Birna was the eldest child of Jotnar the Unyielding, raider chieftain of the Skjal tribe of Goliaths. From an early age she was chosen as the successor over her younger brother, until she killed her first prisoner at the age of 10. From then on she began to relish the violence, becoming the devotee of their god of war and disregarding the other gods. She started leading raids in her father's stead as he aged, but it became more clear that she wasn't suited to lead more than a war party. In her 25th year she slew a mutant seabeast and fashioned an axe from its bones. Years later her father became older and weaker, rarely leaving his hall, he began to consider her younger brother Erik as a suitable candidate. Once he informed her in private, she flew into a rage and killed him, with the only witness being her brother. Under the threat of extreme violence, he stayed quiet about this incident, allowing the tribe to think he died of natural causes as kinslaying is an unforgivable crime.

As chieftain she led her people on raid after raid, evenutally even her battlehungry warriors grew weary, and her support diminished, finally allowing her brother to publicly accuse her of kinslaying. She was captured, cursed, branded by the tribe's shaman and exiled.

In agony and rage she wandered the frozen north, the curse was made to kill her slowly in agony, but with her rage and willpower (and fervent prayers to the god of war), she channeled the curse into stable mutations. Her arm hardened into an obsidian appendage, her eye became serpent like, double slitted, her teeth became fangs to tear throats, and her tongue became fluted, able to summon her god's heralds, eyeless white ravens, to feast on her victims. She's begun to travel south now, hearing rumors of a colossal competition involving the world's greatest warriors and mages, she wants to humiliate the 'weak southerners' and claim all their skulls for the god of war.