. Especially with mortals, who she knows she'll outlive. She very rarely 'troubles' others with her problems, even and especially when doing so is detrimental for herself. This is another self esteem issue, in that she views her own problems as things no one else should have to worry about.

In life, Meja was extremely shy and easily embarrassed. But since then, living so long has made her see that there isn't much point to being shy. Talk to someone, or don't. Making idle conversation has become not easy, exactly, but something she doesn't stress over too much. She's relaxed in social situations, having been through so many. While she can still be surprised by others, it doesn't happen very often.

But despite this, Meja does genuinely like talking to people and making friends, even though she can be hesitant to become too attached. She often enforces a certain emotional distance to others, to prevent being hurt, but this only works some of the time. Meja is, herself, a good soul. She enjoys helping others when she can, and when she makes friends she will always be there for them. Or at least will try to, extremely hard — an influence of those broken promises, again. If she likes someone and is friends with them, then she isn't shy about showing it. She's not very physical with acquaintances beyond shaking their hand, but friends, on the other hand, get hugs.

Meja has, over the years, acquired a very snarky sense of humor, but this snark is not mean-spirited unless she's angry. If it seems to bother someone she cares about, she'll stop. Otherwise, though, she'll loose the snark with a grin on her face. This really only happens if she's angry or happy; if she's in-between, she usually doesn't joke much. Her sense of humor has luckily been more shaped by Fenrir, her mentor, rather than Muninn, her raven companion, who has a very distastefully grim sense of humor.

Her fears, other than what has been described with losing people and breaking promises, are few but strong. She still has nosocomephobia, fear of hospitals and medical places, from when she watched her mother waste away in one. She refuses to enter such buildings, and would experience panic attacks and shortness of breath (though she doesn't need to breathe) from being forced to. This is her only true phobia. She has a leery sadness with graveyards, as a side effect of having to bury both of her parents, but has no trouble entering them. On the few occasions that she sleeps, she still experiences nightmares of Ragnarök, dying, and Jormungandr.

Playfulness and her rebellious nature are a large, defining part of her personality, as well. Her superiors think she has a problem with authority, but Meja picked up an aversion to it because of the concept of "destiny" and a lack of choice in her life. She was forced to defend her town in her life, and she was changed into a Valkyrie without any say in the matter. But if she respects someone who tries to give her orders, and those orders are logical, Meja has zero problem helping out and following them. Too much work, though, and Meja will itch for travel and adventure, which have become large staples in her life. She enjoys joking around and seeing new things, and being overly serious is rarely a problem. Being too serious and taking yourself too seriously are things that she views as problems.

[Samples]

Actionspam/network.

Network.

Prose.

Anything Else? This is more of a side question than anything else, but how much are you guys okay with Meja messing with the weather? This isn't to say she'd bring down a tornado or something, but do you want to impose any hard limits? I don't want to potentially step on any toes. Most of what Meja does is very short storms, since the longer ones tire her out. (Rain for crops, perhaps.)