From what you've pointed out, it's difficult to both keep the non-Germanics and not keep them. But I think that you should keep them. This is because from what I understand, an AMAT story doesn't necessarily mean that it's only focused on one place. I mean, you might want to keep the other non-Germanics because then it's easier and a bit more realistic. *
Not keeping them, though, would be a little chaotic. You may have to not describe some events in extreme detail and have to stretch out people's Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
Then again, I'm not very familiar with any other mythology other than the Norse and the Greek ones. I've read a bit of Slavic and Finnish mythology, but not much.
The trouble is that in this world, all Germanic myths are true.
For one example of how this is a problem, it is a Norse (and possibly by extension, Germanic) belief that the earth was made from the corpse of the frost giant Ymir by Odin and his brothers, so in my universe, the myth is true—the world was literally Ymir's body at one point in time.
On the other hand, however, the Greeks believe that the earth is the living body of the goddess Gaea, which directly contradicts the Ymir myth. Because Ymir is true, Gaea has to be false.
It just feels unfair to me to put people with false or intangible beliefs in a world alongside people whose beliefs are true and provable.
edited 30th Mar '11 8:42:35 AM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.Oh, yes, I understand your problem now. At first I thought that only the Germanic myths were true. That didn't include the non-Germanics. I'm stupid. I'm sorry.
I can't really help much, but let me tell you this, if you don't already know and if it's somehow useful to you:
I'm sure that you're aware of the Christian Creation myth, the one about God making everything for six days then resting on the seventh. Well, in the first chapter of Genesis, that's what you'll see. He created light and dark in the first day, separated the sea from the sky in the second, created land and vegetation in the third and so on and so forth. On the sixth day, he created Man. Humans. Adam and Eve. And on the seventh, he rested.
That's the first version. On the second chapter of Genesis, you will see a different version. It says that Adam and Eve were created first, then everything else came after. I know that everyone accepts the first creation story rather than the second.
My old religion teacher told me that these oldest stories in the Old Testament* were created because the first Israelites were curious of things. They were thinking, "Why is this happening to us?". "Why are we slaves under the Babylonians?" And because of those questions, they sought out their God, and some intelligent people wrote their 'Bible'.
I'm just saying that you have to decide on which set of myths you really want to be true. I can't think of any other way to keep from making the myths contradict each other, so just settle on one. For example, if you decide that it was first Ymir's body, then you can say that that is the actual truth, but no one in your world knows so. The Greeks believe that it is Gaia, but in truth it is just Ymir's corpse.
Or, you can just mix and mash them in, but I don't recommend that. That would be extremely misinforming and just plain wrong. XD By mixing them, I mean taking in bits of one mythology and mixing it with another. Like how the world was created out of Chaos/Ginnungagap. Ymir sprang out of Chaos and - and I can't really go on anymore.
edited 31st Mar '11 11:15:49 PM by theindefiniteone
Actually, yeah, only the Germanic myths are true and provable. The non-Germanic myths are either false (as in the case of Gaea, because Ymir directly conflicts it) or intangible (belief in Jesus, which doesn't conflict with Norse myth).
When I say that a belief is intangible, I mean that it is impossible to prove true or false, or impossible for anyone to observe.
I'm not worried about the contradictions themselves, I'm just worried about how unfair it is to put people whose beliefs are false and/or intangible next to people whose beliefs are true and provable. The latter have power over the former.
Here's a better example of this in action: In Norse myth, the universe is nine worlds connected by a giant ash tree named Yggdrasil. Non-Germanics don't believe this. But if you doubt Yggdrasil, all you have to do is get in an airship * and fly out far enough to see the tree, or fly to another world.
If you're non-Germanic, you have to either not have access to airships or believe in Yggdrasil, because with an airship you can and will see Yggdrasil with your own eyes.
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.I think I may have come up with a possible solution. Instead of isolating the Germanic world, or construct a completely new geography altogether, Take a Third Option and do both—replace the neighboring non-Germanics with constructed Germanic equivalents.
It's still a crude idea so I'd have to alter the constructed cultures to be more appropriate for the places in which they'll exist, but it feels like it could work.
edited 1st Apr '11 8:07:42 AM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.Yeah, I guess it is unfair to put a proven true belief next to unproven false ones. However, the fact that you call it a Germanic AMAT is enough warning for some people, I guess.
And I like your Steampunk idea. It sounds really cool.
But on the Take a Third Option part, I don't think that that would be any more fair to the others. I mean, replacing them and making them more Germanic-y... But it's just what I think.
Yes, it does feel like a slap to the face to all the non-Germanic groups that were invaded and displaced by Germanics (ie, the Celtic groups living in the British Isles), but it's the only option that works reasonably well.
I'm thinking about putting the Angles and Saxons back where they came from (thus, changing the course of history all the way back in the Migration Period) and just removing the British Isles altogether.
I don't mind changing around the map in the non-Germanic regions, it's just Scandinavia and Germania that I want to preserve.
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.Why not just keep all the cultures and simply focus only on the Germanic ones? All the others are there, it's just not their story. And they have their myths, they are just wrong.
I don't see much of a problem with that. As you said, they are really only there so that you'll have someone to plunder.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent."It depends—did they have babysitters and people named John (Ultimately from Hebrew Ievan or some such) in ancient germania?
By Germanic I mean the ancient, deeply-rooted group of cultures that the languages are closely associated with, like the Norse myths. At the time, America as we know it did not exist, so any Anglo-American legends would certainly not exist.
edited 9th Apr '11 7:34:37 AM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.Do you know the plot of Der Ring Des Nibelungen, and are you going to include that in your AMAT canon (e.g. there would actually be nine Valkyries, called Brünnhilde, Schwertleite, Siegrune, Waltraute, Rossweise, Ortlinde, Gerhilde, Grimgerde and Helmwige)? That would be awesome
Loosely.
I may or may not include Wagner's stories as part of Asgardian history, depending on how much they conflict with Norse mythology. I probably would, but the myths take authority, so anything that conflicts with myth has to be altered or removed.
The way I see it, the Valkyrjar are innumerable, since the number is different in every story, and there doesn't appear to be any explanations for where they come from. * So Wagner's nine Valkyrjar may be included, but not be the only ones.
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.(a little off topic, but...)
If I were the one writing this Germanic AMAT and Der Ring Des Nibelungen contradicts Norse Mythology even in the slightest bit, I wouldn't include it. If it's supposed to be an AMAT, I don't think one should just include little bits and pieces of the mythology. It should be the whole thing, or none at all.
(please go on. I actually have yet to research on Der Ring Des Nibelungen, so I'm not help here)
Der Ring is Wagner's invention and is thus essentially a fanfiction of the myths, not myth itself. That's why I'm a little iffy on whether or not to add Wagner, but if I do, the myths themselves will have to take authority.
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.See, the stories having roots in history is the reason why I didn't want to rip out Germania and replace it with a reconstruction. It would be like writing Judaism without Israel.
Ideally, I'd like to stay as close to the myths as possible, but where the myths turn into history (for example, the presence of Atila the Hun, I might have to make changes.)
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.Heh. The Ring: most epic fanfiction ever.
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...I'd recommend listening as well as reading
The music is as awesome as the story.

Alright, so I want to build a fantastic alternate world in which All Myths Are True, specifically the Norse/Germanic myths. All of it is true, including the cosmology, so my world is literally nine lands connected by a giant ash tree.
Working title for the entire constructed universe is either Yggdrasill (the name of the tree itself) or Níu Heimar (Nine Worlds).
Right now, I'm only concerned about only one of the eight worlds, Miðgarð, which happens to be the very one we're living on.
Ideally, I'd like it to be as close to actual Europe as possible, but I have one major problem:
It's easy to make an AMAT out of a place like Japan since Japan has been isolated from the rest of the world for much of its history. This is not true for the Germanic world, which has always been in contact with non-Germanics. This means that the history and culture of the Germanic world is interlinked with that of non-Germanics, like two pieces of cloth sewn together.
What do you all think?
edited 30th Mar '11 3:50:28 AM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.