Gods and Magic

“I think,” he ventured tentatively, “I have a handle on this magic thing.”

Today, I'm gonna discuss the magic system for my Norse setting, as it applies to the available classes. With the wise council of both my commenter, I've modified my previous views concerning the use of magic in the setting and will detail, in brief, what I'm currently thinking.

(A disclaimer: I'm not attempting to pass off this magic system as in any way 100% historically or culturally accurate. I'm merely inspired by the aesthetics and mythology I've researched – much more thoroughly, I might add – in the past few days.)

The world is infused with seidhr, the Norse conception of sorcery. Not native to Midgard, seidhr is the tool and function of the gods and the denizens of the other eight realms. Through the many portals that infuse Midgard, seidhr leaks forward, infusing the land with its raw power.

There are three ways a player character in this setting can wield seidhr:

• Godi (Cleric): As a direct worshipper of one god in the pantheon, a character can attain a small portion of that deity's seidhr. Working as their earthly vessel, the godi speaks on behalf of their heavenly patron and wields their seidhr at their suffrage.
• Druid: By tapping into the seidhr that's infused the land, a character can bring potent magical effects to bear. Rather than learning to wield the secrets themselves, a druid simply channels the seidhr of the land, typically staying near and protecting a particularly area.
• Völva (Wizard): To gain a measure of seidhr power for themselves, völva trap magical potency within runes. Serving only their own selfish desires, the völva can entrapped seidhr power for use later and in personal goals. Not bound to service of a god or a location, völva wander the countryside and have a particularly foul reputation among the common people.

(Note: I'm currently toying with the idea of imposing some manner of drawback on certain – possibly all – magical heroes, to display the dangerous aftereffects that come when mortals tamper with seidhr.)

What do you think? Does that magical breakdown make sense? Again, keeping in mind that I'm attempting to marry a role-playing system's flexibility with a need for both a cohesive narrative for the world. I'm aware seidhr was more concerned with prophecy and illusion but any scan across the 5^th edition spell list would see that, were I to limit the spells to simply those from the schools of “divination” and “illusion,” I'd be severely limiting the viability of my comparatively few casting classes remaining.

Plus, I like the idea of a fireball spell becoming more powerful or easier to cast the closer to a portal to Muspelheim the caster is. That's just cool to me.

Also, somewhat unrelatedly, I narrowed down the list of gods, from the laundry list of contradictory and relatively minor deities that fringe the Norse pantheon, into a core eight that I'll probably use for the setting. Whether I change names or shift their domains a little remains to be seen but, in essence, this is the pantheon I'm working from:

• Odin – god of knowledge and war
• Freya – goddess of fertility and love
• Thor – god of storms and thunder
• Rán – goddess of the ocean
• Tyr – god of battle
• Skadi – goddess of the hunt
• Loki – god of tricksters and fire
• Hel – goddess of death

As to which parts of the mythology (Loki being Hel's father, whether Loki is a jotunn or a god, the Freya/Frigga debate) I'm keeping, I'm not yet sure. I wanted to keep the genders pretty evenly distributed and had to mine a little deeper – specifically Skadi and Rán – to find evocative choices that could round out the number, rather than relying on Njord or Baldr or someone.

Baldr's one of those few I wouldn't mind including, but I feel like I'd want a decent counterpart. Maybe Sif or a giantess or something could do.

It does make me look at Banner Saga, who simply invented their own pantheon, and wonder, but I think the traditional Norse gods are integral to the setting that any poor imitation of mine would have to work twice as hard to feel even half as rich and textured.

That's all I've got for today. Next time, I'll maybe start looking at politics? Who knows.

Exploring Exploration

Firstly, there's an interesting discussion occurring in the comments ofyesterday's Worldblogger about the Norseness and inclusion of arcane magic and specifically the wizard in the theoretical campaign setting. Please, share your thoughts on the matter down there!

A few ideas simmered overnight. In no particular order:

• The random Yggdrasil idea has been growing on me; that the celestial heavens are actually composed of Yggdrasil's branches. I like the stars as glimmering fruits, maybe even have day-stars or something, as opposed to one centralized sun, that wilt or close at the onset of night. Maybe the tree's trunk stands over the northern pole and its boughs reach out and encompass the entire northern hemisphere or something. There might even be a way to combine this with the Ymir's skull myth. Maybe the gods planted Yggdrasil's seeds in dead Ymir's skull?

Obviously lots of things to be hammered out, but I think that's a big, mythic, obviously fantastical set piece that could be interesting to explore further.

(A hasty Wikipedia search has revealed the existence of Sól, the Norse sun deity, that striking the sun would probably remove the need for. She doesn't seem super relevant, from a cursory glance, to the machinations of men or the pantheon.)

• Not a huge revelation, but I think despite prevailing cultural thought about how the gender politics during the Viking Age might have been, I'm gonna continue Mooncrash's 100% random sex assignment. No trumped up “historical accuracy” is gonna justify sexism here. Plus, this.

• The big thing that's been percolating, I think, is more a setting theme than anything else. I want this setting to focus on exploration.

So much of what we perceive of the Viking Age is dominated by images of plunder and rapine. I'd be lying if I said that's not one of the main attractions for me, at least initially, to the aesthetic – bold, barbaric warriors, pillaging the fat lands of Europe and being compared unfavorably to sea-wolves – but that's a very shallow read into the accomplishments that Dark Ages Scandinavia gave European culture at the time.

Trade is such a huge part of the Viking's contribution – interconnecting nations and peoples that never would have had any contacts, shipping goods and slaves along these routes, inter-populating the world. Sure, they were raiders and slavers and bloodthirsty conquerors at times, but the inroads the Vikings carved, with their superior seafaring technology and far-ranging exploration, is way, way more culturally significant than horns on helmets and bearded axes.

I mean, to get technical, I think the first real “adventurers” in the medieval period, as a D&D player would think of an adventurer were Norse and Germanic mercenaries, like Harald Hardrada or the Varangian Guard.

In short, I think I'm going to place a greater emphasis on the Norse people striking out and making contact with other cultures for the first time. Rather than extensively mapping the entire world, I think I'm gonna map the region or small continent than the “Vikings” originate from and imply, via the salty rumor of mythical sailors, the distant lands and strange peoples that can be found far and away across the ocean. In the way that previous Edge of the Empire assumes your party is the rough-and-tumble crew of a smuggling vessel, I feel like this setting can be constructed, assuming your the rough- and-tumble crew of a Viking longship, bound for trade, plunder and exploration across the sea.

More as this stuff trickles in. Thanks for reading and lemme know – do you think I should use arcane magic in my fictional, fantastical Scandinavia?

Everything's Better With Vikings

Frost giants are cool. Vikings are cool. Norse mythology is cool.

How come there's no truly Norse campaign setting? Least case, not one I've heard of.

Worldblogger to the rescue!

The advantage of creating a themed campaign setting comes from how limiting I'm allowed to be. One of my biggest pet peeves with most modern campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, even Eberron) is how many races, classes, pantheons and whole magic systems that're shoehorned in, to allow the widest possible option base for the potential PC. These worlds invariably end up feeling like insane grab bags, with hundreds of sentient species, five or six competing layers of contradictory magic and a video-game-esque sense of geography and worldbuilding – here's the desert place, here's the snowy place, here's the forest place, etc.

By creating a campaign setting influenced exclusively by Norse mythology, I can crack down on the free-range nature of races, classes and redundant story elements – such as both divine, primal and arcane magic – under the auspices of adhering to my Norse theme. Not that I can't deviate here I wish, defy expectations a little, but anyone who willing runs or joins such a campaign knows what they're getting into and doesn't seem as likely to demand to play a tiefling sorcerer or whatever the fuck.

Races: D&D campaign settings have this tendency to value race as a key determining factor in a player character's identity. Going off the Tolkien model, that's understandable, but there's plenty of rich and vibrant fantasy that utterly eschews this philosophy. Two of my favorites – A Song of Ice and Fire and the Gentlemen Bastards sequence, in particular – are populated pretty much exclusively by humans. Monsters, beasts and magical elements are still prevalent in both, but there's no shortage of invigorating characters or cultures because there's no cat-people, bird-people or dog-people.

On the one hand, the tradition of elves and dwarves actually originates in Nordic cultures and I think it would be totally justified to include them. On the other hand, very rarely are Nordic elves and dwarves the protagonists of the great sagas. They're frequently side characters and quest givers, in most myths that I've read, and I think that's where I'd slot them.

The only playable race will be human, with elves, dwarves and giants relegated to non-player character status. I think the bigger question, in a Viking-themed game, is one's cultural background – what kingdom, village or culture they hail from.

Class: Let's look at the 5^th edition class list and see if there's anything especially un-Norse that leaps out right away.

• Barbarian: Absolutely. Berserkers all day long.
• Bard: The tradition exists, but is much less arcane trickster and more heroic skald. Could use a little re-flavor, possibly even a name change.
• Cleric: I think so. The schism exists between the pagan-feeling druid and the traditionally Christian-influenced cleric. That being said, I think lumping the entire Norse religion into one class, along with nature worship, feels off. I think a distinction could be made. Hell, maybe even the Christianization of Scandinavia could be explored.
• Druid: Druids have a place, I think, in a setting based on northern Europe.
• Fighter: The fighter and the rogue work everywhere.
• Monk: This is the first one that really seems to clash with the aesthetic. I think monk's are getting the axe, but like, a cool Viking axe, though. This axe.
• Paladin: This one's a toss up, too. The cleric makes sense to me, assuming they're less the “power-of-Christ” cleric and more the Norse godi, but there's practically no tradition of the crusading knight, the blackguard or really even the Green-Knight-esque warden. Like, if the Christian influence becomes a real thing, I could see something like this, but I'm leaning towards “no.”
• Ranger: I think so. Not a huge tradition, but I think the hunter/tracker is generically European enough that it could fit here.
• Rogue: Absolutely. The rogue fits everywhere.
• Sorcerer, Warlock & Wizard: The elephant in the room. I don't think arcane magic's got any place in the setting at all. The existence of clerics & druids predicates divine magic, but magic deriving from somewhere besides from the gods feels strange and un-Norse to me. It may grieve some players, but I think I'm gonna lose arcane magic. Maybe reflavor the bard as a divine caster, as a skald?

That being said, I don't think that necessarily means this is a low magic setting. The Norse actually have one of the few mythologies that stipulates extraplanar travel. It might be cool to have the Nine Realms more accessible – have the world speckled with portals to Jotunheim, Muspelheim, Alfheim and such. Maybe that's the justification for monsters and magic in the world?

An unseasonal winter can sweep over a country because a gate to Jotunheim was opened nearby? A mountain becomes a volcano when a gate to Muspelheim opens beneath the range? Elves and dwarves have only entered the world through these gates and trade and war with mankind?

I mean, this could be extended even further. What if the sky is actually Yggdrasil's branches, the stars are fruit, dangling from those branches? That's going a little nuts, but would defeat the idea this is a fiercely historical world and embrace the fantasy nature of the setting.

That's not bad for a lunch break's worth of worldbuilding, I think. Who knows if I'll ever return to this, but now I'm gonna be thinking about vikings and frost giants and shit all during my afternoon shift.

It's a well-established fact that everything's better with Vikings.

A Theme Decidedly Nautical

What I'm Listening To: Sea shanties. The majority of my playlist came from good compatriot Steven Molony – actor, barbarian, Black Flag owner – and originated themselves off the latter's immense library of same. These, I've whittled down to several choice favorites (Randy Dandy Oh and Running Down to Cuba among them) and added a few other selections (Barrett's Privateers and Blood Red Roses, mainly). Barrett's Privateers has probably emerged as my favorite, contingent on the fact that it falls nicely within my baritone range. Both the missus and the neighbors are mystified/annoyed at how impossible to dislodge the song's become from my brain.

What I'm Reading: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. I was lucky enough to stumble upon The Big Read, which contains chapters read by such luminaries as Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch and even China Mieville. While most of the chapters are read by literature professors and legitimate boat captains, some of the more famous passages seem to be targeted – Stephen Fry read the "married to Queequeg" chapter, China Mieville read the "Squid" chapter. The ultimate irony was achieved with Sir David Attenborough reading "Does the Whale Decrease in Magnitude", about how the whale will never go extinct. (adjusts collar)

On the whole, however, I'm really appreciating the book. Sure, I, like every other sane human, get pretty glassy-earred around the long-winded and inaccurate to boot factoids about whale skulls, whaling and the nobility of same, but I find myself in the reveling in the absurdly long sentences, actively wishing for more Ahab and basking the general seafaring nature of the book. I think there's a sailor somewhere in my feeble, overfed frame.

What I'm Watching: Vikings on The History Channel. Enjoyable enough historical fiction, the show's infinitely improved by its network, surprisingly. While not tremendously accurate, there are tons of small homages or references to the actual historical civilization that wouldn't have been highlighted were the show premiering on a more mainstream station. There's a discussion of Viking nautical techniques, monks speaking Old English, Northumbria as a primary antagonist and even the classic "three-shield" trial by combat at one point. Stick to interesting factoids about longships and shieldmaidens, Vikings. Avoid, at all costs, your lame duck attempts to feature courtly intrigue. You're no Game of Thrones and everybody can tell.