Bense: The Ideal Nordic Setting

I created the city of Bense way back in 2012, for the story that became the novel Frostborn. While other cities in Norrøngard were built on more exaggerated premises—Herkeby is a giant ring fortress, Frekrheim is a lake town—Bense is modeled very heavily on the real world Viking Age trading center of Birka. Birka was a Scandinavian settlement on an island in present-day Sweden which flourished from AD 750 to 975. Bense’s layout is a mirror-image of Birka’s, although its population of about three-thousand individuals is three times Birka’s at its height.

Seeing as how it exists in both novels and games, Bense has become quite a rich, lively, living place. It features in several adventures, including the introductory adventure The Aptrgangr's Challenge, and the new collection, The Bense Trilogy, which collects three previously published tales set in and around that city—Banner of the Bull by Yours Truly, Keeper of the Drowned by Brian Suskind, and Troll of the Town by Kelly Pawlik. The compilation fixes some errata and expands on the material, adding a setting guide to Bense and an appendix detailing its famous mead hall, Stolki's Hall, with descriptions and stat blocks of Stolki himself, his staff, and his best customer. All together, this makes Bense an ideal starting point for beginning a campaign, whether taking place in Norrøngard, or dropping it in to any Scandinavian-flavored setting.

And now that the Kickstarter is fulfilling, The Bense Trilogy is available for purchase in PDF or Hardcover on DriveThruRPG.

You can also get the three original adventures (recently updated) on Shard Tabletop, my personal favorite VTT for 5e/Tales of the Valiant games. And to bring those adventures up to speed with the new hardcover, a little supplement just appeared on Shard as well. Presenting The City of Bense & Stolki's Mead Hall. This mini-setting guide contains all the new information about Bense and Stoki's from the hardcover, along with a few fun extras. The adventures use a generic jarl stat block for the jarl of Bense, Felbrir Flamebeard. This offering has a Shard-exclusive, a special NPC stat block tailed to Felbrir himself, as well as a never-before-seen Tales of the Valiant stat block for an einherjar, the spirits of the valiant dead who are taken by the gods when they are slain in battle.

So whether you play virtually or in person, if you're looking for a good inception point for your campaign, as well as for a home base your players can ground themselves in and really explore, grab your horn of mead and your battle axe, and dive into the city of Bense. You won't regret it.