Ulrica Vargstrom
Ulrica Vargstrom
Ulrica Vargstrom is a leader of a band of mercenaries who originate from Sweden and known for being quite dirty compared to most. Her name means Wolf Lord / Wolf Stream. She is sometimes referred to as Queen of the Wolves and a number of wolves do seem to follow her, and her pack of roughly 25 followers.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Ulrica Vargstrom was born 29 years ago to parents she never mentions, near the site of Uppsala. A natural hunter and fighter she could easily take on any one of the other very young children in the surrounding settlements. Even the children of elite warriors and nobles of the Nordic tribes were little match for her.
By the age of five, Ulrica showed she had the makings of a possible leader and was soon training to spend her life as a guard to the temple of Uppsala, and all agreed she could easily help protect it at all costs.
Given her age, Ulrica had to move to the settlement at the edge of the temple and was well provided for. Unfortunately this also led to her coming face to face with a dark family secret which eventually surfaced a few years later.
Training, as well as being taught in religious aspects, of the settlement, she showed an aptitude to the teachings of both the Aestir & the Vanir with her taking primary inspiration from the Aestir. She believed that only through the teachings of Odin, Thor and the like an affinity for battle and living to fight was the ultimate worship worthy of such gods.
By the time she reached 13, Ulrica came to find that her father was a practising Ulfheðnar and her mother a Shield Maiden. Ulrica started to go down the path of the Ulfheðnar and practised it in secret with the few local Hofgothi that taught these. As part of the rituals involved hunting like a wolf, they had to treat it as a mystery religious aspect due to some of the majority viewing a more balanced animist take on it.
Taking to this she wore little armour and what armour she did wear involved leather & the skins of wolves. Fighting as part of the pack of other Ulfheðnar at the forefront of the Nordic warriors who defended Uppsala. Soon other elite warriors came to try to marry the 17 year old Ulric and she soon sent them off beaten & bloody for such a thought.
Unfortunately both her and her father made a fatal mistake. When she turned 18 the local nobility refused to let Ulrica choose who she married and not rely solely on the men of the settlement. Finding out she stormed into the Great Hall savagely slaying any person she could reach. Unfortunately for her, one of the men was a high ranking Hofgothi by the name of Alaric. On his dying breath as she stood above him, he uttered the curse that transformed her.
Alaric swore that by killing him and spilling the blood of the holy near such a sacred site would damn her. That the wolf skin will appear with the thirst for human flesh & blood unless she repented her action and avoided violence. The wolf skin did just that, and she found that without repenting and a need for violence was heightened.
Why would she? She found that the increase in strength and fighting ability increased when it did making an even more frightening prospect to her enemies. This got to the point her own family could not control her love of shedding blood on the battlefield, and she felt an ecstasy when she did. Eventually the family, and the community, rejected her driving her out of Uppsala and forcing her to leave as an outlaw. Word was passed to the rulers of Norway and Denmark not to let her settle in their lands or never return to Uppsala, and they would be executed on sight if they didn't heed this.
They all complied and eventually Ulrica made her way across into Europe fighting for & against the Slavs, the Saxons, the Franks and other tribal groups she encountered.
This she has done over the course of eleven years and has amassed a band of other lycanthropes, some of whom she turned herself, others drawn to her as a last resort. Wolves also seem to be attracted to her as well, and a random amount is always with her.
Fighting as a mercenary has proven successful as her bloodthirsty nature and acts of extreme violence by her Brotherhood of the Wolf Pelt has turned many battles. Some have even been won just by the mention that she has been hired by one faction or another.
At present, Ulrica and her band has been hired by the Frankish Empire to face off against the Saxons in the hope of speeding up the end of the Saxons will to fight. So now she and her band stand with the Franks, getting richer, while sallying forth from Aachen when her new masters demand it.
All the while stories tell of savage wolves stalk the streets and forests surrounding this region, and there is darker stories that she has heard in passing of a magical temple below the remains of an old tower to the south in Eschbach. Ulrica and her followers seem to think it may be the perfect place to either strike out on raids from, or to enter the Underdark for even greater kills.
This could spell doom if it were true, as such a prize would spell heavy turmoil for anyone in the surrounding region of Eschbach. If only the curse of hers could be contained or stopped then her savagery would lessen.
Leader of the Brotherhood of the Wolf Pelt Swedish is origin Powerful warrior
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