The Valkyrie are winged warrior women. Gifted with flight and the divine blessing of Thor, the Valkyrie watch over the realm from high above its surface, preferring to keep to themselves whenever they can.
Beautiful and Ferocious
With their blessed features and battle-hardened bodies, the Valkyrie appear almost otherworldly in their beauty. A strong and proud human can be brought low by just by their visage, and then call it a blessing that they were able to behold to sight of them at all. They are slightly shorter than humans, ranging from 5 feet tall to a maximum of 6 feet. Their powerful wings rely on their strength to lift the Valkyrie, as appose to having lighter, frailer bodies, and can reach a wingspan of 14 feet. They typically weigh between 110 to 145 pounds.
Valkyries’ coloration encompasses the normal human range, although on very rare occasions they can be born with metallic coloured hair and eyes.
Heroes of the Realm
While the other races of the Hammerlands think solely about the challenges that face them and their people, the righteous Valkyrie prioritise the threats to the realm above all else. While they make sure to look after themselves, they will charge forth to tackle the threats that no one else is equipped to or willing to handle.
It is the Valkyrie that have been repelling incursions from the Frostwoods and Machi Vasilikós, while the Humans seem wholly focused on Nidhogg.
Reborn, Not Born
The Valkyrie are a purely female race. Due to this, they do not reproduce biologically (Although they have the potential). Instead, they have been gifted by Thor, the Well of Recollection. When a Valkyrie dies within the Hammerlands, her soul is pulled to Well, where it is reformed into a fresh being. Annually, on Thorsday, the Well shines with a bright light and the contained souls spring free in the bodies of newborn baby Valkyrie. It is tradition to name the children after the fallen warriors whose souls they now share.
Valkyrie Names
Valkyrie children are given the names of the fallen Valkyrie warriors with whom they share a soul. You may use one of the following names or create your own name and invent a fallen warrior to be named after:
| Brynhildr | Sigrdrifa |
| Sváva | Mist |
| Hildeberg | Grimhildr |
| Róta |
Valkyrie Traits
Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 2 and your Strength score increases by 1.
Age. Valkyrie mature at the age of 30 and live until the age of 400.
Alignment. Most Valkyrie are Good aligned, believing that all creatures deserve the right to choose their own path. They follow the teachings of Thor closely.
Size. Valkyrie stand between 5 and 6 foot tall. Your size is medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Old Nordic.
Slayers. You gain proficiency in light and medium armour, hand axes, battle axes and spears.
Thors Blessing. As a bonus action, you can imbue a melee weapon you are wielding with lightning. The next successful attack you make with that weapon deals an additional 1d8 lightning damage. You can use this ability an amount of times equal to your wisdom modifier. This resets on a long rest.
Flight. You have a flying speed of 40 feet. To use this speed, you can’t be wearing heavy armour.
Aerial Superiority. When you are flying and move out of the attack range of a creature that is also flying, they cannot make an opportunity attack against you.
Designing the Valkyrie Race
I had a few clear goals in mind when designing the Valkyrie race. They needed to be adept fliers that could be either powerful mages or fierce melee warriors. They really had to be open to as many class options as possible, although I’ll admit their features do lend nicely to becoming a melee combatant (regardless of class).
When deciding on the Ability Score Increases, I decided to make Wisdom their primary stat. This is because my personal world lore and mythology both position them as wise guardian warriors so I wanted them to be thoughtful and wise above all else. I then gave them a small boost to strength so that even non-strength-based classes could make use of their later, more exciting features.
The age, size, speed, language, and alignment were chosen based on lore and balancing reasons so nothing too interesting to say about them!
The Slayers feature is the first passive feature of this race. I added it as I felt it was needed to encourage the fantasy of being a badass, Norse warrior of legend. It will allow classes that typically aren’t able to hold their own in melee combat to have the option of stepping up when needed and provide a welcome bit of defence in the form of some stronger armour.
Thors Blessing is the first ‘active’ feature of the Valkyrie. It allows them to imbue their weapons with the power of storms, dealing a burst of Lightning damage. This is tied to the character’s wisdom modifier for limiting uses. I chose this since the race gets a boost to wisdom so it’ll hopefully be a substantial amount of uses.
The second passive, and really the key feature of this race, is the Flight feature. It was important that there wasn’t a limiter on their flight however something had to be done for balance reasons. Speaking as a DM, the idea of a flighting martial class with a huge AC sounds… very problematic. So I really had no choice but to force the player to choose between heavy armour or flight.
Finally, the Aerial Superiority allows the Valkyrie to dominate the skies. This feature was inspired by the Flyby ability some 5e creatures get, just slightly modified for balance and flavour reasons. Valkyrie will not be the only race that gets wings, but due to being trained in aerial combat from an early age, I did want them to be some of the strongest aerial fighters..
I hope you enjoyed reading about the Valkyrie race and consider adapting them to suit your own games! I love the mythology around them and knew early on that I wanted to include them in Veneon. If you want to see the creative process live you can join me and the community on Twitch or Discord.
Thank you for reading and may your next session be filled with glory!
Veneon Reforged 
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