”The Winter War”
You are all "Northmen" and inhabitants of Heimsted, where your parents, uncles, aunts, etc. owns houses and farms or works for farm owners.
Heimsted is is a small gathering of farms clustering around the first; Heimrs Gård, founded by Heimr and his small clan of Northmen wandering into the area a long time ago; after The Great Plague had devastated the area. Why they left their homes on the other side of Þokufjöll to join their distant kinsmen around Nothwa Rhaglaw, nobody remembers, but it has been their home for more than 300 years.
Near you to the east, and more distant to the north, live the nomadic Hóll-Folk, who- contrasting you- are small of stature, with black hair and brown skin. They subsist on hunting and gathering, and pillage! The coexistance has not always been easy, as neither you nor they have shied away from pillaging and robbing one another. And you are a proud warrior people, while they are tough hunters and wanderers of the wilderness.
The last generation, however, has been peaceful, and they have even visited your village occasionally to barter ironmongery and other finished goods that they cannot produce themselves. You do not trade weapons with them though, just in case.
Far to the west, the Adûn-Folk live in stone houses and castles. They are tall and dark-haired with light skin and eyes and generally fair to behold, but grim and serious to behold. You rarely see them, but occasionally their scouts visit your village; hard men clad in green, brown and grey, armed with warbows and long swords of bright steel, and with an air of violence held in check like a drawn bow, ready to release death at a moment's notice. Despite their smiles, polite speech and sometimes small gifts for you children.
The Adûn-Folk are great smiths, builders and craftsmen; soldiers, sages and kings. But you mostly know them from myths and stories, sagas, rumours and old stone ruins. Even though a few come annually to trade in Nothwa Rhaglaw, where your parents have met their traders. These days nobody travels as far as their realms as the empty lands in between become more and more dangerous; filled with bandits, monsters, Trolls and Orks, but old stories tell of heroes that went to serve them and returned with treasure, arms and armour of magnificient make. Those would come in handy now, for to a larger and larger degree, both you and the Hóll-Folk have to defend against incursions from Orks and trolls, and your elders are furrowing their brows and speaking in low, worried tones in the evenings. Fortunately only one or two Trolls or more than ten Orks, and you yongsters have yet to see any as you are only coming of age, but you hear about them. Old nursery tales also tell of ghosts and wights and fairies; the dance of Elven maidens' feet in midsummer glades and the clanging of Dwarven hammers under the mountains, dragons in the skies and an evil undead Witch King in the icy land of Járnheimar behind the mountains to the north. These are, of course, merely nursery tales to scare children...
Your organisation and technological level is equivalent to historical Iron Age tribal level. Your people weave your own woolen cloth, make iron from bog iron and ceramics for household use, but most of your wool goes to the Adûn-Folk, and from them you get tools, fine, dyed cloth, metalwork, jewelry, weapons, glass and fine ceramics. Your own part-time smith can make and work iron for basic needs, but steel is beyond him and for that you need to go to Nothwa Rhaglaw, where their smith can make pattern-welded steel, and you can buy Adûn-Folk Wootz Steel.
The Hóll-Folk is even more backward and must to a large extent make do with tools and weapons of stone, bone and antlers, and to your knowledge no-one equips them with iron, let alone steel.
Heimrsted
Welcome guest
You are all "Northmen" and inhabitants of Heimsted, where your parents, uncles, aunts, etc. owns houses and farms or works for farm owners.
Heimsted is is a small gathering of farms clustering around the first; Heimrs Gård, founded by Heimr and his small clan of Northmen wandering into the area a long time ago; after The Great Plague had devastated the area. Why they left their homes on the other side of Þokufjöll to join their distant kinsmen around Nothwa Rhaglaw, nobody remembers, but it has been their home for more than 300 years.
Heimsted is is a small gathering of farms clustering around the first; Heimrs Gård, founded by Heimr and his small clan of Northmen wandering into the area a long time ago; after The Great Plague had devastated the area. Why they left their homes on the other side of Þokufjöll to join their distant kinsmen around Nothwa Rhaglaw, nobody remembers, but it has been their home for more than 300 years.
87
men, women and children live in eight farms in Heimrsted. Aslak's is the largest with 17 people, Markward's second largest with 15 and Thrugot's the smallest with 7.
Heimrsted from the west in summer and spring.
Aslak and Kollskegr bids you farewell traveller. Fair journeys
Path to Nothwa Rhaglaw
Hóll-Folk
Near you to the east, and more distant to the north, live the nomadic Hóll-Folk, who- contrasting you- are small of stature, with black hair and brown skin. They subsist on hunting and gathering, and pillage! The coexistance has not always been easy, as neither you nor they have shied away from pillaging and robbing one another. And you are a proud warrior people, while they are tough hunters and wanderers of the wilderness.
Adûn-Folk
Far to the west, the Adûn-Folk live in stone houses and castles. They are tall and dark-haired with light skin and eyes and generally fair to behold, but grim and serious to behold. You rarely see them, but occasionally their scouts visit your village; hard men clad in green, brown and grey, armed with warbows and long swords of bright steel, and with an air of violence held in check like a drawn bow, ready to release death at a moment's notice. Despite their smiles, polite speech and sometimes small gifts for you children.
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