Unique CK+ experience

[Stari0]

Historical record lean towards blood eagles being a thing made up by Christians rather than a real thing iirc.

That is debatable, albeit there are numerous of account of the practice in Norse sources; but still debatable I suppose.

Interestingly, the Old Norse word for "blood eagle" is blóðörn... now the fact there was an actual Old Norse word for "blood eagle" seems to indicate some type of ritual probably existed.

 

[zeress]

That is debatable, albeit there are numerous of account of the practice in Norse sources; but still debatable I suppose.

Interestingly, the Old Norse word for "blood eagle" is blóðörn... now the fact there was an actual Old Norse word for "blood eagle" seems to indicate some type of ritual probably existed.

There's a sufficient blurb on it on the Wikipage but basically

There is debate about whether the blood eagle was historically practiced, or whether it was a literary device invented by the authors who transcribed the sagas. No contemporary accounts of the ritual exist, and the scant references in the sagas are several hundred years after the Christianization of Scandinavia.

Where-in the very specific actions of what we call the blood eagle was almost certainly a Christian embellishment of something that was called "Blood Eagle" in the Sagas, but the act itself was likely very different in practice.

But I digress, either way it's as you said debatable.

 

[a1b2c3d4e5f6]

I'd also recommend Paulicians, one of the games I had most fun with was a Paulician Irish Merchant Republic. I started as an Irish tribal and gave my son to the Paulician Patriarch to convert him, once the son inherited I could declare holy war on my fellow Christians, but here comes the kicker, as you are also christian they can't declare HW on you, also raiding weakens your targets before getting HW'd so even if other christians join defensively, the wars are usually quick (you can easily siege down their depleted (from previous raiding) counties).

After that I formed a MR. As you are given the option to vassalize your religious head, I did so. The religious head is a secular feudal ruler and has primogeniture, if he dies without descendants, guess who inherits the Paulician Head title? YOU.

In the end I was a MR able to raid anyone, able to HW and GHW anyone, raking cash and destroying rival trade posts thru raiding. Rome, Constantinople and wherever I wanted was raided (it also allowed to take titles very easily through war), aside from that I had enough income to sustain a permanent mercenary army, free upkeep vassalized raiding holy orders (after overtaking apostolicism), staking traits (exalted, paragon, raider, icon-breaker, crusader, etc), even I took prisoner the Pope (and other high level people) several times...

All in all is like being a reformed pagan that can raid (CK2+ doesn't let reformed pagans raid) and can declare HW on his religious group but not the other way around.

 

[rakrak]

you can make it so everyone can raid in the game rules tho