Also known as the Konung’s [King’s] Chapel, as it is
patronised by royalty and other notables and is the seat of the Chief Godi of
the cults of the brother-gods Hydana, Pangara, and Sukh. The temple is cut into
a niche at the foot of the plateau upon which Vynheim is built. At high tide,
the sea flows into the temple, covering the floor to between ankle and waist
deep. This fills tidal pools into which worshippers make offerings to Hydana
– anything from simple prayers, to treasures and up to blood sacrifice – which are
carried to the deep on the next tide. The main area of worship is open to the
sky, and the many tunnels and boreholes cut into the sides of the nice channel
the wind. This produces a reassuring sussuration on a day of modest winds, Pangara
whispering confidence to sailors, but on stormy days the temple howls with the
rage of Sukh. Raiders going a-viking will often spend a night singing the
battle song of Sukh before setting to sea.
There other temples, and innumerable shrines, to the
Brothers of Sea and Sky, whether as a triumvirate or as individual gods, but
the Konung’s Chapel is the seat of religious activity for the Northmen of
Vynheim.
[Now I am settling in to my move back to my home village, my brother keeps asking me to run a game. So I will, beginning this weekend, the first of 2016. I will be setting it in Frostholm, the north-east corner of Allansia, a continent on Titan, the Fighting Fantasy world. Trouble is there is little canon to draw on for this part of Titan. Opportunity is that this allows me to cherry pick bits from Mythic Iceland for BRP, Vikings for MRQII, stuff from the TV series Vikings and The Last Kingdom, probably a bit of the Northern Reaches for D&D and the Savage North for OpenQuest, all while adding in the high-but-grotty adventuresome fantasy of Titan. So this is the Frostholm Project, which will cover the area from Sardath in the east to Bjorngrim's Sea in the west, from the Freezeblood Mountains in the north to the Sea of Pearls in the south. And anywhere else the PCs' longships take them.]
