For fic purposes

I've often HC'd the Daroga to be partially of Kurdish descent anyway which gave me the perfectly sensible justification (in my own head) to have him be a lieutenant to Saladin even though he's Persian.

But this Icelandic course made me realize i could just set it in Iceland instead? Like no shit?? And ofc it'll still be anachronistic but not AS much.

I started rewriting it in the style of the sagas but whoops all the sagas are very boring. So i think I'm gonna have to write snippets in saga form and then write it in a more natural way mostly.

I'm gonna write the first few lines of it in another post and explain it.

Rn the plot is: Erik kidnaps Christine, Raoul shows up in Iceland alone to evangelize (there's a backstory there), and he meets the Daroga who also arrives to hunt down Erik (bc his friend al-Ghazali, yes the historical Persian philosopher and mystic, told him Erik's soul needed saving - and yes that's the most ridiculous reasoning ever and I need to change it).

While Christine is chilling in Erik's hall of horrors with his draugrs and shape-changers and evil spirits, Raoul and the Daroga are crossing the country to rescue Erik from himself. Uuuh wait im just realizing Raoul knows nothing about Christine but I'll just give him a "holy vision" or something so he falls "in love" with her without meeting her. Yes he's a monk but it can be the chivalric love, not romantic/sexual love.

Raoul's a French nobleman who knows Latin and Greek and Arabic and Norse and English and French so he can communicate with the ppl in Iceland, but the Daroga has very poor Norse so he needs Raoul as an interpreter. That's the only reason he keeps him around, bc otherwise he's friccin useless. You have this veteran of the crusades who fought with Saladin dragging a frightened novitiate across what they both see as the isle of witches and raiders and wolf-men. Very book-accurate imo

Meg is there too. She's a shapechanger but in a valkyrie sort of way (it's the bird skin she wears that gives her power like how in the sagas the valkyries got their power from their swanskins). She works for Erik and has a puppy crush on Raoul despite being a semi-supernatural being of undetermined origin. Erik can see whatever she sees. Think of Odin's ravens, but Meg is a swallow bc birds like ravens are associated with the war-dead (in the sagas going to battle is called stuff like "feeding the ravens"). Meg isn't like, eating corpses or anything.

Christine is a child of a Christian concubine/slave from Syracuse and a viking, hence her name. I initially wrote her to be devoted to Lucia of Syracuse who in sacred art is depicted holding a dish of her own gouged-out eyeballs (they grew back but I'm going to assume in the version of the story Christine heard they didn't). My first draft had the vibe of one of those "virgin girl saint" narratives (Agnes, Agatha, Lucia). So I'm gonna veer away from that. Christine's gonna worship* Lucia AND Christ AND Odin. And ofc she's going to draw parallels among them. Christ and Odin both died on trees for the sake of some virtue. Then they got better. Lucia and Odin both lost their eye(s). Also think about how ominous it appears! Christine praying to images of a girl with no eyes, a hanged man, and a crucified man. That's... an aesthetic of some sort.

Oh and also Raoul's backstory! Will also be in another post!

there are. new chapters.

I made a poirot fic!! There's a dubious amount of Poirot in it right now but that will surely change (if I manage to finish it which. Might not happen ngl).