Medieval West: campaign setting spitballing

Alternative version: Pagan Vikings flee Europe as Scandinavia become more and more Christian. Over time, they go all CROATOAN native because there just aren't enough Vikings to keep their culture going.

500 years later, the Europeans begin the colonization of the Americans and they're all getting their heads smashed in by Native American Huskarls going all guerilla warfare.

Sounds pretty sweet desu

Look up Inland Empire on 1d4chan.

A norse/native american mythology hybrid would be interesting. Just like a lot of north american folklore is a mix of christianity and native mythology.

So let's say that enough viking colonists make it to america to form a substantial population. What king of hybrid mythology might emerge from that.

Hunting grounds/ valhalla hybrid?
Wendigo/ frost giant?
Moose riding valkyries!

bump

Coyote and Loki buddying it up.

Add some Deadlands to that mix and you're good to go.

BEAR THOR

WITH ALL THE STRENGTH OF THOR AND THE CUNNING OF BEAR

WHAT OTHER GOD DARE YE WORSHIP.

One of the biggest clashes of mythology would be Thunder and lightning.

See, in Norse Mythology, Thunder and Lightning are Thor's domain. It strikes the wicked and the evil. Get struck by lightning? You were probably an evil bastard or just unlucky.

In Native Myth, the Thunderbird is 100% grade A cunt and is avoided at all costs.

Now, Thor's Worship was so fucking strong because his image is literally the heroic Defender of Mankind, like some kind of ancient age Superman.

Maybe instead of combining the two, they'd end up being enemies?

The plague traveled on flea-ridden rats, the rats commonly climbed aboard ships in port.

>the plague/small pox causes corpses to rise and attack the living
this sounds like a game for GURPS

MOOSE THOR

Aztecs literally used sticks with sharps stones lad, they would literally never get through full plate

And how would those rats proliferate in a village where there's only tents and no sewers? The rats would have nowhere to hide and would get eaten by other animals before they would get the chance to infect people.

Indeed. But catching up with an enemy who have metal weapons and armor would be way easier than catching up with firearms.
Also fighting in a jungle with full plate would be impossible. It would be way easier to fight/survive with light armor and then the only advantage Europeans would get would be the superior weapons that would be easily looted by the natives.

I think Europeans would have a hard time conquering South America like that.

Then you have fleas infesting the blankets, the tents, and the other animals. Similar issues.

But much easier to control when the population is small and scattered and people actually bathe themselves.

Sounds great. Make it happen.

Don't forget that with there being less Europeans at the time to begin with they probably couldn't have afforded to send so many, necessitating more peaceful interaction and gradual integration and mingling.

>Vikings
>Full Plate

Nigga what

>what is macuahuitl

Well, that was pretty much Viking "Conquest" to begin with. Half of their exploits are being invited over to rule people.

I mean fuck, before Viking-sperg crashes into the thread, you can probably credit the unification of Russia entirely on the Vikings.

Capable of decapitating a horse but doing fuck-all against steel, that's what.

The Incas developed halberds, but when? They would have a pretty decent chance at defending their hilly territories given that their equipment is the closest to something comparable with euro-gear.

Incas weren't really even a thing back when OP's scenario would set this to.

>Vikings directly influencing local cultures in their infancy
>An Inca/Viking hybrid empire spanning the whole mountains and going well outside raiding shit

Bump

>Sacrificing christian missionaries to Odin or Tir on your longhouse-topped stepped pyramid.

>Smoke weird shit and listen to the skalds telling the tale about how Loki stole the cloak of feathers from the great winged serpent.

>Terrorize the coasts in garishly colourful longboats with crazy animal totem heads.

>Bearded half brown people with leopard pyjamas and swords.

Crusader kings 2 after the end

Give me a fortress in the top of a tepui and i'm set

>Eventually Muslims and Asians get word of this
>300 years later crusaders duke it out with samurai in Anasazi ruins, both not knowing that the Aztec caliphate is closing on their position

You don't need a fortress to fight naked dudes with sticks.

No, but it's going to help a lot against the vikings or gauls.

I remember a novel where celts were the ones discovering the americas 500 years earlier because the roman empire never happened.

Lithuania was also a world power.

>Tarascans alrwady had metal weapons
>Assuming natives wouldn't adopt European weapons and tactics like they did with gunpowder and cavalry irl

tell that at my curare-tipped spears faggot

Why were they still completely irrelevant when they had metal weapons in an area where everyone was fighting each other with sticks and stones?
Oh that's right, metal weapons=/=steel weapons. Primitive metallurgy is as good as a stick with inlaid stones against European steel.
The bulk of their army would still be dudes hearing thongs and fighting with sticks and bows. They would loot steel weapons and capture horses but they wouldn't be able to make and sustain an army with technology they don't have and animals they don't know how to care for.

>Samefag
>Medieval Germans start colonizing mesoamerica
>Run into huastecs
>Huastecs are alchohlics who also liked shoving hallucinagenic cactuses up their butts and charging at Aztec naked
>Germans and huastecs become buddies
>Suddenly a bunch of colonists get recalled to fight in some HRE war
>Naked landsketchs win war while screaming something about a a snake with ten heads.
>Conquer Europe

Who's to say they couldn't learn that stuff once the vikings and whatever have showed them it's possible and once they've seen how much more effective chainmail and steel axes are? You could even have some Europeans teach them.

Humans adapt to circumstances.

GURPS? GURPS

Of course they would adapt. I'm saying they wouldn't. It would take a good while because they would have to absorb radical cultural changes but it would happen.
Against medieval Europe the natives would've stood their ground and would've had time to adapt and we would have a completely different South America than the shithole that was kick-started by mass extermination and subsequent colonial exploration that we have today.
Their best weapons against medieval Europe would be the terrain, though.

i would love to see native americans doing scale armor with obsidian

Isn't obsidian practically glass? I don't think it'd be good material to strap yourself in.

that was i aimed for scale armor. full obsidian plate is unfeasible, obsidian lorica segmentata is too prone to shatter, but small scales of molten glass? i think they could be good armor

Even if it's not good it will at least look pretty neato

So long as it looks feasible I don't see why not.

That's all the local awesome scenery needs: some castles.

Also obscenely heavy

Could low-medieval tech Europe really colonize the Americas?
I'd figure we would more likely set up trade outposts in NA. Pre-colombian civilizations would be hard to beat on their own ground, with our not-so-overwhelming tech-advantage.
What were the proeminent empires in Mexico before the Aztec arrived?

It's just stupid though.
Obsidian is sharp and weak as fuck.
It makes GREAT swords, arrows, polearms etc, but it would shatter and cut you in 23 different places everytime you'd take a hit with this type of armor.

>full plate
>Vikings
>full plate
>middle ages

U wot

I mean, in some native myth? There were an enormous number of different religions/religious structures in North America.

It'd be basically like comparing Thor and Ukko. And America is much bigger than Scandinavia.

In some places, Thor the Thunderbird would continue to be Superman. In other places, he'd be a dick.

Although maybe Loki would be there to balance this out?

>>Crusaders instead of cowboys
>>Castles instead of saloons
>>Jousting duels instead of showdowns at high noon
>>Some asshole is selling armor and lances to the indians
>>Knights having to fight wendigos and deal with trickster coyotes instead of goddamn dragons all the time

It seems like there's more then just Vikings.

One of the reasons the Vikings left was that once they had made an enemy of the Native Americans the guerrilla warfare they employed couldn't be effectively countered. Armour means jack shit if they can attack when you aren't wearing it them slip back into the forest. They were less advanced, but that doesn't mean they were stupid when it came to fighting.

A fort would be challenging to complete with the constant attacks, but would be invaluable when actually built.

Then I guess that would be where this world's history turned to alternate universe: vikings actually managed to build a fort.

How did that happen?

Berserker Building strats.

this could be super interesting, natives wouldnt be completly shrekt by diseases and could stand a fighting chance against europeans without gunpowder. European ships would dominate the coasts but the inland would be extremely dangerous to venture into. The supply lines would also be hard to maintain

I've always loved the idea of BCs fjord-ish coast being home to longship rowing Norse chiefdoms in uneasy alliances with the Pacific West Coast Natives

In an afternoon-worldbuild an friend and I figured out a reason for why this might be the case, but I can only remember that the whole premise was full of high-fantasy ridiculousness and not entirely suited to the alt-history realism itt
>> City state Vancouver built on top of a hell mouth (this was shortly after the hockey riot lol)
>>orc hipster hordes ruining everything
>>the wild hippies of the mountains bringing a nature-magic apocalypse
>>paladin orders based on sports teams that went on "crusade" to fight against other orders around the country

To be honest that doesn't sound terrible.

Magic.

No, really. OP post brings up dragons and other arcane bullshit, so it could be the vikings had with them rune-priests or something that could erect forts with remarkable speed.

Of course, this would imply they'd have similar settlements all across Europe, and would likely have settled down even there rather than just raiding.

An easier alternative would be if Vikings cooperated with the natives instead of thinking only of rape and plunder.
Basically, we missed such a glorious future only because the Vikings were murderhobos.

desu coast salish are an ideal fantasy setting. Northern raiders, spirit quests, inter-village intrigues

Sure, violence probably contributed to the failure of the settlement in Newfoundland, but the viking settlements in Greenland and North America weren't going to succeed without more settlers and more economic incentive to break the sod and accomplish something instead of trading trinkets for furs and getting in fights. The principle reason for the end of the Viking Colonization Age was that Norway was ravaged by plague in the 1350s.

With 1/3rd to 1/2 of the population dead, second sons and ambitious lowborn men didn't have to strike out for foreign shores to make their fortune, they could just take over a farm where everyone had died.

The Vikings would have persisted and succeeded if they had economic reason to, but the plague eliminated that drive.

might want to look at Russia and the Northern Crusade for more inspiration.

You can do a lot with wood

Just do this.

Make a Viking CROATOAN.

200 years later, Aztec scouts talk of a new tribe that has been conquering terrain deeper and deeper south each year, carrying strange weapons made of shiny grey obsidian that does not chip.

>one day loki disguised him self as a starving crow and flew to thor
>thor rested mjolnir near crow as he attempted to nurse it back to health
>while thor had his back turned the envious loki set thethunder and lightning of mjolnir free
>releasing thor's greatest enemy, the thunder bird

I actually had an idea laying around for a few years, that the redheaded Si-Te-Cah were actually lost wandering Vikings that left their settlements and became desperate and brutal enough to turn towards cannibalism.
>I want to see how European warriors of that age stood against Aztec/Mayan warriors at their peak.
The Maya were already way passed their prime by the time the Vikings showed up in Canada.
An interesting note, the Aztecs were still literally just the Aztecs, they were still in Aztlan according to legend, and would be kicked out around 11th century.

I've thought of something similar before, actually. But more **Mormon** inspired and much more far-fetched. Jewish Kabbalah influencing Mesoamerican spirituality. Basically, just golems helping build Tenochtitlan, in the battlefield, or defending towns against Aztec flowery-wars.

アメリカだとちょっと違う

Spawn is pretty cool and all, but I don't understand this post within the context of this thread.

>It is slightly different in America

Mmm what?

That'd be pretty neat but I can't see judaism get along very well with human sacrifice and shit.

They used to be OK with it up until that "don't give your seed to Molech"-thing.
Molech = human sacrifice rituals in anicent yidderia.

...

There's a historical precedent for this kind of thing. Some anthropologists think that it happened in Norse mythology itself.

Basically, there's a division between two sorts of Gods, the Aesir and the Vanir. The mythology has a story of a great war between them, ending with the two groups trading hostages and more or less merging.

It's believed that the Vanir were worshipped by the original inhabitants, and that the Indo-European culture that conquered them brought in the Aesir. The myth reflects that real world conflict.

Taking the Native Mythology as a base, they might refer to powerful beings coming from a dying world, who settle in North America and have various interactions with the existing mythology that establishes the nature of the merge.

Maybe Thor tames the Thunderbird, or the Great Horned Serpent becomes conflated with Jormungundr.

I would like an adventure of thor trying to prove himself to thunderbirds

What role would the players take in it, though?

Vassals, retainers, or other servants.

Maybe you need to transport the hammer to a Thunderbird's sacred place, and after you succeed the next day's got this bigass storm and you never really get any concrete evidence that any magic was involved but...

Old west is 19th century, fall of the Aztecs is 1521. The Aztecs are going to encounter Europeans long before technology develops that far.

I don't think Aztecs were even a thing back when this all would've happened. At the very least the vikings would've ended up heavily influencing their culture.

Quite a bit further south from the viking colonies, though.

Yeah but it's not like vikings didn't, you know, sail.

They went pretty damn far actually.

Okay I know that's just two mooses (meese?) going right next to one another, but jeez...

So the main storyline of the norse religion is loki breaking mjolnir, the lighting turns into or is stolen by the thunderbird, and thor has to go get it back?

Obviously the wild west would occur much much earlier in OP's universe.
The real question is who will make first contact with the Aztecs if the rest of the world finds out five hundred years earlier? Would they survive, and if so, how much would the influence drastically change the culture?
I haven't even begun to think how the Incas would be involved.

How does the Coyote fit into this?

You know, you can always put together a mythology about Thor taming the Thunderbird, and the Aesir and Vanir finding a new home in a new world among new gods.

It being a mythological representation the Vikings teaching Native Americans how to work metal, and the Viking colonists cutting off contact with their Christianized homelands and going "native".

Hell, you could go on and create a whole new mythology based on Thor and the Thunderbird going off to fight dragons down South *cough* war with the Aztecs *cough*.

Also, consider for a moment that the Viking-Native-Americans create some kind of long empire all across the Americas...

If the Viking-Native-Americans keep their seafaring capabilities alive (by making use of the Great Lakes, and all the rivers that cross the USA), and they eventually reach the West Coast, they'll eventually will start to explore Hawaii, maybe even make contact with Japan and China.

>spanish show up to conquer the uncultured savage heathens
>"we have brought christ and guns!"
>"we don't know who christ is, but we got guns too! and katanas! pssst, nothing personell kid!"