The Hyborian Age: Total War

[King Orko]

When will you guys release a province map?

[Taranaich]

I'll get a blank province map out pretty soon, just prettying it up at the moment.

Naming the cities & provinces is a bit of a nightmare. Though most of the important ones are fairly easy, coming up with names for others isn't, and since I set out to make a non-pastiche mod this means I'd have to make up an awful lot of places.

The reasoning for this is that, although the pastiches give us plenty of information on places Howard didn't illuminate, I just flat out disagree with a lot of them. Howard made a point of having his cities bear similarities to historical ones, (Tarantia/Tarentum, Khorshemish/Carchemish, Khawarizm/Khwarezm etc) so it's a general "thing" that he did. However, some cities of the pastiches like Alkarion, Pirogia and Haloga don't seem to have any resemblance to a historical city, and they don't really sound Howardian at all IMHO. Indeed, DeCamp and Carter actually criticized Howard for what they viewed as a lack of imagination (spot the irony), and so they completely made up names despite Howard clearly establishing a convention of naming cities after notable historical ones. He could make up names perfectly fine for his Thurian Age and ancient evil cities, so he obviously designed it this way.

Hopefully by doing this I can make the mod a bit more Howardian. Plus, I just never really liked the names for Hyperborea's cities.