Vossheim
Vossheim is a land of black water and white mountains, where longship clans carve their names into the ice and the gods are close enough to bargain with. The great mead-hall of Hjaltfjord rules a fragile peace among the fjord-jarls, while draugr stir in the barrow-mounds, jötunn brood in the high glaciers, and a southern empire's galleys probe the coast for plunder and converts. At the world-tree shrine the seers read a single doom in every rune: Fimbulwinter, the long winter that ends all winters, is coming — and beneath the frozen sea, the world-serpent has begun to turn in its sleep. Swear your oaths carefully here. In Vossheim, the dead remember every one you break.
Rules of Reality
An Oath Is a Chain
Words sworn over iron, fire or a god's name bind the soul as surely as a rope binds a beast. Keep your oaths and the Norns favour your thread; break them and your luck curdles, your blade dulls at the worst moment, and the barrow-dead mark you as one of their own. Oath-breakers die badly in Vossheim, and worse afterward.
The Barrows Do Not Forget
The mighty dead are buried with their gold, their weapons and their grudges, and they do not let go of any of them. Disturb a barrow and the draugr within rises — swollen, cold-strong, and hungry to drag the living down into the dark with their hoard. The gold is real. So is the price.
Runes Hold Power
Carved true and reddened with blood or will, runes can bind wounds, still storms, or curse a foe's whole line. But a rune carved wrong is worse than none — it turns its meaning inside out, and many a proud skald has cursed the very thing he meant to bless. Only the seers carve the great runes, and they charge dearly.
The Winter Is Coming
Fimbulwinter, the doom-winter foretold at the world-tree, draws nearer with every shortened day. The crops fail a little more each year, the jötunn descend a little lower, and the sea-ice creeps a little further south. Every clan feels it in their stores and their bones — the long dark that ends the age of men.
Hospitality of the Hearth
A guest given bread and a place at the fire is sacred while the fire burns, and to harm them is the blackest of crimes. But the guest owes the hall a tale, a song, or a deed in turn — to take a jarl's salt and give nothing back marks you as a beggar or a spy, and the doors of every hall close after.
Species & Powers
Humans
The longship clans of Vossheim — hardy, oath-bound and proud, raiders and farmers and skalds who measure a life by the songs it leaves behind. They fear the gods just enough to bargain with them and the winter not at all.
Jötunn
The frost-giants of the high glaciers, old as the mountains and slow as the ice that birthed them. Some are mindless storms of hunger; others are ancient and cunning, keepers of grudges older than any clan. As Fimbulwinter nears, they come down from the heights for the first time in a thousand years.
Draugr
The barrow-dead, the mighty who would not stay buried — corpse-grey, cold-strong and swollen with hoarded malice. They guard their gold past death and rise to drag the living down, and the greatest of them rule whole barrow-fields like grim kings of bone.
Dverga (Dwarves)
The deep-smiths of the under-halls, master rune-forgers who shaped treasures the gods themselves covet. Greedy, brilliant and bound by their own iron-clad bargains, they trade rune-steel to those who can pay and curse those who cheat them. The only things they fear are an unpaid debt and the dark below their deepest hall.
Frost-Trolls
Lumbering, stone-hided horrors of the night woods and high passes, turned to rock by sunlight and roused to ravenous cunning by the dark. As the days shorten under Fimbulwinter, they grow bolder, and lone travelers learn to count the hours of light like coins.
Key Locations
Hjaltfjord
The great mead-hall capital of Vossheim, its longhouses crowding the head of a black-water fjord beneath the High Jarl's hall of gilded antler and oak. Here the clan-oaths are sworn, the war-musters called, and the songs of the dead and living sung against the gathering dark. Every jarl in the land keeps an ear and an enemy within its walls.
The Yggsoul Shrine
The sacred grove of the world-tree, where a single colossal ash older than the clans holds the worlds apart and the seers read the runes of doom in its falling leaves. Pilgrims hang oaths and offerings from its lowest boughs; the Imperatum burns every such shrine it can reach, and this is the last great one standing.
The Barrow-Howe
A grim field of burial mounds along the eastern moor, ruled by the draugr-king Olvir Oath-Breaker and his court of the dishonoured dead. Its barrows brim with the gold of a hundred fallen heroes and the malice of every one of them; tomb-robbers go in poor and brave and come out rich, dead, or worse.
The Jötunheim Glaciers
The towering ice-fields of the high north, ancient home of the frost-giants and now emptying toward the fjords as something drives the jötunn down. Crevasses swallow whole war-bands, frost-trolls den in the night-shadowed passes, and the few who climb high enough swear they hear the doom-winter being born up there.
The Frozen Sea
The vast white sheet of ice that locks the southern waters, beneath which the world-serpent sleeps in its god-rune binding. The Fjordfolk keep the ice thick with offering and oath, but it has begun to groan and crack far from any thaw, and serpent-runes appear on the shore-stones overnight. What turns below is not turning gently.
Durinhall, the Deep-Forge
The greatest of the dverga under-kingdoms, a city of ringing anvils and rune-lit halls bored into the eastern mountain-root. Its smiths trade rune-steel and forged wonders to the surface for gold and binding oaths — but lately they bar their lowest gates, for something has begun to stir in the dark beneath even their deepest forge.
The Stormwrack Coast
A jagged shore of wrecked keels and raider-beacons strung between the mead-hall fjord and the frozen sea, where the Frostmaw Reavers and the Imperatum's galleys both make landfall to burn and steal. Its beacon-fires warn the inland clans of black sails, and its tide-pools hide the bones of every fleet that misjudged the rocks.
History
The Age of the World-Forging
The world's first dawn
The Tree Takes Root — When the first frost met the first fire, the world-tree Yggsoul rose to hold the worlds apart, its roots in the deep dark and its crown in the cold stars. The Fjordfolk say they were carved from its first fallen branch, and that its leaves count the days until the long winter.
The world's first dawn
The Serpent Bound Beneath the Ice — The world-serpent that would one day swallow the world was cast down into the deepest sea and frozen there by the gods' last great rune, sleeping until the doom-winter should free it. The Fjordfolk keep the ice thick with offering and oath; the Children of the Serpent labour to break it.
The Age of Oaths
Six generations past
The Mead-Hall Compact — After a century of clan-feuds reddened every fjord, the surviving jarls swore the Mead-Hall Compact over a shared horn at Hjaltfjord, binding their war-bands beneath a single High Jarl against the giants and the winter. The peace it bought is thin and old, but it has never quite broken.
Four generations past
The First Galleys — The Imperatum's longboats first beached on the southern shores, burning a world-tree shrine and dragging a clan into slavery before the fjords even knew the empire's name. The clans answered with fire of their own, and the long raiding-war between north and south began.
Two generations past
The Reaving of King Olvir — King Olvir Oath-Breaker betrayed the Compact for the Imperatum's gold, and when he died his barrow would not hold him — he rose as the greatest draugr in Vossheim, ruling the Barrow-Howe with a court of the oath-broken dead. His curse is still cited whenever a jarl is tempted south.
The Gathering Dark
The last few winters
The Giants Come Down — For the first time in a thousand years the jötunn have descended from the high glaciers, driven down by something even they flee, and frost-trolls range bolder in the shortening days. The seers name it plainly: Fimbulwinter has begun, and the high places are emptying toward the fjords.
This very season
The Ice Grows Thin — Fishers report the frozen sea groaning and cracking far from any thaw, and serpent-runes have appeared carved into the coastal barrow-stones overnight. As the High Jarl musters the clans against the southern galleys, the Children of the Serpent work in the dark to free the thing beneath the ice — and the world-tree sheds its leaves faster than ever.