Character: Ahmad ibn Fadlan

**Killer Shrike** · Mar 25th, '06, 02:03 PM

Originally Posted by Vestnik

I live in Moscow, and lots of people around here would hotly contest the notion that the Rus were Vikings!

Never underestimate the Russian proclivity to disregard history, even their own, I suppose.

Im not a historian, but I don't believe the established history that the Rus Vikings became the rulers of Novgorod circa 862 and that the name Russia stems from this has been challenged.

**TheQuestionMan** · Mar 25th, '06, 02:16 PM

Rus' (People)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus'_(people)

Chud (People)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chud

Slavic (People)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs

Merya (People)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merians

Krivich (People)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krivichs

Russians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_people

Read then discusss, debate, and then agree to disagree, but most of all be informed.

QM

**Vestnik** · Mar 26th, '06, 01:26 PM

I follow the various debates on Russian nationalism and the "Russia idea" only tangentially, but the Rus/Vikings issue is one that gets a lot of Russian nationalists hot and bothered, as does discussions about the Golden Horde and its influence on Russia (by the way, many Russian words dealing with commerce and government are Mongol/Tatar in origin, for instance the Russian word for money is "dengi," and the Tatar word is "denba").

It's one of those wierd nationality questions that preoccupy people in the former Soviet Union. There are over 100 distinct ethno-social groupings here, after all. Others are "are the Crimean Tatars really Tatars?" and "are the Cossacks a people?" (The Cossacks got officially recognized as a distinct people in the 2002 census. There are about 200,000 of them -- it's a long story).

**input.jack** · Mar 28th, '06, 12:59 PM

Russia aside...

I like the write-up, except for two concerns.

First, i think his Intelligence should be more like somewhere in the 18 range. He was -smart-. Thats part of why he was valuable to the party.

Second, his Comeliness should be much higher too. Antonio Banderas is not ordinary looking.

Other than that, the write-up looked fine

**Susano** · Mar 28th, '06, 01:07 PM

Originally Posted by input.jack

Russia aside...

I like the write-up, except for two concerns.

First, i think his Intelligence should be more like somewhere in the 18 range. He was -smart-. Thats part of why he was valuable to the party.

Second, his Comeliness should be much higher too. Antonio Banderas is not ordinary looking.

Other than that, the write-up looked fine

Yes, but the book version was less so. I was trying to balance the two when developing this.