OT: The ambiance and setting (part 3)

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by johan osterman

You are underestimating the amount of original work by Kristoffer. There isn't that much details on monkey nations in indian myth, or at least not that much that has entered into dominions. A fair bit of it is Kristoffer utilisimg human indian society on Bandar Log. Bandar Log were put into being due to a single sentence in the book travels to Cathay by Swedish historian Dick Harrisson, that mentioned an indian myth of a monkey kingdom. As far as I know there is no systematic treatment of the monkey kingdom in Ramayana, certainly none where various species of monkeys and apes makes up different castes. No mention of tiger riding white markatas. No levitating Gurus. No suggestion that serpent kings or devas ruled over the monkeys. The same sort of added stuff is extant in all nations. Many of them have strong counterparts in history and myth, but all of them have significant fluff added and changed in them.

I don't think Kristoffer would mind if you uses dom content for a roguelike, but I feel your characterisation of Kristoffers input into the dominions nations is misguided at best. Reading you posts it sounds like all these nations were just waiting to be plucked out of obscurity, whole cloth.

Fair enough. I've always thought that the most impressive work of KO was his research into cultures and mythology and then mapping this onto their history. I do understand that some flavor specifics such as levitating Rikshi's and specifics in the organizations and constructions of nations are all his own; but I really find the whole bricolage aspect of it all much more creative and grand, rather than those kinds of details.

to that end, it is that bricolage that I want to borrow and build upon.