The Oath of The Valkyr

This land is young and this people strong,
The children of Nidhog and Helman,
Born as slaves,
May yet die free.

This land is young and this people brave,
Of dragon and man,
Of this world and that,
Of storm, the vengeance rising,
Of fire, the desire in our hearts,
Of ice, the resolve in our cause,
Of acid, that no chains may bind us.

This land is young and this people true,
The sons of Man and the daughters of Wyrm,
Hold to the oath of our ancestors,
That none shall set themself above another,
That the poorest has yet a mouth to feed,
As the richest,
That the smallest has yet a life to live,
As the Mightiest,
And so with all things,
Must the heart of the Valkyr guide her.

This oath refers to the legend that the dragonborn of the Beastlands, and infact all the serpentine creatures of the land, owe their ancestry, if one goes back far enough, to two beings: a faerie dragon named Nidhog to whom is attributed terrible power, and her human consort Helman, a great king fighting a never ending war against his own kinsmen. The legends say that 500 years ago Helman summoned Nidhog from her native Feywild (or Aelfheim) in order to destroy his enemies. The summoning brought the Swordlands and Aelfheim into conjunction, and the Beastlands was born.

According to the sagas, Nidhog slew Helman and ate him, and then a mortal hero slew Nidhog and made his house from her bones. From her blood sprang the draconic peoples of the Beastlands, including the dragonborn, the bog-trogs (like lizardmen but not so pleasant), dragons, snake-folk, and so on.

The great wyrms now rule Helman’s kingdom, one of the three ancient kingdoms of men in the Beastlands, and all other races pay them tribute, but the dragonborn have historically resisted oppression so they were hit the hardest by the scaled claws of tyranny.

The Valkyr are a secretive and exclusively female cadre of renegade dragonborn warriors who exist to lead the resistance against the oppressors of their people. Named after the first dragonborn martyr, the Valkyr meet in secret to plan the downfall of the serpent queen Bangog. As an elite order of dragonborn, they have harnessed ancient lore by which, as they grow individually in power and finally ascend to epic heights, they even take on forms that are capable of winged flight, giving rise to the legends of the Valkyr as winged warriors.

Aldis had placed herself within a group of dragonborn slave warriors conscripted by Siegmund, the centaur warchief and ally of Bangog, to hunt for ancient artefacts in the Swordlands. As the group journeyed south she organised a revolt, but was betrayed at the last by one of the group. Aldis was then taken into captivity so that Siegmund himself could make an example of her, and in the towers of Glorium she had been been awaiting her end…