I’m running my first ACKS II campaign in the Auran Empire (and eagerly awaiting the hardcover books from the Kickstarter) and I joined these forums to pose a question I’m hoping folks here can help me with.
What would be the closest historical analogue for the city of Alakyrum in Opelenea?
The PCs may be visiting Alakyrum soon (assuming they escape from a certain Lost City they’ve stumbled into while crossing the Opelenean desert) and I’m looking for some real-world inspiration.
As I understand it, Opelenea is analogous to the Levantine provinces during the Byzantine Empire, so my initial inclination is that Alakyrum is a stand in for Jerusalem. However, I’m wondering if it might be more accurate to model Alakyrum on Palmyra or Damascus instead.
Explanation: To a first degree of approximation, the Auran Empire is geographically understandable by starting with the Mediterranean region, horizontally reversing it, and then flipping the Greek and Italian peninsulas vertically so that they extend north from the southern coastline rather than south from the northern coastline.
With that in mind, Opelenea is situated where Cyrenaica was located - it is east of Kemesh, and equivalent to being west of Aegypt. Cyrenaica alternated between being a vassal of Egypt, its own kingdom, and a Roman province; and likewise, Opelenea has been a vassal of Kemesh, its own kingdom, and an Auran exarchate.
However the analog is not 1:1 (as it couldn’t be, given the geographical changes). Among other things, the Auran equivalent of the Levant region of our world is Somirea, which is ruled by the Auran equivalent of the Indo-Aryan Mittani, rather than by the Semitic peoples who came after them. Therefore the role of Carthage was assigned to Celdorea (which is otherwise analogous to Persia), while the role of Phoenicia was assigned to Opelenea.
So Opelenea is a mash-up of our world’s Levant and Cyrenaica, or Libya and Syria, or Greco-Roman and Phoenician, with an overlay of Egyptian influence.
The northern cities in Opelenea are similar to the colonies on the coast, roughly equivalent to Cyrene and Benghazi. Alakyrum, however, is a city built in an oasis in the desert and isn’t an Auran colony. It is therefore more analogous to Palmyra.
Thank you so much for the thorough answer and explanation of the region. In that context, Palmyra makes perfect sense as the basis for Alakyrum. It’s this level of realistic world-building and thoughtful attention to detail throughout the system and the setting that drew me to ACKS in the first place.
I should also tell you that I’ve discovered and have been devouring your “Opelenean Nights” threads here, which have given me a ton of inspiration for my current campaign.
Coincidentally, I started out by dropping B4: The Lost City somewhere in the middle of the Opelenean desert. Cynidicea seemed to fit perfectly in the region, given its obvious historical influences. I noticed, for example, that the namesake of the long-dead queen of Cynidicea is Queen Zenobia of the Palmyrene Empire. Coincidence? I think not…
In any event, if the PCs ever see the light of the sun again, they may yet find themselves strolling the Great Colonnade and spending the wealth they’ve claimed from Cynidicea in the souks of Alakyrum.