Correlates between the Threshold and the Real World

[Guest]

While this was never really my conscious intention, when it comes to naming NPCs in the various Exalted campaigns that I've run, I've found myself falling into a very interesting pattern in assigning names based primarily on geographical origin. Since most of the games I've run are Dragon-Blooded games, I've tried to reserve the classic two-or-three English word names (Soft Mirror, Victorious Sunrise, Perspicacious Eagle) to those originating in the Realm of common origins or those Thresholders who try to ape the Realm (particularly devout Immaculate converts, for example). Otherwise, I seem to have assigned various different cultures to different places in the Threshold for the purposes of naming. They have been non-Western European and non-Asian Indian cultures (which are just too familiar to some of my players, so no Georges or Johanns or Kunals), but even some European cultures are exotic enough to retain a sufficiently foreign flavor.


Examples of what I'm talking about:


Gem - Arab names (Afaf, 'Abd el-Majid, Rafiq)


Paragon - Persian names (Giv, Housmanzadeh)


Wavecrest - Polynesian/Fijian (Bau, Mataqalis)


Northern Tributaries ruled by outcastes - Greek (Anasthasios, Spartenos, Eutropius)


Does anyone else do this, and if so, what sorts of correlates do you use?

 

[Guest]

I make the realm asia the south africa the north northren europ and havn't thought about the rest

 

[Flagg]

Does anyone else do this, and if so, what sorts of correlates do you use?

I do -- and to some extent so do the WW authors.


I roughly correlate it this way:

• North: Northern European
  
• Near South: Mediterranean
  
• Far South: Arabic
  
• West: Polynesian
  
• River Province: Asian
  
• Southeast: Sub-Saharan African
  
• Northeast: Indigenous American

Of course, that's more general than comprehensive, and it's largely an association between culture and climate on my part.


-S

 

[Spook]

Lake Vostok is a pretty solid connenction.  Although back in the real world it's under an Antarctic Glacier.

 

[Guest]

Lake Vostok is a pretty solid connenction.  Although back in the real world it's under an Antarctic Glacier.

I've just remembered another one I used. I ran a DB campaign last year set in the Trikhanate, and I wanted to emphasize ethnic/cultural tensions as much as possible (ethnic/cultural fault lines being just one more way of dividing up the power players and creating more intricate factional politics; hooray!). In particular, I remembered reading that there was a fast-developing emnity between settled Delzahn and their nomadic cousins.


So I says to myself, I says, "Self, where's a good example of a nomadic people that have settled down and gone urban and civilized and basically forgotten their wanderin' past? Just making them all Mongols isn't going to cut it."


Eventually I settled upon giving all the settled Delzahn noble clans Hungarian names (and customs, to the extent that canon doesn't specify their traditions), and the nomadic Delzahn got a good healthy dollop of Turkishness, including some old time Big Sky God religion (I figured that it was more likely that the nomadic Delzahn were the ones who retained their pagan beliefs and didn't subscribe to the Delzahn Heterodoxy, which would be yet -another- cause for strife).


Varangians, who, in my campaign at least, lived in part of the Trikhanate that had been conquered with the Realm's tacit approval by the Delzahn during a spat the Empress had with the City-States, were all Assyrian, so the characters ended up negotiating with King-Emperor Eni-Lah, Sovereign Lord of the City-State of Apulundeezu.


Characters ended up helping the Immaculates destroy the Heterodox hierarchy at the secret urging of the Bronze Faction, which thought it was the best way to punish the Tri-Khan and cement Realm control among the Delzahn. This would have been true, if FFL hadn't used the resulting bloodshed to punch through a shadowland in the middle of the Tri-Khanate and march into Creation. Good times.

 

[StarHawk]

Does anyone else do this, and if so, what sorts of correlates do you use?

I do -- and to some extent so do the WW authors.


I roughly correlate it this way:

• North: Northern European
  
• Near South: Mediterranean
  
• Far South: Arabic
  
• West: Polynesian
  
• River Province: Asian
  
• Southeast: Sub-Saharan African
  
• Northeast: Indigenous American

Of course, that's more general than comprehensive, and it's largely an association between culture and climate on my part.


-S

I follow about the same pattern excapt I play a little more in the north so it's been divided up into a few more catagories, like Norse, Russian, or German. Also I've decided in my little world to add the french just for shits and giggles.