Thread: Ideas for Yrth
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Old 01-09-2021, 08:56 PM   #176
Astromancer
 
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Default Re: Ideas for Yrth

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Basically, he's adding a slice of the Planet Mongo is adding a new genre blend to Yrth. Megalos is basically Lankhmar, Yibyorak is basically Ankh-Morpork. Al-Wazif is The Arabian Nights Glamourous and Al-Haz is the Arabian Nights gritty. Bilit Island is a mixture of Swashbuckler and survival horror. Sahud is...interesting. Alexander Howl's suggestion would add a area of Sword and Sorcery blended with Planetary Romance.
Some thoughts on how to do this.

I'd place the new microcontinent, and some nice large islands to hide pirates and rebel kingdoms, due southeast of Bilit Island. This will make regular contact between Yttarria and the new lands fairly rare at first.

Picking a name for this land will help, I choose Enitharmon. She was dominated by others and her children brought violence, she's the right sort of figure to name lands ruled by a brutal dictator.

Planetary Romance involves a higher tech level than Yttarria, so we'll need a good set of reasons why the people of Enitharmon haven't conquered Yttarria.

First, although Enitharmon has a tech level of four plus two (TL4+2) based largely on their rich and sophisticated Alchemy, they are incompetent at Agriculture. There have been on our Earth, settled high-density societies with little or no agriculture. These societies are typically near amazingly rich sources of wild foods, almost always marine sources. Such societies can be quite aggressive among themselves and near neighbors but lack the logistics to conquer those at any significant distance from them. In the Movie serials set on Mongo, Flash Gordon travels through high-tech cities and wilderness but we never see farms or gardens.

Second, although some classical societies like Ancient Gaul had complex and sophisticated school systems (Druids had to complete an internationally recognized 21-year education program) neither Greece nor Rome had anything like secondary education, colleges, or universities. Their primary school was largely unorganized, started at age seven, and was over at age fourteen. Schools more advanced than that were either apprenticeship systems or seminars. Scribal schools were generally the former and the Greek philosophical schools the latter. Most engineers, physicians, etc. were mentored. Having Enitharmon have this sort of educational environment (you couldn't call it a system) would also severely limit them.
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Last edited by Astromancer; 01-10-2021 at 11:55 AM.
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