A Game of Crones

Melissandre does more magic in a single book than Gandalf in the whole LOTR

But we're talking about The Witcher.

Witcher is about Western Europe

And the Lord of The Rings isn't?

He is asking about ASoIF set in Novgorod Republic/Kievan Rus. Witcher novels and LoTR aren't related to Rus in any way.

>Tsar's Landing

Laketown was the only good part of the Hobbit movies.

Maybe riddles in the dark.

But mainly Laketown.

What houses are you gonna use?

>warring Chud, Slavs and other Finno-Ugric tribes invite Rurik to unite them and establish order
>he comes with two beautiful sisters and 3 zmeys

>Chud, Slavs and other Finno-Ugric tribes
good one

Khaleesisa Preskeryana?

Aerys the Terrible

Tyrion is now a Jew named Moishik

>Jews
>in Novgorod

Nigger you retarded?

>half the people of the kingdom are living in the haunted forest
>but it's managable because all the zombies are eaten by bears

>War of the Roses Britain, "A Song of Ice and Fire" was inspired by the Novgorod Republic?

Winters a shit

Summers a shit

Steppes a shit

Forests a shit

Mountains a shit

Hordes a shit

Wildlife a shit

Nobles a shit

Raiders a shit

Baba Yaga is love

Baba Yaga is life

Baba Yaga is also a shit

Novogorod wouldn't be the Westerlands, but King's landingesque

Clearly House Ruryk's shtick is turning into bears

Novgorod was the Russian city of merchants. Do the maths

would be a cool plot hook

not!jewish merchants come into the city and the pcs have to work through the conspiracies and find out if they actually are smuggling in fake coins or not, or if someone is actually shoving the blame onto them

Except for the part where you said "while ASoIaF at least starts fairly low [on the magical fantasy scale]".

Zombie bears are canon so I wouldn't get too comfortable.

Please.

There's no surer sign of a wannabe knowledgeable faggot who's learned everything they know about Russia from fucking RPG supplements than a loud insistence on the importance and/or "awesomeness" of Baba Yaga.

The woman's a fucking fairytale character. One of a great many. Not even the most famous, important, popular or interesting one. Her "central place" in Russian folklore and culture is literally a fucking meme started by lazy fantasy writers, comic book artists and RPG makers who couldn't be assed to do more than that tiny bit of research, and it's self-perpetuating among uneducated niggers because one uneducated nigger reads in their D&D books that she's the fucking patron saint of all things Russian, not realizing that the guy who wrote his D&D book also originally read it from an older D&D book, going all the way back to some proto-uneducated nigger who chose her at random instead of Ilya Tsarevitch or Dobrynya Nikitich, who never made it into a fucking video game.

How many fairytales featuring Baba Yaga do you actually know, without Googling it? Or is it just some fake idea that all of Russian legends revolve around her? Do you realize the fucking absurdity of this? It's as if everyone just "knew" (and shared that fact as if from a position of knowledge) that Odysseus is the hero of Greek mythology.

This

t. Russian

>Ilya Tsarevitch or Dobrynya Nikitich
It wasn't chosen at random, Baba Yaga is easier to pronounce. That's all there is to it.

>Ilya Tsarevitch
That's Ilya Muromets for you, you non-bogatyr!

Or Ivan Tsarevitch. They are very different.

What kind of stuttering bongo do you have to be to not be able to pronounce "Ilya"?

Depends on where in Russia you're from. One of the problems of the country being so large is that at some point every village gets their own version of every fairytale and since everyone is an Ivan or an Ilya it tends to get mixed.

>being this autismal about a joke
yikes lad

Either that or Anonski's grandma is senile.

You can recognize a proper Russian house by the grandma sleeping on the couch in the middle of the living room, occasionally waking up to say something wrong about the past.

>A Russian with no sense of humor
In other news, rain: wet.

The same kind that thinks Baba Yaga is the central piece of all Russian culture.
Besides, I think the tough part of the name is Tsarevitch, not Ilya.

And they still:
Gave it a music theme that started awesome and turned into genericness^100
Made their equipment look retarded
The main "baddies" there were also tropey as fuck

The Hobbit films were not very good films.

>"Grandma is waking up!"
>"I remember Stalin went by the name of The Moustache by night and beating up capitalists left and right, and nobody knows about it."

The real hardcore have grandmas so old they don't even remember the name of oblast they were born in. Nine times out of ten they will mumble toothelessly about how their seventeen sisters were all raped to death by cossacks.

Witcher is about central europe

I think the thing that makes her so memorable for western audiences is the fact that she is so different from comparable characters we have here in the west. Our witches arent as lively in folklore tales.

I learned abou her from my grandma btw, not from some fantasy supplement

DA

t. Ruski

ITT: Russians being Russian

And presumebly some angry American with pretensions.

Bears instead of wolves

Man, Kievan Rus' is such a based low fantasy setting.
You have polytheistic paganism as the main religion, you have excellent fantastic lore, you have a conflict between different local feudals - it's glorious.
If you want an authentic experience of Kievan Rus', read The Tale of Igor's Campaign and The Tale of Bygone Years. They are amazing as fuck.

Actually, medieval Russia suits a high fantasy setting far better than medieval Britain. It's one of the scant few things 7th Sea actually got right about it - the land is STEEPED in mysticism. The earth is alive. The animals talk. If I made A Game of Russian Thrones, magic (at least low type magic like divinations and such) would be way more common than in Westeros.

In medieval Russia Tatars are overlords.

Medieval Russia is like 2000 years, many people are overlords and many people are scum.

>Medieval Russia is like 2000 years
>Middle Ages only lasted around a thousand years

Medieval Russia is eternal, infinite.

>Middle Ages only lasted around a thousand years
That's in those places they ended
Russia still waiting

>shoots lightning out of his sword
>summons giant eagle
>resurrects himself (okay fine he didn't cause that but whatever)
>spooks the Nazguls with magics
>makes the huntsmen's weapons useless
>Shadowfax
>casts light
>sustains as a minor like the entire time they're in Moria
>magic fireworks
>wizard fight with Saruman

C'mon, dude, you know that's nonsense.

b-but le gandalf level 5 sorcerer memeay

What's that from?

Dragon Magazine issue 5, "Gandalf Was only A Level 5 M-U"

The meme is 40 years by now.

What do yo think of this screencap? Better?

You know Chinese history in the 19th century? That's the fate of Earth in this SPAAAACE campaign.

What would be the opposing forces in this setting, instead of fire and ice? Sky and earth? Clean and dirty?

That's a dark fucking setting.

One interesting aspect of this is the magic/mythical beings. GRRM drew very strongly on traditional European folklore/mythology for this stuff; he didn't just do elves/dwarves/orcs. The giants, the CotF, and the Others in his stories have a lot of Celtic/Nordic inspiration.

But if he did a series steeped in Russian history/folklore, presumably that would change. The CotF would be more like the Slavic leshii or vila or something, maybe a mix of the two. The dragons would probably be more like the Slavic zmej, multi-headed and associated with storms/lightning more than fire. I'm not sure what the giants would be like; giants aren't a major fixture of Russian folklore. Wargs would probably be largely the same, as animal control/shapeshifting was a big thing in many Russian tales. The Others/wights would probably be more like upirs/vampires.

There are giants. The oldest bogatyrs are all giants like Sviatogor or Mikula Selyaninovich. They are beings close to earth and elements.

>the land is STEEPED in mysticism. The earth is alive. The animals talk.
Could you expand on that, please?

Vodka and Babuskha

Bolshevism and the Tsar

You're like 800 years too early for that...

The struggle against classism is eternal, comrade.

It's less clear cut, but going by Russian mythology and symbolism I would say Earth and Water. Though keep in mind that both also have a lot of positive connotations and that mud ("moist mother earth") is considered even better. It stands for life.

This made me laugh way harder than it had any right to.

Natural things and unnatural things (undead, lovecraftian horrors from the beyond, gays)

What's real depressing is that grandma's probably right

Where the fuck do I even start with Russian folklore, Anonovich? I know fuck all about it, but it seems incredibly interesting and I want to learn more.

Do you know much about the Novgorod Republic? I know a fair deal about the Novgorod Republic.mi dug in the Novgorod Republic. I could maybe answer some questions about the Novgorod Republic if you're interested.

(It is called Lord Novgorod the Great by the way. Not the Novgorod Republic. That's some Lyach-sounding nonsense.)

That being said isn't Norvos a grotesque caricature of Novgorod? Bearded men with axes. Dancing bears. Inland trading city. Supreme ruler is a priest.

Also - for proper Game of Thrones you really should do the full pre-Mongol Kievan Rus. It was a very interesting setting in its own right, and Novgorod was just one part of it, if one of the more interesting ones. Could say more about it too, though my memory is less fresh. Read Karamzin if you find him in translation. Klyuchevsky.

I live here and I have no idea. Just read some fairy tales. Maybe read some of Pushkin's fairy tales, they're not folklore but they are based on it and have influenced how much of it is perceived. Look up paintings?

All you dudes about Russian mythology this, Russian folklore that: you realize Game of Thrones isn't exactly Celtic folklore galore, right? No reason Game of Samovars here has to be all that authentic. It's more about the culture and history. Hell, I wouldn't mind if it had the same dragons, Children of Forest, giants, etc.

Maybe just dress them up right or something. Dragons in Russian mythology are usually (not always, but usually) multiheaded and almost always (there are very rare exceptions) intelligent, so yeah, maybe change this. But the other things? No reason for that.

Maybe add a race of domovoi. They're like tiny little dwarfs who do the housework, like British brownies. They are married to a ratlike woman called kikimora.

So in the Game of Thrones setting, probably they're just a race of hairy primitive midgets of some kind who were traditionally enslaved by taiga humans. Or if you want to go more mystical, domovoi are like this, but still have magic powers. However they are very servile. Kinda like elves from Harry Potter (but not so stupidly powerful).

How is the caricature grotesque, or at least more grotesque than anything else in asoiaf? They even try to emulate Valyria in the same way the Rus tried to emulate Byzantium.

Funnily we seem to have been more or less okay with gays until Peter I decided to Europe things up. And now you change your minds, leaving us deeply confused on how to fit in. By some accounts anyway.

One thing you may've not considered: Russia is so xboxhueg individual duchies in it were at some points in history larger than Britain (that is, Westeros).

Either focus the story on a tiny region or get ready to invent a hell of a lot more houses and intrigue to go for it because the lazy man's solution of just saying "each house's territory is stretched proportionally bigger, and there's nothing in the inbetween" is silly.

>Children of Forest
Nicholas St. North? Is that you?

Do we have to go full Game of Thrones?

If we have to then okay. I'd say the various wild spirit things would be overwhelmingly dead or out of sight by then. Legitimately weird and magical but basically gone. Maybe they start showing up again.

I'd laugh at the notion of some white haired pretty boy trying to ride Zmey Gorynich though, if we're keeping it remotely true to source.

Svyatogor is life though. But he is also probably dead.

There were some Jews there later on. To make it weirder there were also people who tried to study and learn from their books. Probably just practical stuff but maybe some mystical stuff and magic too. Those people were called the Judaiser heretics. (Zhidovstvuyuschie. Latin alphabet is extremely awful for Slavic languages by the way. Or at least Russian and Polish.)

Remember the Tatars weren't around for a large part of our medieval history. Polovtsy were an adequate preview though. Much more manageable however, and Wildling-like inasfar as they were the ones the princes teamed up against most, other than one another. Less Wildling-like in that they also intermarried with them, hired them as mercenaries, etc.

Wouldn't they rather be "Subbotniks" than that terrible lettersalad?

Not saying it is more grotesque than the rest of Essos. That is just the point: Essos is populated with grotesque caricatures, more exotic than thou. This one is of Novgorod. Matter of taste though.

I hate that screencap with passion

It's basically "le grim grumpy Slavs lol"

Yeah the world was full of scary things, but there was also beauty and adventure waiting

If Middle-Earth was based entirely on "le autistic suicidal Nordic" memes then it would have never been faithful or successful

No. That was a separate, later, less obscure heresy. Who the hell knows what the hell was really going with the Zhidaboos. Subbotniks are better documented and more clear cut by comparison. And not, I think, based in Novgorod?

I'm not saying STICK to Game of Thrones, but the point here was to make "Russian Game of Thrones", not just another Russian fantasy setting. The monsters are okay and all, they just need to keep faithful to the tone, etc.

So zmey, for example, can be the real masterminds behind Valyria instead of serving the humans, or they could be just legends (maybe real dragons are unintelligent), or maybe they're degenerate (like it used to be zmey were intelligent and multiheaded, but with magic on the wane they became regular old dragons).

(also, just to note, you're way exaggerating the prevalence of multiple headed dragons in Slavic folklore. It's mostly that the most iconic of them, Gorynich, is three headed. There are plenty references to single headed ones all over Eastern Europe and Russia).

Giants - probably less monkey men than ASOIAF, giants in Russian folklore are noble and sophisticated. They just can't help causing destruction due to being so big.

Various water spirits would be just the right tone for ASOIAF if you only accentuate how scary they are. Rusalka, vilya, stuff like that. All about drowning people.

Leshy are already plenty ASOIAF as it is, what with being hideous moss covered giants addicted to raping, drinking and gambling.

Domovoi are good. Just make them less magical.

In general, so long as you tone down the obvious magic and make things more like "animals that you could sort of kinda imagine possibly evolving naturally somehow", it fits. On top of that you put magic.

I'm also in favor of Phillip Pullman style witches ruling the taiga, but I say that about every setting.

>I know nothing about Slavic legend but what I've skimmed from Wikipedia and DnD guides

Is it wrong that I was completely fine with the Harry Potter depiction of the villia?

See, I think that the ASoIaF tone is not "less magical" as much as it is "magic is dead". So that's a bit different. Magical things these days are gone, weakened and/or in hiding but might be coming back.

Don't mind the ideas though. What would the Valyria be? As in the place ruled by the dragons? Maybe the Greek land?

Also what is your opinion of Vseslav of Polotsk.

>is it wrong that I have opinion?

No. Especially not about something like this.

Valyria is pretty obviously Byzantium.

This website should be stickied

sacred-texts.com/neu/index.htm#easteur

And don't come back until you read them all

Listen to some Eastern European folk music to enhance the mood