Armchair Historians! Help me flesh out my character!

[Munin]

A Call of Cthulu Dark Ages game is coming up for my group. I'll be playing a brigand of Germanic descent with a military background.

What I need to know is what was going on in the area (northeast Europe) around 982CE; important wars, political upheavals, things like that.

Thanks!

 

[painandgreed]

The region was under the Holy Roman Empire under Otto II and Otto III in 983. In 982 after having fought the French, Polish and Bohemians in previous years, Otto II invaded Italy but was pushed back by Arabs. Go to wikipedia.org and look up "Holy Roman Empire" and "otto".

 

[ajanders]

A Call of Cthulu Dark Ages game is coming up for my group. I'll be playing a brigand of Germanic descent with a military background.

What I need to know is what was going on in the area (northeast Europe) around 982CE; important wars, political upheavals, things like that.

Thanks!

Actually, just do a wiki search on Germany and you should find quite a bit of historical information there. Failing that, go to Will and Ariel Durant's History of Civilization: they're old books, but 982 is hardly recent history.

 

[johnsemlak]

One important general background thing to remember is the importance of feudalism at that time. Power was decentralized. Kings and Emperors existed (like Otto) but in fact they did not have a great deal of control over all the lands formally under them. Power was spread among a large number of small landowners and rulers. Each small fiefdom was generally armed to the teeth in those days.

At the time Europe was still in the process of converting to Christianity. There were still large pockets of paganism, and many villagers were formally Christian but stll practicing pagan rites.

Viking raids were a periodic problem. In general, long overland travel was not safe.

 

[Rabelais]

If you're German and a Soldier Clap your hands...

Ditto the part about the Holy Roman Empire. Plus there's Vikings around, and Aethulwulf was King of England (Great DnD name!)

 

[hong]

Ditto the part about the Holy Roman Empire. Plus there's Vikings around, and Aethulwulf was King of England (Great DnD name!)

I beg to differ. While King of England may not be a bad name for a rock band, it's a terrible D&D name.

 

[Piratecat]

Says you. I'll gladly name a dwarf Kingo Fengland; it sounds kind of cool, actually.

Ahem. Back to the thread.

 

[Munin]

Thanks for the pointers.
I'm thinking about making the character a veteran returning from Otto II's failed invasion of Italy.