[CONAN] Cosmopolitan Hyborian Age?

[Supplement Four]

Sometimes I wonder if the settings of most fantasy RPGs involve a world that is too well traveled. People seem to have no trouble striding a horse and hoofing it to the next town, or even further. I would think that long distance travel would be a serious subject, never taken lightly, always planned out. Because, Death is a constant companion on the road.

I'm not much of a historian. Just how cosmopolitan was the ancient real world, anyway?

Thoughts?

 

[Mach5RR]

Look up information on The Silk Road. At 40BC you had the Chinese doing trade with the Roman Empire, who's touch spread all the way to England, while performing trade with the Moors coming up from Africa.

Now, these were specific envoys and traders with specific goals and destinations in mind. In fact, if you want an idea of how this was laid out in game terms, I would recommend A Magical Society: Silk Road from Expeditious Retreat Press.

But this doesn't mean everything in Hyboria was connected:

“What are you working at there?”

“A map,” Conan answered with pride. “The maps of the court show well the countries of south, east and west, but in the north they are vague and faulty. I am adding the northern lands myself. Here is Cimmeria, where I was born. And –”

“Asgard and Vanaheim,” Prospero scanned the map. “By Mitra, I had almost believed those countries to have been fabulous.”

Excerpt From: Robert E. Howard. “The Phoenix and the Sword.”

The majority of Hyboria do no travel. To them, great swatches of the lands around them are surrounded in myths and legends, even though the Road of Kings winds from Aquilonia to Turan. Most people will not travel as that leads to the unknown, with wars being fought, kings men to tax them as they travel, and bandits to rob them if they are not armed. The Vanir are seen as something out of legend to Aquilonians and would not even be recognized in Khitai.
But there will be travellers. Those of their race, such as Conan, struck with wanderlust and a desire to see what is over ... there.

 

[Spectator]

To add about the silk road, no-one travelled from england to china, either. the traders had their routes and zones and contacts. the piece of silk would prolly go through about 20-40 different trading houses before it ended up in britain.