What real-world touchstones have you used for Severos and the Dagger Isles?

What real-world touchstones have you used for Severos and the Dagger Isles?

What real-world touchstones have you used for Severos and the Dagger Isles? I’m struggling to wrap my head around them due to how scant the canon info is.

14 thoughts on “What real-world touchstones have you used for Severos and the Dagger Isles?”

  1. Our Severosi are akin to Mongols – severe steppe folk with a quiet yet honourable disposition. The Dagger Islanders are like the Pacific Islanders – Think Moana.

  2. I’d personally read the Dagger Isles as Mesoamerican, as a sort of post-fall Aztec situation. I’m sure the rail lines there are kind of eerie, cutting through the jungle like that.

  3. My Severosi is essentially Maori, tribal tattoos, signature weaponry (a Waihaka) and language use sprinkled in. I was going to make him be from the Dagger Isles, but someone already had a character from there and Severos still seemed to work well.

    I actually prefer there not being enough information about it since you can make those decisions for whatever you fancy.

  4. I’ve always based the native Severosi on Cossacks, with the cities being a little more like Austria. Mainly because Severos makes me think of Severin from Venus in Furs. So yeah, the Cult of Ecstasy is pretty big in the cities of Severos.

  5. Our Cutter is from Severos, and her player has determined that it most closely resembles the western edge of the Eurasian steppes, more Slavic than Mongol.

  6. For the Dagger Isles I’ve been stashing away old photos from mid-1800s Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka). Two of our PCs are from Severos, so I was going to ask them their thoughts rather than going too far down any path on my own.

  7. I just can’t get the idea of Severosi being Native American-mixed-with-Mongols out of my head. A part of this comes from the idea of this huge tribal society of theirs having A LOT of room for cultural variation, so I like the idea of there being, like, a tribe of Severosi that are inspired by the Navajo, another that’s inspired by the Aztecs, another that’s inspired by the Inuits, all mixed up into a nice Dothraki-esq similarity with the Mongol influence.

    As for DI’s – I used to like Aztec/Mayan influences on them, but more lately a kind of Polynesian/Indonesian flavor comes to mind.

  8. Eric Thornber I had a Skovlander player that went full-Slav for his guy. He actually once described his character’s attempt at stealth as “Slav-squatting his way around”.

Comments are closed.