Olaf

Olaf wears his blond hair at a middling length and matches it with a goatee, his eyes a cool grey. His dress runs to a black cape thrown over a red outfit, cinched with a black belt above grey trousers and brown boots.

Self-interest rules him. Olaf lives for women, drink, and the thrill of the fight, and he extends acknowledgment only to the children born of his lawful wives. Lydia, once his favored slave in her youth, is cast off like a stray animal the moment illness takes her beauty. He notices Askeladd solely for the boy's talent with a blade and never grasps how thoroughly his son had come to loathe him.

While raiding the coast of Wales, the Danish lord Olaf seized Lydia and kept her as a concubine. His fondness for her faded as she sickened, and she and their son Askeladd were left to scrape by in wretched conditions. On one return from battle Lydia, mistaking him for the figure of Artorius, blocked his path, and Olaf raised his sword to drive her off. A young Askeladd snatched up a blade of his own and parried the strike before any harm could land. Struck by such untrained skill, Olaf brought the boy into his hall and raised him beside his legitimate sons. That choice proved fatal: one day, as Olaf lay naked beside a woman, Askeladd slipped into his chambers and killed him.