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So in recent months I've become enamored of Kobold Press' Southlands setting, and am running a weekly game set in the world.
While combing through the book, I noticed some clear influences to the Middle East and Africa, notably Nurian's obvious Egyptian influences. But I also noticed some less obvious things gleaned from Wikipedia articles. Such as Nurian cities having the "Per-" prefix like Per-Anu and Per-Bastet apparently have real connotations. Or cities named after local deities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadjet
Or that Egypt did have a cult of Aten, who was a monotheistic sun faith.
Or the nomadic Tamasheq people's penchant for wearing blue garments, not unlike the real-world Tuareg tribes of Northern Africa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people
I mostly found this via Google and Wikipedia searches, which I found very cool because it shown that the writers were deriving inspiration from real world as well as fantasy elements to create an interesting blend.
But as far as I can find, there's no internal listing of inspired works in the Southlands Campaign Setting, nor can I find any articles where Wolfgang Baur or other writers talked about the research material they used.
I suppose it may seem niche, but I enjoy looking at the behind-the-scenes inspirations of RPG books and settings I'm enamored with, so as to see how various works came to shape as well as delving into more reading material to grab for my own games.
Anybody got any knowledge of potential real-world inspirations and material for Southlands?
Tagging. I find this stuff fascinating myself.
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I've actually been doing quite a bit of Egypt-related research lately too. My home campaign is set in a semi-historical Earth during the Roman Republic and Roman Empire (rough timeline is 750 BCE to 1453 CE). My players are currently in ~20 BCE Egypt and are about to embark upon a new arc. I've drawn quite a bit of inspiration from the Southlands Campaign Setting - it is very well done and offers a lot of great material.
I've also incorporated aspects of Khemet/Necropolis by Gary Gygax and some of the Lost Lands material from Deserts of Desolation for this particular arc. I was actually just reading up on Aten and Akhenaten. I've also found some decent material from song lyrics of all things. The band Nile, which I don't really listen to - technical death metal and blastbeat stuff isn't my thing, has based almost all of their albums on Egyptian and Near/Middle Eastern mysticism, occultism, and mythology and some of the lyrics in their songs actually have given me ideas of some plot points.
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The bibliography is large, but I'd be happy to contribute a list of what I used. I'd previously worked on two books for Atlas Games set in North Africa, so I had a lot to begin with, and that expanded for this.
I'll hunt some down and post tomorrow.
-Ben.
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Ok, so, visually, I looked at:
African Air
Desert Air both by George Steinmetz.
They're fantastic and a wonderful idea of the vistas available on the continent.
Now I didn't read all of these cover to cover, but I read a lot of them, covering the bits I found useful after looking for particular topics.
The Arabian Nights, Townesend
Carthage, A History, Warmington
In Quest of Lost Worlds, de Prorok
Digging for Lost African Gods, de Prorok (he's almost like a late 19C/early 20C Indiana Jones, but so disrespectful of what we'd call good archaeology)
Phoenician History, Sanchoniatho
The Periplus of Hanno, Hanno
A lot of fragmentary stuff on Carthage via the web, translations of ancient manuscripts and some Archaeology magazine articles
A History of the Maghreb in the Islamic Period, Fenton&Littman
A Traveller's History of North Africa, Rogerson
North Africa: The Roman Coast, Davies
Siwa Oasis, Fakhry -- this was especially good.
The Berbers, Brett & Fentress
Men of Salt, Benanav
Gods of Egypt, Traunecker
Red Land, Black Land, Dodd&Mead
The Sphinx Revealed, Salt, edited by Usick&Manley
The Garamantes, Idjennaden
A couple of shows on Amazon Prime.
The Sahara and its Peoples, Scoones
Sahara Unveiled, Longewiesche
The Sahara: A Cultural History, Gearon
Slavery, Meltzer
Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia, Welsby
Ancient Churches of Ethiopia, Phillipson
Ancient Ethiopia, Phillipson
Ancient and medieval Ethiopian history to 1270, Selassie
The Ethiopian Borderlands, Pankhurst
A History of Ethiopia, Markus
Ethiopia, The Unknown Land, Munro-Hay
The History of Ethiopia, Adejumobi
Foundations of an African Civilisation, Phillipson
Guide to Ethiopia, Briggs
The Hyena People, Salamon
The Red Sea Region, Aliboni
and about three or four more e-books on Ethiopia I really don't want to transcribe right now. I also got to trade a couple emails with Dr. Pankhurst, which was awesome. Sometimes, I love the internet.
The World of the Swahili, Middleton
City-states of the Swahili Coast, Wilson
Arab Seafaring, Dourani
Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, Chaudhuri
This led me to a separate pile of books on 13C India, but I haven't dug into those yet.
Ancient African Civilizations: Kush and Axum, Burstein
Egypt, Kush, Axum, Sylvester
The Meroe, Kush, and Axum, Cassius
The Empire of Mali, Thompson
Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, Niane
Sundiata: Lion King of Mali, Wisniewski
Africa in the Iron Age, Oliver&Fagan
Dictionary of African Mythology, Scheub
Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Fagan
Plus, I'd read a lot of wikipedia, then check the references for those pages, pull them up on Google Books when I could, to take notes. Wikipedia was never my primary source, but where I would hunt down leads to then chase in other books. And shows on Africa on National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Smithsonian Channel. There was The Ghost & The Darkness and I have the written account by the hunter (played by Val Kilmer in the movie). I'd also ask the NYPL online reference desk, and they'd help sometimes.
I'm sure I'm missing some sources in there, but that was a quick look-photograph-and-transcribe of my Africa shelves. In a lot of cases, what multiple books on a topic would provide me was more detail or confirmation of a story, because for the Ars Magica books, I needed to be as accurate as possible. Trying to find the names of the governors in Iberia in the 13C, because they were related to the Sultan, and I needed to know that information, was an adventure.
-Ben.
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Thanks for posting this list, Ben! You gave me A LOT of material to pursue in my quest for knowledge!! :D
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Wow. I got a lot of new books to add to my reading lists. Thank you very much terraleon!
:D
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Wow. I got a lot of new books to add to my reading lists. Thank you very much terraleon!
:D
You're welcome. I tend to pick them up used on Amazon, but I probably spent a good chunk of the commission before I ever even finished. :) I have a stack of about 8-10 I have been referencing for the Norse stuff I'm doing now. I picked up a good ten-ish about 13C India because it really looked like some place I wanted to write about at some point. The Kilwah Sultanate and the Swahili Coast were the interesting discoveries in there for me. And Sanchoniatho.
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Great list. I actually wrote a paper on Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean in a class when I went back to get a History degree. Really excellent book.
I've read this also: A History of the Maghreb in the Islamic Period, Fenton&Littman.
A few others that are fantastic and cover the Rise of Islam, its spread across the Arabian Peninsula and beyond, some of the first Christian and Muslim encounters, and the different caliphates are:
1981, The Early Abbasid Caliphate; a Political History (Barnes and Noble, London and New York).
1986, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 600–1050 (London, Longman)
2006, The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East (Variorum Collected Studies Series) (Farnham, Ashgate Publishing Limited)
2005, When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty (Cambridge, MA, Da Capo Press)
The Venture of Islam. Conscience and History in a World Civilization. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974.
I wrote my senior thesis on early Christian and Muslim encounters and relations. The Near East, especially during the Byzantine period, is absolutely fascinating to me.
Okay, so I might be a nerd. Will definitely be checking out the others on the list.
Thanks, Ben!
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A few others that are fantastic and cover the Rise of Islam, its spread across the Arabian Peninsula and beyond, some of the first Christian and Muslim encounters, and the different caliphates are:
You're very welcome. :)
I was working primarily with the 13C for the region, because that's when Ars Magica 5th edition is set, and they'd started me off on the whole crazy thing which then laid the foundations for Southlands. While I did go back in places for the mythological stuff, I tried to stay near there. There are some exceptions; I think of al-Kahina (7C) when I consider the Spider Prophet. The Tethys freebooters drew a bit more from the pirate crews that operated out of Madagascar in the 16C-18C.