'tribal' inspired nation

Gregstrom · #1 February 9th, 2008, 06:39 AM

I thought Machaka was more H. Rider Haggard than specifically Zulu.

HoneyBadger · #2 February 9th, 2008, 04:26 PM

If you mean the books about Alan Quartermain, I honestly don't see how. I've read both books (King Solomon's Mines and The Lost City of Gold), and neither one strikes me as especially Machakan in nature, and She is set underground. Could, ofcourse, be a story I'm unfamiliar with. I've got all of Haggard's works, and they're wonderful, but I haven't read them all yet.

Omnirizon · #3 February 9th, 2008, 04:56 PM

I wonder if Machaka isn't kind of a hybrid grind-up of 'African tribes'. It isn't uncommon for this to happen to animistic cultures.

Take American Indians. We rarely bother to differentiate between Onieda, Cherokee, Souix, or Seminole; rather we just clump them together and grind their separate cultures into 'Indian' or 'Native Americans'.

Gregstrom · #4 February 9th, 2008, 05:02 PM

Well, the manual mentions King Solomon's Mines when talking about them. A hybrid grind-up of pulp fiction about the 'lost tribes of Darkest Africa', perhaps? The evil sorcerers ruling from an extinct volcano and the giant spiders with associated cult fit right in.

Omnirizon: I agree about the grind-up. The various Eskimo tribes probably get fed up that they're all called Inuit, too. And all those Celts, Angles, Saxons, Normans (and Vikings, Romans etc...) probably get annoyed at being lumped together as English these days.

HoneyBadger · #5 February 11th, 2008, 03:23 AM

I think it all started with the English, Germans, and French calling themselves "white".

Agema · #6 February 11th, 2008, 11:58 AM

It's not really a lack of animist cultures. The early Ulm, Marverni and so on are based on European nations at the point where ancestor- or animal-worship was transmuting into the idea of Gods.

It's more that most of the nations are based on European cultures. Maybe not a surprise considering what I assume (maybe unsafely!) the cultural upbringing of the creators and most players. There aren't really any nations covering the Arabs and Persia, south-east Asia, and so on, either.

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LA Atlantis are basically Eskimos, aren't they?