Skoldir's Background
Skoldir, son of Amleth, seemed fated for a quiet life in his father's sleepy holdings in the tradition-bound nation of Royalmark. Unfortunately, shortly after he reached adulthood, a great army marched forth from the Withered Lands. Skoldir never learned what the army's goal was, but apparently his father's lands lay in their path. The undead descended without warning and slaughtered without mercy.
Skoldir was charged by his father with seeing to it that his mother and younger siblings were taken to safety, with the understanding that Skoldir would return to fight once his task was accomplished. By the time Skoldir made it back, however, the fighting was over. His father's lands were almost entirely scoured and there were almost no survivors. Tragically, his father was amongst those slain.
Only one village remained, that of Hunanglir. Skoldir attempted to rally support, particularly focusing on a band of paladins of Scaetha he encountered in a nearby town. But the paladins, with regret, told him that his father's lands had been written off as lost and they had been ordered to make a stand elsewhere.
With the few men he had under his command, Skoldir journeyed to Hunanglir and prepared to make a stand of his own. Fortunately, the undead forces, facing stiff resistance elsewhere, spared only a relatively small group to attack Hunanglir. Skoldir and his men prevailed and he returned to the town where he had hidden his family, only to find that, in his absence, the undead had attacked there as well. There were no survivors.
Enraged, Skoldir went looking for more undead to slay, only to learn that the army had been defeated and the deathless ones had withdrawn back to the Withered Lands. (Whether they had accomplished whatever they had set out to do by attacking Royalmark remains unknown.) Skoldir then encountered the same paladins of Scaetha he had met earlier and confronted them, blaming them for his family's death. They were sorrowful, but stood by their decision. Skoldir tried to provoke them into fighting and, when that failed, he desecrated a shrine to Scaetha and publicly cursed the goddess and all her clergy, vowing never to accept help from one of their kind again (this is the source of his God Cursed Hindrance).
Never the family's seat of power, Hunanglir was at least a stable and self-sufficient settlement, having small but fertile wheat fields, an apiary, meadery, and paper mill. Its hasty defenses (built just before the undead attacked) were bolstered beyond what the town's strategic importance called for, the construction being funded by selling off the barren and blood-soaked lands surrounding Hunanglir, where the undead had run rampant. Now, well-defended in his small but stable holdings, Skoldir spent some time brooding.
It was only another year or so before Skoldir happened to learn from a traveling skald that more information about the undead force that had killed his family and destroyed his lands had been learned. According to the skald, the leader of the undead force was known to be a priestess of Hela called Nagoll the Deathless who was rumored to reside within the Withered Lands.
Gathering his few huscarls and militiamen, Skoldir, against absolutely everyone's advice, set off into the Withered Lands, seeking Nagoll's tower, an ivory edifice called Snaehvitr, where she was said to reside with her three lieutenants and - presumably - an army of zombies, skeletons, and other horrible undead creatures.
With those few of his men who survived the journey, Skoldir succeeded in finding Snaehvitr. Heedless of the danger, he stood before the tower and called Nagoll out. The priestess, being both practical and unimpressed by his bravery, declined his challenge and instead met his forces with her own.
Even so, Skoldir managed to find her on the battlefield and lopped off her hand before he was dragged away by his own men, who, recognizing their impending utter defeat, chose to get their lord to safety rather than fight and die to no purpose. Nagoll's forces pursued them all the way back to the border of Royalmark. (And, unsurprisingly, she remains a little irritated about the whole "knocking on my door and cutting off my hand" thing, which is why she is his Enemy. She is only Minor because she lacks the resources to constantly send people after him, particularly since her ability to keep tabs on the goings-on outside the Withered Lands is limited.)
Returning home, Skoldir understood that, in order to exact his revenge, he would need more than just a dozen huscarls and a few dozen peasants. He left Hunanglir in the hands of his trusted steward, Alfdan, a longtime family servant (who, for his part, hopes that Skoldir comes to his senses before throwing his life away in the Withered Lands).
Skoldir then set out into the world, seeking wealth and glory in the hopes of attracting to his side valorous and stout-hearted men in numbers sufficient to march back into the Withered Lands and put to rest every creature within its borders.
TL;DR: Undead killed everybody, Skoldir blamed Scaetha, went for revenge, cut off a b%&!+'s hand, got beat anyway, goes out to attract followers.
