Of Utgard Scourgers

Although Ilium and Ersatz define pretty much my own battling essences, there is a rather other component in the game. And unfortunately they help the enemy side. I’ll call them Utgard Scourgers, though they can simply be thought as giants. Giants that shatter foundations of the world, because they are dealing with my own body. They’re quite different from Chthonic Scourgers as these giants are mostly physical and most of them are easily more bearable than those damaging me from within.

I’ll start with their most common type, not being terribly dangerous. Hrímnir is about body pain and diseases. It can be tooth pain or skin wounds. It’s a rather dense quintessence so with time I could fractalize it into other types, and if I think of them as some sort of class or species, some of them can be quite strong, like a compound fracture or luxation in comparison to thumping toes.

Next is Hrimthurs. It’s that feeling of numb and stiff muscles, usually after leading an extremely sedentary day. In the scale of scourgers this would be the absolutely weakest of them all, apparently. After all, it just takes some warm-up exercises and there, it’s gone. This is like Poring in my scale of monsters.

Then there’s Hymir. It’s sleepiness, but also tiredness and fatigue. Though I used to have much more energy a few years back then I can still go through the day without problems. But a whole week without proper sleep will eventually wear me out. I don’t know how to string it entirely too. That is, I don’t know what makes this sleepiness play any role in differentiating this from other giants, you know.

And before I get to more serious jötnar, there’s Hruga. It’s going to be about the discomfort of heat. It’s the sweat and irritation that comes from it. As with the sweat, it’s also how I hate stinking (so it can also be being soaked by the rain), so this is a concept neighboring with the element of Haze Clouds as opposed to Zephyr Winds. It’s hard to reach trances in this condition, though when I can notice it’s taking me I can sort of use Trygve and its resistance against him.

Hrímgrímnir is the pain of accidents but unlike Hrímnir, this comes with some sort of social humiliation. It can be related after losing a fight or being beated down. I don’t even remember the last time I ever fought with someone, but once in a while when I accidentally hit my nose and its cartilage aches I sort of have this feeling. In case it happens to me in the future, I have this one ready.

And here’s one that’s the most annoying and dangerous of them. It’s been bothering me to no end. Hrungnir. It’s the distracting hunger, the actual hunger, but also gastritis and nausea. It’s the terrible effect of eating and having no appetite, eating and needing more, eating and having no energy, eating and gaining absolutely none of the needed weight. As for the scourger, it has an earthquaking effect on concentration. Makes me worried and the aching slowly comes associated with other emotions, so it’s as if it is some sort of battlefront scourger, invading territories for other battalions to follow.

And then, a last scourger, but quite experimental as it skips the Q.Rule, I have. Helminth (it also skips the rule of picking names of norse giants). This parasitic monster represents psychosomatic intereferences, like the mental interferences on body, and also how body affects the mind (decreasing self-steem, and taking me to Ersatz mood). It is related to Hrungnir as the feeling of hunger can also be about anxiety, so these two would be the two I have to take care of in this tribe. Probably Helminth is a half-giant, or an Ersatz scourger who first got to this wild place and made his alliances here.

So this is about it for now. Hrímnir, Hrimthurs, Hymir, Hruga, Hrímgrímnir, Hrungnir and Helminth. Seven scourgers to represent the physical concerns. I think the Utgard realm would even be sort of separated from Ersatz itself, because as a mental thing this place is, this is the most external of them all, but they are very easily connected, and when I think about it, it all reflects on my body.