Onef’s Keep, Vrakgrad
Vrakgrad was a place known for it’s snow and ice. Snow covered the earth the vast majority of the year, only in the brief, and still cool springs did the snow melt and an ability to grow crops granted. The country was rich in oil and iron, the only reason the country was worthy of any real note to the outside world.
For centuries the jarls and chieftains had fought bitter wars for the scarce natural resources, for better hunting grounds, for more more lumber for the fires, shields, and staffs, for more iron for arrow heads, swords, axe-heads and spear-tips. They had met at the place named after one of their gods; Onef’s Keep, to avoid spilling the blood of their kinsman when they could. After they were colonized it became the center of the representatives allowed to the people, and after they gained the independence in 1932, it became the center of the Council, a group of elected representatives created to advise the last remaining Jarl.
An age of peace had come to the frozen land, and the ruling Jarl; Vladimir Icefang, seeked to ensure it would stay that way. They needed trade to flow through their ports, needed money to flow into their markets, as well as more than meets and grains. The place once dominated by conflict was under the secure rule, as it had been for eighty years, of the Icefang line.
Vladimir stood in front of one of the center fire pit of the lodge. Outside his Huscarls patrolled the hill top that Onef’s Keep dominated, and the stone wall. The wore white and green, Swedish-style camouflage, their faces covered by ballistic masks and blue-tinted ski-goggles. Inside, and just outside of the Keep the Huscarls took on a traditional, ceremonial appearance. They wore fur-lined chainmail clothing of millennial dead warriors, large round shields with the blue-ish stylized snarling wolf emblem of the Icefangs on a black field, armed with spears in their hands and spathas at their sides.
Vladimir’s frame was largely shadowed because of where he stood, and the dim lighting provided, looked like a mass of muscle and the left side of his a mat of scars centered on a white eye, the opposing side clear of scars. He wore a slim-fitting unzipped dark grey coat, that seemed as if it would day be matched by the peppered, greying hair and beard of the Jarl. At his side was the Vrakgardian war-axe almost everyone wore, in a black sheathe.
His son, Harold, stood nearby, although he was pacing like a caged animal. He longed for action, to be out hunting in the wilds of Vrakgard. He wore a black coat akin to his father’s in a much greater contrast to his hair; blonde all around. His straight hair fell on either side of his taller but similarly built frame. His beard was short, and his eyes pierced the darkened room; their blue shining in the fire light.
Alette sat at the far side of the room near where the smell of food was growing ever stronger as more was cooked. She could have some food if she wished to. She wore a trench-coat, her red hair braided into two tails behind her head. She stared into the fire with green eyes. Alette replaced the war-axe with an ornate dagger she wore at the belt of her black tight jeans. She took after her mother to a large degree, who was unable to make it due to a meeting with a mercenary company in one of the northern cities.
The Hersir; a man known almost only by his last name of Blackheart wore militarized trench-coat and fitting pants with jack boots. His raven hair was short and he had a scruffy beard coming in. He was at the back right corner of the room, fitting down next to Ambassador Mathelda Kirik; a woman going into her mid-forties, wearing an unzipped red coat. Ulrich Blackheart was the much well known of the two; a strategist and natural tactician he was entering his sixties, and carried an aura of calm confidence compared to that of the country’s heir; Harold, who had one of dominance and aggression.
“They will be arriving any minute now,” Vladimir said quietly, looking in the direction of his son. “You won’t have to remain pacing for much longer.” He added with a teasing smile. Harold simply kept pacing, awaiting someone to arrive at the lodge.
