In my previous article (Introduction to Building Nyonia—Celestial Jewels), I wrote about how I developed the geography, races, creation myths, world history, and magic of Nyonia. In this article, I will describe the process I used to create each race's nations, governments, cultures, and technology.
Process
One of my decisions was to focus on the playable races and cultures and deal with the Elder Races later. There are sixteen unique races and cultures in Nyonia. Using the history I had already developed, I started detailing each culture. I decided to look at historical cultures, governments, and technologies.
I found the Kingdom Builder tools, made by Chaotic Shiny Productions, which can generate the following kinds of information: nation names, types of government, city names, flag descriptions, general descriptions, regions, cities, laws, events, notable individuals, fashions, armies, laws, and place names. With the Kingdom Builder tools, I could generate hundreds of options and use them as part of a brainstorming exercise.
Once I had several suitable options, I started mapping the races and cultures.
Looking at the past
Since Nyonia is a large world and the people who came to it mostly came from places like Earth, I used historical examples to build up each culture.
Non-Human Races
I started with the three non-human races. The Ainu are small, sturdy, and stoic people known for mining, metalwork, steel, gems, and fermented mushroom tea. They have a king and prime minister and a mercantile economic system.
The Koori are bipedal lion-like people. Since they are like lions, their government is patriarchal and a feudal monarchy, where the patriarch is selected based on merit. Their economic system is based on socialism within each pride and tribe. The Koori have no coinage of their own.
The Wangai are a small and sturdy people who enjoy family, friends, and an easy life. They are known as merchants and farmers. Their home country is the world's 'bread basket.' They have a democratic republic form of government with a prime minister and a grand council to make decisions at a national level.
Humans
Humans came from the Earth. How or why isn't really important. All humans can trace their ancestry back to either the arrival of the Easterlings or the Samara on Nyonia. As I built the timeline for Nyonia, I created the following culture map to help trace the way each of the cultures evolved.
This map allowed me to build each of the cultures based on their evolution and outgrowth from where they came from. Each nation/culture ended up being unique and interconnected by shared histories. The types of governments vary from feudal monarchies to plutocratic city-states, oligarchies, dictatorships, monarchs, democratic republics, meritocracies, ruled judges, confederations, and republics of nobles and merchants. Each nation is known for different kinds of materials and merchandise.
Economics is less varied between each nation. The economies include mercantile, feudal, capitalism, dirigism, and bartering.
Technology
I broke up technology into three main categories: weapons/armor, transportation, and power. Nations that are more advanced in certain technologies would jealously guard their advantages. A country might have a low transportation tech level but a high weapons/armor level because the need to travel would be low in that country. Another country might have a very high transportation technology level and a minimal technology level for weapons/armor.
Tech Level | Weapons and Armor | Transportation | Power |
0 | Wood and Stone Weapons Cloth or Wood Armor Spears & Spear thrower |
Skis Dog sleds Dugout Canoes |
Human Muscle Power Dogs |
1 | Bronze weapons and armor Simple Bows & arrows |
Bare horseback The Wheel / Chariots Carts Ship Building Sails Celestial navigation Short ocean-going trips (3 to 5 days) |
Donkeys Oxen Ponies |
2 | Iron weapons and armor (mail) Siege engines Crossbows (simple)Longbows |
Saddle Wagons Roads Triremes Celestial navigation using Sun-stone Simple tool to identify latitude |
Horses Water wheels |
3 | Steel weapons and plate armor Compound bows Complex crossbows |
Stirrups Oceangoing sailing ships (longships, round ships, etc) Mariner's astrolabe |
Heavy Horses Horse-collars Windmills (simple) |
4 | Weapons made from crystals Pikes / Halberds "Brimstone" Fire Horse-drawn artillery |
Stagecoach "Paved" Highways w/ Way stations Three-masted sailing ships Compass Marine Sextant Accurate measure of time and speed |
Windmills (complex) Belt Drives Clockworks Complex gearing |