North Kingdom of the Cruski

The Cruski are known for their austerity, endurance, and loyalty to clan and kin. Unlike the more politically entangled Schnai or the aggressive Fruztii, the Cruski tend to eschew outside affairs, preferring to safeguard their own harsh homeland.

• Clans are the heart of Cruski society. Each maintains its own steading or stronghold, often in defensible fjordside locations.
• Storytelling and song preserve history. Long nights are filled with skaldic poetry, sagas of hardship, and ballads of voyages and vengeance.
• Raiding still occurs—particularly into Stonehold, Blackmoor, and along the Icy Sea—but these are usually the acts of individual warbands, not kingdom policy.
• The Cruski tongue is a dialect of Old Suel, peppered with Flan and Oeridian borrowings, especially terms relating to nature, spirits, and seafaring.

The Cruski are perhaps the finest sailors among the North Kingdoms:

• Their longships, narrower and faster than those of their neighbors, are built for speed and silence. Most are lined with sealskin and walrus hide to resist icy swells.
• They are unmatched at ice navigation, using charts of glacial drift and wind current passed down for generations.
• Warriors favor axes, spears, and whale-bone shields. Many wear laminar armor fashioned from hardened hides, bronze scales, or lacquered wood.
• Berserker cults still exist—ferocious devotees who enter battle in a trance, believing themselves to be guided by the spirits of wolves, bears, or sea-serpents.

The Cruski follow an animistic form of Suel worship, viewing gods as harsh but necessary forces that must be honored through sacrifice and song.

• Kord, god of strength and storms, is the most revered, seen as the eternal challenger and patron of personal might.
• Lendor, god of time and fate, is honored with solemn rites during seasonal changes.
• Norebo is called on in dangerous voyages and gambles of war.
• They also revere spirits of wind, ice, and sea, often appealing to them through offerings left at stone cairns, cliff shrines, or burned upon floating ice-rafts.

Shamans and rune-casters, sometimes touched by elemental magic, serve as healers, guides, and intermediaries with the spirit world.

The High Thane of the Cruski rules from the icy stone hall of Jotsplat, a stronghold perched above the crashing Icy Sea. However, local clan-chiefs maintain wide autonomy, and unity among the Cruski is rare outside of holy festivals or great threats.

• Relations with the Schnai and Fruztii are cautious but cooperative—temporary alliances form against common enemies, but longstanding rivalry remains.
• The Cruski consider the Great Kingdom remnants, Blackmoor, and Iuz to be corrupt lands to be avoided or destroyed.
• Most southern kingdoms see the Cruski as backward isolationists, but underestimate the deep discipline, pragmatism, and survival instinct that guide their society.