The Winter's Wrath

Fury of the North redirects here. For other uses, see Fury of the North (disambiguation).

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Biography

The Winter's Wrath

By Odin Austin Shafer

Starring: Sejuani

Mentioned: Ashe, Grena, Kalkia

Biography

Sejuani was the child of a Freljordian political marriage that ended as coldly as it began. Her mother, the Iceborn warrior Kalkia of the Winter's Claw, abandoned her new family to pursue the man who had captured her heart years before, and the tribe fell into decline and chaos without a young Warmother to lead it.

Sejuani was instead raised by her grandmother, Hejian. Though Sejuani tried her best to earn Hejian's love, she was never able to meet her arduous expectations. As the tribe's troubles grew in the years that followed, Hejian had even less time for the girl.

Wealth, love, safety—these were things Sejuani only experienced secondhand, through visits to the Winter's Claw's sister tribe, the Avarosans. During the summers, Grena, the most famous warrior in the region, took Sejuani into her household. After discovering Grena had in fact once bested Kalkia in a duel, the Avarosan Warmother instantly became Sejuani's idol... and Grena's daughter Ashe became the only person she ever truly considered a friend.

After Grena questioned the treatment of the young girl by her grandmother, an affronted Hejian cut all ties with the Avarosans. The Winter's Claw then instigated a series of conflicts with other neighboring tribes, attempting to reclaim the lands and honor they had lost with Kalkia's flight, but these desperate tactics only led them further into ruin.

Somehow, word of this reached Kalkia.

Hearing of her former tribe's misfortunes, she returned and took up the mantle of Warmother once more. Even so, quelling these hostilities left the Winter's Claw with game-poor lands and precious few other resources, forcing them to rely on the grim Frostguard for protection.

Sejuani was galled by this, and resolved to seize leadership from her mother. She swore a sacred oath to lead a perilous raid against a Noxian warship, hoping that fulfilling this oath would be enough to rally the tribe to her, with enough support to wrest power from Kalkia and the Frost Priests.

During the vicious assault, Sejuani freed a juvenile drüvask from the ship's butchery stores, naming it Bristle for the feel of its hide. Though she could not have guessed it at the time, this creature would grow to become one of the largest drüvasks ever seen, and remained with Sejuani as her loyal steed.

Her raid a success, Sejuani decided it was time to challenge her mother directly for the tribe. By the ancient customs, a duel between a mother and her daughter was unthinkable—but Sejuani would not be deterred.

Outraged, the Frost Priests were forced to intervene, and Kalkia died in the struggle before Sejuani could reach her.

As the new Warmother of the Winter's Claw, Sejuani began attacking and absorbing nearby tribes, consolidating her power and gathering a veritable horde of followers. Her defiance of the Frostguard also attracted outcast shamans, spirit walkers, Iceborn and Stormborn, and unrepentant worshippers of all the old gods from across the Freljord.

Where once they had been weak, disgraced, and preyed upon by their neighbors, in only a few years the Winter's Claw had become feared throughout the northlands for their speed, brutality, and absolute devotion to their Warmother.

Now, as the seasons turn, Sejuani marches on the southern tribes, Noxian interlopers, and even the borderlands of Demacia—raiding, pillaging, and conquering any who stand against her. Ultimately, she seeks to cast down and destroy the burgeoning coalition of tribes formed by her childhood friend, Ashe. As far as Sejuani is concerned, the Avarosan Warmother has betrayed not only their friendship but, far worse, she has also betrayed Grena's legacy.

And so, Sejuani will prove that only she is worthy of ruling the Freljord.

Change log

The Winter's Wrath
MISSING	Updated to the current version.
MISSING	Updated to remove references to the Institute of War. "I was cut from the ice, shaped in the storms, hardened in the cold." Sejuani was weaned on hardship and reared on barbarity. Where others succumbed to the harshness of the Freljord, she was tempered by it until pain became power, hunger an encouragement, and frost an ally in culling the weak. Through her ordeals, she learned that to thrive in the endless winter, one must become just as cold and unforgiving. In Sejuani's eyes, her followers either have the mettle to endure or the right to die. Once she has conquered the Freljord, she knows that those who survive will form a nation to be feared. As a child, the leader of the Winter's Claw watched her tribe's numbers slowly dwindle. Cold and starvation took all but the most resilient. She was the only one of her siblings to survive to her tenth year, leaving Sejuani sure that she too would die in misery. In desperation, she sought spiritual counsel from her tribe's mystic. But the seer did not foretell Sejuani's death. Instead, she prophesized that Sejuani would one day conquer and unite the divided tribes of the Freljord. Armored with absolute faith in her destiny, Sejuani pushed herself to extremes that would have killed anyone without her will to endure. She walked into blizzards without food or furs and trained while frigid winds raked her flesh. She clashed with the strongest warriors of her tribe, one after another, until her legs gave out beneath her. When she assumed leadership of her tribe, Sejuani commanded her warriors to follow her example. Under her rule, the tribe grew stronger than they had ever been. In the end, it was an offer of peace - rather than an act of war - that began Sejuani's campaign of conquest. On the first day of winter, envoys from Ashe's tribe approached Sejuani's camp bearing a gift of Avarosan grain. Ashe's intent was clear: if Sejuani united with her tribe, the Winter's Claw would never go hungry again. To Sejuani, the gift was an insult. In Ashe's tribe, she saw men and women, slight and soft, who preferred to farm instead of fight. Her contempt for them was absolute. Sejuani gathered her people and set the grain alight. She proclaimed that Ashe's offer of charity would bring only weakness. Stripping the envoys of their supplies, Sejuani sent them back with a message: the Winter's Claw would prove to the Avarosan that only the strong deserve to survive in the Freljord. As the grain burned behind them, Sejuani rode out with her warband to inflict the first of many painful lessons to come. ▶️  "They plead for mercy when they hear our drums, but the wolf owes no consideration to the prey. We do not sow seeds and till earth like the Avarosan. We do not stand watch over shattered ruins like the Frostguard. We do not pity the meek, for courage is the true salvation of the Freljord! We are the war cry of the wind, we are the strength of the mountains. We are the claws of winter!"
MISSING	Original version. "The Freljord provides for the few. For the others, 'peace' means only death." When Sejuani was born, the mystics of her tribe foretold that she would be the one to unite and lead the divided territories of the Freljord. Her people had suffered for centuries, as a losing war on the frozen tundra pushed them farther and farther from the Freljord's limited food supplies. Sejuani grew up surrounded by this misery, and it fueled her desire to fulfill her destiny. She pushed herself to extremes, walking out into blizzards without food or furs and training while frigid winds raked her flesh. She sparred with the strongest warriors of her tribe, one after another, until her legs would give out beneath her. She sustained injuries that would have killed any other member of the tribe, but she would only rise again, driven by sheer force of will and what her tribe took to calling her 'heart of the blizzard'. On her twentieth birthday, Sejuani declared that she would lead her people out of their remote isolation to conquer the lands of their enemies. She had completed her training and she was ready to face the leaders of the opposing tribes. Her feats had already become legend and soldiers in her company were inspired to new heights of strength and resolve. However, before she struck out on her campaign, Ashe began campaigning for peace in the Freljord, joining the League of Legends to demonstrate how the people could be spared violence. To Sejuani, this was a violation of tradition - a coward's ruse to hoard the Freljord's precious few resources. She saw the confidence of her people wane as it seemed they would never be delivered from their plight. She decided that to truly prove herself as the rightful ruler of the Freljord, she must defeat Ashe completely and unquestionably on the world's stage in the League of Legends.

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References

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