She hails from a family of vintners on the outskirts of Dale. Her father owned a vineyard that produced some of the finest wine in the region. Her mother spent her time making toys or shaping wood carvings. She also ran a brewery in Dale.
Ethelthred often helped her mother or father, but she found her calling in Mirkwood Forest. She fashioned herself a yew bow and spent the evenings honing her skill when the family did not need her.
As winter passed, the family prepared to replant the vines and heat the brewery; but darkness descended on their home. Goblins from Dol-Guldur ransacked their estate and burned the vineyard to ashes. Ethelthred fell asleep in the shadow of a glade near her family estate but woke with fright as capering Goblins hooted and howled through the trees.
Ethelthred hid for a time until her courage returned. Then she hurried back to her house, but the tragedy brought her low; her father and mother swayed limply from nooses on an apple tree.
Ethelthred wailed bitterly as the sun sank over the trees behind her. When she summoned enough strength, Ethelthred gathered herself and prepared to run into Mirkwood. Then light from a long wooden pipe cast over a hard, grim face. The stranger had heard her parents the previous night; however, the goblins numbered too many to intervene. If not for him, Ethelthred would not have left the glade alive. Though he sympathized with Ethelthred, the stranger encouraged her to seek a different path.
“Come to Eriador with me,” he encouraged her, “and aid the people of Bree against the wicked schemes of Angmar.”
Ethelthred resisted his overture at first, but after a time, she nodded and followed him; her parents rest beneath the tree where they hung, and she formally closed the brewery and gave the rights to the land to one of her distant relations.
Now she delves into Breeland’s dense forests, racing over lush grasslands to pursue the greater evil: the Witch-king, the source of the Goblins, the root of her doom. Hear the odyssey of Ethelthred, fledgling of Dale, Huntress of the Greenwood, friend of Elves.