Drugs & Gambling

Drugs

Pipe grass is enjoyed when ever there is time; however alcohol is a constant. At the end of a long winter, the store of pipe grass becomes very low.  A generous host will often offer pipe grass to a guest, even if his store is almost empty.  Valgarins see little sense in partaking of hallucinogenic drugs. 

Mead is the Valgarin drink of choice with ale or a strong whiskey being accepted when it is not around. It is customarily to welcome someone with a bowl of mead when they come to your home after a long journey.  When the mead horns are used, it is thought to be a sign of weakness to sip from the mean horn.  Mead horns are made to be drank from deeply.

Games

The people of Valgard are hard workers due to their environment.  Because of the harshness of life and their scrappy nature, about the only thing that the Valgarins are willing to gamble on is the out come of battles and the trials of winter.  However, that is not to say the winner of a contest of skill or wrestling bout doesn’t win bragging rights. Valgarins enjoy sports that are equally as tough as their environment such as wrestling, jousting, and stone throwing; matches that take strength and skill. 

Short days of the long winter months have afforded many variations of games which are played in clan halls and around the hearth.  A favorite is merles (nine men’s morris).  This is found carved in a table top, or outlined on the hearth by a lump of coal.  It is played by two players, though any number of family or clan members enjoy watching.

Games

Stone Toss

At clan gatherings and the annual games stone tossing is a common enough contest.  Two variations of this contest are practiced.  One is simply to see who can throw their stone the farthest.  The stone being really a small boulder no less than the size of a man’s head.  The man to toss his stone the farthest is the winner.  The second takes a good deal more courage than the first.  Two contestants face off each holding a stone, as before, a small boulder roughly larger than a man’s head.  The first hefts his and attempts to throw it at his opponent.  The other man may stand there, dodge, or run, depending upon his courage.  After the first’s throw, his opponent has the opportunity to do likewise.  This contest is especially comical when the men have had too much to drink, and bystanders are warned that the stones don’t necessarily fall where they are aimed.

Last Man Standing

This is more an activity born of too much drink and bragging than a game, but occurs often enough to be considered a past time.  Simply put, Valgarins drink till they stagger, pick a fight, and the last man (or woman) standing wins.

Merel’s (or Nine Men’s Morris)

The players  use the 24 points on the board obtained with the 12 vertexes and the 12 intersections of 3 concentric squares connected in the middle of every side by perpendicular lines. 

Play starts with the board empty.  To begin the players first take turns placing their nine pieces on unoccupied points of the board. During this first stage there is no option to move the pieces already placed on the board.

The second stage starts after all the “men” (game pieces)  are placed.  During this stage every turn entails in moving one of the own men through one of the lines to an unoccupied adjacent point of the board.

During both stages of the game mills may be built; this happens when the three points in one of the lines of the board are occupied by three men of the same color, and the player who forms the mill must capture one of the opponent's men; the captured man is moved from the board and may not be used again during the game.

The right to capture a man exists every time that the mill is built, even if the mill is formed by moving back one man to his previous position. The player who makes the capture selects the man to be moved between all the opponent men, but it is not allowed to remove a man who is part of some mill (unless all the opponent men are part of mills).

Once a player is reduced to three pieces, they are no longer limited to moving only to adjacent points. A piece may instead be moved to any unoccupied point on the board.

The game may be won when the opponent has only two men, all the opponent’s men are blocked so he has no moves,  or when both players make 50 moves without forming any new mill or the same position is repeated three times on the board.

(picture of a nine man’s morris board  http://www.tarahill.com/instruct.html )
 

Table of Contents

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Life to Death
Slavery
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Religion

Becoming a Völva
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Relationship
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Rune Calling
The Talon Circle
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Social

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Interaction
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Social Orders
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Stories

Battle Anthem
Dorian the Winter Trader
Dyrling Brides
Earning your sea legs
Going Home
Hallaic Wall
The Initiate
The Story of the Two Sacred Eggs

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