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MonocleMinotaur Gentleman Adventurer from the Hearts and Minds of Us All Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
Gentleman Adventurer
#1: Nov 12th 2014 at 12:28:52 PM

I truly enjoy the Ruritania/Überwald/Balkans setting, but as an uneducated American I know very little about the various cultures and peoples in the Carpathian region.

I want to recreate a setting similar to the tropes but I would rather it be accurate rather than Castlevania or VanHelsing.

Can you help tropers? What is the Historical basis for these tropes and stereotypes and who or what can I look up for fun and interesting notes?

edited 12th Nov '14 12:29:37 PM by MonocleMinotaur

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MattStriker Since: Jun, 2012
#2: Nov 12th 2014 at 3:15:41 PM

The reason for all the horror tropes is twofold:

One, the look of the region, with a mix of dense forests, forbidding mountains and tiny backwoods villages overlooked by ominous castles (the whole carpathian area is one of history's favorite battlegrounds, so the locals tended to fortify pretty well) just lends itself to the genre.

Two, local folklore is rich and pretty damn dark, drawing on a large number of sources (including a pretty unique mix of graeco-roman and slavic myth).

TheBorderPrince Just passing by... from my secret base Since: Mar, 2010
Just passing by...
#3: Nov 14th 2014 at 2:54:24 AM

Wikipedia is a good starting-point to look up basic facts like history, cultures and folklore of the region. As allways, take what is said in wikipedia with a grain of salt...

What you want to reserch also depends a bit on the story you are going for...

I reject your reality and substitute my own!!!
CookingCat Since: Jul, 2018
#4: Apr 25th 2020 at 7:19:18 PM

It is okay if I mention the Mediterranean in the intro sentence of Ruritania along with Central Europe and the Balkans? Because both Central Europe (because of Slovenia) and the Balkans overlap with it, and many examples are Southern European, but not Balkan.

Edited by CookingCat on Apr 26th 2020 at 2:44:50 AM

YourBloodyValentine Since: Nov, 2016
#5: Apr 26th 2020 at 1:58:31 AM

You can try and have a look to the book "Danube" by Claudio Magris. He's an italian literary critic, expert on Central European culture, who describes a travel along the Danube (the river which flows through almost all the regions you are interested in), with many historical, literary and cultural details. There's very little about folklore, but I think it's very useful to get not only information but also the 'flavour' of the cultural environmnent. And it's way more readable and engaging than Wikipedia. (The book is available in English)

By the way, the classical Ueberwald setting is inspired by the mountainous parts of the area (the Carpathians), usually neglecting the vast plain which lies in the middle (the carpathian range is a sort of half circle which surrounds the hungarian plain). It's a pity, because that plain has great potentialities as a setting: vaguely similar to the russian steppes, vast, with tiny villages scattered from one another, wide horizons, majestic rivers, an interesting history and folklore,a horse culture which has no parallels in Europe... There is at least a horror story which uses this setting, "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood, and it works. Try and read it, it's great.

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