Wulfwald: Opening Thoughts
The seedling of the campaign began in early 2025 when I picked up a historical novel series named Saxon Stories. Some other fiction that contributed to its making, knowingly or otherwise, are:
Kingdom of Heaven
Dune
Geoffrey of Monmouth's book on the English kings
Battle of Malden
The Prose and Poetic Eddas
The Wanderer (poem)
Lord of the Rings
Met Opera's Ring Cycle performance
Macbeth
...and many other media that I cannot think of right now, but surely assisted in some way or form in creating the mortar and stone of the campaign.
Premise
The PCs are the wolfpack, a secret blade hidden up the sleeve of an unscrupulous thegn named Raedwald. Composed of outlaws who by all rights should have been killed like wild dogs (or indeed, wolves - as per 10th English law, wolves were seen as dangerous and thus to be killed on sight).
""Wolfshead!" shall be cried against him, for that a wolf is a beast hated of all folk; and from that time forward it is lawful for anyone to slay him like a wolf." (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caput_lupinum)
Raedwald
A thegn with a mere two Tithing of land at the start of the game. Ambitious, Anglo-Saxon, a follower of King Cyneric in dreaming of a united England as a single kingdom... and a pagan. The difference in religion - and thoughts on realpolitik - continues to be a source of tension between Cyneric and Raedwald, who were childhood friends that grew up in Witanceaster together. Even so, Raedwald is a faithful vassal of the king, and seeks greater and greater power in order to better assist the king in the achievement of their shared dream, even if Cyneric might dislike the way Raedwald goes about to achieve it. That means he needs more land and more men.
Heavily derived from Uhtred of Bebbanburg from the Saxon Stories, though tempered heavily by age and innate caution. He's much less of a hothead than Uhtred, lacking the savagery and blood-joy inculcated by the latter's time spent among the Northmen. Visual reference was Fassbender's Macbeth. He is more a warrior than scribe, and leaves much of the ink-scribbling to his cousin and seneschal, Grima son of Galmod. Yes, I lifted the name directly from LOTR. More on that on his own section.
Lacking the war-thirst of Uhtred, Raedwald is generally more of a measured warrior, fighting because he must and not because he enjoys it. He is extremely calculating, seeing things more in a merchant-like POV than a "proper" warrior lord aught, in matters of profits and revenues and losses and so on.
A direct vassal of the King (for something similar, see Reichsunmittelbarkeit), Raedwald has an infamously horrible relationship with the nearest Ealdorman whose name I haven't come up with yet (let's call him Guthfrith Redhelm; and lo, I have created an NPC) and seeks to attain Ealdorman status himself by subsuming local thegns under him, through whatever means necessary. His ambition is not entirely self-serving; King Cyneric is embattled in his own court by powerful nobility that thwart his reforms and policies working toward a more centralised kingdom (for obvious reasons, one of which is that it would severely curtail their own nigh-independent status!) and Raedwald seeks to be more of a help for the king by becoming a powerful voice himself in the Witan.
Grima
The Seneschal to Raedwald, and the mission (though not ring)-giver. I did describe Grima as more Snapelike than Wormtongue, and the players seem to be warming up to him despite initial misgivings, especially after his more human sides were revealed over the course of the campaign. Black hair tends to be used as a shorthand for Celtic heritage (alongside red, of course) in the campaign, so I've inadvertently made Grima of Celtic blood - which in turn invites some interesting speculation in regards to Raedwald's own extended family and their allegiances. Like many suddenly important NPCs, Grima came up mid-play when I felt it would be boring to just mime Raedwald himself speaking, and spiced things up by suddenly adding an advisor-figure who flattered his lord and looked down on the PCs - a kind of voice for the general low nobility who would obviously consider wolfheads as outlaw criminal filth.
He has grown a lot as an NPC since then, from merely being a Wormtongue expy to showing to the players glimpses of the difficulties and (scribal) labour required to maintain and extend one's lands by plots and deceptions and other political shenanigans. A well-learned man of letters, Grima is ill-suited for physical exertions, and is best served at the desk with a full ink pot and several quills.
King Cyneric
He has not appeared yet, of course. The PCs are merely the outlaw-retainers of a thegn, though one whose lands are rapidly growing thanks to a series of unfortunate deaths of a number of thegns in his vicinity. Outlaws seem to be out and about in these difficult times, even assaulting thegns in full war regalia (which they promptly steal). Nevertheless, it would be good to have some idea of what kind of person he is, in order to see the macro-level strategy driving the game.
In terms of inspiration, Cyneric is a heady mix of Baldwin IV from Kingdom of Heaven, Tiberias from the same film (played by the inimitable Irons), and Alfred the Great from Saxon Stories. A huge departure from the RAW Cyneric (who is an absolute beast of a man able to mulch entire armies by himself, if one looks at the statline), my Cyneric is much weaker and much less eager for Machiavellian cloak-and-dagger, the lack of which is filled up by Raedwald's behind-the-scenes shenanigans to maintain the more idealistic king's power. I have not quite decided whether I should give him leprosy or some other crippling thing, but after deciding he would look like Tiberias, I am leaning away from him being a physically incapable king.
What he retains from both Alfred the Great and Baldwin IV are his idealism, the magnitude of his dream, and his Christian faith. I wanted to explore a deeply political, yet deeply personally devout individual, the two creating flaws yet also complementing each other sometimes - there are occasions where idealism in a leader can be inspiring, lifting up morale. In some ways he is an antithesis to the generic Game of Thrones scheming leader; at times weak, at times exasperatingly by-the-books (such as not killing his dead older brother's son, who is liable to be a real danger to his throne, because kinslaying is wrong), getting hoodwinked by clever greedy priests who grasp for more and more money and land for monasteries and churchbuilding projects. His insistence for Raedwald to convert to Christianity has caused fights between them, more than once.
For all that, though, I would argue there is utility to nobility. It helps for men to feel as though they are fighting for a good man, and the high credibility that comes with being a man of his word has its own soft-power applications, despite what people think about politics being all lies.
Guthfrith
Ealdorman with thirty five thegns under his rule. Also known as the Redhelm for the glowingly brass helm he wears to battle. Hates and is hated by Raedwald. Is a strong proponent for purchased peace with the Northmen. Also thinks pagan lords should be unlanded. He represents the pacifist, war-avoidant bloc in King Cyneric's court, a bloc that the frontier marcher lords and those like Raedwald who know the Danes will never keep to a peace treaty's terms fight battles of words with all the livelong day. Given King Cyneric's dislike of war for being costly - he gets that from the Saxon Stories' Alfred - Guthfrith's faction probably consistently wins, despite Raedwald's protests. He is one of the reasons Raedwald seeks to become an ealdorman, as Raedwald knows he needs more than a secret black-ops deniable asset killteam to improve the weight of his words at court.