Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, and The Companions of Arthur for Pendragon, Sagas of the North is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Iceland the other lands that the Vikings travelled to. It enables creators to sell their own original content for use with Age of Vikings. This can be original scenarios, background material, alternate Icelandic settings, and more, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Vikings Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Age of Vikings campaigns.
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It is a full colour, twenty-six page, 15.37 MB PDF.
The layout is tidy, but it does need an edit in places.
Where is the Saga set?
The Fróðá Wonders takes place in and around the Vatnsendi farm owned by Ásmundur, near Lake Vesturhóp in northern Iceland. It takes place over the Yule period.
Who should be the subject of this Saga?
Any type of Player Character can take part in this sage. At least one Player Character with good Mythic skills, such as Second Sight and being able to cast the Runes, is recommended, but a diverse range of skills is better than focused ones.
It is written to be played by beginning Player Characters. The only limit on the scenario is the time of year at which it is set, but that can easily be changed.
What does the Saga require?
The Fróðá Wonders only requires the Age of Vikings core rulebook.
Where will the Vikings go in this Saga?
The Fróðá Wonders is a story of broken social obligations and their consequences. The goði, Snorri Þorgrímsson, has received a message from his sister asking for his help. She lives in the isolated valley of Fróðá, known for its storms and as a place where the spirits are said to walk. Her message tells him that the omens of late have not been good. There has been blood on the hay, her farmhands are ill or walk strangely, the sheep do not bleat. She believes that her pride has got the better of her. Snorri Þorgrímsson asks the Player Characters to travel to Fróðá to help his sister, and to investigate and resolve the situation.
What is interesting about The Fróðá Wonders is that the Player Characters start the adventure more or less knowing what has happened. Their investigation and around the farmstead is more a matter of confirming, whether by looking around or talking to the NPCs, that Snorri Þorgrímsson’s sister’s assessment is correct. In effect, there is no actual mystery here, though some of the NPCs still have their secrets that they will be reluctant to reveal. Careful questioning or surveillance will be the best means of revealing them. The lack of a mystery might be disconcerting for some players, the confirmation process will enable their characters to move onto resolving the situation. This requires the Player Characters to apply the laws of the mortal world to the supernatural world and ideally, this should culminate in a ritual in which the draugar, the walking dead, are named and banished whilst at the same time identifying the crimes committed by the men and women of the farmstead.
A handy set of appendices in turn list all of the clues, their origins and connections, detail the ritual that the Player Characters must perform at the climax of the scenario, and give a useful pronunciation guide. In general, The Fróðá Wonders is a decent little scenario, but its information is not so much poorly presented as overly presented. The nature of the crimes and their timeline is presented more than once and this gets in the way, making it just that bit harder for the Game Master to really grasp the information and move on to the next section she needs.
What will the Skalds sing of this Saga?
Playable in a single session, The Fróðá Wonders is a good scenario and achieves what it sets out to do, which is to explore the consequences of violating spiritual and social obligations, on both the living and the dead. As such it has some unsettling moments and some great scenes at the end with the situation is resolved, again for both the living and the dead. However, The Fróðá Wonders is overwritten and repetitive and this hampers what should have been relatively simple and straightforward scenario that emphasises social obligation and the horror that results in not fulfilling that obligation.
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