Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="xenoflare" data-source="post: 2873473" data-attributes="member: 12431">Hi,  Time for me to use my 4 yrs of undergrad work!  Warfare in the Southeast Asian region in historical times, according to archaeological and archival evidence seems to be focused not so much on killing people, but rather on kidnapping them. It's like - we've got so much land and forests and resources here, but not enough people to work on these lands, so you get lotsa nonlethal warfare by warlords in order to shanghai people away to work on their fields.  Then classical approaches to SEA history have been divided into roughly Indic and Islamic periods of influence. We have the so-called "men of prowess" who are your heroic individuals that gather cults of charisma around them. They generate spheres of influence around themselves, which are hardly fixed and subject to waning and waxing, and they war with other men of prowess. Since you want a low-magic campaign, these guys can be the mythic equivalent of gang leaders. In SEA, we have this whole thing about magic and fighting power. There's lots of betel nut (i.e. sireh) involved in Malay magic, my friend just got back from the fighting in East Timor and he got dragged into a Christian magic ritual. Where someone waved a sword at him, chewed some betel nut, spat it out at him, and forced him to eat it, and as long as he doesn't go around being sexually promiscuous, he will be impervious to gunshots.  So the men of prowess can monopolize your low-magic world - there can be magic of the common folk, hedge magic, which can be used to fortify the warriors, predict the seasons etc, which will be very useful to ruling territories. If the temporal rulers can be the patrons of these spellcasters, then the social stigma can be lessened for them. For further examples, in Burma and Thailand, to this day, tattooes can have magical significance in warding away bad luck, wounds, weapons, and disease. So can yantras, which are paper with inscriptions of sutras on them. Tattooed monk, anyone?  As the Indic influences started lurking in with the merchants and teachers coming down, Hindu, Jain and Buddhist influences started sprouting up. We get the "devaraja" concept coming in, like in Angkor - "deva" for god, "raja" for king - so literally, we get a god-king. Usually it's a member of the nobility in SEA, who takes in a priest of Indic origin, and he patronizes that religion in order to show his difference from his peers - and the priest blesses that noble, who then generates good karma, and plays up his similarity to the devas. What's more, the whole idea of karma is one that rulers like - cos it explains their rule as one that is natural, a product of their past lives' accumulated merit, hence they get divine right to rule. And it keeps the populace (theoretically) pacified - cos it's their karma to be ruled.  You get huge monuments built like Borobodur which were used for occult purposes - to allow mendicants and ascetics to so-called transcend and reach moksha, nirvana, etc. But at the same point of time, as my archaeologist prof was pointing out - the rich may be the guys who paid for them to be paid - but were they the ones making them? Same with the pyramids, the pharaohs didn't lift a stone. it was the workers. Same thing here- and since you want a low-magic feel, all these huge temples and artifacts - who built them? We're talking about a high degree of craftsmanship and organizational ability within the populace, that are required to build such big projects.  I've got to run now - but i'll return with the stories of the Wali Songo (The 9 Islamic Saints) and their coming to Indonesia. Hope this helps.</blockquote>

Verification