Building a homebrew African setting and I need character art
I've been wondering whether or not to include gods in the traditional sense at all, most African deities seen to be explicitly recognized as deified mortal ancestor spirits
Please and thank you
I'm also pondering
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I tracked down a pair of threads - one recent and one old - you might find useful.
Oh boy somebody wants to talk about African mythology. What part of Africa are you using?
Hey, cool. One of my settings is largely Afro-Caribbean, along with Melanesia and Latin America. Southern hemisphere needs more love in fantasy. In popular works there's pretty much just Earthsea.
Good luck, there's a lot less art to work with I had a hell of a time just trying to find good, matching art for just one african-esque, dark skinned character. Took hours, and then the game only lasted about 2 sessions anyway.
Huzzah
Focus is mostly sub saharan leaning towards Niger-Congo folklore with a chunk of Ethiopian
Setting is high magic because African folklore (and daily life) was seen as high magic
That sucks - it sounds like an interesting setting.
White Wizard's tower.
Well ancestor worship would be pretty appropriate in that case. Ethiopia also had a lot of Egyptian and semitic influence as well. Animism should also play a role. I think that if you do go with gods they should be relatively low power (note that while African mythology does feature a single or pair deity similar in role to the Abrahamic god they tend not to play a major role and only lesser gods and spirits interact with men) and perhaps equal or lesser in power to the spirits of the land and the mightiest of mortals. If you want to throw in an interesting mechanic divine blood could be a cool thing. There are a lot of African myths featuring an older greater race of men and the whole gods living among men was prevalent. In addition the gods weren't really viewed as objects of worship. They were something that you venerated and appeased in the hope that they might use their magic to aid you. You can see this today in places like the Congo where you can see shrines to Jesus alongside native gods. So a divinely gifted spellcaster would be more like a druid than a cleric in D&D parlance.
adding to that another interesting thing is the Yoruba idea of fate, which simplified, is a quest for ascension to join the spirit realm superficially similar to Buddhist and Hindu concepts of transcendence.
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Indeed
I also note that while Eurasian myth is concerned with the gods and their divine struggles, such cosmic tales are handwaved inost African myths. The meat & potatoes of the myths are about the first man, and how he spent his life. Some folklorists saw this and realized "if myth is the domain of the gods themselves and legend is the domain of man, then the boundary is blurred in Africa". People usually come last in creation, but their appearance has the most dramatic impact.
Usually what follows is an origin-of-death legend. In 80% of cases it's due to a chameleon either being a cunt or accidentally bringing the message of death.
Chameleons were seen as the messengers of big G God, showing up outta nowhere and vanishing almost as quickly. Dat camouflage.
The non-human nature gods are respected but also treated with care. By virtue of their inhuman nature they can seem randomly capricious. The African tried not to bother with non-human spirits due to their tendency towards blue and orange morality. Like the great juju of Calabar. It was the obscenely powerful spirit of the dark forest, and one day decided it wanted a young girl as a sacrifice due to a bizarre feeling of offense. So the entire forest came "active" and began tormenting the villagers (like an evil March of the Ents). This culminated with a massive explosion and fire which killed nearly everyone. The survivors fled and refused to have anything to do with the forest spirit, who was enraged and confused about why he was suddenly hated.
Much safer to trust in spirits who actually think like mortal men.
>WE_WUZ_SAMRAYS_N_SHEET.jpg
lol epic
Hella
>most African deities seen to be explicitly recognized as deified mortal ancestor spirits
Wat
en.wikipedia.org
wilderutopia.com
And that's just in one small part of Africa. Do more research, broham.
Ignore Veeky Forums
Acquire Spears of the Dawn
Its not going to be culturally accurate, but look up Wakanda and Black Pather stuff from Marvel comics, they can probably give you a good esthetic.
dank link bro, thanks
African mythologies also have lots of nature spirits and mythological animals exemplifying virtues and aspects of the world
I know that there is an ogre-like monster with a bird face called the dodo
Lots of freaky cryptids too
I cannot remember the names and I don't have the books on hand, but there are fae encyclopedias that could
namely this one fr.wikipedia.org
Unfortunately for you, I don't think it has been translated from French
If you do though there are also flesh-eating ape-like pygmies with basket for heads, quirky camel men that ride you to death if they manage to climb on your back and other really cool stuff
>afro samurai origin
Does Africa have anything for magical races?
Something like changelings being part of a fey realm or vampires?
Evil pygmies
Shapeshifters such as the Anioto (leopard-men)
Why not just make really powerful Egyptian wizards?
You will have a lot to go on myth-wise and by making them black you won't be considered racist.
egyptians weren't black though
Because Egypt is Egypt and black Africa is a completely different thing.
>I want setting based on Germanic legends
>make them romans with different names duh
More like this
>en.wikipedia.org
>en.wikipedia.org
I'm using an immortal griot as a recurring NPC in a nWoD game set in Egypt and there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with egyptian magic
The aesthetics are also a nice change from the usual
"WE WUZ" meme incoming
>egyptian magic
african magic, sorry
Doesn't matter; with all the backlash against admittedly horrible movies like Gods of Egypt and so on, the only way to truly represent Egypt is by making them all as black as possible.
Heck I've even seen people complain that actual Egyptians aren't dark enough to play Egyptians.
you've seen retards complain, not people, those are morons who think that white people are the root of all evil and that black people are noble angels descended on earth that we corrupted, yeah well you get my meaning.
Plenty of African vampires. Iron-fanged, hook footed men who drop from the trees and eat you, mosquito demon things, witches' familiars who take the form of a handsome youth, but require an enormous sustenance of blood.
Hyena men, Giants, shapeshifters
What about hellboy makoma?
I'm definitely rolling rolling with cryptids because I love dinosaurs, and Hunter stories are all about hunting weird giant animals
There's a widespread belief among the Bantu in a race of people with tails that live among the clouds and sometimes come down to goof off with humans
The Vodun are mostly former humans such a Aganju for example
And Anansi used to be called "the great ancestor" by Twi people
I'll give you Odinani but it much ore common belief that human ghosts are of greater importance
Bantu are out of the geographic region OP wants though.
The Bantu are Niger-Congo speakers in sub Saharan Africa
Come back with the hollow stone filled with the water of the dripping tree, child.
That is the only way the rain kite will work. Beware the siafu men, and trust only the honeyguides.
I'm scared
All over west africa silk-cotton trees are regarded as ominous abodes of the unknown powers
There's a monster called Impaca who is said by the Azande to have long unkempt hair, a pitch black body (even his eyeballs are black), and a veery long red fingernail almost like a claw. He sneaks up on people in the bush and drives his claw into the base of the skull. Once a person has been stabbed they are slaves to him.
There are tales of shapeshifting demons with bizarre anatomies
Use creative anachronism
Decent fairytale
I bet this thread is nice and /pol/-free
I want to keep the setting "pre colonial" and overall gunpowder free
But I'd like to keep a counterpart to the Afrikaners/Boers around
Could they even work without guns?
One of the plot lines I was considering was a bunch of whites fleeing from a mysterious past into not!africa to justify their presence
>Could they even work without guns?
Just give them magic, or maybe make them a race of ogres or soemthing.
Back in the old days we never had an issue because we'd never mention them and quietly report off topic posts instead of screaming like a triggered liberal
Yeah, my gut feeling was to give 1 in 10 whites inborn lightning or fire powers
Especially considering that black people honestly thought the whites could shoot lightning and fire through their "wands" at first
I'm aiming for a human centric setting
I believe there is a vampire that has a glowing anus.
I think that's Adze
African monsters are grotesque
Honestly I just sounds funny to me.
Like some of the Japanese yokai.
>eyeballanus.jpg
>I've been wondering whether or not to include gods in the traditional sense at all, most African deities seen to be explicitly recognized as deified mortal ancestor spirits
>Please and thank you
An overarcuing theme in Subsaharan African religions is the idea that the creator/highest god is a remote being that is either uninterested in the world or has been offended by it somehow.
Most "gods" are actually powerful spirits that act on humanity's behalf. These often include deified ancestors, but also includes beings that are just powerful unto themselves. This made it relatively easy for them to adopt powers from other religions, even those that maintain that there is only "one god".
Also, while many might describe the religious as "animist", this is kind of a misunderstanding. Yes, a spirit may live in an idol, a rock, a tree, etc, but they are not necessarily the spirit of that idol/rock/tree. It's just where they're living. It's like how you may live in a particular house and that house is YOUR house, and you really like that house, and do things to that house, and are concerned about what happens to and around that house. But you aren't a manifestation of that house's being. It's just your home. And you can have more than one house, and you can move out of a house, especially if something about it displeases you.
Natural phenomena can be homes to a spirit, but so can altars/shrines.
Possession is also a very important part of many west African religions. During a ceremony, people can reach an ecstatic state at which point a spirit will occupy the body of a person. The person is effectively treated as the spirit in question and everything they do and say is treated as if the spirit is the one doing and saying it.
Sex is not usually a part of ceremonies and sacrifice, when it occurs, is usually followed by the cooking and consumption of said animal. It's more of a really long and complicated way of saying grace.
Protecting an albino from a crazed wizard could be fun
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You could always go the Imperial Chinese route where there are gods but they're distant and uninvolved while your ancestors are close and active.
You might want to look at the Nyambe campaign setting too.
Most Egyptians weren't Black but there were still Nubians around as immigrants and mercenaries.
Here's a (You), cherish it.
>>I want setting based on Germanic legends
>>make them romans with different names duh
>Implying fantasy settings don't already do this all the time.
darksouls african addition when?
>I want a setting with polytheistic religions
>make them all Catholicism with different names duh
>I want a setting with hordes of pillagers
>make them Huns and Mongols and call them "Orcs" duh
>I want a setting with people who have been directly chosen by the gods to cast spells
>make them all sorcerers with different names duh
African fairy tales do have this weird sense of...fatalism, like Dark Souls
>once upon a time the hero Ozidi set out to vanquish the evil monster councilmen who sentenced his father to death
>after slaying most of them he went nuts with his sword and killed two innocent people in a fit of madness
>he gave up his quest and died of smallpox
>the end
Good observation
A spirit associated with a tree is not the "soul" of the tree, nor is it a personification of the tree
The tree is merely a favorite livingroom for the spirit
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Wat
Goddamn african ants.
Kek