Real History: Homo Floresiensis - Ancient Human

Dwarf Stegadon, giant rats, huge storks, Lomodo dragons and Homo Floresiensis. All existed thousands of years ago on islands to the south of Sundaland. Skip to 19:00 to see what the 'hobbit' people encountered on the island of Flores.

Real History: Denisovan - Ancient Human

A look at the Denisovans. From around the 22:00 it discusses the presence of Denisovans in Southeast Asia and Australia and how they mixed with modern humans, specifically the Melanesians, Papua New Guineans and Aboriginal people. This indicates migration along the Pacific coast in particular.

Elder Beings: Truth of the Star Gods

Legends of the Star Gods: 

When the land was still young they came in their many ships, down from the heavens where they existed first. Here they, whom we call the travellers from the stars, found a forest covered land with abundant fruit and flowers, air filled with the songs of birds, the calls of monkeys, the growling of tigers and the trumpeting of elephants. 

They set out to build high towers and great palaces to make their homes in and recruited the animals to help them in these efforts. The animals were directed to dig into the earth for stone and jewels, and to cut down trees and divert rivers and lakes. And many of the animals were taught to speak so that they could more easily be guided in this work.

It is said that the star-travellers could take the clay from which all creation was fashioned and mould and press it into new shapes as they saw fit. To make small fruits grow large, to make beasts stronger or walk upright where before they were on all fours, to give a snake limbs or to even make a fish breathe air and walk on land.

However even in their wisdom there was disagreement amongst them. First arguments, then conflict and eventually open war; although it is not known why or to what end. Battles raged on mountain tops and in deep caverns. Entire cities were destroyed with terrible magic, and ever more fearsome monstrosities were created with which to chase enemies across open seas and down into deep mines where it was hard for them to reach.

Eventually the wars of the star-travellers ended, but with no ultimate victor or vanquished. The lands were ravaged and our people were there amongst the ruins. In service we had been taught how to carve stone and pour metal. How to sail ships and cast nets. And how to tend forest gardens and herd animals. This is how we managed to survive in the aftermath of so much devastation.

The travellers from the stars left in their ships, for reasons as mysterious as what brought them in the first place. Although it is said some stayed behind guarding in mountain fortresses or still lie resting in tombs in deep caverns. 

Even then there was no peace as the surviving animal servants warred amongst themselves for the inheritance that was left behind. Our people eventually prevailed over all others who then forgot how to speak, or perhaps choose no longer to talk with us because of what we did. Those that refused to submit fled into the forests and swamps, or into the cold mountains and the deep oceans where they plot to one day return and overthrow us.

Since those times we've multiplied, prospered and built new cities, using what we remember from our teachers to honour them, even attempt contact with them and request their return. There are ambitious amongst us who believe there is still yet more to learn from the star-travellers. And that there are to be found in the ruins of those ancient towers, cities and tombs knowledge and artefacts, magic and weapons that can benefit us still. There are even said to be the wrecks of some of their enormous ships situated in the remote parts of the land. Could they be repaired and sailed to the stars to meet their original captains? 

- Unknown Author 

 

Truth of the Star Gods:

Pick one or create your own truth.

1. The star-travellers are worshipped as gods but do not exist. They form part of or the entirety of the various pantheons of gods that exist in the religions of Sundaland. 

Religions are a collections of memes that are passed down through the generations; providing a survival benefit to societies by increasing group cohesions and codifying cultural knowledge. Some, often less pious, religious leaders are aware of the cultural power they wield and do so consciously. In the same way a great warrior leads an army a religious leader can lead and control believers. 

What kind of knowledge, 'magic' or technology underpins the power and authority of religious leaders? How do they use religion to lead or control believers? What kind of interpretations of the nature of the gods exist and how do they manifest in religions? What kind of different religions exist? How do they interact?

2. The travellers from the stars are gods from outside of time and space that were involved in the creation of the universe or perhaps closely tied to the ultimate creator. They came to earth in order to guide and teach humans and to help them develop civilisation.

The star-travellers are gods worshipped by the people of Sundaland. These gods interact with the world in seen and unseen ways but are capricious in nature and their aims and motives are not fully understood by humans. The people of Sundaland are at the mercy of the gods and do their best to gain their favour through rituals and religion.

What is the intention of these gods? Are they moved purely by self-interest or do they wish to impact humanity, either positively or negatively? Are they the ultimate power in the universe or is there something else out there?

3. The star-travellers are not gods but actually aliens that travelled to earth where they engaged in geo and bio-engineering projects using technology so advanced it seemed like magic. They genetically engineered several species to increase their mental and physical capabilities including the ancestors of humans. Variant human species such as Denisovans might be the result of these experiments or the initial stock that was uplifted. There were also experiments with reptiles, amphibians and newly genetically engineered creatures.

The evidence of the alien presence on earth still exists, albeit in a severely deteriorated state since it occurred thousands of years ago. There are various types of building and structures whose purpose we can not hope to understand as well as ruined cities, underground complexes and even space-ship wrecks to be found in Sundaland.

Where did the aliens come from? Why did they come to earth? What did they want to do here? Why did they fight amongst each other? Why did they leave? Will they come back?

Adventure Ideas: 

1. A newly discovered underground complex, lost city, ruined tower or star-ship wreck has been discovered near a remote village. The authority of your culture wants you to investigate the site and bring back whatever knowledge or artefacts you can find before neighbouring city-states hear about it as well.

Have other cultures learned of the site? How did they find it? Did the gods reveal the location to religious leaders? Are there elder-species (uplifted reptiles, amphibians, mammals) at the location? What can be found at the site?

2. A group of elder-species or elder-humans has reportedly moved into lands near our city-state. The people are fearful of might happen next. What are their motives and desires? Will they instigate violence, consume resources or attempt to live peacefully? The authority of your culture has a particular response in mind and wants you to set their plan into motion.

3. An ancient artefact has been discovered in a mine. It surely belonged to the Star Gods and has been brought to the religious leaders of your culture. However it is unclear what the purpose of the artefact is. Can you help find out what it is? Is it a weapon, a tool, or something else? How is it used? Who else wants it and what do they want to do with it? What are the consequences of its use?

4. Something has been disturbed which should not have been. A deadly disease spreads from an re-opened complex, a piece of technology has been activated and is transforming the land, elder-species have been set free from a hidden city after an earthquake, a star-god has been awakened from a thousand year slumber.

How are the various cultures in the land reacting? How will our way of life be transformed? Can anything be done to put a stop to this? Will our way of life end? Has the apocalypse begun? 

Introduction: What and where is Sundaland?

I've travelled across Sundaland many times as an envoy and trader but I am afraid there are not enough life times for me to explore all of its wonders and beauty. It is a land of art, craftmanship and culture the likes of which has never existed. Yet it is also the place of turmoil and war, where various peoples chance at clambering up to heights of power and wealth through diplomacy or violence. Some succeed, many fail. The successful build monuments to commemorate their victories while the vanquished are forgotten in the deep mists of time. In any case, I am sure that this land will shine until the last days as a beacon for all that wish to rise up from our animal states and take our place as people of words and deeds when the final stories of the world are recounted.  

- An Account of Sundaland by Alom Takal 

Sundaland is the name for the Southeast Asian subcontinent that lay between current day Java, Sumatra, Thailand, Malaysia and Borneo. This area was flooded between 15,000 to 5000 BCE* as the last ice age came to an end.

Archeologists and historians working outside or on the fringes of mainstream academia hypothesise that this area could have been an early cradle of civilisation and perhaps even the real location of the fabled Atlantis.

Think of city states in jungles or along rivers, forest gardens and early agriculture, towering temples that priests use to track the motions of the stars and planets.

Economies are simple, based on trading commodities, tools and artefacts, perhaps early forms of currency. Literacy isn't common often reserved for a select group.

There are no horses. The main beasts of burden are the Elephant and perhaps the Water Buffalo. There are hundreds if not thousands of rivers that are traversed with canoes, boats and ships. The people of this land were the ancestors of the great Polynesian navigators who colonised the Pacific all the way to, Hawaii and Easter Island (perhaps even further: Genetic studies link indigenous peoples in the Amazon and Australasia).

Religions are polytheistic and regional. Priests and shamans take consciousness altering substances in order to enter trance states and communicate with spirits and gods.

Societies rise and fall within hundreds of years, cities are swallowed up by the jungle then built on top of by their successors. Cities allow for specialisation and division of labour but also lead to decadence, overextension and overuse of resources.

A touch of Sword & Sorcery. If the gods are real they are capricious and need to be appeased. There's no good or evil as we know it today. Might usually makes right. If magic exists it's mysterious and hard to control. There are possibly monsters or the last remnants of ice-age animals in the deep jungles and high mountains. And perhaps strange ancient races of humans or even non-human sentient species.

This blog is a place for me to collect fictional content for entertainment only, mainly role-playing games, using accurate and real information about this time and place for inspiration. It's not my intent to present an archeological or anthropological investigation. Where I see fit I will set aside reality if it gets in the way of my fun. I do however present many scientific resources because truth is often stranger than fiction and there is a lot of evidence pointing towards this part of the world being important in the history of our species.

It is also not my intention to recreate or be in any way faithful to any of the cultures or civilisations that existed in the area in recorded history. Although it may be fun to take inspiration from for example the Khmer Empire there's no reason to believe there would be any similarities between it and cultures of the ancient past in the same way there is no similarity between modern day Iraq and the city states of Mesopotamia.

I also take a lot of inspiration from the OSR community in that I'm not looking to fill in all the blanks. Because I don't want to make people feel like they have to read up on lore and history in order to use what I've created. Instead I want to create a framework and tools that will leave people feeling empowered to create their own version of this setting.

Time Line

I'll assume that anatomically modern humans inhabited the area from around 70,000 BCE (Wikipedia: Peopling of Southeast Asia) and that advanced civilisations developed and existed up until around 15,000 BCE when the sea level first began rising. That's around 55,000 years for civilisations to develop, rise and fall perhaps culminating at a technology level similar to Greece and Rome of Classical Antiquity or the height of the Han and Gupta empires, perhaps with even further developments in certain domains, an Atlantis type civilisation. Remember, unlike in many fantasy worlds with histories spanning tens of thousands of years, in real life great empires rose and fell in the span of a couple of hundred years.

I imagine there being six different periods but there's nothing to say that this cycle didn't happen several times over. Between the time of the Egyptian pyramids and the present day is 'only' a span of 5000 years after all.

1. Optional pre-human period. The time of elder gods and species.

2. Stone Age: Humans move in to the area (Homo Sapiens Sapiens and perhaps Denisovans as well?)

3. Early Period: Early civilisations. City-states and small nations similar to the Bronze and Iron Age societies. Think of Sumer, ancient Egypt, Harappan and Minoan civilisations. These are sustained by basic horticulture and agriculture and have early forms of centralised government or palace economies, bureaucracy, religion and trade between cultures. Perhaps an early golden age.

4. Middle Period: Period of alternate stability and turmoil after the early golden age. Wars, famine, ecological collapse, abandoned cities but also the birth of new societies and cultures built on the remnants of the past. Some rise and fall with a couple of hundred years, others last one or two millennia. Think of how Mesopotamian and central American civilisations rapidly followed each other. Lots of changes, lots of opportunity.

I think this potentially the most interesting period as a player and a creator. There is a lot of scope for societies with different levels of technology and cultural sophistication, there are many mysteries to investigate and challenging circumstances to deal with.

5. Classical Period: The height of the civilisation before the big floods. Perhaps there are nation states and empires, standing armies, a layered bureaucracy, intricate trade networks, complex government and religious institutions. This period might be similar in sophistication to the time of the Roman and Gupta empires.

These are societies that would lay the foundation for the Atlantis myths right before the big floods submerge the land and the survivors scatter around the globe to China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, North and South America.

I think of this as the most stable period. Perhaps there is an empire or state that spans the whole continent, or there are a set of large states that engage in occasional warfare. On the whole there is enough peace and stability to allow culture and technology to flourish.

6. Apocalypse Period: The floods begin and civilisations and societies start to descend into aggressive competition and wars. It's an apocalyptic period where civilisations are under extreme stress, sometimes even collapsing with consequences similar to what brought an end to the golden age. However this time the subcontinent is submerged under water due to a series of floods that last from around 15,000 BCE to 5,000 BCE*. Finally many inhabitants flee the area to seed civilisation across the world.

What Next?

Discover the core truths of your Sundaland setting by answering the questions in this work book: Sundaland Workbook: What does your Sundaland Look Like? And start playing to discover more. You can use these Adventure Ideas or this Sword & Sorcery Adventure Generator to get started with your favourite RPG system. I like using the free IronSworn RPG rules which suit a gritty Sword & Sorcery style. Just remember to swear your vowes on Bronze instead of Iron! You can read some of my play reports using those rules here: Game Diary: Elephant Queens & Tiger Kings

If you want more inspiration (adventure locations, faction and culture generators, historical inspiration etc.) go here to find all the content I've created for this setting, grouped by type or theme: Content Overview

Some resources that first inspired me to create this setting

Atlantis in the Java Sea: A great overview of the Sundaland civilisation hypothesis (10 - 15 minute read)

Eden in the East: Drowned Continent of South East Asia: Comprehensive overview of the hypothesis that in particular explores genetic and linguistic evidence.

Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilisation: I first encountered Sundaland in this book. It's principally about the proposition that civilisation began much earlier than mainstream academia believes and how there is evidence around the world of a cataclysm that destroyed it scattering its people across the globe. Sundaland doesn't feature heavily, the book is more focused on the background and surrounding evidence for the cataclysm.

*The dates for when the floods first started are different from source to source, some say 20,000 years ago, some say 16,000. They're mostly consistent in that there are considered to be several sea level rises over the course of a couple of thousands years. Read more here: Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis