MERGED: Information On The Real Rurik And Other Things

I was bored and thought it would be funny to do a search on Rurik's name considering many games take historical characters or locations and use them in thier games. Here is a link where you can read about the real Rurik. Heres some other examples, if you don't care to read these just scroll down to the link.

Game Name/ Historical Thing-a-ma-bobber

Fable: The name of the world in this fun yet short little rpg is Albion. If one was to look down in history they would find that Great Britain's ancient name at one point was Albion. Now you know where that accent the characters have came from. >_<

Prince Of Persia: The fun little game feature the prince of well Persia and his struggle agaisnt bad. The funny thing is that Perisa was the ancient name of Iran.

Dynasty Warriors/ Samurai Warriors: Both of these games made by Koei feature actual historical fighters that lived in fuedual Japan and China. Most people may have guessed this but other belived they were made up.

Heres the Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik

interesting wikipedia entry for Rurik.
Also interesting that it includes the word Hrodric, which is of course notable in Diablo2.

eudas

Russian historians generally disregard the legend of Rurik of Rus as just legend for nationalistic reasons, because it'd mean that vikings, westerners, founded what was to become Russia; worse, they were invited because the russians themselves couldn't agree on who should rule; and, worst of all, indeed the name Russia derived from a western people.
If you're a nationalistic russian historian, that is simply Not On.

For those who've seen the movie King Arthur, they follow the Russian view, and make the Rus a slav people from the Black Sea, rather than vikings, despite the obvious bizarreness of having mercenaries from the Black Sea region fighting in Britain. Presumably this was simply a case of shoddy background checking, as they seem to have confused them with the horseback-warrior people the Kurgans.

The Kurgans, in turn, show up and get misrepresented in another movie: Highlander, where they're portrayed as a people who get their kicks by throwing babies to dogs, and the main villain is simply known as 'the Kurgan'.

But to the historic Rurik, being associated with the mad rusher Rurik of Ascalon is probably much worse than being confused with a Kurgan.

Oh, and incidentally: Numa Pompilius was the second king of Rome.

Iraq originated from Babylon, an ancient city that was once under Persian rule, until Alexander's arrival in Babylon and thus converting it to Mesopotamian state, that and among a few other historical cataclysmic events that would eventually seperate the two sovereignties into Iraq and Iran. So depending on how far back you go, Iraq and Iran were both part of Persia once.

So have you wished it, so shall it be.
Just a short note; About 7 posts in here were removed for being wildly off-topic.

A few more wiki searches turned up these:

For King Osric: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osric
For the Bladed Aatxe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aatxe
The sunken continent of Orr: named after the Orr (Yossarian's friend) from Catch-22?

On a side note, I've been a long-time lurker, and just recently started posting. But recently, why does it seems like every other topic in the GWGuru forums is either turned into a flame war or locked?

Under that logic, the United States originated by Native American settlements.
How would you define Spain? Visogothic? Islamic? Roman? You can't just say a country developed dirrectly from a people who lived there 1000 years ago. The only thing that is really remaining is the land mass.

You want one to boggle the mind Augury was named after the temple that the blind seer(talk about an oximoron) Tesseriaus if i spelled that right used to watch over and give his predictions

Wow lots of intersting facts, I'll have to save some it so I can reviw it.

I must agree with hawk, if we were using that form of logic; when Jerusalem was under Roman rule, would we consider them to be Romans at any given time in history? Iranians have a completely different culture than the indigenous people of Iraq(Babylon). Needless to say that people from Iraq were never called Persians or Iranians.

I was talking about the land. The origin of their culture can leave much speculations.

We're talking about two different issues: You're speaking of who created the Iraqi nation, while that answere is definitely very much not persian. I was talking about the land of which the map is drawn from, which Iraq definitely sits on the land once belonging to Persia. And you are right, the great nation of United States may not be created by the Native Americans, but the soil it rests on today did belong to them. Depending how far you go back, our lands are often shared by cultures we didn't even know of, I guess you can say that our lands once originated from the Dinasour civilizations...

Allow me to rephrase so that the message can be clarified:

But I think the existance of Persia in history is common knowledge?

Anyway to add to this I think I can remember Ascalon to be a city and possibly a region that existed during the crusades and was destroyed at some point. I'd look it up to get the details but I'm lazy.

heh, I would say it is probably that right there that they derived it from as opposed to the historical context. though hrodric may have been from the historical context, and these guys being diablo devs probably named him in the first place, I see it more along the lines of referencing their previous work. it is much like Fallout/Fallout II having references to Wasteland :-)

thanks for that bit of info..

hehe, I wasn't. You are correct, it was a stronghold important to the Crusades.
Three references:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01766b.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkelon

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0101/feature4/

This means the Charr/human battles are a metaphor (intentional or not) for the Crusades. only from the POV of the islamic states. A nice touch.

Wow very intersting might have to do a report on it for a history class. I also like the detail and background each of the proffesions have. Such as the Elementalist and the thrid eye which adds a +1 state bonus as we all should know. Many Wiccan and spellcasters today feel it help focus and unlock power from within so it make sence that it would raise a gievn skill. Though sence the wiccan belief isn't writen it can be taken and changed by the praticeners.(sp?)

Necromancers sacrifce blood to cast certain spells. I'm sure we all have heard of vodo docters and saintanic worshipers(sp?) using blood and other living things to cast certain spells and curses so I was very surpised to see that. The Monks seemed to be based off shoulin or temple monks which are usually found in Asian countries. The tattos that the monks bare can e seen on actual monks in pictures which is pretty trippy. It seems alot of history and detail from the real world was added into the game to give it a truelyeal feel.

Interesting stuff here!

I just did a few searches on wikipedia myself:

Ettin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettin
Aidan - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aidan
'Alessio', as of clicking 'go', takes you straight to 'Saint Alexius' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessio
Balthazar - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balthazar
Yak - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yak
Ghoul - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoul

I've seen lots of similarities between the LOTR movies and Guild Wars. Ettins are a good example. In mythology, they're two- or three-headed monsters, while in the game they look almost identical to the cave trolls in FOTR. There are other similarities but I can't think of them right now.

I think in some cases we're looking a little too hard. Maybe they just picked some of these names because they have a nice semi-medieval ring to it.