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Other lands, a very simple Gazetteer


Mr. R

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4 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Late response, but I note that pirates rarely confine their operations to a tight patch of ocean.  Those in the Golden Age of Piracy were active throughout the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and pretty much the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S.  They base themselves in a city state that tolerates them and go where the plunder is.

 

Are you saying that the same pirates would operate across half the globe?

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6 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Are you saying that the same pirates would operate across half the globe?

 

I'm saying that they could, if they could navigate out of sight of land.  Blackbeard alone preyed on ships from Belize to the Chesapeake, which is not a small area.  The British privateers ranged even further.

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1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

Late response, but I note that pirates rarely confine their operations to a tight patch of ocean.  Those in the Golden Age of Piracy were active throughout the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and pretty much the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S.  They base themselves in a city state that tolerates them and go where the plunder is.

Seriously the way y/they wrote it originally, there are NO coastal towns/settlements/cities ANYWHERE on the outside coast of the continent.  Except for one city on the west side (home of a mercenary company that have no idea of logistics) and two on the east side.  Sorry but even the best sailors/merchants/pirates won't sail THAT far without some sort of gain.

 

As a result this merchant island will have as contacts:

1--- the cities on the Mountain coast

2--- the new cities springing up in the three bays area including one at the top of the first bay.

3--- The city of Chioko in the Divided Plains.  (Considering this is the only place where they will deal with outsiders, this is to their benefit)

4--- The Far Islands (Not yet described, but an archipelago of islands forming a circle around the Black Sea of the east.  Think a combo of Caribbean and Philippines)

5--- The cities on the Eastern side of the continent!

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On 10/21/2022 at 9:08 PM, Mr. R said:

Before I post my next area, I want to comment on how a supplement certainly needs an overview editor to make sure that certain ideas that SOUND good, really DON'T work.

 

<snippety-snip>

 

So basically my next two areas are going to be almost total reworks.

 

Congratulations! You have learned a Great Truth of setting design... by critiquing the work of someone who apparently didn't know it.

 

Also the importance of &scale* in setting design. I encountered that issue when freelancing for White Wolf on Exalted. Very early in that game's design process, important countries were blocked out on the world map before anyone decided on a scale. The result was that many countries became... very large, once the map scale was set. Those of us who came later had to deal with the results. One result was that a writer described a new country he'd created (a young republic) as fairly small, "only" a thousand miles from side to side. I reminded him that was the distance from Chicago to New Orleans. Did he really think of that as a small, compact country? One whose new prosperity derives largely from single mine of a rare mineral?

 

He changed it.

 

Dean Shomshak

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30 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Congratulations! You have learned a Great Truth of setting design... by critiquing the work of someone who apparently didn't know it.

 

 

 

Dean Shomshak

Part of the reason I am posting here is to get feedback.  Are my ideas sound, OR are they so out of bounds as to make no sense.  As a teacher I still have people proof read any papers I am writing and welcome those big red marks.

 

 

PS I loved your comment of where is 1000 miles a small country?  I live in Canada, in the Far North.  The next closest major city is 1000 km by air or 1400 by land [we have to go north to get around a huge lake] and ALL of our food stuffs have to be brought up overland.  Until recently this involved using a ferry to get over the Mackenzie River.  Well twice a year that river was uncrossable for about six weeks.  And you could see the shelves in the grocery store going bare.  And this is with modern semis and refrigeration units.  

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The Canadian North, or the Prairies, don't translate well to standards of scale in many parts of the world, let alone to pre-industrial societies. Modern transportation has radically changed how most of us view distance and travel time.

 

I remember an old episode of Dr. Who which included a medieval knight in modern times. The knight was picked up on the road and given a lift by a rich socialite in her limousine. She remarked about having come to that location from Point X, and the knight observed, "A full day's ride." The socialite replied, "Well, it did take us forty-five minutes by car."

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18 hours ago, Mr. R said:

Seriously the way y/they wrote it originally, there are NO coastal towns/settlements/cities ANYWHERE on the outside coast of the continent.

 

I'd consider sticking a bunch of villages on the coast. "Too small to show up on the map". They can add up to a sizeable population.

They still wouldn't justify/support a stupidly big city, but a small one/large town could make sense.

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45 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

The Canadian North, or the Prairies, don't translate well to standards of scale in many parts of the world, let alone to pre-industrial societies.

 

Anything above small villages would be unlikely. Hunting/herding would be a potential economic base.

 

Rivers would be communication/transport routes. You wouldn't be crossing them so much as travelling along them. (E.g. the Mackenzie River in this case.)

There could be exceptions. A gold rush town could exist, although much of its population might be seasonal.

And of course there is fantasy weirdness, which allows all kinds of things.

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3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I remember an old episode of Dr. Who which included a medieval knight in modern times. The night was picked up on the road and given a lift by a rich socialite in her limousine. She remarked about having come to that location from Point X, and the knight observed, "A full day's ride." The socialite replied, "Well, it did take us forty-five minutes by car."

Years ago I was crossing Canada by train and staying in Youth Hostels.  I met a young man from Scotland who was crossing from Halifax to Vancouver.  I met him in Edmonton and asked him what he thought of my country.

"Honestly mate.. its bloody huge!'

"Some of us were talking of going to Calgary for the day!  The way they were talking I thought it was a short jaunt.  Its FOUR bleedin hours!

"Back home that gets me off the island and on the Continent!"

 

Conversly here in Canada we can't seem to think OLD

I was in Stratford at a small shop that was a converted house.  I asked how old was the house?  Her answer..

"Well this is the new part of the house, its only 300 years old.  The back part is the old part, its over 400 years old!"

 

I come from a country where over 150 years old is ancient!

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Speaking of gold rush towns, that brings up another example from Exalted: The city of Gem, in the far South of Creation, is one of that setting's larger cities despite being located in hot, arid mountains with little food or water. But like its name says, Gem is the world's richest source of multiple jewels. It extracts so much wealth that its ruler, the Despot, can actually pay to bring in supplies from thousands of miles away along the aptly-named Diamond Road, with assistan ce from hired sorcerers, gods and demons. It's a design point that the city exists on a knife-edge of disaster, but the money's *so good*...

 

Dean Shomshak

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Thinking about age: the most obvious common aspect of the modern "young" countries is that they are colonies built on the ruins of older cultures. Much older cultures.

 

This has implications in a fantasy world.

 

Imagine a society based on Iron Age Britain. What remnants of the Bronze Age, Stone Age and earlier (pre-human) societies could be there?

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7 hours ago, assault said:

Thinking about age: the most obvious common aspect of the modern "young" countries is that they are colonies built on the ruins of older cultures. Much older cultures.

 

This has implications in a fantasy world.

 

Imagine a society based on Iron Age Britain. What remnants of the Bronze Age, Stone Age and earlier (pre-human) societies could be there?

I don't know how strong the argument is, but Niall Sharples diagnoses a social revolution at the beginning of the Wessex Iron Age by observing an outbreak of circular-home building. Circular buildings, as opposed to rectangular, are sometimes seen as a way in which the various peoples of the British Isles have expressed difference with the predominantly rectangular-building Continental societies on the opposing shore. However, during the Wessex Bronze Age, rectangular buildings were the rule, often erected in landscapes in which archaeologists believe they can discern relatively high levels of social inequality. Meanwhile, Neolithic-era round henges and other monuments were everywhere. 

 

The argument, then, is that these putative early Iron Age revolutionaries said, "Look, our ancient ancestors built round buildings, whereas the hated 1% built square buildings. Let's return to the ways of our ancestors, and build round buildings! (Also, let's eat the rich!)" 

 

So, yes, it does seem that the ruins played a part in shaping ancient mentalities, just like they still do. 

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On 10/24/2022 at 7:26 PM, Lord Liaden said:

 

Are you saying that the same pirates would operate across half the globe?

Pirates really did operate over vast spans of distance in the Golden Age of Piracy.

 

But let's not forget that they were operating on the lines of existing maritime commerce. It's less impressive to see a pirate voyaging from New England to the Indian Ocean when Boston merchantmen were doing the same. 

 

Now, a fascinating aspect to this, and one that might bear on the OP's vacant coasts, is just how long and how far these lines of maritime commerce stretched, and how long ago. We have an interminable and exhausting debate over whether or not the Basque were in the Newfoundland fisheries before Columbus that I think is pretty much played out, but is also the less interesting with the discovery that people were present on the Azores as early as the sub-Roman period, seven hundred years before they were "discovered" in the days of Henry the Navigator. 

 

If that's the case, we have to explain literally centuries of what was almost certainly low-intensity (because it is not frequent enough to be documented, and any permanent population on the islands was too scanty to leave obvious archaeological evidence) fishing-related (I mean, why else?) activity. Why didn't it escalate into "discovery"?

 

The answer, which I take from narratives of expeditions to the Canaries, is that the "fishers" weren't going for fish, but for seals. Marine mammals can be taken in rookeries on the beach, which is much safer than fishing for them offshore; they produce a high value staple (train oil) that is completely fungible and anonymised, and while the yield of an individual rookery can be quite high, it is also inherently limited. You can predict about how many animals you can take on a given beach. It's never going to increase, there's no room for capital investment, and the number of hunters has to be limited somehow for the voyage to be profitable.

 

When you look at the global distribution of pinnipeds, and particularly the so-called Mediterranean monk seal, it maps onto the routes of the early European voyages of discovery pretty well. There was a long pre-Age of Discovery era of faffing around with the North Atlantic islands and the islands of "Macaronesia," which all have seal fisheries; there was a southwards push towards the Guinea coast which is first documented in contemporary histories of the "deeds of Prince Henry" when the explorers arrived in the sealing grounds across from the Canaries and then southwards towards Mauretania's Bay of Arguin; Columbus sailed to the Caribbean, catching up with another large seal population, especially off the Mayan coast of Yucatan; the story of how the Portuguese got to the Cape of Good Hope is very obscure, but Namibia has a huge seal population; and, of course, there's lots of sealing to be done off Newfoundland. 

 

So is there a prehistory of low-intensity sealing voyages to the areas later "discovered"? Sometimes. Maybe. Point is, where the sealers go, you're likely to get pirates --subject, and I think this might be the crucial point, to there being fiscal room for them to operate. (There's not much point to going out and stealing hide bags of train oil instead of catching your own seals unless you can sell them for less than the fishers can. Throw in a Prince with a "soap monopoly" like Henry the Navigator in the ports form which the fishers come from, and a rising Meseta to use the soap, and you have a monopoly rent being charged on legitimate edible fats imports which allow the pirates their profit by evading the rent. 

 

Now, when I say that there is no possibility of capital investment increasing yields on sealing voyages, this  isn't quite true. The Canaries in the immediate pre-Contact era seem to have developed quite a trade in dyed goatskin. So-called "Moroccan kid" dominated (dominates) the industry, and the leatherworking port towns on the Moroccan coast are known to have sourced their hides as far away as northern Nigeria during the caravan days. There also seem to have been Moroccan buyers in the Canaries in the era when the  native Canarians were, by some accounts, cave men who couldn't even build boats --perhaps an unfair rap. 

 

The point is that you might see a region that, on a map, looks completely deserted, no towns or even cities, but which is actually fairly populous, and is linked into a global trade network by some kind of high-skill specialised export like dyed goatskin. 

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12 hours ago, assault said:

Thinking about age: the most obvious common aspect of the modern "young" countries is that they are colonies built on the ruins of older cultures. Much older cultures.

 

This has implications in a fantasy world.

 

Imagine a society based on Iron Age Britain. What remnants of the Bronze Age, Stone Age and earlier (pre-human) societies could be there?

 

I've always found the cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley to be most intriguing as models for fantasy lands of great antiquity. Many successive waves of ethnicities and cultures, long-buried ruins with hidden treasures, and traditions of beings with human bodies and animal heads, or the reverse, or multiple heads and/or arms, lending to imagination of pre-human habitation.

 

I've also heard the argument that Western Europe during the early Middle Ages makes a fine model for a post-apocalyptic world. The Roman Empire has crumbled, but the ruins of its past glory are everywhere. Much of its knowledge has been lost, outside of isolated enclaves. Pagan "barbarians" are a constant threat to "civilized" lands.

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Time for an update

The City of Mercenaries

 

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Xanis

The city of Xanis is located at the end of the Bridger Pass through the Jomoloto Mountains along the western coast of the continent.  Its main position is that it is the main point of trade for items going from the Mountain Coast to the Basin area, and vice versa.  Its founding is somewhat unique.  

 

A mercenary captain thought it would be a good idea to set up a permanent camp where they could train and set up contracts.  So after leading his troops across the Forbek Plains and all those nomads, up and through the Bridger Pass, and down to the other side, he set about organizing his camp.  Then the reality of Logistics came to him.  How was he going to feed all his troops?  Desertions were rife and soon he was down to a skeletal force.  But locals soon gravitated to his city.  He supplied protection from goblyns and undead, they supplied him with food and clothing.  Soon other experts moved in and soon a bustling town sprung up.  Building boats, they went up and down the coast.  

South there were two river systems, one of which leads to the Lenoe Pass and Lake Lanoe and then back to the Gefting Basin.

North are the Xani Salt flats, the Coastal Fens  and eventually the two northern rivers that travel through the arid terrain. 

Now Xanis is a full fledged merchant town.  Its major exports are salt, fish and fish products, glassworks, textiles and of course mercenaries.

Government is best termed a military dictatorship.  The various units in the city handle various jobs.  Every ten years a vote is held among all active soldiers as to who will become overall commander.  Once elected, he becomes supreme commander.  Any order he gives is absolute.  Recently though they looked to far off Reuchia and its collapse and are beginning to worry about their own citizens!

 

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I'm curious as to whether the mercenaries draw their recruits from immigrant fighting men, or the native population, or both? And what effect does that have on their wider society? If a citizen isn't an "active soldier," are they treated as lesser by the fighting men?

 

For my own most frequent fantasy setting, I developed a small kingdom with a reputation for producing quality fighters. It controls an economically and strategically valuable pass through extensive mountains. In the past it was part of a larger realm, and that realm and its foremost rival would frequently fight over control of the pass. The local people adopted a militaristic tradition to prepare them for battle, and even though those rival kingdoms crumbled long ago, the tradition remains.

 

Most of the land's males, and some of the females, are trained from childhood in weapon use, tactics, and military discipline. While most of them choose to serve at least some time in their country's army, many will sell their services as mercenaries to other lands, or become professional adventurers. As mercenaries they're widely well-regarded and sought after. Even after they retire from battle, they remain ready and able to defend their homeland from any threat.

 

Hero Games' sword-and-sorcery setting, The Valdorian Age, offers another precedent. The people known as the Amyklai have long been ravaged by warlike barbarians, and established the practice of volunteering every fourth child born in their communities to a common army to defend their lands (the term "Amyklai" properly belongs to said army, but outsiders often call their whole people by that name). The Amyklai are raised with nearly Spartan rigor, and are reputed over the known world as unsurpassed warriors.

 

As with your "City of Mercenaries," the Amyklai exercise a military dictatorship over the whole land, but merely to assure that the army is well supplied and their homeland behind them remains peaceful. The civilians are free to govern themselves as they see fit aside from occasional edicts from the Lord Marshal.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

Hero Games' sword-and-sorcery setting, The Valdorian Age, offers another precedent. The people known as the Amyklai have long been ravaged by warlike barbarians, and established the practice of volunteering every fourth child born in their communities to a common army to defend their lands (the term "Amyklai" properly belongs to said army, but outsiders often call their whole people by that name). The Amyklai are raised with nearly Spartan rigor, and are reputed over the known world as unsurpassed warriors.

 

As with your "City of Mercenaries," the Amyklai exercise a military dictatorship over the whole land, but merely to assure that the army is well supplied and their homeland behind them remains peaceful. The civilians are free to govern themselves as they see fit aside from occasional edicts from the Lord Marshal.

 

 

I had forgotten about that group.  it would be perfect.  Consider it sto.... errrr Borrowed!

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An island of sailors just off the coast

 

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Island of Bukan

Just off the coast near Xanis is the Island of Bukan.  Not very large (about 100 km X 100 km), it has long looked to the sea for food and revenue.  It started slow, but soon they were getting a reputation as being the best sailors on any coast.  Only the inhabitants of the Far Isles can claim to be their equal.  At first they were equal parts merchants and pirates, but in more recent times they have seemed to abandon all the piracy.  

Now they are all merchants.  They consider war to be “bad for business” and avoid it at all cost.  They have sailed all the coasts of the continent except the southern one ( Ice and lack of a safe harbor on the southern coast makes travel there impractical)  Thus sailors from Bukan can be found at any port on the the outer coast of the continent, buying and selling goods, arranging transport, and even acting as go betweens.

Bukan’s government is a monarchy where the head of government is called the Prince(ss) of the Fleet.  Successors are chosen by the current leader and groomed to become the next in line.  

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Last entry

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The Far Isles

If one follows the southern mountains called Moreg’s Brow to the end, it leads to a peninsula that curves up north before ending in the Dark Ocean.  But if one had a way to continue then eventually you would end up in the Far Isles.  These are a collection of islands, some very small, others large enough to support humans and “Others”.  Since the sea was the main source of food, naturally they became suppurative sailors.  Only Bukan can rival their seamanship.  The Far Isles have no one government, each island taking care of itself, but all have an agreement to come to each other’s aid during emergencies.  

 

 

I am envisioning a sort of Philippine archipelago with tones of the Caribbean!

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