Ragnhild Adisàdattir

##### The Bakeoff

When Ragnhild heard about a cooking challenge before a grand feast, she first thought she couldn't participate, until she realised it... mead, especially good mead, is alchemy. So she started experimenting, looking for various sorts of honeys, herbs to combine with it, and reagents to accelerate the preparation. In order to experiment the numerous recipes she elaborated, during the gathering process, she made sure to organise a few feasts among her clan.

It took longer than available for the gathering, which she had anticipated, so some of the recipes were already ageing as at accelerated pace. The first attempts were barely better than passable honeyed ale, but the ageing showed promises. A recipe based on pine honey mixed with malt and some mountain herbs brought a first version, quite light, that was used in a first, small, after raid feast in the grove instead of ale. Her werewolves and goblins found it less good that the usual, but promising. Changing the proportions, altering taste on the more recent recipes, the daughter of Adisà set up around an hundred barrels, full with various honeys, water, malt, herbs, various barks, and a collection of spices the raids gathered, all of that accelerated by her alchemical reagents.

With a full team of goblin cooks and werewolf alcoholics checking on the wort, tasting, smelling, and checking for clarity, the process slowly advanced, leading to 142 barrels of freshly brewed mead, of various taste and alcoholic strength.

When the time of the feast arrived, her clan carried the barrels there, and it was set up for the festivities. Some of the very light mead qualifying as beers, other being served as wine, and some as strong spirits, allowing everyone to partake in high spirits. Used to the inebriation, her whole clan feasted as well, leading to drunk werewolf dancing on tables on the sound of goblin drums.

On her own, carrying the barrel of her strongest mead, Ragnhild visited most chefs around, trying everything she could, copiously drinking from her barrel, sharing drinks with everyone, loudly laughing whenever someone realised how tricky her mead was. On that evening, she ate half a cow, drunk one quarter of her barrel, and tasted a five dozen pastries, while the clan was happily indulging in food, beverage, and other fine things of life.

Each morning during the multiple days of the feast, she would find some of her drinking friends of the last evening, usually badly hungover, and share some sobering drinks... before getting some more food and drinks.

##### Incandelth Peninsula

As the outcome of the Fifth's last throes became obvious, Ragnhild, the Storm Queen, gathers her forces, blessing her troops with her mantle to not hit them too bad. To get there, she first made her forces cross through the complex web of portals, gathering outside the area of influence of the Fifth, before unleashing her personal storm, granting flight to her army to carry it to the battleground.

As the hollowed hordes spread out, former heroes alongside nameless former mortals shambling forward, Ragnhild enlarged her winter storm, drowning the undying ranks under snow, lightning, and wind,her armies still free from the nefarious effects of her weather.

As she herself delved into battle, the various companies fight as well, each using their own tactics.

On one side, Ragnhild's vikings werewolves pounce with savage anger, slashing walking corpses with axe, claw, and fang, each eager and ready to fight... and each just as ready to decapitate any of their fallen, to stop them from raising from the dead under the Fifth's control, clearly used to fight undeads and similar creatures, and obviously happy to die fighting. After each skirmish, they plunder the corpses of the hollowed ones, quickly looking for treasures to bring back home in a clearly well organised manner.

On a different front, a horde of grinning goblins rapidly shifting from one shape to another, bouncing from the head of one undead to the shoulder of another, turning into different shapes to adjust to each fighting style shown by the corpses, sometimes slashing ankles before stabbing them once on the ground, far too fast to be easy to take down, and similarly with no hesitation to mangle their dead to make them useless if risen.

The third group, far less controlled than the others, counts innumerable cats, small and large, gathered by Ragnhild's call, fighting for their rising goddess, somewhat surprised at their newfound ability to fly, but pouncing nonetheless on what they perceive as ultimate aberrations, not really caring about their wounds and their deads, but none apparently rising from the walking corpses' efforts, their savagery compensating for their lack of tactics.

In the middle of those groups, Ragnhild, her rune carved blade in hands, flies through the battle field, thunder and lightning announcing her arrival before she slashes at the commanders of the undeads, her storm amplifying the martial prowess of all her followers.

As the undying ranks grow thicker, she reorganizes her armies, the werewolves now riding on the tiger's back, with goblins on their saddles, to apply easier hit and run tactics.

When the storm calms down, corpses litter the battleground, already buried under a thick layer of snow and ice...