It's occurred to me that, between CK3's congenital traits and religion customization, I can breed a medieval troll/jötunn dynasty in the dark and snowy mountains of the north, and this is now my only goal

Stage one, we're bringing in the giant gene from Ireland. Thanks Birger!

Ireland currently has a complex relationship with the North

FFS Birger! You had one job! Now I need a new giant.

While my daughter waits for her new giant betrothed to hit 16, I've decided to woo the lustful giant Imma. Taking the multi-pronged approach to adding the giant gene to the lineage.

This is good, but probably bad!

Fortunately Norse paganism seems to be pretty flexible when it comes to divorce. Now let's hope for a beautiful little-big baby

Noooooo! Yrsa is normal! A setback for the creation of Trollkind!

Action-packed few years. Bård died, splitting the two duchies of the kingdom between his two daughters. Ylva quickly had Yrsa assassinated while she was still heir, the kingdom reunited for now. Next step is founding it as an official kingdom so this doesn't happen again.

Ylva is married to one giant and wooing another, hope springs eternal for our first giant baby of the dynasty.

Yes!! Our first giant of the dynasty. He might be the illegitimate son of my lover but who cares? The Norse faith doesn't! A new heir! Of course he's called Ymir

Next step for the genetics of our troll house? Scales!

It's been a tough few years in the North. Finns attacking from the East, Vikings from the South. Four more children, none are giants but they've been helpfully married off for alliances in an war

Dynasty is a level that means we can now start to lock in our trollness though!

After 18 years of war (ridiculous!) we've defeated the Finns. Ylva has been one hell of a ruler, leading from the front. I'm not sure I've ever had a character last through such a campaign without dying.

Ymir has just come of age, is betrothed to another giant, excellent!

A second giant for the dynasty, a beautiful one at that! She will be called Skadi. Our plan is gradually coming together, all will fear the trolls of the north!

After much war Ylva has made the defining achievement of her reign, we've founded our own kingdom to ensure the jarldoms are not split on succession. She's now 50, so chances are King Ymir, our first giant will take over soon. Unless he's troll equivalent of Prince Charles

This feels like the troll thing to do

Ylva had one hell of a reign, turning us into a bit of a powerhouse, but alas it's time for the true Troll King! Ymir has five children, three giants, two regular humans (although Ylva had them disinherited), so we're looking in good shape for the future

Alas the first Troll King, Ymir, has died. He expanded our borders, reformed the Asatru religion (albeit to start a chaotic Troll heresy of course). His dynasty is full of a good number of giants (they're everywhere these days) but still no true giant & scaley troll.

Difficult time for Aslaug, she's ended up with a son and grandson as successors who are not giants! The horror! Due to traits she's also unable to have them bumped off, and lacks the renown to disinherit. This random event may help save the day!!

And now we're back to two giants next in line to the thrown. Not sure Aslaug is going to survive the stress levels for much longer though.

Aslaug died a complete mess, not surprising after what she'd been through though. She did secure the giant lineage for Haldor though, who at only 12 has the best chance yet of being able to setup our chaotic troll religion. Still no scales

Going to try really hard not to spend the whole day playing again, but we need to found our chaotic faith and that's going to take a lot of Piety! So let's do the most Norse thing we can, raid for prisoners then sacrifice them to Odin!

A pretty good first haul, this will get us closer to the Troll Faith we need. I'm increasingly unpopular with the Finns though...

So a quick look at how this chaotic troll religion is going to work.

Obviously, being trolls, our tenets include eating people, eating often and fighting.

In most other categories we're as egalitarian as possible, that way the only biggest and most evil brutes hold power

Also, basically nothing will be a crime. You're a troll, do what you like. You can fight people that try to stop you. Hopefully these also means we'll have a thriving witchcraft scene

Obviously, eating people will be a very virtuous activity for the trolls.

Our big issue right now is cost, this new religion will cost a whopping 10k piety. We don't yet have the Prophet perk though, that will cut it to 5k, but we currently only have 2.5k piety, so work to do

Surprised it took this long

Lurking danger right now is that King Holdor doesn't yet have any children. His next four heirs are all human, not giant, so one false move or event and the whole thing could come crashing down. Desperately wooing my new wife to try and fix this without switching to family focus

That was a nervous few minutes, somebody is plotting to kill King Haldor but fortunately one of our concubines has saved the day and delivered us a handsome giant of a son, we're calling him Skrýmir. The dynasty is saved!

I've just realised that executing higher ranked nobles gives much higher piety, up to 250, so the troll raiders may be about to commence a tour of Europe's capital cities!

A second giant son by my concubine, also has the traits Beautiful and Quick, he could turn into an absolute power-house! Given his intelligence he has to be named Vafþrúðnir.

A hint of the next raiding target in the background