Icewind

Farther north than Hulneth, where the inland lake's icy waters lapped against the shore, stood the village of Issvindr. The name, given by the village's founders, meant Icewind in the old tongue, a testament to the biting gales that howled down from the unseen vastness of the Arctic wilderness. Issvindr was a place of hardy trappers and hunters, their homes built low to the ground in the manner of Torvaldsland. Smoke would curl from the central longhouse, where the village's heartfire burned, a beacon of warmth in the depths of the long, dark winters.

The people of Issvindr were a breed apart, their bloodlines forged in the crucible of the far north. They moved with a quiet confidence, their eyes narrowed against the glare of the snow, their hands ever-ready to grip the hafts of their ice-tipped spears. They were ruled by the indomitable Chieftain Keld, a man whose beard was as white as the snows he called home, and whose gaze could pierce the very soul. Keld had led his people for nigh on twenty winters, his wisdom and strength unquestioned.

Issvindr's existence was a delicate dance with the unforgiving land. The villagers were masters of the hunt, their prey the great snow panthers that stalked the treeline, their fur as white as the drifts, their eyes burning green in the dark. These were beasts of legend, their strength enough to tear a man asunder. Yet, it was in hunting these fearsome creatures that the warriors of Issvindr proved their worth, returning to their village with pelts that would fetch a king's ransom in the markets of Hulneth and beyond.

Yet, even the prowess of Issvindr's hunters could not diminish the ever-present threat of their northern neighbors, the Hyperboreans. These were giants thought native to the area, a Hyborean people unseen by those of New Sardar. Their kind said to have shaped the very earth in days long past. They roamed the unseen wilderness, their footsteps causing the ice to shudder, their voices like thunder on the horizon. It was said that any man who gazed upon a Hyperborean would be forever changed, his soul imprinted with the memory of a power that dwarfed all human endeavor.

Despite the dangers, the people of Issvindr would not be swayed. For in this place of ice and wind, they had forged a life of unyielding beauty, their spirits as hard as the land that gave them birth. And as long as the heartfire of Issvindr burned, so too would the indomitable will of its people endure, a beacon of humanity against the crushing vastness of the Arctic wilderness.