No Kalevala references in Dom3?

[capnq]

Endoperez said: Kalevala is hard to transform into a nation. It has a bunch of stories, but they tell of outstanding heroes, not about wars. Old mighty wizard, young foolish wizard, the great smith, the cursed anti-hero, the evil shapechanging crone of the northern Pohjola, etc.

Those examples sound like they could work in game as mercenaries, rather than nations.

[Endoperez]

capnq said:Those examples sound like they could work in game as mercenaries, rather than nations.

Mostly, they stay in one place. Väinämöinen, the old singer, stays in his home and farms his fields. He doesn't manage to get married, but does boast a rather inspiring array of magical powers. He is always a bit more powerful than even his most powerful enemies, entrancing scores of people with his magic and negating plagues sent to destroy the nation. Or making a forge in the stomach of the giant that ate him. Or going to world of the dead just to find the words for finishing his boat. The one time he got really angry earth shook, mountains shuddered, and Joukahainen (Youkahainen) learned an important lesson about humility and respecting your elders. The young guy only got away after he promised his sister would marry Väinämöinen.
Ilmarinen, the great smith, doesn't move about much either. He created an artifact to get the permission to marry one of the daughters of Louhi, the crone of Pohjola, and after his wife's death (thanks to the the anti-hero) made a golden replica that he still found lacking. With that much wealth and skill, he wouldn't be a mercenary. People would come to him, not the other way round.
Lemminkäinen died, and his mother brought him back. Would you buy a mercenary who already failed once? I thought so.
Louhi, the crone of Pohjola, governs her manor and doesn't go out much. Oh, she might steal the sun and the moon, or freeze all the oceans of the world, call in the great beasts of the seas or transform into a mighty bird to carry her army when trying to recover the artifact Ilmarinen stole back with the other good guys, but she's not the adventurous type.
There are also some minor characters, like the man barely an inch high. He came from the sea, equipped with miniature armor and a miniscule axe, and stepped up to became a hulking giant for whom felling a tree big enough to cover all sky was no problem. There are also various monsters: Iki-Turso of the seas, a great moose, a great bull, etc.
Oh, and that promised wife of Väinämöinen? She wasn't happy with the marriage and drowned herself. Ilmarinen's wife died too. Not to mention the anti-hero and his whole family. No wonder Finns are said to be melancholic.

[tka]

It has been a while since I read my Kalevala but it has a lot of things which could be used as heroes/spells/summons/items. For basic unit lineup you can look info from other sources. Some light/medium infantry would work fine. For example something like hirdmen & huskarls of Vanheim with axemen and shortbows/villains. Hakkapeliitta as a light/medium cavalry. Maybe even make them sacred, at least I can't think any other sacred unit apart from some which would work better as summons.

Commander roster is a bit more difficult tho... forester, hakkapeliitta commander, wiseman/singer and witch spring to my mind. Wiseman is mage-priest with NNEH and some randoms, like water/death/fire for example. Witch could be almost the same but without priest skills.

As spells and summons diseases and all sort of spirits of rivers, lakes, fire, dead people, forests and so on are pretty common in finnish mythology. Also spellsongs and animals (bears, wolves, swans) are obvious. Making dom spells out of those requires creative imagination and work with stats and abilities tho.

I would certainly play a Kalevala mod.

[Edi]

The way I see it is very much like tka outlined above, but with a fairly big emphasis on summoned units. Low level, low quality in large quantity much like the Gana available to Lanka, with some more powerful but numerically fewer summons.

Relatively few recruitable troops. The commander ideas tka threw around would be fairly ideal. The Kalevala people would probably all have forestry too, or almost all of them. Väinämöinen, Louhi, Ilmarinen, Lemminkäinen and some of the other characters would make for a wide cast of heroes, but you'd need to have several hero dependent events. Väinämöinen and Lemminkäinen in same province would probably be detrimental to income and cause unrest, maybe also something else. Väinämöinen and Aino (Lemminkäinen's sister) in the same province = Aino dies. And so on and so forth.

But making a Kalevala nation would be VERY work intensive.

[Endoperez]

Not any more so than making an Arthurian myths based nation (MA Man). The traditional 3 witches, bards, knights and longbowmen, knights of the round table as knights of the stone, hints to the older myths of tuatha de danaan... Making a nation BASED on a myth is just as hard as you want it to be.

I'm not sure if Nature is even that necessary. Nature was respected, that's certain, but the spells use various asepcts of nature that the N path of Dominions doesn't cover that well. N2 would be enough for most of the stuff the heroes do, really - there's no Gift of Health, no great beasts such as Tarrasques, no walking forests... Well, Charm would be just about perfect. But I still think Earth should be more important. Joukahainen boasting about turning Väinämöinen and his clothes to metal (Petrification), Väinämöinen singing him into the bog (similar to Earth Meld), Destruction (Väinämöinen destroyed Joukahainen's equipment, transforming the bow into a rainbow, sword into a bolt of lightning, arrows into hawks, etc), and Construction in general.
Death would be another strong one, perhaps. Earth/Fire is quite common already.

I played with the idea a while ago. You could get special units from various parts of the poems, such as from the origin of iron (iron was found and told how it could serve the humans, and it agreed to be worked upon. it didn't like the fire, and when the water was prepared for hardening an evil creature bought poisons in the stead of honey a bee was supposed to bring, which made the iron mad and angry. that's why iron bites deep and why it's just as good for weapons as it's for tools). Weapons tempered to deal extra damage to magic beings, or just naturally poisonous. Ranger-type stealthy archer/infantry. Huskarls and Hirdmen.


I've got some sprites of white-clad furmen somewhere. Let's see if we can throw something together. Please, post all your ideas.

[tka]

Endoperez said:
But I still think Earth should be more important. Joukahainen boasting about turning Väinämöinen and his clothes to metal (Petrification), Väinämöinen singing him into the bog (similar to Earth Meld), Destruction (Väinämöinen destroyed Joukahainen's equipment, transforming the bow into a rainbow, sword into a bolt of lightning, arrows into hawks, etc), and Construction in general.
Death would be another strong one, perhaps. Earth/Fire is quite common already.

Very true, but I could also see those fitting nicely into nature category too. A matter of taste I suppose, both would work for me.

capqn said:Those examples sound like they could work in game as mercenaries, rather than nations.

Considering that Kalevala is all about getting wife, I bet that both Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen would work as mercenaries if you could pay in blood slaves instead.

[Aezeal]

As a complete novice on this I need to say this: it SOUNDS a lot like midgard/vanheim etc nations.. with other heroes...

are you all sure it's worth a mod..

well it's your time.. but couldn't you just make the rest of the warhammer nations first? (this is of course totally not influenced by any personal desires I have )

[Burnsaber]

I kinda came up with a idea how Sampo could be implememnted. It's pretty crucial part of the story.

Copystat something unique and make it a construction national summon. You can't make it give any money, but what about *huge* supply bonus and gem production (like lots of fire gems or one of each gem type). It would most likely be a earth/fire national summon, which would be outside your nationals. You would have to depend on your pretneder or if you get lucky, the hero Ilmarinen to forge it.

[atul]

I'd think nature would be quite important, if not for the heroes, but to recruitable mages. After all, in the rural settings, everyone knew some "spells". At least in Finnish tradition the women knew healing and farming spells (a bit like the NE witch) whereas men practised magic related to hunting (and possibly hurting, N...B?). During the time of witch hunts, most convicted witches in eastern Finland were male, after all they were practicioners of the black magic. Women's magic was mostly beneficial, so why hunt 'em?

(Of course, as Swedes brought their civil ways to western Finland they also brought the idea that women were the bad witches, and as such most convictions for witchcraft were given to women in west.)

I'd also base the nation on historic light infantry, but with summons of its own. And heroes based on stories. Maybe a mix of 'heims and EA Ulm?

[Endoperez]

What era should the nation be in? Early is a bit crowded already, and the bows used are often shown as crossbows. If we put the nation at Middle, we could make the nation independent splinter of what used to be under Helheim's rule. Heim basic infantry, stealthy infantry based on LA Ulm rangers, couple of special units (like Hakkapeliitta cavalry). I'm not sure what the race's ability should be like. Increased hp and strength as Ulm, lowered encumberance as Machaka, increased magic res as Eriu, or increased morale on all troops, or something else altogether...

There's also the possibility of making the Kalevala nation precede LA Atlantis. Forbidden Coast, the Coast of Ice and Bones... I'm sure the Sami have some stories about underwater race, and Finnish mythology is full of spirits of the rivers, rapids and lakes. Some kind of Näkki or Staalo as an assassination spell would also work very well with this theme. See *1 below.


What about the magic? All of Nature/Death, Water/Earth/Death and Earth/Nature would fit in my opinion, but I'm not really that familiar with the old stories. We could use 3 to 4 mages, most recruitable everywhere. A female witch (NE), a male wiseman with holy 1 with Nature 1 and perhaps a random, a spellsinger with more magic and perhaps holy 1 or 2... Perhaps a sami-inspired shaman as a more powerful nature-caster, and the spellsingers with mixed paths. National spellsongs would be a must. Perhaps Sermon of Courage and Fanaticism as spellsongs? The latter would take a gem.

Gnomes (354; a bit like dwarves with E2N2, glamour and stealth) would fit both the Finnish tradition of gnomes guarding homes, saunas, places etc, AND work as a continuation of the Helheim theme (gnomes instead of svartalfar). That'd make for a nice summon.


There are many stories about water spirits teaching you if you could trick them to do it without killing you. Any ideas about implementing that?



http://www.pakanaverkko.fi/vox/staalo.shtml

Lihatontta on maagisesti rakennettu staalon ilmentymä. Se on tunnettu myös Suomen lapissa hahmona, jonka noita nostatti maasta tuhoavaa tarkoitusta varten. Kertomusperinteestä riippuen lihatontta oli vainaja, elävä ruumis, savesta tai kankaasta luotu olento. Nämä tuovat mieleen etäisesti sekä zombimaiset palvelijat että juutalaisesta tarustosta peräisin olevan Golemin.

Juha Pentikäisen Saamelaiset-kirjassa karasjokinen mies kuvaa lihatontan rakentamista 1920 luvulla:

”Uskoivat ennen, että jos mie suutun jollekin, niin mie teen savesta niin kuin ihmisen ja leikkaan sormeen haavan, niin että veri tulee ja tiputan sitä verta sen savikuvan päälle. Ja niin tekevät noituudella siihen hengen.”

Aikalaisten kertomuksissa käy ilmi, että lihatontta oli näkymätön. Sen pystyi havaitsemaan ainoastaan uhri, jonka kimppuun se oli lähetetty. Lihatontan maaginen luominen ei ollut riskitöntä. Uskottiin, että ellei olento löytänyt vuoden sisällä uhriaan – palasi se surmaamaan tekijänsä. Noita panosti henkilökohtaisen kostajan luomiseen paljon, sillä toisten uskomusten mukaan staaloon täytyi vuodattaa puolet noidan omasta hengestä, jotta se heräisi eloon. Tämä tarkoitti käytännössä sitä, että jos lihatontta sai surmansa, niin samalla kuoli sen tekijäkin.

Lihatontta (Flesh gnome) is a magically constructed staalo a witch created to destroy. Depending on the story, it was made from a living or dead body, clay or cloth. In Juha Pentikäinen's book, a man he interviewed described the construction of lihatontta:
"Used to believe that if I'm mad at someone, then I make a likeness of human in clay and cut my finger, so that blood comes and drop it to the clay. And the witchcraft makes in it a spirit."
Only the victim could see the creature, and it would return to kill it's sender if it couldn't find the victim in one year's time.