Blog Name Change

I figured we're at a point where development is pretty much a done deal, we're just fleshing out details. I have a rough idea of a 100,000+ year old Sidhe Empire, that collapsed, for the most part, roughly 1800 years ago. I know when, where and how pretty much all of the different Human groups got here. I know how the Dwarves got here and where they came from and why they can't go home. I know the stresses the Sidhe and the Dwarves were under before the Humans were thrown into the mix, all part of the multi-planar war and I have worked out a rough timeline for that as it affects this particular world. Plus we mapped the whole world out. Now I just feel like I should hand out assignments to people so they can flesh out the parts of the world they are most interested in!

Typical Celtic Buildings

When we had our sit down the other day we didn't really talk too much about the civilization level of the "Barbarian" Celts that lived to the north of Garnia, except for the one brief mention that they had one "Real" city; the word I couldn't remember was Oppidum. Since most of the Celts in the original crossing were Gauls and Britons, they were familiar with building techniques and probably used them to their advantage even out on the semi-barren steppe where the found themselves. Their one city, the city holy to the barbarians and learned men from Garnia to Frodia to Tirnakaur is in this steppe, it is the place where all the people of Math were led to, and Druids, Priests and Bards still hold their traditional roles here. I always pictured it as an Oppida built on a hill next to the one "mother river" that flows to the north; from there they could protect their people and expand against the ill equipped hordes of poorly led and not terribly intelligent humanoids that already lived on the the steppe, and they would also come into contact with things from earth that hadn't been seen in tens of thousands of years, Neanderthals, Mastodons and Woolly Rhinoceroses to start with.

I did a Google image search today for some inspirational examples of real world Celtic structures and it was not easy coming up with anything solid. When you search for Celtic structures of any sort, from Oppida to Crannogs they inevitably lead to many images of ruins, which is probably unhelpful in the inspiration department, or conjectural drawings of what artists and/or archaeologists think they looked like, or models from miniature companies, or the proud owners of said models showing them off, or back and forth to each other type of Celtic building, and, of course the conjectural reconstructions of said buildings, sometimes entire villages.

So, without anymore explanations as to where I plundered this bounty of Celtic building Awesomeness, I'll just start posting  the pictures.

 This is a Broch and out buildings.

Both of these were the work of a guy on the Warlord Games forums.

This is an artists rendering of an Oppida.

An artists rendering of a Crannog.

An actual reconstructed Crannog.

The cut-away of the inside of a typical Celtic round house.

A reconstruction of a typical Celtic round house.

An artists rendering of a Celtic village near Glastonbury. 

A Celtic Hill Fort in the west of Ireland, there was an actual picture, but I thought this was prettier.

OK, we actually did stuff yesterday

I picked up Dalton and we headed over to Darryl's house, which is pretty cool when you have three people on your design team that can get together and brainstorm over things and I drew out a much better -to scale- world map. We discussed a bunch of timeline issues, including the thorny question of why are there Dinosaurs in Garnia? Chronomancy by those ecology loving Elves, or rather their more magically powerful ancestors, the Sidhe. It was a failed experiment because the forces of Darkness launched an invasion into their experimental Chronomantic area, Goblins mainly, driving the Sidhe Chronomancers either away or killing them, are those secrets lost? Were they stolen by the forces of Evil? Or were they simply destroyed? All I know is that there is a pretty cool "Lost World" area to go adventuring, and it had some weird ancient ruins too, as well as all the Tyrannosaurus Rexii and Veliciraptors, wild Goblins, and Lizards Men, both primitive and advanced, and all manner of other jungle and swamp dwelling goodness.

I also found this pretty cool looking miniature on another blog and thought I'd share him here, he's exactly the sort of Celtic bad-ass that overthrew the Sidhe Empire.

Not a lot of activity here.

When I set this blog up as separate from my "main" blog, it was intended to foster all kinds of intellectual fermentation on the topic of world building. When we started off we were on fire, then we just kind of stopped. I have to say it has made me wonder if the project is worth doing or if, just maybe, we should scrap the idea that we came up with in 7th grade, and refined slowly, but surely over the course of our adult lives; and just start something new? I don't know, I am tired and I have been sick, and I have a dozen other gaming projects on my plate too.

This blog stares at me every time I post to my other blog and accuses me for not finishing up some bit that I can't make my mind up about, like when was the Necromancer war? How long was the war against the Sidhe Empire? How long did the first Garnian kingdom hold together before Frodia split off? Did Frodia split off before or after Tirnakaur? I think before, because Tirnakaur represents an older Garnian Royal line, but then how long were they united before their succession crisis split them into eastern and western factions? How long did the Sidhe empire rule before the coming of man? We know it was at least 50,000 years, because they acted as preservers for species that died out on earth and, presumably, other worlds. When did the forces of Darkness invade for the first time? When did the first Elves fall and become "Dark Sidhe"? How long were the Dwarves in contact with the Sidhe empire and what did they trade? We know the racial enmity between Dwarves and Elves is caused by the fact that the Elves sealed the gates back to the Dwarven home world, when did this happen? I know why.

Multi-planar war between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil; Men, Elves and Dwarves caught in the middle of it. Halflings too if anyone can give me a good enough reason, hell, I'll even bring back the Gnomes, so the entire 1st edition AD&D Players Handbook will be useful again. Just give me a good reason that doesn't say "They're in the book, so I should be allowed to play one.", I was never a Gnome fan, I used to be a Halfling fan, because I loved the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, but that's a reason to NOT have them here.