Greek/Byzantine/Rhōmaiōn Medieval Fantasy

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How is this *functionally* different? I don't care if it's just a change in aesthetics.

Alright, fair enough. The main ideas I'd personally like to use is that of Age, Wealth, and Position.

Age: The Byzantine Empire can practically be thought of as just the final child of Alexander's empire. After Alexander died the Successor Kingdoms took over and then were slowly devoured by Rome. Once reunified under Rome they quickly became the true economic and cultural center of the empire as they had always had a much larger population and more trade than western Europe. The fall of the Western Empire basically left the Greek half on its own and it waxed and waned for about another millennia before finally ending to the Ottoman Turks. In a fantasy setting I'd use the idea of a sort of Eternal Empire, constantly reforming and adapting over the eras but now clearly in its twilight years with little hope for one last renaissance. Instead of small kingdoms of loosely connect nobles you'd have a centrally powerful empire fighting other empires while people schemed from within. A big emphasis would be on this empire wanting to take back "Ancient Lands" that they once held.

Wealth: Constantinople was un-goddamn-believably wealthy. It was the final stop of the Silk Road before Europe and the fall of it to the Ottomans and their subsequent shakier trade relationship with European monarchs is one of the reasons those monarchs started looking for separate routes to Asia, fueling the Colonial Age. A fantasy Constantinople should be a place of absurdly wealthy traders and nobles who are nearly as powerful as any Emperor or General on their own and would have personal mercanry armies to do their bidding. While the heathen hordes eat them away from without these people, as well as foreign traders looking to muscle in, would be fighting each other and eating away the empire form within. Trade would also be much more focused on the sea, allowing for more naval combat than I usually see in Western European inspired games. (Fireships, you know you want one)

Am I the only one who prefers Justinian II to Justinian?

Position: Cosntantinople was on the crossroads of East and West, controlling it nearly completely. Trade and people from all over Europe and Asia would find their way there, as well as culture.

A fantasy setting would allow for a wide variety of creatures and cultures without seeming to......patchwork. If your party is roaming around Not-France and you get into a fight with an Oni, you're probably gonna crack a joke at the DM about his setting's consistency, if not just call him a weeb. Finding out that the rival merchant guide from the east you've been working for is run by a mad Kitsune in Not-Constantinople? Sure, why not? You wouldn't have to go very far to encounter just about anything.

As for aesthetics, I kinda feel like that is enough of a change to warrant trying this kind of setting out more. Sometimes you just want a break from longswords and Gothic Cathedrals, you know?

Rescuing from page 9 because this is my favorite empire/aesthetic as well

Will be mixing in some ancient Greece inspired stuff as well

fug forgot pic

NotConstantinople is the perfect place to launch Emissary missions from. Explore Persia, India, and finally find China or the Mongols

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It's also the focal point for technological expansion thanks to various neighbors and trade

GOTHED

Wouldn't Notconstantinople just be "ConstantiNOPE?"

...I'll see myself out.

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You forgot a major thing.

Culturally, it should be alien to the players if they come from Not-Europe and sometimes...kinda bullshit. Like the fact that the Byzantines continued to use Roman civil offices for official titles and positions long after those positions barely resembled what they had one been. Your players should see similarities to the feudal system that they know and love, but glossed up in this big sheen of Imperial "what it once was".

Moreover, the Byzantines could be very sneaky and pragmatic. This is an empire that may have WANTED to reclaim all of its old lands, but didn't have the manpower and couldn't sustain the countless enemies it would incur in trying to do so. This is why the Byzantines over time tended to try and make today's enemies in tomorrow's friends to deal with next week's enemies.

"Thank you, adventurers, for retaking the lost city of Zenith with your patchwork mercenary army. Here is the 500 gold as per the original contract you were hired under to simply SCOUT the city out. I know that's not enough to pay your army, but I'm not authorized by the senate or the Emperor to give you any more, the contract was quite clear. Oh, and and since you looted the city when taking it I'm afraid I'll have to consider you thieves as well, since it's our city. Tell you what, if your army brings you in to the capital in chains, I'll pay them from my own person treasury what you promised them as well as comfy positions in the Zenith guard. Here that, boys?"

I love it, backstabbing asshole nobles: the setting.

IstNOTbul

The Byzantines...are a bit weird to look at. Historians for much of the 17th-19th(and even 20th) centuries tended to exaggerate how backstabby they could be(often making the argument that it proved some dishonest trait in the Greek character that showed that the ancient Greeks clearly HAD to be Germanic and replaced by mongrels) but there is no denying that the Byzantines had a strategic desire to see their enemies fight each other. Internally, I'd say they had no more or less infighting than many other dynasties or empires.

My main setting is basically Russia circa 1500. I fucking love Eastern Medieval shit.

Yes. They were both kinda terrible, but Justinian II was incredibly unlucky and Justinian I simply lucky.

But Justinian I had good generals and a good historian, so he wins, I guess.

>Army of paladins come through to kill the Lich Caliphate and retake the Holy City
>Ok fine, but promise you won't break or take our shit?
>Get them to promise
>They immediately start breaking and taking my shit
>Take the holy city.....for like a year. Lich retakes shit basically immediately
>More paladin armies come through to try again, more breaking and taking of our shit on the way
>One gets lost and sacks our capital, breaks up our empire into a bunch of shit-tier little kingdoms
>Spend fucking decades rebuilding the empire
>Unending fucking hordes of nomad orcs come in and take everything over while we're weak and reeling
>Fucking paladins

That's Istanbul.

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Ranging from "absolutely barbarian" to "better than the original", what's the verdict on the Latin Empire?

Not Constantinople

Now it's Istanbul

"Hey, George!"

"Yeah, Charles?"

"You know how the Byzantines are keeping the Saracens from moving into Europe?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's break their empire into a bunch of shitty pieces and run it half-assed ourselves!"

"That's a right nice idea, mate!"

300 years later

"Fucking Ottomans, how'd they get into Europe?!"

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>often making the argument that it proved some dishonest trait in the Greek character that showed that the ancient Greeks clearly HAD to be Germanic and replaced by mongrels
But the Brits are Germanic and they're far more perfidious than the Byzantines could ever hope to be.

Let's agree on Konstantinyye

Congrats, you have a child's understanding of the 4th crusade. The byzantine empire was already falling apart at the seams and half the periphery would have rebelled, Venice or no.

The ottomans were being kept at bay so poorly that the greeks had to beg normans to help them in the first place, and they still managed to lose more land while the franks weren't backstabbing them.

Also Justinian I had a crazy competent wife.

I have a gaming buddy who wants to start an Ars Magica game in 1190s Greece, so please, tell me all about this.

Hey, even old New York was once New Amsterdam

Why they changed it? I can't say.

It is known. brits are faggots.

this is a myth

Actually I think people just liked it better that way.

But don't let's start with that right now, I've got a weak heart

"Awaken, my basilieus."

I mean, no.

They only changed the name to Istanbul way after the period this is supposed to represent.
It was STILL Constantinople at that point, what's more, it's only recently that there aren't people who were around when it was Constantinople. It's only in 1928 that Turkey started saying it was definitely Istanbul.

I mean, they didn't.
They didn't pay attention to them at all, there was like ONE noteworthy historian of the Roman empire in the east at the time, and he focused a lot on politics which meant that backstabbing got a lot of attention.

And I mean, Irene on her own is like... three Frances.

Okay fine, but why did Constantinople get the works?

Because of its huge strategic value and cultural importance.

But that's nobody's business but the Turks.

Plus Istanbul is just from a greek phrase at the time meaning "into the city". Basically the greek were just calling it "The City" like folks in NYC do. Same thing, if you're anywhere near it people will know exact which city you mean.

Backstabbing nobles who have NEVER EVER EVER EVER been outside one city. (Well, some of them may have villas)

Have heavy urbanization, an upperclass who doesn't speak the same language as the people outside of the city, a government that runs on a THIRD language, and academics who are just kind of doing their own thing language wise.

Campaigns could take place entirely in the city among the working class poor and outside travellers, in districts the upper classes have never seen, where the food is sold in stalls by people who are very adamant that this is actually meat.
Or in the grand palace, an entire city unto itself, bloodstained backstabbed bodies draped in purple silk.

eh, its nobodys business but the Turks.

maybe they liked it better that way?

>Hey, if I make the same joke that everyone has already made 20 times in this very thread, maybe it'll become funny again?

Didn't Vampire: the masqurade have a campaign set in called Constantinople by Night?

There is so much shit you could do with that, Gangrel Varangians, Brujah crusaders, Toreador and Ventrue Byzantines, Ravnos Bogomils etc.

sauce? Most of my readings have implied it to be so. I'm open to refutation, though.

It's not so much that she was crazy competent as it was her looking good compared to all the cucks around her, most notably Justinian himself.

That's fair.

>Let's agree on Konstantinyye
Byzantion
Byzantium
Alma Roma
Konstantinoupolis
Konstantia
Ipolis
Sarigrad
Stamboul
Istanbul

you got a pdf of that user?

Just wanted to say this thread is really helpful to me.
My setting is basically Rome just after the battle of Adrianople but notes for my setting's Not!Constantinople is really helpful!

Thanks again/tg/!

What they kept alive was something interesting. It was Roman in so many ways... yet it produced its own unique style or politics, culture, language, art, warfare, and so on.

Their expeditions against foes both old and new are incredible. With such influence, they pressed even mighty powers like the Franks to keep Greek as one of their court languages. Slave trade going to the Middle East and further into Asia gave the Lombards reason to fight even the Pope in his lands in an effort to make good coin off the Byzantines.

They were Veeky Forums as fuck too

They followed the trend of using foreigners in the military well after their Latin brothers fell to the West. As new barbarians came and the old ones turned to the light of their own civilization new faces showed up in the cavalry, infantry, and archer portions of the Byzantine Empire. Norsemen exploring the Black Sea, Steppe Tribes seeking new lands, Arabs and various African peoples seeking new trade partners, Germanic tribes still finding their way well after the main migrations ended... the Byzantine Empire was a way for many to forge a new life.

The waxing and waning of the Empire was harsh though, so living/working there would only be good during certain times.

Their affinity to the color purple as one of royalty and power stuck around well after the Empire fell in the 15th century. Called Tyrian purple, the shit was worth so much money that the Byzantine state did its best to regulate, train court dye makers, and monopolize its creation. To be born as Byzantine royalty was to be "born in the purple".

The reason it was so prized has many origins. The one I like the most was the dye's resilience in sunlight. The harsh sun would only make the dye appear more vigorous and bright rather than fade away. It's a bromine compound with fascinating chemistry for any scientific folks out there

If I were to create a story or game based on them, it would be best in a time right before the Byzantine campaign against the Vandals. The Vandals were a people who are believed to have come from Poland or Belarus. They migrated so far as to sack Rome not once but twice before ending up in North Africa.

Imagine a massive migration of pale, blonde and brown haired Europeans showing up to become the dominant class of people in North Africa. They brought a form of Christianity known as Arianism. If you like theology and "heresies" look into it.

But the idea of a Greek flavored Roman Empire sailing across the Mediterranean to fight a Germanic ruled kingdom in North Africa is amazing. The ideological differences are profound too, so there would be plenty of good lore and flavor to add into whatever story or game that would be written

IIII The horror, it should be IV