tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post7906655533223689376..comments2024-03-29T07:58:31.156-04:00Comments on GROGNARDIA: REVIEW: Tharbrian Horse-LordsJames Maliszewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-89518299557395877892009-09-26T17:41:09.775-04:002009-09-26T17:41:09.775-04:00The Irish have a great love of horses, even today....The Irish have a great love of horses, even today. It's very notable, and in my homeland Northern Ireland it's something that distinguishes Catholic-Irish from the partialy Anglo-Saxonised Irish (Ulster) Protestants, who have no particular affinity with horses. You can often identify Catholic suburban areas by the horses grazing on scraggly patches of grass among the rows of houses. This love of horses is most extreme among the gypsy-like semi-nomadic Irish Travellers.<br /><br />So, to me, 'Celtic horse nomads' is not a contradiction at all; I rather suspect that's exactly what the earliest Celts were.<br /><br />On topic - I set most of my Wilderlands games in Tharbrian territory, this product is very tempting.Simonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01173759805310975320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-46684195729128991562009-09-26T15:33:13.523-04:002009-09-26T15:33:13.523-04:00It's Iaroslav Lebedynsky. I verified exactly w...It's Iaroslav Lebedynsky. I verified exactly who he is : an Ukranian-born french historian. I need to have look on his historiographica background.Nicolas Dessauxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03010015806129652185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-19722875295033562172009-09-26T13:45:53.447-04:002009-09-26T13:45:53.447-04:00Nicolas: who was the archaeologist? Masson, Pugach...Nicolas: who was the archaeologist? Masson, Pugachenkova and their coterie had a hard time presenting Turkic (or Irano-Turkic) culture to their Russian audience - at least since the Great Game years of the 19th century the Turko-Mongol strand of Central Asian/steppe culture was denigrated in Russian newspapers and literature, so that anyone looking for ancestors for the Rus and Khazars would be strongly inclined to find them to be Aryan/Caucasoid, and to consider the Turks + Mongols "foreign invaders."<br /><br /><i>ethnologists among us might balk at this</i><br />...aside from Mongol- and Turkophobia noted above, I don't see why: it's a fantasy game, and fantasies thrive on hybrids/chimaeras. I think it's actually an under-appreciated tool in roleplaying: if you sit between two archetypes you can play up one or the other as needed... which now I think about it might inform a discussion of demihumans and demihumanophobia going on in other threads here :)richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13517340075234811323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-12510718399561841382009-09-26T11:58:24.329-04:002009-09-26T11:58:24.329-04:00I recently read a book on the history of nomadic p...I recently read a book on the history of nomadic people from the asian and european steppes, by a russian archeologist. I was intersted to see that, from physical anthropology point of view, most of them during antiquity and early middle-age were described as blonde 'europoids' people rather than asiatic 'mongoloids', with skeleton evidences. From Hungary to China, these people speaked a wide varity of languages, mostly linked to Iranian (iranian speakers Alans invaded Brittany!). So celtic / mongols is not so much a fantas mixture than a nearly accurate relation of a possible antique scythic people.Nicolas Dessauxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03010015806129652185noreply@blogger.com