I'm making a not!Europe fantasy setting but I don't really know much about it...

>just Europe overall
I do kind of like this idea of "Europe from somebody who knows nothing about Europe". It would be like getting the ultimate dose of Europe since it would be from a very outsider perspective.

I suppose you could have different time periods living in different areas. Far north and far west, real dark age barbarians stuff, raiders and pagans, Celts and Norsemen and Germanic tribes kinds of stuff. Then the closer inland and east and south, the more sort of developed it gets. More southern areas where its warmer you have proper cities and all the labyrinthine politics that come with it, more Renaissance-era areas. But of course the endless hordes of barbarians in the far off vastlands outnumber all the gunmen of the cities so its balanced, sort of.

>When/where you thinking of stealing from?
A few things stood out as cool to me from European culture.

>Gladiator fights
>Crusades
>Werewolves
>Neanderthals
>Hermetic magic
>Soviets
>Dragons
>Nazis
>Vikings
>Swashbucklers
>The sheer amount of ruins
>Catholic & Orthodox imagery
>Ice age beasts
>Hussars
>Mycenae

Recommendations would be cool
The image in my head is vaguely like 17th-20th century-ish but without particularly effective gunpowder weapons as far as material culture goes

I imagine an incline from semi-industrialized city dwellers to hunter gatherers in the more remote areas

Stuff like bicycles exist but not steam engines

lots of squatting and tracksuits
dog shit everywhere

I don't think Russia counts as Europe.

Clearly you do not have an open mind.

European criminal groups are pretty interesting. Some of the low level antagonists are a blend between gopniks, chavs, ancient athenian youth gangs, and highwaymen.

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>a few things stood out as cool
>Nazis

Oh yeah, so the Soviets get a free pass huh?

I'm just saying, they looked cool as fuck and had badass style.

...that's a lot of very different shit you have there user.

Okay, what I'd suggest is for you to set it in a sort of not!Medieval period, after the fall of a Not!Roman empire that had 17th Century technology (or whatever)

Whereas the Empire used to span most of the known world and bring peace, it fell apart due to decadence, plagues and an over-reliance on barbarians in it's armies.
However, the fall of this empire is way nastier than the fall of Rome, leaving a bunch of ruined cities, and the few pockets of civilisation that are left are isolated and surrounded by savage wilderness.

Each post-imperial state has it's own culture, derived in part from the homogeneous imperial culture, in part from indigenous culture, and in part from the invading barbarians.
Nearly all of the former empire is unified by one central religion, with a few border regions following off-shoots (not!Orthodoxy).

You gotta remember that for a long time, Europe was defined by Rome, so to emulate it you want something similar.

As for reading, that's really a lot. There's nothing I can really recommend that would cover even half of the stuff you listed in any detail. Maybe something about the fall of Rome? Tom Holland's "In the Shadow of the Sword" might be decent, haven't read it but his other stuff is good pop-history.

I'm being memed aren't I?

point taken. I hastily reacted to seeing the word Nazi.

so between Soviets and the Crusades my disdain for you is now predominately LOWER than i had previously displayed. congratulations.

Oh, and when I say not medieval period, I mean more in terms of the politics rather than the tech.
A whole bunch of fragmented sorta-states rather than a bunch of big empires.

As for the other stuff you listed, you would include that by theming your states around those ideas.
Everything I just said was a half-assed attempt to get the broad strokes of "Europe" and to try and set up a framework for including as much of the stuff you listed as possible

Where are you from OP?

Agree.
Apparently the other user can't differentiate between "interesting" and "concur".

>predominately LOWER
That's not how you English, at least pick up a dictionary you stupid twat.

I had something similar user, I settled for a not!france style setting, named after the frankish peoples of course, and the adventurers are in not!provence. The not!italians have decided to break a truce due to an outside influence. The main thing you got to figure out is what sets your setting up to literally be not europe. For example, dragons, they used to rule the damn world in mine, when a god king murdered them all, formed the !notholynotromannotempire about 1k years ago. and it is currently the start of the rennaisance approx

user'S HISTORY OF EUROPE
1/9

So, basically, back in the day you had a series of shining empires stretching across the land, developing art, history, astronomy, math, writing, and all sort of other human endeavors. Like jeweled mantles they spread across the Earth and were bastions of law, order, and civilization.

Europe was not where these empires were located.

Europe was by and large a cold and wet barbarian hinterlands where people were illiterate and stupid. The most they could do was the occasional raid of more civilized lands. One particular raid got massively out of hand and caused a Bronze Age Collapse, but we're not here for that.

Eventually the morons who inhabited the peninsula managed to get themselves organized, mostly because the folks in Crete aped the Egyptians enough and the Greeks started aping the folks in Crete. This gave rise to Greece, a barbarian kingdom of competing city-states who couldn't organize a cohesive nation if their lives depended on it. But what they COULD do is close ranks against outside powers and REEEEEEEEE strong enough while taking advantage of their thoroughly shitty terrain to push back conquerors. This was the two Greco-Persian Wars, where Persia wasted so much money and resources into the wars that it entered a decline. The Greeks couldn't take too much advantage of this, however, as they immediately fell into in-fighting again.

2/9

Now, meanwhile, through osmosis civilization actually spread from Greece throughout other parts of Europe. One of these areas was Macedon, which wasn't nearly as nice or interesting as Greece but which had a FUCKTON more people and really wanted to BE Greece because Greece looked nicer. So a guy named Phil in Macedon decided that he wanted to conquer Greece, and because the Greeks had just fought two wars against Persia and then proceeded to fight a big ol’ war against themselves, he managed to do it, the crazy bastard. But then he died.

His SON, however. Alexander the Great. This guy was a total bro and just loved conquering shit. To make a long story short he basically conquered absolutely everything, all those empires I alluded to previously, except India and China. But that’s okay because India and China aren’t actually relevant yet. But then the crazy bastard then up and died before he could do anything interesting with his empire, like invent rocket ships or something. His empire split apart and the notably weakest one ended up owning Macedon and Greece and maybe a little more.

Now meanwhile civilization had continued to spread and reached a place called Italy where it reached a city called Rome. Rome decided that a good portion of civilization’s ideas were nice but what they really liked was the “conquering” part. So they conquered all of Italy except for Sicily. Then they decided to conquer Sicily but this got them into a war with Carthage (a mercantile empire in North Africa), which Rome won. Then they decided to conquer Spain, but this got them into a war with Carthage, which Rome won. Then they decided to conquer Carthage, but this got them into a war with Carthage, which Rome won.

3/9

To make a long story short, Rome conquered the whole of the Mediterranean, including Greece, Egypt, and the Near East. A guy named Gaius Julius Caesar sort-of tried to become the supreme ruler of Rome but he failed and got stabbed by his best friend. This however pissed off Caesar’s adopted nephew who was also named Gaius Julius Caesar but who went by the nickname “Octavian” to avoid confusing people. Octavian killed the guys who killed his uncle, killed the guys who supported the guys who killed his uncle, and then made himself the supreme ruler of Rome. He renamed himself Augustus.

Around the same time some guy named Yehoshua did some stuff in the Near East that got really popular in Greece, only the Greeks couldn’t pronounce Yehoshua so instead they called him Iisoús, and then they started telling the Romans about this Iisoús guy but the Romans couldn’t pronounce it so they started calling him Jesus. By about this time Yehoshua’s ideas had become a religion called Christianity and after only a LITTLE bit of resistance the entire Roman Empire converted to Christianity probably.

So things for the Empire were pretty good for the next 200 years until basically everything started to go wrong all at once: barbarians to the north, a reorganized Persian Empire in the east, the Western part of the Roman Empire becoming a huge money sink since all the money was made in the East, and a certain moral weakness that happens when you’ve been resting on your laurels for 200 years. The Roman Empire split into two halves, and the Eastern Empire (henceforth called the Byzantine Empire for reasons too complicated to get into) basically let the Western Empire get zerg rushed by wave after wave of northern barbarians.

4/9

Europe entered a Dark Age where the continent was divided into a bunch of petty kingdoms and fiefdoms that had people arguing over who’s dick was biggest while they trampled on the peasants beneath them. But once a few people had decided that they had the biggest dick they then decided to put those dicks to use and arranged things so that instead of the strongest becoming the ruler after they died, their eldest child would instead. Also peasants were trampled on. Did I mention that? That happened. Probably not relevant.

Meanwhile out East a guy named Mohammed had founded a new religion called Islam that had conquered just about everything in the Near East and North Africa and also in Spain, but after the initial push they were pretty chill about things and still let Christians come to the Holy Land if they wanted since Christians brought money with them and money is nice. However they then started taking land from the Byzantine Empire, which asked for help from the Pope in Italy (head of the…it takes a while to explain, let’s just say that there was a big important religious guy), and in return he got a good portion of the fighting-men in Europe to go to the Middle East and start killing people who basically didn’t deserve it. This was the First Crusade. It would be followed by three more but, like most things, the first was the best. Ultimately they were all for nothing as the Byzantines were conquered and replaced by the Ottoman Empire. For some reason this gave some barbarian hicks in Russia the idea that they were the Third Rome, but that idea never really took off and was basically just delusions of relevancy, which is a good way to describe 90% of Russian history.

Also a lot of peasants got trampled on. Probably not relevant.

5/9

Eventually the people in Italy remembered that they used to be Romans and so started to have art and literature and stuff again. This was the Renaissance, and a result of it was getting the folks of Europe to stop acting like dickweeds to each other just ‘cause (that isn’t to say that they stopped, just that they started looking for better reasons than “he looked at me funny”) and instead start getting their shit together. This took a bit, though, but by the end of it the major nations in Europe were Portugal, Spain, France, the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire), Poland, Lithuania, Hungary-Bohemia, the Ottoman Empire, Denmark, and Muscovy. There was also these two shit countries on an island off the coast called England and Scotland. They were constantly fighting each other and constantly broke and the one time England tried to exert any real influence over Europe they got their ass handed to them by a 14-year-old French girl. A lot of peasants got trampled on, but that probably wasn’t relevant.

So the Spanish and the Portuguese managed to push all the Muslims out of Spain and Portugal. Portugal celebrated by going to Africa, India, and China and bringing back all sorts of neat stuff so that they could throw a party. Spain wanted to throw a party with an Afro-Indo-Chinese theme too but Portugal wouldn’t let them use their save spots that they’d set up. So a nearly illiterate moron named Christopher Columbus, who was convinced that the world was much smaller than it actually was, managed to convince the Spanish to give him three ships to sail east and find a shorter route to China. He failed but he did find two new continents in the process. Spain conquered a gigantic amount of territory in these two new continents and named them America after an Italian for no known reason (actually America is named after a Dutch man living in England but no one likes to remember that). Peasants and trampling.

6/9

So Spain became rich, and France (the most powerful nation in Europe) got jealous so France started setting up colonies in America too, and England got jealous of France-sempai and so started setting up colonies in America as well. Also the Dutch drove by and tried to set up a colony but got beaten by fucking England of all nations. And also the Scottish drove by and tried to set up a colony but failed so spectacularly that they ended up having to sell themselves to England to cover their debts (Congratulations! Your ENGLAND has evolved into GREAT BRITAIN!). Denmark also stopped by to colonize a little island in the Caribbean, but no one noticed so they got to keep it. More peasants and trampling.

Spain went bankrupt because they started shipping back way too much gold and it turns out that if you increase the supply of gold too much you decrease its value. Spain still struggles with the after-effects of this to this day. France and Britain fought a war for control of their parts of North America and in the end Britain won Canada where they could get beaver fur. But the war was expensive so Britain started taxing the shit out of their colonies, who didn’t like that and so went to war with Britain and got France and Spain to help out. The colonies won and founded AMERICA (the country). But that’s not relevant to this.

What is relevant is THOSE PEASANTS I KEPT MENTIONING! France was broke as a result of basically 400 years of constant war with Britain (Britain wasn’t doing so hot either). The peasants in France overthrew their King and founded the First French Republic, but they were new at this and it sucked so a Corsican (a weird hybrid between Italian and French) named Napoleon Bonaparte offered to fix the flaws with the Republic and turned it into the First French Empire, which sounds like it’s not a Republic on paper but only because it isn’t – BUT it was still much nicer to its peasants than anywhere else in Europe.

7/9

And in all seriousness, this is basically where all of European history for the past 300 years tracks. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe but failed, but the ideas spread by the French Revolution coupled with the ammunition spend by the French Revolution resulted in major upheavals throughout Europe. The Holy Roman Empire collapsed, became the Confederation of the Rhine, collapsed, became the North German Confederation, and then became Germany. The various Italian city-states likewise unified together to create Italy again. Austria-Hungary came into being into ways way too complicated to go into. Russia managed to fool everyone into thinking it was the major land power of Europe. And Britain, which had fought and won several wars with France, became the predominant naval power of Europe, which is in fact the only power that matters.

Now it turns out that constantly fighting one another means you get creative. Europe realized that it was really fucking strong compared to everywhere else and so started conquering Africa and Asia but ESPECIALLY Africa. They also decided that major wars between major nations in Europe shouldn’t happen anymore, but this basically just amounted to the various generals and admirals and kings of Europe getting blue-ball’d for a hundred years.

the vikings actually found Canada waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay earlier but never settled there permanently.

but please continue. I'm enjoying this.

8/9

It all came to a head when an utter asshole Sebian named Gavrilo Princip killed a guy who was trying to help him and his people and ended up starting World War I because the guy was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria declared war on Serbia, but Serbia was allied with Russia so Russia declared war on Austria, but Germany was allied with Austria so Germany declared war on Russia and figured that while they were at it they might as well declare war on France, but to do that they had to go through Belgium without permission, which resulted in Britain declaring war on Germany. Then a little later the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, and then a little bit after that Italy declared war on Austria. America was uninvolved but Germany, being Germany, decided to start attacking American ships, so America eventually entered the war on Britain and France’s side.

World War I ended with Europe completely exhausted and bankrupt, with Britain and France winning while Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire lost. Russia left the war early because of something to do with Communism or something. Britain and France decided that it was Germany’s fault that a Serbian had killed an Austrian and so made Germany pay war reparations…which it did, and had stabilized its economy by the late 1920s and everything was going fine. Except in Russia where nothing was going fine because it had been taken over by Communists.

9/9

THEN THE GREAT DEPRESSION HAPPENED due to events in America but because of how much the world economy depended on America it reverberated into Europe. A guy with a funny moustache named Hitler took over Germany and decided that this was all the fault of the Jews for really no reason at all, and that it was also all the fault of the Communists, also for really no reason at all. He managed to trick Italy into allying with him, broke every single promise he ever made, with the last straw being when he promised he wouldn’t invade Poland but then did anyway. France and Britain declared war on Germany.

This is World War II, and it is definitely Germany’s fault this time. Basically Hitler was convinced that Germany could conquer the whole world and so by turns declared war on everyone in Europe except Russia, then declared war on Russia, then declared war on America. Eventually Germany was defeated but not before taking down Fascist Italy with it and managing to get most of Eastern Europe conquered by Russia, which was calling itself the Soviet Union now but, really, was still Russia.

After World War II Europe was REALLY broke and could no longer afford to maintain overseas colonies, so bit by bit the colonies broke down and eventually most of the world was no longer under European control. Ironically the conquers who once played tribes and nations against one another now became pawns themselves in a really slow game of chess between Russia and America that America eventually won, causing Russia to commit Sudoku.

A bunch of other stuff has happened more recently but it’s really not all that interesting and no one nation in Europe is really relevant anymore, it requires the entire continent working together to be taken seriously on the world stage.

THE END.

Narrow it down from that list, or combine some stuff. From the looks, Late medieval would be right, Big religious church, led by an all powerful (possibly female) ruler. Crusades of sorts against a sovietic type of incursion that has invaded from the west. You'll probably have to combine vikings and swashbucklers into one, unless they exist in completely different areas, but remember that your players will only see a small part

someone make this into a History of Europe video like the History of Japan video and we are golden.

Valid point

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I can't be the only one who sees a parallel between the Scottish and the Albanians, right?

Or the Rus and the English?

Damn dude, nice summary!

>A bunch of other stuff has happened more recently but it’s really not all that interesting and no one nation in Europe is really relevant anymore, it requires the entire continent working together to be taken seriously on the world stage.

The fuck are these? WooKKKies?

What is European mythology all about? Guys like this seemed huge but then Jesus got even bigger

How to christian european legends compare? Did they blend like Buddhism, Confucianism, and Animism did in East Asia?

The setting I'm making is gonna pull influence from Christianity, Plato, Hermes Trimegistus, and Euro paganism

Plato's social philosophy will be the basis of civilized culture

Christian death, metaphysical, and eschatology beliefs will fill the role of Buddhism

Hermeticism will parallel Taoism's role as the "magical" school

And paganism will be peppered in

The people I'll be playing with are east asian and would appreciate something that sorta makes sense like this

A Thing

European Mythology depends on a) region, b) time period and c) amount of christian pressure.

the legends do tend to build upon each other- rather than blending, the successive generations create crazier and crazier embellishments on their exploits. Example: Spartan King Leonidas didn't fend off 1 million Persians during his last stand, but the far more likely number of 200,000 is less impressive, so someone swelled the numbers for effect.

Paganism is kind of a catch-all phrase for none Christian ideas, so be careful with that. if you're thinking of Druidic ideology, which some of the more popular notions of paganism come from, look to the ancient beliefs of the Celtic Nations.

East Asians ehh. well, then you can relate that there is a similar sense of fierce cultural and regional pride, often defined by nuanced differences in dialect, social customs and cuisine. styles of dress will change within a few hundred miles according to local tastes mixed with historical views on what is an isn't acceptable for men or women to wear.

also, if its a time of "relative peace" that means that the local lords are likely building up their armies and getting ready to invade or counter a rival nation's invasion.

What are some cool exploits from European myths?

Europeans and westerners in general seem to have a boner for super strong guys who can punch anything to death

they REALLY do. read up on the 12 Labors of Hercules as an example of muscle love.

so Europe was kind of a land of crapsack reality for a long time, where a select few held onto EVERYTHING while the masses were constantly living in squalor. the dream of rewarded endurance- of making it through all the shit life throws at you and making it out the other side stronger for it- evolved into gaining the strength to crush your enemies to death real fast.

hmmm...cool exploits. well Odin from Norse Mythology sacrificed an eyeball for the wisdom to foresee the future, and Prometheus from Greek Mythology stole fire from the gods to give it to man, and those always seemed pretty neat to me.

I neglected Romulus and Remus, who were raised by wolves, only for them to have a falling out over their supposed divinity before Romulus murdered Remus then founded the city of Rome. awesome Myth.

these

Communist wiccan steppe raiders riding penny-farthings

That was beautiful and informing user, thankyou!

NOW DO ASIA.

I would include Orlando Furioso, twin-tailed snake princess moors and pic related.

I would actually be interested in this as well, if history-user would be so abliged.