Migrating For Loot and Plunder

Tellene's rich backstory includes a prehistorical legend about how the various human tribes--the Brandobians, the Fhokki, the Reanaarians, and the Kalamarans--migrated from Svimolz, the Cradle of Civilization after the collapse of the half-forgotten Dejy Empire. The backstory is that the Traveller and the Storm Lord warred over thousands of years, building and destroying a land bridge from Svimolz to the mainland, as the human races migrated one-by-one onto the continent. It's not a bad prehistory, giving you a sense (especially as you read the rest of the sourcebook) of the temperaments and movements of the races, including a sense of where one might find the ruins of their old kingdoms.

There's just one problem: For some reason, all of these great movements (with a couple of exceptions that I'll get to in a moment) take place in Tellene's prehistory. Once the races settle in their various areas, they seem inclined to just sit there.

That's neither particularly realistic nor particularly interesting, from a campaign-world design perspective. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, KoK--like most D&D worlds--is a pastiche of ancient history and Medieval European culture. In Kalamar's case, there are actually "time" zones one can pass through, from Brandobia (14th Century Europe, or thereabouts), to the Young Kingdoms (Early Medieval Europe, aka the "Dark" Ages), to Kalamar proper (late Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire, depending on your preference), to Reanaaria Bay (the pre-Roman Iron/Bronze Age). But Middle-Ages Europe was profoundly impacted by two elements that KoK lacks: The rise of a universal Church that worshiped a single God, and the mass migrations of the Germanic tribes and later the steppe peoples (the Huns, Mongols, etc.). 

As an aside, those interested in this area should check out Dan Carlin's Hard Core History podcast, particularly "Thor's Angels" and "Wrath of the Khans." Carlin has a great "voice" when talking about history, and really knows his material. Also, he tends to rotate his podcasts so that older ones are replaced by newer ones, so get them while they're hot.

In any case, despite being a late Roman culture and the Young Kingdoms being a Middle Ages culture, neither Kalamar nor the Young Kingdoms have ever experienced a mass migration of the Fhokki or the horse-nomad Dejy from the Wild Lands, even when Kalamar was so weakened politically and militarily that its outlying provinces just quietly broke away. Neither do we have any indication that Svimolz used the chaos of the Age of Great Anguish (c. 89-171 in the Imperial Reckoning) or Time of Misfortune (c. 228-236 I.R.; the "start" date of KoK being 563 I.R.) or the long, slow loss of Kalamaran dominance to try to establish its own colonies on the mainland. Why not?

The only real migratory movements noted in modern history are in the Young Kingdoms: The Brandobian conquests in c. -40 I.R., the rise of the hobgoblin kingdom of Kruk-Ma-Kali from 22-35 I.R., and finally the Kalamaran conquests from 41 I.R. on. The Atlas shows that there is still a minority Brandobian presence in the Young Kingdoms by the occasional village with a distinctly Brandobian name. (One thing that I do truly love about KoK is the attention Kenzerco paid to those kinds of details.) That's pretty much it.

And again, that's boring--and not particularly realistic. At the very least, even if they didn't try to hold territory, we would expect waves of Fhokki, Dejy, and Svimolz raiders hitting all of Kalamar's outlying districts during the times when the Vast Empire was weak. Okay, granted Kolokar built a "great wall" (Kolokar's Barrier) to try to keep the Fhokki out--but that didn't exactly work for the Chinese against the Mongols, did it? Yet, the entries for Tokis and Dodera say nothing about Fhokki raids leaving their distinct . . . genetic mark on the local populations.

And that's a great pity, especially for a world otherwise so carefully thought out. KoK thrives on grey-and-grey morality, where people can do terrible things while thinking that they're right and justified. What if Emperor Kabori's obsession with conquering the Thars wasn't just a matter of wanting to expand his empire, but because for hundreds of years Thar raiders had raped, pillaged, and burned the Vast Empire's northeastern borders? What if Basir, Tarisato, and southern Pekal had at various times been conquered by Svimolz, and the people had a distinct chocolate tone to their skin as a result? Maybe there are racial tensions in Tarisato due to the lords tending to be lighter skinned "pure" Kalamarans, and the lower classes having the darker skin tones of Svimolz. For that matter, maybe those conditions are reversed in Tokis and Dodera, where pale, freckled skin (a sure sign of Fhokki blood) is looked down on. 

What about the Young Kingdoms? Did they break off just because they could, or because the Empire proved too weak to protect them from Dejy and Fhokki invasions? Maybe many of the nobles are of Dejy and Fhokki blood as a result, even if they identify ethnically as Kalamaran or Brandobian.

None of this contradicts the canonical material. Tellene's history, as detailed as it is, is really quite sparse and mostly focused on the events that directly lead to the nations' current situations (exactly the way most people would remember it, actually). There are vast centuries details in but a few sentences here and there to fill in.

A final note, which ties into my observations in a couple of recent posts: It seems to be taken as a given by the peoples of Tellene that there are and have been since the Godswar exactly 43 gods (well, 42 for those who don't know that the Overlord is loose again). Each of these has certain titles that seem to be universal, and each seems to be known by different proper names by every culture. My own supposition was that those proper names were the names known by those cultures of the last avatar of the gods, who are hypostases (personified traits) of the Creator, platonic ideals of that which they represent. Since the gods represent all that is in the world of Tellene as endowed by its Creator, every culture instinctively knows all of them.

In some ways this is a shame. There is only other commercial D&D world that pays such close attention to the migration of cultures and how they effect the world, and that is Gary Gygax's own World of Greyhawk.

As Rob Conley and the Greyhawk Grognard have both pointed out, you can derive a lot about the cultures of the Flanaess from the simple one-page listing of the gods of Oerth because it contains a single column noting which gods are indigenous to which cultures--and in turn, by paying a bit of attention to the migratory patterns of Oerth's human races, tells you a lot about the cultures, including which gods are likely worshiped in different regions.

Looks like I'm going to have to spend some time figuring out where each god's major temple is, where else they're worshiped, etc. Should be interesting to try to map that to the different racial movements.

Yes, I'm a geek.