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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8708361" data-attributes="member: 58172">It is possible that the "Suel" in the continent of Flanaess, roughly corresponds to reallife Nordic ethnicities. They are often depicted as having light complexion and the silliness of "viking horns".There are difficulties with using Suel to represent Nordic ethnicities − besides how Greyhawk demonizes these ethnicities. Suel is decadent, cruel, and conniving. The N*zi Scarlet Brotherhood are said to preserve best the Suel culture. One can see why reallife Nordic peoples object to such an identification! The problematics continue. The Suel breed mul (≈ derro) as a dwarf-human slave hybrid. Likewise they engage defacto racist wars against orc, goblin, and hobgoblin, tho to be fair, Greyhawk characterizes these as more like nonhuman fiends, they remain ambiguously resembling reallife ethnicities anyway. The setting supposes that Suel is a specific prehistoric empire on the cusp of history in a location that roughly corresponds to the great deserts of Asia, such as Gobi Desert and Taklamakan. (These Asian deserts collide and blend with Mexican deserts.) In a later war, the Siberian-esque Baklunish unleashed the genocidal weapon of the "Rain of Colorless Fire" that causes the desolation of the Sea of Dust and genocides the Suel Imperium. During the various wars, many Suloise had already fled into the areas corresponding to North America, forming a Suel diaspora in North American Flanaess. Yeah.If Suel is Nordic, they are far away from home. Perhaps they sail from Jotumheim to the gulf between Baklun and Dry Stepps, and south up the rivers to the mountains of what is now the Sea of Dust. There the population flourish.In any case, the homelands of the Nordic ethnicities are around Jotnumheim Sea in NW Oerik. But this area exists off the edges of the maps of the World of Greyhawk from 1980 and 1983. The map beyond Flanaess that has these Nordic areas comes from the Dragon Annual magazine of 1996. It charts this Nordic "realm of the Jotnum". This map also mentions regions such as Erypt (= Egypt and Arabia) and Celestial Empire (= China).In reallife, Nordic peoples founded communities in distant locations. Compare Vinland in North America and Rus in today Russia. The deserts of Asia and North America are awfully far away. But perhaps the Jotnum reach there. Perhaps the name Suel relates to Norse súl, meaning a "pillar" or "column".Unfortunately, the surviving "Suel" populations are mainly "barbarians" and "jungle" dwellers. Moreover, these jungle dwellers have the unfortunate implication of white people appropriating the cultures of the Indigenous in Central and South Americas. Note Urnst and the islands of the Jerlea Sea are understood to be part of the Suel diaspora.Here is what Gygax writes about the "Snow Barbarians". A Suloise is a member of Suel."Suloise. The fleeing Suel folk were scattered in a broadcast fasshion across the Flanaess, so that many tended to mix with other groups. The Suel RACE (!) is very fair-skinned, some almost albino. They have light, red, yellow, blond, or platinum hair. Eye color varies from pale blue or violet through deep blue, with gray occasionally occuring. Curly hair is common. The inhabitants of the Dutchy of Ernst are nearly PURE Suel RACE (!). The Frost, Ice, and Snow BARBARIANS (!) are the BEST example [of racial purity]. The Suel folk are quite predominant in the island groups off the eastern coast of the Flanaess [such as the Jerlea Sea] as well as in the [N*zi] SCARLET BROTHERHOOD (!) region. Those BANDS that migrated into the [Central America] Amedio JUNGLE and [South America] Hepmonaland are so ALTERED (!) as to be no longer typical of the RACE (!): they are TAN to BROWN."Yeah. No."Scarlet Brotherhood. ... This [N*zi] order is purported to espouse the cause of the Suloise, claiming superiority of that RACE (!) above all others."What makes this Greyhawk setting so violently painful to Norwegians is: the N*zis invaded us. The WW2 Germans did evil against Norway. They are not us.The Nordic peoples are not − and have never been − Germans!The concept of a socalled Aryan race is a bygone German scholarly racist fiction. There is no such thing!That antihuman crap has nothing to do with us!</blockquote>

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