From the Amber Coast to Thule ...

[rust]

After reading BRP Witchcraft, I have now added "Ragana" ("baltic witch") to the setting's list of

professions.

It seems this profession fits my idea of "subtle magic" quite well, and the "Old Religion" back-

ground from the supplement does also. Moreover, this type of "wise woman" could serve as

the colony's accepted healer and midwife, tolerated even by the Christian knights and priests

because there is no one else with comparable knowledge and skills on Thule. The Christians

would just pretend to look the other way when the Ragana performs pagan rituals at one of

the few small stands of trees near the settlement, both because she is most useful for the en-

tire colony and to avoid a serious conflict with the still at least partially pagan Baltic settlers.

[seneschal]

Sounds historically reasonable to me.

[rust]

Sounds historically reasonable to me.

Well, at least it does not seem completely impossible, I hope.

There is the "witchhunt problem", but from what I have found this would not necessarily be the

case (Wikipedia):

The Council of Paderborn in 785 explicitly outlawed the very belief in witches, and Charlemag-

ne later confirmed the law. The Council of Frankfurt in 794, called by Charlemagne, was also

very explicit in condemning "the persecution of alleged witches and wizards", calling the belief

in witchcraft "superstitious", and ordering the death penalty for those who presume to burn

witches.

Nonetheless, Pope John XXII formalized the persecution of witchcraft in 1320 when he autho-

rized the Inquisition to prosecute sorcerors.

So, in 1240 people did not have to believe in witches and the necessity to destroy them, although

many doubtless did. They could at least pretend to consider witchcraft as superstitious nonsen-

se that does no harm, except to the poor silly pagans who did not know better - and to anger

them by persecuting their "witches" would not be worth the trouble and not help to turn them

into Christians ...

[rust]

After some months spent on other settings, mostly science fiction ones, I am

now back to the work on the Thule setting.

As the result of a little more research I have changed the date of the setting to

1300 AD and also made some other, minor changes, and the system used is now

a modified version of the one from the German Middle Ages supplement for Call

of Cthulhu combined with the economy rules (price lists, sea trade, etc.) of the

Harnmaster system.

One of the advantages of a pseudo-historical setting on an alternate earth is

that I have to describe much less than I would have to do for a fantasy or sci-

ence fiction setting, so the basic framework of the setting with the necessary

maps is now just 27 pages.

Right now I am doing some more research to fill in more details, especially about

the differences of the various cultures of my Greenland-Thule, and the next step

will then be the introductory adventure that will take the characters from Thorn

via Danzig, Lübeck, Bergen and Iceland to Thule, and then the important parts

of the setting's background history.

[rust]

The main difference to the original concept is probably that the Norse settlement

on Thule has not become extinct. Under the pressure from the Inuit the settlers

had to give up their northern settlement, and in the southern settlement only 177

settlers at 24 steads and 8 monks at Gardar are left, but the Norse settlement

does still exist in 1294 AD when the knights of the order first visit Thule.

This means that the knights do not go to Thule to found a new settlement, they

go there as vassals of the Norwegian king with the mission to secure and expand

his remote province, the "furthest outpost of Christendom", as they see it. And

since this now happens in 1300 AD instead of 1240 AD, the Prussian settlers they

bring with them are slightly more peaceful and Christianized than in the original

concept.

There is also a small group of Christianized southern Inuit, so this Thule colony

will consist of four population groups with different cultures, German knights, Nor-

se and Prussian freeholders and friendly Inuit, each of the groups with different

expectations and ideas how things should be and be dealt with - enough internal

conflicts for a couple of adventures, I think.

The player characters will enter this picture rather late. They will belong to the

last group of knights travelling to Thule, the group that has the task to "wrap up"

the order's holdings in Prussia and hand them over to the Teutonic Order. When

they finally arrive in Thule, much of the basic work to secure the colony will al-

ready have been done - a "fortified" port, three new tiny fishing villages, six new

manors ...

The first adventures on Thule will be designed to make them familiar with the new

environment and its human and non-human inhabitants, like an exploration along

the northern coast, a polar bear and walrus hunt, a voyage to the Forest Coast

(= Labrador) to bring some wood, the annual Thing, and so on. The next major

event will be a "crusade" to reconquer the lost northern settlement area from the

Inuit and to build a fort there as the first step to resettle the region, and later

adventures could include diplomatic and trade missions to Iceland, Norway and

Scotland.

I think that the "style" of the campaign will be quite similar to that of a Pendra-

gon campaign, only more gritty and less romantic than the usual Pendragon cam-

paign. And there will be no magic, at least no "high magic", and no monsters.

[rust]

By the way, a good source of informations about the time and region is the Eng-

lish translation of the King's Mirror, written around 1250 AD to give a Norwegian

prince the basic knowledge of the Norse lands and its inhabitants that he would

need as a king - it even includes many informations about Greenland (the Thule

of my setting).

If you want to take a look at it, click on "PDF" in the box on the left side:

http://www.archive.org/details/kingsmirrorspecu00konuuoft

[rust]

If you should ever feel an urge to get an impression of what utter confusion is

like, try to research medieval ship types ...

There is few doubt that the Norse used Knarrs or very similar ships to establish

their colony on Greenland, that the Hanse used Cogs and the Scots preferred

Birlinns. It is obviously much less well known what a Knarr, Cog or Birlinn exact-

ly looked like, and how long these types remained in use. For example, the Nor-

wegian ship sent to Greenland around 1380 AD was named the "Greenland Knarr",

although it is highly unlikely that it was a real Knarr of the type used by the Nor-

se.

Beyond Knarr, Cog and Birlinn things get even worse. Other ship types of the pe-

riod are named Buss, Hulk, Nef or Roundship, but the experts are completely un-

able to agree what these names did mean. Nef and Roundship are treated both

as generic names for all kinds of merchant ships and as specific ship types, and

a Buss can be everything from a river boat to a small fishing vessel to a big car-

go ship. A Hulk usually is a type of Cog that is slightly different from a Cog.

Originally I just wanted to find out which ship type the merchants of Bristol used

for their well documented trade with Iceland. After my research I have now deci-

ded that the type they used was the Nef, which looked exactly like a Cog with

some features of a Buss, resulting in a Hulk-like kind of Roundship. Well, if the

players doubt this, they can always do their own research ...

[rust]

It is Christmas Time, and I am planning to get rid of a bishop during the introduc-

tory adventure of the Thule campaign ...

The Grandmaster of my Pruthenic Order wants one of the Franciscan Spirituals

who accompany the knights to Thule to become first Abbot of the monastery at

Gardar and later on Abbot-Bishop of Thule, as this would ensure that the church

on Thule would be friendly to his various projects and support them, and it would

reduce Norway's influence on the events in Thule.

Unfortunately a certain Norwegian priest named Birger Olavson has already been

invested as Bishop of Thule several years ago by the Archbishop of Nidaros. Be-

cause of the dangerous situation in the Thule colony Olavson never went there,

and his see at Gardar remained vacant for all practical purposes. But now, with

the knights and the new settlers there, Olavson is very much tempted to travel

to Thule and collect the Tithe there.

The Grandmaster wants Olavson to resign as soon as possible, before he can go

to Thule, and so asks Bernhard von Sterneck, the leader of the last group travel-

ling from Prussia to Thule, to use the group's stay at Bergen in order to take a

close look at Olavson's life and to see whether there is anything in the priest's

past that could be used to convince him to resign.

Since Bernhard von Sterneck is busy with lots of other tasks, he in turn asks the

player characters to investigate Olavson's past. This gives them an opportunity

to learn a bit more about life in Bergen and Norway, and with a little luck they

will discover that the money collected by a Norwegian monastery to support the

monastery of Gardar on Thule never arrived there, because Olavson used it to fi-

nance his own luxurious lifestyle, which included a concubine.

This little plot will replace my original idea for the events in Bergen, a conflict be-

tween the order and the Archbishop of Nidaros because of the heretical tenden-

cies of the Franciscan Spirituals. I think it will be better to use that plot later in

the campaign, when the Grandmaster will attempt to have one of the Franciscan

Spirituals accepted as Abbot and then Abbot-Bishop, leading to a diplomatic mis-

sion from Thule to Nidaros in Norway.