Garnia 2nd Generation Game Primer

 

This Campaign Setting -

This is a primer for new players in my “World of Garnia” campaign setting. I was planning to run this as a straight up, by the book AD&D core rules setting, but Darryl suggested that we should play in a very early era of this setting, one which hadn't been explored as a possibility for use yet. I was intrigued enough to agree, so here we are.

The basics-

You belong to tribal groups of Iron Age Celts that were part of a pan-Celtic religious movement, a movement that was based around a prophecy of the destruction of the Celtic world and way of life. These groups gathered themselves for a ritual that would prtocet them, and take them to a place where their way of life could always be ascendant. This movement was organized by the Archdruid Math the old.

Celts from the entire Celtic world came individually or as entire tribes, gathered in Gaul and then disappeared. All record of this was lost to the people of earth, as Gaul was in the middle of being conquered by the Roman empire. Movement from earth to the new world didn't end with the first mass migration, but it did significantly slow, with one further large migration from Britain in the face of the Roman invasion of 43 AD.

It has been 35 years since the first people got here, the climate was harsh compared to your homelands, cold, barren plains rather than temperate forests. The challenges were many, unknown species of deadly monsters, wielding strange magics, disease, starvation, freezing temperatures. Your people have prospered in spite of this, and have expanded beyond the river valley of your initial settlement. Your task is to explore the world beyond the valley, and find new lands for your growing tribes.

What are Celts?

For our purposes they are the culture(s) that dominated Europe, mostly north of the Alps, from the bronze age until the Roman conquests of the 1^st centuries BC and AD. They are a huge chunk of Europe's pre-history. Their cultural zone ran from the black sea coast of modern Bulgaria to the Atlantic coast of modern Spain and France, and included the British Isles; from the North sea to the Mediterranean, they expanded into northern Italy following the Etruscan collapse (which also led to the rise of Rome as a power), and they colonized the central part of modern Turkey. Renowned and feared as warriors, they served as mercenaries as far afield as Carthage and Egypt and Persia.

Assuming we're not all scholars, I am going to define them as five main groups (divided somewhat along linguistic lines), and a couple of sub-groups. Gauls, Britons, Celt-Iberians, Irish and Picts are the main groups, and Ligurians and Belgae are the sub-groups.

Gauls (mostly) come from modern day France and the low countries, they speak what is called P-Celtic or Brythonic, which is a simplification, as there were dozens of Gaulish languages and dialects, and D&D poorly models linguistic reality, so we're going to call their languages “Gaulish” and call it a day. Gauls are the “civilized” Celts, they lived in proper towns, and had magistrates. They had had a lot of contact with the Mediterranean world.

The Ligurians were, perhaps, Gauls that dwelled in a mountainous region along the Mediterranean sea coast, or maybe another group entirely (pre-Celtic peoples that were influenced by Celtic culture). I include them here because scholarly opinion was divided the last time I looked into it, but it seemed they leaned Celtic pretty hard at a minimum.

The Belgae (from whom Belgium gets it's name) are the “Savage Gauls” of the north, noted for their ferocity. Scholars are divided over their actual ethnicity, some considering them a Germanic people. I am using Belgae as a term for any Germano-Celtic people, and, since Caesar called them Gauls, I am assuming they spoke Gaulish, which makes them Celts in my view.

The Britons (or more accurately “Pretani”) are the majority culture of the Island of Great Britain in pre-Roman times. Like the Gauls they are a P-Celtic speaking people. The Romans considered them to be more primitive, but closely related to the Gauls. Round buildings and war chariots. Way less contact with the Mediterranean world made them a scary race of savages sitting at the edge of the known world to the Romans.

The Celt-Iberians are the Celts of modern day Spain and Portugal. We're not entirely certain, but we think they were Q-Celtic or Goidelic speakers; which makes their tongue more similar to modern Irish or Scots-Gaelic than Welsh. The Romans considered these Celts to be primitive and savage compared to the Gauls too. It is entirely possible that these people were from an earlier wave of Celtic settlement (and/or conquest) than the Gauls, their material culture suggests some melding with the aboriginal inhabitants of the area, the Iberians. The Romans adopted their shortsword design though as the “Gladius Iberius” usually simply referred to as the Gladius.

The Irish were the Celts from beyond the edge of the world to the Romans. They spoke a Q-Celtic language, never saw a Roman invasion, and would go on to colonize Britain in the wake of the Roman collapse, most successfully in Scotland. Other than the language, they are culturally and materially very similar to their Briton cousins.

The Picts are the great enigma of Celtic culture. Scholars cannot be sure if they were P-Celtic speakers, or Q-Celtic speakers, or a 3^rd unknown Celtic language variant, or if they spoke a Celtic tongue at all. Their material culture suggests, at a minimum, strong Celtic influences. They were considered by the Romans to be fierce, savage, and, of course, primitive. Ultimately their homelands in the modern Scottish highlands were considered not worth the effort of conquering, so, rather than complete their domination of the island of Great Britain, they chose to build a couple of lines of fortifications across the entire island, the most famous of which is Hadrian's Wall.

All of these groups have cultural similarities and religious bonds to each other that far outweigh any of the differences. They are what are called “Heroic Cultures”, greatly valuing individual martial prowess and physical fitness.

But wait, there's more!

We've all heard of Druids and Bards, both of which are a part of the priestly caste of the Celts. Celtic music and art are still fairly popular today. Plaids are widely associated with Scotland, but are really a Celtic thing rather than a specifically Scottish thing. Halloween is one of our most popular holidays, it's origins are Celtic.