"Five days I tracked it, the kill is mine. Be thankful you're no Aesling, or Orgrim would have let the Ymir finish you first."
The Ymir, also called Jeti, depending on the dialect of the Norscan tribe, are great, white-furred behemoths who feature often in the tales of the frigid northern land of Norsca. The Dwarfs substantiate these myths with their own accounts of encounters with titanic, white-furred, humanoid beasts.[1a][2a]
The Ymir are believed to be an offshoot subrace of the more common mutants known as Beastmen. Savage and bestial, they are cunning hunters who prey exclusively on Humans. Unlike Beastmen, Ymir are generally solitary creatures, only meeting with another to produce a few whelps. They have no formal language, communicating only in guttural growls and grunts.[1b]
An Ymir stands just over seven feet tall and weighs over 300 pounds. They possess ape-like heads, and their entire bodies are covered in thick, shaggy, white hair that gains a yellowish hue towards the lower body. They have an unpleasant smell, stinking of sour milk and rotten flesh. Most Ymir have frozen chunks of blood and flesh caught in their fur, which they pry off to eat when hunting is scarce.[1b][3a]
For the Norscans, these monsters fulfill an important role in the passage all men must undertake if they hope to be recognised as warriors in their tribe. These young hopefuls brave the swirling snow and freezing winds to track down and face these beasts in combat. If they return with its head, they are accorded a special place in their tribe -- those who don't, generally don't return at all. Some Norscans have grown accustomed to consuming Ymir meat, as the claws of the northern winters are deadlier than those of the creature.[1a][3b]
Any man in the north comes to know Ymir well from the sagas told during the long winter nights. They are believed to be cowardly creatures with little taste for battle. If a Norscan could intimidate the Ymir with a show of force, it might abandon the fight, but if cornered, they defend themselves with their mighty claws.[3a][3b]
The Ymir share a lot of characteristics with the Yhetee, a race of large, bipedal ice-beasts that inhabits the highest slopes of many mountain ranges.
Trivia[]
In real-world Norse mythology, Ymir was the name of the progenitor of all jötnar, the Norse giants. To survive, he would drink the milk of the primeval cow Auðumbla after she licked him clear of the primordial ice that had encased all of creation. It was Ymir's corpse that gave birth to the mortal world of Midgard after he was slain by the Aesir gods Odin, Vili and Vé.
The Ymir's variant name, "Jeti," is a distortion of "Yeti," which refers to an ape-like creature in Himalayan folklore.