Introduction
Born to Breed: House of the Prophets
featuring the Sigurdr dynasty
in a world gone mad
- An Introduction of Sorts -
featuring the Sigurdr dynasty
in a world gone mad
- An Introduction of Sorts -
Karmavision, January 1st 2119
Joining us tonight for a short interview about his upcoming book is somebody who needs no introduction, but for the benefit of any viewer who has been in seclusion the last few years, I give you one anyway.
AUDIENCE: LAUGHTER
I present to you the winner of the 2115 and 2116 MSR awards, of the 2117 MLR award, last man standing on last season of the reality show Real Princes of Asia, author of the bestselling self-help book, “Inbreeding is how you get the best racehorses”, the world famous descendant of prophets, his serenity prince Sigurd af Sigurdr of Isfahan.
AUDIENCE: APPLAUSE
Sigurd – may I call you Sigurd?
Om.
Thanks. Your upcoming book, “Born to Breed: House of the Prophets”, is shrouded in secrecy, but I understand that it is a history of sorts rather than a new book on the marital arts, and it has been strongly hinted by your publisher that you will be drawing on confidential dynasty records to present a scandalous and/or modern take on the traditional authorized telling. Would you care to comment?
Your understanding is wrong. It is not a history, but historical fiction, a collection of educational tales written for the edification of youth, that happens to feature historical people, many but not all of whom are my ancestors, members of my house, or other members of the dynasty.
That certainly puts a different complexion on it. One thing I particularly liked about your last book were the instructional illustrations and the selfies taken by your wives. Dare I ask?
There will be illustrations, but not of that sort.
I guess your fans will just have to wait for a sequel when you are up to it, right?
AUDIENCE: LAUGHTER
But back to your forthcoming book, you said that it was for the edification of youth. Would you care to give an example?
Assuredly so. I take you are familiar with the history of the third prophet Sigurd, praise be, he of the Snake-in-the-Eye?
Candidly speaking, history in my school mostly covered post-enlightenment empire, but that tale was covered and it is not one to forget. “How the young pigs would grunt if they heard how the boar suffered” etc. The northern conquest laying the foundation to empire and so on and so forth. Loved that one, even if I wondered as a child where the king got all those venomous snakes. Hardly something to find lying around in England, let alone in somebody's eye.
Yes, that is the one tale everybody knows, and to answer your childhood fascination, according to surviving records from the Ivaring investigation, the snakes were imported. And the one in Sigurd's eye, praise be, was a sign of his cosmic significance. As you were undoubtedly taught. But there are other tales about him, such as the tale of the Courtship of Sigurd.
Errr. I was probably thinking about snakes when that was covered.
AUDIENCE: SNIGGERS
Relax, this isn't an examination. The official tale of the Courtship of Sigurd, blessed his name, is that first he married the daughter of the king who killed his father Ragnarr, and that upon her death at much too young an age he first grieved bitterly, then he travelled the world and wooed the fairest of maidens in the courts of Europe, even in the heart of Christendom itself, dancing with them at balls, giving them gifts, singing the falalala song beneath their balconies, and then marrying them and taking them back to Denmark so be seated beside him as queens in his great hall in Lejre.
Rousing stuff, no doubt, but not all there is to it, you say?
Well, for one thing while Sigurd, in his mortal role as hand of the one-eyed, was the king who brought women's liberation to the world by freeing the weaker sex from the ancient bonds of concubinage to become true wives, honoured and respected by all, that was something he accomplished near the end of his long life, not as a youth. For another marriage between a non-Christian and a Christian was forbidden by the Christian church.
Fascinating; I am not an expert on dead religions, but that is really interesting. Why would they mix religion and marriage? Strange people, am I right?
For a third, the idea that a northern tribal lord, no matter how powerful, would spend his time travelling Europe attending parties for years on end without being deposed is ridiculous. For the fourth, the idea that he would marry the daughter of the king who killed his father is rather far-fetched for somebody, who didn't stay in England where it might have been useful to consolidate his rule, doesn't it?
A bit.
And as for his concubines being the fairest of maidens in Europe, that's probably poetic license. The family records make clear that he had other priorities.
Would this be the secret records of the Sigurdr dynasty you are talking about?
If you can call a collection of runestones that is in public display but few people apart from historians and priests bother to visit a secret, I guess it is. You do know what a runestone is, I hope?
Sure, it is a stone. With runes. People used to write on them before the printing press.
They stopped a bit earlier than that. Runestone records were mostly phased out in favour of paper during the early 10th century despite spirited arguments at the time that runestones made for more persistent storage, but were still used for royal proclamations. They were left in place until near the end of the reign of king Gormr 'the Blood-Father', who apparently thought they cluttered the landscape and ordered every runestone to be collected and properly filed for the permanent record. Surely you must have learned this in school! Those runestones include the birth certificate of empire!
I may or may not have been paying attention. But I'm definitely going to see them now! Sounds utterly fascinating, a saga writ in stone. Where did king Gormr file them?
He was apparently a literal man, so they were initially filed in Wiltshire, England, next to Stonehenge. When he later moved the capital to Cairo, they were refiled next to the Pyramids in Gizeh, where they still stand to this very day.
How utterly riveting. To get back to your point, do I understand you right that Sigurd left a runestone about his courtship practices and priorities?
More or less. Runestone 327, a majestic three-sided stone raised in his old age, says on its largest side:
King Sigurd ordered this stone made in memory of Yeldem, Gertruda, Iacoba, Irmele, and Skuld. They were his women. That Sigurd who won for himself all of Denmark, Norway, and England and reformed the faith. The second and smaller side is covered by images, and on the third and smallest side it says: Know secret of Odin. Brains before brawn. Brawn before beauty. Plough daily. King Sigurd was born to breed. That's where part of the title of my book comes from, you see.
What do the images show?
Let's just say that some things seem to run in the family.
Thank you, Sigurd. And on that perfect note our time is up, so say it with me.
Are you serene?
AUDIENCE: WE ARE SERENE!
We'll be back after the news. Today's headlines:
- King of Hellas claims mantra shortage to blame for forest fires
- Hardened criminals in Vinland rob bank without apologizing
- Unrest in Cairo as the count's slippers spontaneously catch fire. Is witchcraft afoot?
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Crusader Kings 1.3.1 with Northern Lords, slightly modded
Posting will be infrequent and erratic.
My goal is to continue playing until I get bored or there is an update to the game that spoils my adventures
It originated as a thought experiment. I usually have a specific set of overall goals for my AAR games, but beyond that the story follows the gameplay. What if I were to write an AAR where the gameplay flowed from the story rather than, as is usual, the reverse? How would I go about doing that? And would it make for a good or a bad fit?
When I got CK3 this spring I realized I had an excellent platform for the experiment. Write a story outline with prophets and other major characters at key points in the development of a realm, filling in the details of what each character must achieve through his life – and then play the game, with any character theoretically able to meet the next milestone in the story attempting to achieve it. So House of the Prophets goes story outline => gameplay => AAR based on gameplay.
There's plenty of room for reacting to developments in the game - it is a quite broad outline apart from the key achievements of major characters - but it imposes interesting and ever changing constraints on my play depending on which ruler I am playing, which is great fun.
And I did an abandoned CK2 AAR game, Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures, which unfortunately had to be abandoned after only nine chapters due to work, so with the Northern DLC dropping.... well, the choice of starting ruler was obvious to this Dane.
I played a short 150 year test game before I began the AAR to get a feeling for the norse DLC gameplay, and then I sat down to write the general outline for House of the Prophets, drawing on lessons learned and introducing new twists. Then I began a new Sigurdr game, and this is the game played out in the AAR.
So when e.g. I introduce Gormr the Blood Father in the introduction, who moved the permanent runestone record to the pyramids after he moved the capital to Cairo, that is because my story outline calls for it, not because the game has already been played, and my task when playing is to ensure that this comes to be. And it will - I'll just need to engineer the election of somebody named Gormr at the appropriate time when the decision can be taken. Hasn't happened yet, but it should be easy.
I try not to play too far ahead of the AAR writing, as that has been known to kill some of my AARs in the past, so most events described in the AAR happening decades later than a given AAR entry covers have not actually been played at the time of writing, but it is my goal to make them come to pass no matter how ridiculous things I have to do to achieve them.
(This spoiler explanation was added during the writing of the Sverker Diaries, which was the first time that the story outline vs. actual gameplay was tested, hard. It will not be the last.)
When I got CK3 this spring I realized I had an excellent platform for the experiment. Write a story outline with prophets and other major characters at key points in the development of a realm, filling in the details of what each character must achieve through his life – and then play the game, with any character theoretically able to meet the next milestone in the story attempting to achieve it. So House of the Prophets goes story outline => gameplay => AAR based on gameplay.
There's plenty of room for reacting to developments in the game - it is a quite broad outline apart from the key achievements of major characters - but it imposes interesting and ever changing constraints on my play depending on which ruler I am playing, which is great fun.
And I did an abandoned CK2 AAR game, Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures, which unfortunately had to be abandoned after only nine chapters due to work, so with the Northern DLC dropping.... well, the choice of starting ruler was obvious to this Dane.
I played a short 150 year test game before I began the AAR to get a feeling for the norse DLC gameplay, and then I sat down to write the general outline for House of the Prophets, drawing on lessons learned and introducing new twists. Then I began a new Sigurdr game, and this is the game played out in the AAR.
So when e.g. I introduce Gormr the Blood Father in the introduction, who moved the permanent runestone record to the pyramids after he moved the capital to Cairo, that is because my story outline calls for it, not because the game has already been played, and my task when playing is to ensure that this comes to be. And it will - I'll just need to engineer the election of somebody named Gormr at the appropriate time when the decision can be taken. Hasn't happened yet, but it should be easy.
I try not to play too far ahead of the AAR writing, as that has been known to kill some of my AARs in the past, so most events described in the AAR happening decades later than a given AAR entry covers have not actually been played at the time of writing, but it is my goal to make them come to pass no matter how ridiculous things I have to do to achieve them.
(This spoiler explanation was added during the writing of the Sverker Diaries, which was the first time that the story outline vs. actual gameplay was tested, hard. It will not be the last.)
EDIT: Regarding the warnings in the title. After I got access to the barbershop mod, I got creative. But not that creative. It is mostly healthy clean fun for the whole family. In fact, keeping it in the family is very much a theme of this AAR, as it is of Crusader Kings in general. One would think that would make it even more family friendly when so few strangers are involved each generation. But I digress. Short version: There are a few pictures that might theoretically offend in inhibited societies like South Arabia, Iran, or the United States and the occasional explicit diary entry, but it is rather tame stuff. Sigurd af Sigurd writes in the tradition of ribaldry, not porn.
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