Originally Posted by
Sutekh
I was a huge fan of the Young Avengers conceit of introducing some new young heroes who *looked,* on the surface, like legacies of certain characters, but were in fact legacies of completely different characters. (Asgardian and Hulkling, actually legacies of the Scarlet Witch and Captain Mar-Vell!)
So, I created Longbow. A tall super-strong archer with the ability to shoot up to 9' tall and be about 3-4x stronger and tougher in that form. Her outfit has a Kirby-esque design esthetic that wouldn't look out of place on a Hawkeye legacy (and the size-changing even hints at his time as Goliath!).
But she's a Thor legacy. Her mother was the half-giant/half-Vanir Skadi, goddess of archery, winter, hunting and, uh, skiing? Her mom, ages and ages ago, before Thor had even earned the right to carry Mjolnir and still ran around with a sword and his three drinking buddies, getting into shenanigans, hooked up with Skadi when she was in Asgard selling the goods (furs, drake hides, etc.) she had gained hunting on the frontiers. Being young Thor, he was off on a new adventure the next day, and Skadi was not thrilled to have been a pump and dump.
A thousand or more years later, time flows differently in Asgard, her hunting buddy Uller came back from Asgard with a *hilarious* tale about how that punk Thor had so pissed off his dad with his irresponsible frat-boy ways that he'd been stripped of Mjolnir, banished to Earth and, get this, *turned into a mortal!* A crippled mortal! A *healer!* Forced to tend other mortals with hurts like a shepherd tending his flock! They laughed and laughed.
Skadi had to see this humiliation for herself. Not that she had been holding a grudge, for like centuries, not at all... So she called on an old arrangement with Heimdall, who would allow the hunt-gods who manned Asgard's frontiers to travel the rainbow bridge to other realms, such as Midgard, in pursuit of some drake or frost wolf or giant who had strayed from their places, and traveled to Earth to see this for herself, calling upon the old magics when she arrived to spin herself a glamer as a mortal woman. She faked a skiing injury, and arranged a meeting with this 'Dr. Donald Blake,' who had no idea that an angry ex of Thor's was in his exam room, faking a sprain. In the journey of a thousand seemingly reasonable steps, which leads us to totally unexpected places, she decided to 'get him back' by seducing this fragile mortal frame Thor was trapped within, and laughed as she returned to Asgard.
The joke was less funny when she turned out to be pregnant. And the hits kept coming, as the healers determined that her child was fragile, a weak half-human, barely able to thrive in her half-giant / half-god frame. She gave birth to a tiny pale daughter, barely any hint of her own blue pallor (from her frost giant heritage), and she knew right away that the child was too weak to survive the rigors of the Asgardian hinterlands, where Skadi lived and hunted, and after Heimdall forbade her to return to Earth full-time to raise her child, as she had duties on the borderlands, left her child with a pair of ex-biker Asatru, living on a farm in Minnesota. A visit from one of their *gods,* and a gift of mild winters over their farm, Asgardian leathers, a gold coin and an apple of Idunn to split between them each year, heartily convinced the Stevensons to raise Saga, the daughter of Skadi, as their own.
Every winter, Skadi would come to Earth to visit, and when Saga was old enough, would take her on hunting trips, first to places on Earth, but later to other realms entirely. Now clad in a mixture of frost wolf pelt cape and ice drake scale tunic ('mom' won't let her wear anything she hasn't killed herself), and with a bow crafted from the antlers of an Asgardian stag, Saga can call upon her giantish heritage to slightly increase her size from it's already impressive six feet, and her already superhuman strength and durability, so much that she can shoot an Uru-tipped arrow with enough force to penetrate a battleship's hull when grown! Using 'the old magics,' she can also whip up a whirl of snow that obscures her for a second and summons her armor, knives and longbow, with hip-quiver filled with uru-tipped arrows. A reversal of that charm, and she's back to jeans, boots and flannels, no hint of the giant blue demigoddess!
And Saga Skadisdottir (Stevenson, on Earth) still has no idea that the 'weak' father that mom never talks about was the mortal identity of Thor!
(Cause there aren't enough super-powered archers out there! And it tickles my funny bone to have a Thor legacy who inherits nothing from Thor, but pale skin and blonde hair!)