Week 2 - Vikings
Outdoors, day. You are in a market in the Viking city of JórvÃk In the ninth century. You pass a stall selling horned helmets. A member of your group whispers to you “I wouldn’t buy one of them. if I were you. The armour class is terrible. Strictly for ceremonial use only”.
Walking further through the market, you come across one of the most implausible of RPG clichés, the magic item vendor. She is speaking in Old Norse “biargrunar … meginrunar …” but switches to English when you arrive. As she speaks you realise she is Susan wearing a Viking outfit. “Runes to carve on your sword hilt … runes to aid childbirth … something for everybody…”
You say, “I’ve played one of these games before. Aren’t you supposed to give us a quest or something?” She fetches a scroll from underneath her table and unrolls it. You have some difficulty in reading the words, as it appears to be in the Runic script. And besides, you have a suspicion that “corp por” was not actually an Old Norse word.
Tasks for week 2:
- See some text in a script that in not the script of your first language - 5 points
[list]
[]The script is Runic, or a reasonable approximation to it. +15 points
[/:m]
[*]See a horned helmet - 10 points
-
And wear it - + 15 points
[/:m]
[]Drink from a drinking horn - 10 points[/:m]
[]See a Viking longship - 10 points[/:m]
[]See one of more dream characters in Viking costume, or a reasonable approximation of it - 10 points (NB: can potentially be combined with the horned helmet task)[/:m]
[]Attend a Viking festival - 15 points[/:m]
[]Cast a spell (hey, we’re not being historically authentic here) - 5 points -
Cast a spell using Runes somehow, e.g. by reading them, painting them on something, dropping paper inscribed with them in a dream character’s mead, etc. - +15 points. I will allow this even if the Runes aren’t in quite the right character set for the Viking era (e.g. I will allow kanji). - +15 points
[/*:m][/list:u]