Flint: Real World Parallels?

Evil Midnight Lurker

Evil Midnight Lurker

Explorer
I've been burning brain cells wondering how to properly get the atmosphere of Flint across. It's like Victorian London, but plopped down on the edge of the mountains of a subtropical rain forest, with one particularly tall peak right in the city center...

...then it finally hit me after like five years: Rio de Janeiro? Is Cauldron Hill Sugarloaf, or Corcovado (in which case Bourne standing atop it is some kind of hilariously inappropriate Cristo Redentor homage)?
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad


gideonpepys

gideonpepys

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
I'm pretty sure RangerWickett has confirmed that Rio was the initial inspiration for Flint.
 

RangerWickett

RangerWickett

Legend
You hit the nail on the head. Really, just turn a map of Rio 180 degrees and it lines up pretty well. Though the scale is all wrong and there aren't nearly as many fey on Ipanema.
 



K

Karma Kollapse

First Post
I had assumed, since Risur seemed like Brazil in terms of climate and culture, that Flint was Rio... but are there any other similarities? Anything worth reading up on about Rio to give Flint more flavour?
 

S

SanjMerchant

Explorer
Karma Kollapse said:
I had assumed, since Risur seemed like Brazil in terms of climate and culture, that Flint was Rio... but are there any other similarities? Anything worth reading up on about Rio to give Flint more flavour?
Click to expand...

Admittedly, given that it's home to the (presumably English-speaking) players and that the place names are all English words (Flint, Shale, Cauldron Hill, the Nettles, Bosum Strand, etc.), I've always defaulted to thinking of it is England and/or the United States, to the point that it's easy to forget that it's not a temperate climate. Especially since Ber has the whole Iberian thing covered (though obviously the language there is Spanish, not Portuguese).

Still, I suppose it's worth remembering that Risur is fairly close to Ber (a sort of hot desert plain type place) and Elfaivar (which is just straight up India).
If one insists on a United States model for Flint, New Orleans would be a good go-to; they've got bayous and everything!

I will now try very hard not to overthink the combination of geography, counterpart cultures, and climate. :p
 

E

efreund

Explorer
Huh. That makes sense.

I had been imagining and presenting Flint as a sort of Victorian London in the Louisiana Bayou, with a dash of Charles Dickens-style New York City thrown in.

My players eventually started asking the race question, and I eventually decided that the native folk of Risur are black (Creole-esque to fit with the Bayou-vibe), and that white people are from the northern continent, but many had migrated over a long long time ago. (But it's weird because fey are clearly indigenous to Risur, and elves are kinda like fey, but the elves are all 'white'.) This didn't sit quite well with me, because it started to draw in Johannesburg parallels. But eventually I rolled with it. More social tension with awkward echoes of current political crises actually fits the "vibe" of Flint pretty well.
 

Evil Midnight Lurker

Evil Midnight Lurker

Explorer
efreund said:
My players eventually started asking the race question, and I eventually decided that the native folk of Risur are black (Creole-esque to fit with the Bayou-vibe), and that white people are from the northern continent, but many had migrated over a long long time ago. (But it's weird because fey are clearly indigenous to Risur, and elves are kinda like fey, but the elves are all 'white'.)
Click to expand...
Actually, I've noticed that a lot of the elf portraits are more light brown? I think? I'm away from the books at the moment, I'll check later. (Edit: and I do mean elves, not eladrin.)

I did come to the same conclusion about humans.
 
Last edited:

Remove ads

Top