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Relating Barsaive to our world & peoples outside of Barsaive

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2018 12:22 am
by Slimcreeper
Okay, I have a couple of random questions:

One - I know this has been gone over more than once, but where exactly is Barsaive on Earth? Is the Aras Sea the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov?
Two - The People from Beyond the Aras Sea. Turkish? South Russian ethnic groups?
Three - Trade is obviously pretty limited because the Scourge would have disrupted most long distance trade. But how tied in would they be to North Africans etc?

Re: Relating Barsaive to our world & peoples outside of Barsaive

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2018 6:07 pm
by Mataxes
1. Death's Sea is the Black Sea. The Scarlet Sea is the Sea of Azov. The Aras Sea is the Caspian.

(The shoreline of Death's Sea/Scarlet Sea is way too distinctive to be anything but.)

2. It's not specified where across the Aras Sea. Looking at a map, probably in the area of present-day Iran and/or Turkmenistan. Aside from their mention in the Serpent River book, they have not been developed.

3. The First Ed. Theran Empire book describes Creana (Nile Valley and present-day Egypt, with a little bit of the Levant and up towards present-day Turkey), and Marac (Mediterranean coast of present-day Morocco and Algeria). So there's trade and contact.

Feelings on those areas are mixed. After Barsaive is decidedly not just "fantasy Russia," having the Theran provinces laid out as fantasy-expys of real-world cultures (even though they were hinted as such as far back as the Sky Point box) was not well received.

Re: Relating Barsaive to our world & peoples outside of Barsaive

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2018 6:36 pm
by etherial
Slimcreeper wrote:
Sun Dec 09, 2018 12:22 am
Three - Trade is obviously pretty limited because the Scourge would have disrupted most long distance trade. But how tied in would they be to North Africans etc?
Intercontinental Trade predates agriculture, so probably?

Re: Relating Barsaive to our world & peoples outside of Barsaive

Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2018 7:35 am
by ChrisDDickey
Therian vessels may have ranged far and wide, but they know that knowledge is power and trade is wealth. They love a good monopoly, and believe that the subject nations should stay where they are put. Sure the tales and legends spread. But getting good navigational data might be hard.
Just navigating across Barsiave can be tricky. Inter-province travel, much less exploration is much more tricky. It is not a matter of punching coordinates into a GPS. It is not even just a matter of going to the library and copying a few maps. The charts and journals you would want are probably the prized secrets of powerful Therian trading houses and military.