Freyja

Freyja is a powerful central figure to the Ymir storyline. Her influence has stood through time, Ragnarok, and the degradations of a rebuilding society. She is worship and revered as a bringer of wisdom and goddess of the home and hearth.

Most villages have at least a small building dedicated to her. Though the worship of Odin is equally far spread it is less common on a daily level.

Freyja, originally an up and coming student member of the Aesir race, held knowledge of gravitic mechanics and had an ability to apply high energy mathematics that was said to rival Loki.

As the calamity that drove the Ymir builders from their home world was discovered and the Ymir Project was spurred forward she became increasingly resistant to utilizing her knowledge or sharing it with others. She began to find wisdom and even a form of personal salvation in Hoenir. And, radically she swapped her genome from the Aesir to Vanir type.

Odin, who had been courting her for some amount of time was appalled and in a less than symbolic gesture (Freyja had already said no) he called off their supposed coupling.

Freyja was said to have known many technologies and techniques of both the Aesir and Vanir and her synthesis of the two could have brought about even more wonders, but she refused her knowledge to anyone.

After Ymir’s Landing she was often isolated and spent large amounts of time amongst the humans working on common small problems and seemingly ignoring the growing division between Odin’s utilitarian utopia and the natural drive of the human will.

Her death during the course of Ragnarok remains largely a mystery. Legends say that she was present to wrap her arms around her brother Freyr as he fell at the hands of Surt. But stories have a habit of changing over time and even eye witnesses have been known to skew a detail or two…

The Corpse Shore

An enormous underground facility holding the sacred dead of Midgard. As opposed to Nifleheim that houses genetic data and materials, the Corpse Shore is actually a more traditional cemetery. Where those who’s genetic material has been so thoroughly corrupted that it must be contained and quarantined away from the rest of the populace.

These bodies, perfectly preserved and guarded by a nano swarms under control of the entity G.A.R.M. make sure that nothing interferes with these bodies, be it decay or escape.

While it would seem simpler to cremate these bodies as a safeguard, Odin himself handed down the edict that the Corpse Shore be built and the rituals and rights performed there.

For a leader of people steeped in science and logic this act, hidden from the general populace, comes as something of a misstep. What power these bodies might contain and what Odin fears from them is a mystery as of yet unsolved.

Lif’s Awakening

Page 1: Long silent generators rumble and spark into life.

Page 2: A control panel activates and a variety of substances are pushed into a tube. The tube is roughly 3 meters tall and 1.5 meters wide. There is a blue liquid in the tube. The substances being injected into the tube are an indistinct combination of powders, gels, and particle solids.

Page 3: A fetus within the tube opens its eyes.

Page 4: A needle-like cord descends from the top of the tube and is inserted in the base of the now small childs neck. The child, roughly 5, has whispy blonde hair flowing in the blue irridescant tube.

Page 5: Now full grown, the woman within the tube, Lif, is awakened with a shock and the tube drains of its fluid.’

Page 6: Exiting the tube, Lif is strapped into a unitard by a machine that is obscured in the shadows. The synaptic data cord is separated from her spine as she leaves the tube.

Page 7: Lif convulses and hocks up blue liquid on the lab floor. She is terrified and confused.

Page 8: Lifthrasir emerges from the shadows, approaching her swiftly with a variety of diagnostic and surgical tools being held by thin tendrils ot its main body. Lif, shown at the bottom foreground is preparing to flee.

Page 9: Lif flees down a tunnel, Lifthrasir’s shadow  looming behind as she approaches a large door. The walls of the tunnel are lined with human sized machinery, a dark window shows the slight hint of a bay full of larger machines beyond.

Page 10: The door opens and Lif crashes and trips

Page 11: The room, spacious and well lit contains a library and large alien portraits of Hoenir and Freyja. Lif scoops up an odd corset style piece of clothing that is attached to a cloak.

Page 12: Now adorned in the cloak and corset she climbs a ladder towards a hatch with a swiveling red warning light.

Page 13: Lif emerges into the outside world, she is standing at a hatch in the middle of a forest with rain pouring down upon her, she stares wide eyed into the sky.

Notes: Obviously something needs to be done with page 10. Nothing much happening there at the moment. The corset/cloak article is the same one worn by Freyja. Still not 100% on what Lifthrasir should look like so that will be hammered out soon.

Ginnungagap

The primordial world of the Norse, revisited or rather recreated after the fallout of Ragnarok, Ginnungagap is a harsh place of blustering snow and little to no natural life.

A desolate world made all the worse by mounds of ever shifting, blowing, billowing snow drifts. Navigation is performed by brave souls with a knack for knowing which direction they are going. The terrain changes daily and by the time a journey is completed the landscape behind looks as unfamiliar as the landscape ahead.

Visibility is poor and the sub-zero temperatures require layers of clothing whenever one ventures outside of a town or even out of a home.

Though the landscape is covered in a nearly perpetual layer of snow and ice, the terrain itself is short and brutish. Small srub brush and crippled trees occasionally make their way above the snow line.

The area is populated with hills and the occasional high peak provides a natural shield for larger valley villages. Massive cave complexes carved at some earlier time provide shelter, warmth, and hiding for raiders, travellers, and secrets alike.

At the center of this wasteland is the desolate and mostly abandoned city of Midgaard. Its mighty buildings still climbing into the sky, though most are burned out and twisted relics of a former time.

In the center of Midgaard mighty Yggradsil still rises into the heavens. No one knows how to enter or what keeps the massively tall structure in place, but it has stood as such for thousands of years.

North of Midgaard lies a junkyard of desolate machinery from the pre-Ragnarok era. Giant objects of unknown purpose sit in a crater that stretches for a hundred miles. No one has yet found what lays beyond.

In the south a series of sharp cliffs break into a roaring sea that features waves so mighty none have ever crossed it and few have dared even enter.

The west and east are both blocked by impassible mountain ranges and walls of ice hundreds of feet tall.

The area in between these natural boundaries is no more than 1000 square miles. But it is rich in story and heavy with secrets of a past both magnificent and tragic.

Raiders of Lom

The most powerful group of raiders plaguing the Ymir world. What can a post-apocalyptic (or in our case post-Ragnarotik) world be without bands of criminals commonly referred to as raiders wandering around and hurting people who have the misfortune of still being alive after a terrible calamity.

The Raiders of Lom are from the southern most portion of the land but hold several different ‘chapter houses’ across the Ginnungagap. Loosely tied together by a Creed and the charisma of their now aged leader, Erik “The Lode” Bjor.

The Creed is an ingenious piece of despotic diplomacy that advocates the safety and survival of the common people while brutalizing them to a point of terrified complacency. The more alive the ‘cattle’ are the more the raiders can take from them.

The Creed is not spoken outside of the raiders dens and the common folk are unaware that their lives are precious to their tormentors, and that only adds to the fear and the desperation to work harder and resist less. Many a story is spread about the Raiders of Lom descending upon a town and stealing everything, burning the houses and having their way with the women, but each time a sigh of relief is raised afterwords that ‘miraculously’ no one was killed and the community pitches in and rebuilds in record time.

No one has yet drawn together the corollary of these stories.

As for Erik “The Lode” Bjor, whether he has a deep rooted caring for the people or is simply a tyrannical man with a clever mind, is unknown.

There are seven known chapters of the Raiders of Lom, each comprised of roughly 20 men and women. Their numbers come from external recruitment of bastard children and occasionally bribes and coercion to self styled city protectors.

A curse and a blessing of the Creed leaves many wounded protectors and mercenaries across the land. An undercurrent of law and order may one day bring these people a new hope for confronting the Raiders of Lom, but for the time being it offers a talent pool of warriors to draw upon when numbers sag.

And in a land such as this, everyone has a price, and most of those prices are woefully low.