Nordheim as Pirates

`lol...alright.

I'm saying Nordheiumers as Pirates is a great idea and leaving it at that... :wink:
 
Yep.



I'm thinking of designing a farmer RPG. I'm going to call it Farms and Scarecrows. The game will consist of fighting lice, ticks, and starvation. Exciting, huh?
 
As to Nordheimer becoming vikings, while it is true that there was no such thing during the early days of Conan, perhaps by the time he becomes king a small group of Nordheimer pirates might have developed.

Take for example, the character Sigurd Redbeard, from the Conan of the Isles pastiche by De Camp and Carter. He was a golden-red tressed Nordheimer from Vanaheim who ran with the Brotherhood of the Barachan Isles alongside Conan. After he and Conan parted ways, he himself left the trade and became a merchant, plying the route between Messantia and Kordava.

Now expand that, and say that perhaps once every couple years, he made the long journey up to Vanaheim to meet with relations and gather mammoth tusks and amber (as someone has mentioned, such might be a reason to trade up north). While there he would bring on distant cousins or locals as sailors, and some of these would, like other adventuring types, eventually take to piracy. During the 20-some years of Conan's rule, more and more Nordheimers of Vanaheim would move back and forth in this way from the civilized south to the barbaric north. Perhaps a small trading village builds up along the Vanaheim coast. Maybe even several, as various Vanir merchants/pirates take to competing with one another. During this generation, and entire new coastal culture develops, trading and raiding up and down the northern coast, from Kordava, along Pictland, and up into Vanaheim. By the time Conan abdicates (if you use Conan of the Isles in your timeline), the trade has made coastal clans quite wealthy, even properous, and the population grows.

Then, wars break out in the south after Conan abdicates — it's all Conan II can do to hold his throne, let alone keep the peace among the various other kingdoms as his father had. No one wants to trade for luxuries like mammoth tusks and amber, or even the strange glittering ice-like crystals from the northern mountains under the aurora. Things get a mite hungry in the coastal clans. The Vanir merchants turn to piracy, and recruit hundreds of Vanir men who no longer have a trade. These pirates alternately raid and trade along the coasts of the south, sometimes hiring themselves out as mercenaries to Zingaran lords or Argossean archons. Pickings might become slim in the war-torn lands, so some of these "vikings," as they become known, start raiding further south, into Pelishtia and Stygia, perhaps even into the Black Kingdoms. In the north, others seek new lans for themselves to the west, where there are legends of ancient island kingdoms and lost continents...

So while during a King Conan campaign, Vanir vikings would be rare, and simply Vanir-heavy pirate groups, in a post-King Conan campaign, Vanir vikings might rule the Western Ocean!
 
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