Archived Bring More Of Africa To Massive!

[indyfan98]

Africa is a beautiful place, with amazing animals, lovely languages, cool culture, majestic music. and positive people. However, Massivecraft lacks a lot of that.

For representation of Africa, we have the Songaskia, who, while interesting, only represent the Mali people. Much of Africa is lost. The music, languages, and cultures of the rest of Africa are missing. What I'd love to see would be a cultural update for the other races, so that entire large groups of people aren't represented by a single culture, maybe two.

Looking at Farah'deen, we see a place more akin to the Middle East and North Africa, nothing at all like the serene landscapes of Kenya's Savannas or South Africa's forests and Karoos, the jungles of the Congo, etc. To that, we look more towards Essalonia, which more seems to be representative of the Americas than it does Africa.

So, what would you like to see done to represent more of the continent of Africa, if anything? Maybe a new continent added in lore? A new race? New Songaskian cultures? Whatever comes to mind. Maybe you think what we have now is fine for representation of Africa? Let me know below!

 

[Kleinfolk]

I believe the main reason staff haven't made any African-based lore has been stated before. Almost no players/ staff on the server are culturally African, and as such writing lore based off of cultures they don't fully understand/have experience with would likely be a disservice to the real-life cultures.

 

[HydraLana]

I'll state that the reasons mentioned by @RejectedNerd74 are correct, but additionally, there are lore aspects that you are missing that do already represent Africa. For example, yes, Songaskians as a Race are representative of West African societies, but the Qadir can partly represent North Africa/the Berbers, the Varran in their upcoming update will more clearly take from Ancient Egyptian culture (though aspects already existed in the current iteration of them) and finally, you have completely left out the existence of the Hadrav'yan, who represent Ethiopian society. We have west, north, and east African cultures represented on the server. The only area that is missing is south Africa but that's honestly a massive hornet's nest that I don't feel like we're going to be touching any time soon. I don't just mean the country South Africa, but I also mean the Congo, and other regions in that area which I have 0 confidence in representing properly due to a lack of knowledge on my and most likely other people's part on their history and culture.

 

[ZiggyStarDusted]

I happen to be a South African whose been living in the UK for a good nearly 5 years now. What I can say it is a place that is defined by its diversity, it's not called 'The Rainbow Nation' without good reason. The culture is a mixture of so many different ones, to cast a bit of an example, there are 11 national languages. Alongside this, the current state of the country is extremely fresh and new in comparison to a lot of the other countries that have had bits and pieces of them plucked for the purposes of Massivecraft Lore; And it only got to this diverse state after a history of after a deeply-rooted conflict revolving about racism, xenophobia, etc that I personally think along with what Hydra has said, 'it's a massive hornet's nest' and it still struggles from the aftermath of apartheid today to some extent.

If anything, Regalia itself to a degree is probably already the closest thing to South Africa all things considered it is an epicentre of cultures/ in this case races that all converge in a concentrated location and in many cases have an inherent conflict with one another whether that be over class, race, etc but that being said, there is still some communal unity alongside this in that all the characters live there and often wish the best for it regardless of their ideologies, and so forth. (Unless you have a character who just wants to see the world burn I GUESS.)

Anyways! I hope what I've said was as helpful as it could be, I'm no historian and what I've said is drastically simplified, but I do feel I'm very much in touch with the people of SA and how it is there. Baring in mind I definitely held a lot of white privilege living there and obviously my views arent 100% true, maybe a little overly optimistic. But there you go, you've got em.

Addendum: A 'race' based off South Africans would quite frankly be pretty insulting and as the other said, a massive dis-service to the people who live there. Their culture is something acquired and not something you're born with. EG: You can come from wherever, move to Regalia- become a Regalian. You're forged by XYZ races, other cultures, everything.

 

[Wumpatron]

The Varran are going to encompass several West African cultures as well as some aspects of Caribbean culture as well to reflect a post slavery culture inspired by its original heritage. While it is just inspiration as I want to have original lore, it is going to play a part in how I approach the Varran culturally.

Ive spend 3 years studying African and African American culture in university so I'll be doing the best I can to provide a thoughtful adaptation of some cultural aspects.

 

[rimacutem]

I have met a lot of people that play Heartland Ceadrians jut because they want to be fantasy British. And I assume that same goes for all Ailor cultures. And not many wanna play fantasy Bulgarian. Abd same for Africa inspired cultures. I can out of the bat only name Egypt, Ethiopia, Mali, Carthago, Numidia and Zulus, ith Carthago being Phoenician. Not many people read random lore pages, looking for what they like. They will end up playing what they heard of before. And I can say with certainty that I have not heard of central and south african kingdoms in school or films before colonization