Introduction to Odálegaard

So creating your own world is a mainstay of Tabletop Roleplaying games since their conception. As someone who has shelves full of RPG books and am working on finishing my first book; I'm very familiar with the concept. The idea never really crossed my mind in another one of my hobbies, Wargaming, until I read an article titled, "Imagi-Nations" in Issue 340 of Wargames Illustrated. The article's author, Charles S. Grant takes us through the story of how he fought conflicts against his father using the nations 'Lorraine", and 'Vereinigte Freie Städe' or 'VFS' for short.

I'm a big fan of World Building so, this article sparked my imagination. I had never even considered coming up with my own Nation to wargame with. Thus I took to the internet to learn more about these "Imagi-Nations".

Much to my disappointment, I found that most "Imagi-Nations" existed in the Horse and Musket/Napoleonic Era. I'm not a huge fan of the period, favoring the WWII Era and the Dark Ages above all else.

Now, recently I've been building up my forces for Warlord Games' "Hail Caesar". Our group is small so far (literally me an one other person), with me pushing Bolt Action (Another Warlord game) heavily opposed to Hail Caesar. I mentioned this article to the other player and suggested that we come up with our own Imagi-Nations for our Dark Age battles. He agreed and thus began the creation of Odálegaard.

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Odálegaard draws inspiration from the Viking clans and Kingdoms during the Dark Ages. The name itself is derived from Icelandic 'ódauðlegur', meaning 'immortal', and 'gardur' meaning 'garden'; so "Garden of Immortals. I came up with the name based on a song by Manowar called "Army of the Immortals". Being a big Manowar fan, it seemed appropriate.

I sketched up a map that's based on the coastlines of Norway and Dennmark, which displays major settlements, mountains and Rivers. From there I named my monarchs, King Saemund Sinfjoltison and Queen Jorunn Asgaardottir, and named the town, Skalhalla as the capital.

Now that I had a ruler I needed to come up with states, provinces, or regions of my budding nation. I decided to use the Nordic idea of Aetts or clans. I divided up my lands based on the major major settlements and came up with the Nine Aetts of Odálegaard. With this each aett needs a jarl, so I gave names to these people.

For my actual models I decided to have individual shield designs to distinguish the various clans. So each aett would have their basic colour scheme (the Jarl's family would have the same design), with each warrior having his own design.

That's the extent of my creative efforts so far, but I for certain will be coming up with more information as my army grows.