Worldbuilding Weekend Prompt #104 - Barbarian Hordes
Welcome to the next in an ongoing series of writing prompts in the Worldbuilding community !
I'm aiming to post one of these each Sunday. They aren't a replacement for the excellent daily prompts from @worldbuilding they're just an extra opportunity if you have a writing itch you want to scratch. 😀
Image generated by AI in Wombo.art
The prompt this week is - Barbarian Hordes
Barbarian hordes are a staple of history and fiction, stereotyped as wild and fast horsemen on shaggy ponies turning up out of nowhere to sack cities and destroy civilisations. The reality, of course, is more complex.
It's hard to draw a dividing line between a migration of nomadic pastoralists, and rampaging barbarians. The earliest examples come from the Neolithic, when Kurgan nomads moved west, with their last incarnation being the Yamnaya Culture. Archaeological research is still divided on whether they rode horses or drove chariots, and whether they destroyed all before them or moved in and settled peacefully.
The destructiveness of the Huns is more certain, but what of the Alans, Vandals and Goths they drove before them ? The last major wave was the Mongols. But for all of these, it has to be recognised that they were more than pure savages; they had highly developed cultures of their own, just not ones involving cities. More importantly, they enabled the often decadent societies they overthrew the chance at rebirth, sweeping away corrupt old despots and systems and creating an opportunity for a fresh start.
Tell me a story of barbarian hordes from your setting ! What does their culture look like ? What do they ride ? What makes them feared and powerful ? How do they rule themselves, and what happens after they are gone ?
Just to add a bit of spice to things, the two entries I most like (and are linked in comments to this post, so I can find them !) that are posted by midnight (GMT) next Saturday will each get a prize of one Hive SBI.
This link will take you to the FAQ where you can read more about Hive SBI - it's a project I thoroughly support because it gives both the donor and winner a steady trickle of passive income paid out in the form of upvotes on posts.
Guidelines
I stole these guidelines straight from @worldbuilding prompts (I hope that's okay !), I couldn't have written them any better myself....
- Prompt replies may be anything! Art, game assets, stories, worldbuilding details, fake wiki entries, maps... whatever you want to create!
- Please ensure you reply to this post with a link to your reply
- Posting in or cross-posting to the Worldbuilding community is highly encouraged
- Use the hashtag #worldbuilding
- Prompt replies can be any length.
Some other neat communities for writing that you might want to check out are:
It can be a lot of fun to mix and match our prompts with some of these other community prompts.
!BBH