For those who don't know (basically all of you) I have my own custom game setting where I run my adventures for my players.
Drawn out disambiguation:
I actually generated the continents randomly, with the Western Hemisphere landing 4 major continents, and the Eastern only getting 1 (lolwut). So I have been slowly but surely expanding on what I have.
I basically have one of these continents done, East Thaz (taken from draconic Thazil meaning earth or land) which is a very classical fantasy type world, giant fey forest holding two different Elven based nations, Dwarven mines in the north housing two dwarf kingdoms, and aside from that five major nations led primarily by humans, three of which are kingdoms (based on Gondor/King's Landing, Rohan, and Winterfell), one is a republic, and one is a sort of mess of a federation among an archipelago in the South. Continent has a secret overseeing organization composed of metallic dragons in disguise who live among the humanoids. Last nation is a goblinoid led mess, with different military factions of hobgoblins, orc tribes, and such constantly at war with each other.
That's all well and good, there is a few thousand years worth of history there, not all fleshed out, some left ambiguous on purpose to maintain a sort of mystery feel going. BUT that's not what we're here to talk about hence the spoiler tags.
What I need to work on is the other three continents. With the release of Occult Adventures and some conveniently timed influence from the (ugh) anime series Magi I want to develop my southern continent, based on ancient Persia, and other old Middle Eastern and north African cultures. Ancient Egypt, gypsies, genies and stuff. The occult stuff really seems to fit with a lot of these themes.
I really would like some input on this as I am nowhere near an expert on any of this.
If it matters, I do have my own deity pantheon, upon which I am more than willing to expand as to not need to use copyright materials for my own stuff.
Well, knowing what its like to work and build a world from scratch, i can say the Al-Qadim setting might be helpful. There is a plethora of information on persian history and myth accessible from google.
Shaminism was relatively big during ancient persia/africa/egypt. I would say dead gods, cults dedicated to demons or evil genies, divs, etc. The persian culture has a great devotion to the telling of king soloman and the multitude of different divs and devas.
African cultures worshiped, if i am not mistaken, Orishas? which were like deities or divinities.
As i said earlier, shamanism and spiritualism would be big.
Hopefully some of this helps.
Bump. details on research later.
Turns out the Achaemenid Empire was a huge nations that was composed of four smaller states each originally ruled itself autonomously.
I've landed on 4 different nations. One, farthest to the north (north of the equator) will be based on Ancient Greece/Rome city-states pre Alexander, called Gracia. South of there will be a divide, off to the west will be a sort of peninsula which will encompass my Egyptian based nation, called Asril. It's geography will cross the equator. Directly east of it will be the largest nation on the continent, based on the aforementioned Achaemenid Empire, called the Zerez Empire. It will itself be divided into four states, with one major city in the center of all of them serving as the center of the empire. South still I would like to have a nation with inspiration from ancient India. This one is the least developed as far as my research goes.
My big thing is separating the cultures so that they all function differently. For example, in Gracia, all the city states function independently, and self-govern. In Asril there are two "kings", one who rules the land east of the river (which is mostly desert), and one who rules the land west of the river. The land west of the river is much more fertile as you head inland, and so there are many larger cities closer to the borders with Zerez. In Zerez, each state functions autonomously, but all follow the rule and laws of the emperor (a Gilgamesh esk character) who lives in the central city. Each state is influenced by the culture of its surrounding neighbors. I do intend to have each individual nation speak its own language, rather than having common be spread throughout.
Last nation still doesn't have a name as I need to do more homework to figure out what I want the land to be like.
I'm really looking to figure out what races live there, as I want to steer away from the more traditional classic Tolkeinian racial structure that I have in the other part of my game world. I definitely want genies and the elementals to be very present throughout the land. As a result, I foresee a lot of Janni, and Suli being present, as well as humans. Planar Dragons would be present as the typical dragons that exist as enemies here. I also like including the Nagaji and Vishkanya races here, but I'm not sure if their flavor fits. I'm trying to look up Nagas to see what their lore is, are they like crappier dragons? Can I use them in place of dragons for the southern continent?
Am I missing any races that really fit in here? I found the Shabti as I wrote this.