Friday, January 28, 2011

Re: [greytalk] Re: Knights of the Watch

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 1:30 AM
From: "Chris Anderson"
To: "Marc-Tizoc González"
Cc: greytalk@canonfire.com

I've always envisioned Ket as being culturally like the Seljuk Turks. Tusmit, Ekbir, and Zeif would be more like the Arabic cultures of Baghdad circa 800-1000AD. Ull is the Mongol equivalent (I confess ... the city of Ilkhan did that for me) and the Paynims are the moral equivalent of the Empire of Tamerlane for me, sans Samarkand.

For me, Ket, Bissel, and Veluna would have much the same tensions that Byzantium and the Turks had... not because of religion, but because of competing cultures. Which would make Bissel the Outremer of Keoland... except that we have no crusades. :-)

Personally, I think the idea of a Crusade from the Flanaess into Baklunish lands is silly, unless somehow the Suloise remembered their history, got organized, and got seriously mad. Mad in both meanings of the term, too.

So, it would never happen.

-- Chris
On 3/19/07, Marc-Tizoc González wrote:
Thanks to all for responding. This level of historical information is one of GreyTalk's strengths.

Rafu mentioned that the comparison between civilized Bakluna and the Ottoman Empire is off and suggested comparing the Baklunish to pre-Ottoman Arabs is better.

He and Chris Anderson also distinguished the factors of Earth's Crusades and the sociopolitical situation between the Kingdom of Keoland, Veluna, and Ket. It's interesting that an Oerthly crusade seems unlikely given Keoland's failure to hold what it tried to conquer during its historical expansionism.

In contrast, the uncivilized Bakluni nomads have twice invaded substantial regions of the Flanaess.

MTG

Raffaele Manzo < raffaele.manzo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why did many of the Crusades seem to originate in kingdoms of France and
> England? Is that historically inaccurate?

Historically accurate or not, I think we tend to get such an impression because those two kingdoms were the two largest unified political entities within Roman Catholic Europe during most of the Middle Ages (the two which stand out resembling "nations" to our modern eyes).

As an aside, since you mentioned the Crusades... I believe the Knights of the Watch have something of the (historical Crusades-era) Templars. Templar Knights were "soldier monks" tasked with defending the small Christian "kingdoms" in the Holy Land - a shard of Western Europe surrounded by Arab nations. In a sense, if you think of "greater Keoland area" states as a Western Europe, and of Bakluni as Arabs, then you've got Western Europe and Near East sharing a long border - longer than any Holy Land kingdom was large (though nearly impassable mountain ranges do help) - and the Watchers patrolling it. Of course, you can only draw so much similarities... You won't have any "Crusades" in the Flanaess, at least not "Watcher-nations vs
Baklunish states" Crusades. Real world Crusades were born from politically opposed peoples *not* sharing a geographical border, but sharing a distant cultural heritage which brought both sides to hold a certain place as "holy". If you look ad Baklunish states vs. Gran March, Keoland etc. you're looking at politically opposed peoples who
*do* share a border, but having no common cultural heritage whatsoever (a much more common situation in the majority of real-world conflicts as well).

Oh, yes... and I would *not* liken the Bakluni to the Ottoman Empire. Pre-Ottoman Arabs is a much closer call, I believe.

____
Rafu
(the gamer formerly known as "Lord Raphael")
http://victordraconem.blogspot.com

RE: [greytalk] Looking for a Bakluni War God

Wednesday, April 4, 2007 4:40 PM
From: "Marc-Tizoc González"
To: greytalk@canonfire.com

I agree. Al'Akbar as a righteous war / sun god, and Azor'alq as the noble paladin / fakir (is that the right word?).

LGJ 3 described Azor'alq (formerly of Pinnacles fame) and connected him in very interesting ways to Al'Akbar and the Bakluni struggle against evil / darkness.

MTG

"Vest III, Robert W" wrote:
I think Al'Akbar &/or Azor'alq are probably the closest thing the Baklunish have to war gods.

Rob Bastard
Bastard Greyhawk: http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk.html
Age of Worms: http://www.ghoulgamers.com/viewforum.php?f=73
Greyhawk on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Greyhawk


-----Original Message-----
From: Basiliv [mailto:basiliv@cablespeed.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 10:36 PM
To: greytalk@canonfire.com
Subject: Re: [greytalk] Looking for a Bakluni War God

Official info on the Baklunish gods is sparse, so you might want to see what fan material is available.

But you can get just about everything officially available about them by consulting 2 sources:

1) The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer: This has a write-up of all of the Baklunish gods of Demigod status or higher. Each write-up is about 4 paragraphs, which is a lot more than many of them had in the past. But what I think is especially useful are the
write-ups of the Bakluni nations, and the religious conflicts add a nice dimension to this small pantheon.

2) Living Greyhawk Journal #3: This one may be questionable by some, as the real write-ups in here are of several Hero-Gods of Greyhawk. Several figures that were little more than names were turned into Hero-Gods, and a few of these are Bakluni in origin. But I mention it because, divine or not, the backgrounds of these figures provide a good addition to the religious conflicts I mentioned above.

Other than that, for official sources you've really just got several write-ups of Istus:

Greyhawk Adventures hardback
From The Ashes boxed set
1983 boxed set -- this also has a write-up of Xan Yae

I think that's about it. Hope this helps!

~Jim (Basiliv)

On Tue, 3 Apr 2007 22:39:14 -0400
"Aluvial" wrote:
> I'm looking for information about Baklunish gods.
> Especially a war god if any.
>
> I know that the Suel got a special writeup at some point... I was
>wondering about the Bakluni.
>
> Aluvial