Wyla Wallbreaker

History

• Background

  Life among the Oak Clans was never easy. Their thatched wooden buildings dotted rural plains and forests, and even the city they share doesn’t have the protection that a true nation-state would. They hunt and gather much of their food, honor their gods, and fend for themselves against outsiders- and each other.
  
  As the oldest of three children, Wyla swore to protect her siblings. The local children would spar with wooden sticks and crude shields, as children are wont to do, and despite a small frame, she quickly became one of the best. She idolized Enyalla, the Goddess of War, and trained in her honor.
  
  Her parents weren’t having it. In her clan, women were meant to be cooks, healers, and smiths. Her mother came down especially hard- she wanted her only daughter to carry on her legacy.
  
  When the Northern Kingdom invaded, her tribe was the first to lose its clanhold. Northern soldiers came with their superior numbers, forge-made armor, and powerful weapons. Part of her felt validated - shame on her tribe for taking half of the population out of the fight - but it was a small, small part. Colonization remained brutal. At sixteen, she was separated from her family, and enslaved by one of the enemy commanders.
  
  Three years later, she fell on particularly hard luck. She was caught stealing food from the remnants of a solstice feast. It was going to be thrown out otherwise - she didn’t even realize it was stealing, and maintained that it shouldn’t be - but regardless, it wasn’t a slave’s place to eat from such a fine table. She would have to be lashed.
  
  She was chained to a post to await discipline. They left her in sweltering heat with no food for six hours before her torturer came out- a man twice her size with a heavy lash. As he worked, she was barely lucid - pain shot across her back, the only thing bringing her to wakefulness.
  
  It was then that Enyalla called to her. In her mind’s eye, she saw her patron standing at a stone war table. A stern, gray-haired woman in beautiful rawhide armor, wielding an axe as long as her body. “This cesspool of moral bankruptcy shall be buried,” she demanded. “Are you ready to do the deed?”
  
  She thought it was a dream. She was confused- she just wanted water. Sleep. Medical treatment after this torture. “Are you, or are you not!?” The goddess demanded once more.
  
  “I want to be." She knew she was speaking out of turn, and her assailant stomped on her back for breaking silence, but it was all she could say.
  
  “Good.” Enyalla spoke with a pitiless touch of iron in her voice. “I will not endow you with my power, but there is plenty to earn.” Enyalla carved a rune into the back of her neck- in that moment, the pain from the lashes faded, giving way to the goddess’s touch. “You will have the strength and prowess of each fallen enemy. You need only collect it.”
  
  She let the torturer finish. As she fell to the ground, she spotted a dirty dining knife left on the ground from the prior feast. Picking it up, she shambled to her feet even when she wanted to keel over, and shoved it in his back.
  
  Turning around, the man grabbed her by the throat, lifting her small frame off the ground and pounding her against the wall. She stabbed him again - twice, three times - until his grip weakened. When his body hit the ground, she felt the first surge.
  
  As the torturer’s strength and stamina joined her own, she had the energy to run down the alley from the guard who came with him- and afterward, to trip him for a stab in the eye. When she was immediately safe, she went back in once more to kill her master and his son, who was a year older than her.
  
  When Wyla escaped, she returned to what was once Oak Clans territory, and helped in efforts of resistance. As her influence and might grew, they called her "The Wallbreaker;" a title she took fondly to. She quickly proved to be an exceptional rider, leader, and warrior, tearing through enemy lines and rebuking the imperial threat.
  
  
  Before the resistance, she had retained her form, and simply been deceptively strong. As her kills grew from the tens to the hundreds, however, her body began to change. She became burly during earlier battles, and hulking as the clans were almost liberated. Her own clan, as one of the smallest and one of the northernmost, was the last. By the time they were free, she grew too monstrous to ride a horse.
  
  Described as a giant, she became something of a social outcast as well- she retained the respect of the clans, along with a degree of renown and awe, but she wasn’t necessarily one of them. They feared her. Some who rejected the war goddess in favor of more peaceful deities decried her as a heathen avatar.
  
  
  Stern Enyalla called to her again- her talents were wasted mulling about among the clans. She left on a ship going south, determined to find a new purpose.