The reformed faiths are theocratic, the unreformed are spiritual. There is a definitional difference

I think that's really silly

All none Muslims faith in the game are Theocratic, i think its a balance thing more than accuracy

If deceit is a sin wouldn't honesty therefore be virtuous? Honesty was seen to be a virtue by all European pagans actually, as swearing an oath and breaking that oath would make you a "Warlock"
Meaning oath breaker. An Anglo-Saxon word that has the same cognate with the god "Loki", basically a black wizard and brother to the good (Odinnic) god, like Veles (odin) and Chernobog (black god) in slavic myth. There's lots of examples of brothers, one evil and one good, in myth and even in abrahamic tradition with Cain and Abel) .
One can still be a trickster (a rational thinker) without actually lying. This is usually how gods & heroes are frequently depicted as tricking monstrous enemies. This does not mean these myths and legends promoted dishonesty. In many Germanic (norse included) stories liars are often cursed and end up wit bad luck (the idea of fate (wyrd in anglo, fylja in norse) worked like karma in the old Germanic traditions.

can you give holy site of kiev to denmark?

It's also true there was no "priest class" as oftentimes the warrior aristocrats played that role. Pagan pantheons always reflected the roles of day to day people as if everyone was meant to be a priest in their own right.

It actually makes complete sense for other cultures to have Berserkers to. There are many equivalents of predator fur wearing warriors in all pagan cultures. Even the Latins, as Rome was said to be founded by the sons of a wolf.
These men were often the outcasts and landless men of their tribes, who impacted history more then we can imagine. Look up the Koryos by Dan Davis History on YT.

Is this compatible with polytheism reborn?

That's what I figured as well, it's a matter of someone being a badass and worthy of emulation, not simply being confident yet with lackluster feats

@Follkvang In fact, after re-reading, I would say that a direct 1=1 pair isn't the correct choice in this case, humble does seem to fit, but arrogant should still be replaced with "Ambitious". Boastfulness in itself doesn't seem to be virtuous, but a lack of it was sinful, whereas a lack of ambition wasn't precisely a vice, but having great ambitions which you ardently pursued was virtuous.

@folkvang: Based on your own descriptions, I would argue that "Ambitious" and "Content" make a better virtue/vice pairing than "Arrogant/Humble": what I've read in the Eddas frequently lambastes arrogance, but equally, a humble kind of Ambition is very clearly vaunted.

HOLY CRAP FINALLY

thank allah

WHAT

Done.

Please update it doesnt work anymore

@Harald Handsvett
They clearly define witch as a practitioner of the occult. Nothing to do with women and the magic is meant to be unorthodox. Their doctrine on witchcraft is how certain societies deal with the unorthodox spiritual practices. In my eyes it completely makes sense for some pagan tribes to be suspecious and wary of magic, focusing more on worshipping the Aesir then practicing Trollslore (Witchcraft). Also, if the wrong gender practitioned a magic forbidden to them, especially men practising Seidr (Seer) they were treated as Ergi (unmanly) and often put to death for it.

This mod doesn't work, neither does Unholy Potato's one. I wen't ahead and changed version support to current, the 1.7.2 one.

For those still interested in this, I have performed minor updates to allow this mod to be usable with Royal Court. See SwMHNP Updated .

Does this work with Royal Court?

pls update or ill kms

Seems to have been abandoned which is unfortunate

Is the mod still being worked on?

May I suggest also making witchcraft accepted or at the very least not criminal? It's bizarre that a religion where women perceived as magically potent were held in high regard is represented as anti-"witch".

For people who wonder how to fix the issue with Hellenism and this mod, pls replace the Holy Site file from this mod with the base game's. Seems to have fixed it for me.

I just noticed that this mod makes title creation free for tribal asatru rulers, is this intentional?

noice

Okay, I'm 90% sure I've figured out why the mod is breaking religions and it should be a fairly easy fix, but it also means I'm going to need to update everything every time they add a new religion to the base game. Expect a fix this weekend/early next week.

@ericbirling
That's bizarre! I'll look into it.

This mod currently breaks Hellenism. The name, adjectives etc. of the faith are removed which makes it impossible to reform the faith later on.

Can't wait for the update.

@David, Duke of Knee

I think you're broadly right about human sacrifice/"gruesome festivals", especially for the Norse specifically, but human sacrifice is very well attested among the Aztec, for example. Then again, actual human sacrifice among the Aztec generally wasn't much like people imagine it, and is not all that different from e.g. the way in which European rulers carried out many public executions for minor crimes, including religious crimes.

But obviously a game like CK3 is partly meant for people to play out imagined/pop-culture history and not just actually-existing history as best as we can reconstruct it, so I don't really have a problem with it being in the game as such, it's just kind of unfortunate that it's the default portrayal of Norse paganism in a game that includes a bunch of (variously accurate) historical detail most people don't know much about, so people tend to assume it's an accurate depiction.

@tfisher1803

You either did not read or read but did not comprehend the two or three paragraphs after the quoted section, because I accounted for the historical facts ("Now that doesn't mean that I believe that ancient societies didn't commit acts of religious violence. Of course they did.") and then laid out my case in far more detail. You've offered evidence against a position I never advocated for and failed to address my actual argument, which is about the very definition and use of the concept as well as issues with portrayal in media. Please make sure that you've read and understood sections 4 and 5 and then address my actual arguments.

@David, Duke of Knee

"Now for the part that will no doubt be extremely controversial: the human sacrifice tenet should not exist. Neither should the "gruesome festivals/blot" tenet, as it's little more than another human sacrifice tenet. In fact, there shouldn't even be talk of so-called "human sacrifice". I am of the opinion that no such thing ever existed in human history."

Well, history disagrees. Human sacrifice is a well known practice throughout ALL the world. There isn't a single part of the world where human sacrifice wasn't practiced in some form or another at some point in time. The Aztecs and Mayans are well known for practicing it (and even having entire ritualistic wars to do so). And, yes, the Norse probably practiced it as well as we have, more or less, direct archeological evidence of human sacrifice from that point in time.

Anyway, I could go on forever but I'll stop here. Good job with finally starting to do literally the bare minimum that one should expect from Paradox to represent Norse paganism in CK3.

(6/6)

Another reason that I am opposed to featuring "human sacrifice" in any prominent fashion for the Norse pagans specifically (only because this post has gotten too long and broad in scope) is that we have no way of knowing the context to their "human sacrifice". Surely they did these things for reasons and had justifications which made sense to them in that context. Drawing so much attention to so infamous a practice for which you don't have any way of understanding and modeling the context is quite inconsiderate and treating the subject matter without due care. Without that context, you're just shining a spotlight on a gruesome fiction of senseless savagery and violence, and you're likely to greatly overstate it owing to ignorance. There's also the issue that there's no evidence that so-called "human sacrifice" was anywhere near essential/routine/widespread to religious expression in the ancient Norse pagan world; certainly not enough to warrant fully one-third of the tenets.

(5/6)

Now that doesn't mean that I believe that ancient societies didn't commit acts of religious violence. Of course they did. What I mean is that the concept of "human sacrifice" has historically had nothing to do with categorizing human behavior. It was only used as a cudgel to attack and vilify an opposing group and was always wielded by groups which themselves practiced religious violence - often to an obscene degree (just ask the 20,000 victims of Beziers). The concept is meaningless in that it means whatever forms of religious violence the wielder doesn't consider "valid" - essentially, it is carefully defined so as to exclude whatever is practiced by those who use it. It has everything to say about the culture from which it developed and nothing about the culture on which it is used. To the extent that the concept should be prominent and promoted in-game, it should only be in the form of a "human sacrifice rhetoric" tech which unlocks some kind of "smear others" ability.

(4/6)

I am 200% on-board with lay clergy. Easily the most WTF? decision for Norse paganism in vanilla. Just file that under "example #10,001 that PDX has zero understanding of non-Abrahamic religions".

I'm not mad at pursuit of power, but I'm also not in love with it. I'm not sure it even makes sense for a religious tenet, but that's another topic. Warlike (another tenet that shouldn't exist) absolutely has to go and it's a travesty that they kept it in the DLC. Patron gods is good, but it should be a special extra doctrine for pagans like ecumenism. Replace it with ancestor worship (the only one I actually agreed with PDX on).

Now for the part that will no doubt be extremely controversial: the human sacrifice tenet should not exist. Neither should the "gruesome festivals/blot" tenet, as it's little more than another human sacrifice tenet. In fact, there shouldn't even be talk of so-called "human sacrifice". I am of the opinion that no such thing ever existed in human history.

(3/6)

Mostly agreed with virtues and sins. I'm not too sure that arrogant is the right word for the reasoning described, nor am I convinced that it would actually be looked at as a virtue in old Norse society, but it seems like it might be the closest fit given current traits. I'm not really sold on humble as a sin. Just because a society is structured in a way that incentivizes specific behaviors doesn't mean that they are considered to be virtuous or even good, and it certainly doesn't mean that all manifestations of that behavior are even acceptable, and the same holds true for the inverse. After all, how many ancient societies valued wisdom as one of the highest virtues whilst simultaneously being structured in a way that seemingly only incentivizes foolishness? I mean, just look at later Christian societies: lavish displays of wealth incentivized by the mechanisms by which political power is maintained in societies which considered avarice a sin and generosity a virtue.

(2/6)

You've definitely done your homework, the mod definitely fixes some of the most egregious and downright silly issues with Norse paganism in the game, although there are many egregious issues with how paganism in general is handled in the game. The very foundations of religious design and mechanics are incapable of modeling any of the various pagan religions with any modicum of accuracy, and I'm afraid that's almost beyond the capability of a mod to address and would require that Paradox actually start basing their mechanics on careful analysis of history instead of memes and misconceptions and whatnot. My thoughts are as follows:

(note that all of my harsh criticisms are levied at Paradox, not the mod creator)

(1/6)

@Schmorgus
The 'freshest science' (a 2020 doctorate thesis by Klas Wikström af Edholm from Åbo Akademi University) falls in the 'human sacrifice was a thing' camp. The main split between its existence or not has been that historians going by written sources have deemed it unlikely, while archaeologists have interpreted remains as human sacrifice. The study looked both at the evidence and its interpretations and came to the conclusion that it is highly probable that human sacrifice was performed, primarily of captured enemy warriors or other males, but also of women and children.

Now, I'm not able to read through the entire 400 page document or judge the science of it, but it is the most recent study of it, and one of few that look at both the historical and archaeological sides. If you search for the author you should easily find it if you want to have a look at it, although the study itself is in Swedish, there is both an abstract and a conclusion in English.

This is really impressive research, especially for a topic that just does not have much out there source wise, and more specifically non-bias/actual-Norse sources. Like wow, I can tell you put a ton into this! I'm a huge history buff and its a big reason I play ck3, this this is so awesome !

@y do Looked it up. In Trelleborg (was Danish back then). One place does not confirm. More like showing a group of insane people going to far. The nordic beliefs in general shows no human sacrifice. Until it is proven, it shouldn't be a option.

The current version does change Witchcraft to shunned. I'm not sure if I mentioned that in the change log or not.

Hello! Great mod here- was wondering though- should witchcraft be shunned and not accepted? same goes for how many things are criminal rather then shunned- just wondering though on that- keep up with the great mod!

@Schmorgus according to the National Museum of Denmark, there is multple instances of evidence in favor of that human sacrifices was a thing, mostly from sweden.

Would be nice if you also changed Blot.
There's not a single historical evidence that blot included human sacrifice.
It's been annoying me since first day I played :P

You know, I'm all for lore accuracy, but I'm wondering about it's influence on gameplay and balance.

@Langhar That verse is stating one should be honest and "tell someone his thoughts", be they positive or negative, rather than only flatter and compliment ("only says pleasant things"). It's a statement on duplicity. At least to my understanding

"That is the true mingling of kinship when a man can tell
someone his thoughts;
anything is better than to be fickle;
he is no true friend who only says pleasant things."
Hávamál, Stanza 124

Maybe fickle as a sin?