Earthdawn: A Crash Course

[Lys]

Oh hey, look at this! Someone went and started making detailed topographical maps of the Barsaive area as it looked in the early Holocene - when ED takes place - plus the magical stuff like the jungles and giant lava sea. It's really neat!

Also, I read bits of the Theran Empire book from way back in 1e. It turns out that Earthdawn already has an Assyria expy called Issyr, which has been conquered by the Theran client state/province of Creana. Well, that's okay, the Kingdom of Ashur isn't primarily located in the historical Assyrian homelands, but up in the Lesser Caucasus, the Northern Zagros, and the Alborz. So I'm rationalizing this as the Issyrians and the Ashurians are the same people, just that the former are lowlanders and the latter highlanders. Originally I had the Ashurains have an attitude of weary indifference toward Thera, because I thought the Empire was some distance away. Given it's actually a neighbour that has conquered and subjugated their lowland cousins, it's fair to say Ashur doesn't like Thera and really doesn't like Creana. Neither side is in a position to invade the other though, so the Creanans and Therans focus on internal affairs, while the Ashurians secure their position by invading the Orkish Kingdom of Kur in what is now Azerbaijan. Ashur does, however, quietly aid a brewing rebellion in Issyr composed mostly of escaped slave-soldiers.

The book is actually pretty crappy and generally fails to live up to the Earthdawn flavour. (Seriously, Ancient Egypt? Renaissance Italy with Catholic Church and everything? Come on!) Which explains why none of it was included or much acknowledged in subsequent materials. Frankly I could have ignored everything in it, too. However I wound up liking the idea of Ashur slowly gearing up for a war against Thera to retake the Issyr sometime in the future. None of this really matters in a game set in Barsaive, though. That is, other than Stormbreaker being rather more willing to oppose Theran designs wherever she encounters them. It also gives a good reason why her family let her go to find adventure in Barsaive, as it's the only place known to have won a war against the Therans. Beyond her own desires for thrill, wealth, and adventure, she's also there in an unofficial capacity to learn about Barsaive and the people in it.

[Karrick]

Oh hey, look at this! Someone went and started making detailed topographical maps of the Barsaive area as it looked in the early Holocene - when ED takes place - plus the magical stuff like the jungles and giant lava sea. It's really neat!

Speaking as resident GIS-person... that's fucking brilliant!

This is something I've wanted to be able to make for a variety of settings, but Earthdawn presents a fairly unique opportunity for this by being set in what amounts to a real-world location. Without the actual data doing this for some other fantasy setting would be immensely time consuming and difficult.

[Lys]

Here's some thoughts I've been having while fleshing out Ashur. There's a small gift for Comrade Tortoise at the bottom, just a minor setting detail but I think he'll like it.

If you take the whole Sumero-Semitic Garden of Eden myth to refer to some half-forgotten and heavily mythologised actual place in the history of humanity, as opposed to being as made-up as Middle Earth, then there are three possible locations:

1) Lebanon, the Bible actually stops short of straight up saying it's in Lebanon. This thematically links to the Promised Land, Canaan, being just outside but not in the Garden. There's also potential references to Lebanon in some Sumero-Akkadian myths. Lebanon is staggeringly pretty... or was before we farmed it and chopped down all the cedars, and is still very fertile, particularly the Beqaa valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains. It is, however, short two rivers, and the geographic location doesn't fit the settlement patterns of the people from whom the myths originate.

2) Somewhere in north-western Iran, possibly the valley where modern Tabriz is located. Like pretty much the entire region, it used to be a lot greener thousands of years ago. It also has landmarks that loosely correlate with those mentioned in Genesis, including being not far from the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris, two of the four rivers that originate in Eden. Another two rivers originate in the area and flow into the Caspian that may fit the Gihon and Pishon. Issue is, loose correlation to vague landmarks isn't convincing, it doesn't fit at all with the Sumerian myths, and the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates are 300 miles west, which isn't actually nearby. This one is the weakest option, mostly a case of trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

3) The strongest contender is the area encompassing the Arab Marshes, the Shatt Al-Arab, and the shallow northern end of the Persian Gulf which is now underwater but wasn't thousands of years ago. While Genesis states four rivers originating and flowing out of Eden, if you turn it around and make them flow together into Eden you can actually locate three of them on the map where it says they are. The Euphrates is the Euphrates, the Tigris indeed flows east of Assyria, and if the Gihon refers to the modern Karun then it does in fact flow through the lands of Cush. Provided Cush means Cossaea, the Kassite homeland north of Elam.

That just leaves the Pishon, and there is no fourth major river flowing into the Shatt Al-Arab. That is, not any more, there is a dried-out river bed that leads back into the Hijaz mountains, where there is gold and bdellium as ascribed to to land of Havillah. Then, for correlation, the Sumerians often refer to their equivalent of Eden, where the Gods live, as whence the sun rises. The Shatt Al-Arab is, in fact, to the (south)east of them. The part where it falls short is the lack of mountains in the vicinity, but it's nevertheless the best fit.

Now, Earthdawn is the magical secret history of the world, it contains the seeds for many of later myths, such as Thera being the basis for Atlantis. So regardless of the validity of the above statements with respect to our world, the basis for Eden totally exists in Earthdawn. I say it stretches from just above where the Tigris and Euphrates meet, to the 6000 BCE Persian Gulf in this map. And it's full of Tskrang. The whole place is wet, swampy, and has a bunch of rivers flowing into it. Of course it's full of Tskrang! The Ashurians hold the area around modern Baghdad, and lust after the bountiful lands of Dilmun, but they cannot afford to turn their back on Creana to war upon the Tskrang. So, paradise is not for humans, it's for lizardmen! ^_^

[frigidmagi]

I like it. I should note for the record that I do not feel all that bound by the Empire of Thera book. Vasgotha and North Africa are pretty much the same and that's it.

[Lys]

I agree with you that Vasgothia and Marac are the only two chapters that don't need to be rewritten. I mean, Marac is still a blatantly based off the post-Islamic Maghreb, but at least it's an interesting rip-off. There's loads of neat stuff, it fires up the imagination, you can do things with it. Creana's Not!Egypt is utterly boring, with literally the only interesting thing in there being the relationship between Creana and Thera. Talea's Not!RenItaly is worse though, I mean right around the time you realize that the Cult of The-One-Who-Is-Yet-To-Be is the fucking Catholic Church, you have to wonder if whoever wrote that chapter was deliberately insulting the reader's intelligence. At least they're backward God-and-Christ-are-not-yet-born Catholics. That might have actually been interesting if they were a tiny cult located anywhere else, but no, we're doing Renaissance Italy and that means Catholics everywhere.

Also the map at the back of the book is completely wrong, failing not only to match the text, but also to make any damn sense. Somehow Creana is located in the Western Desert and not in the fertile river valley right next to it! Brilliant! It also mislabels Rugaria Province as Viviane. The actual Viviane Province is the unofficial name for the southwest corner of Barsaive still in Theran hands, not the entire bloody Balkans.

I should make my own map, then I can show everyone where everything is, as well as Ashur's place in the world.

[Lys]

Some Comments on Climate

Okay, so I wanted to discuss the climate of Barsaive. Firstly in terms of prevailing temperatures the province is consistently described as temperate, and the word tropical is never used. It can get a bit uncomfortably hot in summer, and there is no "true" winter, meaning it normally doesn't snow in the hills and lowlands, though it still does up in the mountains. This puts the region in the warmer end of the temperate zone, more Mexico City than Moscow. In terms of weather, Barsaive is very wet, supporting a number of jungles, or more accurately temperate rainforests, and it experiences considerable rain in the first six months of the year. It's generally warmer and rainier in the souther half to two thirds of the province, as evidenced by the wooded areas being termed jungles, whereas further north they're forests. The exceptions is the Badlands which are very hot and very dry, and I would expect the Wastelands to the west to be cool and dry, edging into outright cold in winter. The coast of the Aras sea is probably a bit cooler than than the surrounding lands, on account of the sea breezes, and likely foggy during the winter months.

A good way to get a nice grasp of how the climate feels is to relate it to some real world locations. The world's temperate rain forests are probably a good starting point for that. Having lived there, I feel that North America's Pacific Northwest fits the bill pretty nicely. The areas west of the Cascade range - roughly from San Fransico, CA to Vancouver, BC - fit most of Barsaive, and the deserts east of them fit the Badlands and Wasteland. Across Barsaive the daily highs should keep to a range of 50°-80° Fahrenheit for most of the year, only dropping below that range in the deep of winter (mostly in the north), and climbing above in the height of summer (mostly in the south). The rainy season in both the PacNorWes and Barsaive is also about six months, but in the former it starts in the ninth month of the year, whereas in the latter is starts in the first months of the year, meaning the first three months of the year are rainy for both. In general it's pretty comfortable so long as you don't mind the rain.

Other possible locations that might be similar to Barsaive in climate are Chile south of Valparaiso, Ireland, northern Spain, the eastern Black Sea, and New Zealand. I've never been in any of these places so I can't be certain that they fit the description well without more research than I'm willing to give at the moment, but I would guess they generally do.

Further Comments on Climate

In the time that Earthdawn takes place, the Sahara was in the middle of its pluvial period. Which is to say that rather than being a godforsaken desert, it was semi-arid plains and grasslands. To put it in visual terms instead of this, you'd see this during the dry season, and this during the wet season. Some bits would be still be pretty dry, like in here, but you get the idea.

This changes the character of both Creana and Marac. For Creana the changes would be pretty substantial, as the civilization would not be quite so intensely focused on the Nile valley. This is very good because Creana needs to be something more than just Ancient Egypt plus magic and jackalmen. You'd see a lot more settlements out into what is today the Western Desert, in fact pretty much all the areas that today have oases would be major centres of civilization with considerable agriculture and settlement. The Quattara Depression would likely also be a salt lake or a series of lakes with salt marshes on its shores and people living in and around them. It's not very relevant to our game, but Creana would have certainly be a lot more interesting if it had been written with these things in mind.

For Marac the changes aren't as drastic. For the most part it is the sufik who are affected. They no longer make sense as a desert-dwelling Tuareg-Beduin mash-up, because rather than living in a harsh arid desert, they live in semi-arid plains and grasslands. Instead it makes more sense for them to be semi-nomadic cattle herders, like Maasai and the Wodaabe, perhaps keeping some Tuareg influence. Actually, adding in Central Asian horse nomads to that would probably make for some tasty flavouring. If the wet Ukraine can have flying Vikings, then the wet Sahara can totally have Djinn-worshipping Mongols!

You don't even have to change the meta-history of Marac to make it work. The tension between farmers and pastoralists is older than the written word. It totally makes sense for Marac to have a millennia old conflict between the two. On one side you have the settled aalhar who farm the fertile northern areas, build towns and cities, and practice magic as a science. On the other the semi-nomadic sufik, and all their predecessors in their numberless names: horse-riding, cattle-herding, semi-nomadic tribes who worship the Jinari and practice magic as mysticism. Beyond that, Marac stays mostly the same except having to edit all instances of "desert" to "plains", "steppes", or "grasslands". Overall makes an interesting place both more interesting and less of a Maghreb copy.


(BTW - I found were most of the provincial names were derived from: Marac = Maroc, Arancia = Francia, Talea = Italia, Rugaria = Bulgaria, Indrisia = India, and Vasgothia is a reference to the Germanic Goths. The only truly original ones seem to be Barsaive and Creana. Not that I did better, given Ashura = Assryia, but at least my knock off is a blend of Sumero-Akkadian, Iranian/Persian, Turkic, Byzantine, and even Spanish elements.)