Crusader Kings 2 certainly doesn’t need a lot of help being weird, given that you can already put a horse in charge of your government, marry your immortal great-grandmother, and sacrifice them both to Satan using only the base game and its official DLC. When it comes to the considerable task of making it even weirder, though, the mod community hasn’t been slacking. Here are the weirdest CK2 mods our spymaster could track down and drag before our throne:
Anime Portraits Pack
For those of us who spend most of our campaigns trying to get Charlemagne-senpai to notice us, this mod adds hundreds of hand-drawn, anime-style portraits for everyone from the Pope to Genghis Khan. There are even variations included for various illnesses and traits like Blinded. It was just updated on September 2, so this probably isn’t even its final form.
Foal Portraits
When Horse characters were added for an event based on the Roman emperor Caligula wanting to make his horse a consul, there were protections put in place by the developers to make sure horses couldn’t marry, breed, or own land. Players found a way around these almost immediately. But there are still some barriers to immersion when playing as an equine emperor, such as the fact that your young ones will still have the portraits of a full-grown horse. This mod fixes that by adding portraits for young horses.
Horse Invasion
Not enough horse shenanigans for you yet? As per the creator’s description, this one adds “a 3-6 part event chain that revolves around Sleipnir, Odin's 8-legged horse, coming of age and being a cannibal horse that eventually gains a large army." It’s a tale as old as time itself. Sleipnir will spawn at the head of a horsey host some 100,000 strong, adding a challenging foe for the bipeds of Europe to contend with.
Narnian Kings
There are already mods for Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Elder Scrolls, and Warhammer, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised to discover one based on C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. It includes bookmarks for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, as well as a fairly fleshed-out map.
Bill Wurtz 2 Sound Mod
Hell yeah! Now we’ve got business! This mod replaces a lot of the audio cues for various menus and diplomatic actions with the musical stingers from Bill Wurtz’s fantastic history of japan and history of the entire world, i guess videos. It gets old pretty quickly, but is good for some short-term amusement. SHUT UP MILITARY SCREEN, I CANNOT “HIRE A SAMURAI”! IT’S THE YEAR 900 AND I LIVE IN ESSEX!
Sensible Satan Spawn
Finally, a nice, sensible mod in the midst of all this nonsense. The Monks & Mystics DLC allowed characters who secretly praise Satan to supernaturally impregnate a friend or family member with a demon baby who would one day go on to lead the armies of Hell to ultimate victory. (Again, this is all unmodded CK2.) But there was one problem—if you were playing a female ruler, you couldn’t get Lucifer to knock you up! This mod fixes that, so you can have your own little, bouncing harbinger of the apocalypse. Awww, he has your eyes! No, seriously. I think he cut it them out while you were sleeping.
Satanism Plus
What fun is being best buds with the Great Enemy if you can’t shout it from the rooftops? This mod allows the High Priest of the secret Satanist cult to come out of hiding and institutionalize Satanism as a full-fledged religion. Most people who have not accepted your dark master will hate you, of course. But you can take up to 20 concubines, marry anyone regardless of whether or not they are close family, and even enslave your enemies. That’s just the tip of the brimstone, too—dedicated hellions can summon demons and even become a lich!
Cooties Disease
Turns out everything you were told about the opposite sex in fourth grade was true. Or rather, it can be if you install this mod. Very simply, it adds Cooties as a potentially deadly epidemic to ravage your realm, joining the likes of consumption, measles, and The Plague. Best make sure your Court Physician knows how to correctly perform the Cootie Shot.
If you’ve found any other bizarre CK2 mods worthy of a mention, let us know about them in the comments.
