Dominions 3 lore and nation backgrounds !

[kennydicke]

Does taking over a priestly beaurocracy ala LA Mictlan count as inspiring cults?

I was thinking more along the lines of the 'Mad' and 'Dreamer' chaff being the cultists. Not LA Mictlan.

And perhaps I'm reading to much into it but the idea that Atlantis is just some generic fish/frog men thrown in for the sake of it doesn't sit very well with me.

Sorry, I kind of meant 'original' more than truly 'generic'. Although, fish/frog men have become a bit of a trope, which is why I used the term generic.

More than everyone else the story of Atlantis is the story of disaster and exodus, surviving on the fringes of the world they once knew.

Of course, and fitting with many of the 'stories' made up about Atlantis.

Anecdote. Read over the shoulder of a girl reading 'Book of the Jungle' the other day. Seems that the name 'Bandar log' is the name of the tribe or place where the great apes rule or something. To bad there isn't a big ape god one could name 'King Louie'.

Close, it's what they call the 'monkeys' in the book; they had no ruler, that's a Disney thing. Looks like joining the Cub Scouts was good for something.

Kailasa is a specific, holy site in Buddhism.

Patala, I'm unfamiliar with.

Also I think Agartha is a reference to jewish myth about some subterranian monsters.

I think it might be Hindu or Buddhist myth. I am sure it regards the mountains north or northeast of India - so, possibly, Tibetan.

Although, as someone pointed out previously, Hinnom, Ashdod and Gath are all ancient Hebrew locations; golems are from Hebrew myth.


Yomi is the Japanese hell, and Jomon is an ancient (BC) period in Japanese history. I don't know about Shinuyama, but Shinoyama is a Japanese name.


T'ien Ch'i actually means something like "Energy of Heaven" or "Heavenly Energy", but I don't know of any historical or mythological connection. In these cases, 'energy' refers more to a 'life's-breath' or 'the force' kind of thing.


Btw, Corporal Clegg, I recognize your avatar and I'm impressed.

[Mithras]

Meh, excuse my widemouthed ramblings then.

Well it says in the manual that the developers used Lovecraftian influences. So that's probably where they identified most of thei inspiration as coming from back then?

Originally Posted by kennydicke

I was thinking more along the lines of the 'Mad' and 'Dreamer' chaff being the cultists. Not LA Mictlan.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant that since the two nations stemmed from the same mythos then couldn't we interprit LA Mictlan as a sort of cult almost parralel to Ry'leh just a whole lot more organised?

[Zeldor]

T'ien Ch'i was a name of the worst Chinese emperor

[13lackGu4rd]

[quote=kennydicke;739709]

Yomi is the Japanese hell, and Jomon is an ancient (BC) period in Japanese history. I don't know about Shinuyama, but Shinoyama is a Japanese name.

well, Shinu in Japanese means death, and Yama means mountain, so it could be Death Mountain or Mountain of Death. of course it could be something else too, cause well, quite a few Japanese words are written the same(at least in Hiragana, different Kanji of course) and with different meanings, and others have a different spelling(in Hiragana) but will remain the same in English, so it's really hard to translate it...

[sector24]

Mount Kailasa is where Lord Shiva lives.
Patala is sort of the Hindu underworld.

[Makinus]

About the fact that some nations lose magical power along the eras while others remain strong or even get stronger:

I think that the magic weakening in as the eras advance is not the only force at work, but there are 2 other forces in action: the increasing of human population and the flourishing of technology.

The magic weakening is not too pronounced, but humans start to displace old, more magical races and technology advances making several uses of magic obsolete.

Some nations get weaker magically because either their more magical pop is displaced by humans and humans are not naturally magical

or they start using more tech and less magic.

Some other nations (Utgard is a good example), get more humans in their pop but these humans adopt a lot of the magic culture, without any weakening of the magic and even strenghtening it.

Other nations get magically boosted because of events that change the nature of the nation (La Ryleh) or absorb two magical cultures that were two different nations in previous eras...

Maybe i'm imagining it but there was not a canon document somewhere where we had the general dom3 story as the eras advance?

[thejeff]

It also depends on what you mean by "weaker". My impression is that the LA nations have more diversity but lower path levels, while the EA nations tend to be more focused. There are exceptions and a lot of this is linked to human mages replacing magic beings, so in the nations where that doesn't happen it may not show up as much if at all.

[Wrana]

Necromancy post:
This wasn't mentioned in this thread, so I'll add:
There is a map/scenario called "Dawn of Dominions" which gives something like an official gameworld map with locations of 12 nations. It's present both here and on Llamaserver.
Another thing not mentioned is that somewhere between MA and LA a Great Conqueror from Arcoscephales had taken a large part of the world - thus Bandar troops in LA Arcos army (not that I see a role for them! ). This apparently also touched Gath lands, as in their history an influence of "Arcoscephales hoplits passing through" is mentioned. Of course, Pangaea is also influenced mostly by Arcoscephales, so it probably lies somewhere close to them.
Another war mentioned is Ashdod/Gath being attacked by Abyssia and possibly pushed back from their former lands, but surviving in the end (don't ask me how Abyssians managed that - maybe luck with magic sites in close lands. ). This also means that they lived close to each other.

[Wrana]

Considering Ermor LA/MA. As far as I understand what KO said (especially about more periods), MA Ermor was actually a probably very short period of time before catastrophe which lies somewhere between EA & MA, while LA Ermor lies in MA. With no Ermor nation at LA - just a desert with no life.
Another thought was that some nations (such as Hinnom, e.g.) lie further in the past than others - which would also explain why they had less tech at LA...

[Kadelake]

I thought that LA/MA Ermor had gotten switched? I don't remember what KO said though. Anyhow, LA Ermor seems to fit in MA story-wise.