Ulric

Ulric is the god of war, winter and wolves in the Old World Pantheon, one of the older gods of the Human tribesmen that created the Empire of Man. Once the foremost god of the Men of the Old World, looked to by its people in times of war and seen as the patron deity of the early Empire, his influence in the southern regions of the Empire has been fading, mostly overshadowed and overtaken by the Sigmarite faith in political presence and further struggling even for control over the portfolio of war with the foreign Myrmidian cult. Despite this decline in worship, Ulric retains a stronghold in the northern lands of the Empire, particularly Middenland, and his faithful remain in a position of undeniable political power in the present-day Empire. In some of the north he is venerated above even Sigmar by peasants and nobles alike, his devout sure that there is only one true divine warrior amongst the heavens.

Having been worshipped since the earliest days of Human occupation of the lands of the northern and central Old World that became the Empire, there are many local names for Ulric that honour a particular aspect of his nature. Some minor, regional deities are aspects of an official Imperial deity like Ulric, and thus tolerated by the official Imperial cults. For instance, Ulric "Blood-hand", the personification of berserk fury, is popular with footmen and templars who lose themselves in rage on the battlefield and often become a danger to their friends as much as their foes. The domain of Ulric "Snow King", by contrast, is winter, and his followers, scattered throughout the colder regions of Nordland, Ostland, Kislev and southern Norsca, are ascetics more focused on the struggle to survive the rigours of winter than battle.

There existed a bloodier interpretation of Ulric among the Norscans called Olric, a name also often used among the poorest citizens of the northern Imperial province of Nordland. A purely Norscan sect venerated Ulric as a hunter of bears, which often raid Norscan farmsteads, known as Ursash. There was also potentially an early aspect of Ulric in the form of the predator god Lupos the Wolf, which was undergoing a resurgence in Hochland and possibly tied Ulric back to the ancient nature deity Ishernos.

Ulric is sometimes called "Lord Ulric", "Ulric the Wolf", "Great Wolf", the "White Wolf", the "Wolf God of Winter", the "Winter God", "Lord of Winter", "God of Battle", and "God of War". In the days of Sigmar, Ulric was known to be personified as the "Wild Wolf". As Lupos, he is known as the "Lord of Predators" or "God of Predators" rather than god of winter or more specifically the god of wolves. According to Ulrican lore, he was the "King of the Gods", although other cults dispute this.

While it is true that the highly organised Cult of Ulric is limited to Middenland, specifically its capital city of Middenheim, let there be no mistake: Ulric is a powerful and important god, prayed to by every man or woman who has to do battle, and in the Old World, sooner or later, that is everyone. Ulric the mighty, Ulric the proud, Ulric the wolf as white as snow, is the god of battle and destruction and the patron of soldiers and wolves, and his followers fight with their ferocity.

Southern folk often mock the devotees of the White Wolf for their bestial nature, but Ulricans pay little heed to such sentiments. Indeed, Ulric is a harsh god, but so too is the mortal world a harsh one, and when the winters come and icy storms grip the land, it is the wolves who survive while the lambs perish. It is little wonder then, that such a place as Middenland has a deity as harsh as Ulric for its patron. The Wolf God is as unforgiving as the country he watches over, demanding of his followers the strength they need to survive there, such is the simple reason behind their veneration.

Ulric is also the divine spirit of winter, and is known to be personified as the savagery of the piercing winter's chill. By the autumn equinox celebration of "Less Growth," his brother Taal, the god of nature, animals and the wilds and Taal's wife Rhya, the goddess of agriculture, love, fertility and nature, are said to hand their power over the land to him. A portion of the harvest and some form of animal were quietly sacrificed to Ulric to keep his wolves at bay in the bitterness of winter. Around this time frost begins to creep over the land, and in ancient Teutogen folklore, Skoll, the legendary wolf companion of Ulric himself, soon chases away the sun to allow the onset of winter.

By the winter equinox, also called "World Still," Ulric is at his height in the Old World, and hungry wolves begin searching for easy meals of livestock and the occasional Human victim. Bonfires are lit in hopes of guiding Taal and Rhya back into the world, and in the farthest reaches of the Empire, the pelts of wolves are raised on sticks outside village perimeters, both as a sign of respect for Ulric and a warning for his "children" to stay far away. During Sigmar's time the people waited for Ulric to return to his frozen realm in the heavens, and for Taal to bring balance to the world in the spring. By the spring equinox or "Start Growth," Ulric's reign of ice and snow ends[1e][9c] and he returns the world to Rhya.

Yet, some Ulrican myths do not portray all this as a smooth or certain process. There exist invocations to Rhya to intercede with Ulric to force him to relinquish the land when spring comes,[16a] and it is said that if the Sacred Flame of Ulric in Ulric's Middenheim temple were to ever go out, then the next winter would last a whole year or possibly even forever. Ragnarites, followers of Ulric in his aspect as the "Snow King," believe that winter is simply a training ground for Evernacht, an eternal winter that will choke the life from Ulric's greatest enemies, the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. Some extremists of the order believe it is their duty to prepare the mortal world for this imminent cleansing, and so sacrifice food raided from silos across the north in Ulric's name, a practice few appreciate.