[BAW 2.0] Chapter III

[Barry Goldwater]

Would it at all be possible to change out some of the eastern island holdings so they belong to the Slovarians? I find that the Falinesti are quite sizable and powerful.

You mean western? I'm in the west, not the east Though I doubt you'll find the Falinesti suitable as the 'civilizing' influence on the semi-Thracian Slovarians, since they're equivalent to the various barbarian Germanic & Celtic tribes of Europe; Arion was the first 'proper civilization' to roll into that part of the 'hood.

@BF You'll want to talk with Xion then, that area's the core of her main civilization.

[Xion]

Y
@BF You'll want to talk with Xion then, that area's the core of her main civilization.

Depending on how the Asiatic culture issue is resolved.

[Dan the Man]

Which could have been done a long time ago if people would actually focus on cooperating, which was supposed to be the most important part of the game.

But hey, what do I know, I'm just here to advise.

[Dirty Chai]

Alright, having talked with Xion about the whole situation...

If I were to place my "N.American-Ainu-Javanese" guys in Essita-En (far eastern island chains), I would be waiting on this Asiatic/Aboriginal issue to resolve.
Though the decision wouldn't really change the culture; it really fits with both origins.

Or I could go somewhere else?

[Barry Goldwater]

OK folks, the Asian/Aboriginal issue still hasn't been resolved despite it having tied up two players' (and now a third one's) cultures for almost 2 weeks, and even after both Dan and I pointed it out again on the last page. Two days ago. Frankly, this has been dragging on for way too damn long already and my patience on the issue is about to run out, as it already has in the case of one of those players with designs on an Asian culture.

Therefore, in the interest of not unfairly holding up their plans any longer, and given that literally nobody has voiced even the slightest concern about them in nearly 2 weeks, if you guys still fail to even talk about the issue then I'm going to have to assume that y'all are perfectly fine with the idea and force through a compromise plan earmaking the NE slice of Anvakhano (final borders to be drawn at the northern border of the Delta region + halfway through the big eastern desert) for an 'Oriental' ethnicity by 7:30 PM EST tonight. That's when I'll get back to a comp with Paint.NET and will thus be able to draw a map for it; you have until then to discuss & vote on the issue, in which case I'll accede to the community's expressed wishes. If even then nothing's happened, well then the above kicks into force and if you have further complaints that's highly unfortunate, but you had ~two weeks to make your voice heard. You might think that's unfair and you might be right, but you know what, I think forcing players to grind their own progress on writing their cultures to a halt for that length of time - all without voicing the slightest bit of support or disapproval for a plan that'd make room for 'em - is unfair too.

@BF Well, looks like you won't have to wait much longer for that issue to be resolved after all. See above: if at 7:30 PM EST tonight nobody has still done anything about the Aboriginal/Asiatic divide proposals, then I'm ramming it through and you can most definitely create your culture.

[Barry Goldwater]

Well folks, it is now past 7:30 here with literally not a single post about the Asiatic ethnicity proposals made and you know what that means - in my capacity as host, I'm going to unilaterally ram it through 'cause frankly, this ~2 week delay with zero discussion on the matter, even after Dan & I brought the point back up 2 days ago, has been nothing short of ridiculous. So without further ado, meet the new 'Oriental' ethnicity:

Oriental: Caught in between the Aboriginal and Deltaic ethnic/cultural spheres, the 'Oriental' group has perhaps unsurprisingly developed into a blend of both. Although genetically similar to the Aboriginals, they have long since adapted to their new environment - physically I'd say they'd resemble our East and Central Asian peoples, as befits their mainly desert/mountainous/jungle homeland, rather than the black Aboriginals whose home would primarily be savannas, deserts or scrublands with little to moderate precipitation and not all that much shelter from the sun. Culturally they'd be more in line with the Deltaic peoples, living in walled cities and eventually organized states; thus blending influences from Asian civilizations like the Indians, Chinese and Japanese. They'd be the ones to migrate onto the Essita-En islands as well, and I'd imagine the folks there would alternately take on Chinese or Austronesian characteristics.

Map

[Dan the Man]

Un-freaking-believable. I said from day one that this game was supposed to be just as much about cooperation as it was individual creativity, and evidently even that couldn't be done right. Instead, everybody is so busy tripping over themselves to make their legions upon legions of East-Asian rip-offs that they can't be bothered to do anything else! You each had days to read a brief proposal and cast a single vote, and hardly any of you did it! Even for the new people, there was plenty of time to scroll through the thread and take note that, hey, something is being talked about here! But evidently nobody gave a for anything beyond what they wanted to get done! It's stunning, just stunning.

[Lucius Malfoy]

Well whats done is done now then, I guess. At least now I can get back to working on my Indian-Aztec-Chinese culture with this all solved. Which reminds me, Barry, you still planning to write up that Indian-Aztec culture or do you want me to do it?

Also I do plan to drop the three nomadic cultures (too much work for me) and instead put a different culture (got the idea from Xion, thanks again!) in their place. A rough draft is being made, so give me some time to get it all together.

[Barry Goldwater]

Un-freaking-believable. I said from day one that this game was supposed to be just as much about cooperation as it was individual creativity, and evidently even that couldn't be done right. Instead, everybody is so busy tripping over themselves to make their legions upon legions of East-Asian rip-offs that they can't be bothered to do anything else! You each had days to read a brief proposal and cast a single vote, and hardly any of you did it! Even for the new people, there was plenty of time to scroll through the thread and take note that, hey, something is being talked about here! But evidently nobody gave a for anything beyond what they wanted to get done! It's stunning, just stunning.

Almost two weeks, to be exact. And we both posted reminders two days ago. And I gave everyone almost 12 hours to start a discussion before ramming this compromise through, with an explicit warning that that was what would happen if nobody did anything. As it so happened, nobody did anything.

(though I don't think it's fair to blame the guys who wanted to create East Asian-based factions, Rose at least was literally the only person to have said anything about the compromise proposal besides you & me)

Guys, c'mon. Just because your culture isn't immediately related to what's being discussed does not mean you cannot issue a yay/nay vote. Use your common sense, and if you can't find anything to discuss, just cast a vote; I know most of you are strapped for time nowadays, but a simple 'Yes' or 'No' with a short sentence outlining why is all I would have asked for. I don't think that's exactly an unreasonable demand, you didn't need to write six paragraphs on the merits or lack thereof of the proposal. Stuff like this was supposed to involve the community, and that was why I waited so long - believe me, I really didn't want to have to force things through the way I just did, b/c if that's what I was after I would have done it at most a week after the proposal went by undiscussed (and you guys should know from all our years together that I absolutely appreciate community input on stuff like this); but, your ~2 weeks of inaction + the obvious unfairness of it holding up the interested players forced my hand. Don't let this happen again.

@LM My chief suggestion for you now would be to create a new language family for the 'Oriental' group, to further distinguish them from RL East Asiatic societies. You can make up new words out of whole cloth or mix & match existing ones (our discussions on 'Khan + Chanyu = Kanyu' come to mind), whichever one would be easier for you, and it could probably be used by Xion too (the Chinese language left a marked influence on Japanese after all). BF could have his language take after yours or create a new one (quite a bit of difference between Chinese and say, Papuan or Australian Aboriginal after all).

Regarding the Indian/Aztec culture, I can write it if you want me to, though I must warn that it's a secondary project to the Falinesti. It might be better for you to write it, move things faster that way.

[Dan the Man]

I remembered to say 'almost' everyone for a reason. I know that Rose was among the first to cast a vote. But bloody hell, how many of these things can we fit into a tiny corner of the world? And can't we just scrap this whole "Based on x, y, or z" thing? I'm kicking myself enough now for the ambiguously Greco-Roman Arion.

[Lucius Malfoy]

@LM My chief suggestion for you now would be to create a new language family for the 'Oriental' group, to further distinguish them from RL East Asiatic societies. You can make up new words out of whole cloth or mix & match existing ones (our discussions on 'Khan + Chanyu = Kanyu' come to mind), whichever one would be easier for you, and it could probably be used by Xion too (the Chinese language left a marked influence on Japanese after all). BF could have his language take after yours or create a new one (quite a bit of difference between Chinese and say, Papuan or Australian Aboriginal after all).

I will see what I can do. I will talk to Xion about this.

[Dirty Chai]

They'd be the ones to migrate onto the Essita-En islands as well, and I'd imagine the folks there would alternately take on Chinese or Austronesian characteristics.

So that would be my bridge then.
Perhaps the group I'm trying to create represents this Austronesian-like part? Their primitive ancestors were the first to migrate across the sea to the east and up into the northern half of the Essita-En islands. Later migrations (Teisarians?) are then more Sino-Tibetan I suppose.
(This is just by comparison though, not that they actually are those cultures)

@LM My chief suggestion for you now would be to create a new language family for the 'Oriental' group, to further distinguish them from RL East Asiatic societies. You can make up new words out of whole cloth or mix & match existing ones (our discussions on 'Khan + Chanyu = Kanyu' come to mind), whichever one would be easier for you, and it could probably be used by Xion too (the Chinese language left a marked influence on Japanese after all). BF could have his language take after yours or create a new one (quite a bit of difference between Chinese and say, Papuan or Australian Aboriginal after all).

I'd prefer the latter.

But I should really note that I could altogether choose to fill some other part of the map.
Could I get a rerun of what should be filled in?

Edit: Wait..
What if I did a language isolate?

I remembered to say 'almost' everyone for a reason. I know that Rose was among the first to cast a vote. But bloody hell, how many of these things can we fit into a tiny corner of the world? And can't we just scrap this whole "Based on x, y, or z" thing? I'm kicking myself enough now for the ambiguously Greco-Roman Arion.

To be fair, I don't think everyone using real-world reference names necessarily means them as direct inspirations.
In Barry's case, for example, it's just used to keep everyone roughly on the 'same page' about where all the culture, language, and ethnic groups stand in relativity to each other.

[Barry Goldwater]

So that would be my bridge then.
Perhaps the group I'm trying to create represents this Austronesian-like part? Their primitive ancestors were the first to migrate across the sea to the east and up into the northern half of the Essita-En islands. Later migrations (Teisarians?) are then more Sino-Tibetan I suppose.
(This is just by comparison though, not that they actually are those cultures)

I'd prefer the latter.

But I should really note that I could altogether choose to fill some other part of the map.
Could I get a rerun of what should be filled in?

Edit: Wait..
What if I did a language isolate?


To be fair, I don't think everyone using real-world reference names necessarily means them as direct inspirations.
In Barry's case, for example, it's just used to keep everyone roughly on the 'same page' about where all the culture, language, and ethnic groups stand in relativity to each other.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was trying to suggest: your culture could be indigenous to the islands, whereas the Teisarians are a later arrival. They could most definitely use their own native tongue, distinct from the 'Sino-Tibetan' Oriental ones; a language isolate would be a great choice IMO.

For the record, you can have more than one civilization, which will probably be necessary to fill up the map anyway. There are still a lot of places on the southern continent (I had plans for the mountain/highlands region on its NE corner, but you can have it if you'd like; you could also probably split that giant steppe with Kaits, take the desert area, etc) and the central-northern continent of Mannasin Dest has precisely zero active players on it atm (though EB may place his Slovarians there, and G2TC might also move his Perhe on to it later). The southern continent of Anvakhano is currently the region with the most players (Kip, probably Kaits, Narf, Dan's Varadai, possibly me, and Lucius) with the western continent of Khio Na being the second most populated (me, G2TC, Xion and Dan's Dafcikar) so those are the lowest priority areas at the moment.

And yes, exactly, that's what I mean. I don't think it's possible to avoid taking influences from RL cultures, even the greats like Tolkien or Martin did it, but in no way should that mean restricting yourselves to creating pure carbon copies of them; at the very least, as I just did above I'd encourage players to create fictional languages for their cultures. A bit of mixing & matching stuff from various RL cultures doesn't hurt either. That said, I do refer to cultures as (for example) 'the Indo-Europeans', 'the Mesopotamians' or 'the Pre-Indo-Europeans' because that's the easiest way to tell everyone where they stand in relativity to everyone else. Like, at this point it should be quite obvious that my Falinesti are sitting in the role of the Indo-European peoples, in fact they were already in that role as of BaW 1.0 (@EB this is also why they're so powerful, the Indo-Europeans are kinda widespread across Europe today after all ), and are even greatly influenced by various ancient European peoples - but it should also be obvious that they aren't exact carbon copies of any one European culture either.

[Dirty Chai]

Edit: Re-doing this.

[Dan the Man]

To be fair, I don't think everyone using real-world reference names necessarily means them as direct inspirations.
In Barry's case, for example, it's just used to keep everyone roughly on the 'same page' about where all the culture, language, and ethnic groups stand in relativity to each other.

Eh, I'll believe it when I see it. For now it seems like people are just cobbling together low-effort stuff from a couple historical/mythical bases. I don't have a problem with taking cues from pre-existing history and culture, but the final product should draw inspiration from enough places that it doesn't exactly resemble any of them when it's finished. Copy/pasting China or even China + India is not very creative: It's just plain boring and, therefore, wrong. If we wouldn't plagiarize Middle Earth or Westeros or Tamriel, why would we plagiarize Earth?

[Barry Goldwater]

Minor aside, I've opted to devise some calendars for the Falinesti. Specifically I've settled on two: the lunisolar Kwenes-Hallin ('After Landing') which has 12 months to a year but with the addition of a 13th month every 2 years, used between the year the Favri landed on Khio Na (2525 AU, also their year zero) and the expulsion of the Arionic legions (4500 AU), and the exclusively solar 12-month Tenha-Yuval'a ('Savior's Years'), starting with the year of Falinasht's birth (4445 AU) and used by pretty much anyone who adheres to the Church of Aba-Favra. The latter will supplant the former as of 5000 AU (in this example, it'd be 2475 KH/555 TY), though it'd already be in use by the early Church for about 500 years before that.

[Dirty Chai]

So here's what I'm now thinking:
The Arjuts or Arjutic languages. They broke off from the ancestors of the Batu people pretty early on and moved east, crossing to the islands north of eastern Anvakhano.
There, they developed little culture pockets as they moved through the archipelago.

migration

languages

Suwarji
Garjari
Varjuts
Rajkats
Bajrari

The word 'Arjut' refers both to languages as a whole group, but specifically references the ruling elite of three of the Arjut cultures.
Descended from Varjuts, the Arjut themselves conquered other tribes in the Garjari, Suwarji, and Varjuti regions, setting up a more larger cultural sphere and establishing themselves as ruling warrior classes. The Rajkatic and Bajrari are separate from this sphere and more varied in culture.

The Garjari are somewhat special since they are highly effected by Falinesti(?) contact.
Their ancestors moved into their region the same time as people from Mannasin Dest, and thus they have western elements in their culture.

images

Early Arjut culture An Arjut "tukiva" ('high priest', 'king') Typical Arjutic clothing Young Arjut noble

Edit: Probably going to do some renaming.
I don't really fancy the Indianized style the linguistics took.

[Dan the Man]

See now this, this is good! I'm assuming it's a pretty early draft, but it's a very unique concept! I can see some influence maybe from the Māori and the peoples of the Pacific NW, but it doesn't bash you over the head with that concept. The only thing I don't understand is the part about Falinesti contact, unless the Falinesti managed to circumnavigate the globe which would, of course, be super cool.

[Barry Goldwater]

I think BF meant the Falinesti would contact them from Khio Na, which admittedly would be fairly difficult in the period of Antiquity but hey, if he wants to I'm down for it I guess Though the Falinesti subgroup closest to him are Rose's Cerayanesti, so @BF you might want to contact her instead of me, at least until the Middle Ages roll around (at which point the Falinesti attain a sufficient degree of social organization to make serious intercontinental contact on a large scale, not just limiting it to a few regions, so f'rex you'd finally be able to contact the Falinesti Holy Kingdom's royal court on the eastern end of Khio Na instead of just the Cerayanesti).

[Dirty Chai]

Ah, it seems I've misunderstood where the Falinesti were. They're in Khio Na? I thought they were in Mannasin Dest with the Arionic states. I suppose not.
Change the Falinesti to Arionic (or whatever is more likely) influence.
See, the Garjars are fairly close to the Mannasin Dest cultural sphere, so I figured the Garjari would be to Mannasin Dest what the Afghan peoples are to the Mediterranean and western Middle East.
Again though, I really want to go back and rename everything. Too similar to 'Rajputs', 'Gujarati', and so on.

The only thing I don't understand is the part about Falinesti contact, unless the Falinesti managed to circumnavigate the globe which would, of course, be super cool.

Speaking of which, I would like to have the Arjut(or whatever I call them) be the first people to sail incredibly far distances by using the stars and knowledge of weather and biome geographic placements. Like the Polynesians.
I could make a map of the area they would have some contact with (trade, mostly I think. They're violent, but they won't sail that far for bloodshed)?

I can see some influence maybe from the Māori and the peoples of the Pacific NW, but it doesn't bash you over the head with that concept.

Interestingly enough, I haven't looked at the Maori at all. I basically just know what a Maori warrior vaguely looks like, and I'm not really going for that. I know very little about them. But everyone always brings them up in the context of Austronesians

Here's some hints: The first image used is of the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, the Moundbuilders.
The second is of a Tlingit tribesmen, probably a chieftain or religious authority.
The last two images are just Ainu, as you said with "Pacific Northwest".
So at the moment, aesthetically, I've taken cues from Native Americans and the Ainu.
But as their culture .. er.. evolves and thickens, it'll be rather unique I hope.
Like the Polynesians and Indonesians, they are a very sea-born people.