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I've kinda been posting out of order. The entirety of the first chapter of my D&D game set in 526 BCE was actually set in the area around the Baltic Sea. Whoops. I just got on a roll with all the Middle Eastern art and didn't want to interrupt my flow XD This first chapter was actually one of the biggest pains in the ass to build. Obviously, this is way too far back for the historical record to account for in that part of the world, which pretty much resigned me to the world of myth. Unfortunately, Norse mythology doesn't really give half a shit about specific dates. Occasionally you'll get an event mentioned that matches the historical record, like how Beowulf's ancestors fought the Franks in the 5th century, and you can… kind of piece together an extremely rough timeline based on what is said to have happened between two points, but it's far beyond an exact science. The Eddas too are notoriously contradictory even within single poems, so they proved to be of little help. Instead, I turned to an even less reliable source… from a historian's perspective at least. Obviously we're already pretty deep in the unreliable pit with stories of giant snakes, eight-legged horses, and a big bearded man bringing lightning down from the sky with his magic hammer.

The narrative for chapter 1 was almost entirely based on a 16th century chronicle written by Swedish Archbishop Johannes Magnus: Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus. This book is the principle foundation for the Swedish monarchy's genealogy. It is the reason why King Carl Gustaf today boasts the ridiculous regnal number of XVI, and the first historically attested King Carl, who lived during the 12th century, is posthumously deemed Carl VII. Johannes Magnus's work is a bizarre mixture of Biblical chronology, mismatched myths from the Eddas, and junk he just entirely made up to fill in the gaping holes in his timeline. It is very clearly not a historical document, but it's the closest thing to proper dates that I was able to dig up, so I decided to roll with the bishop's fantasies. Unfortunately, I could only find a transcription in Latin and a translation into modern Swedish online. Sadly I haven't flexed my Latin muscles since high school, and my Swedish vocabulary is limited to Ikea furniture. So, I had to go through paragraph by paragraph, copy and pasting each line into Google Translate, format it because the copy paste wonked it up a bit, and read it agonizingly slow. Forgive me if some of the information I gathered isn't entirely accurate or lost in translation. The kings I'll be discussing are evidently inventions of Johannes anyways, so historical accuracy has already been defenestrated at least.

The king that Johannes identifies as a contemporary of Cyrus the Great and his heirs was a wicked man named Grimmer. It's unclear what relationship he had to the previous king, Carl (Carl II for all you Carl talliers out there), but the two couldn't have been further opposites. Whereas Carl was a benevolent and level-headed ruler who ruled with a firm but fair hand, Grimmer was just an asshole. And I'm not talking just your run of the mill spoiled shitty king asshole, no. Johannes makes it a point to say that while other princes develop their vices over time, Grimmer was just born that way. He was the kind of kid who liked to torture small animals, and now he was given a crown. Johannes compares him to Dionysios, tyrant of Syracuse, whom he actually says is a contemporary of Grimmer, confusingly. I'm actually pretty sure what's going on here: Johannes Magnus was an average 16th century priest who didn't have modern archaeology to date ancient history, but rather the imperfect chronology of the Bible and whatever the Romans passed down to his library. This is the same reason why the Jewish calendar lists the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians as happening in 420 BCE (heyo), instead of the archaeologically proven date of 586 BCE. Basically some scribe at some point got their dates really, really wrong (obviously because he was far out in the clouds, man) and historians had just kind of rolled with it until the 19th century. Hence why Johannes assumes that Cyrus lived in the 5th century BCE along with Dionysios. That's just my reasoning, though, I haven't seen that proven for this text specifically anywhere. At least in English.

Anyways, Grimmer pretty much spent his entire reign having absolutely no moral standards whatsoever. He looted the famous Temple of Uppsala, which… assuming there was even a historical Temple of Uppsala as described by Adam of Bremen at all, would be extremely anachronistic, but remember Johannes is making this up by the seat of his pants. Grimmer was apparently known to cackle while he ransacked the most sacred site in Heathenry, you know like a super villain. He also raised taxes against the poor and working class, just to add insult to injury, you know like a supervillain. To really round off his super villain checklist, once his war chest was full, he began to enact his conquest of the Tri-State Area. "Behold, Perry the Platypus, the politicinator! One blast from this device will force our neighbors, the Estonians and Curonians, to pay tribute to me because I'm scary and evil!" Unfortunately, Perry the Platypus destroyed the politicinator, and when the aforementioned neighbors saw just how hated Grimmer was by his people, they invaded. Grimmer, super villain, immediately went to lock down his treasury, which is where his enemies found him. They captured him, strung him up by the neck with an iron chain, and worst of all, took all of his shiny money! Oh no! His son Tord was installed on the throne shortly thereafter, and Tord was much unlike his father. He was a just man who cared about his people, but he had a long journey ahead to re-earn their trust in his family.

I may have made up the part about Perry the Platypus.

Design notes, yeaaaahh I don't know what I was going for with this. I guess just generic evil despotic king? He was the final boss of chapter 1 of my campaign, and he was just kind of meant to be a puppet for the bad guy that the party could bully at the end. But yeah, I still feel this could've been better. There is an image of an evil king accompanying Johannes's chapter on Grimmer, but that same image pops up multiple times for other kings, so it's clearly just a generic woodcut the original printers used to cut corners. Maybe it's just the colors I used. They really got away from me, but I was too lazy to fix it, and Grimmer really isn't worth it anyways. He wasn't even a real person, so I don't feel as bad as when I mess up someone who actually existed and has been lucky enough to enter the historical record. And I mean he was kind of a dick anyways, I'm glad my party beat him up and put him in a cage.

Description
I've kinda been posting out of order. The entirety of the first chapter of my D&D game set in 526 BCE was actually set in the area around the Baltic Sea. Whoops. I just got on a roll with all the Middle Eastern art and didn't want to interrupt my flow XD This first chapter was actually one of the biggest pains in the ass to build. Obviously, this is way too far back for the historical record to account for in that part of the world, which pretty much resigned me to the world of myth. Unfortunately, Norse mythology doesn't really give half a shit about specific dates. Occasionally you'll get an event mentioned that matches the historical record, like how Beowulf's ancestors fought the Franks in the 5th century, and you can… kind of piece together an extremely rough timeline based on what is said to have happened between two points, but it's far beyond an exact science. The Eddas too are notoriously contradictory even within single poems, so they proved to be of little help. Instead, I turned to an even less reliable source… from a historian's perspective at least. Obviously we're already pretty deep in the unreliable pit with stories of giant snakes, eight-legged horses, and a big bearded man bringing lightning down from the sky with his magic hammer.

The narrative for chapter 1 was almost entirely based on a 16th century chronicle written by Swedish Archbishop Johannes Magnus: Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus. This book is the principle foundation for the Swedish monarchy's genealogy. It is the reason why King Carl Gustaf today boasts the ridiculous regnal number of XVI, and the first historically attested King Carl, who lived during the 12th century, is posthumously deemed Carl VII. Johannes Magnus's work is a bizarre mixture of Biblical chronology, mismatched myths from the Eddas, and junk he just entirely made up to fill in the gaping holes in his timeline. It is very clearly not a historical document, but it's the closest thing to proper dates that I was able to dig up, so I decided to roll with the bishop's fantasies. Unfortunately, I could only find a transcription in Latin and a translation into modern Swedish online. Sadly I haven't flexed my Latin muscles since high school, and my Swedish vocabulary is limited to Ikea furniture. So, I had to go through paragraph by paragraph, copy and pasting each line into Google Translate, format it because the copy paste wonked it up a bit, and read it agonizingly slow. Forgive me if some of the information I gathered isn't entirely accurate or lost in translation. The kings I'll be discussing are evidently inventions of Johannes anyways, so historical accuracy has already been defenestrated at least.

The king that Johannes identifies as a contemporary of Cyrus the Great and his heirs was a wicked man named Grimmer. It's unclear what relationship he had to the previous king, Carl (Carl II for all you Carl talliers out there), but the two couldn't have been further opposites. Whereas Carl was a benevolent and level-headed ruler who ruled with a firm but fair hand, Grimmer was just an asshole. And I'm not talking just your run of the mill spoiled shitty king asshole, no. Johannes makes it a point to say that while other princes develop their vices over time, Grimmer was just born that way. He was the kind of kid who liked to torture small animals, and now he was given a crown. Johannes compares him to Dionysios, tyrant of Syracuse, whom he actually says is a contemporary of Grimmer, confusingly. I'm actually pretty sure what's going on here: Johannes Magnus was an average 16th century priest who didn't have modern archaeology to date ancient history, but rather the imperfect chronology of the Bible and whatever the Romans passed down to his library. This is the same reason why the Jewish calendar lists the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians as happening in 420 BCE (heyo), instead of the archaeologically proven date of 586 BCE. Basically some scribe at some point got their dates really, really wrong (obviously because he was far out in the clouds, man) and historians had just kind of rolled with it until the 19th century. Hence why Johannes assumes that Cyrus lived in the 5th century BCE along with Dionysios. That's just my reasoning, though, I haven't seen that proven for this text specifically anywhere. At least in English.

Anyways, Grimmer pretty much spent his entire reign having absolutely no moral standards whatsoever. He looted the famous Temple of Uppsala, which… assuming there was even a historical Temple of Uppsala as described by Adam of Bremen at all, would be extremely anachronistic, but remember Johannes is making this up by the seat of his pants. Grimmer was apparently known to cackle while he ransacked the most sacred site in Heathenry, you know like a super villain. He also raised taxes against the poor and working class, just to add insult to injury, you know like a supervillain. To really round off his super villain checklist, once his war chest was full, he began to enact his conquest of the Tri-State Area. "Behold, Perry the Platypus, the politicinator! One blast from this device will force our neighbors, the Estonians and Curonians, to pay tribute to me because I'm scary and evil!" Unfortunately, Perry the Platypus destroyed the politicinator, and when the aforementioned neighbors saw just how hated Grimmer was by his people, they invaded. Grimmer, super villain, immediately went to lock down his treasury, which is where his enemies found him. They captured him, strung him up by the neck with an iron chain, and worst of all, took all of his shiny money! Oh no! His son Tord was installed on the throne shortly thereafter, and Tord was much unlike his father. He was a just man who cared about his people, but he had a long journey ahead to re-earn their trust in his family.

I may have made up the part about Perry the Platypus.

Design notes, yeaaaahh I don't know what I was going for with this. I guess just generic evil despotic king? He was the final boss of chapter 1 of my campaign, and he was just kind of meant to be a puppet for the bad guy that the party could bully at the end. But yeah, I still feel this could've been better. There is an image of an evil king accompanying Johannes's chapter on Grimmer, but that same image pops up multiple times for other kings, so it's clearly just a generic woodcut the original printers used to cut corners. Maybe it's just the colors I used. They really got away from me, but I was too lazy to fix it, and Grimmer really isn't worth it anyways. He wasn't even a real person, so I don't feel as bad as when I mess up someone who actually existed and has been lucky enough to enter the historical record. And I mean he was kind of a dick anyways, I'm glad my party beat him up and put him in a cage.