Eldarian Amazons
A.K.A.: "The Amazons of River Elda" "Chindren of Frigg"
Homeland: The Merchant Republic of Eldara
Distinctive Characteristics: Deeply miscegenated with Germanic and Scandinavian tribes, the Eldarian Amazons are famous for their golden hair, pale skin and bright eyes.
Cultural Traits: Deep admiration for the Elders amongst them, respect for nature and love for woodworking and seafaring. Meritocracy and Seniority define who rules each family and city.
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The origins of the Eldarian Amazons are ancient spoken tales of a large contingent of Ancient Amazons who refused to venture in the dangerous crossing of the North Atlantic Ocean towards the promised land coveted by Queen Hippolyta the Great. While the bulk of the Amazons left Europe behind, the Eldarians lingered by the Baltic Sea, mingling among the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia for a thousand years before they finally made the crossing to Arandolia themselves to join their long lost kin.
Not much is known about the time before their late arrival in Arandolia, as those amazons lost most of their original Hellenic heritage, including their written alphabet, as they strongly miscegenated with the Norse peoples around them. All that survive from the history of that era are sang sagas of their foremothers, who were believed to be Valkyries by the Norse as they fought by their side for gold and glory.
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Very little is also known about why the Eldarians left Scandinavia around the 2nd century BC. Legends say that Queen Hyppolita herself found them and led them to Arandolia as she did leave in an expedition to do so in 1000 BC, but the time discrepancy is substantial, making it very unlikely to be true. Most likely, just like happened before in Themyscira, the Norsemen began to fear the expanding numbers of the amazon kin within their territory, starting a war and forcing the Eldarians to flee to the oceans, carried to Arandolia by the same Northern Winds that carried their kin to those very shores 1000 years before.
Either by chance or fate, by the time they crash-landed on the cold shores of the estuary of River Elda at the Northern Coast of Arandolia, the Eldarians were so thoroughly changed that they even called themselves "Daughters of Freya" instead of Daughters of Hera, having long adopted a modified Amazonized variant of the Norse Pantheon as their new religion, along with Scandinavian as their new language.
At first, there was a big clash of cultures among the newcomers and their long separated kin. The Eldarians settled in the so far unpopulated northern coast of Arandolia and thrived as they used the vast forests of their new home to build a mighty lonship armada. With a substancial number of seaborne warriors, a vast fleet of lonships that by far outmeneuvered the Hellenic Amazon's trirremes and a thirst to carve a place of their own in this newfound "promised land", the Eldarians pillaged, sacked and conquered their way through their own Amazon kin, causing the entirety of the Eastern and Northern shores of the so far purely Hellenic Arandolia to be substantially Germanified.
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As centuries passed, though, the Eldarians who conquered and settled in the rich fertile Southlands ended up Hellenized themselves, turning Southern Arandolia in a Greco-German collection of small petty-kingdoms, much like what happened to Britain in the dark ages. As these new "Southlanders" became more tolerant to germanic culture and traditions, even embracing some, so did Eldara back in the cold North, calming down their aggressive temper and eventually replacing all their raiding fleets for trading fleets.
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Now in peace and with a place of their own, the Eldarian Amazons became a mercantile powerhouse in their own right. They re-embraced some of their long lost Hellenic and Amazonic traditions, though the core values of their Norse-Amazon culture remained deeply rooted in Eldara. This can be easily observed in the Eldarian social hierarchy itself, as their leaders are always the oldest and most honorable women around due to their worship of their ancestors, while the Eldarian army employs handaxes and vast round shields as their weapons of choice in tight shield-wall formations. Carpentry and wood-working technology among them are still the most advanced among the amazon kin, while up to this day they worship Freya around stone and wood shrines covered in runes.