The Great Game : Norway, 1066-1920
The Great Game is an MP AAR intended to span the entire period from 1066 to 1920. There will be wars. There will be intrigues. There will be great rivalries and epic defeats. And, of course, there will be AARs! Hence this thread.
The current players and countries :
The current game year is 1347.
There are now two threads with AARs on this game. The reason is that we are having something of a religious schism : I (along with all right-thinking people) feel that a game of such epic scope should naturally be called the Great Game. This phrase has grandeur and gravitas, and is also associated with diplomatic skullduggery from feuding Romans to 19th-century Afghanistan. On the other hand, Traveler and his heretical band of Greatness-deniers have pulled the name "March Through Time" from, um, somewhere. A ridiculous name, and subtle Communist propaganda to boot, with its reference to Mao's Long March. Plainly, I shall have to crush these people and make them recognise the Great Game as the only proper way to refer to our game.
At any rate, the upshot of all this is that I appear to be the only one posting in this thread. So, in an effort to win friends and influence people, I shall break with the tradition of MP AARs and invite, nay, beg for, comments from the peanut gallery.
It also occurs to me that I should give a quick glossary of terms; while probably familiar to most reader of sagas, that is only a small subset of people.
The Great Game is an MP AAR intended to span the entire period from 1066 to 1920. There will be wars. There will be intrigues. There will be great rivalries and epic defeats. And, of course, there will be AARs! Hence this thread.
The current players and countries :
- Traveler, Courageous King of Italy
- Robtimus Prime, Perfidious King of Burgundy
- Dominus, Just-Recovered King of England
- Sterkarm, Most Catholic King of Poland
- King of Men, Badboy King of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Wends, and the Goths
- Blackeye, Autocratic and Silent Emperor of Byzantium
- Lurken, Most Serene King of Iberia
- Earendilhe, Magyar King of Hungary and most of the Middle East
- Cyrus Was Great, Newly Reborn King of Jerusalem
The current game year is 1347.
There are now two threads with AARs on this game. The reason is that we are having something of a religious schism : I (along with all right-thinking people) feel that a game of such epic scope should naturally be called the Great Game. This phrase has grandeur and gravitas, and is also associated with diplomatic skullduggery from feuding Romans to 19th-century Afghanistan. On the other hand, Traveler and his heretical band of Greatness-deniers have pulled the name "March Through Time" from, um, somewhere. A ridiculous name, and subtle Communist propaganda to boot, with its reference to Mao's Long March. Plainly, I shall have to crush these people and make them recognise the Great Game as the only proper way to refer to our game.
At any rate, the upshot of all this is that I appear to be the only one posting in this thread. So, in an effort to win friends and influence people, I shall break with the tradition of MP AARs and invite, nay, beg for, comments from the peanut gallery.
It also occurs to me that I should give a quick glossary of terms; while probably familiar to most reader of sagas, that is only a small subset of people.
- Scot : Nothing to do with people who inhabit Scotland, but an Old Norse word meaning 'tax' or 'wealth'.
- Hight : Verb meaning 'to be named'. This is the past form.
- Nithing : Adverb meaning 'dishonourable', 'faithless'. Can also be used as a noun meaning 'dishonourable scum'.
- Grid : Mercy, after the jotun (giant) woman who once spared Thor's life when she had him at her mercy.
- Hird : The King's household guard.
- Sea-king : A man of royal blood with a claim to kingship, who rules no more than a few ships, his warband, and whatever ground he happens to be standing on.
- Frill-wives : Concubines, basically, but with some legal rights. A custom that is falling rapidly out of favour with the Christianisation of the country.
- Bonde : Farmer who owns land. Someone who rents it is a 'leilending' or 'husmann'. Implies a reasonable amount of social standing and wealth; the closest thing to a middle class Scandinavia possesses at this time. Expected to maintain weapons and fight in the militia. Plural bønder.
- Fylking : Army, host, the fighting men of a district, a fighting array. In modern Norwegian, the administrative division between cities and the state is called a 'fylke'.
- Miklagard : Constantinople. Literally 'Great City' - well, even more literally, 'Great Farm', but this is 'farm' in the sense of 'the kind of place where the king lives' - an estate, in other words.
- Gardarike : Russia, especially the lands around the great rivers navigable by viking galleys - the Don, the Dvina, the Dniepr, and the Volga. Literally 'land of farms'.
- Hird : The King's personal guard.
- Norns : The fates, very similar to the Greek concept - three sisters who spin a man's life, weave it into history, and snip the thread when he dies. In the Norse version, they sit at the base of Yggdrasil, the World-tree. When you get right down to it, there are an amazing number of similarities between Norse and Greek mythology; which is, I suppose, why people postulate an ancestral Indo-European culture somewhere on the steppes. At least Odin has the decency to delegate the smiting-with-lightning bit to his son; he goes more in for tricking people into dying in glorious battle so he can have more heroes for Ragnarok.
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