I've had a fascination about how non-European cultures would fit into a setting where dwarfs, elves, and other creatures existed. Sort of like what would happen if all the Greek, Norse, Japanese, American Aboriginal, African and all the other famous mythical stories were all real and all lived in one world-how would they react? How would kenku get along in the Perisan Empire, or dwarfs in the Iroquois Confederacy?
In any case, I've tried (I hope) to make my Greyhawk work stand out
a little, but what I'm really interested in with Greyhawk is the
lands beyond the Flanaess. In my head, I've conjured up settings
that involved the Dark Ages (a time when the nations consisted
of "the Goths", "the Huns", "the Franks", and so forth) and
monotheistic religions that involve all the clerics getting their
spells from the same god, but who rewards and punishes priests
according to the rules they themselves have set out in their
priesthood. In a sense, the humans themselves form the religion,
and the god merely assumes the role humans have created for it.
(And no, I DO NOT mean any social commentary on this. Let me make
that perfectly clear).
The same thing applies to other lands that have their own unique
mythos-anything from a blend of Chaucer and Homer to even modern
fairy-tale tellers like Baum and Andersen-all tailored to fit a D&D
setting, of course. That is, in a sense, my way of keeping the D&D
templates intact (dwarfs, elves, orcs and such are spread all over
the world, just as are humans) while shaking things up.
As an example, dwarfs living in a Japanese-type setting might have
their sacred bonds of family tied to a particular human clan as
opposed to other dwarf races, with two clans of dwarfs getting
involved in the same blood feuds as the human families to which
they're bonded. If anything, dwarfs don't get along with each other
at all-they have no sense of racial cohesion as is so common in
fantasy nowadays, but are instead bitter enemies, bound only to the
human families they have signed blood-contracts with. However, they
still have the same strict sense of law and regulation that
Occidental dwarfs have.
In a setting based on sub-Saharan Africa, halflings might live the
same way they do in Europe as burrow-dwelling farmers, but they
become very superstitious and religious, always keen to appease the
gods lest bad weather or the beasts of the jungles or savannah ruin
either their homes or their crops. They let the humans dispute in
their kingdoms and empires. The gnomes and dwarfs, in these cases,
profit handsomely from the sale of metal weapons to the humans in
exchange for gold and gems, or even grains, rare furs, and water.
In either case, many elements of the human cultures could remain intact-the grand cities of the Aztecs and the Mayans, for instance, could exist in the sothern regions of Hepmonaland or in Anakeris. The feeling of close attachment to the earth felt by aboriginal people could still be reflected.
Many cultural elements could be retained, they'd just be elaborated on; Aboriginals could engage in the fur trade with dwarfs for metal weapons, in a way similar to the fur trade after contact IRL, since that gives them an edge against orcs and goblins. But they'd spurn the metal armor-something that is more of a hindrance than a help when you're hunting, and if you're nomadic, the last thing you need is to lug around so much dead weight on your travels.
Note that, of course, I do not on any occasion mean any insult or
racism by making any of these statements. They're just the way I
imagine D&D demihumans would fit into the cultures of the rest of
the world. In a sense, I'm trying to imagine the same thing for the
other nations of the world that has already been done for Europe.
And that's why I'm posting here. People like the Despotrix might be able to reply to this, although I haven't asked any of my aboriginal friends yet. Let me repeat myself: I do not mean to insult or denigrate any culture in any way. The reasoning I have in posting ideas like these is the following-that since my own ancestors' cultures (Anglo-Celtic Europe) have been elaborated on in everything from Greek and Norse myth to modern D&D, I figured it could be done with other ancient cultures of the world. It's also my way of trying to break away from the plain-vanilla fantasy that people always complain about, without going completely off the wall.
And why do I insist on using elves, halflingss, and goblins? Old
habits die hard-I balked at a D&D world without demihumans when I read the 1E Oriental Adventures guide, and it hasn't changed since.
I read a Moorcock novel from the Elric series called the Skrayling Tree. IIRC, it more involves planar/timeline overlapping than one distinct world, but there is an instance in this book your post reminded me of. American Indians in this book encounter a 'dwarf sized' Indian tribe who are just from another plane/timeline where they are normal size. Then there is also 'giants' who are also normal from their vantage point, but due to the overlapping they exist at the same time as their smaller kin.
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