Actually, wait a minute... @Imperial Fister can we assign 0d6 to a farm task and just have the Ox do it with its auto-successes? Is that allowed or not? I was assuming not, but it would be much better if we could, so I thought I'd check.
Actually, wait a minute... @Imperial Fister can we assign 0d6 to a farm task and just have the Ox do it with its auto-successes? Is that allowed or not? I was assuming not, but it would be much better if we could, so I thought I'd check.
Just finished reading through this quest and congrats! This is the first cultivation quest that actually kept me reading! (Not that the others are bad, just that this one clicked with me in a way others haven't)
[X] Asgeirr (Boy 1)
[X] Sigurdr (Boy 2)
[X] Eyvor (Girl)
[X] Give it to Boy 2
[X] Plan Lots Of Gifts
...I am a bit curious as to Jerasmus's goals are in agreeing to read the Bible to us. I mean, Halla (and us questors) are primarily interested in the Bible for what it can teach us about Christian cultivation, and Jerasmus is probably smart enough to know that. However, he's currently teaching Halla stories from Genesis, while the most prominent example of "Power Requires Sacrifice" in Jesus's death is much, MUCH later. Is he just buying time until Gabriel fulfills his Oath to stop the evil that's been plaguing our family (at which point they will probably leave together for Christian lands)? Does he truly feel that going through the Bible in order is vital to understanding Christianity? Is he merely seeking to present an alternate perspective for why the world is the way it is, in the hopes that Halla will gain more empathy and understanding for non-Norse people?
...I am a bit curious as to Jerasmus's goals are in agreeing to read the Bible to us. I mean, Halla (and us questors) are primarily interested in the Bible for what it can teach us about Christian cultivation, and Jerasmus is probably smart enough to know that. However, he's currently teaching Halla stories from Genesis, while the most prominent example of "Power Requires Sacrifice" in Jesus's death is much, MUCH later. Is he just buying time until Gabriel fulfills his Oath to stop the evil that's been plaguing our family (at which point they will probably leave together for Christian lands)? Does he truly feel that going through the Bible in order is vital to understanding Christianity? Is he merely seeking to present an alternate perspective for why the world is the way it is, in the hopes that Halla will gain more empathy and understanding for non-Norse people?
I think it's a combination of trying to convert us/expand our horizons and perhaps giving us some subtle cultivation advice if we're right about what the mixed fabrics comment meant.
Just finished reading through this quest and congrats! This is the first cultivation quest that actually kept me reading! (Not that the others are bad, just that this one clicked with me in a way others haven't)
I mean, I'm not picky, it's okay for the other guy to profit more as long as we're getting something out of it too. It only becomes a problem if he's Taking Us For A Ride.
I think what he's getting is context though. It's notoriously difficult I imagine to get into Norse civilian society and actually get reasonable answers from them if you're an outsider.
...If I had to guess, his cultivation path could be related to Teaching (as opposed to Knights and Squires who focus on combat). It's one thing to teach the "blank slates" that are children, another to try and refine the paths of Squires as they progress. But to engage a student that's been raised in an entirely different worldview AND is capable of being critical of the lessons? That's just grinding free XP.
...If I had to guess, his cultivation path could be related to Teaching (as opposed to Knights and Squires who focus on combat). It's one thing to teach the "blank slates" that are children, another to try and refine the paths of Squires as they progress. But to engage a student that's been raised in an entirely different worldview AND is capable of being critical of the lessons? That's just grinding free XP.
As I said, I'm not against the other guy profiting too as long as we're not being Taken for a Ride. Jerasmus never really gave me that impression though. I think this will be valuable in the end, if only because of having a point of comparison. It's already useful because we can use the Existence of Zeal as a sort of workaround to sort of talk around the fact 'We've got something kinda like it, it's just a pain in the ass to access and you can't explain it to other people until they've gotten it too'
There's a bit of me that's all-to-familiar with the explicit evangelical nature of Christianity that makes me wary that this is part of some very long-term work on Jerasmus and other Mendicants' parts to Convert the Heathen Norsemen, but I heavily doubt that. Besides being a bit too conspiracy-brained, it just doesn't seem to fit within the nature of this quest. I agree that it more likely ties into his method of cultivation, somehow. Whether that be through teaching or some other means.
I think extravagant gifts for those who helped us are more appropriate this year. I'm thinking we do bigger sacrifices next year...I could probably be persuaded to reduce the gift to Halfdan slightly and sacrifice a single Fine Ewe, depending.
If the idea of Norse Cultivation is to make your own Nine Realms it's possible the equivalent of the Bifrost is needed to connect your inner Asgard to your soul, representing Midgard.
I mean, I doubt he has Fine level livestock at all, getting those was portrayed as an event, but I could be wrong. The ram is vastly better than a sheep no matter what though just because in a worst case scenario he can sell it for literally four times as much as one of the sheep of the same quality. It also means we're giving him a full breeding population even if he has no sheep to start with, which is solid. Like, it's only not a great gift if he already has a Fine or higher quality Ram of his own and even then it's a valuable beast for him to sell or gift away in turn.
Speaking of which, his son is also marrying our sister in less than a year and thus setting up his own household, I think...so there's a non-zero chance that he keeps it even if he already has another Fine Ram and gives it (and the other sheep we're giving him) to his son as part of the marriage gifts (like we got a pair of cattle), helping Jordan and Asva's household get set up (which we'd certainly be happy about).
Quality-wise, Basic is as low as it gets, so I don't think we get a lot from sacrificing it (we were told Quality is what mattered there...I feel like even Decent is a little marginal on the sacrifice front honestly), and with only +1 success per turn, a Basic Ox, unlike a Decent one or above, barely pays for its own Fodder (in practice, its +6 successes net between 4 and 8 Fodder depending on details and it consumes 6)...I don't think that's worth it (for us or anyone else). +12 Food isn't super necessary, but the fact it expands our effective Food Storage from 75 to 87 makes it worth doing.
Given that the branches of Yggdrasil are apparently visible for the keen-eyed, but there are still Christians, I'm thinking there's some level of subjectivity to reality in this world. Like how Arda is round to a human but flat to an elf in Lord of the Rings. Or how in American Gods, a shred of belief from hearing a story was enough for someone to be judged by the Egyptian afterlife. So learning how the world works for other people could be very interesting and potentially useful.
Jerasmus is a self-professed wanderer, he's likely fulfilling some personal path with learning from us. Insofar as he's doing conversion, he seems to be leading by example rather than actively evangelizing. True faith is pretty powerful that way.
Hmm, so three energies from three realms join and create the gate(ymir?), opening the gate creates a flood, the flood creates a lake, the lake nourishes plants.
I'd hazard a guess the weaving comes after the harvest of the soul plants?
After the creation of the world, the flooding of the world, and the destruction of a city or two, the Christian Bible seems to be quieting down. For a while the story is very much centered on one guy, Abram.
Abram pretends that his wife is his sister to offer her the protection of blood-kin under foreign customs, but this results in a foreign man trying to marry her.
Abram's followers are numerous enough that he and his nephew Lot agree to split up and settle different valleys to farm with their parts of the... clan? felag? gothord? Jerasmus says "household", but that can't be right, there's hundreds of people following Lot and Abram.
Lot gets captured by one of the kings in a local war, and Abram musters the men of his valley to rescue Lot.
Abram gets a vision that he's going to have many children, and changes his name to Abraham. This is apparently a pun on Odin, because it means something like "All-Father" in the Christian language.
Abraham has family drama between his wife and his maid/concubine over who gets to bear him the first of many children. (He's been childless up to 90!)
"Why is this Abram guy so important?" you ask impatiently. "He never seems to do anything important! He wanders around and has stuff happen to him, and your gods keep promising-"
"One God." says Jerasmus insistently.
"Fine. Your one god keeps promising him that he'll be important but this is longer than a saga and he's been in a fight once, and in court never! I didn't even get to hear about the fight, it was just 'Abram mustered three hundred men and routed the king'. Boooo-ring."
"Bloodthirsty little girl, aren't you?"
"I'm not little!" you say with a scowl. "Answer the question! Why is Abram so important?"
"Father Abraham is the progenitor of the Jewish people, the people of the Old Covenant. It was Abraham who first cut a covenant in blood with the Lord. Abraham was called by the Lord to sacrifice his son Isaac, and his dutiful obedience-"
"Sacrifice? Can we skip to the part with the sacrifice?"
Jerasmus puts up his usual resistance to telling the story out of order, but you sneakily argue that if you're a 'little girl' as he says then surely you don't have the patience to hear every word of the very long Bible, he should tell you the important bits now and the full story when you're an adult. He looks down at the Bible. "Fine, I guess I can skip the bit where Lot's daughters get him drunk so they can do unspeakable things to him."
That's intriguing and you almost regret asking him to skip it, but at the rate this is going, it's probably one disappointing sentence between three chapters of Lot doing bookkeeping.
Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
Then He said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."
Huh. This sounds vaguely familiar for some reason. Is it just the general theme of sacrifice, or is there something more specific? You listen intently as Jerasmus continues to read aloud.
And Isaac said to his father Abraham, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"
Isaac is getting suspicious, and the story is getting interesting. Jerasmus is no skald, but he can do the voices, and what he's reading might have been written by a skald. It's gripping, inevitable yet tense at the same time, the more so for you having your own precious children that you can't stop thinking about. Abraham ties down his son and is about to unleash immense power from sacrifice at the direct command of God, while betraying his family and stepping into nid if the Christians have such a thing (surely killing your own son is something like nid), dealing in wicked magic similar to Horra-
Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
What? You stare slack-jawed at Jerasmus as a dozen questions in your head struggle to be the first out of your mouth. Can he do that? How does that work? Is Abraham this famous for sacrificing one ram that he didn't even bring himself? Is Isaac going to die later in the story since he's still marked for an incomplete sacrifice? What is the relation of Abraham and the Christian god at this point, anyway? What's with the angel? Does Abraham still get nid for trying to kill his own son?
"Why?" is the first word out of your mouth as you try to organize your thoughts. You feel disappointed and cheated. You were promised human sacrifice, like with Odin or the Great Blots, and the Christian god yanks it away at the last moment, instead putting in one measly ram, which is less than what you've sacrificed this year. And once again, the Bible skips over the best part with a single sentence.
"For several reasons: Abraham's devotion, God's testing, God's mercy, and a prefiguration of the last sacrifice that is the Crucifixion. You have worked in the smithy, yes? When you test a piece of iron, you do not want it to break, but you strike it hard enough that it might break if it is poor quality. Similarly, God tests Abraham to the breaking point, where other men might have disobeyed. But God does not wish to see Abraham broken or Isaac dead. A sacrifice is a show of devotion, but it is the devotion that God wants, not the sacrifice in itself. Do you see, Halla?"
Honestly, you don't. Iron sort of works that way, you can temper it a little but mostly you're determining if it's brittle or not. People work the opposite way, they constantly grow in knowledge and power and friendships and wealth, there is no inborn character to be revealed or not, people's character is created in trials and by gaining orthstirr. Jerasmus seems to be talking nonsense. But... maybe Christians work differently? "I'll think about it." you say. Jerasmus looks happy with that, but what you're actually thinking about is whether he's let slip a secret of Christian cultivation. If the Christians look up to Abraham so much, it sounds like they're learning to uncover or use some power that already exists, in contrast to normal people who have to go out and gather orthstirr (and in your case, odr) and create their own legend. It would explain why Christians spend so much time studying, too.
"Oooh, we can use this to double-dip on sacrifices and get favor from two gods for the price of one. Set up a sacrifice to the Christian god, yank it away at the last moment after getting his approval, then go through with the sacrifice to Odin."
Jerasmus: "That's not how it works."
Author's Notes:
Part of this is that I wanted to explore how Halla's Bloodthirst trait might show itself in casual settings. In the 21st century I sometimes hear people complaining that the Bible is violent, but Halla is bloodthirsty and it's implied that's bloodthirsty even by Viking standards, so she might complain that it's not violent enough for her liking.
Part of it is my own free-wheeling cultivation mutterings about cultural differences and overstretched metaphors and baseless speculation.
And part of it is touching on the fact that Christianity has a unique relationship to human sacrifice, which I hope to see mentioned in the main quest at some point.
'Abram mustered three hundred men and routed the king' is Halla's summary of this incident in Genesis 14.
What? You stare slack-jawed at Jerasmus as a dozen questions in your head struggle to be the first out of your mouth. Can he do that? How does that work? Is Abraham this famous for sacrificing one ram that he didn't even bring himself? Is Isaac going to die later in the story since he's still marked for an incomplete sacrifice? What is the relation of Abraham and the Christian god at this point, anyway? What's with the angel?
"Why?" is the first word out of your mouth as you try to organize your thoughts. You feel disappointed and cheated. You were promised human sacrifice, like with Odin or the Great Blots, and the Christian god yanks it away at the last moment, instead putting in one measly ram, which is less than what you've sacrificed this year. And once again, the Bible skips over the best part with a single sentence.
I'm not sure this would be Halla's reaction at all. She'd definitely be in for bloodthirsty war stories and the like, but from all my research, for the Norse, human sacrifice was something you used as a method of execution for criminals or did with people you didn't care about like slaves. I suspect that their general attitude to Abraham agreeing to sacrifice his son would be "What were you thinking? Fuck any God who'd make you a kinslayer like that."
Like, the sacrifice itself would seem just as perverse to the Norse as to modern sensibilities, if for slightly different reasons. They sacrificed people, sure, but not their family members or free men or women of standing.
Yeah, I think the Norse would argue that you shouldn't obey a God who told you to do that as either they're a shitty God (totally possible in Norse metaphysics, after all) or it's actually a trick from some sort of malevolent entity rather than actually being your God (like, how do you know it's not actually Loki playing a trick? You don't).
I'm not sure this would be Halla's reaction at all. She'd definitely be in for bloodthirsty war stories and the like, but from all my research, for the Norse, human sacrifice was something you used as a method of execution for criminals or did with people you didn't care about like slaves. I suspect that their general attitude to Abraham refusing to sacrifice his son if he had done so would be "Good. The proper attitude when asked to harm family. Fuck any God who'd make you a kinslayer like that." Or, since he didn't refuse, to think of him with contempt for caving.
I see your point, I agree that it could certainly go different ways.
My thoughts on it were that Halla recognizes that this would be nid, but she doesn't care as much about how long-dead distant foreigners are behaving, and recognizes that this is an extremely valuable sacrifice that might correspond to great power. It's one of the quest themes that diverges a bit from RL history.
This study presents new cross-disciplinary investigations focusing on three sacrificial well-like structures (47, 50 and 121) from the pre-Christian Viking Age at Trelleborg. Two of the sacrificial wells (47 and 121) included the only skeletal remains of four children hitherto recovered from Danish Viking Age wells. The strontium isotope results of the four children point to local provenance. However, the results of each well seem to pair up in a systematic way pointing to that the children might come from two different key surrounding areas at Trelleborg. Furthermore, the three wells contained animal remains of primarily domestic livestock partly representing consumption waste from either profane or ritual meals deriving from, for example, blót activities.
