I was thinking a few days ago of not even bothering with a TIMISCHBURG map. I'm now thinking of something even more radical (although if I do this, I'll almost certainly eventually put a map together after all.) What if I combine TIMISCHBURG and DARK•HERITAGE, Mk. V, where I am right now? First off; what would be the advantages of doing something like this?
Well, first, both settings are at a stage of relative non-development. TIMISCHBURG has been developed in one country only, with a few handwavey attempts to describe what else is out there in the setting beyond that country. DARK•HERITAGE is, if anything, even less developed in its current Mk. V version; it's got a bit of development on the East Coast and very handwavey expressions of what else is out there. Since both focus on different areas and are handwavey about everything else, it would hardly be difficult to combine them.
It also gives me the benefit that I can utilize more of what I developed in DARK•HERITAGE Mk. IV than I can currently. Because the country Timischburg is the evolution of Tarush Noptii, I can fit it in. I was already hoping to figure out where to use Terassa, although it would be "demoted" from protagonist country to alternate, southern "New Spain". In step the old balshatoi, who were renamed Kozaky and renamed again Scramasaxons; none of which really hit it off quite right to me. They are now the new protagonist nations, and they're actually refugees or Crusaders, or whatever you want to call them, from Earth, come to the New World across a mystical bridge or portal a hundred (or so) years ago, which would have been pretty much the time of Richard I The Lionheart. This gives me a kind of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood vibe to my pseudo Saxon, Celtic, etc. nations which make up the protagonist countries.
The disadvantages of course being that TIMISCHBURG was created specifically to be a more D&D-like setting than DARK•HERITAGE was ever supposed to be. The former is supposed to have room for elfs and dwarfs and orcs and whatnot, while the latter doesn't really. Of course, this may be a bit of a moot point, as I've found that I don't really like the D&D elements enough to try very hard to preserve them, and even as TIMISCHBURG has continued to develop, I've completely ignored them.
Although I'm leaning heavily towards doing this, and drawing up a map showing my nations, such as they are, and Weird Tales-ing it all up a fair bit to be more Hyborian Age and Hyperborea and whatnot, I need to give it some more thought before I decide for sure. But I am leaning heavily towards doing it.
If so, how would I integrate stuff, and what would I integrate exactly?
- My protagonist northern European nations would still be on an ersatz east coast, mostly.
- The Six Colonist Nations: Westry (English, ruled by Normans), the Archenlands (English, ruled by Anglo-Saxons), Brochwel (Welsh and Cornish), Dun Nechtain (Scottish), Trondmark (a kind of hybrid of English, Scottish and Viking), and Vingulfold (actual Viking.)
- Immediately to the south of that is Timischburg. Their immediate source is unclear, but they claim to have come from the Holy Roman Empire, or at least the aristocracy does, although no record of them having left the Holy Roman Empire in the past is known.
- To the immediate west of them would be frontier mountain ranges not unlike the Appalachians geographically, although more like the Rockies or the Alps physically. These are mostly uninhabited, but protagonist settlers and homesteaders are moving into the area, and some lingering Wendaks (WHG type natives) still lurk about too.
- To the immediate west of that is the Prairie-Sea. Untash, Haltash and Tazitta tribes roam here, as a kind of analog of Comanches (the first), Scythians (the second) and Huns (the latter) in the vague way that the Aesir and Vanir of Howard's Hyborian Age were Vikings.
- North of the Prairie-Sea is the vast Cerenarean Sea; actually kind of all of the Great Lakes rolled up into one super-great lake. North of that is mostly boreal forest, inhabited by savage relatives of the Wendaks and the Lomar. The latter are descendants of old Hyperboreans; pale and degenerate, and fleeing the advances of the savage Inutos even further north.
- The eastern coast between the Cerenarean Sea and the ocean (immediately north of the Six Colonists) is home to the Carlovingians, who claim to be the descendants of old Franks who came several centuries before the Six Colonists arrived. Quite honestly, the origin of these guys is mysterious, and scholars among the Six Colonists find it very curious to have found them at all.
- West of that are the foothills of the Massive Mountains, and in these foothills is where Baal Hamazi still lies. It's now more a region than a polity.
- South of the Prairie-Sea is the Hill Country; another settlement of homesteaders and pioneers and others who chafe for whatever reason under the governments of the Six Colonists. This is a mixture of all Colonist ethnicities, but especially Anglo-Saxon and Scottish. It has no real central government, which is just the way the people like it.
- Southwest and West of the Hill Country is the Great Escarpment, and the High Desert above that. The High Desert is home to the degenerate descendants of old Mu, and the High Desert still holds that name for some. These are the red-skinned jann, more like a savage and degenerate Red Men of Barsoom in most respects than the Qazmiri of DARK•HERITAGE Mk. IV.
- South of the High Desert and Hill Country is Terassa. The geography will be somewhat swapped; the Mezzovian Sea now being an ersatz Gulf of Mexico in most respects. Porto Liure will still be on some analog of Hispaniola or Cuba. Nizrekh is here as well.
- South of Terassa will be Kurushat, similar to how it is, mostly, from the older DARK•HERITAGE. Here, they're the descendants of old Lemuria.
- If you can imagine in this ersatz New World that some part of eastern Brazil came up as a massive peninsula closing off the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea, that's where Tesculum and Gunaakt are.
Well; now that I've done that, I feel even more confident that I'll eventually decide to actually go with this. But still; I'm going to let it sit before I decide for sure.
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