From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@toppoint.de)
Date: Thu 25 Sep 1997 - 21:09:00 EEST
Lee R Insley wrote:
> Does anyone have a write-up of the Sartar landscape, villages,
> culture, etc.
There are a couple of publications dealing with villages, inns, etc.
There is a short espionage report on Clearwine village in KoS.
Apple Lane is the prime example for an absolutely atypical Sartarite
village.
RQ-Adventures "Return to Snake Pipe Hollow" describes travel to Alone,
with stops on the way, if I recall correctly.
Two German language scenario booklets, "Schatten in den Huegeln"
("Shadows over the Hills", describes the Ornsford clan of the Malani) and
"Ort ohne Wiederkehr" (~"Town of no Return", somewhere in Culbrea
territory IIRC) deal with village life.
Tradetalk 1 describes a somewhat unusual village in Tom Zunder's scenario
about Gren Dahl.
> A friend of mine once told me that the basis for Sartar was
> along the lines of the Germans in Roman times.
Entirely correct, from the pre-migration tribes through all stages to the
early Frankish kingdom in Gaul and the Visigoth kingdom in Iberia.
> From my knowledge of the Germans, it appears to me
> that Sartar is more like Gaul than Germany.
My favourite comparison are the Danubian Celts of the late Hallstatt and
>1) Gauls was more civilized than Germany. Germany had no large towns
If you define "Germany" as "where the Germanic tribes lived", you are
early La Tene period. Huge and lesser oppidae (fortified cities),
interaction with nomads (Scythians), trade with civilized coastal regions
both downriver and south across the mountains to the sea.
>or trading centers before the Romans got there.
mostly correct - there have been cities (ok, I know of one) largely made
of wood in middle Poland already before the Romans conquered Gaul, and
since this is pre-migration, the southernmost Germanic tribes lived
nearby. If you use Germany in its more modern boundaries, possibly even
including the later Roman province of Noricum, you are totally wrong -
the entire Danube valley was as civilized as Gaul. The inhabitants were
eastern Celts, probably with Germanic and Scythian ties. (At the time the
Roman Empire dissolved the Bajuwars, which became the Bavarian tribe in
Charlemagne's time, formed here from Roman settlers, native Celts and
more recently immigrated Germanics...)
>2) Germany was never fully subjugated by Rome. Gaul was.
Germany as a unit never existed before the division of Charlemagne's
empire between his grandsons. Gaul was unified by Caesar...
Patrik Sandberg:
>IMHO Orlanthi culture should always be a tight and (almost)
>non-diffusable _mixture_ of Celtic, Viking, Ango-Saxian, Germanic
>(and maybe others as well) stuff.
>On the other hand iI seems to me that people tend to lean more
>heavily on the analogue they are most familiar with.
And sensibly so. I can't help and give blank looks if someone
would describe the Pentans as "just like the Pechenegs", one of
many Asian rider peoples during the Byzantine history.
>-A physical landscape which is a blend of the Scottish Highlands
>and Iceland for the hills and mountains; the fertile areas
>around lake Malaren in Sweden for the valleys.
I often tend to think Wales, minus the coast. Even weather and climate
seem correct.
>[...] But the above-written is how I have handled both the
>Talastar, Skanthi, Aggarian and Sartarite Orlanthis. (I would
>stick to it quite much if I went down to Heortland as well. I'm
>not particularily fond of the Medeival pot this area often seems
>to be. On the other hand again, the step between a viking
>culture and medeival Norman ain't that great so I suppose I can
>reconcile the differences...)
Well, I am one of the "guilty" using "medieval" parallels for Heortland.
The period I use as source for some of the customs and laws is
Anglo-Saxon England, before and during the Viking Age. Not quite Dark
Age, but neither romantic chivalry (that is, before the latest Seshnegi
insurge). And I make a distinction between the lowland (plateau) Hendriki
nation and the foothill tribesmen. The rougher the terrain, the rougher
the inhabitants...
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