An RPG set in the Doom of Ragnarök, utilizing Robert J. Schwalb's Shadow of the Demon Lord rules and based in Ian Sharpe's Vikingverse.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Deep Delving with the Dvergar
almost 2 years ago
– Sun, Jul 31, 2022 at 10:06:14 PM
Hello!
I had a great question today from a backer, which deserves a detailed answer. The question was: "Will dvergar always look as alien as on the illustration above?".
I'm going to answer that in a variety of ways, and I hope it helps.
Firstly, we are creating illustrations designed to capture the imagination. Ger (the artist) and I went back on forward on the concepts for the dvergar a lot. I wanted to keep the "beginner" dverg boxy and functional. But it is your game, you can design your character however you wish. The goal here is to take the essence of Norse myth and made it into a playable, and fun, origin. If you want to stick horns on your dverg, you go right ahead.
Secondly, the Origin description excerpted below will doubtless help inform how you design your dverg. And I choose my words carefully there, because designing your "machine-man" is very much like designing a car. In some senses, they are similar to Shadow's Clockwork ancestry. They also have a dash of Replicant and a touch of Marvin, but their inherent Norseness ensures dvergar are considerably more crafty.
Thirdly, as your thread your way through the Vikingverse, you will choose different paths. Origins are just that - a starting point. A dvergar who takes a martial path will adapt, evolve and augment his form until he looks something like this:
Dvergar Path Progression
Machine Men
Designed to provide their masters with slave labour, dvergar range in size and function from rigid-bodied industrial behemoths to minute drones that aid in medical procedures - and everything in between. The first dvergar were assembled centuries ago by the great Langbarð polymath, Lewenhart of Meilangsborg. He built them as war machines, bonding mineral and metal, oil and polymer to give the illusion of life to his mechanical brutes. The devices became especially sought-after during Time of Travels as unquestioning and reliable thralls, able to work in the harsh conditions of the hinterworlds without complaint or injury.
Branching Code
Níu Heimar pioneers experimented with new materials, infusing ironwood, fluid sacs and soft resins into the steel and stone frames. This made the machine men more adaptable, but it inadvertently gave them a degree of sapience. Now linked to the consciousness of Yggdrasil, these accidental engines came to be known as svartálfar or dökkálfar – corrupted, ungainly versions of true álfar, but carrying with them centuries of wisdom.
Artificial Intelligence
The emergence of the dökkálfar terrified the Wise and stifled dvergcraft for over a century. Only with the outrbreak of war did Midgard’s most industrious minds turn their attention back to mechanised labour. The Skuld began to mass produce new models under the direction of High Lector Niði Bohr. These new designs are colloquially known as Bots, a contraction of Bohr’s Thralls.
Dvergar are heavily reliant on memory, continuously reading instructions stored there and executing them as required. The near-omniscient supercomputer MIM provides access to vast amounts of data, allowing dvergr to perform complex computations with great speed, even translating intangible concepts like minni into observable reality.
Tall Stories
Dwarves, like elves, are commonplace in fantasy: despite their small stature, they are tough as nails, boasting big beards and bigger axes. Which makes it more startling that, in the early Norse sources, there is no mention of their being short! The literal smallness of the dwarves was a product of Christianization, earlier texts like the Völuspá mention only that they were the product of the primordial blood of Brimir and the bones of Bláinn; the Prose Edda describes them as maggots that festered in the flesh of Ymir before being gifted with reason by the gods. In When the Wolf Comes, dvergarcomes in all shapes and sizes.
Any Colour You Want
…so long as it is black.
One of the first great dvergar magnates, Heimríkr Fjǫrð, famously said that his customers could have their dvergar in any colour they wanted, as long as it was black - a comment that has defined all subsequent dvergar manufacturing. There is an expediency to this approach: most bots are made almost entirely from mímameiðr, which is notoriously difficult to paint. While there has been a degree of experimentation with other composites and colouration, most designers tend to favour sleek, black boxes that they never go out of fashion. For simplicity, most dvergar have four wheels or a number of continuous tracks.
Once activated, dvergar tend to be dour and dismal. Philosophers have speculated as to whether this is due to ironwood itself or their bleak colouration. Libertarians point out that being purpose built for domestic drudgery hardly inspires the best in the dvergar, but it remains true that they are by nature, treacherous, lustful and vengeful creatures and the device most often returned under warranty.
Dvergar are factories in and of themselves, able to replicate a wide variety of tools and technologies with a high degree of competence. Whether they will actually do so depends on their mood, which is often…dark.
Built-In Obsolescence
Just four decades ago, almost no one owned a personal dverg. Today, nearly everyone is bothered by a truculent black box. To ensure new models sell, dvergar are manufactured with an artificially stunted working life, designed to become obsolete inside five years. After this allotted span, their power supply fails, and their neural networks uploaded to the Evergreen. These short lifespans are often truncated further by violent conflict or extremely hazardous tasks. Given their origins, dvergar are sometimes called (ironically) Longbeards or (pejoratively) Wormfood.
Dvergar Names
Dvergar have runic bar codes stencilled onto their chassis during assembly, which encodes identifying data and allows them to access Evergreen networks. While the bar codes are machine readable, they are incomprehensible to humans without a suitable optical scanner, so most dvergar go by their brand name when in mixed company.
And with that, I'll leave you to your weekends! More on the other Origins next week.
Best,
ISS
The Battle of York
almost 2 years ago
– Fri, Jul 29, 2022 at 12:12:38 PM
A short history lesson, if you will indulge me.
On All Saints Day, November 1st 866, a Viking army led by Halfdan and Ivar the Boneless attacked York.
With many of the town’s leaders likely in the cathedral, it made a surprise attack even more effective. York fell, although the Northumbrian kings Aelle and Osbert escaped.
The Viking army spent the winter on the Tyne and had to recapture York in March 867. This was a more violent clash. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles recorded that there was ‘an excessive slaughter made of the Northumbrians’, whose two kings were, this time, slain on the spot. Halfdan ‘shared out the lands of the Northumbrians and they proceeded to plough and to support themselves’.
Two years later King Alfred of Wessex agreed a truce with Viking king Guthrumwhich saw England divided into the Anglo-Saxon southern kingdom and the Danelaw. The Danelaw under Viking control, included counties north of an imaginary line running from London to Bedford and then up to Chester. It was England’s first north-south divide. A history written 150 years later records how the Viking army ‘rebuilt the city of York, cultivated the land around it, and remained there’. Eoforwic had become Jorvik, and was soon transformed into the capital of a kingdom of the same name, roughly corresponding to Yorkshire today.
Now, fast forward a thousand years or so. In the very same place where Halfdan and Ivar stood is the Jorvik Viking Centre. And in their bookshop, copious copies of Old Norse for Modern Times, the book you can listen to for free as part of this Kickstarter. And that is the power of crowdfunding, and the impact of your pledges. Dots and joined. History, even in some small way, is made.
So, thanks to the 300+ people who are already in this campaign. I look forward to sharing gaming shelves and virtual tabletops in the future with you and saying "We made this!".
Of course, in the Vikingverse - and especially in the short story I am writing for this campaign - some of the history outline above changes. My advice:
Hang on tightly, just to avoid being thrown to the wolves. Haldit fast, svá þit endit eigi í úlfs kiapti
Best,
ISS
Old Norse for Modern Times in the Jorvik Viking Centre
Kasta þú tveggja tigu teningi! Roll20 news
almost 2 years ago
– Thu, Jul 28, 2022 at 03:10:34 AM
Hello!
Some exciting news today. We've just agreed with Roll20 to bring When the Wolf Comes to their Virtual Tabletop as a stretch goal. I am a big fan of online play, ever since the pandemic forced us to gather round a screen rather than a table and have been organizing this in the background for a few weeks.
Because it is a stretch goal, it might be me biting off more than I can chew. That said, this is a game featuring Fenrir on the cover. He consumed the world so swiftly that even the sun was dragged from its zenith and into his stomach. My thinking is to provide a complete Vikingverse package in one fell swoop, rather than keep returning to crowdfunding. It's an investment in a game we hope will run and run. Fortune favours the bold! (Ei komask sóttdauðir til Valhallar!)
So, what does this mean for backers?
The new Stretch Goal will go towards supporting the conversion costs versus paying for unlocking that content for "free" - but Roll20 are looking at ways to help support us in making that an incentive worth going after. We're hoping for discounted digital keys and discussions are underway to see if we can make them completely free for specific pledges. Watch this space!
What about other VTTs like Foundry?
Well, Odin didn't fashion Midgard from Ymir's flesh in a day. If this approach proves a hit, we'll certainly consider it (other VTTs that is, not the wholesale slaughter of progenitor beings).
How can I, [INSERT HEROIC NAME HERE], help?
Feel free to sail to England and extort Danegeld (technically called gafol at the time). Maybe sell a thrall or two. Seriously, I know full well that it isRagnarök out there. There is rampant inflation and a cost-of-living crisis. Eldjötnar keep burning down forests.
Nevertheless, I've been truly humbled by the support from the community, and all I can ask is you keep sounding theGjallarhorn. A lot can be done in two weeks.
In the meantime...
I've made a few tweaks and updates to the Kickstarter page. Go back and have a look, and remember, feedback is a gift.
Have fun storming the castle! Haf þú skemmtan nokkra af atlǫgunni vit kastalann!
Best,
ISS
Origins (Part One)
almost 2 years ago
– Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 12:40:04 AM
Hello!
Today, I wanted to spend a little time exploring Origins. In Shadow, they are called Ancestries (in D&D, Races) but I wanted to be clear that in When the Wolf Comes, they are more of a starting point.
If you have read any interviews about the Vikingverse, or listened to today's RPG Academy podcast (well worth it, if I do say so myself) you'll know that I am trying to forge something both ancient and modern, drawing heavily on myth to fashion an authentic vision of a pagan present.
So, without further ado*, here are the first five in teaser form!
The Dvergar are sentient machines, raised from the bones of worlds and forged into crafty and cunning thralls. The dvergar are programmable, but they are not simple automatons, as many a controller has found to his cost. Their earthy nature and short lifespans make them volatile and unpredictable.
Mannfólk are masters of all they survey. The storied heroes of mannkind once took to the seas in clinker-built vessels of oak and pine, shattering kingdoms and claiming soil with blood. When there were no more lands to conquer, they sought out the cosmos, in living, breathing ships, grown from the same stock as Yggdrasil.
The Jöfurr are a breed apart, an emergent race of super-rich tycoons and jet-set jarls who style themselves “the New Gods”. Most jöfurr are wildly rich and totally conceited, referring disparagingly to mortals who can’t afford rejuvenation as “Dayflies”.
The Sons (and daughters!) of Ivaldi are a close-knit family of corporate apparatchiks, who eagerly pursue immortality. Eschewing the eternal youth granted by Iðunn’s Apples, they instead upload their consciousness to custom built bodies. Their "swarm intelligence" amplifies each individual’s brainpower - large groups can aggregate data and predict an event outcome with far more accuracy than any given individual.
Wanes are an archaic offshoot of mannkind, also known as the “tree-touched” or álf-kin. Possessed of a deep and timeless connection to Yggdrasil, they wandered the Níu Heimar long before the Time of Travels, only to forfeit their unique culture with the arrival of Imperial settlers. Wanes can draw on ancestral memories, using the resonance to quickly adapt to situations.
* a phrase of Old Norse origin, which used at with the infinitive + do. Vikings get everywhere.
San Diego Fire!
almost 2 years ago
– Sat, Jul 23, 2022 at 09:33:50 PM
Hello!
I am sure everyone saw all the trailers and news coming out of San Diego Comic Con over the past few days. What a glorious time to be alive!
We've also hit 250 backers and the third stretch goal, which is truly stupendous. Thanks once again for taking your spot in the shield wall.
Now, as you may know, one of the aims of the Vikingverse is to "reverse engineer" fantasy tropes - to explore their DNA so to speak. With all the Rings of Power buzz this week, I wanted to provide an example of what I mean.
"Balrogs" arguably existed long before Tolkien ; in Norse myth: an epithet of Odin was Báleygr, "fire-eyed".
Tolkien wrote that Grendel, the beast of Beowulf, was "physical enough in form and power, but vaguely felt as belonging to a different order of being, one allied to the malevolent 'ghosts' of the dead".
Compare this with Aragorn's description of the Balrog as "both a shadow and a flame, strong and terrible".
It is notable that fire jötunn Surtr carries both a sword and a sviga laevi, etymologically something akin to the Balrog's flaming whip.
So, what does all that mean for When the Wolf Comes?
You shall not pass! Eigi skal hjá ganga!
To me, the most revealing phrase (from a man who was a professional philologist) is "a different order of being, one allied to the malevolent 'ghosts' of the dead". Think about that for a second. This isn't purely a creature of health and hit points, this is something that exists outside the world we know - but one that the Norse took for granted.
Accordingly, ancestors, spirits and the multi-part soul are a critical component of the game, both in the Bestiary and Player Character origins. I'll be providing some detail on those Origins next week. Stay tuned!
San Diego Comic Con rather devoured all the news cycles this week, but there is a short interview on EN World that is worthy of a tweet or share. I am happy to dialogue over on our Discord server.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to destroy Jotunheim. Má ek hafa mig á brott. Mér esnauðsyn á at leggja Jǫtunheim í eyði.
