Winged Ghosts

The Winged Ghosts are a tribe of Vikings located in the Northern Draconic Archipelago.

## Overview

The Winged Ghosts live on their own island called Ghost Island. They are generally pretty isolated, they rarely leave, they receive few visitors. The only known regular visitor is the halfling trader Findak.

Ghost Island has a thriving population of Terrible Terrors, who are commonly seen as benign pests who chase away rats and make useful mail carriers.

## History

The ancestors of the Winged Ghost tribe were close with dragons until most of the dragons withdrew from humanity. For centuries, there were no dragons on the island until the Terrible Terrors came back.

The Winged Ghost tribe owned the original Book of Dragons, but made a copy of it, which turned out to be a good idea because the original book was burned.

During the Spellplague, the Winged Ghost tribe developed a suspicion of magic. Once the Spellplague was over and the Leygard was created, the only mage on the island was the wisewoman.

The Winged Ghosts at one point had a war with the Silent Berserkers and are implied to have been in an on-again off-again war with them.

The current chief of the Winged Ghosts is Frigdis Niddock.

## Culture

The Winged Ghosts are generally suspicious of magic, since for a long time, none of the members had magic except for the village wisewoman, a cleric sworn to the Old Norse gods as a whole. Though later on, they became less suspicious of magic as more members began acquiring it, they still maintained a martial culture and preferred to train all their members in weaponry and physical fighting. The Winged Ghosts have two main fighting squadrons- berserkers, who fought close-range with an array of deadly weapons; and the shield-warriors, who wielded shields and played more of a support role in a battle.

The Winged Ghosts were pious to the Old Norse gods, but did not know much about newer gods. Though they believed in the Nine Worlds, most of them were either unaware of the existence of other planes or didn't believe they existed. Some of them believed the demons, devils, and other extraplanar creatures did not exist.

Family and clans were very important to the Winged Ghost tribe, though the way clanless people were treated depended on the person. The Winged Ghosts are also lenient on the rules of establishing clans and families, anyone who wanted to could establish a new one, shown when Jorgen was able to start his own clan with no difficulty. It is implied that while the Winged Ghosts see family and clans as important, they recognize that families are flexible and the only notable people who operated on strict rules was House Shielding.

Since the Winged Ghosts tended to remain isolated, most tribe members have little experience with the outside world and people from the mainland continent, or even other tribes.

The Winged Ghosts, like many other places and organizations, leaned toward an egalitarian society in terms of gender and sexuality. A well-respected member of the Pikesson clan was openly agender. Cazi Olsoren even thinks to question if dragons had different genders than humans. The tribe also did not oppose Frigdis Niddock, a lesbian married to a woman, becoming their chief. As a whole, women were held in an equal regard to men.