Timeline fun...

[GT]

Sooooo.... according to S2, Keraptis built his stronghold in the Rift Canyon 1300 years ago (or, c.4800 S.D. and Acererak, being a demi-lich probably constructed his stronghold in the Vast Swamp, or wherever in Oerik one placed it, even earlier (no actual date given, only that it took 80 years to construct and that it is "ancient" (so let's say maybe 500 years or better before Keraptis). On top of that are legendary events such as the Sinking of the Isle of Woe, and Kas and Vecna... my question, then is:"Who were these people?" The Oeridians started migrating in around 5058 S.D. and the Suloise around 5069 S.D. The Bakluni never came that far east and south, and the Flan are described as "hardy and capable hunters but not particularly warlike, and their small and scattered groups made no appreciable civilizing efforts". Who were these legendary "earlier" people?

[GRWelsh]

"Left for the DM to develop" is my take on it. The Flan at the time of the migrations were not civilization-builders, but their ancestors might have been. And there could have been other human races/cultures, before the Flan. For example, the "Lost City of the Suss" was was revealed in ARTIFACT OF EVIL to be be of pre-Flan origin. And -- who are the cavemen of the Cairn Hills, and where did they come from? Could be they are similar to Robert E. Howard's Picts -- the degenerate remnants of a once-proud but now fallen civilization. Maybe the Cairn Hills cavemen are all that is left from the civilization that once flourished on the Isles of Woe? Or, they might simply be the neanderthals or cro-magnons they appear to be [shrug] -- possibly enslaved in the past, as sub-human troops and slaves...

I think I've always vaguely imagined these proto-Flan cultures and peoples similar to Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians, but was a dash of Atlantis thrown in for pulp weirdness. That was a big theme in the pulps. There was always some new hidden city or lost civilization being discovered. I think a lot of room for that was deliberately left in the Flanaess.

[GT]

Yes, there is also the I1 module which has a definite "REH Stygia" feel to it.

[Scott]

When I was working on the Teeth of Barkash Nour for EGG, my version had Barkash Nour as a Quetzalcoatl-type figure for the Flan. He was a figure that brought civilization to the main part of the Flan tribes. The civilization flourished for many years, but eventually the Flan fell into corruption and slowly descended back into a less civilized state. So in my history at least, there was a period in the distant past where the Flan did have an advanced civilization.

[GT]

So the Flan were a "classic" civilization in decline until the influx of Oerid and Suel invaders brought civilization back to Eastern Oerik...

[Scott]

IMO, by the time the migrations began, they had already declined to the point that any traces of their former civilized state would be hidden. Additionally, the text does imply that there was an another ancient people in addition to the Flan tribes.

[GT]

I had another option I toyed with: since I "shoe-horned" the FSS Beagle into my Greyhawk as the City of the Gods, as it was originally in the Blackmoor campaign, I used the engineering skills of some surviving crewmen who had fled southward to "kickstart" some of the Flan to feats of engineering and civilization. The Beagle had crashed about 3000 years before present--hence its legendary status as a "City of the Gods", and that gave plenty of time for certain events to occur in the Flanaess... maybe a mix of this and pre-invasion civilizations. Hmmmmm... I'll have to rethink some things. ^__^

[geneweigel]

I went over this with Gary once. Here's his reply when I was trying to compile non-fake info for GHC (when I was doing the GHC website; its a little "Greyhawk Metro-centric" but that part is universal):

Subject: Re: Gord behind the scenes
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 11:23:57 -0800
Morning Gene:)

> So there was no confusion with what was going on in
> your greyhawk campaign.

In part, as far as Gord, yes.

> I thought there was some contract bullshit involved.

There was. I changed names so as to not give that material to T$R for
their
version of the WoG. of course. New material I created remains my
property,
not theirs, now WotC/Hasbro's.

> Since so much of the later novels had name references
> changed I thought it had to do with something like
> that.

It did, as explained above:)

As to:

> Because actually there isn't much written history of
> the City of Greyhawk except this:

Rioght. Keeping things as general as possible allows one to revisit
something and create without a lot of constraints. The more detailed
the
backstory, the more boxed in the one who wishes todevelop new ideas,
characters, etc. This is certainly the case with LGH new...

> PREHISTORY
> The inverted ziggurat where the chaotic evil
> theorpart Initiator was found in Artifact of Evil and
> the location of the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun in
> the Yatils seems to suggest there was pre-Flan
> civilization composed of Tharizdun worshippers across
> the Flanaess or at least in the central region. Maybe
> even belonging to the legendary Isles of Woe, an evil
> country in the Nyr Dyv that sank below the water,
> brought about by a wizard-priest named Yagrax using
> the artifact the Codex of the Infinite Planes in
> ancient times.

Correct, as I recall, and broad strokes with space left for detailing,
yes:)
> HISTORY
> Flan are the indigenous people of the Flanaess when
> early migrations begin.

> The migration of the Suloise cuts right through the
> area of Greyhawk.

> Starts as a trading post on the Selintan.

> A few years after a local warlord, Ganz's father,
> builds keep over village and becomes a Landgraf of
> Selintan getting rich off silver

> Ganz marrying the despotrix's daughter, a powerful
> sorceress (or the daughter of a powerful sorceress?)
> from Hardby

She was both.

> 400 years after that the Great Kingdom expands so much
> it reaches the Greyhawk city

> 700 years after that Zagyg builds the new city and
> Castle Greyhawk. Zagyg is long lived stretching either
> before or after this time period then disappears.

Both (^_^)

> 100 years after that it becomes a free city

> around 100 years after that is the "modern era".

All on target as I see things, Gene.

> That's all I could muster up am I missing something?

Sure you are--all the myriad of things not recorded in the long periods
between marked events! Heh-heh. No sense in not leaving plenty of blank
pages to be filled in later. Possibly in the course of things with the
Gord
GN series, we';; collaborate to add some pages to the recorded history
of
the city, even if it must perforce be done in somewhat tangential
form...

Cheerio,
Gary

[GT]

OK... Got the pre-Flan civilization (still keeping FSS Beagle too, though, because of its good fit, and frankly--it was based off of the original in a way...). Now--who were the pre-Flan? There had to be more than one faction I would suppose...

[geneweigel]

Well, Perrenland descibes the tribes of the Yatils being far more warlike and fierce than the rest of the tribes of the Flanaess. This is most likely a remnant of the proto-Flan.

[geneweigel]

White Plume Mountain's connection to GH was included in the module as well as in the 80 folio however that said any and all creative clues from histories in that source is most likely an afterthought so its best avoided.