A Norse Beginning

The shapeshifter, Iruka Naudir, had managed to survive the crash of the ship he was on. He had sustained a few injuries which he was able to take care of without too much grief. The crash had not broken any of his bones so he walked along the beach to seek other survivors. 

While walking along the shore he'd come by some rocks and hear someone. He looks over to see a woman (Kölla Jalsefni ) resting on the rocks bleeding. He decides to help and walks over.

"If you can hear me, be still. I am no healer, but I am a mystic of sorts." Iruka investigates the wood puncturing Kölla's shoulder, he needed to see it better she he tore the fabric around the wound. "I'm unsure how deep this stake is, but if you are to begin recovering, it must be removed."

The Mystic firmly grabs the wood and attempts to pull it out cleanly, he was prepared to dress the wound, but first he'd need to check the inside for splinters. Once removed, he checked for splinters and with his finger activated his ability inside Kölla's wound. He could make some physical changes that would accelerate healing, which included decreasing estrogen levels, as estrogen hinders healing. She would suddenly feel warm, and would continue to get hot flashes and feelings of dry skin while near Iruka, if she survived the process. Once his finger was removed from the wound he would dress it and apply pressure.

The horizon stretched to infinity, the sky melding with the water as the Viking fleet crawled onward. The only sound heard under the collaborative "Rad, Rad, Rad" was the oars splashing against the ocean. The sounds of the waves crashing against them and the wind beating against the sails had inured the men to the violence of the open waters. On days past whole ships had collided and been swallowed by Njord whose name the men of the Snekkja "Wildsar" had begun to curse. It became apparent that Njord was no ally of theirs on this voyage, however a foe.

The morning had broken to clear skies and it was obvious Njord had to recuperate from unrelenting assault the Vikings and he had fought. The crew of Wildsar seated forty, ten oars were empty where Njord reached up and dragged his victims into his watery halls. "Rad. . . Rad . . . Rad . . ." The chant had died down considerably as those left had slowed pace to a lazy list. The men took turns dropping their lines in the water. Raw fish helped to supplement the men and women's near-depleted rations.

On one of the oars in the front Raunganga Leggrmen sat with his face soaking in the sun. Raunganga was a man of middling height he did not stand taller, nor did he stand shorter than his counterpart. With a dirty blonde ponytail and a dual braided beard he sat dressed in simple cloth rags, drenched from his prolonged travel, bone ornaments hung from his arms legs and neck.  He held in his hand a freshly scaled and filleted Haddock. Gently he busied himself with the creature's frame trying to pull apart two bones when the boat gave a violent kick and the fish broke in two.

"Double time!" A voice called, "Rad, Rad Rad!"
'It's huge' A voice from behind mumbled as another began to pray.
Raunganga cursed, picked up his oar and began to row.
A tidal wave loomed in the distance rushing right for the Viking fleet. The air chilled and the water dropped and a mist kicked up as the bones strung up to the Wildsar clattered against each other.

The wave smashed into the boat and Wildsar was thrown sideways. Raunganga felt himself being thrown over his oar, sideways two rows up he collided with another viking. His body was a rag doll as his hands groped for something to grab ahold of. Water rushed over him, stealing the breath from his lungs. His body shook as a feeling of urgency overtook him. "This is it, I am coming for you Valhalla" He said as two of his comrades were dragged upward, and washed away. He could feel himself coughing only inhaling water as he went limp.

WHOOSH!. . . The boat crested the tidal wave and slammed against the surf. The rowers were haphazard and some were missing. Another wave, not quite as big came on and nearly resubmurged the vessle. Raunganga still felt himself suffocating, gasping for air until he felt a boot to his back. "Your debt to the gods is not yet paid." It was one of his kin he realized as he retched against the planks of the boat. It was in that moment, laying face down, struggling to rise he felt the toll fighting this watery battle had exacted on his body. He retched again, spewing saltwater and bile from his stomach against the floor before attempting to stand and was thrown into a seat. "Rad, rad, rad, rad, rad, rad" He rhasped meekly, his voice gone from him. Suddenly he saw it.

"Portside, stop!" He heard his voice break as some of it returned to him. The storm stood still and he caught a glimpse of what looked to be a bright light in front of another longboat and a wave in the distance freezing the water in its path. The woodsman rushed to the portside and grabbed one of the men, wrestling him to the Starboard side to fill an empty seat. "Thor give us strength, MOVE!" The oars fought the water as the vessle spun away from the wave. "Port push!" The crew shouted, mustering what they had left of their strength to row with all of their might. The wave moved past, freezing the water inch by inch, encasing the last ten feet of the stern in ice just catching the ass end of the ship. The crew jolted forward. Another wave was rushing forward, and using the energy of the ships abrupt halt Raunganga flung himself from his seat and ran to the stern. He ripped a fingerbone from his necklace and flung it into the ice. The ship bucked forward violently as the ice cracked away and shriveled back a couple of feet.

"Push!" Raunganga heard the Jarl shout near the bow of the boat. The crew started inching along slowly, as the next wave was near on top of the Wildsar. The lack of momentum made rowing a grueling experience the wave was headed right for the ship. It was then that Raunganga could see the wave had lightning coursing through it, almost imbued with the water itself. His eyes grew wide as the wave just grazed the bow of the boat, sending it careening away from the path. The crew immediately tried to stabilize the vessle as it spun violently away from a huge wave revealing a whirlpool. Luckily the Wildsar was just out of range. Hail beat down against the exhausted crew relentlessly as they rowed on aimlessly. The surf never let up but the tidal waves ceased.

"There goes Niraxees!" Raunganga heard a woman shout out from behind. He turned and saw the wreckage of a skeid get taken by the current of the whirlpool. There was a sudden 'CRACK' loud enough to be a thunderstrike as the ship snapped in two and collapsed in on itself being swallowed by the whirlpool. Raunganga leaned forward and pressed his head against the oar in his hand, letting out a primal yelp of sorrow that lead off in short sobs.

He began to fight against the wake of the storm once more only giving himself a moment to gather himself. His mind had been blank up until this point as he thought back to his shelter in the Naddovellir outskirts. Going on hunts and returning to praise and laughter. This was a grim ordeal. Many different ships had set out from all over the Nordic territory and each was different. While some took to intense prayer others took the oppurtunity to gorge on ale, already fantasizing about the songs to be sang, on some ships old blood fueds were reunited and holmgangs performed. The Wildsar however was mostly quiet, everyone on it had an intense air of purpose in what they were doing. They were all for the most part woodsmen, and the Jarl of the boat was not even a real Jarl, nor had been given the name until the first storm the crew had endured. The man distinguished himself by keeping a clear head and turning back when a Karvi had tipped over and spilled its crew into the water.  

Raunganga snapped back into reality as a bolt of lightning crashed into their sail and the wooden mast came toppling down. He froze, struck by fear and looked toward the skies. Thor himself was fighting against this voyage. He looked back toward his task and continued to row against the endless ocean, shaken.

"Gulls!" A voice rose among a sleeping crew. Raunganga sprung awake. After breaking off from the storm the crew of the Wildsar sprawled out and slept. Gulls! It was true. He could hear the squawking now. . . Land. . . The gull circled ahead, inspecting the boat, before calling out and swooping back toward its home. Far in the distance a faint outline; breaking the monotony of the horizon could just be made out when the crew of the Wildsar squinted hard. Everyone remounted their oars and plunged their paddles into the water. "Rad . . . rad . . . rad . . . "

Iruka remained still once the imposing figure stuck their hammer on his back. He responded in the same language. "I am Iruka Naudir, son of the late honorable huntsman Hendrix. I'm a survivor from one of the crashed ships. This woman needed help, so I helped."

He waited to find out who was behind him.

"Are you okay?" The one horned leader questioned in native Norse.

It truly was a mess. Everything felt bad, yet strength was not absent; Kölla's right hand rose and gave a little wave to signify her well being.

When Argimos felt tempted to acquaint himself with the face of the wounded Viking, the scar attending its place around her eye invoked a short memory, only to fade from the mind. If that memory were to be pursued, it would only fade further, as if searching for a certain word that tingled upon the tip of one's tongue.

"Have any of you seen my weapon? It looks like a bow, but horizontal, and small."

(We should really use English because Google translate is horribly inaccurate.)

Bodies continued to be thrown on to mounds made of more bodies. The ocean continued to spit out more and more till there was nothing left to give. There was no way to send the amount of dead back into the ocean on rafts, leaving them with the option of burning their comrades. While the piles would not be burned till the evening, it would take that time to make the piles and prepare them for burning.


((Here is a nice pile of dead bodies.))

Inland, vikings still worked to gather lumber and other materials needed to build with. When the stockpile was enough, others started building their temporary homes. The structures would be ugly, but there were multiples to build by nightfall and they had to hurry. As more materials piled up, more started building. There was a good chance that the shelter's could be done by nightfall. Inside they were divided into rooms, much like an apartment building. 

The crew of the Wildsar abandoned the oars as the longboat swayed with the current, the mast only a charred stump. The land ahead was now clearly visible, its ends stretching beyond eyesight. Beneath the ship the water adopted a lighter hue of blue, the ocean floor was discernable and reef life bustled beneath the Viking ship. Land was a little more than a mile out the wrecks of smashed longboats littered the coast.

The crew of the Wildsar congregated around the starboard end of the boat. Men and women stood arm to arm and each spoke, clamoring. Some rejoiced, praised Thor and forgave Njord, others grieved their losses while some objected to this new land, claiming it was cursed. "Brothers, sisters." A voice called from the back of the mob. Pushing his way through the crowd Raunganga made his way to the tip of the boat his cloth garb replaced with a near full suit of bone armor.

"If everyone here thinks what we just fought was the battle they've already lost. Don your armor, get ready for battle!" He shouted at the top of his lungs with a primal hunger. He paused."We know not what is ahead of us, if anybody survived if this land has people or monsters. Whatever happens, I know only this. The open water was just the journey we have a battle to fight!" He began to bang his spear against the floorboards in rhythm. The crew came alive, the meeting transitioned into a stream of Vikings flooding to the cargo hold, donning their leathers bone stone and iron. . .

Raunganga kept the rhythm, hoarsely shouting out commands as the Snekkja skimmed along the coastline scanning for survivors. The ship was alive with energy, people were stomping their feet and shouting, cursing and banging as they rowed along. The Wildsar came to an inlet as one of the Vikings shouted alarums. The Viking boat rowed right past a scene of men gathering dead and injured in a line. "REVERSE!" Raunganga shouted, his protective bones clanging against his ornamental loose ones as he thrust his whole body with the word.
 
The men immediately began rowing in the opposite direction and the symmetrical styled boat came to a near immediate halt, before reversing its course. The boat turned into the small inlet aroar with noise as only six more rowed. Everybody else stood, slamming the butts of their weapons down to the floorboards keeping pace with Raunganga. The sound could easily be heard a mile away. The ship  crawled alongside the coast before stopping near a tree behind a rock bed. A woman vaulted from the vessel with a rope under her arm, clad in leathers and furs and a long Atgeir in her dominant hand. She tied the rope to the tropical tree as a large flat wooden walkway spilled over the side of the Wildsar. The entire crew let out primitive calls as they ran across the walkway, hungrily looking for an outlet to their new found energy. The party had the energy to wake even the dead as a body in the pile of corpses choked up a good deal of water and began violently coughing his lungs dry. The man was pale as a ghost as he sat up and turned to the party, who shouted approval at the man as he meekly put his fist in the air and contributed another coughing fit to the clamor. This only fed their morale.
   
Raunganga looked on now twitching in anticipation. That was omen enough for him. "Everybody stick together, let the others raise the dead, they're doing it on their own anyway!" He said looking at the man who was now refusing to allow one of his kin help him up and rising on his own. "This bay is ours now! Today we scout, take what food we find tomorrow we hunt!" Raunganga's voice was high and already cracking from the strain he had already endured. at least a dozen men and women in the party were bone clad but Raunganga's garb stood out the most, he was the vision of death.
   
He and the party was clearly on a warpath as they began to march into the woods, four of the faster and lighter equipped breaking off to scout ahead. He knew it was not a very good move, they were all hungry and tired and knew nothing of the terrain, nobody even so much as attempted to get a situational report or so much as acknowledge another viking on the sands. This did not stop him from continuing forward, the party went forward and Raunganga leaned over to a wiry man with a gray unkempt face naked except for a fur tunic and a bronze shoulder pad with a matching ankle guard on his shield side. He carried an axe and buckler and approached the small group congregating

Simply chop down trees? He would admit that doing such a job would be quite easy for him and the amount of trees he could provide would be the amount of ten, twenty, maybe even thirty men, but he had ideas that other things might do him better; however, he would allow himself to chip in just slightly on this woodwork,
"I'll fell a few, but then I shall leave the work to whatever survivors of my tribe survived. I'm certain a few thick boned giants and whatever potential elven slaves survived can do the work well."
At this the beast among men turned and began to walk into the forest with his goliath ax in hand he made his way to a clearing of trees and would activate his Berserker strength, already he was making use of the strength granted to him by the tsunami, one would find that with one swing his ax would cleave directly through the wood of the tree, turning the base into a splinters before it inevitably fell. Then with the speed granted to him by his elven blood he would be at the next tree, and the next tree, and the next, and the next, and the next. In an hour it was quite possible he had fell as many trees as their were minutes of work, but with that done he immediately went to something he believed more worthy of his time.
The behemoth would be found back upon the beach, but what he was doing must have seemed like the acts of an absolute monster, he would be found extracting the femurs of the deceased for use as weaponry. Knowing full well the strength of these bones he refused to see them go to waste, so he would swing the ax to seperate the legs from their bodies and then with his clawed gauntlets he would peel the flesh from these wondrous bones. This process would happen again and again until one could see a pile of nearly eighty of these fine bones from both human and giant alike. With these axes and clubs of the sturdiest sort could be devised, but only if they were embraced,
"Nearly done."
His final deed was to locate a cave that could be used as a base for his comrades until a society was up and running. With their size he knew that a shelter would be a hard pressed thing.