Fria Ligans forum

so what does this mean? im curious a little bit about the setting. first let me say i am a backer. i also recently purchased the ebook, Coriolis: The Dark Between the Stars, to get a better understanding of the setting for Coriolis.  Honestly im not sure how to look at "Firefly meets Arabian Nights" . after reading the ebook i get the feeling that the names and culture is mainly saudi arabia type of thing. where everyone dresses in long shirts (khufkas) which im guessing is arabian with pants underneath them? so the culture part would be from saudia arabia? but what does that mean. is the firefly part just where its in space. i think im understanding that there are corporations that run things on the third horizon. and everyone mainly works for a corporation. (like shadowrun) the corporations do things like set up planets for expansion, build things that others need etc. is this correct? sorry i already backed im just trying to understand some of the setting for the game. i get the space and the third horizon is a big space station but im missing some things like what makes you a part of this and i dont get the arabian nights part. is the station ran by churches? or corporations? or a neutral party? what is it that your character does. why would he adventure etc. in firefly they hauled cargo and helped people out along the way while avoiding the corporation that was looking for river. sorry if i seem to be rambling i just have alot of questions and i have no idea what arabian nights means even how it works in a space setting especially when adding firefly to the mix. thanks for the patience in answering my questions

One of the creators would be better suited to answering the connections to the game. I've taught cultural studies (focused on a region that was colonized by Islam) at a snooty almost-Ivy school, so I can weigh in on that aspect. But forgive me if I detail too much or skip something entirely.

"Arabian" is a far older descriptor than Saudi Arabia, older than the Islamic religion. Saudi Arabia is less than a century old, and based entirely on a singular family dynasty.

"Arabian" in the sense you are asking is a culture more than a millennium old, so without going into an extensive history lesson, you could check several threads here on this forum which discuss some of the influences, or search the internet/Wikipedia for what Arabian culture is. Culture, in a single sentence, is the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. The "we" would change with ethnicity, religion, gender, and geography. In a few words... culture is the style, the art, the buildings, the attitude.

But, briefly, it is a culture that was already wide-spread when Islam rose from the western Arabian Peninsula and spread from Western Asia (modern Iran) across the Maghrib (Northern Africa) and into the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain) at a time when Europe was in the Dark Ages. It produced great works of literature and music, but also created things like marques of credit in business, and formulated fields of mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, philosophy, literature, and sciences. From the 8th to the 13th centuries, it was the predominate culture in the Western world. Because it was so geographically wide-spread, and included vastly different people and ethnicities, it was generally far more assimilating, more diverse and malleable than what is generally referred to as Western culture, which tends to eradicate and dominate everything within its sphere of influence, and adapt other influences to it.

This is sometimes difficult to grasp given the toxicity and limited definitions applied to either culture in the modern media-saturated age.

As to what "Arabian culture" means... what is the difference between traditional Hebrew culture and Christian culture? Behavior, methods of doing business, expectations of life goals. The style of art, architecture, pace of life, and ideas of what is Other to that. Some cultures find multiple marriages is expected, others find the idea abhorrent. Some cultures are singular in their acceptance (White Anglo Saxon Protestant). Ideally, Arabian culture was a plurality (a mestiza of multiple influences). It included not only Muslims, but Christians, Jews, Bedouin, Tuareg, Greek, Slavic, Turkic, etc. The Arabic world had different political centers at different times—Baghdad, Córdoba, Cairo, Istanbul—each that added a different slant, a different flavor to the mix.

In modern US/European culture, there is an attempt to separate the religious from the secular. In Arabic culture, there is far less of a division. In NY, Berlin, London, Stockholm, a business meeting would probably not be interrupted by a religious event (unless it is also a secular event like the commodity of Christmas holiday). In the Arabic world, it would not be unusual to be discussing business over lunch, then walk to the mosque when your hear the call to prayer, and after 15 minutes of praying, continue your business discussion.

The "Arabian Nights" part of it might be the idea of exotic storytelling, travel, dreamlike locations... stories within stories. Magical realism (which, in a science fiction setting has incredible potential). You might track down the single issue (chapter?) of Gaiman's Sandman called "Ramadan" and read it to see a condensed version of this idea.

In Firefly, y'know how they cursed in Chinese? That was the attempt to show another cultures' influence on theirs. It succeeded to varying degrees throughout the series, but in order to remain as familiar as possible, there wasn't as much of an influence as there might have actually been had the world been fleshed out more.

Which Coriolis seems to be, and we all hope, to grow even from that. The inclusion and importance of religion is, to me, a dynamic indicator of a different culture.

What do characters do? Same as any people any time do. Why would they do it? Same as any people would in any age or culture. Struggle to survive, to gain wealth & prestige, or to maintain it if they've already got it. Why did Marco Polo head east? Why did Zheng He sail the Pacific? Why did Egil Skallagrimmson flee Norway? Either they were tasked by a patron to do so, wanted to explore to gain fame and fortune, or had to because they pissed off the local ruler.

Again, even as meandering a reply as this, barely covers the definition of what culture is. Perhaps start with Wiki (Golden Age of Islam is a great article; but keep in mind Arabic is more extensive a description than Islamic ((Arabic culture was not monotheistic, while Islam is, even in its own plurality of sects, just as Christianity's history includes more than just Catholic & Protestant)). And certainly this is not a religiously Islamic game. But the cultures assimilated long ago, and to unthread the tapestry would leave both poorer for it). If you're interested in more than that, there's a few documentaries that could be suggested. I've seen a recent one on the history of the Caliphate (a religious, as well as a secular, title in Arabic/Islamic history), that I watched to cultivate political ideas about the world I was to style in Coriolis.

You've asked some difficult questions. Which are usually the best kind. Hope this helps at all. And I hope I didn't just skip past some decent answers. Great questions are better addressed in a dialogue, rather than a monologue.

In the Swedish section of the forum, there's a google doc file that illustrates (text in Swedish, of course, but pictures are pictures) some variations in Arabic garb as relates to the game.

http://frialigan.se/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2344

Very good written by Umberto Octo on the "Arabic" theme! It's broader than just Arabic, and also look at the area pre-Islam (the religion in Coriolis is not inspired by Islam). 

Regarding Firefly I believe another big connection is the relation to the ship. The Serenity has a central part in the show, and in Coriolis the first steps of character creation is to choose a group concept (eg. Free traders, Artists, Pilgrims, Mercenaries, etc..) and create a space ship (and getting a hefty loan dept that will motivate the group to keep flying!)

Excellent stuff there, Octo, just excellent. 

Not sure I can add a lot.

Firefly, to me, was a series about a family. A band of brothers and sisters with less than 50% actual soldiers/fighters that made a run-down ship their home. And "home" is the imperative word here, and I think for Coriolis just as well. In Firefly, Kaylee adorned the ship's interior with painted floral ornaments; Serenity had an actual kitchen, an actual living room with a desk and chairs, and they all sat down together there and shared whatever meals they could scrape up. In Coriolis, there seem to be plenty of ways to make a ship that feels similarly like a home (that garden module: first to buy) and a crew that feels similarly like a family. Also, Firefly was about humanity being alone in the universe. Firefly didn't even have alien 'animals' like Coriolis does, but I think the storytelling gist is much the same: Human beings have the real intelligence and exert the real cruelty in all of the universe.

The Arabian Nights represent – at least in today's version of them, re-written and expanded by e.g. European translators well into the 18th century – our romanticized and mythologized image of the old Arab world. It's obvious how Coriolis lends titles, heraldry and ornaments, and of course traditional garb (without that much of a religious connotation) from these cultures, and also brings some of the stereotypes into the game.

Excellent reply, Umberto Octo!

okay i think i understand. please excuse my not understanding the culture thing. so im understanding that like in firefly when they swore it was in chinese/japanes/cantonese within the world of coriolis basically its firefly but with the name filed off and where firefly had a limited amount of chinese/japanes/cantonese culture included into it coriolis has arabian nights culture ingrained into it. since im sure its listed in the book whenever i get my grubby hands on it what is life in the third horizon like. i take it to be a huge station with several "worlds" built into it. there are hundreds of planets out there and thye all basically rely on third horizon space station as like a hub for them all. the third horizon would be where the politics are ran where the churches run things and where the "army?" would be ran out of. are there corporations atht run the world like in shadowrun? is it the church that runs thing? is it a monarchy where a royal family runs things? sorry just super interested in the game and trying to prep to pitch it for my players.

I'm going on a limb here because I haven't read even remotely as much about the setting as I would have liked, but I guess that planets usually have their own governments, which may or may not be monarchies, theocracies, plutocracies or corporatocracies (plus the occasional democracy thrown in for shits and giggles ); and those planets have their own armed forces, technologies, "culture", social problems and what have you.

On the contrary, think of the Coriolis station as more of a UN kind of institution, with its emissaries and ambassadors from every planet, with peace and trade at heart but still too darn many differing voices to be really efficient. And I would assume – all right, this could be wild conjecture – that Coriolis "natives" still bear the mark of Cain in not being "Firstcome" – they're basically outsiders trying to unify the galaxies they once tried to take by force during the Portal wars. Think England trying to mediate in the Civil War.

Depending on the world and family you grew up in, your life could be vastly different of course. But I would guess that in most societies that form, you have a Shadowrun situation at its core, with most of the population living in the thick of it, under the rule of someone who really shouldn't be in power, in poverty yet with the big dream of endless space.

The more knowledgable may step in at any time now.

@ Umberto Octo  

the google document i downloaded and attempted with google translate but its very mixed up. im guessing things like Algol and Mira are like planets and common dress for those planets?

@ Umberto Octo  

the google document i downloaded and attempted with google translate but its very mixed up. im guessing things like Algol and Mira are like planets and common dress for those planets?

Correct, Algol and Mira are planets.