ReDeeMeR wrote:ii) about the map that gonzoron posted. canon info from the islands of terror indicates that the majority of the settlements in Nidala lie in a 10-mile radius around Touraine.
True, but do we have any canon info for the size of the cluster? I can check the IoT map tomorrow, it should have a scale.
Given the fact that Elena frequently visits most of the villages in the domain in search for evil, the centralized population makes sense.
Agreed. In fact, IIRC IoT says she visits
every village
every week, which seems a bit of a hectic schedule, IMHO. (Maybe the DP's gave her a bit of extra speed when traveling her domain in search of evil?) In any case, when I added villages, I pretty much just scattered them west of the mountains in places that might give them a bit of a story hook. i.e., my Iasgair is a fishing village, Sgorrlag is a mining town, Srath has a limestone quarry, etc. I didn't give much thought to the distances, and when I ran my adventure, I just guesstimated that most villages were about a day's ride apart. I imagine she might not get to Cu Clannagh every week, and maybe it's a good place for minor rebellions to fester. (Or maybe like Glenmurron, she said, "enough with this place" and burned it.) Regardless, feel free to use or ignore parts of my map as y'all see fit.
Something that might need to be addressed is a cultural hook, especially regarding naming. We've all been throwing around the King Arthur metaphor (I kept it in mind as well, though my "Merlin" was Theokos, not Morgoroth), and Belenus is a celtic god. That's why I skewed toward "British" in my names, with a focus on gaelic. Frankly, I'm not well versed enough to really have pulled it off consistently, but considering the native speaker reactions to Richemulot, Dementlieu, etc, I figured "close enough" is good enough for Ravenloft.
The source material doesn't fully support it (Touraine? Elena? Alexi?) but does somewhat (Faith-Hold, Shadowborn, Caitlin, Avalon). So outliers like Ricochet grate a little bit, but are probably acceptable, since we don't
need to shackle it to a real-world culture, but it helps the land feel consistent. IMHO, "Arthurian England, with Celtic influence" is enough of a hook to distinguish it from Tepest, Mordent, and Paridon.
As far as people's names, I tried to keep with the feel of "noun-verb" that Shadowborn and Faith-hold have, without treading on traditional halfling names, but I found it difficult, so I extended it to noun-noun (Silvertree) or noun-noun translated into gaelic or welsh (Eggleston=Eaglestone), but when all else failed, I just went with british-sounding names (Flanagan, Braeburn (whoops, that's New Zealand), Hansen (whoops, that's Danish/Norwegian).) In other words, I did a rather poor job of what I'm advocating, but I'm advocating it anyway.
ETA:Apparently adjective-noun is acceptable too, as in Lysander Greylocks
Any ideas on that false history thing?
I agree, this needs work. I didn't come up with much, other than this: they knew they were a province of the Great Kingdom once, but the Kingdom descended into chaos due to outside forces, and the Knight-Protector arose to fight the evil and usher in the New Kingdom. (years in my Nidala are measured as Nth year of the New Kingdom. I don't recall if that's canon.) The forces of chaos shrouded the land in Mist in retaliation. As the Knight Protector has purged the land of evil, the Mists have retreated to reveal more of the fallen Great Kingdom (the Forest and Avonleigh), infested by evil she is destined to fight, so as to eventually reclaim the whole Kingdom in Belenus's name. Belenus has preserved the Paladin for these long years because none have risen high enough and pure enough to take her place.
Last person who brought up that question hasn't recovered from the trauma yet...
