NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)
- Thread starter I.F. Ister
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- Original Fantasy Action
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- norse mythology (mythology) original xianxia cultivation western cultivation ask sirihand did your mother tell you anything? discussion pleases yggdrasil farming gloating gets people killed granary management hubris is a coward's word you will die norsemen do not die when they are killed the qm has a bad memory the qm is bad at math viking courtroom drama (legal drama) vikings
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One of the several reasons not to do that, yeah. But Hamr, Combat, and Wordplay are all solid.
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We're really unsure how expensive that is. And really unsure how safe. And it's only relevant if Vagn swears to us, since he's our only retainer who's a berserk.
- Location
- India
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Say, @Imperial Fister, didnt Haydis want Kurt to swear to Halla, while he was the one who was reluctant? Why does the update say she was vehemently against it?
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It's an error. Dunno about fixes, but IF mentioned it as a mistake a few pages back.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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I'll go ahead and call the vote in 30 minutes
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Okay, edited in stuff for the incomplete parts of the plan. I'm a little iffy on the runes but I think they're probably fine?
Oh, also, @Imperial Fister we should have gotten to do a poem last turn, I think? We had an Experience and spent the Work to write one...should we just roll for that? It just adds Orthstirr, but the amount could theoretically matter (it probably won't, but it could).
Oh, and looking back:
Is this a general rule for Wolf Bone Ash in NQ2? Because we do have other Wolf Bone-Ash infused weapons (indeed, almost all our retainers weapons are like that). Also, if so, a bit of systemization of what the Lynx Bone Ash we put in Sagaseeker does would be nice to know...if all Bone Ash is gonna be codified maybe that should be as well?
Oh, also, @Imperial Fister we should have gotten to do a poem last turn, I think? We had an Experience and spent the Work to write one...should we just roll for that? It just adds Orthstirr, but the amount could theoretically matter (it probably won't, but it could).
Oh, and looking back:
Is this a general rule for Wolf Bone Ash in NQ2? Because we do have other Wolf Bone-Ash infused weapons (indeed, almost all our retainers weapons are like that). Also, if so, a bit of systemization of what the Lynx Bone Ash we put in Sagaseeker does would be nice to know...if all Bone Ash is gonna be codified maybe that should be as well?
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I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Oh, yeah, sorry. Go ahead and roll for that
Ope, looks like I forgot what wolf bone ash does
0~0~0
Voting is now closed
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Will do. See below.
Not necessarily. We never actually found out, I don't think. We have used our sword (which uses Wolf Bone-Ash) and I don't think we got bonus damage? I'm really not sure.
EDIT: Ouch, only two successes. Boosted to 14 with Odr and Wordplay, so +4/9 of an Orthstirr, though...that's nice. Does the Odr grant something special? If it even boosted it to 15 successes that would be handy...
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Announcement of Break
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Alright, folks, we've recently reached 500k words. Half a million damn words. Wow-fuckin'-wee.
With that in mind, I'm going to start taking breaks every few hundred thousand words, to allow myself to rest without worrying about writing NorseQuest. During these breaks, I will be working on other projects that I really want to do but just haven't had the time to start. These are short, significantly more streamlined projects than NorseQuest that won't take me more than a few weeks to a month to complete.
With that out of the way, may I introduce you to Space Ship Quest (A Pre-Dreadnought Cultivation Story)?
With that in mind, I'm going to start taking breaks every few hundred thousand words, to allow myself to rest without worrying about writing NorseQuest. During these breaks, I will be working on other projects that I really want to do but just haven't had the time to start. These are short, significantly more streamlined projects than NorseQuest that won't take me more than a few weeks to a month to complete.
With that out of the way, may I introduce you to Space Ship Quest (A Pre-Dreadnought Cultivation Story)?
- Location
- iTALY
So we finally got our Cultivator Boiler in a Imperial Fister quest.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Norsequest World Thoughts by Shard
The setting of NQ has many interesting implications. I've had quite a lot of thoughts over the time of NQ and I thought I would collate them and lay them out for critique.
Raids
In real life, the concept of a raid is that you hit people who are not ready. Quick strikes before an army can be raised to respond to an attack. Note the key word here. Army. In NQ, raiding other Norse people gets you face full of veteran Norsemen because all Norsemen can fight. Unlike real life where actually a lot of Norsemen probably don't fight that well. In real life, raiding Carolingan lands before armies can be raised to chase you off is plenty viable. In NQ Knights can be active basically 24/7, raising the question of raiding viability.
How do raids work then? I dunno, but it's definitely harder than IRL by a whole lot.
Church Gold
Is there any value in a church holding gold and silver? Is there a cultivation advantage to be gained? Gold and silver are basically Norseman bait as they fall over themselves to loot your wealth for Orthstirr.
Thralldom and the Afterlife
Thralldom is even more horrific than in real life. In real life, thralls could possibly be freed by their owners. In real life, thralldom doesn't affect your afterlife.
In NQ, thralldom totally does. A Norseman enthralled will never be an Einherjar, thralls aren't the honored dead. Thralldom is therefore extra suck.
Conclusion:
1) Sten actually didLars Forkbeard Lard Forkbread a huge favor by ripping out his soul. Lars Forkbread is going to get rezzed by his family instead of being enslaved by the Hading. Having your soul be (temporarily) imprisoned be a good thing is a real 'what the fuck' moment.
2) Family should be willing to do A LOT to get anyone enthralled to be not-enthralled. Paying higher ransom, raids, hire seeresses/witches to send curses over, whatever, anything to let your loved ones not be enthralled is actually a massive massive deal.
3) Not being enthralled is also a huge deal. Die in combat if you can. Offer whatever to not be enthralled if you can. Just don't get enthralled. Freedom or Death!
4) Being born as a thrall is a real extra shit moment.
It's also bad for Carolingan cultivators, to a somewhat lesser extent. Cultivation lets you spend less time in purgatory before going to heaven. Enthrallment means you can't cultivate means you can't reduce your time spent being in purgatory. This sucks.
Serfdom
Serfs are afterlife-wise in the same spot as an enthralled Carolingan cultivator. Can't cultivate can't reduce time spent in purgatory. This sucks.
Vengeance Cycles
In real life, vengeance cycles sucks. In NQ, Vengeance Cycles are great - Cultivation-wise, that is. Vegeance gives motivation which almost always leads to Orthstirr. This means dying a glorious death in combat is actually a good thing for your descendants as they now have motivation to avenge you, generating Orthstirr. Eternal feuds equals eternal fights equals Orthstirr gains. Being killed might be Nid, but being avenged cleanses that Nid from you! The odds of becoming an Einheri improves since you have an awesomer saga.
Conclusion: Cycle of destruction and death... good? Feuds good, weregild bad?
Until a Horra happens anyway.
Culture and Atrocities
In real life, sacking/burning/ruining a sacred place, where be it a sacred tree or temple or mosque or such is generally agreed to be a bad thing. Ruining places of great cultural or religious value is not good, should not do.
In NQ, culture is cultivation. Places of great cultural value are places of cultivation value.
This means they have military value. This makes them targets because of their great cultural value.
Conclusion: RIP culturally important places.
Propaganda
1. If culture and belief affect the afterlife, does this mean that books like Dante's Inferno are atrocities?
2. Convincing people that their afterlife/religion sucks is actually turbo ultra bad. Convincing people that Hel sucks will actively make the lives of people in Hel worse, convincing people that Odin/Loki/etc are assholes will make them more asshole making people's live worse.
3. But does this mean that convincing people that the world, their gods and the afterlife is awesomesauce will actually make them awesomesauce? Thoughts.
Conclusion: Thinking happy thoughts will make the world a happier place in NQ. Think happy thoughts. Think happiest thoughts. You'll literally make the world a better place!
Alternative Positive Interactions Between Norse and Carolingans?
You get Orthstirr for being awesome and Nid for being un-awesome. Caroligans are subject to no such laws. Norsemen want Orthstirr.
So a thought here is.. okay. You know the idea of Pas d'armes?
That might be a positive way for Caroligan-Norse relationships to improve. Challenges to first blood and such.
Or something.
Women's Rights & Contraceptives
In real life, women's rights were pretty closely linked to contraceptives and birth control. In Norsequest, reliable contraceptives and birth control exist for women approximately 1000+ years ahead of time compared to IRL. What does this do to their rights? A lot, but what does that mean, I don't know.
Medicine
Culture lets you literally use magic to heal people. Via magic we can perform medical interventions that would astound modern day doctors. The impact of this is.. a lot.
Can you even maintain a belief that life is short and brutal - And therefore very precious (one of the driving reasons to have weregild, preserving life and avoiding blood vengeance) when the local Seeress can reliably bring back the dead, cure disease and lopped-off arms/legs are but a minor inconvenience?
Clans?
Apparently, clans were a huge deal in the pre-kingdom viking era. They don't really exist in NQ though.
Ancestral Worship?
Ancestral Worship was a pretty big thing for Norse and Finnish Culture. We don't see it come up much though.
===
Anyway, these were just a bunch of thoughts I had about the NQ setting.
I don't really know enough about other cultivation systems to make a serious analysis on the Unfortunate Implications present in, say, Finnish Cultivation.
The setting of NQ has many interesting implications. I've had quite a lot of thoughts over the time of NQ and I thought I would collate them and lay them out for critique.
Raids
In real life, the concept of a raid is that you hit people who are not ready. Quick strikes before an army can be raised to respond to an attack. Note the key word here. Army. In NQ, raiding other Norse people gets you face full of veteran Norsemen because all Norsemen can fight. Unlike real life where actually a lot of Norsemen probably don't fight that well. In real life, raiding Carolingan lands before armies can be raised to chase you off is plenty viable. In NQ Knights can be active basically 24/7, raising the question of raiding viability.
How do raids work then? I dunno, but it's definitely harder than IRL by a whole lot.
Church Gold
Is there any value in a church holding gold and silver? Is there a cultivation advantage to be gained? Gold and silver are basically Norseman bait as they fall over themselves to loot your wealth for Orthstirr.
Thralldom and the Afterlife
Thralldom is even more horrific than in real life. In real life, thralls could possibly be freed by their owners. In real life, thralldom doesn't affect your afterlife.
In NQ, thralldom totally does. A Norseman enthralled will never be an Einherjar, thralls aren't the honored dead. Thralldom is therefore extra suck.
Conclusion:
1) Sten actually did
2) Family should be willing to do A LOT to get anyone enthralled to be not-enthralled. Paying higher ransom, raids, hire seeresses/witches to send curses over, whatever, anything to let your loved ones not be enthralled is actually a massive massive deal.
3) Not being enthralled is also a huge deal. Die in combat if you can. Offer whatever to not be enthralled if you can. Just don't get enthralled. Freedom or Death!
4) Being born as a thrall is a real extra shit moment.
It's also bad for Carolingan cultivators, to a somewhat lesser extent. Cultivation lets you spend less time in purgatory before going to heaven. Enthrallment means you can't cultivate means you can't reduce your time spent being in purgatory. This sucks.
Serfdom
Serfs are afterlife-wise in the same spot as an enthralled Carolingan cultivator. Can't cultivate can't reduce time spent in purgatory. This sucks.
Vengeance Cycles
In real life, vengeance cycles sucks. In NQ, Vengeance Cycles are great - Cultivation-wise, that is. Vegeance gives motivation which almost always leads to Orthstirr. This means dying a glorious death in combat is actually a good thing for your descendants as they now have motivation to avenge you, generating Orthstirr. Eternal feuds equals eternal fights equals Orthstirr gains. Being killed might be Nid, but being avenged cleanses that Nid from you! The odds of becoming an Einheri improves since you have an awesomer saga.
Conclusion: Cycle of destruction and death... good? Feuds good, weregild bad?
Until a Horra happens anyway.
Culture and Atrocities
In real life, sacking/burning/ruining a sacred place, where be it a sacred tree or temple or mosque or such is generally agreed to be a bad thing. Ruining places of great cultural or religious value is not good, should not do.
In NQ, culture is cultivation. Places of great cultural value are places of cultivation value.
This means they have military value. This makes them targets because of their great cultural value.
Conclusion: RIP culturally important places.
Propaganda
1. If culture and belief affect the afterlife, does this mean that books like Dante's Inferno are atrocities?
2. Convincing people that their afterlife/religion sucks is actually turbo ultra bad. Convincing people that Hel sucks will actively make the lives of people in Hel worse, convincing people that Odin/Loki/etc are assholes will make them more asshole making people's live worse.
3. But does this mean that convincing people that the world, their gods and the afterlife is awesomesauce will actually make them awesomesauce? Thoughts.
Conclusion: Thinking happy thoughts will make the world a happier place in NQ. Think happy thoughts. Think happiest thoughts. You'll literally make the world a better place!
Alternative Positive Interactions Between Norse and Carolingans?
You get Orthstirr for being awesome and Nid for being un-awesome. Caroligans are subject to no such laws. Norsemen want Orthstirr.
So a thought here is.. okay. You know the idea of Pas d'armes?
That might be a positive way for Caroligan-Norse relationships to improve. Challenges to first blood and such.
Or something.
Women's Rights & Contraceptives
In real life, women's rights were pretty closely linked to contraceptives and birth control. In Norsequest, reliable contraceptives and birth control exist for women approximately 1000+ years ahead of time compared to IRL. What does this do to their rights? A lot, but what does that mean, I don't know.
Medicine
Culture lets you literally use magic to heal people. Via magic we can perform medical interventions that would astound modern day doctors. The impact of this is.. a lot.
Can you even maintain a belief that life is short and brutal - And therefore very precious (one of the driving reasons to have weregild, preserving life and avoiding blood vengeance) when the local Seeress can reliably bring back the dead, cure disease and lopped-off arms/legs are but a minor inconvenience?
Clans?
Apparently, clans were a huge deal in the pre-kingdom viking era. They don't really exist in NQ though.
Ancestral Worship?
Ancestral Worship was a pretty big thing for Norse and Finnish Culture. We don't see it come up much though.
===
Anyway, these were just a bunch of thoughts I had about the NQ setting.
I don't really know enough about other cultivation systems to make a serious analysis on the Unfortunate Implications present in, say, Finnish Cultivation.
I mean, we do see that family relations and the relations with retainers are very very important in Norse culture.
They are not explicitly called Clans or Clan politics, but is what they basicaly are.
This was pretty disappointing, Norse Ancestral Worship is a pretty interesting thing, i also find that the other various religious parts of Norse culture were often ignored in the quest.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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There are two kinds of raiding. The kind of raid that you describe and the far more common intra-Norse/Baltic raids as described in many sagas.
While Norsemen all know how to fight in NQ, the same was true in real life. Just as not all Norsemen in real life were good at fighting, the same is true in NQ. You're just surrounded by strong warriors so it doesn't look like there are Norsemen poor in combat.
In real life, something as small as a scratch can spell death by infection. The potential presence of Knights is simply scaling to account for how cultivation affects combat. It is no more or less dangerous as in real life.
Perception begets reality begets perception.
Medicine was not always as good as it is now in NQ.
they do, though? The alliances between families are what a clan is. I don't use the term clan to avoid confusion with Scottish and Irish and other clan structures, which are not the same.
Yeah, I'll do better about that in the future
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To expand on what IF said: IRL, the Norse did not have super powers, and attacking unprepared farmers could still result in getting killed with a pitchfork if you got unlucky, since you were only human. Knights are needed to preserve the IRL level of danger of raiding Carolingians, since mortals are not a threat in the same way even peasant farmers were in real life.
Uh...thralls can be freed in NQ. We've literally done that. And we actually don't know how thralldom effects the afterlife, I don't think. It's likely that people who accept their thralldom do not become einherjar, but that's true of most people, not just thralls, and I'm not at all clear that a freed thrall can't become one if Odin or another God thinks they have potential (which is the main criteria, after all).
I mean, feuds are good if you always win. They're terrible if you lose. That's pretty true to real life...having a good reputation has always been handy in basically all real life cultures, and you could loot your defeated enemies to boot! The reason feuds are bad is that one side loses, and it's really bad for them, and even the winning side takes casualties, which are both still true in NQ.
Culturally important places are also a lot better protected in NQ Earth since there's actual magic involved in their defenses. So yeah, they'd be targeted more often, but fewer attempts are likely to be successful, generally speaking.
It's pretty unclear what kind of contraceptives the Norse had IRL, but plenty of people in that era and earlier had access to birth control.
The Romans had reliable herbal contraceptives, for example, as we know from their writings (though they appear to have overused the plant in question to the point of extinction), and there's plenty of evidence that the Norse spaced children by using breastfeeding as a contraceptive, and exposed infants to die often enough that it was made very illegal post-Christianization (which is pretty equivalent to abortion in terms of its societal role and contraception).
Contemporaries also used various physical barriers (lambskin condoms, sponges with vinegar inserted, and so on), abortifacient herbs, and primitive spermicides (often in combination). We don't know if Norsewomen used any of those, but they'd have had no religious or moral qualms, so it's pretty likely.
All that said, in a society like the Viking Era Norse, children are an immense economic advantage and the incentives to have a bunch would have been very high. Most women would have used this sort of thing only if they couldn't manage to feed another kid, or had some other specific reason not to have one.
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To be fair this isn't quite true. We literally just had a whole big fight about it! As long as you can get free and get someone to take vengeance on you as payment for enthralling you (or, from IF's statement, just get them to pay weregild to the wronged party) it cleanses the shame of Thralldom. This would presumably cleanses the spiritual shame as well, and allow them to earn their place amongst the honored dead (or not).
What was the use of gold and silver in real life? Appearing rich, paying bribes, and all things similar. Gold was literally a worthless metal for much of the world, with no use besides Shiny. And yet people hoarded it. Churches extracted it from their worshippers as much as possible. Kings made it rhe basis of their riches.
Something doesn't have to be useful to be valued. See; diamonds.
Raiding was still a dangerous and deadly activity even irl with that mentality (which is also not completely correct). There are hundreds of gravesites we know belonged to Viking raiders just across the British isles. There's more elsewhere. People died on these raids, even when striking those who are unaware and unprepared. Battle is, in general, a lot more deadly irl.
And raiders happily engaged with fortified positions with archers and shit at times, which are far from 'sudden ambush against rhe unprepared'. They generally would do their best at tilting things their way, but this wasn't some 'they only struck undefended fishing villages'. They knocked over actually strong positions to get the tasty gold goodies too. And this is a world where a single arrow from a single 'mortal' guardsman could/would get infected and kill your ass.
If anything, foreign raiding is much safer in Norsequest than irl, because only one in ten (a hundred? A thousand?) Men is going to be able to even harm you. Everyone else is a joke. And even if your arm gets cleaved off, you put some spit on it and finish the fight and then heal it later. A smart raid can spend time Scouting and figure out where knights are and avoid them, because Knights are the one real threat. (Priests seem a lot less threatening)
Raiding other Norsemen is no more of a threat than irl either; its actually literally the same. Every norseman exists in the same paradigm, whether that's RL (all men learn to fight, no magic) or NQ (all men learn to fight, magic). The only difference is the same difference between 'are you good at fighting' and 'do you suck at fighting', though yeah in NQ that scales larger.
I mean, that's all from a modern perspective. The Norse IRL loved hitting monasteries and burning them down for the goodies inside. It wasn't because of military value but monetary. I don't think that needs to change here; what's changed here is that monasteries are probably scary and strong places. Multiple priests. I'd expect monks to have some level of cultivation too, Nuns as well. Or at least cultivation-like tricks they can pull since they're Holy.
Burning shit down because you're angry and you know it's important to the people you're angry at was the norm for much of the world though. The crusades happily destroyed every mosque and artifact it came across. The wars in Spain (both Muslim conquest and reconquista) literally targeted places of worship as major targets to destroy the cultural value. Hell, the christianization of Ireland destroyed so many cultural artifacts that we barely have records of what predated it. Let alone the Norse.
RL firmly believed in demoralizing and weakening people by destroying their culture, and showing they're weak, while showing that their own culture is strong/favored by whatever god. The crusaders shouted how God was on their side as they burned mosques as proof of how Islam's God was not real. The same was done by Muslims in wars with Christians! The same was done by basically every religious conflict.
All NQ does is make what people already did in reality have military value, as well as the perceived cultural value. Burning that mosque is probably gonna legit harm the cultivation ability of the Imam until its restored.
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Priests are still a real threat to most Norsemen, depending on the situation. They can power up mortals to the point of being able to meaningfully harm Random Norseman #3 and do some pretty good damage themselves, and most villages have them. I think that and the times a Knight does show up combine to make raiding probably about as likely to get you killed as real life. Getting maimed or similar things is, of course, more or less nonexistent.
Remember that Halla is not representative. Random Norseman #3 has Hamr 6-ish, Combat 5-ish, Prowess 3-ish, Orthstirr 2-ish, no armor better than a Gambeson, and often no Hugareida at all and no Martial Style other than Glima. Even three or four random soldiers can do that guy some damage before going down (by attacking simultaneously...he'll defend against one pretty much for sure, but he doesn't likely have any ability to defend against multiple foes at once), to say nothing of those juiced up by a priest.
Now, Halla was around that level when she killed a priest, but Father Gerrit was overconfident and didn't expect Halla's particular tactics (which were also dependent on having multiple hugareida)...we outplayed him and he was fragile enough he couldn't survive that, but a more straightforward 'slugging match' approach with him would likely have lost. And many Norse would not have had options other than a straightforward slugfest.
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
To be clear, what I mean in this case was un-freed thralls. Who are just fucked. People don't buy thralls to free them, after all.
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That was definitely true in real life, too. Well, ignoring the afterlife bit.
- Location
- USA
I mean, the main focus of that section was about the afterlife, so that's sort of like saying "if you skip the singing, Hamilton is a really short play"
The focus was on how being a thrall in this world is not only slavery of your corporeal form, but punishment on your eternal soul, so it's even worse than slavery irl
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True, I suppose, though as I noted in my original response, we actually don't know much about the afterlife fate of thralls. They don't become einherjar, it's true, but neither do most free people, so it's really hard to actually analyze if they have it any worse. Which was sort of my point.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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I need a social check rolled, please (12 dice)