Abraham Merritt
Age Of Fable
Barbary Corsairs
Cargo Cults
Clark Ashton Smith
Dream Park
The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath
Headhunting
Jack Vance
Kumari Kandam
Lemuria
Mu
Nidus !!! (funny how things come full circle..Ouroboros!)
The Odyssey
Orientalism !!!
Polynesia
Pre-Spanish Philippines
Sinbad the Sailor
Skull Island
Southeast Asia
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
"The "Sea of Spices" may be considered a misnomer, as in actuality it consists of an uncounted legion of islands and islets, the remains of a submerged mountainous continent, in the cyclone lashed midst of the tropical region of the great ocean, isolated from the other continents of the world; legendary for its wealth in spices, fragrant gums, narcotics, feathers, furs, gems and precious metals."One though I've come up with in regards to a theorhetical OSR adventure path is that there could be multiple "paths"; you have the pulp fantasy, greed motivated Treasure Hunt; but you could also incorporate a "Save The Heir/Princess" as alternate or additional "path," one that could appeal to altruistic or roleplay motivations ("Dude...I'm going to make that princess fall in love with me!); and a third "evil" path such as "Summon mini-Cthulhu to serve the party as an empire building war beast."
You could use the same setting and materials for three very different experiences...you could run multiple parties through the different "paths" (or on the same path for some competition!) for a dynamic campaign experience.
Anyways, so The Sea of Spices is the location of this thought experiment; as I'm directly referencing many elements of our world's cultures in this, that means I get to use the classic rpg standby of "ham-handed interpretations of real life historical cultures with their serial numbers filed off."
I imagine the Sea of Spices being well-isolated from the continental landmasses; interlopers from these far away regions may be bold explorers, colonial powers, or merely those blown of course/very very lost. From my list of influences the following "faux-cultures" emerge as being non-indigenous people, with all of them being filtered through an inaccurate, Orientalist lens:
Faux-Ancient Greeks - WASP-ish dudes with British accents in fancy bronze armor that act like classical Greek heroes & philosophers.
Faux-Arab/Berbers - Dudes that wear giant turbans and eyeliner; upper class & sorcerer types have British accents.
Faux-Dravidians - Hindu mythological epic style warlords and priests.
Faux-Southeast Asian Types - Dudes with Ankhor Wat style architecture that ride elephants into war
I like this mix...four different cultural groups, four languages, a nice mix of ethnicities to keep things from being too whitebread. Now I need to come up with names for these peoples/cultures. (Iskanders, Sindhus, Kumarikantams & Ankhors?)
Also, this is PRETTY FREAKING AWESOME:
