The most common feedback we get about Hrafn is that people expect to hate him and end up finding him compelling instead. This was intentional, and it was the hardest thing to get right.

Most fantasy villains want power. Hrafn has power. He united the warlord clans of Xevis at seventeen — by thirty, he commanded the largest army the north had ever assembled. Power was not his problem.

What Hrafn wants is something he cannot name precisely, because he found the first piece of it by accident eight years ago in the permafrost of northern Xevis. A fragment. A remnant of something. He has been looking for the rest ever since.

The invasion of Resin was not conquest for its own sake. Hrafn’s intelligence — fed by Bartholomew for three years — told him that whatever he found in Xevis had a counterpart beneath Taryn’s Hold. The march was an excavation project with an army attached.

He found what he was looking for. The Treaty of Ash stopped the army. It did not stop him.

We are not going to tell you what he found. Season 2 opens with Hrafn back in Xevis, in the ice city of Varn, with whatever he retrieved from beneath Taryn’s Hold. Trino’s arrival in Barow’s camp is directly connected to it. That is all we will say.

Character Deep Dive

Hrafn

Season 2