Chapter I: Origins

It had been a year since the Hooligan Tribe settled on the island they've called Berk. I was a beautiful place for hunting, fishing, and romantic nights to stare at the sunsets. It was a perfect place for the Vikings, but it came with a great price, for there were dragons in these parts.

These mighty children of Loki were the terror of the Hooligan Tribe, but they were fearless Vikings with no desire to seek out a new home, and so they stayed, defending their village at all costs…

… The greatest price was death from both parties.

On a particularly unfortunate night, there was a great raid that led to the slaying of an exceptionally rare dragon that happened to be prized in the eyes of Loki. The dragon was known as a Submaripper, a gigantic dragon that took up residence in the waters the Hooligan tribe favored to fish in. Not only did the beast consume a lot of fish, but it released this stench that befouled their beautiful island, and so they killed it by lacing fish with poison.

When the beast finally met it's slow, sickly, demise, the Vikings cheered and hacked up the massive carcass to chum the waters to get the fish to come back, but to their shock, Loki came to the village that night, barged into the Great Hall during the celebratory feast. The hall fell silent as the enraged god looked the chief in the eyes and declared: "With the death of the Submaripper, you have slain and defiled the corpse of one of my most beloved children! You have also slain over a hundred of my other children! Do you plan on driving them to extinction? I won't allow it! For your disgraceful actions towards the dragons, I curse this island! There shall be a hidden treasure on Berk, and once in a generation, a child will find this treasure, and try to claim it for themselves, only to find that they will become the beast they fear most within three days! Yes, once in a generation, one of your own will be turned into a dragon!"

Loki left the Great Hall, and in the middle of the woods, Loki embedded a glorious battle axe into a stone pillar as his cursed treasure, and then he created a magic ring disguised as wildflowers, should the axe ever go past the flowers then he would appear to place the curse on the unfortunate soul who took the axe. Satisfied with his work, Loki turned and vanished.

The next day, the Chief's nephew found the axe and took it out of the stone pillar to take a look at it. He swung it around a few times, until he got carried away and brought the axe past the ring of wildflowers. Loki soon appeared before him and declared: "As the third moon rises, you shall become what your village fears most, a dragon!"

A patch of scales appeared on the lad's neck, they were this bluish-grey, and the nephew dropped the axe and ran back to his village. He ran straight for the healer, the healer summoned the nephew's father, and upon realizing that his son was cursed, he disowned his son, and he had been kicked out of the village. Three days later, the nephew became a Whispering Death, and spent a few months stealing food from the village before leaving the island to find a new home, never to be seen by his family again.

With each generation, one soul would take hold of Loki's cursed axe and would soon find that they would suffer one of three consequences: they would be ostracized by the tribe, they would simply wait out the transformation in the forest (hidden from the village) and then just never show their face again, or they would be killed before the final transformation even took place.

Then, by some miracle, there was almost a century that passed without anyone finding the cursed axe, and the legendary cursed axe of Berk became nothing more than a scary bedtime story. Of course, being this story, that was about to change.