Weird setting idea

[Blackhawk748]

Ok ive had this weird idea for a setting floating around in my head for a long time and i want to use it, but i feel it needs a second set of eyes.

The setting is basically a fusion of Medieval Ireland, Scotland, and Japan. Ya i know its weird.

It started out as a joke on my part. Me and some friends were discussing what the most terrifying warrior would be. Viking Spartans and Mongol Vikings got thrown around (basically Viking + anything got thrown around) and i countered with Samurai Highlanders. Well needless to say we all thought that sounded incredibly awesome as thoughts of Kilt wearing Samurai with epic beards charging into battle to the tune of Bagpipes went through our heads. So i started making a setting out of this idea and i decided to add Irish culture to this when i saw this on Medieval 2 Kingdoms:


A king's son is not nobler than his food.

Which i took to mean that, until your actually a noble, being the child of one gets you no special treatment, which i thought was cool.

Now on to actual setting stuff. The primary setting is a large Island to the West of the main continent (about as far as Iceland is from Europe). The Island looks like if you stuck Ireland to Britain and is about the same size. It is home to the Jade Empire (better name pending) which is an Empire that is a conglomeration of two cultures. The first culture is your basic Fantasy Feudal Japan, the only difference is that their adherence to protocol and order is slightly less. (IE if Japan was a 10 on the Honor and Proper Form scale, the original Jade Empire would be like an 8). The second is the Scot/Irish people, who are refugees from the main continent, having been forced out by a larger Empire to the east. They view Honor and Protocol as good things but they are less formal about it (so they are like a 6 on the scale). The big difference is that the Jade Empire viewed Nobility as Descended from Heaven and Ordained by the Gods and thus rule by right, the Scot/Irish viewed Nobility as Ordained by the Gods, but it was a duty bestowed upon them by said gods because they would be the most capable.

So in short, Jade Empire Nobility does the standard, passes to oldest child, whereas the Scot/Irish people's Noble title passes on to the one the title bearer names (usually a relative, though not necessarily) Obviously this caused some problems when the Scot/Irish (i really need to call them something else :smalltongue:) landed on the Island. In short a war broke out shortly after they landed on the main Island (they had settled on a few islands off the cost that the Empire didnt care about, thus why they didnt really notice). This war went on for a few years, only ending when the Firstborn Daughter of the Emperor (so shes the heir) was saved by the son of The Chief of Chiefs (the elected head of the Scot/Irish Nobility, where each clan is led by a Chief of the Name, who is also elected. Under this is the rest of the nobility) After her rescue she fell for him (oh sweet trope laden love) and they were married. After her fathers death the First Empress created the current noble structure and helped shape the current culture.

Nobility starting from the top:

Empress/Emperor
The Chief of Chiefs (the Husband or wife of the Emperor/Empress, they deal primarily with the clans)
Shogun, Chief of Names (these are the respective titles for the heads of the two major clan types, both continue to function as they did before the merge, ie Chief of Names are still elected, whereas Shoguns are appointed and then pass the title to one of their children)
Daiymo, Laird (these are the standard landed nobility)
Samurai, Muire or Ridire (These are the Bonded Warrior caste and their title depends on their preferred fighting style)
Everybody Else

Now nobility in the new Jade Empire is closer to the Scot/Irish (screw it going with Celtic) Celtic style of nobility, where they see it as a duty and responsibility not some right, so the common people get treated rather well as the nobility is aware of how life is without money or position. This is because until they are old enough to help their parents with the work of running the family estate they are treated like any other child, and not just by their parent. Being the son of a Shogun gives you no more special treatment than being the son of a Farmer. Even the Imperial Children arent treated all that differently (though they tend to have discreet bodyguards nearby) and while the families of the Original Empire may still pass their holdings to their oldest child, this is usually because they have been groomed for the job.

So ya thats the gist of it, im planning on having a Shadowlands like Rokugan in the north. Probably just call it the Demonwastes or something similar, oh and the clans (on both sides) are made up of several races, so an Elf, a Dwarf, a Halfling and a Human may all be in the same clan. This is because i want to try out a non-racial culture setting. Ok, start ripping this apart. *hides behind a riot shield and dons helmet* im ready!

[Phelix-Mu]

Actually, I kind of like this. It reminds me of a merger I did where a Chinese/Oriental-type culture was living alongside a more Conan-style barbarian culture of horse-riding steppe people. Worked out really awesome flavor-wise.

As to critique, I would scrub off as many of the serial numbers as possible. Chief of Chiefs and Chief of Names are cool, but I would avoid saying "shogun" or "daimyo", because many players will have the visuals in their heads affected by the irl cultural references. People will still get the references and the flavor even without the names, and make it an out-of-game shorthand if you have to say "the temple is a Japanese-style pagoda," as opposed to calling the npc "Shogun Jeff."

The contrast between cultures can be very rich. Remember that this is still (by the sound of it) early in the blending process. So there are likely to be conservative throwbacks, liberal hippies, and commoners that just want to marry that handsome guy from the other clan (Romeo and Juliet, though I guess they weren't commoners...).

Finally, good luck with the multiracial cultural thing. The main difficulty in the races being seriously intermingled culture-wise is the aging process. Elves tend to have a different culture than halfling and to self-segregate because their long lives lead to different perspectives. I don't think what you suggest is impossible, just unusual, and therefor a good seeding ground for some unusual or innovative results.

More basic, consider that the elves remember the old ways, while the humans embrace the change. The halflings like to get along with everyone, and the dwarves like duty. But that is standard. If you want to break cliches, perhaps the elves are more ephemeral, enjoying innovation and change, while the dwarves are more Viking and less duty-oriented. Or maybe there are no racial cliches? Not sure how extreme you want to be in eliminating racial differences.

A good way to augment the normal racial dynamic is to introduce new elements, to break the habit people are in of thinking "dwarf = x." In a more ambitious angle, consider reskinning all of the races to be different. Elves have elf stats, but they have the appearance of bird-people, make the halflings nezumi (rat people), and the dwarves bear-people. By eliminating "dwarf," you get rid of the baggage and the visuals and open players up to new character narratives that draw on new cultural themes. Use the normal stats because you already have a heap of work for yourself. If going this way, I would even just eliminate the aging differences, or at least minimize them (elves=two centuries, dwarves=1.5, halflings = .75, humans =.6)

Otherwise, I think this has real potential. All fantasy is a mishmash of real-life influences, from Tolkien to Potter, so you are in good stead. Good luck.:smallwink:

[Blackhawk748]

Lots of Good stuff

Thanks for all of that, and actually i was gonna muck around with the aging thing because i always found Elves being 400+ to be hard to work with. Id probably cap them off at like 200 but averaging around 120-140.

[Afgncaap5]

Definitely a lot of good ideas here. Especially since, I think, both cultures sort of have a tradition of fairy-ish creatures pretending to be animals and tricking humans into dying (kitsune and selkies both do that, right? Or am I misremembering?)

The only other note I'd have is that it reminds me of Samurai Jack when he met The Scotsman, and discovered that his magic samurai sword couldn't sunder the Scotsman's rune-covered blade.

[Phelix-Mu]

Thanks for all of that, and actually i was gonna muck around with the aging thing because i always found Elves being 400+ to be hard to work with. Id probably cap them off at like 200 but averaging around 120-140.

As a human irl, it can be hard to wrap one's head around the scale of the problem that racial aging differences presents.

For illustration, consider an adult elf in real life, versus a human, at the current time.

Human: 20. Elf: 120.

Human: Born in mid 90s, remembers vaguely y2k and 9/11.

Elf: Born in 1895, remembers the humanist movement, Prohibition, the Great Depression, WWII, the GI Bill, Kennedy, the Beatles, Vietnam, the sexual revolution, polyester, disco, 80s hair, the crack epidemic, Desert Storm, the Clinton era, and that other stuff the human remembers.

Now consider the elf adult's parents, in middle age, let's just say 350 (elven fertility range is huge).

Born 1665. Remembers Newton publishing Principia Mathematica, and has thus been alive for practically the entirety of modern scientific thought (although it will be another couple centuries before chemistry and biology become meaningful disciplines). In this person's life, the field of human understanding went from "Gravity: It's A Thing!" to "A Unified Theory of Physics." We realized things exist that we can't see with the naked eye. We realized leadership shouldn't be derived from genealogical heritage. That religion is a choice, not an obligation. That women are people, too. We started to recognize that humans come in all colors, and equality is not a hopeless dream. That sex and sexuality have as many forms as there are stars in the sky, and are all beautiful. It has been a long, long road for humanity. But to this elf, it was 40 years.

Let's not even get into the grandparents, probably still alive. And this doesn't touch on the unusual relationship between elves and memory/sleep.

So, yeah, skip/minimize that problem and get onto the cultural blending. It's a solid concept, and is hardly noticeable in the average span of time that most campaigns cover. Elven backstories are really the only thing materially affected (having seen less of the history of younger races), and that is all mutable fluff that should work for the DM and the setting.

I would be interested to know how much of the raider/land-grabbing aspects of Celtic lore you might be poaching. Cattle raiding was a big deal in Ireland at one point, and the squabbles among the nobles are really close to the root of the reason why a modern Irish state has never fully materialized (no Irish king leads to lack of central gov't, etc). This despite the Irish really having a very strong identity, in typical islander fashion.

Yeah, Irish and Japanese. That's pretty much my wheelhouse. Can I play in this campaign??:smallredface:

[Blackhawk748]

More good stuff

I actually hadnt considered the whole cattle poaching raiding thing, but now that i think of it Rokugan pretty much has conflicts between their clans like that. Its all small unit raids for prestige more than the actual stuff, so that could be a ton of fun.

And ya, Elf age, its freakin weird :smalltongue:

As for the Animal Fey, hadnt even considered that. And i think your thinking of the Kelpie, but ya a water horse that eats people. Selkies are just seals that turn into people, and are generally not evil.

[Eloel]

Actually, I kind of like this. It reminds me of a merger I did where a Chinese/Oriental-type culture was living alongside a more Conan-style barbarian culture of horse-riding steppe people. Worked out really awesome flavor-wise.

That's not homebrew merger, that's real life a long time ago.

[Phelix-Mu]

That's not homebrew merger, that's real life a long time ago.

I had them coexisting peacefully. I am not clear on the details, but I don't think that part was quite true-to-life.

[Blackhawk748]

Ok, ive been thinking about this for a bit and i cant figure out what to replace Daiymo or Shogun with. Now i know that Shogun has a lot of baggage with it, but im not sure if Daiymo is as bad. I mean to me a Daiymo was a Lord, usually the head of a family, ive also heard it be used for the head of a clan, though Japanese culture isnt my strong suit (just one more reason i need to play Shogun Total War 2 :smalltongue:)

[Karl Aegis]

So, you have a setting with Scottish, Irish and Japanese cultures. You named it after China. Bizarre.

[Blackhawk748]

So, you have a setting with Scottish, Irish and Japanese cultures. You named it after China. Bizarre.

I got the idea from Rokugan, which is apparently Fantasy Japan (more or less) anyway Jade Empire is little more than a placeholder right now, or i may keep it. I dont know yet.

Hell ill probably steal some stuff from Chinese culture while im at it. I mean im already a terrible thief :smalltongue:

[Coidzor]

I got the idea from Rokugan, which is apparently Fantasy Japan (more or less) anyway Jade Empire is little more than a placeholder right now, or i may keep it. I dont know yet.

Hell ill probably steal some stuff from Chinese culture while im at it. I mean im already a terrible thief :smalltongue:

I thought Rokugan was already a "What if Japan took over China at some point during the 800s-1400s?" sort of place to begin with.

Definitely change the name, though, because otherwise you'll run the risk of getting references to the Bioware game made.

[Blackhawk748]

I thought Rokugan was already a "What if Japan took over China at some point during the 800s-1400s?" sort of place to begin with.

Definitely change the name, though, because otherwise you'll run the risk of getting references to the Bioware game made.

Ya i realized that when i was poking around the internet. I just need to think of a better name...

Edit: Also kicking around ideas for clans, im thinking the "Japanese" ones (need a name for them) will probably use ones based on the Rokugan Clans and the Celtic ones (ugh names :smalltongue:) will probably have family names.