So I am will soon be running a Siberian colonization campaign where the characters are settling a frontier town in the Siberian wilderness. I am not too familiar with either slavic or Siberian myth and I plan on introducing some supernatural horror elements to the campaign. The game will be set around 1830-1850, so I was wondering what foes to throw at my players other than barbarian tribesmen. Also if there where an myths or ruins of of an ancient civilization in that area or some other plot hooks that I might be able to use.
Siberian colonization campaign help
Ian Diaz
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Grayson Hill
'Siberia' is a pretty big place at that point in time. It pretty much encompassed the whole of Russia's Asian territory. Any particular part of Siberia?
David Butler
all-creatures.org
>Cannibalism was absolutely a real problem in Siberia, because some tribes were human eaters indeed. Rare cases of cannibalism had been registered by Soviet authorities even in the 1950s.
Benjamin Morales
Look up the native folklore on the area in which the Butugychag gulag was established. The valley was cursed with death and haunted by malevolent spirits, in the form of radiation from the heavy uranium deposits which eroded out of the landscape.
I can't find a reliable source, but supposedly when the native Lamut people discovered the valley (being reindeer herders they generally avoided the climatically extreme mountainous hinterlands between the Kholyma river and the Sea of Okhotsk), the clearings in the stunted forest of the valley floor were covered with the bones of men and reindeer, presumably victims of the radioactive landscape. Accordingly, 'Butugychag' translates as "Death Valley."
Regardless of whether that bit is true, it's certainly the case that the region of Kholyma and the Russian Far East in general have some pretty crazy folklore. For comparison, the environment that gives us tales of insane cannibal wendigos is temperate in comparison to this region, and even the insanity of arctic folklore was spawned out of a more clement climate.
Thomas Thompson
An arc about consumption being literally caused by a vampire would be pretty good.
Jeremiah Cooper
Actual Siberian here, ready to answer any of your questions.
>I am not too familiar with either slavic or Siberian myth
"Siberian myth" is an incredibly broad blanket term. There is no single cohesive mythology because the native peoples who live in Siberia number in the dozens, and many of them are not related in any way. To know what you're dealing with you need to specify the part of Siberia where you'll be running your campaign. It's generally divided into West Siberia (my homeland, the most densely populated and thoroughly Russified region), East Siberia (that's where most of the natives live; mountainous and sparsely populated) and the Far East (the pacific coast, volcanoes, Japan-like climate in the south and Inuits in the north).
>I was wondering what foes to throw at my players other than barbarian tribesmen
The White-Eyed Chudes are basically the West Siberian dwarves. They used to inhabit the region before the humans came, then, after some fighting, they said "screw it" and moved underground, but promised to return and kick the humans out for good.
>Also if there where an myths or ruins of of an ancient civilization in that area or some other plot hooks that I might be able to use.
Ruins, in Siberia? You must be kidding. We never had civilisations any more developed than Native Americans. Although there are ancient Indo-European cities just across the Urals, the most ancient proper cities that the Indo-Europeans had ever built before splitting into the various tribes.
Leo Sanders
>Siberian colonization campaign
>1830-1850
Charles Reed
>We never had civilisations any more developed than Native Americans.
Carson Nelson
Is that some Tuvan palace? Making low-grade copies of Chinese stuff a civilisation does not constitute.
Robert Diaz
I think that my campaign would likely take place in western Siberia, where towns had been slightly more established, but the area was still quite lawless. The PC's would be foreign nobles or the like, sent to command the Cossack guards. Do you happen to know any local folk lore that might evil a sinister or unsettling feeling in the players. Also, what was the response of the Siberians to the Russian colonization, was there active armed resistance like the apache, Comanche and plains tribes in the west or was it more isolated settlements being assimilated and picked of one by one.
Final would it be plausible to have a ancient lost info-european city on the eastern fringe of the urals?