Humans in Shadow of Old Night

A couple of quick things, none of them sufficient to merit a post on their own.

1) I've been listening to the Hideous Laughter podcast. I'm in episode 29, and they average somewhere over an hour each, so I'm pretty invested in it... that said, it's getting harder and harder to listen to for a variety of reasons. Most of them are related to the fact that they're using the Pathfinder system. In general, actual plays aren't great spectator sport anyway, although the only way I seem to be able to do them is via audio only while I'm in the car. But Pathfinder is even worse than most, because they spend so much time talking about mechanical considerations. I'm going to set it aside when this episode is over. I don't claim to be done listening to it, but I need to take a break from it, at least. I'll probably download some of the Red Moon Roleplaying Warhammer Enemy Within episodes instead and try them out. Even so, I've decided that I need a pretty good run of actual music in between episodes. If the episodes are an hour, I need a good hour or music too.

2) I looked at the dates of the Focus on Freeport entries, which I have all compiled into a single ~60 page pdf. The earliest ones were posted in 2000, and the latest in 2002. I've decided that I can read that before reading Hell in Freeport and still approximate my chronological reading goal, so rather than waiting for Hell to arrive in the mail before starting the Freeport trilogy, I can start it now, while I'm motivated. That said; it's probably a moot point. I doubt I'll actually read even the trilogy much less Focus on Freeport before my Hell in Freeport order comes in the mail anyway. (You can also still get the individual focus files here.) Speaking of reading...

3) I'm just a few pages away from finishing my big Greek Myths & Tales book, a fancy Flame Tree Publishing book available at a decent price from Barnes & Noble. I also bought a Celtic and Norse one, but I'm not going to read them immediately. The text was quite old; mostly from the late 1800s, and it didn't exactly read like either a novel or a non-fiction study either one. I think I want to read something else first. That said, I was struck—not that I didn't already know this, but it's not something you think about—with how incredibly foreign the morality and culture of the Greeks is from us, in spite of their position at the foundation of Western Civilization in many ways. The famous saying is, "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." In the original context, that means that just the past in your own life among your own people, but it's really true when you talk about reading something like The Odyssey. But yeah, Norse and Celtic... I don't know the Celtic in particular as well as the Greek, but it can still wait. I've got other things to read.

4) So, I'm also likely to finish the 3.5 Monster Manual this week too. Before I start Freeport, or maybe concurrently, but I'll prioritize it, I want to read Raymond Feist's novel Silverthorn (cover art pictured above, although I have an earlier printing with a different cover. Oh, well.) We'll see what else I want to read, depending on how fast I finish stuff. I usually read novels fairly quickly, and I do want to not wait too long before moving on from Silverthorn to the last novel in the series; A Darkness at Sethanon. But I have two additional novel series to read after that; a trilogy and a quadrilogy. And of course, loads of gaming books on deck. In addition to Freeport stuff on pdf (mostly pdf, but not completely) I've also got Eberron in my backpack, and Heroes of Horror and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, and Libris Mortis, and more to read. And, of course, once I finish the Monster Manual, I've got the other Monster Manuals, the Fiend Folio, etc. too.

5) I've been calling the setting for the Shadow of Old Night game the Three Realms sometimes, referring to the Hill Country, Timischburg and Baal Hamazi, the actual Three Realms. But in many ways, it's developing into Five Realms, as I spend a little bit more time lately on Lower Kurushat and the Corsair Coast. Those aren't really as big in scope as the Three Realms, but the then again, I'm not sure how much smaller they are, or what that cut-off is. Three Realms, plus two half-realms? Lower Kurushat in particular always was kind of there, but I didn't consider it too much. Pivoting to actually developing more details about it is a new thing. And, of course, the Corsair Coast is a new area, although I'll be building it by taking old Dark•Heritage material and making minor updates so that it fits in the new context. (I'm going to update a lot of Terassan stuff and make it slightly less "Spanishy", like Porto Liure (POR-toe lee-YOOR-ay) will be changed to Port Liure (port LYOOR) and I'll rewrite and update some of my old stuff to be up to date with the Shadow of Old Night context. Port Liure is, as an aside, my own pseudo-Provençal translation of Freeport. Catalan also gave Port Lliure. Spanish would, of course, be Puerto Libre, but that sounded too familiar to people in America, and I wanted a more European and slightly exotic/Medieval feel. Some of the other Romance languages give good results, if I massage them just a bit.)

6) Which reminds me; I need to probably talk briefly about the different human ethnicities. I'm slowly accreting more and more of them. The Corsair Coast people are meant to be very similar to the old Terassans and I will posit that they are related to the Tarushan ethnic group. This is now a bigger group than I thought, although in several branches that have diverged over many centuries, and do not speak languages that are the same, nor see themselves as the same people anymore. The Tarushans are either an extension to the west, or a closely related western cousin of the peoples of Old Kinzassal. Although I don't really talk about Old Kinzassal much, I do propose that there is still a lingering branch of it in the Hill Country, hidden in the deep woods and still so-far unsettled corners. The Tazitta tribes are one such; probably the largest. Otherwise, there is mixed ancestry from Old Kinzassal among many of the Hill Men in general, especially in Southumbria, although they have lost their language and culture, and their genetic percentage is relatively low. 

After the fall of Old Kinzassal, and its dwindling into a rural rump people, their close relatives the Tarushans carried the torch of their culture under a new banner and in different format. Tarushans, of course, are still a prominent ethnic group, especially in Timischburg. The Drylanders also have some obvious influence from either Tarushans or another substrate that was related to the Tarushans (but maybe separated by many centuries by geographical distance and the Indash Desert) and this is detectable in some loanwords and other linguistic stuff, but the Drylanders are also a different ethnic group and the largest component of their genetics, culture and language is unrelated to the Tarushans. 

The Terassans, or Corsairs, or whatever it is that I end up calling them are also related, but have been their own group for at least a millenium, and they do not look at the Tarushans and think of them as long-lost cousins or anything. But they clearly have a related language (kind of like the Romanians and the Spanish have related languages from old Latin, but also clearly are widely separated and don't consider themselves the same people at all).

And I've mentioned the Northlanders for some time, but as I start to actually focus a little bit on Lower Kurushat, they become important. They are also completely different from any other group. Maybe the "Terassans" can just be the Southlanders to match the Northlanders? Northrons and Southrons? Northlings and Southlings? I dunno. Still tossing around labels.

The last thing to mention is that I've mentioned these other languages. I don't actually mess with languages, except as they relate to names, to signal culture. Hillmen use Medieval British sounding names, for instance, whereas on the Corsair Coast use Medieval "Spanish" (usually actually Catalan or Provençal names) and Timischers use German-sounding names, etc. without actually assuming that they speak different languages. This is mostly just because I've never found that languages in fantasy stories and games has ever added anything very fun (Tolkien notwithstanding.) Even though linguistics is, in fact, kind of a minor hobby of mine, I've decided that it just isn't all that fun in game to deal with languages and linguistics. Honestly, even Tolkien agreed with this and punted to a Common speech that almost everyone used.