I am not going to lie, I don't really
feel good today. We have had snow, sleet, hail and freezing rain on
and off all day and I spent half of my day tracking down a new
Minivan and putting it on the road. Oddly, it looks pretty much the
same as my old Minivan, which was a silver Dodge Grand Caravan, this
one is a slightly newer silver Plymouth Grand Voyager. So I am not
really feeling U day here at all, so it is fortunate that it is not
an important letter day.
U is for Úlfhéðinn, an Old Norse
word for a warrior that usually fought alone and often at night.
Rumor has it that they specialized in long range operations behind
enemy lines. Úlf means "Wolf" and Héðinn means "Skin
or Jacket"; kind of sound like a Werewolf to anyone? They also
apparently have a special dedication to Odin.
U is for Ullr, a God of the Aesir,
strongly associated with hunting, winter and skiing. He is another
candidate for one time king of Asgarð that Odin supplanted. He may
also have a female counterpart named Ullin, with pretty much the same
attributes. Also, while it chronologically doesn't fit, he is said to
be the son of Sif and the step-son of Thor. He also has a dwelling at
Ýdalir.
U is for Útgarðr, which stands for
the "outer-enclosure", or pretty much every place that is
not under the control of Gods or Men or Elves, a periphery full of
shady characters like Jötnar and Thursar and Trolls and all manner
of ill meaning Vaettir.
On a personal note, I am thinking that
I need to be playing some more games, wargames, RPGs, doesn't matter.
I know Lee wasn't super into my OA game, and that kind of threw that
whole project under the bus, I am thinking about doing some more with
that. Dalton has a D&D group in Oswego, I'd like to meet and
maybe they'd be interested in picking up where we left off before. My
B/X Viking game keeps getting bad luck in the way of gaming, what
were the odds two of us were going to have vehicles die last week? We
have a gaming convention at SUNY Oswego next weekend, so I am going
to go to that Arcon XI, maybe I'll meet some more local and
interested gamers there too. I also have my grand Mongol RPG/Wargame
crossover that's been on a back burner for a long while that I'd like
to start working on and my Dawn Patrol group said they'd be receptive
to play-testing my B/X World War II game, so I guess we'll see which
of these catches, eh?
The idea of the "Úlfhéðinn" sounds like it might make for a good hook for a "friendly" werewolf (or even a PC-werewolf). Commando missions are a never-ending source of interesting adventure hooks, even more so when they go wrong . . .
ReplyDeleteI always thought of them as another type of berserker, kind of like "lone-wolf" types as opposed to the big, burly, smash the enemy to death berserks.
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