Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

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Caladbolg wrote: March 4th, 2018, 8:20 pmAll of that can be easily explained by the two continents being close at some point but the path being extremely dangerous. You can put all sorts of dangerous beasts there if need be. If nothing else, it'd be a perfect place for dragons- a position allowing easy access to both continents, wide sea to the north and south, maybe volcanic activity.
By effectively moving the continents much closer together from how they are represented in canon in order to make a land bridge possible, you have made land and sea travel between them tremendously easier. Dragons can be circumvented by sailing however many leagues away from shore or be defeated directly on land (as they often are).

This makes the two continents more or less one land mass and we should expect to see mostly the same races on each and a number of the same or similar cultures too.
Celtic_Minstrel wrote: March 5th, 2018, 6:03 amWell, desert-dwelling humans vs desert-dwelling lizards. That's a pretty big difference. Sure they're both desert-dwellers, but that's where the similarity ends, I would think.
Just a few posts ago you seemed very enthusiastic about all races having many cultures and these cultures having a major influence over the core aspects of a group, even including physical attributes (you mentioned desert-foot move type being a product of culture).

So besides reworking the visual appearance of the sprite base frames, what difference would there necessarily be between a saurian dunefolk and a human dunefolk? What can a human culture do that a saurian culture cannot?

Again, keeping in mind that if the dunefolk were another culture of an existing native race like saurians, no silly or tired plot device would be needed to get them to the great continent at all. And as you agree there is much more variety of human cultures already than cultures of any other race, so why not take advantage of this opportunity to give more cultural variation to a race that could really use it?
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by MathBrush »

The ship idea is not that far fetched or boring:

The Dunefolk invent triangulated navigation and cross the much bigger ocean to the west of the old continent (like Pacific vs Atlantic), wrapping around the world and landing on the other side of the great continent years after TRoW, slowly migrating to the sandy wastes. The poorness of the soil prevents more than just an outpost from coming
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by Caladbolg »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote:Uh, hold on a second, I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here. The land bridge idea wouldn't be a desert. In fact, it would probably be relatively fertile land, though likely cold (possibly tundra).
If the land bridge went through the south pole. I'd have it around the equatorial area, if at all, and it'd be largely deserted. You're right, in general, the land bridge wouldn't need to be a desert, but it needn't be fertile nor cold either. Those details can be adjusted as needed.
Celtic Minstrel wrote:My opinion of the land bridge method is that it can only really work if they take a south polar route and arrive on the new continent long before the Wesfolk, though they may only have reached that desert around the time the Wesfolk landed.
And there was no fertile land anywhere along the way? The only way that would be true is if the Great Continent becomes really narrow south of the proposed map, so that the only thing south of the deserts is the land bridge stretching all the way to the south pole. Or there were lands, but they were also deserts (which brings a whole another set of problems), or Wesnoth is in the southern hemisphere (and I'd rather avoid that). If there is going to be a land bridge, why such an implausible one and not a shorter path along the equator?
Cold Steel wrote:By effectively moving the continents much closer together from how they are represented in canon in order to make a land bridge possible, you have made land and sea travel between them tremendously easier.
But the continents themselves aren't represented that way in the canon, as far as I'm aware. Only the familiar parts of the continent are.
Quotes from TRoW:
In the days before Haldric the First saved our people and founded the country of Wesnoth, we came from an island kingdom far to the west...
They were the vanquished refugees of some war, fleeing from their homes in a land even farther off into the west.
So, there is a lot of distance between Wesnoth and the Green Isle, and between the Green Isle and the land to the west. Mainline maps don't give any info about the south of the Great Continent. All of the info on distances that comes from TRoW seems to be referencing the length of the path from some point on the Old Continent to the Green Isle and from the Green Isle to the Bay of Pearls where Haldric landed. There is no reason to assume that the continents are that distant on all latitudes nor would the closeness of the continents to the south contradict any canonical information.
Furthermore, in TRoW, there is the following bit:
You must recall that the route from the western continent to our Green Isle was perilous at the best of times — so perilous that a stable trading relationship between the mainland and the Isle could never be maintained. Things were worse still when sailing to the east. A strong, cold ocean current swept down from the north in the Eastern Ocean, pushing all ships horribly off course. Ships that traveled east and returned reported nothing but open ocean and vile sea monsters...
So Old C. -> Green Isle and Green Isle -> Great C. routes are extremely dangerous by themselves. How in the world do the Dunefolk (or anyone else for that matter) come from the Old Continent to the Great one if the distance is about as huge on all latitudes as it is on the one talked about in TRoW, and if there are no islands as convenient as the Green Isle along the way? Any other path would have to be even more difficult.
If there is to be any kind of crossing between the continents, it is necessary that they are close(r) to each other at some latitude.
Cold Steel wrote:Dragons can be circumvented by sailing however many leagues away from shore or be defeated directly on land (as they often are)
You'd have to sail really far away from the shore if there's a colony of dragons. And if the seas are as insanely treacherous as the TRoW would have us believe, sailing far from the shore is a recipe for a disaster. My point being, with some messing with geography and the kinds of creatures inhabiting the area, you can have continents relatively near each other (with a land bridge or an island chain between them if needed), but the passage being as difficult as you need it to be.

If we go with the idea that the continents are closer to each other at the equator and that dangerous beasts live there, that alone might be sufficient for an explanation of their arrival without going into details, and on the other hand the details can be tweaked as needed if we want to flesh out the lore, add some creatures, explain alliances, etc.

All else aside, the recent comments on the cave idea haven't really changed my mind, I still think it is more implausible than any other ideas and that it doesn't fit the theme at all. I'm ok with the Dunefolk being some kind of a colonization force or somehing, not necessarily refugees from the Old Continent.

EDIT: A random idea just popped up in my head. Why would the Dunefolk need to be from the Old Continent? It's strange that there are only two continents to begin with. Have another continent to the S/SW of the deserts on the proposed map. That way we run into no contradictions with the canon, and the distance between the continents is not as restrictive as with the Old Continent. The Dunefolk can be colonizers from that "new" continent, and their connection with other humans can remain a mystery (maybe they were both from the Old Continent long long ago). We also expand the world, opening up more space for new stuff. Basically, we can still have this same conversation but we are less restricted by what the canon has set and we have more potential to work with :eng:
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Xalzar wrote: March 5th, 2018, 11:27 am I think it is underestimated how a year in undersea tunnels affect health:
-Scarce variety of food (I can't imagine many plants and animals thrive in such environment, Dwarves and Trolls have probably adapted, but humans surely haven't);
-Extreme humidity (we are under the sea afterall), and probable lack of sufficiently clear, drinkable water;
-Lack of sunlight, which notoriously weakens the bones.
I don't think it would take a year if they have guides. If they were venturing into the unknown, maybe a year or more, but with guides I would guess a month or two or three.
Xalzar wrote: March 5th, 2018, 11:27 am And then two more problems remain:
-why would Dwarves/other underground civilization let a sizeable part of Dunefolk population pass through their lands for months/years consuming their resources (a new land is not settled by a dozen people);
-why even take such a route, it seems like the last resort. Another exodus? It seemed this wasn't wanted as motivation, since it is seen as too similar to the Islefolk/Wesfolk story.
For the first question, the dwarves probably get something they want in exchange. For the second, the motivation could be resources that aren't available on the old continent.
Xalzar wrote: March 5th, 2018, 11:27 am Thinking about this, I'm more inclined to propose the "colony that has lost the motherland" story.
My interpretation of the cave passage actually fits that description too. :P I generally agree with this, even if I may not agree on the best means of the dunefolk establishing the colony.
Caladbolg wrote: March 5th, 2018, 8:01 pm And there was no fertile land anywhere along the way? The only way that would be true is if the Great Continent becomes really narrow south of the proposed map, so that the only thing south of the deserts is the land bridge stretching all the way to the south pole. Or there were lands, but they were also deserts (which brings a whole another set of problems), or Wesnoth is in the southern hemisphere (and I'd rather avoid that). If there is going to be a land bridge, why such an implausible one and not a shorter path along the equator?
Or, there is fertile land further south but it's largely occupied by some as-yet-unseen hostile race which ends up driving the dunefolk north, into the desert. This is part of why I think a land bridge would involve a much more extended journey.
Caladbolg wrote: March 5th, 2018, 8:01 pm EDIT: A random idea just popped up in my head. Why would the Dunefolk need to be from the Old Continent? It's strange that there are only two continents to begin with. Have another continent to the S/SW of the deserts on the proposed map. That way we run into no contradictions with the canon, and the distance between the continents is not as restrictive as with the Old Continent. The Dunefolk can be colonizers from that "new" continent, and their connection with other humans can remain a mystery (maybe they were both from the Old Continent long long ago). We also expand the world, opening up more space for new stuff. Basically, we can still have this same conversation but we are less restricted by what the canon has set and we have more potential to work with :eng:
This is an interesting idea. It would allow the dunefolk to leave the Old Continent in the distant past while only arriving on the Great Continent relatively recently (around the time of the Wesfolk, or maybe later).
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

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I also support the third continent as a simplification for timelines and distances.
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by skeptical_troll »

Xalzar wrote: March 5th, 2018, 3:57 pm Xalzar wrote: ↑Yesterday, 11:27 am
After decades or centuries contacts with the mainland were lost, the reason being either changed conditions of the path (new dangers in the ocean, land bridge destroyed...) or the original kingdom being destroyed by enemies (or magic! another reason to ban it) in the Old Continent, without hope to recover.
I think you could fancy that... No new monsters, no crumbling landmasses, simply there's no reason to return there.
Funnily enough, I myself proposed something similar as an option ~2 years ago, thinking about the western/eastern roman empires as a model. That's indeed something I'd prefer over creepy monsters/magic used as a deus ex machina to explain disappearances of landmasses or the blocking of the route. An alternative I thought about was a civil war between the colonies and the motherland which led to the separation of the two. Yet, I like more the idea of a lost motherland which they still dream about and wish to return to, it gives a romantic and epic flavor to their culture, somehow. So, these are valid alternatives but I still prefer the 'lost-route' scenario, whatever the nature of the route is.
Xalzar wrote: March 5th, 2018, 3:57 pm For the tunnellers-fans, a compromise could be to integrate a cavern in the Dunefolk mythos, something akin the Cave of Wonders, which could be either magical in nature or simply a place used by Dwarves to store their riches (if you want the Dwarves). Diplomatic issues surely should arise between them if the Dunefolk were to enter the cave...
Oh, I don't actually want to put caves everywhere, I just liked it as an explanation for the lost route and as a possibility to characterize dwarves/underground a bit more. I would actually add a Cave of Wonders to the mythology only if the underground enters somehow their true history, for consistency.
Caladbolg wrote: March 5th, 2018, 8:01 pm Why would the Dunefolk need to be from the Old Continent? It's strange that there are only two continents to begin with. Have another continent to the S/SW of the deserts on the proposed map. That way we run into no contradictions with the canon, and the distance between the continents is not as restrictive as with the Old Continent.
I think that either this or them living further south in the Old Continent is fine. As you said, there's no reason why the ocean must have the same width at all latitudes. They were separated from the Wesfolk by either sea (if it's another continent) or another hot desert/natural barrier, and even if the ocean wasn't large in the south they didn't find their way to the Great Continent before because they weren't proficient sailors and the passage through land bridges/archipelagos/cave systems/volcanos/dragons' nests (choose the order and combination you like) required a great explorer to be found.
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

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Caladbolg wrote: March 5th, 2018, 8:01 pmSo Old C. -> Green Isle and Green Isle -> Great C. routes are extremely dangerous by themselves. How in the world do the Dunefolk (or anyone else for that matter) come from the Old Continent to the Great one if the distance is about as huge on all latitudes as it is on the one talked about in TRoW, and if there are no islands as convenient as the Green Isle along the way?
They do not come, that was the whole point of the canon geography.

The two "worlds" must be extremely separated for canon to work. It is not even like our real life old-world-versus-new-world separation; the new world has been peopled for at least the last 13 millennia (thanks to a land bridge and/or continental proximity), whereas irdya's great continent had no human life whatsoever until a few centuries before your average campaign starts. This is critical to the events throughout history, that the great continent starts as a relatively virgin land with a few native races and then a confluence of events leads to a sudden invasion by outlander races with expansionist tendencies- orcs and humans (with the latter bringing the practice of necromancy).

This is why, the guy who originally created the kalifa/khalifate/dunefolk had justified their presence (as a second human culture on the remote great continent) by them being an offshoot of the original wesnoth settlers that became separated from wesnoth by desertification.
Caladbolg wrote: March 5th, 2018, 8:01 pmIf we go with the idea that the continents are closer to each other at the equator and that dangerous beasts live there, that alone might be sufficient for an explanation of their arrival without going into details, and on the other hand the details can be tweaked as needed if we want to flesh out the lore, add some creatures, explain alliances, etc.
As demonstrated by both real life history and in game history, hostile fauna do not make an impassable barrier by any measure, not even in the short term. Mutual migration between the continents by their inhabitants would already have happened long ago and much of what could be found in one land would be found long ago established in the other.
Caladbolg wrote: March 5th, 2018, 8:01 pmA random idea just popped up in my head. Why would the Dunefolk need to be from the Old Continent? It's strange that there are only two continents to begin with. Have another continent to the S/SW of the deserts on the proposed map. That way we run into no contradictions with the canon, and the distance between the continents is not as restrictive as with the Old Continent.
Expanding a connecting land bridge into a whole continent only inflames the issue. Now the extreme mutual isolation between the two lands required by canon is made further implausible.
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by Caladbolg »

Cold Steel wrote:They do not come, that was the whole point of the canon geography.... This is why, the guy who originally created the kalifa/khalifate/dunefolk had justified their presence (as a second human culture on the remote great continent) by them being an offshoot of the original wesnoth settlers that became separated from wesnoth by desertification.
Once again, there's no canon geography for the distance between them except on the Green Isle latitude. Not only that, but the alternative to them not coming from the Old Continent is that they are native to the Great Continent (which has even more issues) or that they came from some other continent. Well, or that they don't exist at all and we should replace them entirely with something else, which is what you're aiming for, I guess. But working under the premise that the Dunefolk exist and live to the south of Wesnoth, our best options are to have another continent or to have them come from the old one. Then the question is how can we best fit that into the canon or how we can least change the canon so that we can fit them into it.
Cold Steel wrote: the new world has been peopled for at least the last 13 millennia (thanks to a land bridge and/or continental proximity), whereas irdya's great continent had no human life whatsoever until a few centuries before your average campaign starts.
By your logic, the fact that the new world has been peopled only some 13 millennia ago is unrealistic- after all, if the continents were so close that people could cross, they would've done it long before! In other words, the fact that the barrier is not impassible is not sufficient to claim that no exchange could've happened before any given point.

In fact, there's no real reason to imagine monsters or change geography and what not. To explain how the Dunefolk arrived only at some time T and not before, all we have to do is claim that they weren't much into sailing until that point. But it would be good if we came up with something a bit more colorful, which is why we're focusing more on geography and other possible obstacles- so that they can pick up some lore along the way.
Cold Steel wrote:As demonstrated by both real life history and in game history, hostile fauna do not make an impassable barrier by any measure, not even in the short term.
Hostile fauna in the real world is nowhere close to what exists on Irdya so that's a moot point. A single dragon is powerful enough to deal with a small army, could easily fly to an isolated location if wounded to prevent death, could burn ships by dozens in a single fly-by, etc. A colony of them is more then sufficient to explain why no one comes even close to a certain location.
Cold Steel wrote:Expanding a connecting land bridge into a whole continent only inflames the issue. Now the extreme mutual isolation between the two lands required by canon is made further implausible.
If the land bridge was expanded to the size of the continent, then the Old Continent and the Great Continent would be one same supercontinent. I'm not proposing a land bridge the size of a continent, but a continent somewhere due southwest. It needn't even be anywhere close to the Old Continent if we're ok with the human races diverging a loooong time ago, but if not, it can be in a position where it at least makes the travel between the continents slightly easier on some southern latitudes.

As an example, look at Australia and Africa. Africa is practically connected to Asia and you can island hop from Asia to Australia, but that doesn't make Africa and Australia close. The third continent could have a similar position like that of Asia "between" the existing two continents. Size and the distance from each individual continent can be adjusted as needed.
In any case, I don't see how adding another continent could do anything other than help the current discussion. All of the proposed options could still apply, we have a possible motherland if the Dunefolk are colonizers or expeditionists rather than people fleeing a disaster, we have place for all sorts of possible additions in the future, restrictive distances are lessened.
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by zookeeper »

I don't see why a land bridge would make the mutual isolation between the continents implausible. The southern part of the ocean can simply be too cold and stormy to be navigable by ships. The Old Continent can very well be on the southern hemisphere, and there's no saying where the equator lies on the Great Continent either. Thus, the distance between the continents by sea can be far longer than the distance via the land bridge, especially considering in this case you only need to get from the southern part of one continent to the southern part of the other.

Perhaps it's partially an ice bridge that's only occasionally available, and the conditions could be so arctic that you need some really innovative ways to keep warm to make the journey which could go partially through caves and crevasses of ice instead of underground.
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

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zookeeper wrote: March 6th, 2018, 9:53 pm I don't see why a land bridge would make the mutual isolation between the continents implausible. The southern part of the ocean can simply be too cold and stormy to be navigable by ships. The Old Continent can very well be on the southern hemisphere, and there's no saying where the equator lies on the Great Continent either. Thus, the distance between the continents by sea can be far longer than the distance via the land bridge, especially considering in this case you only need to get from the southern part of one continent to the southern part of the other.

Perhaps it's partially an ice bridge that's only occasionally available, and the conditions could be so arctic that you need some really innovative ways to keep warm to make the journey which could go partially through caves and crevasses of ice instead of underground.
The major issue I have with the idea of an ice bridge is that I can't see the Dunefolk to be able to withstand extreme cold temperatures, so unless this event took place thousands of years in the past I cannot imagine a cold-resistant civilization transitioning to a hot desert one so easily. In that case I'd figure that the cold-dwellers would settle in the proximity of the land bridge and not expand further north across temperate plains and woods to reach the tropical deserts.

But! I doesn't need to be this way: the southern part of the world doesn't need to be cold. Irdya doesn't need to respect Earth climate rules.
Even ignoring possible magic shenhanigans, there could be a frozen pole and a scorching hot pole (and the climates change from colder to hotter climate following the latitude), or even stranger condition such as obscillatory climate depending on the inclination of the planet axis (with temperate medium latitudes and crazily variable poles). And this if we even take for granted that the world is a globe. Then the astral bodies themselves (sun and moon, possibly stars) could possibly function in a different way than ours (see how humans were able to install a second and third sun in orbit around the planet). :eng:

This is to say: I think a land bridge is plausible if:
-it's icy but the journey across took place very long ago;
-it's located in a climate zone more suitable for the desert-dwelling Dunefolk.
And once solved that still it remains to explain why the Dunefolk chose to settle amidst two large deserts if they had more comfortable climate choices. :doh:

I think we should really establish how planet Irdya works to resolve this conundrum after all... :hmm:
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by skeptical_troll »

In this scenario, perhaps there was a climatic anomaly such as the medieval warm period which made the subarctic land bridge possible to cross even for the dunefolk, without the need of particular technologies. It lasted a few centuries and then the standard cold conditions returned, with the double effect of closing the passage and pushing the dunefolk north in the Great Continent, towards warmer areas, up to the sandy wastes (but there could be other settlements south of it).
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

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Xalzar wrote: March 6th, 2018, 11:13 pmThe major issue I have with the idea of an ice bridge is that I can't see the Dunefolk to be able to withstand extreme cold temperatures, so unless this event took place thousands of years in the past I cannot imagine a cold-resistant civilization transitioning to a hot desert one so easily.
Why not? Of course they'd be unaccustomed to the weather, but they're still humans and survival is mostly a matter of clothing and finding/building shelter. A few weeks of travel in extreme cold temperatures with a <50% mortality rate doesn't sound unreasonably impossible, considering they probably have efficient means of keeping their wagons and tents warm.

Besides, if deserts tend to get really cold at night, then they're probably accustomed to both extremes to a degree.
Xalzar wrote: March 6th, 2018, 11:13 pmBut! I doesn't need to be this way: the southern part of the world doesn't need to be cold. Irdya doesn't need to respect Earth climate rules. Even ignoring possible magic shenhanigans, there could be a frozen pole and a scorching hot pole (and the climates change from colder to hotter climate following the latitude), or even stranger condition such as obscillatory climate depending on the inclination of the planet axis (with temperate medium latitudes and crazily variable poles). And this if we even take for granted that the world is a globe. Then the astral bodies themselves (sun and moon, possibly stars) could possibly function in a different way than ours (see how humans were able to install a second and third sun in orbit around the planet). :eng:
Certainly, there wouldn't need to be a cold south at all. It could be unbearably hot with volcanoes and steaming seas and whatnot. That could serve as a simplistic explanation for why the ocean is said to have a "southern pull"; there's so much water evaporation in the far south. :whistle: (IANAO)
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

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zookeeper wrote: March 6th, 2018, 9:53 pm I don't see why a land bridge would make the mutual isolation between the continents implausible.
...
Perhaps it's partially an ice bridge that's only occasionally available, and the conditions could be so arctic that you need some really innovative ways to keep warm to make the journey which could go partially through caves and crevasses of ice instead of underground.
A brutal arctic style land/ice bridge that other times is an open strait is effectively what beringia was/is in the real world. It has proven to be a very weak obstacle to humans, who have crossed it several times, over many millennia under very different climactic circumstances each time.

This makes the empty land that would become wesnoth already fully peopled by the time haldric's ships arrive. It would reshape canon down to its footings.

Caladbolg wrote: March 6th, 2018, 9:06 pmBut working under the premise that the Dunefolk exist and live to the south of Wesnoth, our best options are to have another continent or to have them come from the old one. Then the question is how can we best fit that into the canon or how we can least change the canon so that we can fit them into it.
Or how can we modify dunefolk to fit canon.
Caladbolg wrote: March 6th, 2018, 9:06 pmBy your logic, the fact that the new world has been peopled only some 13 millennia ago is unrealistic- after all, if the continents were so close that people could cross, they would've done it long before!
As I said, at least 13 millennia. It used to be 10 millennia. 15 or 18 is likely to be the next official number before it gets moved further into the past by new archaeological finds. I would not be surprised if the number ends up at 40 or 80 millennia ago. Beringia is not a great obstacle to human expansion.
Caladbolg wrote: March 6th, 2018, 9:06 pmIn other words, the fact that the barrier is not impassible is not sufficient to claim that no exchange could've happened before any given point.
Exactly the problem. The great continent would already be fully occupied with human civilizations if not other races like orcs that migrated there tens or hundreds of thousands of years before haldric arrived.
Caladbolg wrote: March 6th, 2018, 9:06 pmTo explain how the Dunefolk arrived only at some time T and not before, all we have to do is claim that they weren't much into sailing until that point.
If we are truly puritanical about the dunefolk, that is likely the only viable option, as boring and uninspiring as it is.
Caladbolg wrote: March 6th, 2018, 9:06 pmHostile fauna in the real world is nowhere close to what exists on Irdya so that's a moot point. A single dragon is powerful enough to deal with a small army, could easily fly to an isolated location if wounded to prevent death, could burn ships by dozens in a single fly-by, etc. A colony of them is more then sufficient to explain why no one comes even close to a certain location.
Some level 5 units are not a strong barrier in a military strategy game where most engagements are between armies. The dragons would get pinned down and slaughtered, especially by races like orcs that are so aggressive and reproduce so quickly. It might not all happen in one battle or one campaign, but over months, years, decades, centuries or millennia it certainly would. Either races would be allowed to slip past while the dragons hid in their lairs or they would fall to an endless tide of organized, aggressive little creatures. As it is, in wesnoth after only four or five centuries, dragons were practically a myth.
Caladbolg wrote: March 6th, 2018, 9:06 pmI'm not proposing a land bridge the size of a continent, but a continent somewhere due southwest. It needn't even be anywhere close to the Old Continent if we're ok with the human races diverging a loooong time ago, but if not, it can be in a position where it at least makes the travel between the continents slightly easier on some southern latitudes.
That is effectively a second green isle then, just bigger or smaller. A detail of the 'came by ship' concept.
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by MathBrush »

So it seems like land bridge has a lot of support but the biggest problem is why no one came before.

In the series Dune, Emperor Leto banned superluminal travel and forced isolation of individual worlds for millennia.

I love the idea of an oppressive Dunefolk empire in the past, and wrote it into my campaign. The old continent had something so terrible the Lich lords fled. What would make lich lords flee? An oppressive empire of magic haters? An empire that banned long distance travel to avoid rebellion?

Of course there would be rebels over the years who defied the rules and tried to escape across the land bridge, but small parties could never make it alone.

Only a fairly hefty rebel force, possibly with magical allies (to go with cold steel’s suggestions) could cross the land ridge while evading the empire’s peacekeepers who are trying to stop them from leaving.
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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Dunefolk(previously Khalifate) race description

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Cold Steel wrote: March 6th, 2018, 4:59 pm The two "worlds" must be extremely separated for canon to work. It is not even like our real life old-world-versus-new-world separation; the new world has been peopled for at least the last 13 millennia (thanks to a land bridge and/or continental proximity), whereas irdya's great continent had no human life whatsoever until a few centuries before your average campaign starts. This is critical to the events throughout history, that the great continent starts as a relatively virgin land with a few native races and then a confluence of events leads to a sudden invasion by outlander races with expansionist tendencies- orcs and humans (with the latter bringing the practice of necromancy).
You seem to be suggesting that the separation between the continents needs to be vastly greater than that between America and Eurasia, but I don't see why this is so important. First of all, human civilization at the time of the Lich Lords was not a global civilization by any stretch - they surely didn't even occupy the whole of the Old Continent. There are almost certainly large areas of the old continent that the Wesfolk simple knew nothing about, because for one reason or another they had never sent expeditions in that direction. The fact that the journey via the Green Isle is quite long and difficult doesn't mean there can't be a shorter (or at least easier) route that the Wesfolk never knew about.

And this idea that the Great Continent is some "virgin land" is simply ludicrous. Even before the Wesfolk arrived, it had elves, dwarves, and saurians at the very least. Quite possibly it also had drakes (it's unlikely that all the drakes lived on that one island). We see at least three factions(?) of elves in the campaigns, each largely confined to a different forested expanse, but it's quite likely there are many more to the east. Similarly, Dwarven Doors is probably not the only place where dwarves live. While it's true that the elves tend to be more environmentally conscious and less expansionist, I don't know that we can say anything similar about the dwarves or even the saurians.

Paintng the Great Continent as an untapped virgin land prior to the arrival of the Wesfolk is just completely contradictory to the lore. Sure, some of the Wesfolk may have described it that way, but they did not know what they were talking about. The colonization of the Great Continent by humans honestly isn't all that different from the colonization of America by Europeans, though there is at least one obvious difference in that the connection with the original homeland was lost. The Wesfolk weren't bringing civilization to an uncivilized land or tapping into untapped resources. They were just relocating to another place, one which happened to have no other previously-known human populations.

By this measure, the presence of the dunefolk, arriving via land bridge or whatever, actually makes a lot of sense, and I don't think it contradicts the canon to the degree that you're arguing. People have said that TRoW paints the Wesfolk as the first humans on the Great Continent, but is that actually an objective viewpoint? More likely it's merely the viewpoint of the Wesfolk themselves and/or their first contacts on the Great Continent. That is, the Wesfolk see no humans in this new place, and the people they meet there say they have not seen humans before. None of this means that no other humans have previously reached the Great Continent. It only means they have not reached this small area of the Great Continent.

But! If you want to latch onto the Green Isle route as being the best route available, then consider that the sea they crossed may have been the Pacific-equivalent rather than the Atlantic-equivalent. In other words, the Dunefolk went the opposite direction, wrapped around the planet, and came into their desert from the east. Under this interpretation, the Green Isle (or an archipelago containing it, if you want to posit a moving volcanic hotspot a-la Hawaii) may well be the only island directly between Wesnoth and the opposite shore of the Old Continent; but the opposite ocean may well have have a mid-ocean ridge, and could be significantly narrower, making it easier to cross. As for why the Wesfolk didn't think of that... well, if I recall correctly, aren't the orcs also from the Old Continent? Perhaps they occupied a large swathe of the northwest, blocking a western passage for the Wesfolk; the Dunefolk on the other hand were further south and had access to the western shore.
Xalzar wrote: March 6th, 2018, 11:13 pm Then the astral bodies themselves (sun and moon, possibly stars) could possibly function in a different way than ours (see how humans were able to install a second and third sun in orbit around the planet). :eng:
While this could be interesting, I've never seen anything to suggest it is the case and as such I've always assumed Irdya is a standard Earth-like planet in a standard Sol-like planetery system. It could of course have a different alignment of temperate zones and poles, like you've mentioned.

In particular, the Two Suns Era does not in my view prove any unconventional astronomy. The extra suns are merely asteroids or small moons that have been placed into orbit and induced into producing light.
Cold Steel wrote: March 7th, 2018, 1:25 am Exactly the problem. The great continent would already be fully occupied with human civilizations if not other races like orcs that migrated there tens or hundreds of thousands of years before haldric arrived.
  1. The Great Continent is almost certainly fully occupied, though whether it's with humans, elves, dwarves, or some other race remains an open question.
  2. Perhaps the Dunefolk are these humans that you insist must be present.
Cold Steel wrote: March 7th, 2018, 1:25 am Some level 5 units are not a strong barrier in a military strategy game where most engagements are between armies. The dragons would get pinned down and slaughtered, especially by races like orcs that are so aggressive and reproduce so quickly. It might not all happen in one battle or one campaign, but over months, years, decades, centuries or millennia it certainly would. Either races would be allowed to slip past while the dragons hid in their lairs or they would fall to an endless tide of organized, aggressive little creatures. As it is, in wesnoth after only four or five centuries, dragons were practically a myth.
Just how many dragons do you think there would be? If there were one or two or three, then sure maybe you have a point. If there's a hundred... perhaps not so much. And quite frankly I think even a hundred would be a low estimate.
Author of The Black Cross of Aleron campaign and Default++ era.
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