D&D 5E Calimshan, Thay, Anauroch - Thousands of miles apart, interchangeable artwork.

[Laurefindel]

This is the question I've asked for years regarding Calimshan and Zakhara and why there's a tiny second Al-Qadim inside of the Sword Coast.

It's a reason I'm not a big fan of FR: the visual shorthands are less interesting than more creative world-building. Too much sameiness and fantasy-counterpart cultures (and multiple fantasy counterparts for single real world cultural regions).

Yeah, I see where your coming from. But I’m a bit split on this issue. On one hand, I like having cultural references in a fantasy world. On the other hand, « logically » and respectfully populating a fantasy world with tidbits of earth-like cultures ultimately end-up with Earth 2.0, which is not what I’m looking for.

I know that saying « oh, I just ignore that part… » doesn’t save the FR, but for me , FR works well as a around-the-world buffet (rather than a kitchen sink); you get good Americanized knockoffs of other countries’ flavours in mass, and you take what you like, leave what you don’t. Ultimately, you can’t chew it all at once anyway, or taste it all in one visit, but you got it all under one roof.

But objectively, it does require you to voluntarily ignore incongruities within the setting, or find explanations that sound more like excuses than logical conclusions.

 

[Marandahir]

Yeah, I see where your coming from. But I’m a bit split on this issue. On one hand, I like having cultural references in a fantasy world. On the other hand, « logically » and respectfully populating a fantasy world with tidbits of earth-like cultures ultimately end-up with Earth 2.0, which is not what I’m looking for.

I know that saying « oh, I just ignore that part… » doesn’t save the FR, but for me , FR works well as a around-the-world buffet (rather than a kitchen sink); you get good Americanized knockoffs of other countries’ flavours in mass, and you take what you like, leave what you don’t. Ultimately, you can’t chew it all at once anyway, or taste it all in one visit, but you got it all under one roof.

But objectively, it does require you to voluntarily ignore incongruities within the setting, or find explanations that sound more like excuses than logical conclusions.

It definitely feels like ThemeParkLand to me. Something like the MOTHER series' take on America.

I think for me, it's just not what I'm looking for in a fantasy setting. The politics are good, the world-building lackluster.

It's servicable as a backdrop that I can write around to pull adventures out of the Realms into my own setting, though.

Also, I should correct myself, Calimshan isn't technically on the Sword Coast, it's south of Amn and Tethyr. But it's still further north than Chult, and we visited Chult in 5e officially as well.

 

[S'mon]

I tend to have Anauroch as a big cold Eurasian desert, Calimshan as a hot Arabian desert, and ignore Zakhara which should never have been added to FR IMO. Thay is mountainous so more Turkey & Iran type themes, not Arabian or Egyptian. Mulhorand is Egypt of course.

My actual campaign is in Damara 1360 DR, Mulhorand & Thay get mentioned now and then and there are a few NPCs, notably Shukura the Mulhorandi priestess. Anauroch & Calimshan don't really come up, though ancient Netheril gets the occasional mention.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The Bedine of Anauroch ultimately originated in Zakhara (via portal), so it's hardly surprising that they have the Middle East as their cultural touchstone...

I haven't ever seen that while reading about them. Do you happen to recall the source of that info?

 

[Voadam]

I haven't ever seen that while reading about them. Do you happen to recall the source of that info?

I see it on the wiki entry for Bedine in the history sectiom but not a specific source for the info.

After the Fall of Netheril, the surviving cities, known as the Lost Kingdoms lasted for a time, until eventually the desert consumed them as well.[30] Then, in −339 DR, a group of humans emigrated from Zakhara using a portal. They intermingled with the populace of the ancient Netherese cities, and over time the combined culture became what was called the Bedine.[8] They maintained knowledge of their spoken language, Midani,[8] or Uloushinn,[2] but had all but forgotten their native written language.[8] Over the centuries since, traders introduced them to the Thorass alphabet.[8] Throughout this time, the Bedine somehow resisted the mind-controlling magics of the phaerimm who were imprisoned in the sands beneathe them.[14]

 

[Henadic Theologian]

This is the question I've asked for years regarding Calimshan and Zakhara and why there's a tiny second Al-Qadim inside of the Sword Coast.

It's a reason I'm not a big fan of FR: the visual shorthands are less interesting than more creative world-building. Too much sameiness and fantasy-counterpart cultures (and multiple fantasy counterparts for single real world cultural regions).

Calimshan is functionally a colony of Zakhara.

A lot of cultures in FR use magic to immigrate from one part of FR to another or even from a different world to FR using magic, so geographic distance means nothing.

Honestly this is small fry for FR. Like how did an colony of fantasy Mesopotiamia evolve into a fantasy Greece?

 

[see]

This is the question I've asked for years regarding Calimshan and Zakhara and why there's a tiny second Al-Qadim inside of the Sword Coast.

Of course, the reason is that Calimshan was Ed Greenwood's original Hollywood Arabian Nights genies-and-flying-carpets zone, while Zakhara/Al-Qadim was a separately developed TSR Historical Analog glued on to the Realms whether or not it made any sense.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I generally treat Calimshan as the Realm equivalent of Moorish Spain, with Thetyr and Amn being more like Leon and Castilla, so not ''full-on'' Arabic in themes. Thay I see them as more Turkish (their spell-bombard being a huge hint).

Even Zharara is treated more widely as Persian that Simbad/Aladdin-esque trope-fest in my games.

 

[Marandahir]

Of course, the reason is that Calimshan was Ed Greenwood's original Hollywood Arabian Nights genies-and-flying-carpets zone, while Zakhara/Al-Qadim was a separately developed TSR Historical Analog glued on to the Realms whether or not it made any sense.

Right, that makes a lot of sense, and frankly, I've wondered this for years but not so much that I had spent time looking into it. >_>

But now that I see the turbans on the heads of the Thayans in the book, and now that the issue has been raised, I'm not wondering about it. Of course, turbans are used by cultures throughout South Asia, Southwest Asia, and North Africa, so one could easily lean into completely different cultural crutches for Thay vs Calimshan (vs Zakhara vs Mulhorand, etc). I just would rather that my fantasy not lean on cultural crutches but create something new yet familiar. Put it in a blender.

I don't mind a spaghetti western bounty hunter like Cad Bane, but he's not John Wayne, he's a Duros, and that alien of a difference, and his placement in a setting of alien worlds, interacting with planet-wide cities and desert planets and volcanic hellscapes and misery mire slug-ruled gangster worlds means we're not just telling John Wayne Cowboys in Space. But there are genre tropes there. So I don't MIND the genre tropes explored with Thay and Calimshan etc. But what I do mind is that Calimshan is a Disneyland cutout stashed right in the middle of Fantasy Europe on a landscape more similar to the Pacific Northwest until suddenly the deserts of Calimshan (I guess maybe Calimshan is like the south California desert to the south of Amn's more San Franscisco/Mediterranean climate?).

Anway, what I mean is that if it's just a one-to-one cultural paste, it's bothersome. Thay is less so, but it still feels odd to have turbans in it. I haven't gotten the book yet, but I would hope that the Thayan culture leans a bit more into Persian/Mughal/Greco-Indic vibes than to more Arabian Nights, just now in the mountains with evil red wizards.

 

[see]

Right, that makes a lot of sense, and frankly, I've wondered this for years but not so much that I had spent time looking into it. >_>

Fundamentally, anything that's a clear historical-cultural analogue is something that got changed by or pasted on to the Realms by TSR. Greenwood mostly developed the Sword Coast, Moonsea, and Cormyr/Dalelands/Sembia.

Lands beyond that were either undetailed or vaguely sketched exotic lands for NPCs to be from. So Thay, for example, was a mysterious empire where various meddling Red Wizards encountered by his players came from, with Greenwood's typewritten notes (some of which were published in Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms) suggesting that it would be a suitable region for Oriental Adventures material. Calimshan was similarly explicitly called out in those notes as being "lightly detailed"; it was mostly a place for exotic things found in the detailed parts of the Realms to have come from.

But TSR from 1985-1995 was really, really big on direct real-world adaptations, seen in how they handled the Known World (Mystara), in the green-covered HR series of supplements, and in what they did with the Realms. So TSR made the Moonshaes into Fantasy Celtland, and Mulhorand into Fantasy Egypt, and Unther into Fantasy Babylon, and Chessenta into Fantasy Greece, and appended the Hordelands and Kara-Tur to the east, and added Zakhara to the south and Maztica to the west, et cetera.