The Auðunar family has a long history. Although not members of the Royal family, they were counted amongst the noble houses within Greistburg, and their children and grandchildren had married well in order to secure their stations. The family patriarch, Lord Regin Auðunarson was a close ally of the contemptuous old King; and it was said throughout Greistburg that he was the Kingmaker - the one who controlled who was fed and who wasn't, and strategized the funds and movements of the Royal treasury, supplementing the wealth of his own families with the tax profits. Regin's wife, Lady Ádís Grettisdóttir, was a powerful woman herself, she had had entrenched herself with the noble ladies of the court and was considered to be a close confidant of the important women that had married even more important men. For a time; the Talfyrn family enjoyed status, and a good reputation.
However, Ádís was an adherent to old beliefs, and a faith older than any else in the world; a pagan system of beliefs that relied upon gods, monsters, giants, and dragons. Of course, all of this was a fantasy; none of it had any bearing on reality, as there remained no proof that any of these creatures existed in the world. Nonetheless, she believed, and she believed strongly. The Grettis family, her ancestors, were believed to be descended from a single giant, named Grettis the Pale ; in actuality, not a giant at all, merely an immense man. It was said that Grettis had split the rocks of the mountain, and built the family hall in the crevice. He was so mighty that he was permitted to marry the daughter of the God of Strength - the first Ádís in the Grettis line. Because of their shared name, Lady Ádís Grettisdóttir saw herself as the family founder come again, looking for her Grettis to wed. But she, as was tradition, had been married off to the already powerful, and already wealthy Regin Auðunarson, despite her knowledge that he was not who she was meant to wed.
She believed, in keeping with her Old Faith, that she ought to marry her brother - Skýla. Skýla had proven himself to be a capable warrior, responsible for driving out bandits and barbarians from their mountainous homelands ; and she loved him dearly. When she was wed to Regin, she begged her new husband to find employment for Skýla so that she could keep him close. Regin, wanting to make his wife happy, caved to her demand. He was made a House Carl of House Auðunar. Because of this, Ádís had no proper children with Regin. Every time she was made to lay with her husband, the next morning she choked down a tea brewed from the black roots of the Carrionflower to trigger a miscarriage. She would conceal this from her husband.
Nonetheless, Ádís had eleven children, all with her brother, Skýla. She believed that one of these children would be as strong as Grettis was, and represent a return to the Old Faith. However, she found fault with all of the children. The first one was asthmatic, the second one was colic, the third soft in the head - the fourth mute, the fifth deaf, the sixth blind. The following five all suffered from some sort of epilepsy, and each had disfigured faces. Ádís did not give up, however, because the more children she had - the paler their skin became, and she saw this as a sign that she was close to bearing a child as pale and equal to Grettis the Pale.
When each of her children turned thirteen, she determined whether or not they were strong enough, like her ancestor. Each of them failed her scrutiny. She asked Skýla to take them back to the Grettis hold and kill them. He did, and in keeping with Old Faith tradition; ate their hearts to absorb whatever strength they might have had. Ádís told her husband that the children were sent away to various distant nobles in order to be fostered in their houses, so that they might have connections with distant lands. This appeased Regin's Kingmaking instincts and desire to see his family entrenched with connections.
During her thirteenth pregnancy, something went wrong. Ádís lay with her brother, as was her fancy, but Regin returned unexpectedly early from one of his voyages, and wanted to lay with her as well. This presented Ádís with a problem; she couldn't bear to abort her brother's child but couldn't bear to bring Regin's child into the world. She went to a midwife, Grimhilde, who told her that when there were two, nearly simultaneous pregnancies, the seed that was strongest would be the one that was born. As Ádís' pregnancy progressed, she unknowingly carried the product of heteropaternal superfecundation; fraternal twins with two differing fathers. When the twins were born, one was blood faced and large - howling and screaming. The other was small, skeletal, and pale. However, both were born and Ádís was forced to raise them both ; even though she knew that the pale child was her brother's.
The pale child she named "Eidr", which meant 'fulfilled oath' in the language of the Old Faith - she knew that he was the one, Grettis-Come-Again. The red-faced child she called "Grómr" - 'Worthless, dirt'. However, as the children grew; Grómr was a strong, bloody faced fighter - ugly, but powerful, even as a boy. Eidr, on the other hand, was waif-like and delicate - beautiful, but fragile. Ádís despaired - and loathed both children. Grómr she hated for being the son of a man she did not love, but was powerful and strong anyway, and Eidr she hated for the disappointment that he was. When the boys were seven years old, she could no longer bear them. Rather than putting in the careful forethought, she simply ordered Skýla to take them into the woods outside of Greistburg and abandon them there. The lie she concocted to Regin was that she had gone to the woods to pray, as was the Old Faith's custom, and she had taken the children with her, only for them to be abducted by bandits and her body ravished. She went to Regin in tattered clothes, weeping, and for all the world seemed a mother who had lost her children.
Skýla took the children to the woods but did not abandon them as he was told. He had developed a taste for blood. He lay them on the runed rocks that were the custom site of Old Faith prayer. Out of contempt for Grómr, he strapped him to the rock first, and sliced him from throat to gullet, and reached inside to pull out his heart. The inside of the boy was thick with congealed blood. As Skýla greedily devoured his sister's son's heart, Eidr ran. He did not know why his uncle, a man he had trusted, had done this to his brother, but it was not something that he could reconcile. Skýla pursued Eidr, his son, with the speed of a wolf. He was hunting him. However, all of a sudden, out from the trees came a dozen brass tipped arrows. It took all twelve to bring Skýla down, and he let out a howl as he died. Eidr seized with fear - as out from the trees came a man and a woman. The woman and man were bandits - driven from their usual hunting lands due to the systematic purges led by Skýla - so they rejoiced at the chance to kill him. The woman was called Signy, and the man Halmyr. They took in the sobbing, terrified Eidr, and taught him their ways. They too, were adherents of the Old Faith but kept to it in a different way than Eidr's mother - they believed that fate could not be forced, but was simply something that came when the time was right.
The bandit couple loved him as if he was their own son, and Eidr flourished under their care ; though he was traumatized by terrible nightmares of his bloody brother and the monster of his uncle, mixed with unclear memories of a mother that he barely recalled. He developed skills as an archer, and became a capable hunter. When he was thirteen, his foster family explained the circumstances that had led him to their care ; as they understood it. They explained that he was being pursued by Skýla Grettisson - and Eidr knew him as an uncle. Against his foster parent's wishes, Eidr rode out to Greistburg to meet his mother and father - to explain that his uncle had tried to kill him.
He rode to the Auðunar hall, and announced his name, parentage, and the circumstances that brought him before his father and mother again. The Auðunar had suffered since the death of Skýla. Ádís had wasted away into a pale shadow of the woman she once was - a rare sight at social occasions, and the frequent abortive herbs she had taken rendered her skin blotted with black marks and emaciated her form. Regin was frequently overcome with anger and despair - as none of his so-called children had answered his letters and the fosters' that they had supposedly been sent to said that the children had never come to them. So, when a son arrived in his hall, a son that he recalled and remembered ; Regin was overjoyed and a flush of colour returned to Ádís. She felt a surge of hope for the first time in six years. If Eidr had survived, and her brother had not, he must be strong indeed. When his prowess as an archer became obvious, she further rejoiced. Regin immediately accepted him as his son, and called for him to be wed to the Lord Gísli Bjørnsson's eldest daughter; a fair maiden of thirteen years named Valdís. They were to be wed when they both turned seventeen.
However, the toll of herbal 'remedies' and years without children or love had poisoned Ádís' already poisoned mind. Since she was Ádís-Come-Again and Edir was Grettis-Come-Again it was only natural that she lay with her son. From their loins would come a new glorious age for the Grettis family. She created a draught of Alarune; a plant that was said to only grow from where a hanged man's blood had dropped. She mixed it with her son's mead on the night of his seventeenth birthday, a day before the first day of his month-long wedding ceremony. Alarune's leaves were powerful hallucinogens, and Edir imagined himself with the beautiful Valdís, of whom he had become quite fond, instead of with his mother.
The next morning, Ádís instructed him to go to the burial holds outside of Greistburg and break one of the mounds to retrieve something that she believed would truly cement the legacy she wanted ; the sword of Grettis the Pale. It was tradition, in an Old Faith wedding, for the groom to retrieve a sword and therefore confront his past and future ; this would provide an opportunity for the groom to be confronted by a man costumed as a ghost of his ancestor, who might elaborate on the young man's instruction by reminding him of his family history and lineage, the importance of tradition, and the need to continue the ancestral bloodline. There was no man costumed in Edir's wedding barrow-delving.
When he found himself amongst the graves of his ancestors, he was still in the grips of Alarune's powerful hallucinogenic effects. A vision of flushed face man - similar in age, but ugly and swollen - appeared to him infront of the crypt of Grettis the Pale. The vision explained to him that he was his dead brother, Grómr, and that their uncle was Eidr's father ; and more horrifying still, their mother had tried to murder them just as she had murdered all of their ill-born siblings. The vision of Grómr grasped Edir, and warned him that their mother was mad, and that she had stolen his purity from him ; she had drugged him and laid with him the night before. Horrified, Eidr fled from the crypts of his ancestors - without the sword. Valdís was waiting for him outside, with her father standing by, but under the effects of Alarune, they did not look like themselves - Eidr saw instead his mother and uncle - his true father. He ran into the woods once more - ten years older than the last time he had run into the woods.
What he found in the woods this time were not the friendly bandit couple that had taken him in before but instead a band of poachers and outlaws - a wandering caravan of cast-off people. He had collapsed on the edge of their camp, succumbing to convulsions and delirium brought on by Alarune. He stirred only when the group's healer, an old crone named Tsura, brought him out from the brink. He laid in her tent unconscious for three days, wracked by terrible nightmares and visions as the caravan moved on. He explained all that he had seen to the crone, and Tsura advised him to seek redemption for the sins of his family, as kin-killing was something that all gods, Old or New, reviled. His mother had broken her oaths of marriage by lovelessness, her oaths of kinship by incest, her son's oaths of betrothal by violation, and had ruined all she touched because of petty ambition. Tsura explained to Eidr that there was a witch, a dangerous but powerful sorceress, who could use magic to wipe away his mother's sin and restore his family's name.
After he was nursed back to health, Eidr left the caravan armed with a new bow and a new sense of purpose ; to find the witch and end his family's strife.