This is an unofficial fan-made compatibility patch. All original mod content was created by ercarp and published on the Steam Workshop in 2021–2022. This repository exists only to keep the mod playable on current Crusader Kings III versions (the original was last updated for CK3 1.6 on 2 July 2022 and has not been updated since).

Original mod: Vikings: Tale of Ragnar Lodbrok by ercarp Original author: ercarp on Steam · u/ercarp on Reddit Target game version: Crusader Kings III 1.19.x (Titus) Original game version: 1.6.x

If you are ercarp and you would like this repository taken down, please open a GitHub issue or contact the repository owner. The repo will be made private or deleted on request, no questions asked. I claim no ownership of the original content — only the small set of compatibility edits required to make the mod load on CK3 1.19.

See NOTICE.md for the full credit and rights statement.

A drop-in 1.19-compatible build of Vikings: Tale of Ragnar Lodbrok. It contains the original mod's 50+ portraits, three Viking-era bookmarks (824, 832, 867), and all of ercarp's custom characters, dynasties, and Norse content — with only the changes required to make it stop crashing or producing errors on CK3 1.19.

The original Workshop mod still installs but cannot be loaded on any CK3 release after 1.6 without compatibility edits. Some of the breaking changes between 1.6 and 1.19:

• NCouncil = { COUNCIL_MAX_SLOTS = 3 } (and 4 other defines) removed by Paradox
• All 1.6-era tiered lifestyle traits (blademaster_1/2/3, hunter_1/2/3, mystic_1/2, poet, reveler_1/2) consolidated into single canonical IDs (lifestyle_blademaster, etc.) in the 1.13 Wandering Nobles update
• has_government = republic_government syntax replaced with government_has_flag = government_is_republic in 1.12 Roads to Power
• Various 1.10+ effect scopes requiring title: / province: prefixes that didn't exist in 1.6
• Stale NJominiMap overrides causing border misalignment on the political map mode after the 1.10 India and 1.17 East Asia map expansions
• A 1.6-era full-replacement 00_landed_titles.txt that broke vanilla's de-jure changes from 1.7 through 1.19 (~581 new baronies, the 1.12 Byzantine/Abbasid administrative restructure, the 1.17 nomad rework)

1. Download or clone this repository into your CK3 mod folder:

   %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings III\mod\ragnar_lodbrok_updated\
   

2. Create a sibling .mod file at the mod-folder root (one level above the mod folder), named ragnar_lodbrok_updated.mod, containing:

   version="3.0"
   tags={
       "Alternative History"
       "Portraits"
       "Bookmarks"
   }
   name="Vikings: Tale of Ragnar Lodbrok (1.19 update)"
   picture="thumbnail.png"
   supported_version="1.19.*"
   path="mod/ragnar_lodbrok_updated"
   

3. Start the CK3 launcher. The mod should appear under Available Mods. Add it to a Playset.
4. Recommended load order (same as ercarp's original instructions):
   1. Community Flavor Pack (top)
   2. Other mods (such as Fullscreen Barbershop)
   3. Vikings: Tale of Ragnar Lodbrok (bottom)
5. Do not subscribe to the original Workshop mod at the same time as enabling this fork, or the launcher may report duplicate-content conflicts.

• Community Flavor Pack (Workshop)
• Northern Lords DLC

Three Viking-era start dates, all grouped under the vanilla 867 bookmark tab:

Roughly 52 lines of edits across the ~408-file mod, plus one structural refactor of landed_titles. Full per-slice audits and the migration knowledge base live under .omc/ — those internal notes are kept private and are not part of this repo.

Code-level changes

• descriptor.mod: supported_version bumped to 1.19.*; remote_file_id removed.
• common/defines/00_defines.txt: 5 removed/renamed defines patched; the stale NJominiMap block deleted (it belongs to map data, not gameplay tuning).
• events/game_rule_events.txt: 8 trigger/effect renames for 1.10–1.19 idioms.
• history/characters/: 31 tiered-lifestyle-trait renames across 5 culture files; 97 lines updated to add title: / province: scope prefixes that 1.10+ requires.
• history/titles/k_xia.txt: 4-line typo fix on a vanilla character ID (pre-existing bug in the 1.6 mod, surfaced as a hard error on 1.19).
• common/bookmarks/00_bookmarks.txt: missing closing brace added.
• common/bookmark_portraits/: 3 portrait files retain their gene_vikings_makeup references (this is a mod-defined gene; do not strip).
• common/genes/vikings_makeup.txt: 3 obsolete type = skin decal-block lines removed (the type field was deprecated from decal blocks between 1.6 and 1.19).

Structural refactor — landed_titles The original mod shipped a 1.5 MB monolithic common/landed_titles/00_landed_titles.txt (a full replacement of vanilla 1.6). That file has been deleted. The mod now inherits vanilla 1.19's complete title tree and layers only its unique additions on top, in common/landed_titles/01_torl_landed_titles.txt (~2 KB). The mod now correctly picks up the ~581 baronies added in 1.7–1.19, the 1.12 administrative-government de-jure changes (Byzantine themes, Abbasid hierarchy), and the 1.17 nomad rework — all of which were impossible while the monolithic 1.6 replacement was in place.

Bookmark assets The side-strip tab DDS files for the two renamed bookmarks (bookmark_buttons/bm_867_humble_beginnings.dds and bookmark_buttons/bm_867_tale_of_lothbrok.dds) were replaced with copies of vanilla's bm_867_northmen.dds to match the visual fidelity of vanilla's 867 tabs (the original tab buttons were 1.6-era low-resolution).

• Missing localization for the 824 bookmark in French/German/Spanish. Those locales fall back to English for the 824 bookmark's character names. English and Russian are complete.
• Pre-existing bug in common/traits/torl_traits.txt: brittle_bone_disease defines same_opinion twice (values 20 and 15); the second silently wins. Not a 1.19 regression — present since the original mod's release. Not fixed here, since the intent was "make it work on 1.19", not "rebalance ercarp's work".
• Phantom history: history/titles/k_kimek.txt and k_mongolia.txt reference kingdoms that vanilla 1.19 removed in the 1.17 nomad rework. CK3 silently ignores history for undefined titles — no crash, but the development-level changes and holder assignments simply won't apply.
• Cosmetic mismatch: the bm_867_northmen bookmark name says 867 but start_date = 846.1.1. Pre-existing.

Before assuming a save is stable, do at least:

1. Launcher loads the mod without errors. No red icon on the playset.
2. All three bookmarks open without freezing on "Start running through history".
3. All custom characters render with correct portraits — especially Siggy, Torvi, and Finehair (these three use the mod-defined gene_vikings_makeup decal; if any of them appears as plain skin, the gene file has regressed).
4. Start a game as Ragnar on the 824 bookmark. Skip 30 in-game years. Check Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings III\logs\error.log — [error] and [fatal] lines are bad; [warning] lines about portraits or DLC content are usually safe to ignore for a content mod.

There is no LICENSE file in this repository, intentionally. The original mod has no license; default copyright applies and the rights belong to ercarp. See NOTICE.md for the full statement.

• ercarp — original mod author. All character work, portraits, dynasties, bookmarks, custom genes, custom traits, custom landed-titles content, and the entire creative direction are ercarp's. This patch would not exist without their work.
• Maboy — German translation (originally out of date as of 2022; not updated here)
• Montes192 — Russian translation (originally out of date as of 2022; not updated here)
• Vikings TV show — History Channel / MGM (used by the original mod under fan-use conventions)

This compatibility patch was prepared with the help of Claude Code in May 2026.