I'll be using ACKS's Sinister Stone of Sakkara for this solo game I'll be running for a bruh~ in my community. Thing is, I'm a sucker for historical fantasy and ACKS is right up my allery for reskinning it or retroskinnig it into a historical fantasy game. Specifically, I hope to eventually use it for Dark Albion and a campaign based off of the Men of Rome series, albeit with low-magic tropes involved. It makes sense, the ancient world view was much more magical than it is now, so Historical Fantasy is not the oxymoron it might be tempted to imply.
And for this game, my bruh~ being an honest to goodness Greek dude whose hometown is Athens, I thought, holy shit. This is Historical Fantasy shit just waiting to happen. So, I threw him an idea for playing a pre-con adventure, and he threw the idea right back at me with a suggestion for setting it in Dodoni, a pretty mystical place in the Greek hinterland.
My only problem is, will it fit a resetting of Sinister Stone of Sakkara? I have this simple notion of the Zaharan's being Sumerians, and Auran's practically are Romans, but for Turos Tem I'm looking for a more historical or real world fit for it. I feel Sakarra's a bit more of a frontierland adventure, something more fitfor Eastern Europe maybe...
Maybe you doods can help a brother out? Any easy real world parallels you could throw my way?
You're absolutely right about Aurans being ersatz romans and Zaharans :: Sumerians. Have you had a chance to check out the Auran Empire primer? It has a full map of the larger Auran Empire world, and it has a lot of similarities to a mediteranean ocean that's been mirrored so the ocean is to the east instead of to the west. Obviously Alex can correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe that puts Sakkara roughly in Northern Africa, near Tunisia.
If I recall correctly, Dodoni is in Epirus, on the western side of Greece. I would go the opposite direction, and place this adventure somewhere between Sisamos and Fasis on the Black Sea, with the hinterland either being the border with Lydia or Persia. This would make the Sumerian connection more plausible and it places more emphasis on the players if there isn't a major polis that can immediately step in if they fail.
I'd very much think if that you wanted to still include a bit of the supernatural, the Heroic Fantasy Handbook, with its ceremonialists and revamped spell lists would be a good fit.
To understand the geography of the Auran Empire, you swap the Mediterranean Sea left-right, and then break off chunks of Southern Central and Eastern Europe and plug them on top of North Africa, while chunking north-western North Africa onto north-eastern Europe.
Hence, Tirenea, the ersatz Italy, sits on a penninsula on the south-central shore, rather than on a penninsula on the north-central shore. Nicea, the ersatz Greece, is a penninsula on the south-western shore, rather than the north-eastern shore. And Celdorea, an ersatz Persia, is on the north-western shore, instead of on the south-eastern edge of the Mediterranean.
This is not entirely accurate as I did modify the cultures to represent the different climates in the new regions as well as based on the impact of the surrounding cultures, proto-cultures, and so on, but for the most part it'll help you grok what things might be like - it's the inspiration.
The Sinister Stone of Sakkara is set in Southern Argolle, which is on the south-east of the Ammas Aure. That makes the region an ersatz Southern Spain that eventually, further south, becomes North Africa.