OK, folks. In this week’s post I want to talk about a part of Aromathus that lies outside of the lands and peoples who inhabit A Dance with Demons. To set it up, remember that the Empire of Averim was settled by colonists from the islands, where the humans originally settled after they came from lands across the ocean. These islands form what became known as the Narvith Empire, and is my topic today.

I will talk more about the Narvith Empire in the future (including one of the few D&D presteige classes I created for the world,) but today I want to introduce a few of the things that are behind its background.

To start, pull up the big PDF map of the continent that I posted several weeks back; you’ll see the Narvith isles to the west of the continent. In short, these islands were created for two simple reasons: I’ve always wanted to run an RPG campaign set in a place where the characters are hopping from island to island, kind of a pirate / swashbuckling adventure; and I’ve always been interested in English history. The meeting of the two was obvious.

I’ve never run that island campaign. I may someday, but honestly, if I were to do so, I think it would be better set in Ursala LeGuin’s world of “Earthsea.” OTOH, the tribute to English history is stronger than ever.

Consider: Good fantasy, IMO, has cultures that are based, at least in part, on reality. No matter how inventive the creator is, they are almost always borrowing from somewhere – even subconsciously. Even the “great originator” of modern fantasy, Tolkien, borrowed (if that term can even be used) from Celtic myths, etc. Why? He was creating an “English” mythology.

My focus has been at the same time very similar and very different. I remember a conversation I had at GENCON last summer on this topic. I’d been attending a seminar on building religions for fantasy worlds, and I pointed out to a friend afterword that I wasn’t so much interested in the nitty-gritty of how the religion worked, but what effect it would have on people who lived in the world. “That,” he pointed out, “is anthropology, not mythology.” The thought was very true, the more I thought about it, and it explains a great deal about how the world of Aromathus has been built.

The Narvith Empire is based on an archipelago of thousands of islands. Some of them are quite large, able to support large populations and quite varied economies. Others – most, in fact – are quite small, and don’t even appear on the PDF map. So, I thought, how would a medieval kingdom based on an archipelago function? After all, there is no such kingdom in our own world – Japan comes the closest, but it is relatively compact, with only four major islands, and only came to be a single, unified country rather late in our own timeline.

The Narvics, OTOH, where unified from the start, and their kingdom covered a huge area of the continent – much more “space” than Japan, if you include the water. In fact, it is more like Indonesia, now that I think about it, but with two major differences. First, Indonesia has many tribes, even to this day, whereas the Narviths had only the one human refugee fleet. Secondly, there is magic.

I talked somewhat about this in my last post on Averim. Magic, IMO, would profoundly influence how a society – or a world – functions. For example, the late author Arthur C. Clarke famously said that “Sufficiently advanced technology is indecipherable from magic.” I believe that the converse of that statement would also be true. Last time, I talked about war; here are some more peaceful uses of magic.

The first of these is teleportation, or planewalking, as I termed it in the books. To explain, Star Trek has transporters; Aromathus has teleporting mages – same effect. See where I’m going? Most of us are familiar with how transporters “work,” at least as a plot device. But really think about it: If magic allowed a person to have lunch in Paris, dinner in Shanghai, and desert in New York, the world would function very differently, right? Star Trek allows for that, especially when you consider that they have limitless cheap energy in that timeline. Aromathus is again the same. Now, I didn’t want the magic to be that easy, so I put the limits on it that you see in Chapter Eight of ADWD.

On the other hand, it does allow for a few things; namely, a huge empire encompassing a large volume of the globe, yet ruled by a central ruler. Granted, the ruler can’t easily send an army by magic (that’s a can of worms I REALLY don’t want to deal with…), but an emissary? Or a bag full of gold to pay off a local Duke? And so the Narvic Empire was born.

This leads to my second point: Ships and the sea. I don’t need to spend as much time on this, but it does influence how the empire works. Magic can move a few people, or small good, but anything moved about in bulk requires ships. As I said, I never did that ocean campaign (Or now, story), but I can.

Beyond the bigger parts, though, are the details. I will get into these more in a later post, but for now, this is where I borrow more heavily. In the “macro,” the Narvics have a sea-faring culture based on trading. Just like the English of the 19th century, Narvic traders (and money) are everywhere. In fact, it is again magic that allows an empire very much like the British Empire in its world-spanning time to exist in a fantasy setting with technology equivalent to the high middle ages.

In the micro, though, is where the details lay: a “royal navy,” and a country with a very small army. Trading for everything, and dominating the world economically as a result. Remember how I said several posts back how Averim was originally going to be Germanic? That’s why – Averim is to the Narviths as Germany was to England in the 19th century.

See where I’m going with this? The Narvith’s started off as medieval Brits, but became so much more. It’s a part of the world where I had a lot of fun running D&D campaigns “back in the day,” but is still, as they say, rife with possibilities.

Now, a teaser: Another big influence on me has always been the Arthur legends. See why I had to have an English culture in my world? While I don’t have the Arthur legend as a part of the Aromathian mythos, I do have the Knights of the Round Table. I’ll talk about them – and how I use them as a prestige class – in my next post.

OK, class. Welcome back! (Sorry, but I am a teacher…)

This is my second posting on the history of the Averic Empire. In my first post, I talked about some of the cultural ideas that I borrowed when I created the Empire and its culture. In this post, I will talk more specifically about the history of the Empire – as it exists in the world of Aromathus.

The Empire of Averim is far and away the largest of the many kingdoms and countries on the continent. As such, it is also the most powerful both militarily and economically. Its armies are easily the most formidable, and were they ever able or willing to unite those armies, they could quite probably take over much of the continent with ease. (Even though, for various reasons, such a thing isn’t remotely possible. But that is another topic)

But it was not always so. Originally, Averim was just one of many small city states, much like ancient Greece. These city states, descended from the Narvic colonists (who, if you will recall, were colonists themselves), spread out over the western plains, taking land from the orcs as they went. They were able to do for the simple reason that their technology – and more importantly, their tactics – where more advanced than the orcs.

For several hundred years, things proceeded as follows: A group of men would set out, seeking a better life – or just new land. After all, land was easy and cheap, assuming you could keep the orcs off it (sound familiar?...). These men started villages and towns in the same types of places they were built in our own world – by resources, by places of natural transportation such as rivers, or at the falls of rivers where ships could no longer sale upriver, or at places where farmers would gather to sell their crops, etc. Again, as I mentioned earlier, Averim City was built in just such a place, and it achieved a local prominence based on these natural advantages.

Things changed slowly (Well, fast in the eyes of the elves and dwarves, but still slowly…), and it required the initiation of a catalyst to speed things up. Such a thing occurred in the form of the first Averic emperor, Justarias.

Justaris was the kind of man who people want to follow. Gifted with a supreme knowledge of tactics, personal courage, and that great equalizer – wealth - he was responsible for many of the innovations which made Averim’s conquests possible. The first of these was the Justarian reforms – a series of commands, practices, and orders that turned what had been a citizen’s militia into a permanent, professional army.

These reforms gave structure and commonality to Averim’s army: first, unified training, in a time when Averim’s opponents didn’t train at all. Common practices for marching, fighting, and discipline of troops when they were in error. Little things like common weapons, standard unit sizes and formations – and more. In effect, it turned a good army into a great one, and Justarias’ reforms are still being felt “today” – nearly a thousand years later.

But that was just the first step. He next started on a series of campaigns –some military, some diplomatic, some cultural. In short, it was a medieval blitzkrieg on all fronts. And by fronts, I don’t mean just military fronts. As I said, Justarias’s campaign was multi-faceted. A strategic marriage between a niece and rival king, drawing a city state into an alliance. An economic barrage, where Justarias’s people move in and take over by the simple fact that Averic goods would be sold below cost, subjugating a rival by pricing their merchants out of existence. A word in the ear of a rival prince, saying that “The Grubananders across the river are evil, and you need to save their people from themselves, and we Averics will help you.” And yes, a lot of good old fashioned conquest as well. But Justarias’s conquests had a few things in common – they came from unexpected quarters, sowing confusion. They were quick, not allowing enemy nation’s time to react. And they were thorough. By the end of his reign, Justarias had taken a small city state of a few tens of thousands of people, and forged an empire of millions.

Justarias’s heirs, however, were not the men he was. Justarias was a man who wanted to make things better – to reduce the chaos caused by a multitude of small little city-states, each of them unable to defend themselves from their enemies. While Justarias was a conqueror, he was genuinely concerned with the welfare of his subjects. His heirs weren’t; they sought only conquest for conquest’s sake.

There were several reasons for this. A need to look strong in front of their enemies, both at home and abroad. A desire to match their predecessor’s conquests. Hubris - a vain seeking of glory – and many others. But none is more important than the pact Norazon made with Grummish.

I’ve talked about this pact before, and so won’t get into it in this post. Rather, I will discuss it’s effects, or rather, its main effect. By the time Norazon launched his invasion of the Dwarven lands, the Empire of Averim was unquestionably the strongest kingdom in the world. The orcs had been reduced to a rabble, the elves fled into their forests, and the dwarves slumbering below the mountains. And the Narvics, the only human empire even remotely approaching Averim’s size and power, only cared that they could keep trading with the mainland. This was the climate that Grummish used to his advantage.

Someday I may write a history of “The Hundred Years War,” but not today. I will say that examining the timeline will prove interesting, and give at least some idea of what the war years were like. But only some.

Consider: Aromathus’ Hundred Years War can be thought of as a total, world war – but fought with magic. Imagine a war as violent as World War Two in our own world, but instead of aircraft and tanks, you have war beasts and fireballs from flying mages. Or, even more importantly, instead of nuclear weapons, ritual battle magic. I know other fantasy authors have touched on such ideas, but I will say that I only read their take(s) on it after I came up with the idea on my own.

So, again, consider: What if a group of people were able to summon an earthquake to swallow an army? Or call down fire to burn a city to the ground? Perhaps the could summon the deep waters to swallow an entire coastline? Such things are possible for Aromathean mages, and while they do not do so at the “present” day, they certainly did during the war years.

This has two effects I want to talk about. First, there is the effect on the landscape itself. I remember that when we first made the maps of Aromathus, I stuck in a large swamp just north of the main elven forests. At the time, I did so as a joke, quipping that someone had left a magic item in there that created water during the wars, and left it on. Now, hundreds of years later, it has made a swamp, radiating out from that item – an item which no one can find today.

I will admit that it is vary much a cliché. OTOH, it does signify how magic changed both the battlefields of the wars, and the very map of the continent. Think about it: in fact, it’s rather like what we thought World War III would have been like during the cold war. Why worry about massive armies when all you need are half a dozen mages to conjure of up an earthquake or two and swallow the opposition before the battle even starts? As a result, the great wars were very, very bloody.

Now, for my second point: As the Romans of our world said, “Who watches the watchers?” Or, if mages can cause so much destruction because of their power, only another, more powerful mage can police them, right? Granted, a ruler could stop a wizard with enough troops and time, but the cost would be prohibitive, both to the wizard and the ruler. In addition, what wizard would want to spend all his days defending his place and his power? How would you ever get any research done?

And so the mage guilds and mage academies of Aromathus were born. Why? After the wars ended, it wasn’t very hard to look around and see what improperly used magic could do – and no one wanted that again. So the mages agreed – “we will police ourselves. Further, we will agree to submit ourselves to the laws of those without magic.” In short, for the good of all, mages agreed to not rule the world, and to destroy many of their most powerful spells.

So the magic today, both in war and in peace, is much less powerful than it was. Certain of the most powerful spells are considered lost, for the good of all the races. Even the elves, whose blood veritably reeks of magic, agreed to this. There are many, especially In the Empire, who say the elves remember the old ways of war magic, but the elves aren’t saying.

Today, magic is policed very strongly, for no one wants to see the war magic return – or even a wizard use his power to rule or conquer more than he should. The elves go so far as to hunt down and kill any magic user who isn’t recognized by the guilds. The Averics don’t go that far, but there the laws are strict as well. “Unlicensed magic” is very bad, generally leading to a very short life for the mage.

And so we see the Empire of Averim as it is in ADWD. Not at war with anyone, but not trusted by anyone, either. Orc clans always seeking any advantage they can. Elven leaders who remember when they, and not the conniving, lying humans ruled the plains. And Dwarven warlords who listen to their loremasters, loremasters who remind them that only dwarven vigilance – and steel – kept the humans from overrunning their clan holds in the past.

That, folks, is Averim. A land at peace in name, but always posed at the brink of war. Now, don’t you want to see what happens next?

As one of my writing heroes was fond of saying (RIP, Robert Jordan), Read and find out….