History Literature / LongRoadNorth

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: The dwarven kingdoms have aspects of {{Scotireland}}, NorseByNorthwest, OopNorth and the Welsh. The Ardalans are loosely inspired by the Roman Empire, Napoleonic France and Germany under Kaiser Wilheim. [[WordOfGod And yes, that elven bartender ''is'' supposed to have a Liverpudlian accent.]]

* LowFantasy: Owes much of its inspiration to the later {{Discworld}} novels, and a good bit of thought has gone into the economics of the setting.

* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: Played straight, but de-{{Flanderised}} and justified; the dwarves developed their skill at mining and masonry because there's not much else to build with in their territory, and most of the good iron ore on the continent is in their lands. Also, some of them actually ''shave.''

* ShoutOut: Chapter 3 should make it fairly obvious that the author is a massive DwarfFortress fan.

* TheEmpire: The Ardalans. Subverted a bit; the DeadlyDecadentCourt and its endemic ChronicBackstabbingDisorder doesn't have an especially high body-count, and the throne and senate have been occupied by individuals of any stripe from absolute monsters to SmugSnake(s) to ReasonableAuthorityFigure over the years.
* TheFederation: The Ramelans are explicitly one of these, and in practice the dwarven kingdoms function much like one as well.
* ThrowItIn: WordOfGod says that Mistelside would have ended up looking very different if the throwaway line about rain-shadows hadn't set the author to thinking about the striking parallel to the good burghers of Liverpool and their relationship with the Welsh, at which point the thought of Scouse elves caused him to giggle like a moonbat for several minutes.

* FantasyGunControl: Averted. Gunpowder's quite costly thanks to Veropa depending heavily on imported sulphur for its manufacture, but firearms definitely exist.

* OurElvesAreDifferect: Well, more down-to-earth and reasonable, anyway. [[MindScrew And some of them are Scouse.]]
* [[MedievalEuropeanFantasy Renaissance European Fantasy]]

* FiveRaces: Subverted. Race is ultimately subordinate to nationality, and all five have more in common than not.

* AnAxeToGrind: Subverted. Sven carries one that ends up in use as an ImprovisedWeapon on occasion, but its primary purpose is felling trees (or digging; see below), and he prefers to wield a sword.

* TheEmpire: The Ardalans. Subverted a bit; the DeadlyDecadentCourt and its endemic ChronicBackstabbingDisorder doesn't have an especially high body-count, and the throne and senate have been occupied by individuals of any stripe from CompleteMonster to MagnificentBastard to ReasonableAuthorityFigure over the years.

%%* BadassGrandpa: Sven.

* OurElvesAreBetter: Well, more down-to-earth and reasonable, anyway. [[MindScrew And some of them are Scouse.]]

* AerithAndBob: We've yet to meet two named characters from the same place, but Sven's name and accent don't exactly match. Justified since his father traveled quite extensively and eventually settled down quite a ways from home.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Averted, and one of the author's PetPeeveTropes.

* BadassArmy: The Dwarven Pioneer Companies are basically an army of BadassCrews.

'''Contains Examples Of:'''

* BadassGrandpa / CoolOldGuy: Sven.

* DungeonPunk: Insofar as a LowFantasy version of this trope is possible, anyway.

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