Raiders

The Raiders were berserker marauders of Midgard who chose to endure the killing cold of Fimbulwinter rather than flee to safer realms. By twisting their guardian spirits they took on the traits of beasts, and like the Reavers they fell upon any outsider who crossed into their lands, among them Kratos and Atreus.

Survivors of the long winter#

When the desolation of Fimbulwinter fell upon Midgard, most of its people fled to safer places, but the Raiders chose to remain and endure. Few humans were left in the Wildwoods in those days; those who stayed either hid themselves away in the warmest places they could find or, refusing to hide, fended off the cold by transmogrifying their fylgia, their guardian spirit. This part of the soul took on the traits of a beast, allowing the warriors to adapt to the unforgiving climate. Because of the extremity of their ways, they grew hostile to any outsider, and those who were slain were frequently raised again as undead Hel-Walkers.

The beast-souls#

The Raiders took different beasts for their fylgia, and these set them apart from one another. Most favored the strength and pride of the stag, clad in deer hides and antlered masks and armed with maces shaped like antlers. The scouts among them, drawn from the women, took the owl for its sharp eyes and sharper talons, wearing owl feathers and masks or tribal paint and wielding deadly bladed slings to hurl projectiles from afar. The chiefs took the mighty ox, hooded in pelts hung with tusk-like ornaments so that they resembled mammoths, and bore great bone bidents; they were the strongest of any tribe and ruled it. By their own tradition a chief was chosen through days and nights of combat trials so brutal that most who entered died, though their dwindling numbers had likely forced them to change such customs.

Apart from the common Raiders stood the Kol Raiders, who had turned their devotion from blood to fire and were known for setting themselves alight upon death, even as they kept the castes of animal fylgia and the same lethal hatred of outsiders.

Enemies of Kratos#

The Raiders turned their fury upon Kratos through the hand of Freya. In her grief and hunger for revenge after he slew her son Baldur, she convinced them that the Spartan was the cause of Fimbulwinter and that his death would bring the winter to an end. So they hunted him relentlessly through the Wildwoods, and it was said that they meant to devour him once he was dead. Those Raiders who died in these battles often rose again as frozen, frenzied Hel-Raiders, more dangerous in death than they had been in life.