Looking for assistance in creating a Scandinavian-style setting for my players and ideas for what adventures and quests could take place in such a world to justify the inevitable bouts of mead consumption and Saxon murder.
Humans, light elfs, dark elfs, dwarfs, and jotun of many kinds roam these lands, but what other creatures, races, and monsters from Scandinavian folklore could exist? Has Veeky Forums ever played in a Norse setting and, if so, do they have any wisdom to spare?
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This is all you need.
>Hoi, murderhobos, want to go on a real GLORIOUS ADVENTURE? Jump on my ship and let's sail to kill those rich and lazy southerners!
literally the only plothook you'll ever need.
Or, you could have them retrieve artifacts for me. I am in need of a Book of Vile Darkness, or a Staff of Evilness! I'll give you plenty of money, and alcohol, and don't forget plenty of innocent people to murder.
Be carefull about old one eyed men walking around the land
So pirates?
>what other creatures, races, and monsters from Scandinavian folklore could exist? Has Veeky Forums ever played in a Norse setting and, if so, do they have any wisdom to spare?
Many houses and farms have a resident nisse (something vaguely like a brownie, gnome or house-elf) who must be placated with occasional offerings. Feed the nisse and it'll keep other supernaturals away. Fail, and it'll curse the everloving fuck out of your household from wherever it's hiding, requiring serious adventurer help.
Depending on version, the nisse may sometimes be a genius loci in a symbiotic relationship with humans, or the spirit of the first settler on that plot still watching the place with protective jealousy.
And: Draugr, the barrow-wights/revenants. Regular European people with unfinished business come back as ghosts. Scandinavians with unfinished business possess their own corpse, sometimes to guard the treasure they were buried with, but often just to get vengeance on the living or fuck up some particular fucker.
And since you mentioned elves, you might want the Elf King and the Wild Hunt, but if not, consider it's norse relative the Oskorei. This one is a mob of ghosts and witches and demons that ride or fly through the country during the dark of winter, particularly near Christmas time, and unwary or unwarded mortals may get dragged along. Sometimes it's said to have Odin or similar at the head.
Advice: Put in a Christian-style antagonist religion if there isn't one already, and play up the conflict with the White God as a sideplot.
The giant in English-language Jack and the Beanstalk usually growls "Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman". But the Norwegian equivalent says "I smell Christian blood". Elves hate the sound of church bells, and can't steal children who are validly baptized. Priests keep showing up trying to either evangelize or banish trolls, the trolls keep killing the priests, and now some foreign king is very unhappy that his chancellor was eaten by a monster. In addition to the regular pillaging and looting of churches for money that Vikings do, there's also some burning and razing of even poor churches on general principle to demonstrate "ha ha, the kike on a pike is a faggot and his followers are weaklings".
What the hell did you think Vikings were? Really angry fishermen who got lost?
Totally agreed.
To me the term "pirates" connotes a bit more strictly nautical adventuring, pillaging ships at sea and coastal towns. Vikings, OTOH, would sail their flat-bottomed ships a hundred miles upriver and pillage fucking Paris because fuck you, you thought you were safe in the middle of fucking France?
LESS TALKING
French knew that the Seine is a navigable river.
>Really angry drunk fishermen who got lost
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Also utburds/mylings, the ghosts of children killed by exposure so a poor family wouldn't have too many mouths to feed. They haunt the area where they were abandoned, weeping and sometimes taking the form of pale birds and other animals.
They crave a proper burial, and any travelelr who comes by will hear their crying, but as he passes he'll hear massive, pounding footsteps behind him. If he turns around to look for the source a supernatural force crushes him immediately. If he keeps walking the myling spirit, now swollen to gigantic size and weight, jumps on his back and compels him to walk to the nearest graveyard. The myling grows heavier and heavier as they go. It will vanish if the man reaches the graveyard and give the infant corpse a proper burial, or if the sun comes up, but odds are it will grow so heavy the traveler will be crushed to death first.
It should be noted that, in general, Scnadinavian ghosts are unusually physical. They're not the ethereal, intangible things we think of when we hear the word "ghost." They're big, dense, and very, very strong.
Just be a cool dude to him, and he'll get you cool shit.
You could have dragons, but they'd all be big lindworms and serpent dragons for the most part, spraying venom and toxic vapors from their jaws before constricting people to death. They'd still hoard gold, though, and have various magical properties. Their treasure tends to be cursed by their death,
Trolls are a must for any scandinavian setting.
One mission could be to locate and retrieve the stolen child of a human chieftain or king as a troll family has replaced it with a changeling. A changeling would be the troll child that the kidnapping troll(s) left as replacement for the human child.
To add further conflict to the mission you could have someone propagating for the conversion to Not!christianity as a safeguard against recieving future changelings.
You could also include some sort of war between different gods inspired by the mythological Aesir and Vanir War. Or you could have one of the hostage-gods/godesses send you on a mission to find/recruit the defeated pantheon and restore them to their might so that they can take vengeance on their victors by another war/ civil war.
>the kike on a pike
My sides!
>tfw meet One eyed old man in Norse based campaign alone in the woods
>cotton on to GMs plan and look smugly at one another
>treat him nicely, welcome him into our hall and feed him and give him mead
>get on really well with cool old guy with awesome stories
>agree to help him stop a group of Dwarves from unearthing mysterious artifact
>go on epic adventure with the guy offering advice and teaching group each in their own way
>finally snatch artifact away from Crazy Dwarf cult in abandoned mine
>Next thing we know we are being assaulted by Thor demanding we hand over the McGuffin
>Turns out Old One Eyed Man isnt Odin but Loki
>Fuck it, Guys been awesome to us and we like him and he didnt cave in Sigvards head with a hammer
>Decide to fight for Thor in the name of Loki, surprisingly buy enough time for Loki to effect us all an escape with only 1 outright fatality and the rest of us only mostly crippled
>Loki thanks us, heals us and fucks off back to do hijinks in Asgard
>Give Sigvard a proper burial and then all agree to convert to worshipping Loki as our patron
The threat of a fimbulwinter is also close to mandatory (Winter is Coming y'all!)
Much of the scandinavian mythology is focused on destiny and fighting against it even tho its impossible to stop it. Having your heroes try to stop ragnarök from coming in motion (as in trying to stop the things and conflicts that will result in the end of the world) could be a good overarching goal. This would allow you to face many kinds of opponents and even possibly travel to different worlds to convince people (both mortal and divine), with force if necessary, to change their ways and actions before it's to late. This would marry well with the many different kinds of tests and challenges that the Aesir came up against when they walked the realms of giants and dwarves.
The retrieval of some good deity from the world of the dead could also make for a nice adventure/quest. The story of the fall and effort to retrieve Balder from Hel is after all the story I remember most fondly from norse mythology.
Here's an Amon Amarth-song on the topic:
youtu.be
The song was supposed to start at 4:33.
the artifact was meaningless user, it was all about converting you obviously
if you want norse like, but not tied to actual norse myth, I recommend the Shatter Sea (also called the Half a series).
Actually I just recommend that series.
It's a good way of showing you what the norse ethos was, especially late norse, rather just name dropping. And it's really good.
>Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,
>Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.
>Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll
>Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;
>But the bond will break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,
>Scarred with old wounds, the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,
>Will limp to their stations for the last defence. Make it your hope
>To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;
>For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die
>His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong
>Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
>And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
>Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
>Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
>Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
>Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
>>Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
>>Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
Great. Now I'm imagining an old grandpa viking complaining about the shoddy iron used in the spearblade, the blacksmith who was obviously drunk when he made the blade, and "who in Nifelheim uses spruce for the shaft"... and so on, refusing to die to such a shoddy weapon.
Use the map from MYFAROG
It's a recurring theme in the viking sagas, apparently. At the Battle of Stiklestad, one of the attendants to Olav the Holy gets a spear in his chest, pulls it out, looks down, and remarks "The king's been generous to me, I have grown a good layer of fat about my heart".
Elves don't exist in Norse mythology like they are depicted in most high fantasty.
I'd even scrap "coastal towns" from pirate description. It's marginal.
Pirates fight on the sea
Vikings travel through the sea but mostly fight on land.
>Shipbuilder named Floki
Alfar are basically a race of semi-divine spirit beings living separately from humanity. They live in the heavenly realms with the gods, specifically Alfheim which is ruled by the god Freyr, a fertility figure associated with the sun, rainfall, horses, and boars. Alfar are also strongly associated with the sun, being described relative to it, as in the expression that they are “as beautiful as the sun.” They are also connected with ancestor worship and burial mounds, with the implication that sometimes dead humans can become alfar. Humans can interbreed with them (a few of the Icelandic sagas mention half-elves), so they have some physicality. At the same time, they have various supernatural powers such as passing through walls like ghosts, or the ability to heal wounds and cure illness. They are often described as being superior to humans, but only in the sense that they are more beautiful and mighty, not in terms of morality.
I've always liked to imagine the light/sun/heavens associations show up in their appearance. Have them dress in heavenly colors of blue and white. They could have entire wardrobes based around all the different shades you see in clouds. Hair or skin colors that reflect different shades of the sun at different times of day, different ethnic groups of elves, ranging from dawn to noon to dusk. Maybe light-based supernatural abilities, becoming invisible when no light is present, or maybe they emit a corona of light at all times. Given the “walking through walls” thing they may be spirit-beings, likes ghosts or angels. Just how physical are they?
Then there’s culture. If alfar are spirits that rub shoulders with the gods then perhaps their society is mostly peaceful because the gods provide for them in return for service. They might have elvish servants and soldiers in great numbers. Indentured servitude to a god or enlistment in a god's armies might be a normal way of life for alfar.
Someone with the weaponry and free time to go on a quest will probably be a young nobleman or similar. In which case going to visit older noblemen, killing them, and taking the gold they obtained in the same way in their youth would be more or less expected.
I guess the Saxons will be suitable victims in your case. In case of success be generous with gold and mead alike, that being how you get loyal followers and establish yourself as a king. Then go loot some more, loyalty has a half life, until it's time for your son to take over the looting, and other's sons to come and try to take your stuff.
Then of course there's the blood feuds that this brings about.
>but what other creatures, races, and monsters from Scandinavian folklore could exist?
Maybe these are rather later than Viking era, but I think they'll pass anyway.
Trolls and changelings have been mentioned.
The huldra, aka the skogsrå, looks like a beautiful, naked woman. Except her back is either covered in bark, or hollowed out like an old rotten tree. Either way, she tempts traveller to follow her into the woods, disappearing forever.
Näcken is somewhat similar. A beautiful young man who sits naked by the rapids of some river, playing the most amazing tune on a violin. Those entranced by the melody will walk into the river and drown.
One story has him seek out and test a wise man. Answer any question wrong and die style. When the man has answered every question correctly, the last question is "what did Oden whisper into Balder's ear at the fuenral?". Since no living soul but Oden himself knows this, the wise man failed, and was slain.
One old account of a feud have a few men come to the farm of another in order to brutally murder him. One goes up to the farm to see if he's there, and then returns to the rest, who ask if the man was home, to which he replies:
"I don't know. But his spear-axe was home, that much I'm certain of."
And then he falls over dead.
I've been writing a sort of Norse setting, let me know what you think:
The 'Norse' in this setting are descendants of Giants, spawned from their armpits as they slept in their barrows, they consider all races beneath them, and don't consider other humans the same as them.
The Anglo-Saxon equivalent are a caste based society in which the warrior caste live separated, similar to the Spartans.
The Celtic culture used to be the slaves of the goblin empire, their favorite pastime now is hunting down wild goblins from atop their chariot, half of them are waiting for their cultures 'King Arthur' to come back, half think he already has in the form of a little boy.
Something like a caricature of Roman decadence exists as a Goblin empire, who worshiped a golden goblin, until they killed him and replaced him with a senate, they used to control the island the setting takes place in.
Please tell me the Scots analogue are Bugbears or Trolls of some sort.
Sounds like the Viking equivalents might worship the major giants then instead of the more usual Norse pantheon. Though combined with how human giants and gods alike could be to the Vikings, I guess at this point whether they're the offspring of giants or gods depends on if you ask them or anyone else.
Pretty sure Jotunar were thought to eat humans. There was a reason Thor defended Midgard against them.
The idea is, as far as I've thought it through, the vikings worship and order their society tribally according to which giant they spawned from.
God, giant, and ancestor and very much over-lapping concepts to them.
That could be a cool idea. Bugbear celts with iron swords and hulk hogan facial hair.
>bugbears
>Norse
Imagine this ugly fucker charging you wielding a crude iron claymore and in raggedy tartan, bellowing at you in barely understandable Gaeblic while another played a haunting blaring melody on what used to be some poor sods stomach and hollowed out bones.
image not included...
It was funny the first 3 posts my dude
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Just play Myfarog
Sounds like it'd fit quite nicely, yes.
Also, one thing that did come to mind, is that with Tolkien being quite the norse/anglo-saxon fanboy, for all the talk of Tolienedsqeu fantasy, I would claim that what he wrote was in many ways Viking fantasy, and quite far from the "standard" fantasy of today, as that may have picked up a few superficial aspects of his work, but otherwise have run off in a very different direction.