Characters – Jokull

Sigrun remembers him dying. She remembers his last stand against Skarn, buying her time to reach the cryo-pod. She remembers the ex-boyfriend who gave her the Psytum Sword Baldr and told her to run. Those memories are a gift. They are also a lie.

Ivar Lindqvist fell in love with Princess Sigrun Fjeld while on assignment to recruit her for the Jokull cause. When the Fenris Horde breached Europa Station, he offered Sigrun a choice: donate her ovum to the Jokull, or flee and survive alone. He believed it was the best way for her to help fight for the Commonwealth’s future. Instead, she answered with a 10mm bullet to his gut. Regardless, he let her do it. Then he gave her everything he had left: his sword, his savings, a path to Mars. And one final spell that rewrote her memories so she could go and live without hating herself for shooting the man who loved her.

The magic cost Sigrun her sharp mind. Ivar has carried that weight for eleven years.

Now he commands Jokull forces at Dagny’s side, their bond forged in shared purpose and quiet understanding. He has found something like peace in the frozen duty of resistance. But when reports mention a blonde bounty hunter on Mars, his heart still clenches. Some wounds run deeper than Winterborn healing can reach.

First appearance: Nucleus Volume 1 (Returns in Volume 3)

Where Sigrun fled Europa, Dagny stayed. Where Skarn built breeding machines that turned women into livestock, Dagny invented the Hylki: clinical, humane, dignified. Where her mother Maren sold out their people to monsters, Dagny raised the Jökull banner and gave the Nordic Commonwealth something it hadn’t had in eleven years. Hope.

The war has cost her. Golden hair turned white before she reached thirty. She’s grown thinner each year, as if command itself feeds on her flesh. She cannot swing a sword or fire a rifle, but her Lunar and Void psionics can freeze a battlefield solid or tear holes in reality itself. She rides Hrímnir, the first Krabba born in her laboratories, into every battle she can reach. Ivar Lindqvist serves as her consort and most trusted commander. Together they’ve held the line against Fenris for over a decade.

Her fatal flaw is pride. Dagny believes this is a Nordling matter, that outside help would taint the victory. She has refused every alliance offer. Every single one. Eleven years of bloody stalemate later, she still believes she’s right. The question is whether her people can survive long enough for her to prove it.

First appearance: Nucleus Volume 5

Seventy-one years old and still swinging an axe. Most warriors half his age have either died screaming or turned into something that makes others scream. Ulrik just keeps fighting, one clean kill at a time.

The Alaskan wilderness taught him young: you take only what you need, you kill only what threatens you, and you make it quick. That code followed him across the Seven Realms, through Alliance service and into Princess Dagny’s war against Skarn. Where other Nordlings favor brutality, Ulrik insists on honor. Fair combat. Swift mercy. Some call it weakness. The men who’ve faced him know better.

He still trades messages with old friends when the fighting allows. Dilinur Altai. Dante Pompeo. Kofi Mensah. Proof that a Nordling can love his people without hating everyone else. He chose to stay on Europa when he could have lived comfortably elsewhere, because someone has to show the younger Nordgårds how proper fights are done.

First appearance: Nucleus Volume 5

When the first Hylki chamber flickered to life in Dagny’s laboratory, Hrímnir was what emerged. Not a weapon. Not a tool. A promise that the Jokull way could work.

Eleven years later, his shell still carries the pale blue-white veins of that early viral formulation, crackling like frozen lightning across sapphire armor. The notch on his left claw tells a different story: the 2284 Fenris breakthrough at Europa Station, when he held the line so Dagny’s people could escape. No Nordgård has ever earned the right to saddle him. He postures and clicks his disapproval at anyone who tries.

His intelligence runs deeper than most would assume. He understands tactical Jöturmál, shifts position before Dagny signals, communicates in clicking patterns she’s spent years learning to read. Where Hrímnir holds, the line holds. Veterans know this. They rally to him without being told.

Yet this same creature lowers himself for Hylki-born children, letting small hands touch his battle-scarred shell. He bickers with Ivar Lindqvist at times, tracking the Winterborn’s movements with twitching claws whenever the man approaches. Dagny finds it amusing. Ivar does not.

When advisors suggested using him for breeding stock, Dagny’s answer was final: “He’s earned his rest from service beyond battle. When he falls, his shell goes to the cairn whole.”

First appearance: Nucleus Volume 5

Before Dagny Fjeld perfected the Winterborn transformation, there was Astrid. The first. The proof that Nordlings could become something more without losing themselves to Skarn’s brutality.

She volunteered knowing she might die on the table. Instead, she woke up with frost singing through her veins and every Jokull creature’s DNA woven into her cells. As a scientist, she documented her own transformation with clinical fascination: the heightened senses, the animal urges clawing at her thoughts, the way her body could now sprout claws or wings when she needed them. She learned to ride those instincts rather than fight them. Eleven years later, she’s still taking notes.

Where Dagny preaches Nordling purity, Astrid asks questions. She’s genuinely curious about outsiders, about other cultures, about anything beyond Europa’s ice. This makes her valuable as a diplomat and dangerous as a free thinker. Her playfulness disarms people who expect Jokull warriors to be grim and humorless. Her analytical mind dissects combat scenarios and potential lovers with equal precision. She flirts like she’s running an experiment, because she usually is.

Some within the Horde whisper that she’s too soft. Astrid just smiles. She was soft once. Then she let Dagny remake her into something that could tear a Draug apart with her bare hands. She simply chooses not to lead with that.

First appearance: Nucleus Volume 5

He was a groundhog once. Just a small creature Ivar rescued and kept in his Jotunheim Institute dorm, fed scraps and given warmth when Europa’s ice crept too close. When the Fenris Horde tore through the station and Dagny offered Ivar a second chance, Olav followed his master into transformation. The Jökull variant changed his body. It never touched his heart.

Now he stands waist-high to a grown man, armored in dense fur and chitin, capable of tearing through frozen rock to harvest Zephyrium. He cannot speak, but he understands English and Jöturmál both. He communicates through chirps, gestures, and gentle psionic impressions that feel like being nudged by something kind. His cooking has kept Ivar and Dagny alive through lean winters. His mapped routes have saved NordGård patrols from ambush. His healing spells are small but given freely.

Sigrun knew him before, back when he fit in her palm. She does not yet know what he has become, or that he remembers her too.

First appearance: Nucleus Volume 3