Quote: Our faith is one of conflict. We are a religion of war. We view existence itself as conflict, that of order versus not just chaos, but nihilism itself. We view our lives as bubbles of structure clawed out of a meaningless, pointless reality, hewn together with law and order that will collapse should we act unquestioningly in accordance with our chaotic natures. For we know what happens if we succumb to those base urges and unquestioning reactions: Ragnarök, where all we have striven for, all we have built, will collapse and be purged under the onslaught of disorder. That, ultimately, nothing we have done has lasting meaning, that our legacies will amount to naught.

So we fight against that end. We stop the unstoppable. We question ourselves and our actions, to see their endings. The All-Father saw, but he never reflected on what he saw. He merely reacted, and in that reaction, set forth the sequence of his own destruction. But the lesson we take from this is that it is possible to step back from the precipice and interrupt the chain of events, by choosing a different path.

The followers of the Æsir are at war. But while the Jötnar are all around us, they are not the enemy, even as they are the agents of our potential destruction. No, the enemy is within ourselves. For, unlike the Jötnar, we of Midgard have choice. We can use that choice for good or ill, but to abandon it in favor of unthinking reaction reduces us to little more than an animal or Jotunn, a predictable force in the tapestry whose thread is controlled.

The Weavers care not for the threads. When the Tapestry is complete, they will begin anew. But for us and for those we follow, every inch woven is another victory, every day that we stave off the final knot a battle won.

This is our existence. It is not for everyone. Other faiths view things differently. That is their choice. Their threads still weave through reality, even if they care not to acknowledge it, or view it in different ways—as the Christians view themselves in the service of a Father-God of Order in a conflict against a corruptive god of destruction, or as the Jews view themselves as being in an agreement with a God of Wisdom, helping build upon an imperfect creation. That is their choice, to view things in such a way. But as for us, we will safeguard our own choices, and theirs, knowing that it could all fall to naught. This is our struggle, our burden, our exultation.

Who is with me!?

—Fyrir Hiccup House Haddock VI, Collected Public Sermons & Private Contemplations

Quote:Folklore continued to evolve in the North Sea Empire, despite the claims of certain prescriptivist academics to the contrary. While certainly there were heroic tales of the exploits of the leading families and individuals of the Empire, there were other, more wide-ranging developments beyond these individual works. One of the most infamous examples is how, within the space of a generation, an entire new class of minor malevolent entity had entered the stories and traditions of many of the ethnic and cultural groups in the Empire—that of the kroaziad, taken from the Brezhoneg word for crusader. By the 1070s, instances of this genre of folklore and folktales were commonly recorded, and it is possible to track the development and spread of this particular class over the prior and subsequent decades.

While the particulars differ between different ethnic and social groups, the general commonalities of the kroaziad are that they are disembodied malicious spirits sourced from the souls of Christian Crusaders slain in their attacks on Imperial communities; that their abilities , in their weakened state, mostly amount to causing minor problems and inconveniences for the household thus afflicted; and that their agreed-upon leader is the knight Sir Henry of Brittany. Other details vary between different groups. On the topic of removal, for example, the Breizhad hold that the best way to be rid of them is to shake a pouch filled with dragon-scales, while the Jews state that they cannot stand running water, and the Danes believe that a hearth-fire will repel them. The reasons for the spirits staying in this world and not moving onto the afterlife are likewise varied; among the Breizhad, the local psychopomp, Ankou, is believed to refuse to allow them to sully their cart, while the Jews state that the spirits themselves are responsible for their circumstance through a rejection of accepting responsibility for their crimes, and the Swedes state that neither Odin, Freyja, Rán, nor Hel allowed them into their realms, citing ‘standards’.

—Ten Thousand Living Tales: The Oral Traditions, Cordova Academic Press Ltd., 1545