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Post by swordnut on Mar 24, 2016 10:51:48 GMT
SOooooo.... I, for my sins, am an archaeologist (Heritage Consultant). I rely heavily on that training when DM-ing my games for inspiration and building the little details that give a sense of time depth. I find it helps out a lot, because the heavy lifting of having an internal logic and form/function have been done by dint of it being an actual real thing people did/used/built. It can also lead you down interesting little rabbit holes as you consider that, if you are exploring ancient catacombs; what else did those people make? What happened to their culture? Why did they dispose of this wealth to create labyrinths and dungeons? Ill start with a couple of examples from my games to get us going: One of the BBEG's bases - a Roman marching camp I moved the entrance and put a permanent kitchen block and stables in the corners. Then put a 15th century manor house in the middle where the praetorium (HQ/officers quarters) would be: The players didnt get the plans, but they did manage to get the overall layout after some reconnoitre. So, what this led to was the design of a whole town layout. This is a defensive structure, re-purposed to have a domestic and administrative purpose (by me) but why not have it evolve that way in the fictional history? So there must be somthing around that was strategic enough to defend. Ok, usually a river crossing or a good view. I went with the river. Once you have a millitary presence, soldiers need suppiles, entertainment and company, so a small settlement usually springs up nearby (for roman camps, this is called a Vicus). So the town grew around the fort, but military types dont like civilian types building their indefensible crap next to their nice, shiny walls. So the town is across the river. Over time, the town grew. But that generally means a period of stability and peace. So why have a fort still there? Why not take it down and use the materials to build houses etc? Nobles. Thats why! The local lord decided he wanted to live apart from the plebs and have a defensible position, just in case (they did this all the time in early medieval england). Hence the manor house. Why a separate stable? Horses stink. Why a separate kitchen? Fires stink more. Again, drawn from medieval manor layouts and wooden motte-and-bailey castles. So, because I decided to save some time rather than invent a compound, I now find myself with a town with a good few hundred years of history, a hint at the geopolitical landscape and a new map to draw. Not to worry though, this place has all I need: sites.oxy.edu/horowitz/home/johnspeed/cities1.htmOf course, its (Spoilers) occupied by a cult and run by some half-dragons. But thats another story. Ill post more stuff by way of "heres some cool stuff for you to ruminate on". Please share stuff you used or just cool things you found that could inspire somenone
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Post by swordnut on Mar 24, 2016 10:59:12 GMT
There was a culture in the danube valley about 5000 years ago, that built their home anew each generation. Knocked down the old structure, leveled the surface by packing earth on top and built a new home.
Over time, this led to a large mound being formed with less and less room on top, and higher and higher status people living on that limited high place.
Thing is, under the wooden floors of each new home, was a pottery vessel containing a foetus. No other burials were found nearby.
Theres no way to know if the foetuses were the stillborn of the people living there, or whether something else was going on.....
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Post by swordnut on Mar 24, 2016 11:13:33 GMT
A neolithic culture (about 4300–3500 BC) in Romania, called the "Boian", made distinctive pottery vessels with geometric lines and patterns in bands around the sides. No two were ever the same and they were often deliberately buried whole. Why?
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Post by swordnut on Mar 24, 2016 11:15:41 GMT
This is from the same region but earlier. It exists in your word. What is it?
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Post by DM Windhover on Mar 29, 2016 20:21:29 GMT
As a history teacher, I can't resist adding to this one. The Lascaux Cave in France dates back to the Paleolithic. It's one of the most magnificent cave paintings in the world, in my opinion; making it even more fascinating is the fact that hidden within the painting is an accurate star map. Look carefully and you can see that Orion's belt is at the left, following through the V shape which is the Hyades (and the head of the constellation we still know as Taurus the bull!), and ending with the cluster of stars we call the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters. There are other star "dots" throughout the cave, and researchers were able to match them up to other real stars. While the relative positions seemed a bit "off" of what we see in our sky today, the differences can actually be accounted for by the intervening time actually changing the relative positions. Some believe the star locations are accurate to within a remarkably small degree of what Neolithic man would have seen when he looked up at his sky.
Why did these "primitive" people create such a work?
Can you imagine your PCs stumbling across an ancient cave like this? Perhaps they would find that the positions of stars pointed to a specific and calculable time of year at which some event might occur? Perhaps the cave is an ancient prophecy in pictorial form?
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Post by dm_mainprize on Mar 29, 2016 21:06:35 GMT
Both of you, and anyone else who studies or teaches this kind of stuff. Its absolutely fascinating and I want you to post more of it. In my worlds time line the gnomes were the first to develop language and writing. They Also were the first to develop ships capable of crossing large bodies of water. This lead them to discover humans on a much larger continent to the east. In what physical way such as cave painting, or pottery or art would their discovery and interaction with tribal man be seen by the people of my current time which is roughly 2000ish years later.
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Post by joatmoniac on Mar 29, 2016 23:46:29 GMT
I agree with DM Mainprize, and would love to see more of this type of content. I sadly have little more to offer this discussion, haha.
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Post by DM Windhover on Mar 30, 2016 21:46:36 GMT
dm_mainprize : That's an interesting one. It will depend a lot on the nature of the interaction and its length. If the gnomes were significantly advanced over the human society with which they interacted, AND if the gnomes did not settle in the region but returned home, AND if there was no further contact between the races for significant time, then it is conceivable that over generations the stories told would transform the gnomes into "faerie" type creatures or even divine beings which would become part of the human mythology. They might become something akin to the "Children of the Forest" in George R. R. Martin's Westeros. These figures could then be expected to appear in stories told by the humans, as well as in pictographic forms. And when humans and gnomes finally come back into contact you might have a situation similar to the interaction of Cortez with the Aztecs who believed him to be their god Quetzalcoatl returned. If gnomes settled on the "human continent," though, the results would likely be wildly different. Considering it from the perspective of real world history; when two significantly different cultures in the ancient period ended up in the same place, such as Mesopotamia, it usually led to warfare, cultural assimilation, or both. Usually both. But there are complications in this case. This is the $64,000 question: Just how technologically advanced are these gnomes relative to their human counterparts? If the humans are living in caves still, as suggested by your cave painting reference, but also making pottery, then we may be talking about a difference equivalent to anywhere between 17,000 and 5,000 years in "real world" history--and probably not much less. Sumerian pictographic writing originates around 3000 BC, with fully fledged standardized cuneiform appearing by 2500. The Paleolithic cave dwellers who painted the Lascaux star map probably lived about 20,000 BC, and crude pottery was probably just showing up around that time. Humans did continue to use caves for much longer in some circumstances (there were cave dwellers in parts of China even well after the invention of farming!) but we can still assume that these gnomes are WAY beyond the humans in terms of the evolution of their cultures. And that will have a huge impact on their interactions. Are the gnomes going to benevolently "raise" human cultures up to their level and in their image? In this case, humans may see the gnomes as almost godlike benefactors during their early history. However, since they're, well, human, chances are good that once they are on the same technological level as the gnomes it's only a matter of time before they turn on them in striving for dominance. Or perhaps they adopt "gnomish" values and perspectives on the world, which would make for a vastly different kind of human culture. On the other hand, gnomes might initially see these humans as primitive, little more than animals, maybe even using them as beasts of burden. Being gnomes, they'd probably think of humans as big useful sentient pets to be treated very well but made useful. (After all, sentience probably isn't considered problematic r.e. slavery by a race that can talk to animals.) And in the long run, there would probably be humans who would want to be free to create their own world again, and the gnomes might even freely let them. But some might willingly choose to stay as servants, because the gnomes are benevolent masters who make sure they never want for anything... And the creative juices flow on. But frankly little of this is going to be explicitly based on historical knowledge, because we simply don't know of hardly any situations in which cultures with such incredibly different levels of technology came into contact. Even the explorers of the early colonial era would have been at a technological distance of no more than a couple thousand years, at a generous estimate, from their New World counterparts. (A caveat: There are real problems with analyzing relative cultural advancements based on the time it took for technologies to develop in the real world. But it's still useful to get a basic picture.)
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Post by swordnut on Mar 31, 2016 11:56:27 GMT
In Irish folklore there are 3 main strata each one lives physically above the last.
The fomorii. We would call them demons and monsters, dwelling in the deep places, often watery The Sidhe. The little folk or fey. Dwelling in hills and trees and things you can see day to day. Humans. Duh.
Each of these could be linked to actual population and cultural changes in Irish archaeology. The people of the Iberian peninsula (Portugal/Spain) colonised the island, followed by the Central European folk. One could argue (not without merit but shaky) that each group came along, displaced and then demonised their predecessors. So the Palaeolithic folks became the fomorii, then they got made into demons as the next lot became the fey. It could also relate to the repurposing of the native's superstitions as populations interacted and evolved, but in a D&D setting, those folks acutually could go bump in the night now.
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Post by swordnut on Apr 2, 2016 11:04:39 GMT
Here's a spin on the standard village.
Normally, a village is described as a centralised, nucleated settlement. All the structures are in the middle and the fields are on the outside. There might be some scattered farms, but this is the overall pattern
There is another type of village from medieval England and Scotland. The de-nucleated village is spread out over several square miles. Let's call ours "Roth".
There would be a church and a couple of farms/dwellings called "kirkton of Roth". An hours walk, across the bog is a couple of farms and a big barn called "fermton of Roth" and down the lane, by the stream about half an hour from the church is a mill and a smithy called "Milton of Roth". And so on. They generally form part of a larger parish, and identify as a single village. They have one Lord, organise shared labour etc just like a standard village. The difference is that the distance between settlements means communication needs more effort and they may set up systems of regular visiting, or have a designated person who travels between farms sharing news, collecting fines etc. They may have regular meetings at the church or tavern. Taverns may be based somewhere permanently, but it would be more likely for a farmers wife to declare a "free house" when her beer had brewed, so the tavern, public house (pub) or free house would change month by month.
It's a small change in geography that changes how your players see the world. Useful if you want a regional feel but not a huge culture shock.
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Post by swordnut on Apr 3, 2016 11:11:22 GMT
An obsidian mirror. Found all over the world, from aztec to elizabethan. John Dee used one for scrying
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Post by swordnut on Apr 4, 2016 8:14:39 GMT
since one of the big old libraries in my city is doing an exhibition on it: There is a rich tradition of late medieval - Elizabethan occult practice. This is often grouped under alchemy, but was primarily about summoning angels for prophecy and favours. As they skirted the boundary of Christian doctrine at the time, practitioners often had secret societies and wrote in code. I have personally seen sigils incribed on walls in the attics of country estate houses (whether real or an affectation, we couldn't tell This is a great resource of arcane sybology and interesting complex rituals. I couldnt take any pics in the library, but here is an example. obviously, you could change the words to reflect your worlds cosmology for more examples, google "solomonic magic" or look up "the book of oberon" on Amazon
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Post by swordnut on Apr 4, 2016 8:27:51 GMT
want a rich burial that isnt egyptian? This is a burial from a place called Varna, in Bulgaria. it contains some of the oldest gold jewellery known, at around 6500 years old. the necropolis contains so much gold, it out weighs all other treasures until the medieval period, when the church became properly wealthy. Archaeologist talk a lot about "displays of wealth". There is no more obvious way to display your wealth and power than to dispose of valuable things by burying them or consuming them (these folks buried gold, we eat it).
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Post by swordnut on Apr 6, 2016 15:31:48 GMT
There is an anglo saxon burial site somewhere in england (I cant say where exactly because it hasn't been published yet). The 90 or so burials span about 40-60 years.
Not a single one is a regular burial. Normally they would orient east-west, but the orientation here is all over the place. Some were buried in pairs, some alone, some in more than one grave. Many have the heads removed and placed between the legs, under the arm or elsewhere. The necks showed almost no damage, just light scoring, like they were removed carefully, not like an execution at all. One pair of graves had the heads swapped. Another had a small box engraved with a short inscription "MBUGI", but the best people in the field had no idea what it means.
One burial on the outskirts of the site was found face-down with all his worldly accoutrements still in place. This included his clothes, shoes money purse and a sword, still on the belt. The sword was pattern welded and worth a fortune. It was definitely not a reverential burial. This guy was killed, thrown face-first into a shallow grave and covered. One would expect the people burying him to remove the valuable sword, scabbard and purse, but they left it all. That sword could have bought half the county. This was the only weapon found.
In one corner of the site, there was a 4-post structure (of what, we dont know past the 4 posts). It was square and not oriented in any particular way. A body was found on each side, arranged head to foot. Not many grave goods, no beheadings.
In short, this has almost none of the usual hallmarks of early christian or known pagan traditions. What were the people here doing? Why remove the head after death with surgery-like care? Who were the people around the square structure? Who was the swordsman and what had happened to lead him to such an end?
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Post by frohtastic on Apr 7, 2016 0:23:34 GMT
Jesus, this is beyond interesting.
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