Cutting a few ties

After reading yesterday's DH5 post, I realized that I was falling into a trap that I've fallen into before.  I've started getting too much into the weeds of a setting detail that ultimately isn't all that important.  I like the idea that my protagonist DH5 nations resemble some familiar real-world nations, but honestly; who really cares all that much how they got that way, or wants that much detail about their set-up?  Ultimately, it's completely unimportant.  This kind of purity spiral about developing an inconsequential detail until it swallows up everything fun that sparked it is what ultimately cratered DH3, so you'd think I'd know better.  But clearly, I just have a natural tendency to go that direction unless I recognize and stop it.  Luckily for me, I'm not really very far into DH5 yet, so I think I'll be OK.

What does this recognition mean, then?  First off, there isn't going to be any more discussion about how anyone got to the New World from Earth.  In fact, the New World will just be called earth, the world, etc. and if there's even an off-hand mention of the fact that the protagonist nations believe they have come from somewhere else, that's all it will be; an off-hand mention.  All details about timing and how and why and what was going on on Earth when they left will be taken completely out.  I may even do away with the idea entirely and just pretend that they were always there and have a curiously close parallel to earth cultures (not terribly unlike Robert E. Howard's Hyborian model, honestly.  Or the way the Warhammer World did it.  Or any number of other settings that have done the same thing.)

But by the same token, I don't intend to change much of the nations that I have.  Maybe a name or two.  There's no reason to have New Cumbria and New Dalriata if I'm not going to talk about how they're settlers from a place that remembers Cumbria and Dalriata on the British island.  And if I use the names Dalriata and Cumbria, it occurs to me that Cumbria and Culmerland are perhaps too similar for my liking, and liable to be confused.  I need a new name for one of the two.  In fact, I might want to change all kinds of names, possibly.  I've really struggled with finding exactly the names I want, for some reason.  Here's another stab at it:

• Normaund: a Norman kingdom, with the aristocracy, at least, and maybe much of the peasantry, speaking Norman French.
• Morganset an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, wary of ambitions from Normaund.
• Cumbria: a Brittonic kingdom; i.e., most similar to the Bretons, the Welsh, and the Cornish.
• Brynach: a primarily Scottish kingdom, but with some Anglo-Saxon Border Reiver style mingling.
• Trondmark: ruled by Cnut V, a mixed Viking/Anglo-Saxon type kingdom.
• Skeldale: a more "pure" Viking kingdom

I don't know if I'm going to rename the combined loose alliance of these nations as the "Six Colonists" or not, but maybe I will.  Carlovingia, Terassa, Tesculum, Timischburg, and the "native" kingdoms also will remain unchanged.

Another change is that I will make frequent reference, even among the natives, to Greek, Roman, Celtic and Germanic (specifically Anglo-Saxon and Norse) mythology.  The correct religion in DH5, as in the real world, is Christianity, of course, but as after the early Christianization of Northern Europe, we still have a strange situation in which the pagan gods are acknowledged, but not worshiped, or something like that. I actually think I see this most like the situation in the Dresden Files.  While fallen angels and other specifically Christian doctrine make up a significant portion of the discussion, Pluto and Odin do make specific appearances as well, not to mention less specifically mythological, but similar beings like Queens Mab and Titania, etc.  (Although it's likely that Mab comes from Gaelic Medb or Maev, a former goddess who became a legendary mortal queen after the Christianization of Ireland in the Ulster Cycle.)  This probably isn't all that different than what the early Christian writers who committed the Irish Mythological Cycle to parchment, or the Icelandic Eddas, or even Beowulf, for that matter; they are weird hybrids of Christianity overarching over what was clearly once a pagan religion, but the deities have been demoted to something that is not specifically a deity.

As the Christianized Gaelic and Germanic peoples of Northern Europe could still somehow reconcile their folk beliefs in the Otherworld and its powerful nobility (formerly pagan gods in their belief) existing alongside the world that they knew and it not contradicting their Christian faith, so will it be in DH5.

Aside from the belief in these characters, or their actual presence in the setting itself in some form or other, it's also an important part of their cultural heritage.  Like the Victorians still say "By Jove!" and make references to classical mythology quite frequently, assuming that everyone knows what they're talking about, the same will be true here.  For the most part, this mythological stuff is referenced in expressions.  But if it comes down to it, they do exist, although nobody actually worships Thor or Odin or Zeus or anything like that.  They become instead powerful otherworldly beings who may not necessarily be hateful of human life, but aren't likely to be magnanimous towards it either.