Sellswords, Sellsails and Merry Men: The Wildling Raiders
The Wildling Raiders
Free folk society is made of many tribes and clans, each with their own peculiarities and customs .After the integration of the Far North into the Realms and the dissolution of the Night’s Watch, most of them are gradually becoming more and more stationary, building their own fortified settlements and establishing permanent rules under the watchful eye of the Throne. Unfortunately however, there still are groups of wildlings that see this progress as a “disgrace” and even betrayal of their culture.
Those renegade groups are roaming the already harsh enough lands as raiders - lawless and primitive killers, rapists, and thieves. Some of these groups recognize the authority of other chieftains while others exist in a perpetual state of conflict, warring against each other and themselves.
The Dogheads
One of the newest of the groups are the Dogheads, a group of savage degenerates formed some decades prior by a deranged woman Harma, known as Harma the Dogshead, who hated dogs.
She killed a dog every fortnight to create a new totem for her banner. Her followers, currently led by a ruthless man by the name of Galem the Widow Maker, still try to do the same, although with the coming of the Dragons and the establishment of some semblance of stability and civilization beyond the Wall this pastime of theirs is much harder to accomplish.
The Rattleshirts
Another group that was formed around the same time as the Dogsheads are the Rattleshirts. The Lord of Bones was a free folk leader of dark renown and his followers now emulate him in their appearance. In his time however he was actually mocked as Rattleshirt due to his boiled leather armour covered with loosely-tied bones of aurochs, cows, elk, goats, humans, mammoths, and sheep that clattered as he moved. Rattleshirt also wore a yellowed broken giant's skull as his helm, and his arms were covered with bearclaws sewn to the leather. He rode a goat-like horse which was also armoured in bones. He also commanded a pack of dogs and warred with Harma Dogshead who was obsessed with the idea of making a whole new totem out of said pack. Two groups still bitterly hate each other and brutally clash every time they meet.After Rattlesirt’s death, his son Orand became the new leader. After his death, a man named Ragnarr (father of Orand’s second wife Harra) became the new leader since Orand’s only child Geir was too young and inexperienced. With Ragnarr’s death just four years later Geir finally took the reins.
With his death and due to Geir’s sons being in the same position as their father before them, the group elected their current leader, the very unstable but otherwise quite tame man by the name of Lambi. His elevation probably came from his marriage to Harra, daughter of Ragnarr and widow of Orand. Some even speculate that she might be the actual leader of the group since she is the one to preside over any and all of the disputes among its members.
The Crowkillers
The last of the “newcomers” are the Crowkillers, followers of Alfyn Crowkiller, an infamous wildling leader with a history of killing members of the Night's Watch. Fortunately, the man died at a relatively young age of seven and thirty. At first the group actually tried to have Alfyn’s young son lead them, but soon realised their mistake and conveniently found the boy dead two years into his “leadership”. Alfyn’s other sons lived to adulthood and even bent the knee to the dragons.
The actual leadership went to a man named Medger who was known for his affinity to exaggerate things about himself or even straight up invent new ones.
After Medger’s death the Crowkillers were led by five rather unremarkable men until it finally came time for Medger’s son Nord to follow in his father’s footsteps. It would seem that Nord inherited from his father the latter’s love of tall-talk. His wildest tale would have his followers believe that he was somehow descendant from Alfyn Crowkiller himself, although there is absolutely no substantial evidence to back up that bold claim.
The Nightrunners
Now let us have a look at some of the more ancient groups of free-roaming wildlings.One of them are the Nightrunners, a rather terrifying bunch of raiders that seem to be highly adapted to the long, bitterly cold and pitch-black nights of the Far North. The Nightrunners are reportedly interlocked in a bloody feud with the Hornfoots, but the details about its starting reason are too vague to be of any use.
The group’s current leader, a surprisingly reasonable and amicable man Dan, is married to Sara, daughter of Nord of the Crowkillers and widow of Geir of the Rattleshirts. That last bit might suggest that Dan’s rather unfit moniker of a “Widow Maker” could very well be an example of mistranslation from the Old Tongue, the mixup in particular being that of the words “to make” and “to do”.
The Hornfoots
The Hornfoots that the Nightrunners are in feud with are another clan of free folk who live beyond the Wall near the Frostfangs. Hornfoots wear nothing on their feet, which turns the soles of their feet hard and black. They are currently led by a man named Gorne. Judging by his facepaint, he might have initially come from the caves and got his position as the leader due to his marriage to the previous leader’s daughter.
The Cave Dwellers
Cave dwellers are clans of free folk that live in the caverns of the Frostfangs, surrounding Thenn. The cave dwellers dye and paint their faces blue, green and purple, and they file their teeth. One of such clans that resides in the Upper Frost Caves is led by a man named Varald Crowkiller (not to be confused with Alfyn Crowkiller and/or his Crowkillers’ clan). He is the third consecutive man from his direct line to lead the clan and by all accounts seems like a very reasonable man, much akin to Dan of the Nightrunners.
The Troglodytes
Some accounts state the cave dwellers worship dark underground gods. While it is probably not true in case of the Upper Frost Caves’ Dwellers, it might very well be true about their offshoot - the clan of exiles residing in the Lower Frost Caves led by an absolute monstrosity of a man once known by the name of Soren. If the rumours are true, he recently stole himself a new wife from one of the settled freefolk villages, a sweet girl three times his junior. Due to the fact that such an act could be considered a direct attack on the Throne’s subjects, the Lower Frost Caves’ trash might be due for a good and thorough swipe.
The Tall-Talkers
Another group of no-do-gooders prowl the Skirling Pass, the only path through the Frostfangs between the forests of the Far North and the Ice Rivers to the west. Now known rather mockingly as the Tall-Talkers, this group’s actual name in the Old Tongue means “The Tall Speakers” and comes from their custom of decorating the tallest stones and rock formations they could find with their runic messages. Their current leader is a man named Mar who recently raised a sepulchre that oddly proclaims before all the gods and men that his successor as the clan’s head must be Quort Sealcut, who at the moment is just a boy of seven. While his parents are originally from the Ice Rivers, the boy himself was born into the clan and it is speculated that he might actually be Mar’s unclaimed son.
The Hornblowers
It surely will not come as any surprise that the Haunted Forest of the eastern part of the Far North serves as a home to the most bizarre of the free-roaming groups. The Hornblowers (a milder one), currently led by Hornblower Torod (a complete opposite to Mar of the Tall-Talker), claim to be in possession of the mythical Horn of Joramun, also known as the Horn of Winter.
According to the legend, thousands of years ago Joramun, a King-Beyond-the-Wall, supposedly blew the horn and woke giants from the earth. Free folk believe that blowing the horn can bring down the Wall. The Hornblowers indeed have in their possession an eight feet long warhorn. They claim that it was found in a giant's grave in a glacier in the Frostfangs. It is black in colour, with gold bands and engraved with runes of the First Men. The clan believes it to be a thousand years old and that it may have come from an aurochs. Other clans mostly dismiss those claims and suggest that the Hornblowers never found the Horn of Winter, instead claiming their horn as Joramun's because of its size and coloration. That suggestion is accepted as a fact by most of the sane population of the Realm simply due to the fact that every Hornblower of the clan had tried blowing his lungs away all along the Wall, and yet it still stands proud and tall.
The Shakers
The only other clan that might be enough out of their minds are the Shakers, a group of exclusively mushroom-eaters from the Shivering Forest in the north-east. Due to their peculiar diet, the whole clan suffers from violent and randomly occurring fits of uncontrollable quivers. The sight of that is especially horrifying during the clan’s holy gatherings where the whole population consumes an exorbitant amount of special mushrooms at the same time and then convulse all over the forest. This batch’s current head, a boring man named Byrgard, got his position due to his marriage to Bluebell, a daughter and granddaughter of two previous heads. Her brother was deemed too young to lead at the time of their father’s death and therefore is expected to just shake shake shake it off.
Last edited:
- 1
- 1
