Prologue content: March Of The Courageous- Part 1

Introducing Team Invicta- the DND party that is going up against the evils of the 41st Millennium. They won't be alone in this task, because I'm thinking of massive, carnage-filled, LOTR-style army battles and sieges, like in Peter Jackson's movies, but let's get to the point.

You want strong, well-written, relatable and wholesome characters, right? Well here you go. I clearly put way too much effort into describing the first one, the leader of the team, who is the main heroine of my favorite fantasy novel.

Oh, boy. Here we go.

Thianna Frostborn: Young Warrior From Ymiria (the life story of a tiny giant)

SPOILER ALERT for the Thrones and Bones books by Lou Anders!

If you haven't heard of that young adult novel series, I highly recommend you check it out. It's basically Lord of the Rings meets Avatar The Last Airbender. And, it has an OFFICIAL Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting!

Though in this fanfiction's case, the countries in Thrones and Bones are planets and planes of reality instead of individual landmasses.

"A mercenary general in Eberron's Steel Legion, also known as the Winter Soldier. Her name is highly feared on the battlefield."

Sic Parvis Magna. Greatness from small beginnings. For the majority of people in the realms, these words have little meaning. Yet to Thianna Frostborn, the legendary mercenary soldier and adventurer who spends every day getting stronger, they are the words that define her whole life.

Born to a giant father, Magnilmir Frostborn, and a human mother, Talaria, from opposite corners of interstellar civilization, she was a child of two cultures.

Furthermore, her parents both had considerable social standing- Magnilmir was a retired 5-star general in the Free Worlds Alliance's vast armies, making him both greatly feared and respected, and Talaria was an exiled noblewoman from Thica, basically the planetary equivalent of Ancient Grome (get it? Greek plus Roman?) in Wildspace.

She probably would have had a lot of privilege, and lots of people would definitely have respected her... that is, if she wasn't the only half human in the entire village she grew up in. Oh, yeah, and her mother died when she was very young, 8 months after giving birth to her.

The other giant kids treated Thianna like a freak because she was only nine feet tall, half the size of everyone else, and it got to the point where the bullies were using her as a punching bag, beating the snot out of her and leaving her covered in blood and tears. Brings a whole new meaning to "pick on someone your own size," doesn't it?

It didn't matter that her parents were famous and had backgrounds of nobility. Thianna just didn't fit in.Just listen to what she had to say!

"During my childhood, I was weak and lonely. An orphan who had lost her mother, whose father was ridiculed by society just for being tolerant..."

"A stupid girl who didn't know how to stand up for herself… much less throw a punch. The two most important things in the world were, of course, father, and this necklace, which belonged to my mother. To others, I was just a foreigner."

Author's note: I deliberately excluded Thianna's best friend, a human boy by the name of Karn, and the brains to complement her brawn, because I wanted an original character to take his place.

Karn was the first person to sympathize with the lonely half-giant, and told her she should stand up for herself, maybe have her badass of a dad teach her how to fight back the next time someone picked on her.

BACKSTORY BACKSTORY BACKSTORY

Thianna had gone through a rough day at school. She opened the smaller, custom-built door to her house, and climbed on top of a couch. She was bleeding from multiple places, and had a bunch of nasty bruises and a black eye. Beforehand, she was getting picked on by people twice her size, who smashed her face into the dirt many times and brutally beat her up.

It was because she was half human in a town full of frost giants. Her mixed blood made her stand out, and some other giants treated her terribly because of this.

Then her father, Magnilmir Frostborn, entered the room, and he realized exactly what happened.

"Thianna?! What did they do to you?! Hold on, I'm getting you some medical attention…"

The next two solar hours were spent patching up the injuries she had.

Thianna was crying through it all, not just because of the bruises and cuts, but also because she was afraid of not fitting in.

"Why won't they just leave me alone," she said.

Magnilmir was hurt too, because he didn't know.

"I don't know why some people have to be that way, Thianna. But you must know that there are good people who care a whole awful lot."

"Like mom before she died? I believe she was a nice person, but you never really tell me much about her…"

"If there was one quality she had, it was kindness. When I met your mother, she told me about times when she was helping refugees in a war. But that is a discussion for later. For now, we need to get these injuries treated."

2 hours later

Thianna was looking at an enormous suit of armor in her house's basement, which belonged to her father. She ran back upstairs on the secondary stairs that were designed for someone her size, and asked Magnilmir an important question:

"You were a warrior in a crusade. Does that mean you could teach me how to fight? My friend Karn, that human boy from down the mountain, told me that I needed to learn how to stand up for myself. He also said he had problems with bullying too."

"Teach you how to fight? Why? We live on a peaceful planet with no wars, barely influenced by interstellar travel."

"I've had enough of others picking on me for being small. You saw what they did to me, you had to stop all that bleeding!"

"You're right about all that… I can't understand what you're going through, I'm not your size. But you're my daughter, and I have to teach you things, after all."

"Really? Thank you so much, Dad!"

"But before you start training with me tomorrow, you need to know some criteria. And this is no piece of cake. One, you need to be in excellent shape. Two, you must be coordinated and prepared for anything that comes your way. Three, you must stay humble, and be kind to others… which is a good trait for everyone. Deal?"

"Deal."

You may be wondering, how did Thianna's father properly train her in the ways of combat if he was so much bigger than her? Well, he actually had a 10-foot tall battle robot which he could control with physical movements, like a puppet. This meant the young warrior could test her skills on an opponent closer to her size.

Also, she was trained in techniques that let her use the sheer weight of large adversaries against themselves, forcing them to the ground and paralyzing their muscles for short periods of time, which came in handy when Thrudgelmir (the school bully) tried to do the usual to her.

"Put me down, Thrudgey, or you'll regret it."

"What you gonna do, half-breed?"

"I'm gonna deliver the package."

*PINGAS!*

With faster thinking and a quick reaction, Thianna thrust her foot into a very uncomfortable place, causing Thrudgelmir to scream in agony and drop her.

You get the point, a very nasty groin attack. To talk about the rest of her character arc and lore, here's some additional hero data with extra details:

Character file 1:

Full name: Thianna Valstos Frostborn

Height: 9"1 (2.8 meters)

Weight: 440 pounds (200 kilograms)

Age: 39 years old (in Thrones and Bones, she started out her adventure as 12 years old, and by the end, she was 16 or 17.)

Eye color: Blue, or amber (depending on the artwork)

Hair color: Dark brown

Hometown: Cloud Plateau, Ymiria

Constellation: Lupus Boreas, the Arctic Wolf

Loves: Training and sparring with Alliance army recruits, any kind of seafood, skiing, ice fishing, target practicing with her various arcane weapons, weightlifting, thrill-seeking, people telling her she's huge

Hates: Injustice of any kind, oppressive governments, people that believe in authoritarian ideologies, sanctimonious voices

Don't be under any illusion as to what she might be thinking or what her intentions are. Just remember this: Behind that innocent, naive exterior lies a finely honed instrument of war.

Character file 2:

Although she appears to be relatively friendly on the surface, Thianna is a bloodthirsty warrior, just like her father before her. The time she spent in the Underdark, and her old sensei, Ajax, made her self-confident, solipsistic, and brash, thriving on the sensation of being alive. A warrior at heart, she constantly seeks ways to grow stronger, regardless of how she obtains said power.

Thianna considers those who wish to become strong like her to be her friends and takes pleasure in testing them on the battlefield. She lusts for combat and grows excited by fighting strong opponents, even if it could mean dying in the process. She uses bows and arrows because she is the weakest with them, making her victories with them all the more exhilarating.

Because of her pride, Thianna is exceptionally reliable at accomplishing the tasks given to her, no matter how difficult they may be or if they go against her values. This, combined with her straightforward nature, makes her rather easy to manipulate.

Character file 3:

While she is easily capable of scheming, she only resorts to such approaches when necessary due to her straightforward nature. She also appears to treat her subordinates less harshly than the rest of the Allied commanders, stating that she doesn't use cruel punishment against the recruits in her care nor does she threaten any of them.

Thianna dedicates herself to those she cares about wholeheartedly. She is unquestionably loyal to the Alliance and holds her nation in high esteem, seeing herself as its chief weapon of war.

She also cares deeply for her family and friends; she sends money, gifts, and letters to her loved ones often, and comes home to the mountains where she was raised every once in a while.

Character file 4:

Though this lone wolf is not so well-received by her peers and is also sometimes at odds with their methods, her cavalier demeanor hides a responsible, watertight meticulousness.

She is a proud woman of her word. Even if the promise she makes is absurd, she will never break it.

She not only keeps her promises, but does so with finesse and surgical precision. As the Steel Legion's vanguard, Thianna always appears in the vulnerable underbellies of Eberron and the Alliance's enemies, striking as a conflict is about to erupt.

Many tales in the Stormlight Archive, the Rock of Bral's vast library of intergalactic history, say that Thianna has been on the battlefield since she was 13 years old. (Yes, more Cosmere references and shoutouts will be in the story.)

Oddly enough, at that young age she already seemed to be a skilled slaughterer with mastery of many forms of martial arts. Even then, she could snap a mortal man's neck like a toothpick with sickening ease.

But more terrifying than her skill in combat was her passion for it.

Perilous battles would only excite her, and terrifying foes would exhilarate her all the more.

Thianna's arrogance and conceit are derived from honing herself across countless battles, and from unmatched combat experience.

Character file 5:

Ice fishing has been one of Thianna's hobbies since childhood.

In those days, she was known neither by the names Frostborn nor "Winter Soldier," as the Allied troopers call her, but simply as her first name, chosen by her mother, Talaria, after one of her people's traditional naming conventions.

She and her father would cut holes open on frozen lakes before sitting beside them and tending to their fishing lines, then barbecuing the fish they caught for dinner.

This was no easy task, and would sometimes take the entire morning.

But whether it was chiseling away at the thick ice or the long waits in between catches, she was always accompanied by her father's unending tales of adventure.

These were stories of her father's adventures from when he was young, and they became the future that Thianna secretly envisioned for herself.

So she would pay close attention, putting herself into the shoes of the protagonist of those tales, immersing herself fully in them even as they waited for a fish to bite.

Even after leaving home, Thianna, later to be known as the Winter Soldier, would keep up that hobby of hers.

No longer accompanied by the stories of bygone days, fishing instead became an opportunity to train — to hone her endurance, and reflect on combat techniques.

All in all, Thianna Frostborn is one of the best-written, not to mention relatable, characters I've ever read about in fantasy and science fiction. She's got a backstory with plenty of interesting details, and the relatable part of it is where she's picked on by bullies and treated like a freak, because she's too small to be a giant and doesn't fit in with society's standards.

Lou Anders nailed it. If Lord of the Rings and Avatar: The Last Airbender were his chief sources of inspiration, I'd say he created the perfect protagonist for his books and DND campaign setting.

Next time: March of the Courageous, Part 2

Introducing the rest of Team Invicta, over the next 2 prologue chapters!

Later down the track, I'll be introducing the beginning of the main story, which I'm brainstorming while patiently waiting for the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons.

What do you think the Imperium will do to conquer the frontiers of the multiverse? Time will tell.