Limitless Worlds

Limitless Worlds

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Old World of Iron: Norsca and Drakenlanda


What It Is

Norsca is fairly clearly supposed to be Viking Age Scandinavia. Much like the rest of the Old World, it's kind of in the wrong time period - the Viking Age was almost half a millennium before the Early Modern Period. Norsca is very much displayed as being ruled by barbarism and barely functional at all, basically home to Chaos Warriors and not much else. The game doesn't even really mention too many heroic Norscans - except, as normal, in WFRP 1e. In early Warhammer, Norscans were definitely heroes - though still painted as barbarians, the WFRP 1e World Guide explicitly states they helped the Old World during the last chaos incursion and not the other way around. Much more Conan the Barbarian instead of wildmen of the north.

The Real World

Early Modern Scandinavia is weird because they aren't really much of a major player, at least on the surface. The end of the High Middle Ages saw Sweden, Denmark and Norway forming the Kalmar Union which lasted a little more than 150 years. After that, they split into Denmark-Norway (which was pretty stable) and Sweden. Early Modern Sweden was insane - Gustavus Adolphus basically modernized the whole country, won countless wars for the Protestants, and was by some accounts a murderous madman. Before Adolphus, Scandinavia was widely considered a backwater.

My Version

Drakenlanda (aka my not-Scandinavia) is hard to divorce from the whole viking thing because honestly vikings are interesting from an RPG perspective. However, Drakenlanda is going to be much like the Kalmar Union than something like Sweden - jarls and princes led by an elected king, similar to how Iceland had. They will basically be coming out of the viking age, partially Christianized but not unified and still mysteriously pagan. Basically imagine the Vesten from 7th Sea

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