A bit of history, for those who care...

[Wlodowiec]

As I wrote a couple of times I decided to give this scenario a different shape and setting compared to most of the other 1200/1300ish scenarios we had. Here the players are thrown directly in the Early Middle Ages and as someone understood I wanted to base most of this scenario on what happened in Italy (and around it) from the 6th to the first millenia A.D. 

The Vlandians are based on the central germanic populations who formed their first kingdoms within the borders of the old Western Roman Empire such as goths, franks, suebians, burgunds but above all Lombards, where I drew most of the organization in Krenn from (gasindi, gastalds, skuldheis..). 

Most of the names of the nobility has been taken directly from old lombard names, the scuffles of the Dukes within the kingdom also represent the weakness which the lombard kingdom suffered, where an elective monarchy always struggled to keep the dukes at their place by limiting their large autonomies. 

The Jelkalan war is, to some extent, the Gothic War that has been fought in Italy by the Byzantine Empire against the Ostrogothic Kingdom in which the Ostrogoths at the end lost after almost 20 years of war that left the peninsula on its knees. Even if here the "germanic population" (the vlandians) is the one attacking, conquering, and winning, we wanted to represent a war that engaged most of the continent, with fighters from all across Europe (Prochopius wrote that Huns, Slavs, Lombards were hired by the Empire to fight against the Ostrogoths allied with Franks, Burgunds and Alamans) where both the parts fought 'till the last man. A war that forged the identity of the survivors in order for them to bind together. According to almost every reliable historian of the period, the Gothic Wars have been one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of our peninsula, even if it's - still today - one of the least known. Procopius accounts tell us that, even if exagerating, the italian peninsula after that war was in miserable conditions: its urban structure was severely damaged, the population decimated, the crops in the fields died in such numbers that the common folk was forced to eat the grass on the earth or die of starvation. 

There are many more historical "easter eggs" as you might have guessed in this scenario such as the Patarìa, the Khuzait invasion, and so on...

However, who were the Lombards/Longobards? 

The Lombards were a central-germanic people with scandinavian origins dated back to the I century BC. At the times they were called "Winnili" and used to dwell in southern Sweden but then, as the Goths did, decided to migrate south for uncertain reasons reaching the baltic coast. It took almost 600 years to reach Italy, where they eventually settled after wiping the remaining byzantine garrisons and the few roman aristocrats left.  

Once landed in Northern Germany the Winnili took a new name and became "Longobards", literally "long beards". Not much is known about them and their past at this stage, latin sources tell us that they took part in the germanic confederation who fought against the romans with Arminius in the Battle of Teutoburg, Tacitus refers as them as an "aggressive, northern suebian tribe", and Paul the Diacon writes that the Lombards used to terrorise their neighbors by employing warriors with dogs-heads in battle, probably a reference for the shamanic warrior-beasts that we will later know during the viking age as berserkr or ulfhednars. The Beowulf, that contains hundreds of years of old-germanic memories, also tells us about a lombard scandinavian king by the name of "Sceafa", however this source is not often taken in account by the historians as we go deeper in the ancient germanic legends and tales that have been probably changed many times while shared through the generations centuries before being written on paper. 


Lombard migration throughout the centuries

One of the most fascinating things about the Lombards/Longobards is that, unlike the Franks but as the Goths, they have an ancient tale of their origins that has been told orally for centuries untill it was written down in the Origo Gentis Longobardorum and then in the Historia Longobardorum by Paul the Deacon (Paul Warnefried). Paul describes the legend of the name-change of the Winnili in the Historia as a "silly story" and tells about the tribe fighting the Vandals and gaining victory by the will of Odin who therefore gave them a new name "Longobards". 
If you want to read the Historia Longobardorum in english wrote by Paul the Deacon you can do it here, although this link may not work: www.thule-italia.org/Nordica/Paul%20the%20Deacon%20-%20History%20of%20the%20Lombards%20(1907)%20[EN].pdf?lbisphpreq=1 

"The Winnili then, having departed from Scandinavia with their leaders Ibor and Aio, and coming into the region which is called Scoringa, settled there for some years. At that time Ambri and Assi, leaders of the Wandals, were coercing all the neighboring by war. Already elated by many victories they sent messengers to the Winnili to tell them that they should either pay tribute to the Wandals or make ready for the struggles of war. Then Ibor and Aio, with the approval of their mother Gambara, determine that it is better to maintain liberty by arms than to stain it by the payment of tribute. They send word to the Wandals by messengers that they will rather fight than be slaves. The Winnili were then all in the flower of their youth, but were very few in number since they had been only the third part of one island of no great size. At this point, the men of old tell a silly story that the Wandals coming to Godan (Wotan) besought him for victory over the Winnili and that he answered that he would give the victory to those whom he saw first at sunrise; that then Gambara went to Frea (Freja) wife of Godan and asked for victory for the Winnili, and that Frea gave her counsel that the women of the Winnili should take down their hair and arrange it upon the face like a beard, and that in the early morning they should be present with their husbands and in like manner station themselves to be seen by Godan from the quarter in which he had been wont to look through his window toward the east. And so it was done. And when Godan saw them at sunrise he said: "Who are these long-beards?" And then Frea induced him to give the victory to those to whom he had given the name. And thus Godan gave the victory to the Winnili. These things are worthy of laughter and are to be held of no account. For victory is due, not to the power of men, but it is rather furnished from heaven." 

From Paul Deacon, Historia Longobardorum. 

The story contains some very archaic symbolism, as Odins decision to grant victory to those he saw at dawn, that I'm not able to interpret properly, but the most surprising thing about the tale is the ease used by Paul (A lombard catholic monk that saw the Lombard Kingdom falling to Charles the Great) to describe an old pagan legend made centuries before. When the Lombards arrived in Italy they were in fact followers of the arian heresy, while part of them were still openly pagan. To better understand this, the reader must know that the Lombards, unlike the Ostrogoths or the Franks used to live on the very edge of the civilized world, their aristocracy wasnt educated in some byzantine palace as King Theoderic of the Ostrogoths, and they did not want to assimilate with the romans when they first entered in Italy. The Lombards have been in contact with many barbarian people of Eastern Europe at the times such as the Huns/Avars from which they learned the cavalry warfare and from which they took most parts of their equipment such as the avar helmets and the lamellar armors that they kept using for at least another century in Italy. 



In the meantime, the Ostrogoths in Italy...

Some decades before entering Italy, the Lombards were living in Pannonia and were waging war against the Gepids (a gothic people). Again Paul the Deacon in the Historia Longobardorum describes the Lombards/Longobards as a people who idolised valour above all things, with champions dining with the rival tribe and of enemy kings heads made as cups to drink wine (yeah, this sounds very Warband memeish). As most of the germanic people of that period the Lombards used to work as mercenaries. The Eastern Roman Empire employed them both against the Sasanids and against the Ostrogoths in Italy. Thanks to some archeological findings we're mostly sure Byzantium placed Lombard garrisons in Orvieto, Calabria and Sicily. 

In Italy the Ostrogoths were ruling since the 5th century; arrived under the wise guidance of King Theoderic (Thiudareiks, in gothic) the Great decades before the war, they're far from being described as "barbarians", having lived for generations within the borders of the Empire in the Balkans as "foederati". Theoderic himself grew up in Byzantium at the Imperial Court where he was also made patrician and adopted as son by the Emperor Zenone. Italy lived a long period of peace and prosperity under the rule of Theoderic that, with the Empires support, kicked the Heruls which with their chief Odoacer (a germanic general of northern-germanic/hunnic origins) deposed Romul Augustulus last Western Emperor. As always, all the good things dont last longer and when Theoderic became old he also started to imagine plots made by the roman aristocracy (who actually loved him as a legitimate western Emperor) and by his close friend and philosoph Severinus Boetius, who was writing the "De Consolatione Philosophiae" in small country-church just at the back of my actual house. The anti-gothich resentment started to grow among the roman aristocracy and the imperial court in Byzantium. Once King Theoderic died, the Ostrogoths killed his wife Amalasunta mainly due to her simpathy towards the romans. The "Amaling" dinasty, the most prestigious dinasty among the gothic peoples died with Atalaric, the young son of Theoderic. The Amaling dinasty is today remembered by Jordanes and by Viking sagas written centuries after the gothic wars in Scandinavia, it's one of the oldest germanic dinasties ever recorded, with its first ancestors going back of centuries before, right at the legendary tale of the first progenitor of the germanic peoples.  


King Theoderics the Great mausoleum and grave in Ravenna, his capital.

The Emperor in Byzantium used Amalasunta's death as a Casus Belli to send Belisarius with an army in Italy to fight against the Ostrogoths.  

The war against the Ostrogoths saw a first phase where Belisarius managed to clearly emerge victorious against the enemies of the Empire. However, Emperor Justinians greed made him call Belisarius back to the Eastern front against the Sasanids because he was afraid the general was planning to take back Italy for himself. At that point, Totila "The Immortal" was made new King by the Ostrogoths and managed to gain many new important victories for the Ostrogoths while allies from the other sides of the Alps such as Burgunds, Alamans and Franks were storming in Italy in order to aid the Ostrogoths against the Empire. Teia eventually died and was defeated by Narses, a general eunuch from Byzantium that also managed to defeat the last gothic king, Teia in a battle at their capital, Ravenna. The Gothic War lasted 20 years and the Empire had to drain all its wealth to fund the campaigns in Italy while he also had to pay the Sasanids at East to not wage war against the eastern provinces of the Empire. Belisarius and Narses, in order to defeat the Ostrogoths and their allies from all over the other barbarian kingdoms, had to employ large groups of Huns, Lombards, Heruls, Maurii, Anatolian natives and Slavs from the Balkans. At the end of the war, Italy was devastated and Justinian decided to apply the Corpus Iuris Civilis (the latin law) on Italy as well. 


The Arrival of the Lombards

Twenty years later, the Lombards, left Pannonia for different reasons and decided to invade Italy. Procopius tells us that Narses, to betray the Emperor, invited the Lombards in Italy to settle down, while Paul the Deacon instead tells us that the Lombards, having noticed that Italy was now unguarded and weak, thought that it was time to leave their lands to the Avars and find a new land where to settle. Alboin, King of the Lombards, crossed the Alps and managed to slowly conquer most of the northern italian cities where he placed all his Dukes in them, he brought along his people large groups of Saxons, Gepids, Avars, Alamans, Bulgars and Slavs. The Lombards arrived as conquerors and immediatly started to remove the old roman landowner-aristocracy and apply the germanic law. Byzantium was too weakened to engage in another war but still managed to keep some part of Italy under its control, such as Rome, Ravenna, part of the Appennines, southern Apulia, southern Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia. Part of these lands will be slowly erosed by the Lombards during the years after their arrival.  They took the city of "Ticinum" and called it "Pavia", making the city the capital of all their kings: now Pavia, at 1 hour from my house, is a nice medieval and universitarian city on the river Ticino.

The Lombard society was organized around the Fare (singular, Fara. Clans) and each fara had the right to appoint a "Dux" that would have ruled above his subjects. The Lombard monarchy has always been very weak compared to the frankish one due to the excessive amount of freedom the lombard Duci had. The Lombard monarchy was also elective, the King was elected among the Dukes and only the most respected and strong was chosen to be the King of the Lombards. Among the most illustrious lombard kings we name King Rothari, who made one of the very first written germanic law codes where we can clearly see the lombard culture slowly mixing with the latin base; although, even if just nominally, the mixed marriages under Rothari (first half of the 7th century) were still prohibited. 


- Green: Lombards
- Yellow: Byzantines

During the first half of the 7th century the Lombards were converted to catholicism and abandoned the arian heresy that caused much of the negative historical accounts from the Church and the Byzantines. The Lombards were therefore made catholics by the Queen Theodolinda which also crafted the famous "Iron Crown of Lombardy" that has been used by every monarch (Charles the Great and Napoleon included) to rule over Italy. Today the Iron Crown is safely kept in the Cathedral of Monza, north of Milan and it is said it was forged with one of the nails used on Christ's Cross.


The Iron Crown of Lombardy.

However, the greatest among the lombard kings was King Liutprand (ring a bell?), that almost managed to conquer the rest of Italy even reaching the walls of Rome, where he decided to spare the Pope and grant him the castle of Sutri. During his long reign as king, Liutprand gradually extended the boundaries of the kingdom and the extent of Lombard power making the Kingdom of the Lombards the most important power in Europe alongside the Empire, even outrunning the Franks, that were too busy quelling palace uprisings of the first pipinids. 

The Lombard Kingdom was eventually conquered by Charles the Great at the end of the 8th century, when Charles defeated King Desiderious and his son Adelchis in a mountain pass in Piemonte. The reasons of the conquest of Charles the Great was directly linked with the aggressive expansion led by King Liutprand and Desiderio on former lands associated with the Pope who felt himself threatened by the growing power of the Lombards and therefore decided to call Charles of the Franks to take care of the Lombards. The reason of the defeat of the Lombards are many, but the first reason is to be traced back to the large autonomy the Dukes enjoyed: some of them, in fact, did not even join the royal army in defense of their king. Especially the Dukes of Southern Italy (Duchy of Spoleto e Benevento) were most of the times considered almost completely indipendent. Ironically these two duchies survived Charles the Great conquest and managed to live on for few more centuries. The Duchy of Spoleto ended up being annexed by the Pope while the Duchy of Benevento prospered for some time but eventually was divided in two parts (Benevento and Salerno) to be then absorbed by the Normans after the first millennia.  


Lombard historical reenactors. One lamellar is made of steel while the other is made of leather, they're Matteo and Leonardo credits go to @hellvargar

However, the legacy of the Lombards was destined to survive their kingdom. Even under Charles the Great and his offspring, the people of northern Italy kept calling themselves "Lombards". The onomastics of the High Middle Ages in Northern Italy was almost completely of lombard origins and we have traces of "lombard" magistrates such as the "gastalds" surviving even untill the 17th century in northern Italy. The same organization and structure of the first northern-italian cities was based around the assembly of the freemen (arimanni) made around the lombard "gairethinx", where the warriors used to beat their spears on their shields as sign of approval.  Friederich Barbarossa, centuries after Charles the Great, still described the Lombards as a warlike people, used to fight their same neighbours.

In modern times, Lombards history have been minimized and mistreated by the Fascism and by nationalistic zealots because of the struggle for some italians to identify part of our history as not-latin. Today, even the most leftists professors are still heavily influenced by the old academic views who saw all the germanic people as uncivilized and barbarian. The fault in this logic is to perceive the italian identity as "latin" while during the roman times an italian identity did not even exist and during the lombards the byzantines were already heavily influenced by the greek culture and the cultural/political distance perceived by many of the byzantines dukes in Italy made in order for them to pass to the lombard side in certain historical occurrences such as for the iconoclast revolts in the Empire during the 8th century. During the last years there has been a rediscovery of the Lombards mainly due to the popular culture the fairly superiority of the northern italians, books, music and else.

Ironically, Rome today is a shithole while Lombardy has the highest GDP in Europe, eat-shit terroni merdosi

[Deleted]

first

[Deleted]

Apr 10, 2019 21:17:55 GMT Wlodowiec said:

As I wrote a couple of times I decided to give this scenario a different shape and setting compared to most of the other 1200/1300ish scenarios we had. Here the players are thrown directly in the Early Middle Ages and as someone understood I wanted to base most of this scenario on what happened in Italy (and around it) from the 6th to the first millenia A.D. 

The Vlandians are based on the central germanic populations who formed their first kingdoms within the borders of the old Western Roman Empire such as goths, franks, suebians, burgunds but above all Lombards, where I drew most of the organization in Krenn from (gasindi, gastalds, skuldheis..). 

Most of the names of the nobility has been taken directly from old lombard names, the scuffles of the Dukes within the kingdom also represent the weakness which the lombard kingdom suffered, where an elective monarchy always struggled to keep the dukes at their place by limiting their large autonomies. 

The Jelkalan war is, to some extent, the Gothic War that has been fought in Italy by the Byzantine Empire against the Ostrogothic Kingdom in which the Ostrogoths at the end lost after almost 20 years of war that left the peninsula on its knees. Even if here the "germanic population" (the vlandians) is the one attacking, conquering, and winning, we wanted to represent a war that engaged most of the continent, with fighters from all across Europe (Prochopius wrote that Huns, Slavs, Lombards were hired by the Empire to fight against the Ostrogoths allied with Franks, Burgunds and Alamans) where both the parts fought 'till the last man. A war that forged the identity of the survivors in order for them to bind together. According to almost every reliable historian of the period, the Gothic Wars have been one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of our peninsula, even if it's - still today - one of the least known. Procopius accounts tell us that, even if exagerating, the italian peninsula after that war was in miserable conditions: its urban structure was severely damaged, the population decimated, the crops in the fields died in such numbers that the common folk was forced to eat the grass on the earth or die of starvation. 

There are many more historical "easter eggs" as you might have guessed in this scenario such as the Patarìa, the Khuzait invasion, and so on...

However, who were the Lombards/Longobards? 

The Lombards were a central-germanic people with scandinavian origins dated back to the I century BC. At the times they were called "Winnili" and used to dwell in southern Sweden but then, as the Goths did, decided to migrate south for uncertain reasons reaching the baltic coast. It took almost 600 years to reach Italy, where they eventually settled after wiping the remaining byzantine garrisons and the few roman aristocrats left.  

Once landed in Northern Germany the Winnili took a new name and became "Longobards", literally "long beards". Not much is known about them and their past at this stage, latin sources tell us that they took part in the germanic confederation who fought against the romans with Arminius in the Battle of Teutoburg, Tacitus refers as them as an "aggressive, northern suebian tribe", and Paul the Diacon writes that the Lombards used to terrorise their neighbors by employing warriors with dogs-heads in battle, probably a reference for the shamanic warrior-beasts that we will later know during the viking age as berserkr or ulfhednars. The Beowulf, that contains hundreds of years of old-germanic memories, also tells us about a lombard scandinavian king by the name of "Sceafa", however this source is not often taken in account by the historians as we go deeper in the ancient germanic legends and tales that have been probably changed many times while shared through the generations centuries before being written on paper. 


Lombard migration throughout the centuries

One of the most fascinating things about the Lombards/Longobards is that, unlike the Franks but as the Goths, they have an ancient tale of their origins that has been told orally for centuries untill it was written down in the Origo Gentis Longobardorum and then in the Historia Longobardorum by Paul the Deacon (Paul Warnefried). Paul describes the legend of the name-change of the Winnili in the Historia as a "silly story" and tells about the tribe fighting the Vandals and gaining victory by the will of Odin who therefore gave them a new name "Longobards". 
If you want to read the Historia Longobardorum in english wrote by Paul the Deacon you can do it here, although this link may not work: www.thule-italia.org/Nordica/Paul%20the%20Deacon%20-%20History%20of%20the%20Lombards%20(1907)%20[EN].pdf?lbisphpreq=1 

"The Winnili then, having departed from Scandinavia with their leaders Ibor and Aio, and coming into the region which is called Scoringa, settled there for some years. At that time Ambri and Assi, leaders of the Wandals, were coercing all the neighboring by war. Already elated by many victories they sent messengers to the Winnili to tell them that they should either pay tribute to the Wandals or make ready for the struggles of war. Then Ibor and Aio, with the approval of their mother Gambara, determine that it is better to maintain liberty by arms than to stain it by the payment of tribute. They send word to the Wandals by messengers that they will rather fight than be slaves. The Winnili were then all in the flower of their youth, but were very few in number since they had been only the third part of one island of no great size. At this point, the men of old tell a silly story that the Wandals coming to Godan (Wotan) besought him for victory over the Winnili and that he answered that he would give the victory to those whom he saw first at sunrise; that then Gambara went to Frea (Freja) wife of Godan and asked for victory for the Winnili, and that Frea gave her counsel that the women of the Winnili should take down their hair and arrange it upon the face like a beard, and that in the early morning they should be present with their husbands and in like manner station themselves to be seen by Godan from the quarter in which he had been wont to look through his window toward the east. And so it was done. And when Godan saw them at sunrise he said: "Who are these long-beards?" And then Frea induced him to give the victory to those to whom he had given the name. And thus Godan gave the victory to the Winnili. These things are worthy of laughter and are to be held of no account. For victory is due, not to the power of men, but it is rather furnished from heaven." 

From Paul Deacon, Historia Longobardorum. 

The story contains some very archaic symbolism, as Odins decision to grant victory to those he saw at dawn, that I'm not able to interpret properly, but the most surprising thing about the tale is the ease used by Paul (A lombard catholic monk that saw the Lombard Kingdom falling to Charles the Great) to describe an old pagan legend made centuries before. When the Lombards arrived in Italy they were in fact followers of the arian heresy, while part of them were still openly pagan. To better understand this, the reader must know that the Lombards, unlike the Ostrogoths or the Franks used to live on the very edge of the civilized world, their aristocracy wasnt educated in some byzantine palace as King Theoderic of the Ostrogoths, and they did not want to assimilate with the romans when they first entered in Italy. The Lombards have been in contact with many barbarian people of Eastern Europe at the times such as the Huns/Avars from which they learned the cavalry warfare and from which they took most parts of their equipment such as the avar helmets and the lamellar armors that they kept using for at least another century in Italy. 



In the meantime, the Ostrogoths in Italy...

Some decades before entering Italy, the Lombards were living in Pannonia and were waging war against the Gepids (a gothic people). Again Paul the Deacon in the Historia Longobardorum describes the Lombards/Longobards as a people who idolised valour above all things, with champions dining with the rival tribe and of enemy kings heads made as cups to drink wine (yeah, this sounds very Warband memeish). As most of the germanic people of that period the Lombards used to work as mercenaries. The Eastern Roman Empire employed them both against the Sasanids and against the Ostrogoths in Italy. Thanks to some archeological findings we're mostly sure Byzantium placed Lombard garrisons in Orvieto, Calabria and Sicily. 

In Italy the Ostrogoths were ruling since the 5th century; arrived under the wise guidance of King Theoderic (Thiudareiks, in gothic) the Great decades before the war, they're far from being described as "barbarians", having lived for generations within the borders of the Empire in the Balkans as "foederati". Theoderic himself grew up in Byzantium at the Imperial Court where he was also made patrician and adopted as son by the Emperor Zenone. Italy lived a long period of peace and prosperity under the rule of Theoderic that, with the Empires support, kicked the Heruls which with their chief Odoacer (a germanic general of northern-germanic/hunnic origins) deposed Romul Augustulus last Western Emperor. As always, all the good things dont last longer and when Theoderic became old he also started to imagine plots made by the roman aristocracy (who actually loved him as a legitimate western Emperor) and by his close friend and philosoph Severinus Boetius, who was writing the "De Consolatione Philosophiae" in small country-church just at the back of my actual house. The anti-gothich resentment started to grow among the roman aristocracy and the imperial court in Byzantium. Once King Theoderic died, the Ostrogoths killed his wife Amalasunta mainly due to her simpathy towards the romans. The "Amaling" dinasty, the most prestigious dinasty among the gothic peoples died with Atalaric, the young son of Theoderic. The Amaling dinasty is today remembered by Jordanes and by Viking sagas written centuries after the gothic wars in Scandinavia, it's one of the oldest germanic dinasties ever recorded, with its first ancestors going back of centuries before, right at the legendary tale of the first progenitor of the germanic peoples.  


King Theoderics the Great mausoleum and grave in Ravenna, his capital.

The Emperor in Byzantium used Amalasunta's death as a Casus Belli to send Belisarius with an army in Italy to fight against the Ostrogoths.  

The war against the Ostrogoths saw a first phase where Belisarius managed to clearly emerge victorious against the enemies of the Empire. However, Emperor Justinians greed made him call Belisarius back to the Eastern front against the Sasanids because he was afraid the general was planning to take back Italy for himself. At that point, Totila "The Immortal" was made new King by the Ostrogoths and managed to gain many new important victories for the Ostrogoths while allies from the other sides of the Alps such as Burgunds, Alamans and Franks were storming in Italy in order to aid the Ostrogoths against the Empire. Teia eventually died and was defeated by Narses, a general eunuch from Byzantium that also managed to defeat the last gothic king, Teia in a battle at their capital, Ravenna. The Gothic War lasted 20 years and the Empire had to drain all its wealth to fund the campaigns in Italy while he also had to pay the Sasanids at East to not wage war against the eastern provinces of the Empire. Belisarius and Narses, in order to defeat the Ostrogoths and their allies from all over the other barbarian kingdoms, had to employ large groups of Huns, Lombards, Heruls, Maurii, Anatolian natives and Slavs from the Balkans. At the end of the war, Italy was devastated and Justinian decided to apply the Corpus Iuris Civilis (the latin law) on Italy as well. 


The Arrival of the Lombards

Twenty years later, the Lombards, left Pannonia for different reasons and decided to invade Italy. Procopius tells us that Narses, to betray the Emperor, invited the Lombards in Italy to settle down, while Paul the Deacon instead tells us that the Lombards, having noticed that Italy was now unguarded and weak, thought that it was time to leave their lands to the Avars and find a new land where to settle. Alboin, King of the Lombards, crossed the Alps and managed to slowly conquer most of the northern italian cities where he placed all his Dukes in them, he brought along his people large groups of Saxons, Gepids, Avars, Alamans, Bulgars and Slavs. The Lombards arrived as conquerors and immediatly started to remove the old roman landowner-aristocracy and apply the germanic law. Byzantium was too weakened to engage in another war but still managed to keep some part of Italy under its control, such as Rome, Ravenna, part of the Appennines, southern Apulia, southern Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia. Part of these lands will be slowly erosed by the Lombards during the years after their arrival.  They took the city of "Ticinum" and called it "Pavia", making the city the capital of all their kings: now Pavia, at 1 hour from my house, is a nice medieval and universitarian city on the river Ticino.

The Lombard society was organized around the Fare (singular, Fara. Clans) and each fara had the right to appoint a "Dux" that would have ruled above his subjects. The Lombard monarchy has always been very weak compared to the frankish one due to the excessive amount of freedom the lombard Duci had. The Lombard monarchy was also elective, the King was elected among the Dukes and only the most respected and strong was chosen to be the King of the Lombards. Among the most illustrious lombard kings we name King Rothari, who made one of the very first written germanic law codes where we can clearly see the lombard culture slowly mixing with the latin base; although, even if just nominally, the mixed marriages under Rothari (first half of the 7th century) were still prohibited. 


- Green: Lombards
- Yellow: Byzantines

During the first half of the 7th century the Lombards were converted to catholicism and abandoned the arian heresy that caused much of the negative historical accounts from the Church and the Byzantines. The Lombards were therefore made catholics by the Queen Theodolinda which also crafted the famous "Iron Crown of Lombardy" that has been used by every monarch (Charles the Great and Napoleon included) to rule over Italy. Today the Iron Crown is safely kept in the Cathedral of Monza, north of Milan and it is said it was forged with one of the nails used on Christ's Cross.


The Iron Crown of Lombardy.

However, the greatest among the lombard kings was King Liutprand (ring a bell?), that almost managed to conquer the rest of Italy even reaching the walls of Rome, where he decided to spare the Pope and grant him the castle of Sutri. During his long reign as king, Liutprand gradually extended the boundaries of the kingdom and the extent of Lombard power making the Kingdom of the Lombards the most important power in Europe alongside the Empire, even outrunning the Franks, that were too busy quelling palace uprisings of the first pipinids. 

The Lombard Kingdom was eventually conquered by Charles the Great at the end of the 8th century, when Charles defeated King Desiderious and his son Adelchis in a mountain pass in Piemonte. The reasons of the conquest of Charles the Great was directly linked with the aggressive expansion led by King Liutprand and Desiderio on former lands associated with the Pope who felt himself threatened by the growing power of the Lombards and therefore decided to call Charles of the Franks to take care of the Lombards. The reason of the defeat of the Lombards are many, but the first reason is to be traced back to the large autonomy the Dukes enjoyed: some of them, in fact, did not even join the royal army in defense of their king. Especially the Dukes of Southern Italy (Duchy of Spoleto e Benevento) were most of the times considered almost completely indipendent. Ironically these two duchies survived Charles the Great conquest and managed to live on for few more centuries. The Duchy of Spoleto ended up being annexed by the Pope while the Duchy of Benevento prospered for some time but eventually was divided in two parts (Benevento and Salerno) to be then absorbed by the Normans after the first millennia.  


Lombard historical reenactors. One lamellar is made of steel while the other is made of leather, they're Matteo and Leonardo credits go to @hellvargar

However, the legacy of the Lombards was destined to survive their kingdom. Even under Charles the Great and his offspring, the people of northern Italy kept calling themselves "Lombards". The onomastics of the High Middle Ages in Northern Italy was almost completely of lombard origins and we have traces of "lombard" magistrates such as the "gastalds" surviving even untill the 17th century in northern Italy. The same organization and structure of the first northern-italian cities was based around the assembly of the freemen (arimanni) made around the lombard "gairethinx", where the warriors used to beat their spears on their shields as sign of approval.  Friederich Barbarossa, centuries after Charles the Great, still described the Lombards as a warlike people, used to fight their same neighbours.

In modern times, Lombards history have been minimized and mistreated by the Fascism and by nationalistic zealots because of the struggle for some italians to identify part of our history as not-latin. Today, even the most leftists professors are still heavily influenced by the old academic views who saw all the germanic people as uncivilized and barbarian. The fault in this logic is to perceive the italian identity as "latin" while during the roman times an italian identity did not even exist and during the lombards the byzantines were already heavily influenced by the greek culture and the cultural/political distance perceived by many of the byzantines dukes in Italy made in order for them to pass to the lombard side in certain historical occurrences such as for the iconoclast revolts in the Empire during the 8th century. During the last years there has been a rediscovery of the Lombards mainly due to the popular culture the fairly superiority of the northern italians, books, music and else.

Ironically, Rome today is a shithole while Lombardy has the highest GDP in Europe, eat-shit terroni merdosi

How long did this take? 

btw lombardy is shit hole lol, north-rhine westphalia has higher gdp xddddd

[Pac]

Apr 10, 2019 21:17:55 GMT Wlodowiec said:

As I wrote a couple of times I decided to give this scenario a different shape and setting compared to most of the other 1200/1300ish scenarios we had. Here the players are thrown directly in the Early Middle Ages and as someone understood I wanted to base most of this scenario on what happened in Italy (and around it) from the 6th to the first millenia A.D. 

The Vlandians are based on the central germanic populations who formed their first kingdoms within the borders of the old Western Roman Empire such as goths, franks, suebians, burgunds but above all Lombards, where I drew most of the organization in Krenn from (gasindi, gastalds, skuldheis..). 

Most of the names of the nobility has been taken directly from old lombard names, the scuffles of the Dukes within the kingdom also represent the weakness which the lombard kingdom suffered, where an elective monarchy always struggled to keep the dukes at their place by limiting their large autonomies. 

The Jelkalan war is, to some extent, the Gothic War that has been fought in Italy by the Byzantine Empire against the Ostrogothic Kingdom in which the Ostrogoths at the end lost after almost 20 years of war that left the peninsula on its knees. Even if here the "germanic population" (the vlandians) is the one attacking, conquering, and winning, we wanted to represent a war that engaged most of the continent, with fighters from all across Europe (Prochopius wrote that Huns, Slavs, Lombards were hired by the Empire to fight against the Ostrogoths allied with Franks, Burgunds and Alamans) where both the parts fought 'till the last man. A war that forged the identity of the survivors in order for them to bind together. According to almost every reliable historian of the period, the Gothic Wars have been one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of our peninsula, even if it's - still today - one of the least known. Procopius accounts tell us that, even if exagerating, the italian peninsula after that war was in miserable conditions: its urban structure was severely damaged, the population decimated, the crops in the fields died in such numbers that the common folk was forced to eat the grass on the earth or die of starvation. 

There are many more historical "easter eggs" as you might have guessed in this scenario such as the Patarìa, the Khuzait invasion, and so on...

However, who were the Lombards/Longobards? 

The Lombards were a central-germanic people with scandinavian origins dated back to the I century BC. At the times they were called "Winnili" and used to dwell in southern Sweden but then, as the Goths did, decided to migrate south for uncertain reasons reaching the baltic coast. It took almost 600 years to reach Italy, where they eventually settled after wiping the remaining byzantine garrisons and the few roman aristocrats left.  

Once landed in Northern Germany the Winnili took a new name and became "Longobards", literally "long beards". Not much is known about them and their past at this stage, latin sources tell us that they took part in the germanic confederation who fought against the romans with Arminius in the Battle of Teutoburg, Tacitus refers as them as an "aggressive, northern suebian tribe", and Paul the Diacon writes that the Lombards used to terrorise their neighbors by employing warriors with dogs-heads in battle, probably a reference for the shamanic warrior-beasts that we will later know during the viking age as berserkr or ulfhednars. The Beowulf, that contains hundreds of years of old-germanic memories, also tells us about a lombard scandinavian king by the name of "Sceafa", however this source is not often taken in account by the historians as we go deeper in the ancient germanic legends and tales that have been probably changed many times while shared through the generations centuries before being written on paper. 


Lombard migration throughout the centuries

One of the most fascinating things about the Lombards/Longobards is that, unlike the Franks but as the Goths, they have an ancient tale of their origins that has been told orally for centuries untill it was written down in the Origo Gentis Longobardorum and then in the Historia Longobardorum by Paul the Deacon (Paul Warnefried). Paul describes the legend of the name-change of the Winnili in the Historia as a "silly story" and tells about the tribe fighting the Vandals and gaining victory by the will of Odin who therefore gave them a new name "Longobards". 
If you want to read the Historia Longobardorum in english wrote by Paul the Deacon you can do it here, although this link may not work: www.thule-italia.org/Nordica/Paul%20the%20Deacon%20-%20History%20of%20the%20Lombards%20(1907)%20[EN].pdf?lbisphpreq=1 

"The Winnili then, having departed from Scandinavia with their leaders Ibor and Aio, and coming into the region which is called Scoringa, settled there for some years. At that time Ambri and Assi, leaders of the Wandals, were coercing all the neighboring by war. Already elated by many victories they sent messengers to the Winnili to tell them that they should either pay tribute to the Wandals or make ready for the struggles of war. Then Ibor and Aio, with the approval of their mother Gambara, determine that it is better to maintain liberty by arms than to stain it by the payment of tribute. They send word to the Wandals by messengers that they will rather fight than be slaves. The Winnili were then all in the flower of their youth, but were very few in number since they had been only the third part of one island of no great size. At this point, the men of old tell a silly story that the Wandals coming to Godan (Wotan) besought him for victory over the Winnili and that he answered that he would give the victory to those whom he saw first at sunrise; that then Gambara went to Frea (Freja) wife of Godan and asked for victory for the Winnili, and that Frea gave her counsel that the women of the Winnili should take down their hair and arrange it upon the face like a beard, and that in the early morning they should be present with their husbands and in like manner station themselves to be seen by Godan from the quarter in which he had been wont to look through his window toward the east. And so it was done. And when Godan saw them at sunrise he said: "Who are these long-beards?" And then Frea induced him to give the victory to those to whom he had given the name. And thus Godan gave the victory to the Winnili. These things are worthy of laughter and are to be held of no account. For victory is due, not to the power of men, but it is rather furnished from heaven." 

From Paul Deacon, Historia Longobardorum. 

The story contains some very archaic symbolism, as Odins decision to grant victory to those he saw at dawn, that I'm not able to interpret properly, but the most surprising thing about the tale is the ease used by Paul (A lombard catholic monk that saw the Lombard Kingdom falling to Charles the Great) to describe an old pagan legend made centuries before. When the Lombards arrived in Italy they were in fact followers of the arian heresy, while part of them were still openly pagan. To better understand this, the reader must know that the Lombards, unlike the Ostrogoths or the Franks used to live on the very edge of the civilized world, their aristocracy wasnt educated in some byzantine palace as King Theoderic of the Ostrogoths, and they did not want to assimilate with the romans when they first entered in Italy. The Lombards have been in contact with many barbarian people of Eastern Europe at the times such as the Huns/Avars from which they learned the cavalry warfare and from which they took most parts of their equipment such as the avar helmets and the lamellar armors that they kept using for at least another century in Italy. 



In the meantime, the Ostrogoths in Italy...

Some decades before entering Italy, the Lombards were living in Pannonia and were waging war against the Gepids (a gothic people). Again Paul the Deacon in the Historia Longobardorum describes the Lombards/Longobards as a people who idolised valour above all things, with champions dining with the rival tribe and of enemy kings heads made as cups to drink wine (yeah, this sounds very Warband memeish). As most of the germanic people of that period the Lombards used to work as mercenaries. The Eastern Roman Empire employed them both against the Sasanids and against the Ostrogoths in Italy. Thanks to some archeological findings we're mostly sure Byzantium placed Lombard garrisons in Orvieto, Calabria and Sicily. 

In Italy the Ostrogoths were ruling since the 5th century; arrived under the wise guidance of King Theoderic (Thiudareiks, in gothic) the Great decades before the war, they're far from being described as "barbarians", having lived for generations within the borders of the Empire in the Balkans as "foederati". Theoderic himself grew up in Byzantium at the Imperial Court where he was also made patrician and adopted as son by the Emperor Zenone. Italy lived a long period of peace and prosperity under the rule of Theoderic that, with the Empires support, kicked the Heruls which with their chief Odoacer (a germanic general of northern-germanic/hunnic origins) deposed Romul Augustulus last Western Emperor. As always, all the good things dont last longer and when Theoderic became old he also started to imagine plots made by the roman aristocracy (who actually loved him as a legitimate western Emperor) and by his close friend and philosoph Severinus Boetius, who was writing the "De Consolatione Philosophiae" in small country-church just at the back of my actual house. The anti-gothich resentment started to grow among the roman aristocracy and the imperial court in Byzantium. Once King Theoderic died, the Ostrogoths killed his wife Amalasunta mainly due to her simpathy towards the romans. The "Amaling" dinasty, the most prestigious dinasty among the gothic peoples died with Atalaric, the young son of Theoderic. The Amaling dinasty is today remembered by Jordanes and by Viking sagas written centuries after the gothic wars in Scandinavia, it's one of the oldest germanic dinasties ever recorded, with its first ancestors going back of centuries before, right at the legendary tale of the first progenitor of the germanic peoples.  


King Theoderics the Great mausoleum and grave in Ravenna, his capital.

The Emperor in Byzantium used Amalasunta's death as a Casus Belli to send Belisarius with an army in Italy to fight against the Ostrogoths.  

The war against the Ostrogoths saw a first phase where Belisarius managed to clearly emerge victorious against the enemies of the Empire. However, Emperor Justinians greed made him call Belisarius back to the Eastern front against the Sasanids because he was afraid the general was planning to take back Italy for himself. At that point, Totila "The Immortal" was made new King by the Ostrogoths and managed to gain many new important victories for the Ostrogoths while allies from the other sides of the Alps such as Burgunds, Alamans and Franks were storming in Italy in order to aid the Ostrogoths against the Empire. Teia eventually died and was defeated by Narses, a general eunuch from Byzantium that also managed to defeat the last gothic king, Teia in a battle at their capital, Ravenna. The Gothic War lasted 20 years and the Empire had to drain all its wealth to fund the campaigns in Italy while he also had to pay the Sasanids at East to not wage war against the eastern provinces of the Empire. Belisarius and Narses, in order to defeat the Ostrogoths and their allies from all over the other barbarian kingdoms, had to employ large groups of Huns, Lombards, Heruls, Maurii, Anatolian natives and Slavs from the Balkans. At the end of the war, Italy was devastated and Justinian decided to apply the Corpus Iuris Civilis (the latin law) on Italy as well. 


The Arrival of the Lombards

Twenty years later, the Lombards, left Pannonia for different reasons and decided to invade Italy. Procopius tells us that Narses, to betray the Emperor, invited the Lombards in Italy to settle down, while Paul the Deacon instead tells us that the Lombards, having noticed that Italy was now unguarded and weak, thought that it was time to leave their lands to the Avars and find a new land where to settle. Alboin, King of the Lombards, crossed the Alps and managed to slowly conquer most of the northern italian cities where he placed all his Dukes in them, he brought along his people large groups of Saxons, Gepids, Avars, Alamans, Bulgars and Slavs. The Lombards arrived as conquerors and immediatly started to remove the old roman landowner-aristocracy and apply the germanic law. Byzantium was too weakened to engage in another war but still managed to keep some part of Italy under its control, such as Rome, Ravenna, part of the Appennines, southern Apulia, southern Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia. Part of these lands will be slowly erosed by the Lombards during the years after their arrival.  They took the city of "Ticinum" and called it "Pavia", making the city the capital of all their kings: now Pavia, at 1 hour from my house, is a nice medieval and universitarian city on the river Ticino.

The Lombard society was organized around the Fare (singular, Fara. Clans) and each fara had the right to appoint a "Dux" that would have ruled above his subjects. The Lombard monarchy has always been very weak compared to the frankish one due to the excessive amount of freedom the lombard Duci had. The Lombard monarchy was also elective, the King was elected among the Dukes and only the most respected and strong was chosen to be the King of the Lombards. Among the most illustrious lombard kings we name King Rothari, who made one of the very first written germanic law codes where we can clearly see the lombard culture slowly mixing with the latin base; although, even if just nominally, the mixed marriages under Rothari (first half of the 7th century) were still prohibited. 


- Green: Lombards
- Yellow: Byzantines

During the first half of the 7th century the Lombards were converted to catholicism and abandoned the arian heresy that caused much of the negative historical accounts from the Church and the Byzantines. The Lombards were therefore made catholics by the Queen Theodolinda which also crafted the famous "Iron Crown of Lombardy" that has been used by every monarch (Charles the Great and Napoleon included) to rule over Italy. Today the Iron Crown is safely kept in the Cathedral of Monza, north of Milan and it is said it was forged with one of the nails used on Christ's Cross.


The Iron Crown of Lombardy.

However, the greatest among the lombard kings was King Liutprand (ring a bell?), that almost managed to conquer the rest of Italy even reaching the walls of Rome, where he decided to spare the Pope and grant him the castle of Sutri. During his long reign as king, Liutprand gradually extended the boundaries of the kingdom and the extent of Lombard power making the Kingdom of the Lombards the most important power in Europe alongside the Empire, even outrunning the Franks, that were too busy quelling palace uprisings of the first pipinids. 

The Lombard Kingdom was eventually conquered by Charles the Great at the end of the 8th century, when Charles defeated King Desiderious and his son Adelchis in a mountain pass in Piemonte. The reasons of the conquest of Charles the Great was directly linked with the aggressive expansion led by King Liutprand and Desiderio on former lands associated with the Pope who felt himself threatened by the growing power of the Lombards and therefore decided to call Charles of the Franks to take care of the Lombards. The reason of the defeat of the Lombards are many, but the first reason is to be traced back to the large autonomy the Dukes enjoyed: some of them, in fact, did not even join the royal army in defense of their king. Especially the Dukes of Southern Italy (Duchy of Spoleto e Benevento) were most of the times considered almost completely indipendent. Ironically these two duchies survived Charles the Great conquest and managed to live on for few more centuries. The Duchy of Spoleto ended up being annexed by the Pope while the Duchy of Benevento prospered for some time but eventually was divided in two parts (Benevento and Salerno) to be then absorbed by the Normans after the first millennia.  


Lombard historical reenactors. One lamellar is made of steel while the other is made of leather, they're Matteo and Leonardo credits go to @hellvargar

However, the legacy of the Lombards was destined to survive their kingdom. Even under Charles the Great and his offspring, the people of northern Italy kept calling themselves "Lombards". The onomastics of the High Middle Ages in Northern Italy was almost completely of lombard origins and we have traces of "lombard" magistrates such as the "gastalds" surviving even untill the 17th century in northern Italy. The same organization and structure of the first northern-italian cities was based around the assembly of the freemen (arimanni) made around the lombard "gairethinx", where the warriors used to beat their spears on their shields as sign of approval.  Friederich Barbarossa, centuries after Charles the Great, still described the Lombards as a warlike people, used to fight their same neighbours.

In modern times, Lombards history have been minimized and mistreated by the Fascism and by nationalistic zealots because of the struggle for some italians to identify part of our history as not-latin. Today, even the most leftists professors are still heavily influenced by the old academic views who saw all the germanic people as uncivilized and barbarian. The fault in this logic is to perceive the italian identity as "latin" while during the roman times an italian identity did not even exist and during the lombards the byzantines were already heavily influenced by the greek culture and the cultural/political distance perceived by many of the byzantines dukes in Italy made in order for them to pass to the lombard side in certain historical occurrences such as for the iconoclast revolts in the Empire during the 8th century. During the last years there has been a rediscovery of the Lombards mainly due to the popular culture the fairly superiority of the northern italians, books, music and else.

Ironically, Rome today is a shithole while Lombardy has the highest GDP in Europe, eat-shit terroni merdosi

Hahaha the last sentence. Molto divertente, perche evero. But same with my hometown Naples saddly..

[Wlodowiec]

Apr 10, 2019 22:02:24 GMT fallenhonor said:

Apr 10, 2019 21:17:55 GMT Wlodowiec said:

How long did this take? 

btw lombardy is shit hole lol, north-rhine westphalia has higher gdp xddddd

Hahaha u cant do better than this, kid: gyazo.com/30bb8155bf761f8bdd89436f95feb18d

[AlleyCat]

Smells like fake news to me.

[AlleyCat]

North Rhine-Westphalia 


Lombardy

[Deleted]

lol get rekt kid, I guess ur lombardy is worse than westphalia!!

[Wlodowiec]

Apr 10, 2019 22:20:39 GMT AlleyCat said:

North Rhine-Westphalia 


Lombardy

then the second!!! ((

[Deleted]

Apr 10, 2019 22:24:59 GMT Wlodowiec said:

Apr 10, 2019 22:20:39 GMT AlleyCat said:

North Rhine-Westphalia 


Lombardy

then the second!!! ((

3 german regions are better than lombardy, ahaha. (italians are basically romans)

[Wlodowiec]

[AlleyCat]

Apr 10, 2019 22:24:59 GMT Wlodowiec said:

Apr 10, 2019 22:20:39 GMT AlleyCat said:

North Rhine-Westphalia 


Lombardy

then the second!!! ((

[Wlodowiec]

here u can see the glorious alpine area $$$$$$

[AlleyCat]

Except Switzlerand, part of Ireland, Bavaria, most of Austria, , half the Netherlands, Paris, London and the Midlands are all comparable or wealthier.

[Wlodowiec]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ milan $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$