RDR weekly update

70% off of Breton horses! Holy crap; I better hurry and get those last five levels of Bounty Hunter done this week so I can get one of the top tier Breton's while they're that freakin' cheap! 70% off is a freakin' huge deal!

Plus, a lot of that stuff isn't wonderful, but I'll take more free mash, I'll buy another heavily discounted stable stall to have one in reserve; maybe even two! and I kinda want the free appearance changer. Although I picked the athletic body type, I feel like it's kinda skinny and round-shouldered looking all of the time. I'd like to experiment with the burly look, as long as it doesn't end up being fat.

And if 40% is off any horse, I might pick up a Missouri Foxtrotter or White Arabian. I still don't think I want to spend the gold bars for a Black Arabian, even if it is 40% fewer than normal. 40% off of 46, or whatever exactly the cost is, is still too many; close to thirty gold bars. No thanks.

Some of the limited time clothing looks appealing too. Sadly, I just spend a ton of money, but maybe I can get up early and do coin runs for the next few days and earn some decent cashola so I can buy more stuff before it's gone.

Although I note that the limited time clothing is going to be here for two weeks, not just one.

Marshes and bayous

In part because of Red Dead Online, which I've been playing a lot of the last two months or so (I'm now up to level 95 or 96, and I have maxed out all roles except for the Bounty Hunter, but I'm at level 15 there, so I'll finish that soon too.) I've thought that some bayou and or marshes would be a good addition to the Hill Country. It's certainly a feature of the Texan landscape that I'm kinda sorta borrowing, and wetlands are certainly common in the Old World too. Lord of the Rings had the Dead Marshes and the Midgewater Marshes both, for instance.  Where would I put them? I think the obvious place is that biggish blank spot between the southern edge of the Sabertooth Range and Lake Byewick, south of the Chokewater River, although another good pace would be on the other side of Lake Byewick, west of the Copper Hills and where the south fork of the Chokewater River kind of ends. I like the first option because it puts the orc/goblin settlement next to the swamps, which I think is appropriate, but I like the second option because it makes more geographic sense, and it allows for savage, voodoo, Nightfolk like skraelings to linger in the marshes.

I'll decide which of the two I prefer, and probably actually redraw the map in a hex map application, like I did in the past for Timischburg, at 30x50. (I need to redraw Timischburg, since it's been flipped on it's side and now needs to be a "profile" rather than "landscape" map, which will require some rejiggering of locations as well. But that's not urgent, since I'm obviously focusing more on the Hill Country than Timischburg as the "star area" of the setting right now.)  And, of course, maybe I'll opt for different marshes in both areas.

As an aside, as you can see from that map, if you map it a new window so you can get it full size, there is plenty of marsh or swamp territory in Timischburg. I think the Hill Country needs it too, even if it treads the same territory, because I'm much less likely to use stuff in Timischburg, honestly. I've really kind of migrated my interest more to the Hill Country as a setting, and Timischburg is very definitely "the alternate" setting, not the main setting. The Hill Country needs to be able to do it all on its own without reference to Timischburg, or Normaund, or Trondmark, or Carlovingia or Terassa, or any of the other nations that are just there to be used as points of reference, and their geography and history is never meant to really be explored or detailed. Although Timischburg, at least, did get some geographical and historical detail, a bit, and if anything ever needs to leave the Hill Country, then Timischburg is where I expect it to go.

I think I said that that map was 1 hex = 5 miles, but that may be excessive, and that's probably about right; that makes it 250 miles wide by 150 miles tall, or 37,500 square miles. That's smack dab in between the sizes of Indiana and Kentucky; a bit bigger than Scotland, but somewhat smaller than England, for point of reference. Plenty of room for plenty of adventure. In fact, maybe even a wee bit too big... but I'll opt for leaving myself options to fill in more stuff later if desired. And if not, some empty space of wilderness to travel through is hardly something to be eschewed.

Anyway, speaking of adding new things, here's some Red Dead images of their marshes for point of reference and inspiration as I consider where to put whatever marshes I end up adding in to the map I'm working on.

Waves of settlement

I've spoken before about the mystery of the origin of the Celts. We all know that they existed; heck, there are still some Celtic nations today; the Irish, the Scottish, the Welsh, the Cornish, the Bretons, etc. although compared to the vast hordes of the Celtic nation that the ancient Greek and Roman authors regaled us with, they seem to be the smallest of rump states remaining, using a generous definition of "state." In the British Isles in particular, the really massive turnover of population genetics; i.e., the old people were literally replaced by the new people; either dying in plagues of violence, or something else happened at the arrival of the Bell Beaker culture. The people before the Bell Beaker arrival were EEF type people, and they were the culture responsible for the megalithic construction both in the Isles and the Continent; most famously, they build Stonehenge and other henges. Long before that, the EEF were themselves a significant population replacement over the original WHG population, which has a Paleolithic-Mesolithic origin and were literally the first recorded people in the Isles. When the Bell Beakers had their population turnover, it was the third major wave of migration to the Isles, and both it and the one before that led to massive turnover; the Bell Beaker ancestry makes up 90% of the Britons who remained; the prior people were almost completely wiped out, for one reason or another.

However, although from a genetic perspective it's a little bit harder to see subsequent migrations, we know that they happened and they were significant. The Romans are genetically invisible, but they had a profound effect on the Island. The Saxons are easier to spot, although they did assimilate many Brythonic peoples into themselves rather than flat-out replace them altogether. The arrival of the Scoti and the Vikings are also locally visible, but not as much as one might think given what we know of their impact historically, linguistically and culturally.

And between the Bell Beaker and the Romans were, of course, the arrival of the Celts. Some rather sloppily assume that the Bell Beakers were proto-Celtic, but that's linguistically absurd; from what we know of the oldest known Celtic languages, they were way too similar to have split from each other more recently than about 1300 BC with the advent of the Urnfield culture, and the Bell Beakers arrived a thousand years earlier than the earliest part of that range. (It should be noted that there are some linguists who believe it possible to stretch proto-Celtic back further than that. Chang's family tree split shows that the Celtic and Italic branches split from each other shortly after 2000 BC, although that's a somewhat dubious type of dead reckoning and should be used for only very directional guesstimates. And many linguists don't accept that even 1300 is late enough; suggesting that a recognizable Celtic can't be dated any earlier than 800 BC! This is further mixed up with the possibility of "para-Celtic" languages that were part of the Italo-Celtic branch, but not Italic and not Celtic necessarily, but dead ends when it comes to the development of Celtic proper.)

So, I find this kind of stuff fascinating, even though it's difficult to sort out in real life. For DH5 and the Hill Country, of course, I can just always make it up.

So what is the settlement pattern of the Hill Country? Who settled it, in what order, and what happened to them as new waves moved in?

• Skraelings were the first wave of settlers to the area that are known. Refugees from Atlantis before Atlantis even sank, they were rebels, renegades and escaped slaves from that benighted country, but that isn't to suggest that they were any less iniquitous, wicked, or savage. Known to themselves as Wendaks, only a few remain still in very isolated pockets deep in the wildernesses, especially the forests such as the Haunted Forest and the Wolfwood, which they prefer. 
• The kemling Empire of Baal Hamazi passed over the area next, and they built colonies and Marchland baronies. While the kemlings themselves ruled Baal Hamazi, the majority of the people that they brought with them were simply people, the ancestors of the Drylanders as they are known today. The kemling empire only ruled over this territory for a relatively short while; probably less than a full century before it started pulling back and settlements were slowly but surely abandoned, but their ruins dot the territory, giving it a sinister feel, and of course, the Drylanders remained. Kemlings have returned to the Hill Country, but they are usually newer arrivals from the Plateau of Leng where their homeland is rather than lingering Baal Hamazi colonists. The kemlings and drylanders persecuted the skraelings and drove them into the forests from all over parts of the Hill Country, although the spread of plagues through the skraeling population may have made that much easier than it otherwise might have been.
• The jann also extended their empire over the Hill Country, conquering it from the kemlings, and remnants of their epic battles fought in the Boneyard can still be found. That said, they never settled here in large numbers, and mostly only maintained the cities at the edge of the Rudmont Escarpment, which still linger although they are now politically independent city-states, and are not connected with any empire anymore. From here, the jann claimed a territory that was only lightly patrolled by their soldiers, never properly colonized or settled, and was largely depopulated. Bands of proto-Drylanders wandered the territory, left from the battles between the kemlings and the jann, but they built no cities or settlements to speak of, and were not very numerous. Even the skraelings had a rebound of sorts of their population.
• During the reign of the jann over the area, small numbers of even more savage peoples crept into the area, often secretly, and have proven impossible (or perhaps undesirable) to dislodge in the years since. The Wolfwood got its first woses and thurses, which put the skraelings of that forest into decline, and the orcs and goblins of Shurkul settled in small numbers on the shores of Lake Byewick. It's also probable that the cursed established Daikos Colony at this time, although rather than turning southward into the Hill Country, those who moved beyond that colony turned eastward into Timischburg instead, settling there in a number of pockets.
• The jann didn't exactly leave, but as their imperial polity fell apart, those left in the cities of Simashki and Vuukrat and Sinjagat simply turned their faces from the Hill Country and no longer patrolled it or attempted to make anything of it. They were content to maintain their territory along the escarpment spread more to the extreme southwest of the area, in the Indash Salt Sea (which although it shows on the map, is really outside of the Hill Country proper.) The Hill Country had never really rebounded population wise since the great kemling-jann wars of the past, but following the withdrawal of even nominal and token jann claims on the territory, the population fell even further as various tribes of drylanders fought the remaining skraelings, and more to the point, each other. Many peoples were wiped out as coherent ethnic groups during this time, and following long centuries of bloodshed, raiding, and ethnic purges, more plagues swept through the area. 400 years ago, the Hill Country was almost depopulated again, with the exception of small bands of skraeling hunters in the Haunted Forest (and rumored even smaller and fewer bands in the Wolfwood), wandering nomadic pastoralist drylanders across the unwooded territory, and the small settlements of orcs, cursed and growing populations of woses in the Wolfwood. At this point, the Old People came from the north and settled the territory, making it their own, claiming the largely empty lands, and driving out the remnants of the Drylanders; they actually got their name during this time as they were forced out of the karst hills and the wold and into the Boneyard, where they were forced to subsist on drier pasturage than they had. The Old People established numerous homesteads and hill fortresses and were more numerous than any people who had before settled the Hill Country.
• Following another outbreak of plague which tore apart the social order of the Old People in the Hill Country, the final wave of settlers came in, and it is they who now rule the territory. They brought with them a new language, new customs and new social structure, but they were less dissimilar to the Old People than to any other people who had been in the Hill Country before or since. For the most part, the Old People who were left after the plague gradually assimilated into this new population and the people of the Hill Country no longer claim any Old People heritage except in the vaguest sense; even though their genetics do linger in most of the people who live here. There are a few exceptions, and some homesteads and small baronetcies where the Old People language, dress and culture are promoted. Otherwise, the people generally acknowledge the folklore of the Old People, but consider themselves the New People, or Hillmen, who's origins are mostly to the North.
• The Old People are like the Celtic inhabitants of Britain--the Welsh and the Cornish and maybe even the Scottish here and there, and while the Hillmen are, of course, English. While the English today are, of course, Anglo-Saxon in culture, language and tradition, they recognize that there is a Brythonic substrate that contributes to who they are in ways that are more subtle, and of course, the Scottish, the Cornish and the Welsh still consider themselves to be non-English altogether in most respects. The same is true of the Hillmen.

This is a little bit simpler than that of England. I don't really have anything like the Danelaw and Viking settlement, or Cnut the Great's making of the British Isles a portion of his North Sea Empire, nor do I have anything like the Norman conquest. This isn't meant to be England per se, just something that is sufficiently like a combination of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood's England with the settlement of Texas and the rest of the American West that it feels at home culturally to Americans. But I actually think that having these layers of settlement laid out gives me some context with which to be able to work in this territory better.

Lockdowns

Along with everyone else in the Western world, and for that matter much of the rest of the world too, my life has been upended this last week and a half or so. I've spent over a week working from home, running to the store every night looking for items that were out of stock, my daughter-in-law got laid off due to no customers at her job (she's pregnant and my son works part time and goes to school full time.) My other son is getting sent back from his missionary service in Peru, will likely be with us for a time of quarantine (or maybe they'll do that somewhere else; no idea) and then be reassigned within the country. My wife is still babysitting kids, including some that have "graduated out" of having her as a babysitter, but now have no school and their parents still have to work. My teenaged son is home from school with a totally unprepared school and state department of education, so with little to do (luckily our very friendly next door neighbors have a pretty decent gym in their garage that they're letting him use during the afternoon, giving him something useful to do.) Even my father-in-law, who was scheduled to retire within a few months, is probably going to defer, maybe even for years, because his 401k has taken such a bath. My dad, who's already retired and working on a state university pension, is fine. I haven't heard anything about anybody else, but I also have a brother-in-law who works in hospitality and a brother who's a dentist; I imagine they're both hit pretty hard in the short term.

Anyway, given all of that, I'm mostly just trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Work has actually been very busy, so it's a bit of a hard time to be working from home when there's a lot to be done, especially given that since my wife babysits four young kids, my home is a bit chaotic during the day and it took us a few days to figure out how to organize so we can both do what we need to. In the evenings, when we're not running around at the grocery store trying to find stuff (we've actually got everything we need now, I believe) I've been allowing my wife to talk me into binge-watching British period dramas with her, which helps her to feel happier when she's a bit anxious about all of the changes and worry-beads. Other than that, I've been trying to keep Red Dead stuff moving, and at least doing daily challenges every day, even if I can't manage to do anything else.

Along those lines, I maxed out my moonshiner role, the third of four. Bounty hunter is where I started, and that's still the one that's lingering the most; it's just a much, much slower one to do, and I've avoided doing some of the missions for various reasons. Now that I've finished the other three, unlocked the Norfolk Roadster (and actually bought one of the level 20 ones) that's what I need to focus on, I guess... although it doesn't really pay all that well, and I do still have a few expensive things to buy. Cosmetic things, no doubt, but things that I want, including more camp themes, more Cripps' outfits, most of my role outfits, the bar and band expansions, etc.

Due to all of the people who are at home, the servers have been extraordinarily strained, and I've had more errors, glitches and problems than normal; although when I played late at night everything worked great. Sigh. Of course. But I can't afford to do that most nights. Working from home is still working, not just being at home. I still have to get up (although admittedly not quite as early as normal) and get on with conference call meetings, and other things that need doing. Otherwise, I'd shift my schedule to play from 11 PM to about 2 AM or something, when the game seems to actually work and not constantly glitch and crash and have my camp and my moonshine shack disappear, etc.

Anyway, I'll probably still keep doing moonshine runs. It's an easy way to make a decent little wad of cash without spending tons of time doing it. Collecting coins takes at least a good hour and a half of running all over the map, at least for me, and the trader role means spending lots of time hunting for animals and hoping when you bring them back to your camp your camp hasn't glitched out and you can't turn them in. You don't make as much per run, but you can start up a batch, go hunt some bounties, come back and make a quick delivery, and even if you paid full price for the mash, you're still making a good $175 for very little effort or time investment. And you can keep doing it over and over again. If I can get the mash price down to $10 instead of $50, it's even more profitable, of course. (I usually do 2 star moonshine. The amount of extra money you get for doing three star is barely worth the cost of the expensive collectible alcohol ingredient needed.) Evergreen is my favorite because the ingredients are not only easily found, but you end up getting them as part of daily challenges frequently anyway.)

A good long distance trade run or a full collection of coins is still better, of course. But those are a bigger investment of time too. I find that it's difficult to do a collector run before it resets early in the evening, so Saturdays are usually my only good bet for that. Getting a full wagon for trade generally takes me most of the week too. But I can do a moonshine run every time I sit down for the evening to play for an hour if I start it distilling before I do anything else and then go delivery the wagon before I'm done for the evening. Depending on how long I intend to play, I can even do two runs many evenings. Not a bad way to keep the cash flowing relatively well.

John Foxx interview in Aussieland

I'm going to just throw this out there, in case anyone is interested in this kind of thing. John Foxx (real name Dennis Leigh) is a fascinating fellow. I'm actually quite surprised; he's very nearly my parents' age (only short by two or three years from my dad) and I'm not exactly young anymore either. He came to prominence—of sorts—in his very late twenties and earliest thirties as the front-man and in fact main man for Ultravox! (later Ultravox without the exclamation) which was a kind of art school and krautrock influenced punk band at first, but which later produced what is largely considered the very first synthpop song ("Hiroshima Mon Amour") in 1977 and the very first synthpop album (Systems of Romance in 1978.) Gary Numan is gushingly effusive of his work, especially on Systems, but he left the band in the late 70s and went solo. Here, sadly, two ironic things happened.

First, Billy Currie, the synth player for Ultravox, recruited Midge Ure, whom he had met on a Gary Numan tour and on the Visage project, to be the lead singer and guitar player for the new Ultravox, which had four absolutely fabulous, classic synthpop or new wave albums—not as electronic as something like Depeche Mode, for example. They had a real drummer, a real bass player, and plenty of guitar, for instance. The string of albums: Vienna, Rage in Eden, Quartet, and Lament are all very much worth chasing down. They were remastered and re-released with all kinds of bonus tracks back in 2008 or 2009 or so, and I've had these versions for a number of years.

In 1980, Foxx released Metamatic as his solo album, the culmination of the direction he was headed following Systems of Romance. It's quite a wonderful album; a kind of cyberpunk soundtrack, before there was a cyberpunk (Foxx himself credit J. G. Ballard as a very British version of some of the same themes as Philip K. Dick, for instance. However, by the time he did it, Kraftwerk had already done The Man-Machine, which actually had pop (or at least poppish) songs on it in the same style, and Gary Numan had already released Replicas (as Tubeway Army) and The Pleasure Principle, and for that matter, The Human League had already released Dignity of Labour EP and Reproduction. This meant that Foxx's Metamatic sounded derivative, even though he was one of the first to actually do this, and most of those follow up acts (especially Numan) were in fact derivative of him instead of the other way around.

In any case, this type of really cold, dystopian, proto-cyberpunk type of very late 70s early 80s art school synthpop didn't last all that long before stuff that was warmer and more accessible and pop-oriented started overtaking it, including, of course, Vince Clark's output first with Depeche Mode, then Yazoo, then Erasure, etc. Human League's own output after the founding members left the band in the hands of the lead singer that they recruited, who came out with Dare! and the hit single "Don't You Want Me" etc. This type of synthpop is very dark, but it's not the same kind of dark as Depeche Mode later evolved into. Even relatively dark stuff like Visage and early Midge Ure Ultravox doesn't really sound quite like it. Listening to Metamatic compared to Depeche Mode's Some Great Reward, for instance, which came out just a few years later, they barely sound like the same kind of band at all, even though they were, curiously, using the same kinds of instrumentation (completely electronic), both worked closely with engineer Gareth Jones, and the Depeche Mode work was partially recorded in John Foxx's own studio in Highbury.

I strongly recommend finding on Spotify or YouTube the following albums and listening to them as best you can:

Ultravox

• Ha! Ha! Ha! (1977)
• Systems of Romance (1978)
• Vienna (1980)
• Rage in Eden (1981)
• Quartet (1982)
• Lament (1984)

John Foxx

• Metamatic (1980)
• Shifting City (1997) (But get the deluxe version which has the Omnidelic Exotour with remakes of much of his earlier work)

Visage 

• Visage (1980)
• The Anvil (1982)
• Beat Boy (1984)

The Human League

• Reproduction (1979) (Get the deluxe version that has all of the Dignity of Labour EP included in the bonus tracks)
• Travelogue (1980)

Tubeway Army

• Tubeway Army (1978) (This is probably comparable to Ultravox's Ha! Ha! Ha! in that it's not really very electronic but punk, for the most part, although the early electronic roots seen here are probably what stand out as the most memorable.)
• Replicas (1979)

Gary Numan

• The Pleasure Principle (1979)

And just for some more context, it wouldn't hurt to listen to the Joy Division albums from 1978-1980 or so (can't remember their exact dates) and maybe the first couple of New Order albums. And, while you're at it, maybe the first three or four OMD albums.

Although I talk about Depeche Mode a lot, and it does seem like most of the subsequent synthpop scene is more influenced by Depeche Mode and/or Erasure than any of these guys, it's fascinating to see this kind of strange, very late 70s early 80s proto-cyberpunk dystopian type of synthpop that was developing in parallel. Maybe it was more of a dead end, or maybe it contributed to what later became industrial music or sorts, but either way, it's a fascinating period with some fascinating releases.

Our long-lost Eastern cousins

While the spread of Indo-European languages into Europe (especially northern Europe) was the spread of Indo-European people with significant, but relatively little admixture of indigenous peoples, meaning that Europeans can be seen as the descendants of the Indo-Europeans with some hybridization, but broad continuity and connections still to the original Proto-Indo-Europeans of the Corded Ware culture and its antecedents.

In the east, the case was similar for a time, but the Indo-Europeans eventually became genetically swamped. In India, some Y-DNA haplogroups can be traced to post-Corded Ware cultures (like Andronovo), they speak Indo-European languages (in the north, anyway), and they have some cultural traits that are obviously still rooted in the post Corded Ware traditions. But they have also been sufficiently genetically and culturally swamped that nobody looks at them and thinks that they seem to be similar peoples to, say, the Slavs or Balts. But they would have been, in the Bronze Age and even to some degree the Iron Age.

The other huge expansion of European Indo-Europeans in the east was that of the Iranian language families, represented in Classical history by the Medes, Parthians, and Persians, but also the vast nations of "barbarians" known to many literate societies of the age, like the Scythians and the rest of the related peoples; the Saka, the Sarmatians, etc. This was a vast confederation of closely related peoples of clearly European extraction in both physical features, genetic roots, archaeological roots, etc. that follows and is descended from the Andronovo horizon, which was an outgrowth of the Sintashta tradition, which was a descendant of easterly Corded Ware variants, like Abashevo. In other words, the Indo-Iranian peoples were originally closely related in most respects to the Balto-Slavic peoples. And that was still true during the time of the Scythians and their related splinter cultures.  The Scythians were eventually swamped. Their far eastern branches were overwhelmed genetically and culturally by the Han Chinese, and other Asian populations, as wave after wave of Hun, Mongol, Turk, etc. populations surged westward at their expense. Quite probably as the Slavic peoples expanded eastward they assimilated what was left of the Scythians; I suspect, for instance (although I don't know that there's any genetic evidence to back this up) that the Cossacks still maintained some Scythian genetics. The Cossacks were an interesting example of how the Scythian lifestyle paralleled the original Balto-Slavic lifestyle, which paralleled the original Indo-European lifestyle, for that matter.

I miss these guys. Iranians are the fairly heavily admixed remnants of some of them, but after centuries of heavy exposure and admixture with Middle-Eastern populations as well as the yoke of bondage that is the Moslem conquest, they've lost most of their connection to western peoples, or even Slavic peoples—although I also suspect that without the tyranny of the Ayatollah and his folks, and the meddling that our foolhardy government did with the government of the Shah, we'd actually find that we had more in common with the Iranians than we thought. The more "barbarian" Iranians, on the other hand, we'd have had as much in common with as we do the Russians, at least, and it'd be easier to recognize our common ancestors if they had been able to maintain some version of their culture since the Iron Age.

Let's talk about some of the very far eastern expansions of "our people" deep into what is today the territory of China, but which was not populated by any Han Chinese at the time. This map of the Qin Empire shows some of the groups I want to talk about:

Ordos: The Ordos were a very definitely Scythian people, based on their material culture. While today a desert, in the first millennium BC, it would have been very productive grassland and pasturage, very attractive to the horse-culture centric Scythians. They came under cultural influence from a variety of neighbors, including both the Han and the Dong-Hu, and their relationship with the Xiongnu and the Yuezhi is unknown, but archaeologically (and from a physical anthropology perspective) they are almost identical with the Scythians/Saka from much further West, and it clearly seems that this is where they came from. There are numerous hints in Chinese texts and culture that suggest that they may have employed Scythian magi as oracles or as some other type of expert advisors of sorts, who may well have come from this culture as well.  They appear on the territory formerly occupied by the hunter-gatherers of the Zhukaigou culture, who are perhaps related to some paleo-Siberian and/or Mongolian peoples that still linger, like the Evenks or the Daurs, and presumably acquired a genetic and cultural substrate as they did.

Dong-hu: Generally assumed to be proto-Mongols, along with the Xianbei and Wu-huan. There is some influence found in the Ordos culture, although the proto-Mongolians also adopted, largely, the way of life of the Scythians and became a horse-centered pastoralism and raiding culture. Curiously, the Mongols may have absorbed more than just the economic system of the Scythians; Genghis Khan himself was reported at various times to have had red hair and green eyes, the only credible source of which would have been European ancestry. Even if he'd also clearly shed his European language by then. Of course, if the Dong-hu had Scythian admixture, then that puts the Scythians' range even further to the east; almost all the way to the coast, in fact. That may be the real legacy of the Eastern Indo-Europeans that eventually got assimilated, though—their lifestyle was adopted by Turks, Mongols and many others, and while those groups may not have all that much (if any) linguistic or genetic ties to them anymore, they did, essentially, adopt their culture. Even the chariots that the early Chinese used almost certainly came from the proto-Scythian Andronovo peoples.

Xiong-nu: The Xiong-nu, or Huns as they are often called (in spite of the fact that their connection to the Huns as known to the Romans is debatable), were probably a multi-ethnic confederation of horse-nomads. However, almost certainly Scythians were a component, and maybe even the founding component. Some historians point out that the earliest names that appear of Xoing-nu kings seem to be Iranian in character and that the majority of the founding Xiong-nu would have been Scythian. However, there are other theories that favor a primacy of Turkic, Mongolic, Yenesian or other Uralic or paleo-Siberian group. Some genetic research suggest that a significant minority of mtDNA (i.e., women) were of European origin, and at least one elite Xiong-nu burial has the classical European R1a Y-DNA haplogroup that would indicate a Scythian origin. But the majority of genetic evidence, to the extent that it can even be confidently pinned to the Xiong-nu, seems to be more easterly and paleo-Siberian in origin.  While it's clear that Scythians were a component of its genetics, and it appears of its culture, and possibly of its linguistics, if they were, they did not maintain that level of dominance in any axis.

Yuezhi: The Yuezhi are relatively well known from Chinese historical texts, but their affinities are less well known. They, or at least a subset of them, are credited with founding the Kushan Empire in Bactria after losing wars with some of their barbarian neighbors. While their affinities are unknown, the most popular are that they are either a Tocharian-speaking group related to some of the earliest Tarim basin mummies, or they are a Scythian people related to the Pazyryk culture. The modern day Uighurs, while of course speaking a Turkic language, do share a great deal of genetic relatedness to these ancient cultures, so it's possible that they were culturally swamped but still remain.

Wusun: A barbarian tribe that were, at one time, vassals of the Yuezhi, later of the Xoing-nu, hammer of the Sai (Scythians) and possible ancestors of the Hephthalites. Described by at least one Chinese observer as having red hair, green eyes, and looking like monkeys, their generally European character is not in doubt, and it is assumed by almost all that they spoke an Indo-European language, although Tocharian and some form of Scythian are both equally in play.

Qiang: While generally assumed to be a Tibetan ethnic group by most, there are lingering hypotheses that suggest that there was a strong Scythian influence among the Qiang, and some have wrested Eastern Iranian etymologies out of the name Qiang. Much of this is based on their reputation as horsemen and charioteers, though.

RDR Online 3/3 Update

I'm slowing down my playing. I make sure to hit up a few daily challenges to keep my streak, so that my multiplier doesn't drop off again, and also so I can continue the slow growth of my gold total. I'm also grinding, when I get the chance, trader/hunting and collecting to keep my cash flow up, because I have a lot of rather pricey things on my "to buy" list; the next big purchase will be the fast travel post at my camp. Then I've got more cosmetic things; camp themes, Cripps' outfits, more stable space, and the next two role horses that I haven't picked up yet (because I haven't hit level 20 in those roles to unlock them yet.) Then I have the rest of the role outfits to buy, and a few other accouterments and costume items here and there. And I've got Moonshiner updates to buy, including two upgrades to the still and the bar, and eventually the bar cosmetic themes. And I'm considering a black Arabian while they're on sale, which will require a Nacogodoches saddle, plus updgrades.

Of course, I also have the new stuff to buy shortly when the next big update comes. It will release a new role (there's even some speculation that there may be two new roles) and presumably another outlaw pass. I don't know how much that'll cost, but the last outlaw pass was 40 gold bars and the moonshiner role was 25 gold bars. I'm expecting that I need to make sure I have at least 65 gold bars handy to buy in, and 90 would be nice just to be safe. (I actually have over 100, and that's after I splurged just a bit and bought some discounted Opulent vests this morning for 4 and 3 gold bars each respectively. Gotta take advantage of that sale!) If for some reason there are two roles, and everything costs more, I might be just a tad short, but then again—I make at least two or three gold bars a day from a casual check into daily challenges, so I'll get there quick enough. Plus, the outlaw passes of the past gave you back as much gold as you spent as you went through them.

Grinding collectibles for cash is usually seen as the best way to make easy and quick money, but the reality is that isn't really that easy or quick. Although I do log on for about 30-45 minutes most weekday mornings to check out a few daily challenges, and I try to play an hour or two most nights as well to grind, that's not really a ton of time, when it takes a good hour and a half to two hours to round up all of the coins. (I usually focus on coin collections, because they're the most valuable to sell back.) I could probably do it a bit faster if I stayed focused and didn't occasionally get involved in clearing a gang hide-out, or rival moonshiner operation, or revenuer roadblock, or in shooting a big herd of animals. And certainly it would be faster if I wasn't kicked out of the game, had camp glitches, and other problems still happening with disappointing regularity. The biggest problem I have with the collecting is that the most convenient time for me to play is literally right in at the same time that the cycle changes, so I rarely can get the whole set before the locations all reset, and I have to try and figure out what cycle I'm on all over again. Realistically, most evenings I don't, because it's starting to get too late by that point, and I want to go to bed so I can work and function like a normal person and not an OCD gamer person. That means that if I can do a collection run on Saturday, and maybe Friday evening, that's a good week. Needless to say, I'm not making the over $4,000 a day cash that the OCD gamer crowd says if possible, because you have to be investing considerably more time doing so than I have to spend.

I'm also lucky if I do a big trader run more than once or twice a week, especially because in spite of the animal fixes, I do still quite often have really sparse animal spawns where it's hard to turn much in.

Of course, having spammed them for cash means that those are the two roles that I've leveled up the fastest. I'm level 10 or 11 on bounty hunter, and I don't really love doing bounty hunter missions. I'm only 8 or 9 in moonshiner, and don't necessarily dislike the role, but I find it a bit fiddly to do, so my progress has been relatively slow. In reality, this is actually ideal. I saw a video earlier today where some RDR Youtube "luminary" recommended getting tons of collections, but not selling them, so you can turn them all in at once as soon as you have the new outlaw pass, and spam complete it all in one go, or at least within a single day. What?! As most of his commentators pointed out, these are the same kinds of people who complain that there's not enough to do in RDR Online. I actually like the fact that the moonshiner and bounty hunter role still linger for me, with plenty more to do for a while yet, even as I'm also only character level 66 or 67 or so, so I'm only two thirds of the way through unlocking all the stuff that you can get there too. When the new outlaw pass and role land, I'll have all kinds of stuff to grind through without it (hopefully) getting too repetitive. The collector and trader are good for getting pretty big money, but they're kinda boring after a while to do too. The main reason I still spend more time on them than the other stuff to do is that I still have expensive (albeit mostly optional and cosmetic rather than genuinely "necessary") stuff yet to buy.  Anyway, I'm excited about a new role and a new outlaw pass, but I'm also excited to continue buying crap.

I've got three of the camp themes unlocked; standard, hobo and survivalist. I really want the three role themes as well as traveling opulence and military surplus. I think there's another one that I'm not remembering too. Those are all, of course, the most expensive ones. I don't know why I care about getting Cripps outfits, but I like variety there too; seeing him look the same all the time somehow just doesn't do it for me. Although by the same token, I don't mind not having Maggie or... whats-his-name; Pierre or whatever the French distiller guy is called customization options at all. Although given the money I still need to spend on the moonshiner role for two still upgrades, a bar and band expansion, and bar themes, I've got plenty to do there too once I get around to it.

I'm also a little bit annoyed that the role outfits, unlike the other outfits you can buy in game, don't break up into component parts, with the exception of the hat. You can't wear just the coat, or the shirt, or the boots, or whatever—it's all or nothing. Given that I don't really love most of the outfits, and greatly prefer customized ones anyway, that means that the more expensive ones just become incredibly expensive hats, but... eh. I'm sure I'll get them anyway. And while I have two top-level horses now; the trader horse in silver and the collector horse in brown and white, do I really also need a moonshiner and bounty hunter horse? Yes! With their unique saddles too, and the saddles need to be kitted out with improved saddle bags and lanterns! Sigh.

In spite of all this, I'm getting frustrated enough by glitches that screw me over, that I'm sometimes not really as excited to play as I'd like to be. It's also been a month and a half since I got into it, if my daily challenge streak is correct, anyway. Burnout is a real risk. Especially once my delayed PC finally shows up and I get other things to do during my evening free time that I'm maybe more excited about. Like Old Republic. And writing. And music editing and collecting, etc.

Historical and prehistorical site-seeing

As I told my youngest son the other day while we were sitting and eating some reasonably good Texas style barbecue brisket (as good as we're likely to find up here in the northern Midwest, anyway), while I have a real fascination for history, and I love reading history—especially ancient, classical and Medieval history—what really gets me excited is parahistory; the stuff that we can almost but not quite see because either it happened outside of the areas where literate peoples recorded their history, or before they did. And it's not just history; it's also the cultural anthropology, the linguistics—I wish I knew a good deal more about my "deep ancestry" not only cultural, linguistic and genetic (of course, there's a very large degree of overlap there) than we ever will know in this lifetime, because the data simply doesn't exist, and it can't be found, it's been lost forever, and the fact that such data once existed can only be inferred from other data that we do have, like archaeogenetics and archaeology.

I wish there was some way to spend some time; a good year or two, living with and observing some of these older populations, learning their language as well as that of their neighbors, and seeing how they lived, what they looked like, what their economy and culture was all about, etc. Of course, I also had to pick when and where I'd like to go see, and he asked me what I'd do if I could do that. He was curious, but not really, because quickly I got into esoteric archaeological cultures that didn't mean anything to him. I hadn't really tried to spell that out in my mind before, but I thought it a fun thought exercise, so here I'll talk about it. I think a decent gap between observation sessions is important, so I can see really significantly different changes in society as I go from one to another, so I decided that 1,000 years (roughly) would be the way to go. Of course, in order to do this, I'd miss some stuff, and I couldn't really go back much further than half a dozen or so of these before we eclipsed our knowledge and I didn't even know what to look for or why anymore. Anyway, to get a survey of my cultural, genetic and linguistic ancestry and how it developed, here's the stops I'd make:

—c. 1,000 years back. More exact date; let's go back to 1065 and stay for two years. I'd like to see the last of the years of Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England (and, ironically, the first since the years of Viking rule under Cnut before his reign.) After his death, both Viking contenders (Harald Hardrada) from the line of Cnut, Anglo-Saxon contenders (Harold Godwinson, from a rival house than that of Wessex, Alfred the Great and Edward's group) and of course a Norman claimant, William the Conqueror all fought for the throne.  During this time, the various Kings were starting to get quite intermarried, and a King and or his consort may well have been a non-native. Edward the Confessor, for example, was the son of an Anglo-Saxon, but his mother was a Norman, who as well as being married to his father, later married Cnut himself, the Danish king of England (and Scandinavia). The Vikings, Normans and English, at least within the Royal Houses, were substantially intermarried and interbred with each other, and would have been at least culturally indistinguishable, if not indistinguishable by personality. Not only seeing such important events as the Battle of Hastings and the establishment of the Norman aristocracy over an Anglo-Saxon England, which eventually evolved into the actual English nation as we know it, would be fascinating enough, but I could also learn late Old Enlish, Old Normal French, late Old Norse, and go wander about the border country learning an older version of Scottish Gaelic

—c. 2,000 years back. More exact date; I'd actually like to go just a tad farther, to about 60 BC, which is right on the eve of the Gallic Wars (58-52 BC.) I'd get to see Gaul before it collapsed, I'd get to see the Roman Republic kind of on the eve of it becoming the Roman Empire, and I'd get to do my first exploration of some stuff that we know about only tangentially, from the commentary of Caesar himself, most of the time. Were the Belgae linguistically and culturally significantly different from the Gauls? Were the Aquitanians linguistically and culturally related to the Basques? What was really the relationship like along the Gallic/Germanic border? Which tribes were Germanic and which were Gallic, and how did they interact? While I'm at it, maybe I can check out the kingdom of the Dacians, which allegedly Caesar considered attacking instead of Gaul, if events hadn't given him the opportunity that it did.  I mean, I can learn languages here that people don't know much, if anything about, even, as well as see cultures that are more well known. Classic Latin, Gallic Celtic, early Germanic, Dacian, and if Gaul truly was a multilingual affair with significant ethno-linguistic boundaries between Gaul Celtica, Gaul Aquitania and Gaul Belgica, maybe even more. And, of course, I'd prefer to have a guide who could take me deeper into the Nordic Iron Age cultures, where I could explore stuff that Caesar only guessed at among many of my more immediate ancestors. The Gauls aren't really my ancestors at all, except to the extent that the Belgae of Gaul and the Belgae of Britain were the same people, but they were the Golden Age of the Celtic peoples, whereas as an Anglo-American, my ancestors among the Celts were the more fringe peoples rather than the center of Celtic gravity that was represented by Gaul.

—c. 3,000 years back. I'd round this even further to the tune of being a bit older, and go to about 1250 BC or so and see the immediate aftermath of the Trojan War. I'd love to see Bronze Age Achaean Greece, the Hittites in their glory, the Assuwa confederation, and the rest of what was happening prior to the great Bronze Age Collapse.  I'd also be super curious about what's happening to the immediate north of this area, in the Balkans, and see what the story is with the Thracians, Macedonians, Dorian Greeks (whoever exactly they were, and if they came from outside Mycenaean civilization, or just from the hinterlands within Greece itself), the Illyrians, etc. So much to discover that we don't know very much about yet. If I could actually learn the languages of some of these groups that are mentioned by the Greeks but who we don't really understand very well, like the Thracians, Luwians, Illyrians, etc. this could go a long way towards untangling the origin of the Balkans prior to the arrival of the Slavs and Turks. Not to mention seeing Bronze Age Empires in their prime; the Mitanni, the Hittites, the New Kingdon Egyptians, the Assyrians/Babylonians, etc. And lacking any historical anchors, I'd also very much like to get up north and see what the Urnfield and Nordic Bronze Age was like. The Tollense battle took place at about the same time as the Trojan War, although it may be magnified in apparent importance just based on the fact that we know about it, rather than because it truly was important. While this stuff, except up north, is less genetically crucial to the formation of someone like me, it was an important part of our developing culture, and Western Civilization can't exist without not only the Germanic nations (and the Hajnal Line that corresponded with them), Christianity, and the Classical Graeco-Roman tradition. Which is why I'd like to see both Rome and Greece, but I'd also really like to see Urnfield and Nordic Bronze Age. Although I don't know specifically what to look for there other than "conditions generally."

—c. 4,000 years back. If the last stop is fraught with only vaguely dated historical anchors, we now have moved into territory where there are no historical anchors at all, just archaeology. Given this, the destinations have to be more vague, and the trips would have to be more exploratory; we don't know what questions to ask to know what to see yet. Much of Europe during this phase belongs to the Unetice culture, which right at 2,000 BC went from it's Older to its Younger phase. The Unetice culture is the heir to the Bell Beaker phenomenon, and likely represents a culture at a stage of Indo-European where the Italic, Celtic and Germanic branches were still united. As the Unetice spread and splintered, it eventually led to the founding of the Nordic Bronze Age (probably represented by a super-imposition of some Unetice elites over a local substrate) and southward to eventually form the Italic group, while the Celtic and some probable para-Celtic languages developed in situ. In any case, this posits a period where there's still a general unity between these groups. We think.

—c 5,000 years back. Here we round again, but this time we round younger rather than older, and go back to about 2,800 BC. Here we'll see a fundamental transformation of Europe, especially Northern Europe, as the Bell Beakers and the Corded Ware cultures are still at their early stages (with the probable origin of the Bell Beakers as we know them among the Single Grave variant of the Corded Ware. At this point, we're early enough that Indo-European hasn't yet shed most of its branches to begin with, and we can still talk about a very late stage of near-unity between the various Indo-European branches. With the possible exception of Tocharian, some paleo-Balkan languages, and of course the Anatolian languages, all of Indo-European was still wrapped up in the Corded Ware culture. This the very beginning of Europe becoming Europe as we know it, and everybody in Europe today (except for recent immigrants, of course, and the Sardinians and some of the other fringe, southern populations) have at least a third of their ancestry from Corded Ware derived steppe groups. And that's just by genetics; linguistically and culturally, that's where Europe as we know it really comes from. My own ancestry from Great Britain, for example, had a tremendous population turnover as the Bell Beakers arrived; about 95% of the total population is new. In places like Iberia (where I also have a junior lineage from my great grandfather) 95% or so of the male lineages were replaced, although it seems like the invading bad boys took local girls so the total genetic turnover is really only remarkable on the male lineages, not the total population. In any case, the Yamnaya is the eastern neighbor, and while in the past it was assumed that the Yamnaya guys were ancestral to Corded Ware, it now appears almost certain that they were cousins rather than direct ancestors to the Corded Ware, and the expansion of the Yamnaya may well have either sparked the migration of the ancestors of the Corded Ware into northern and central Europe in the first place (or maybe the pre-Corded Ware moved first, opening up the territory for Yamnaya expansion. I'd also see the end of the Globular Amphora and TRB cultures, for whatever that's worth, since it appears they were not Indo-European groups after all. But no doubt they made up an important substrate population who's genetics still run through my DNA today.

—c. 6,000 years back. 4,000 BC would be smack dab in the middle of the Sredni Stog and Khvalynsk cultures on the steppe, where my ancestors are from. Although if I rounded two or three centuries younger, I'd like to see some of their neighbors, like early Maykop and Kura-Araxes in the Caucasus, and the TRB/Funnelbeakers to the North, Tripolye in the Balkans, etc. I'm very curious about the interactions between Khvalynsk and Sredni Stog in particular, as well as the interactions of both with their immediate neighbors, and how that stew of interactions and whatnot contributed to early or archaic Proto-Indo-European, which presumably at least the Sredni Stog guys spoke and maybe the Khvalynsk spoke something closely related as well.  If I get further east, I might see the early Botai people; either the domestication of the horse was happening here somewhere during this time period, which is also another landmark (if vaguely dated) achievement of my ancestors. Also to the east is the late phase Kelteminar culture, and I'm curious is learning their language as well as that of the steppes would highlight any potential relationships between them, as well as refute or confirm the somewhat surprising, yet popular, notion that the Keltiminar spoke some kind of archaic proto-Uralic language.

—c. 7,000 years back. c. 5,000 years ago is the start of the Dnieper-Donets material culture, and the earliest one for which any kind of very early/archaic proto-Indo-European roots can confidently be ascribed. It seems to have been a different physical type than the later Sredni Stog guys; and they are interpreted as a largely EHG (with some WHG admixture) population that had not yet acquired the CHG admixture that later defined the area and which was an important component of some sort in the development of Indo-European, to say nothing of the EEF admixture (which was a product of the Indo-European expansion out of the steppes, mostly, anyway). However, the Dnieper-Donets male lineages seem to be what you'd expect from archaic proto-Indo-European, so probably the later admixture of CHG and EEF ancestry came through women taken through exogamous marriages. This would also predate, presumably, the Caucasian substrate, if the Caucasian substrate hypothesis is an accurate hypothesis on how Indo-European formed. The Dnieper-Donets is also the first Neolithic culture in the area (it's predecessor is the Mesolithic hunter-foragers of the largely EHG group like the Pit-Comb culture from further north—although not the Kunda and Narva cultures, in spite of the geographic proximity.) Going much farther back than this, and we have only very vague genetic and archaeological material to work with. That's not to say that the Dnieper-Donets people jump up out of the earth fully formed, of course—like I said, they probably represent a migration of some near relatives of the Pit Comb Ware culture, but exactly what relationship they, or anyone else, has with Indo-European when you go back farther than this, is impossible to say. In any case, it's also not clear the extent to which the neighboring Samara culture; presumably ancestral to the Khvalynsk and later Yamnaya cultures, had on the development of Indo-European either. While Indo-European seems mostly to have been a development of the Western steppe languages; the pre-Corded Ware rather than Yamanya horizons, in reality, of course, the two courses of cultural evolution appear very similar, probably had intense contacts with each other, were probably culturally, genetically and linguistically closely related, and if Yamnaya isn't really the best candidate for Proto-Indo-European anymore, it almost certainly was para-Proto-Indo-European; a closely related sister group. And, of course, the relationship and contacts between Dnieper-Donets and the Bug-Dniester and even further west Cris cultures of EEF peoples is something I'd like to understand better; although genetic flow seems to mostly post-date this phase and these specific cultures. And, assuming it's reasonable to do, I'd like to also wander a bit and see what the Ertebolle culture, for instance, were like, since they probably were an important component (well, their distant descendants were, anyway) as a substrate to the Corded Ware that developed eventually into the Nordic Bronze Age. There's even a theory that the Nordic Bronze Age is a fusion of a SHG/Ertebolle-derived population with a Corded Ware super-strate that later acquired a second superstrate from Unetice; which explains the high proportion of pre-Corded Ware hunter-gather Y-DNA lineages, as well as the curious apparent similarities between Germanic and Balto-Slavic; if it had a substrate that was an archaic Balto-Slavic relative, that would make some sense. Because of the nature of the Scandinavian population and its density, the substrates lingered as more important components than in some other areas, meaning that my ancestry, while culturally and linguistically very closely tied to the steppes, no doubt has some important Scandinavian Hunter Gatherer elements too.

But as I said, we're now getting so speculative that I couldn't possibly look at any earlier culture or time period than this, like the Pit Comb Ware, or Swiderian, or whatever, and make any claims with confidence that they contributed much of anything—if anything—to me. In other words, other than geographic overlap with people who later were unequivocally my cultural, linguistic or genetic ancestors, or their close relatives, I have no idea who these people were. So, I think it's probably foolish at this point to try and go any further back, if I could in fact do this. Although, I should point out, that making these trips, if it were something I could do, would teach me things about the immediate predecessors; just because I don't know much about where the Dnieper-Donets people came from, for instance, doesn't mean that I wouldn't after having lived among them. And maybe after living among their descendants, like the Sredni Stog would teach me that other groups were just as important as the Dnieper-Donets in terms of what I'd want to check out.