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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9880881" data-attributes="member: 7052563">As a teenager I had fun reading the setting lore in the gold box set and trying to connect the dots to all of the historical and fictional inspirations.  The elvish kingdom of Celene was Lothlorien, the Concatenated Cantons of Perrenland were Switzerland, the Baklunish states were Arabia and Persia from the 1001 Nights.  I could never figure out if the Valley of the Mage had a specific counterpart, or why a bunch of grey elves had followed a human mage for so long that they had branched off to become a separate elvish subculture.Even before it was made canon, I always assumed that Pholtus of the Blinding Light was the chief god of the Theocracy of the Pale.  I always had a sort of grudge against Lawful Neutral as the “just following orders” alignment that demanded hierarchy and obedience regardless of fairness or justice.I got the impression that the Frost, Snow, and Ice Barbarians got increasingly “barbaric” as you traveled farther along the Thillonrian Peninsula.  Perhaps this was based on the imperial Chinese distinction between “cooked” barbarians who had been influenced (and compromised) by Chinese culture and diplomacy, versus the more independent “raw” barbarians, but maybe that was just my imagination.The secret evil societies were reminiscent of those in pulp literature, SPECTRE from the Bond movies, COBRA from G.I. Joe, etc.  The Scarlet Brotherhood in particular always gave me a “Boys From Brazil” vibe of ex-Nazis hiding out in the jungle, conducting weird experiments to try to restore their lost racial glory.  The Invoked Devastation and the Rain of Colorless Fire were particularly evocative during the Cold War, and the idea of twin magical apocalypses that most people of the Flanaess had never even heard of lent a sinister grandeur to the setting.Some of the names were indeed silly (apparently Verbobonc was pronounced with a final silent “c” that was meant to sound French...), but some of them were actually clever.  The duplicate Urnsts (County & Duchy) and Uleks (County, Duchy, & Principality) were a nod to European feudal domains like Burgundy (County, Duchy, & Kingdom) and Poland (Duchy, Kingdom, Commonwealth, etc).  I am usually quite good at catching words written backwards, but I never noticed that the archmage Drawmij and the Dramij Ocean were both “Jim Ward” spelled backwards, more or less.  A DM I used to know once insisted that the Pomarj should be pronounced with a final consonant “y” sound (“Pomary”), but he failed to convince me or the rest of the table.</blockquote>

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