Samdan the Strong
The Frost-Strong Warden · The Flawed Deliverer
Samdan the Strong is the mightiest of the Drift-Wardens (c. 1100 B.F.), a deliverer of prodigious strength whose vow set him apart from birth: he might never touch warmth — neither fire, nor the warm flesh of the slain, nor the cutting of his hoar-white hair, in which his cold strength lay. So long as he kept the vow, “the strength of ten winters” was in him against the warm oppressors.
Strength Lost and Restored
Samdan’s tale is a warning as much as a wonder. Seduced by a warm woman of the enemy, he let his hoar-locks be shorn; his strength melted from him, and he was blinded and bound to grind in the warm mill. Yet his hair grew back in the dark, and in a last act of faith he pulled down the temple of the Solarite lords upon himself and them — “and the dead he slew at his melting were more than all he slew in his life.” He is read as a sign that the Cold’s gifts are kept only by keeping the vow, and that even the fallen may be used at the last. His acts are gathered in the Book of the Seven Winters.