Kriemhild

Temple of the Dii Inferi -x- St.Calenda's Wandering Pageant, Odeum & Lunar Fair

Sobriquet: Lady Kriemhild or The Carolinian

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History: Although the history of Men makes little mention of Kriemhild, she was the greatest of Charlemagne's company of knights and fought to become his champion in the years before his crowning in Rome. In fact, Kriemhild had been given the honor of acting as Charlemagne's factor in Rome and for arranging for the pope at the time - Leo III - to crown Charlemagne in St.Peter's Basilica on Christmas day in 800 A.D. Sadly, Kriemhild was not there to see her lord crowned as Emperor of the Romans. Charlemagne and his advisor's had heard of a foul gateway to hell located in Rome beneath the Campus Martius, Kriemhild was sent by her lord to investigate and vanished from history. The Holy-Roman emperor concluded that Kriemhild had died in closing the gateway to the netherworld. But even as his armies buried the entrance and struck every known mention of the gateway from the pages of history, the other holy knights erased all mention of a lady-knight from their rolls of honor. Kriemhild for her part remained imprisoned in the Temple of the Dii Inferi for the next three centuries.

But she was not alone, the legend of the temple and its dragon-hoard of treasure served to lure half-a-hundred adventurers and blackguards into one of the greatest supernatural traps of all time - the temple. Once the portal to the surface closed, Kriemhild tried to ally with a few of the more virtuous warriors, but that only lasted until the food began to run out. As the her fellow prisoners began to die of hunger and thirst, she came upon a Ostrogothic warrior who called himself Audvakr, like her he had heard of the opening of the gate into the temple and gone in 493 A.D. and then failed to escape.

Audvakr told her his own story, one in which he and his companions had become trapped and nearly starved to death when they came upon a Roman legionnaire called Drusus who had likewise entered the temple during the reign of Octavian and failed to escape in time. The Ostrogoth's story revealed that the Roman soldier had won a magic ring in single combat against another centuries old prisoner whose name he had forgotten. It was an ancient tradition handed down through countless centuries, that the surviving ring bearer should offer single combat to the finest warrior among the newly imprisoned and if the newcomer won the fight, then the the Shardstone Ring was passed onto the victor. Audvakr pointed out that the gate back to Rome would not open again for a century and the only way to survive until then was to take up wearing the ring.

Kriemhild understood that only the worst sort of death awaited her if she failed to accept the Ostrogoth's challenge and as she preferred to die on her feet, it was an easy choice. The battle was a long one, and when it was finally over, she stood over the dust that had been her honorable foe. Thus she took up the ring with every intention of returning to the world above. Yet imprisonment in the temple changed her significantly, after a few weeks of starvation and thirst she ate her surviving companions one at a time, savoring their flesh. In less than a year, everything edible had been consumed and she settled herself to wait. While she waited, she wandered the length and breadth of the temple, and discovered all its traps and wonders. Initially, she refused to listen to the voices of the dead and their equally dead gods, but after uncounted years, she gave in and conversed with the dead to save her fraying sanity. She prayed often, but it was the Dii Inferi who answered her rather than the god of the Hebrews. With the passage of decades she gave up Christ for the Chthonic gods of the temple and then the gate opened once more.

Kriemhild's return to the world was a shock of sensation. Then came the grief, the world she had known, along with all those she loved and hated had passed away to be replaced by a world of strange customs and even stranger people. In the end, she returned to the dark confines of the temple where her friends and gods resided. The next century was easier and while she cherished her next visit to the surface, she had long since come to see the temple as her home. Then came the third gate and its strange collection of adventurers and she decided to return to the world above in the company of a group of vampires.

Recent Events: Recently escaped the Temple of the Dii Inferi in Rome after three centuries of imprisonment. Her ragtag group of rescuers turned out to be Night-folk and the morning after a fey queen called Astarte introduced herself and took Kriemhild to join St.Calenda's Pageant in return for the Shardstone Ring.

• -- Kriemhild's Statistics