Related: Dungeons & Dragons Giants: Everything You Need To Know Caste systems define a person's social mobility, human (and inhuman) sacrifice is a cornerstone of many religious practices, being unaffiliated with a clan is seen as worse than death, iron is a scarce resource, and certain Gods reward faithful worshippers by turning them into zombies after death.
The "present-day" of the world of Tékumel comes across as very strange and alien when compared to most works of Western Fantasy - not just because of the alien flora and fauna, but because the various nations and cultures of this setting operate on values totally alien to modern Western sensibilities. Then the star system of Tékumel was sucked into an isolated pocket dimension, cut off from the rest of the universe and exposed to the influence of extra-dimensional entities fundamentally indistinguishable from Gods.Īs technology failed and civilization crumbled, the various races of Tékumel – humanoid, reptilian, and insectoid – reverted to a more ancient way of living, forming empires with elaborate caste systems, worshipping the forces of Stability and Change, and treating psychic powers and technological artifacts as sources of magic. In the far-distant past, Tékumelwas a vacation planet colonized by humans from an interstellar empire, who terraformed the planet with advanced technology, opened their resort cities to aliens from other galactic civilizations, and drove the indigenous beings of the planet into arid reservations. Tékumel, A World Of Magic, Aliens, And A Desolate Sky The resulting fantasy setting stands out from other secondary worlds thanks to being utterly different from the classic fantasy settings seen in The Lord Of The Rings or Conan the Barbarian. Rather than being inspired by European cultural motifs, Tékumel draws inspiration from Indian, Mesoamerican, Middle Eastern, and Egyptian mythology, then adds strong undercurrent of science fiction lurking beneath the setting's veneer of fantasy. Barker wound up assembling the secondary world of Tékumel over the course of 50 years, describing it through created myths, history, art, novels, a roleplaying game, and even five distinct created languages. Related: Must-Play Roleplaying Games That Are "Powered By The Apocalypse" He also happened to be a huge fantasy fan and occasional writer, inspired by the Dying Earth stories and other 1950s/1960s works of fantasy – the same works of fantasy that happened to inspire Gary Gygax, the creators of Dungeons & Dragons. He taught and wrote dissertations on Urdu culture, the Native American Klamath language, and various myths/oral histories from across the world. Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker (1929 - 2012) was, like Tolkien, an academic linguist, one who distinguished himself through his contributions to the field of South Asian Studies. The world of Tékumel never became a best-selling franchise like other fantasy sagas, buts its colorful original setting, detailed worldbuilding, alien ecosystem, and decidedly non-Western fantasy civilizations wound up greatly influencing other forms of fantasy media, from Dungeons & Dragons to video games like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Barker, a linguist from Spokane who created a fantasy world called Tékumel.
Tolkein and his Middle Earth setting, a detailed fantasy world fleshed out and portrayed through poems, novels like The Lord Of The Rings, maps, and even constructed languages. Most fantasy genre fans are familiar with J.R.R.
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