When Nomads become Peshwah

[aldarron]

Hmmm...I was really liking the Ben Hassock/Afridhi connection. Especially if this could mean Baron Wesley is hiding in the Afridhi Empire.... :twisted:

The whole things a bit tricky, but the Ben Hassock don't really fit as Afridhi because they are tribal raiders of Blackmoor going back at least 5 centuries. So they must be fairly closeby. Not a slowly spreading conqueror from the far west.

Any chance of getting to see these notes? 8) :mrgreen:

Ye old cut and paste:


Dervishes: Fanatically religious Nomads who have +2 on hit dice and
also never retreat unless three 6's are rolled. They will be led as per Bandits with the following exception: Any band of Dervishes wi~l
have a 50% chance of having a M.agic-User leading them, as well as a
Troll (die 5-6) amoung them. They will defend their lair until outnUJlllbered
4 - 1 without thought of surrender. I f in the open, there will
be a ~5% chance that they are escorting a wagon train or rrom 2 - 1'2
Wagons with 1000 - 6000 GP in each wagon. Wagon Trains will be guarded
by an additional 10 orcs per wagon. Wagon Trains will always be lead
by either a Fighting Man (die 1-4 Superhero, 5-6 Lord) or a Magic-User
(1-2 Sorcerer, 3-4 Necromancer, 5-6 Wizard) with a 50% chance for
either.

One minor correction. The Barrier Swamp is not Ritchie's invention, as it appears on the FFC map. Also, as mentioned early in this post, the Peshwah are placed to the south east next to the label for the "Grand Kingdom".

Great catch. Thanks for pointing that out. I always forget about those maps because I don't have a physical copy (I guess it didn't come with the '77 print).

What I think I see is a map drawn and hand colored by dave with his pencils (ala his description on pg 26) and a second B&W map prepared from it by judges guild.

The colored map shows a much smaller barrier swamp. since some of the hexs are only partly colored I assume that was the size Dave intended. So the swamp wouldn't have been at all impassable until it expands with the sinking.

Both maps show "nomads of ten" (in yellow for desert?) directly opposite loch glomin. This is The The Plains of Hak on the new map, and good evidence that the Nomads of Ten must be (now at least) peshwah.

The B&W map puts the Peshwah to the south of the wurm river and the VOA and Dragon hills, while marking the area east of the Wurm as "to the grand Kingdom".

That works, I think. If the "eastern Hak" is originally The VOA and some area east of it, more or less bounded by the Wurm, that leaves a wide corridor commecting directly to Thonia. It shrinks the size of it considerably but....

But yeah, things were do definately seem to have been changed along the way. Actually what is the most fascinating is how many of the original concepts were in fact retained in the later versions. I think the differences in the version you describe occur somewhere between 1970 and 1975. As you know the FFC also includes the first draft of the Blackmoor map, which is different from the FFC fold-out map which I refer to.
...
The Peshwah Tribes from the DA modules/ZG books do indeed fit very
well with the various earlier concepts. However based on what you have provided above, it seems clear that things were moved around quite a bit.

OTOH, the DA modules/ZG books specify that the Afridhi invasions have pushed the various tribes to the east, so this could perhaps be an in-game explanation for their shifted locations? These books are set 30-35 years later afterall.

Brilliant observation Herr Viking! Since the Sufz seem to be a good fit for the FFC Nomads of Ten, one could easily suggest that they moved to the eastern Hak after the Afridhi invasions.

It would also be quite possible that the "Eastern Hak" could have expanded at this time from a relatively small strip of land occupied by the Bortai to its later size. Assuming the territory between the great kingdom and Blackmoor was largely abandoned by Thonian settlers (perhaps the farms had failed), it could have been claimed by the Sufz.

Again, the FFC map showed something I hadnt noticed when I wrote the first post. The Nomads of Ten label is placed close to the Qulaam holdings, not far from the Irfat. But ofcourse if we assume that tribes have been moved around as a response to the invasions, there could be multiple links here. OTOH, the Irfat are considerably war-like, and I could easily see them allying with the Duchy of Ten against Blackmoor, especially during the first Coot invasions when Ran has not yet taken over that Duchy.

Maybe. Will give it more thought but at the moment am still favoring the Sufz.

There is one key difficulty that has to be addressed, that being that the Nomads of Ten and the Horsemen of Peshwah are on different sides in this war. While that doesn't mean that they were actually fighting each other, it still has to be explained if we are going to say the Nomads were Peshwah.

Obviously we are (as usual) probably making the mistake of overestimating the amount of thought Arneson, Ritchie and Dustin may have put into all of this, but its more fun looking at it like a puzzle in this way, isnt it? 8)

-Havard

Definetly! I think the associations were more subconcious than deliberate, but it would be great to iron out a consistent narrative.