Re: World-building: Kairula

[Ximero]

Glad to have been of help with the Vikings 🙂

As for Transylvania, well it’s only known (in pop culture) as Vampire HQ because of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ novel of the late 19th century. Now Stoker simply did what most commercially successful fiction writers do, namely take a smattering of real-life data and wrap it around with thick layers of historic speculation, and especially his own sheer imagination (not dissing him, since i do that myself). He knew he needed a scary and seductive creature of the night, but more than anything else he needed a context to place it in. It was possibly by mere chance, his discovery of the Saxon chronicles about Vlad the Impaler aka “Dracul(e)a” before, say, those about ‘Bloody Countess’ Elizabeth Bathory, that the world now only thinks of Transylvania (and not Hungary, or Bohemia or various Slavic regions) when mentioning vampires (the genuine ones, not the sparkly ones). Plus, “Trans-sylvania”, “The Land beyond the Forests” in Latin, does sound much more, well, Gothic and dungeony than other geographic names around it 😉

But speaking of Latin, the year you found, 101, marks the beginning of the invasion by the Romans of what was the sizeable country of the Dacian tribes (called Getae by the Greeks), a land partly conquered, pillaged and reorganised after 2 consecutive wars (101-102 and 105-106 AD). By the mixture of Roman settlers with Dacian natives, you eventually got what today is known as the Romanian people (typically known as Wallachians in the Middle Ages), whose folklore does know of certain forms of vampirism (as does most of Eastern Europe), but wolves feature much more prominently therein, from your typical Moon-devouring werewolves (folk explanation for solar eclipses) to St. Andrew, the patron saint of Romania (yes, just like Scotland), being also the “guardian of the wolves”. Sure, there’s many animals that Romanians hold dear, and have historically fetishised, such as the aurochs (European buffalo) or various mountain eagles, but only wolves have their own saint (coincidentally… the patron saint of the entire country) and are most typically invoked in folk magic. And how would they not be, when, on one hand you had the Romans revering their Lupa Capitolina, surrogate mother for founder twins Romulus & Remus, while on the other, the Dacians with their infamous rattling battle-flag depicting a fantastic beast with a wolf’s head and a dragon/fish’s tail (it was shaped kinda like a windsock, so when the bearer ran with it in battle, the wind would cause it to roar, howl, etc., making it look rather frighteningly alive… you know, FX of the BC blockbusters…)

Okaaay… i’ve really been lecturing here *blush* But tl;dr: Transylvania would have been a Team Wolf, rather than a Team Vampire. But oh well, not ruling out overlaps, i guess 🙂 Er… hope this helped?