'tribal' inspired nation

[Foodstamp]

Haida Gwaii was actually created to fill the void you are talking about. I based the nation on the first peoples of the Pacific Northwest. I tried to pay careful attention to their animist beliefs and defining customs including totems and the potlatch.

Since I created Haida Gwaii, the game has changed significantly, particularly in the area of modding commands. Along with those changes, my knowledge of the game has improved quite a bit. In the near future I would like to revisit some of my mods including Haida Gwaii, giving them a much needed reworking.

Edit: Cleaned up some of my rambling and whining.

[HoneyBadger]

Haida Gwaii is excellent. It's always been one of my favorite mods, not (sorry) so much because of the features the mod has, but because it does, very clearly and nicely, fit a niche that needed to be filled.

For me, growing up the way I did in Pennsylvania, with my dad who is very much into archaeology, mythology, and genaeology, and having access to a couple of really good historical libraries, I really was able to get a sense of a hidden history and this enormous sprituality that seems to run through the land itself.

The neat thing about Dominions is that the game itself is telling it's own stories: it's not confined to just the players and what we happen to decide to do in a certain game. It's got all these influences, all these backgrounds and voices, and Native American elements deserve to be represented. The game feels incomplete without a nation like Haida Gwaii.

It's a very good mod, on it's own merits. The artwork is good, the execution is very nice, and it's an unusual, creative choice for a subject, but there are so many extremely high-end mods to choose from that it's the emotional response I get from it that carries the most weight for me.

[HoneyBadger]

By the way, I understand that Machaka is supposedly based on the Zulu, but I'd like to contest that a bit: First of all, the Ashanti (from Ghana--the word "Ghana" means "Warrior-King", by the way--bordering the Ivory Coast, in West Africa, as opposed to KwaZulu-Natal, the home of the Zulu, in South Africa) are the people from whom stories of Anansi (the trickster spider-god) comes from. His father, Nyame, is their chief god. Other stories come from the Gold Coast, and Surinam; where Anansi-Tori (spider stories) are involved in burial rites (the stories are understood to be told *to the Dead*), which seem to tie in to the idea of a spider "death-god".

Zulu mythology, conversely, seems to involve a good deal of sky and nature. They have their own interesting myths and archetypes, including the tiny, fairy-like Abatwa who are very sensitive about their size. Insulting them or stepping on them evokes a death-sentence via poison arrow.

Another being is the draconic Inkanyamba, a terrifying water-serpent-who can also fly on the backs of storm-clouds. Both of these beings seem to have originated with the Bushman culture (The Bushmen worshipped and drew cave-paintings of a water-serpent who was their protector), which has mostly been displaced by the Zulu.

Zulu myth also contains the Intulo, a lizard-man, and omen of death/doom that some people have connected (a bit dubiously, in my opinion) with the "Reptilian Alien" UFO meme.

[Gregstrom]

I thought Machaka was more H. Rider Haggard than specifically Zulu.

[HoneyBadger]

If you mean the books about Alan Quartermain, I honestly don't see how. I've read both books (King Solomon's Mines and The Lost City of Gold), and neither one strikes me as especially Machakan in nature, and She is set underground. Could, ofcourse, be a story I'm unfamiliar with. I've got all of Haggard's works, and they're wonderful, but I haven't read them all yet.

[Omnirizon]

I wonder if Machaka isn't kind of a hybrid grind-up of 'African tribes'. It isn't uncommon for this to happen to animistic cultures.

Take American Indians. We rarely bother to differentiate between Onieda, Cherokee, Souix, or Seminole; rather we just clump them together and grind their separate cultures into 'Indian' or 'Native Americans'.

[Gregstrom]

Well, the manual mentions King Solomon's Mines when talking about them. A hybrid grind-up of pulp fiction about the 'lost tribes of Darkest Africa', perhaps? The evil sorcerers ruling from an extinct volcano and the giant spiders with associated cult fit right in.

Omnirizon: I agree about the grind-up. The various Eskimo tribes probably get fed up that they're all called Inuit, too. And all those Celts, Angles, Saxons, Normans (and Vikings, Romans etc...) probably get annoyed at being lumped together as English these days.

[HoneyBadger]

I think it all started with the English, Germans, and French calling themselves "white".

[Agema]

It's not really a lack of animist cultures. The early Ulm, Marverni and so on are based on European nations at the point where ancestor- or animal-worship was transmuting into the idea of Gods.

It's more that most of the nations are based on European cultures. Maybe not a surprise considering what I assume (maybe unsafely!) the cultural upbringing of the creators and most players. There aren't really any nations covering the Arabs and Persia, south-east Asia, and so on, either.

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LA Atlantis are basically Eskimos, aren't they?