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Age: 29
The Outward: Mild-mannered, there is a distance that Hallbjorn maintains with people, be it an ordinary civilian or someone of the guard. It would be inaccurate to say that she was standoffish, however, but more so that she wears her professionalism like a second skin. Protector and protected, comrade and comrade, subject and king. Hallbjorn's helping hand is always there for those who need it, but she would rather not stay for a meal afterwards. Formalities and small-talk is a given, but very little of her plans to marry (implying that they do exist).
The Inward: She soldiers on. Bad things happen to good people is a lesson that is engraved into her very psyche, carved deeper than the scars that reduce her face into a menacing scowl. Grit and will, salt and smoke is what keeps her going. No motivation, no end game, no finishing line. Just straight discipline, just the grim acceptance that what is, is. To Hallbjorn, there is no honour, no standard of morality; to grind the gods and all their creations to the finest powder, to sieve it all through the finest sieve would return nothing but ash and dust.
Patron: Weirin.
Deity's Favor: Mmemis
Background: An older brother that had always been sickly meant that she, as a little girl, had to help out around the house once she was old enough to be able to. It made her strong, carrying around all that firewood and water, scraping off all that bark and eventually helping out in the felling of trees as well. Her father was a lumberjack living in a mill by the edge of the forests to the south, a job much respected for they provided much needed wood, be it for building or burning, while braving the perils of the accursed woods. She was born Helga Sorensson.
The mill was devastated by a bandit raid. None of her family members survived, all having fallen defending their home. Her ax saw blood at the age of 13. Found by the King's soldiers, they were brought back to Yndheim, a pitiable lot compared to what the thriving settlement once housed. Given a position in the Weirin household as a scullery maid, Helga managed to gain the attention of Lord Weirin himself after soundly beating the man's nephew - a boy 2 years her senior - for his unwanted advances. She renamed herself Hallbjorn, choosing to take on a man's name, when she joined his housecarls.
Already strong physically, Hallbjorn proved herself not inferior to the boys training to be housecarls, beating them not with strength but with sheer will. She stood at the end of the long, forced marches that were said to be training for an integral part of soldiering, back straight and ready to continue, even as the rest laid about trying to get whatever rest they could in the brief breaks they were accorded.
She went on campaigns, off to fight in the name of her Lord and her King, and it was during one of those that gave her the scar that made her so distinctive in appearance. Hallbjorn never exhibited anything exceptional about her, until her last campaign as Lord Weirin's housecarl, where she marched a great distance while wounded to deliver news and intelligence about enemy forces after being the sole survivor of an ambush, having played dead. Fortune had smiled on her when a spear had been thrust into her gut to ensure that she was no longer alive, its deadly tip having met nothing important.
It was this that had Lord Weirin endorse her as a potential member of the King's guard, for her commanders did agree that she was reliable, uncomplaining, loyal - a perfect soldier in attitude, while being skilled in warfare. She was nothing exceptional when it came to single combat, just a good touch better than average, but her strengths laid in fighting as a group, in tactics, in rallying troops and other soldiering fundamentals.
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