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From: owner-birthright@lists.MPGN.COM on behalf of Malcom Theo McClellan
Sent: 23 July 1997 23:19
To: birthright@MPGN.COM
Subject: [BIRTHRIGHT] - Aduria

hello, Adam Theo here with some concepts I've dished up....

>Question. There has been a lot of guesses, speculation, and hints as to
what life is like on the continent of Aduria. <

>If anyone has any ideas of thier own, possibly we could discuss this.
What are some speculations that any of you guys out there have? <

>as for myself, my version is this....
>I've decided that the main "kingdom" of Aduria is Roman in technology and
art. Most parts of Aduria haven't "evolved" as fast as Cerilia. Most of
Aduria isn't renaissance yet. I imagine that most of Aduria's government
structure would be a city-state (kind of like Khinasi), however, I read
Raymond E. Feist's "Magician" and I liked the idea of an extreamly large
empire that revolved around a strong religious and warlike way of life.
So, to keep the Roman city state feel and the large holy-war Empire, I've
decided that a large city state struggled to conquer about half of the
massive continent of Aduria. However, the conquering state has spred
itself very thin over it's empire, so most people living at the extents of
the empire in thier city states don't see any sign of thier "liege-emperor
or his "empire" for years at a time. <
>Aduria is a very large continent, it is connected to the continent of
Djapar by a thick string of islands. At the south eastern corner of Aduria
lies the oriental cultures of the world. The western part of Aduria is
land bridged to the African and north american lands with aztec-like
culture on the land bridge itself. <
>The religion of the empire is monothiestic, similar to early christianity
and catholocism, but strong ties to the old testament and judiasm(sp). God
vs Satan. But to keep a system of variety to the priests and monks, there
are a very large range of demi-gods who serve either God or Satan.
churches and people have thier particular demi-gods who they look to for
spiritual stuff in addition to the High Lord of Goodness. the mini-gods
who serve Good are called saints or angels, while those that serve Evil are
called Demons. I envision a society with strong religious elements (strong
good vs evil). <

>please, any comments? just to flesh out the origional lands of the humans


I like the ideas of different cultures other than those already in Cerilia
such as the Oriental and Aztec nations because the Cerilian cultures are quite
similar and they arent as defining and intense as in other TSR worlds.
For Example :The khinasi are clearly meant to be the Arabic culture present in
nearly every other game made, but in Birthright they arent quite so
stereotypical, in that there arent magic lamps, genies and most importantly
massive deserts, instead there are these dry plains which i have never really
understood.
I am sure that somebody will say " ah, but they are trying to create a unique
setting, one that isnt stereotypical"
Well I dont agree with that at all, all the other cultures are pretty much
stereotypical (which I dont think is neccessarily bad )and the main ideas
behind Birthright (such as Bloodlines and PCs running Empires)
are unique enough without having completely new cultures thrown at us
I actually think that before the current worries about Birthright's future the
game designers were planning to "do" Aduria as a truly Arabic setting with a
touch of Dark Sun hardship thrown in.But at the time the designers knew they
had to have an Arabic setting that wasnt a few years down the road, so they
came up with the Khinasi.

PS:I was wondering if any BR designers were listening if they could tell us
what the plans for Birthright actually were for the future (possible domain
sourcebooks , the Shadow world, Thaele , Aduria etc) or maybe this was already
done before i joined the list.