Worldbuilding Weekend Prompt #116 - 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 an archetype, the symbol of the destruction of a civilisation in blood and fire, of rampaging armies merging from unknown lands (usually somewhere to the east....) with no appreciation for the trappings of settled life.
The reality, of course, is somewhat different. The word "Barbarian" comes from the Greek, symbolising someone whose language is not Greek - their speech was thought to sound like a flock of sheep going baa-baa-baa. Yes, racial prejudices and stereotypes existed even in ancient times ! The word "Horde" is more interesting. It appears virtually identically in almost every European and Central Asian language.
Horde... horda.... orda... ordu... urdu... it's all the same word, and is thought to be one of the oldest words in human language. I blame the Yamnayas. But it's meaning is always related to the tribe, camp or family of Central Asian horse nomads.
The nomads have been emerging from the steppes for the last several thousand years, bringing with them a lifestyle derived from nomadic culture. Yamnayas (the Kurgans from Highlander), Scythians, Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Alans, Huns, Mongols and more - all different tribes that came westward into Europe (and occasionally into China and India). They weren't uncivilised or unintelligent, they just had a different lifestyle, often with a rich oral culture that's now been lost. It only stopped when Russia conquered Central Asia, a story just as exciting as the Wild West of America but little remembered.
So tell me about a barbarian horde in your setting ! Where do they come from ? Who unified them (temporarily) to assault the city dwellers ? What has forced them to get on the move ? How do they travel and make war - chariots, horses, Mad Max style cars, space fighters ? What is their culture like ? What happens when they meet civilised people - are they conquerors, stopped in their tracks, or conquerors who become absorbed to create a new vibrant fusion culture ? This is a prompt which could be used in so many ways - have fun !
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.