Early ideas for a game concept
The World
The world of Darkwind is inspired by the southern Baltic Sea region, and the cultures that inhabited it in the 9th and 10th century. While it is located fairly far north, the proximity to the sea gives the region a fairly mild temperate climate. Winter temperatures rarely go much below freezing and snow usually stays around for just a few weeks, but exceptionally cold winters in which the sea freezs over are not unheard of. The landscape is dominated by pine and birch forests, as well as many large stretches of moors, marshes, and heaths.
The region is fairly sparsely populated and somewhat of a wild frontier, but the many rivers and access to the sea allow the scattered small settlements to be very well connected despite the large distances.
The people of The Duchy are taking inspirations from the Saxons. They are culturaly closely tied to the people living on the coast below The Mountsins on the north shorebof the Narrow Sea, speaking a dialect of the same language and worshipping the same gods. They are the most developed people on the Narrow Sea and make upba whole third of the region's population.
The Duchy had been in a state of regular wars with The Kingdom to the south for a very long time, until the Duke submitted to the King 30 years ago, allowing him and his heirs to retain rule over their lands and people in exchange for paying taxes and fighting in his wars, and to worship The Kingdom's god and allow its priests to build temples. Priests of the new faith now have great influence in The Duchy and it's nobles who want to be in good standing with the king and his court, but many people continue to follow the old faith. And many elders still remember fighting in the wars against the Kingdom to defend their independence and have little love for the king and his priests.
The Duke's city in the center of The Duchy is the largest city in the region and home to 20,000 people. The second largest city of 15,000 people on the northern coast is the largest port anywhere on the Narrow Sea, and the main trade center between The Kingdom and the various northern lands.
The people of The Marshes are inspired by the Wends. They mostly live in small villages and their largest towns are considerably smaller than the big cities of The Duchy. The people of The Marshes and The Duchy have been raiding each other every couple of years longer than anyone can remember, but these usually were attacks by single tribes rather that full out wars between the two countries. With The Duchy now being fully integrated into The Kingdom, the king has been eying expanding his realm into The Marshes. But the nobles of The Duchy have been warning him that with the difficult terrain and the widely spread out settlements, such an undertaking might be a lot more difficult and take considerably more time than he expects. To the southeast of the Marshes lie the Great Plains, whose people have launched many raids into The Marshes in recent generations, but as they are getting increasingly bolder about raiding the rich cities of The Kingdom, several nobles of The Marshes have started trying to win the raiders as allies against their common enemies to the west.
The people of the Great Forest take inspirations from the Balts. There is much less information about these people from this period than there is about the specific tribe of the Lithuanians from a few centuries later. But since these converted to Christianity much later than the rest of Europe, I am drawing on them for references as well. The people of the Great Forest are the most remote of all the cultures on the Narrow Sea, and mostly stay in their native woodlands and don't sail to other lands as much as the other peoples. They are not closely related to either their neighbors to the south or the west, speaking a unique language and worshipping their own strange gods that many foreigners believe to be demons.
The people inhabiting the coast below The Mountains are inspired by the Danes. They are close relatives to the people of The Duchy and have traded with them and raided each other for a very long time. Their opinion of The Duchy has greatly decreased since they submitted to conquest by The Kingdom and adopted its new faith, whose priests are very unwelcome north of the Narrow Sea.
The Northlands are home to a people that has some very loose references to the Finns, and have much more in common with the Hyperboreans from Robert Howard's Conan stories. They are unusually tall with white skin and pale hair. Few outsiders have visited their cold, distant homeland, but they occasionally sail south to the Narrow Sea and the shores of The Kingdom to trade or raid for slaves.
The Great Plains are the lands of mounted nomads inspired primarily by the Magyars. They only migrated to the western plains two generations ago, when they quickly conquered the small local tribes that either joined them or were enslaved. Since then they have raided deep into the lands of The Kingdom every year, as well as The Marshes and even the Great Forest. At the same time, they also sometimes trade with goods from the distant East, but there is always a worry that they will come back to burn and pillage the next year.
The Kingdom is inspired by the Carolingian Empire of the Franks. They had frequently been at war with The Duchy for a good century before the Duke submitted to the King's rule 30 years ago. The current king had plans to continue the conquests to subjugate the Marshlands as well, but for the last 10 years has been greatly occupied by fighting off raids from the Great Plains people.
Various random snippets
The people of the Great Forest are inspired considerably by the Pagans from Thief. The new faith of The Kingdom has some similarities to the the Hammerites.
The four main port towns on the Narrow Sea are inspired by cities from the Forgotten Realms. Baldur's Gate for The Duchy, Luskan for The Mountains, Telflamm for The Marshes, and Mulsantir for the Great Forest.
Drawing on the energies of the Chaos to cast sorcery and reshaping reality always has the side effect of corrupting the surrounding environment and nearby creatures, causing madness and mutations in living things and even erroding stone and metal with repeated exposures. Heavily corrupted objects and creatures can even spread the corruption to other things and places they come into contact with. This concept is taken pretty much directly from Warhammer and Stalker.