Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Balshatoi = Kozaki

I'm going through the setting, adding information to the Google Site.  One immediate change that I made is that I'm changing the name of the balshatoi ethnicity--a name which I've become more and more unhappy with over time--to Kozaki.  This is, more or less, a more "true" transcription of the word that renders in English normally as Cossacks.

Of course, the balshatoi aren't really the Cossacks.  If anything, they're more meant to represent something akin to the early Rus Khaganate; Vikings living among Slavs, creating a syncretic culture with elements from the two.  For simplicity's sake; rather than delving too deeply into the esoterica of it, I'm willy-nilly borrowing names, institutions and cultural mores from the Volga Cossacks and the Vikings, and throwing them together, and calling that the Kozaki ethnicity.


No comments: