Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aitch Eye" data-source="post: 266268" data-attributes="member: 385">Guy Gavriel Kay did a very heavily researched fantasy world inspired by the Byzantine Empire around the time of Justinian in his books Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors. He spun the religion off of Roman solar worship; with a doctrinal division between the west, where it focused on a Mithras-like son of the sun god, and the east, where iconoclastic views were taking hold.So, you could do an alternate history version where Christianity never came on the scene and the dominant religion grew out of the cults of Sol Invictus and Mithras. If you set it early enough, you wouldn't have to worry about Islam either (If you didn't mind the history getting even more alternate, you could do a later Byzantine where Islam never emerged, like Harry Turtledove did in Agent of Byzantium). Zoroastrianism would be the other major religion, and you could still have mystery cults and the various forms of paganism outside the empires; all of which might not clash so much with the fantasy elements, or be as restrictive. Of course, that still leaves Judaism...You might want to take a look at the dark age Eastern Europe setting in Dragon #290, since there was some contact with the Byzantines.</blockquote>