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Tell me about your non-Medieval Europe based settings.

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Also, far too much of what is assumed to be medieval is specifically English medieval. There were many other cultures, all quite different from England.

Game of Thrones has only added to this tendency.

I've been setting my stories specifically elsewhere. One is in southern Germany and Switzerland. One is in Dacia and Thrace (Constantinople). One is on an island off the coast of Brittany. My current WIP is in southern France. Another in the Harz Mountains.

There's just so much more to the Middle Ages than boring old England.
 
The setting for my WIP is a portal world that was once tribal in nature to the extreme. Humans from Earth came through the portal and decided the world needed them to govern it. The result has similarities to medieval Europe, but there are tons of differences too.
 

Tom

Istar
Mine is based on the late Roman Empire and the conquest of Germanic and Celtic territory. It also incorporates a Northeastern American geographical setting and North African/Saharan cultural influences for the empire. I'm enjoying writing it!
 

elemtilas

Inkling
Hi,

Just as an aside you might want to look into the history of Breitspurbahn - Hitler's proposed broad gauge railway. In his case it was proposed to be three metres wide and the trains that ran on it something more like land based ocean liners.

Cheers, Greg.


Too bad none of that ever got built. It would be interesting to see how well an extra-broad gauge railway would run.

UK broad gauge was just a tadge over 7'. In the Eastlands of The World, the principle railway lines are on an 8' (oliphant) gauge, while trolleys and short industrial lines are narrow gauge at 4' (imperial) gauge. No steam, though. Either ox- or horse-drawn or else motivated by golems.
 
Too bad none of that ever got built. It would be interesting to see how well an extra-broad gauge railway would run.

UK broad gauge was just a tadge over 7'. In the Eastlands of The World, the principle railway lines are on an 8' (oliphant) gauge, while trolleys and short industrial lines are narrow gauge at 4' (imperial) gauge. No steam, though. Either ox- or horse-drawn or else motivated by golems.

Maybe it's better that none of that got built, since, you know, they're Nazis.
 

elemtilas

Inkling
Maybe it's better that none of that got built, since, you know, they're Nazis.

*shrugs*

Hitler built about 3000km of autobahn highways as well. Guess that shouldn't have been built either, since, you know, they're Nazis. Or no, maybe Germany should just tear up all the autobahn system and return to one lane dirt roads?

Let's just invoke Godwin and leave this aspect of the discussion be!
 
*shrugs*

Hitler built about 3000km of autobahn highways as well. Guess that shouldn't have been built either, since, you know, they're Nazis. Or no, maybe Germany should just tear up all the autobahn system and return to one lane dirt roads?

Let's just invoke Godwin and leave this aspect of the discussion be!

No point in tearing down autobahn highways if they do no harm, but I was just saying the less the Nazis rule the better.

You're right, let's leave this aspect be.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I've always liked the notion of a magical train with a wizard engineer. It requires no tracks because the wizard lays the tracks as they go and pulls them up as the train leaves. Right of way would still be an issue, but you could make the gauge flexible, depending on what sort of "car" was being transported.
 
Hey buddy.
In my story, there is a fictional continent consisting of three countries, but four kingdoms (because the biggest of the countries is just too big, and well, kingdoms is not the same as a country).
But my point it, I have this nation called Lyrea, which is inspired by Middle-Eastern/Indian cultures. Lyrea is the most magical place in my continent, with its elemental spirits (which are an amalgamation of the Celtic sprites and the Middle Eastern/Arabian djinns, more the latter than the former), and mages (who use elemental magic, and their mana is also tied in to and with the elemental spirits, which was how magicians and sorcerers fucntioned within Middle-Eastern mythology). Lyrea is mostly a desert, and the northern parts are cooler and more fertile (and thus much wealthier) than the south.
Their culture is more liberal than my European inspired kingdoms, with an acceptance of polygamy, different sexualities, and politics. I seek to show this as both a boon and a bane; about how this liberal culture has lead to some serious problems in Lyrea.
 

Corwynn

Troubadour
Also, far too much of what is assumed to be medieval is specifically English medieval. There were many other cultures, all quite different from England.

Game of Thrones has only added to this tendency.

I've been setting my stories specifically elsewhere. One is in southern Germany and Switzerland. One is in Dacia and Thrace (Constantinople). One is on an island off the coast of Brittany. My current WIP is in southern France. Another in the Harz Mountains.

There's just so much more to the Middle Ages than boring old England.

You raise a good point about Medieval settings being too often based on England in particular. Game of Thrones is indeed the worst offender. Westeros (at least as represented on the show, and except for Dorne) is painfully English. You'd think the wildlings would have Scottish accents and culture, since they're supposedly based on the Picts; but no, the Land Beyond the Wall is apparently just more England with even worse weather (also how does anything grow there if the snow never melts, but I digress).

I suspect the reason for this is because most early fantasy authors (Tolkien, Dunsany, Lewis, etc.) were (and often still are) British, and thus wrote what they knew. The Medieval Englandesque setting then became entrenched through imitation and repetition.

I too fell into this trap for a while. In early versions of my invented universe, the main setting was going to be Albrionn. Three guesses as to where I got the name, and the first two don't count. To my credit, it was to be based on Victorian Britain instead of Medieval England. Yet as time went by, I began adding other places and periods along with some inventions of my own, and eventually Albrionn evolved into Hualketh. The same process happened with the rest of the world as well.
 

traumallama

Acolyte
I agree Fantasy is replete with examples of Medieval England and Europe. I have no problem with it of course, because I love the time period and place. It is always refreshing to see something other than the middle ages. World History is so vast and complex, it can be a source of endless inspiration.
I studied American History for a very long time, so that is what I'm drawing from in my own world building. It started out as the Norse discovery and settlement of America, but now it has changed into more of an industrial America setting for urban places with some colonial period thrown in too. I also like the theme of America as a melting pot of different languages, peoples, cultures, beliefs, etc. 19th century America is also such a complex time socially and politically. I just enjoy the period so that is where I am right now with my own world building. It is always a writer's prerogative to change their mind!
 

D. Gray Warrior

Troubadour
I had one world that I no longer write in based on the pre-Columbian Americas, particularly Mesoamerica. The main country was a loose parallel of the Aztecs, but with similarities to the Roman Empire in its infrastructure and political system (they had roads, bath houses, an autocratic emperor, etc.) I tried to stay as far away as I could from a monarchy as at the time I saw them overused and just as bad as the "pseudo-medieval fantasy setting." So, position of emperor was not hereditary, but rather appointed by the gods. Sometimes they would choose the emperor's son as the heir, but that was just as often not the case. The shamans would seek out this heir and prepare him for running the empire. The shamans used magic sand to guide them towards the individual they're looking for. They would follow the path of this dust devil or tiny sandstorm until they found him.
 
I had one world that I no longer write in based on the pre-Columbian Americas, particularly Mesoamerica. The main country was a loose parallel of the Aztecs, but with similarities to the Roman Empire in its infrastructure and political system (they had roads, bath houses, an autocratic emperor, etc.) I tried to stay as far away as I could from a monarchy as at the time I saw them overused and just as bad as the "pseudo-medieval fantasy setting." So, position of emperor was not hereditary, but rather appointed by the gods. Sometimes they would choose the emperor's son as the heir, but that was just as often not the case. The shamans would seek out this heir and prepare him for running the empire. The shamans used magic sand to guide them towards the individual they're looking for. They would follow the path of this dust devil or tiny sandstorm until they found him.

Feel free to tell me more details. Maybe by private messaging, if you prefer.
 

wirehead

Acolyte
Huh, so I've spent a bunch of time dusting off a bunch of notes from ~2003 that were more pseudo-medieval fantasy setting and, as I'm going through trying to turn them into something new, I'm realizing that the new version is drifting really far away from that.

The realization that it was always built around (based on AD&D's Mystra or the D&D Known World) was that powerful magic would result in a society that was more like a mirror held to modern day society, with industrialization. Except that was 2003 and the world around me was different and I'm probably wiser now that I'm older.

I kinda feel like the traditional feudalism can totally go, even in an otherwise fantastic setting. Feudalism was built around the notion of the knights as superior. But what is a row of knights in a suit of armor if some punk kid has a very powerful but untrained fireball? Conversely, magic must be limited to be able to have interesting stories, so a king also can't send in a warlock to take down the populace if they trick him into wasting all of his spells and then rush him with rocks.

I was reading "Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes" by Tamim Ansary and the book pretty much re-tells a chunk of history from the perspective of the Islamic world. And the key driving point made was that the traditional western version of history is about the sea routes. When they talk about the Middle East, it's always about the Canaanites and Phoenicians and Greeks and the people who traded along the coast of the Mediterranean but much less about the land routes connecting the coastline to the rest of the world.

Thus, the empire that I'd written up in 2003 as a fairly standard fantasy kingdom has mutated. They are convinced they are the one great everlasting empire, but are decadent and on the decline. They are the archeologists of that universe, but they are only doing it to show how they are the perfect society. They have a King and Barons and Knights and they always manage to never quite have to actually call out the Knights to take out a rebellion because they don't want the population to realize how toothless the whole thing is and instead call for subversive secret agents to solve their problems.

And so they are kinda stuck in a corner, where everyone is content to see them as this ageless empire, and the truly interesting stories that I'm looking to tell are the second-class-citizens in the fairly standard fantasy kingdom. Or the people in the desert. Or the islanders in an age of sail where there's no America to conquer and where some of the ships float through the air.

My present problem is, amusingly, wardrobe.
 

Ewolf20

Minstrel
I mostly like working in more modern settings but one world i've built was a african inspired setting where the main races were arthropod humanoids. it was my answer to the endless sea of sometimes bog standard medieval settings starting humans and human wannabes.
 

Miles Lacey

Archmage
My WIP is based on a mixture of the following:

1. Korean traditional family structures with some tweaks.
2. Balinese naming conventions.
3. Southeast Asian legends about spirits and mythical creatures.
4. Japan and the Weimar Republic in the 1920s for the political side of things.
5. Arabic superstitions and customs with some tweeks here and there.
6. The "sin cities" of the 1920s: Paris, Berlin and Shanghai. Mostly Shanghai.
7. The gritty film noir movies and gangster movies of the inter-war period that were often set in New York and Chicago.
8. The Islamic Faith but with Greek, Maori and Bhuddist elements mixed in to create what I think is a unique polytheistic faith.
 

Tom

Istar
My world is heavily influenced by Mediterranean/Near East antiquity and Iron Age Europe. Some of the main cultures are based on Egypt, the Assyrians, Byzantine, Greece, northern Africa, the Celts, and other European tribes. The main imperial force in this world is made up of a culture of horseback archers who were once desert nomads.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
Lately, I've been trying to make settings without any obvious basis in real-world culture or history.

So, the last setting that I've come-up is entirely made out of clay and is mostly based on a gag-oriented comic strip from the early 1900's and nonsensical stories I came-up with while playing with toys as a child.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I don't know if the setting I'm working in for my sprites counts as non-European or as non-Medieval, but I'll talk about it anyways.

It's not really medieval. It's not set in a specific time period. It's more like I took a medieval setting, I dropped certain scientific advances like electricity and gunpowder, and then advanced technology with those limitations. For example they have factories, but they still have a cottage industry who pay their taxes in the form of spare parts to support those factories, since they break and rust all the time because they don't have stainless steel. The main government is also a kingdom, but the king's herald conducts extensive interviews and selects several magistrates for the people to vote for as local leaders. Details like these give the setting a semi-Medieval, semi-Modern feel that I'm trying to carry throughout the setting.

It's also not really European, even though it is. The history of the setting involves the people of Crenifer, kind of based on Ireland (hence, sprites) originally having their peninsula invaded from the Northwest by the Empire of Pel Daxis (no specific real-world counterpart, I'm still working on their culture). That was like a thousand years ago, and the countries on the peninsula are riddled with evidence of Pel Daxis, a lot like much of the world has signs of Alexander the Great's old conquest, or that of ancient Rome. The Kingdom of Crenifer is the least Pel Daxian (they're inland, while Pel Daxians mostly settled on the coast). But they're there, and they aren't villains or anything like that. The story also takes place in a trade city that feels very diverse and modern, both with the people and the fantasy races.

Which leads me to... well, the sprites. The story isn't about Pel Daxis or the Kingdom of Crenifer. It's about the sprites of Falina Cairn, and other forms of fairies, like the asrai who live in the canals, the mera in the well, the knackers in the mines, or the crazy group of hobs, wild and wacky because each individual hob is like an extremely unique (and maybe a little broken) race. The thing is, some of the hobs are based on the kobold/goblin varieties of different cultures, like the Duende of South America (with a hole in its hand that leads it to drop things when it wants to be helpful).

In book one the two main characters are sprites who are up against each other and basically the Crenifer mafia. As to being medieval and european, you can make of all that what you will.
 

Gurkhal

Auror
So far I've got ideas for a 19th Century inspired setting. Ideas are pretty rough and vague so far but I'm getting there.
 
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