> Greg Stafford has said (somewhere, don't know exactly) that Seshnela is
> comparable to Dark Ages Europe. At least in technology, but probably in
> society, too.
As a Dark Age historian, I have to second this. I think Rokari culture has *regressed* (as we would see it) from the inbred, chivalrous, courtly behaviour still perpetuated on the Castle Coast. Remember that they are said above all to be REALISTS. Flamboyant displays, elaborate manners, intricate customs and so forth do not naturally endear themselves to the austere, purifying Rokari spirit. They creep in at the top, of course -- such things always do -- but the "Realistic" Rokari way is blunt, crude, rude... eminently human. Life is nasty, brutish and short (unless you're pious), and there's no point pretending otherwise. Look at the way the King treats his Barons. Royal policy is at the level of grasping mediaeval monarchs everywhere: think of Coronation Oaths, and the evils Magna Carta was meant to moderate. The Church might perhaps see poverty as a virtue, and hoard wealth and privilege for itself so that others must do without (and be better for it).
This overt power-clutching self-interest is anathema to the Hrestoli, both the Old Seshnelans of the Castle Coast (who like to keep up an appearance of living lives of gay abandon, courtly ceremonial and chivalric derring-do) and the Idealists of Loskalm (who place great importance in symbols and social ritual as embodiments of the Ideal).
The Rokari scoff at these attitudes, pointing out that they can degenerate into a facade of virtue, concealing vice and weakness within. "Such customs are bloated with decay, and conceal more than they reveal," the Rokari says. "At least you know where you stand with our King. When he kicks in your door, steals your house, rapes your wife and murders your son, he's just doing what Kings always do. Does dressing it up make it any easier for you to bear?" Rokari "knights" are thugs in armour, and they don't bother to disguise the fact.
Of course, you can find some Rokari knights who behave chivalrously: they are perpetuating the old traditions of Chivalric behaviour which are frowned upon by the contemporary establishment. King Vikkard of the Tourneys briefly revived the spirit of Seshnelan Chivalry in Rokari Tanisor, but the decline in power which his fai-neant reign initiated did not endear this concept to the Powers That Be. While not overtly "heretical", chivalrous behaviour is not expected, desired or encouraged. This lack of official sanction, of course, makes the few "good apples in a rotten barrel" feel even more virtuous about keeping it up.
The Castle Coasters are a hangover from the God Learner... [thwack!]. I'm sorry, my Lord, I'll start that again.
The Castle Coasters are the last remnant of the virtuous Kingdom of Seshnela of the First and Second Ages. They have inherited a material and social culture far more elaborate than their present size and power would permit: they have marvellous armour and weapons; they have finery and etiquette; they have a plethora of High Churchly ritual... within the Castles. Outside is mud, and rain, and peasants in huts, the same as anywhere else (or perhaps a little worse, for the poverty of the land). But don't go crying to the Lords to complain...
> [Rokari] are the heart and soul of the Rokari sect of Malkionism, which is
> to Malkionism as Roman Catholicism is to Christianity. I.e., the most numerous
> and perhaps the oldest sect.
Hmm... There are also comparisons with Lutheran Protestants, in that the Rokari Church was born out of a Reformation of the corrupted post-God Learner church of Seshnela, as a deliberate "Back to Basics" movement. They are perhaps "the most consciously old-fashioned" rather than the "oldest" sect, purposely aping the Brithini to cloak themselves in the antique austerity of the Prophet Himself.
Novelty is generally seen as a Bad Thing by religions (the Lunar Way being the notable exception): most will go out of their way to adopt or forge a pedigree stretching back to "pure" Hrestolism or Malkionism, in which the recent "founders" who set up the present Church (Rokar; Siglat) are in fact "reformers", sweeping away the accretions of false dogma and irrelevant clutter which hide True Doctrine from the Faithful.
In real-world terms, we run the Rokari Church like the "Bad Papacy" of mediaeval Europe. But the most strident complaints against the excesses of the senior priests come not from "heretics" but from the purest Rokari believers. And the heresy of the Flagellant Movement (the "World of Losers") is taking one aspect of Rokari belief -- redemption in Solace through suffering in this life -- to extremes. Although we ruthlessly persecuted suspected Flagellants in "How the West was One," for a game set in Rokari Seshnela I'd prefer to have them not yet declared heretical: more a fanatical subcult of Rokarism than anything else. (Along with the purist Whyte Wyzards, another splinter-group).
> Nolos is more like a city state than a duchy and my view of it is like
> historical Venice and Genoa.
I quite concur, though my personal preference for envisioning these places is to cast Nolos as Provence (with all of that foreign culture, looking like a more sophisticated version of "Mediaeval French" Seshnela but much smaller than it), and Handra as Venice (c'mon, guys: a trading port built by "Renaissance Italian" Safelstrans in the middle of a marsh...).
> I like the idea of tea-drinking cultures in the East though: elegant Vormain
> pirates holding tea-ceremonies as they loot ships and make people walk the
> plank appeal to me...
They scare me, but I'm sure they exist. Of course, as a tea-drinking naval nation the Vormaini ought by rights to be dominating the oceans of the world...
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