Idea - historically accurate persons.

[Orety]

One of the main goals of this module  are some historically accurate persons. Main part of these goal is already achieved – kings and lords are all historically placed… I suppose so…
But the XIII century consisted not only of army leaders but also of great number of politicians, devoted clerics, scientist, minstrels and many other.
My idea is simple – to add to this module few important and famous character which existed in that epoch. This can give player a taste of immerse in medieval Europe and add some RPG-depth.

I have already thought about three NPCs: 

1. Saint Thomas Acquinas. He was born 1225 in Acquino, Kingdom of Sicily, and died 1274 in Fossanova in Italy. He was an Italian priest of the Catholic Church in the Dominican Order, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus (the Angelic Doctor) and Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis (the Common or Universal Doctor.

In 1257 he can be met in Paris, where he has been teaching theology in College of St. James.

Player could met him on the streets, in the castle or (less probably) in tavern. He could give player a quest, for example:  to find some ancient Christian teachings held by Muslims in Cairo… (it is only an example).

2. Roger Bacon, born 1214, died 1294, also known as Doctor Mirabilis (Latin: "wonderful teacher"), was an English philosopherand Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on empirical methods. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by the works of Plato and Aristotle via early Islamic scientistssuch as Avicenna and Averroes.

1257 - he can be met in Oxford or in Paris.

3. Niccolo (died 1294) and Maffeo (Matteo) Polo (died 1309) were the father and uncle respectively of Marco Polo, the Venetian explorer. Before the birth of Marco, the two became merchants, and established trading posts in Constantinople, Sudak in the Crimea, and in a western part of the Mongol Empire. As a duo they reached modern day China before temporarily returning to Europe to deliver a message to the Pope. Taking Niccolo's son Marco with them, the Polos then made another journey to the Orient, as recorded in Marco's book The Travels of Marco Polo.

In 1257 they can be met in Constantinopole, where they have lived in Venetian quarter of the town. They were -  like Marco – explorers and travelers, so they can give player series of quests: scouting far eastern cities, bringing some items from voyages.

For those characters above I can make all the necessary conversations, dialogue lines, informations – but I would like somebody  help me with technical issues: I can’t script Warband yet.

I can also prepare the model of characters in Warband character editor.

But I want to know, do you like this idea...

Of course, I you have some other famous, well – known persons from that times, just post them with some links.

 

[Skandinav]

Great, more like these please.

NPC's who are actual companions may also be posted in the "New Hero Submissions" thread.

 

[Orety]

I'm refreshing it; not too many votes, and not even one additional idea for historical NPC to add, so maybe I'll give it some time more...

 

[KinGLawls]

Maybe later, now there are more important things to be made.

 

[Tsewe]

This is an awesome idea. I know there are some more, but right now I cannot find any. Let me look or search in my stuff, i'll find someonelse.

I thought about other great person, but they were either dead or not-yet-born in 1257 hehe.

Would you like to make them as companions? or just as a wandering NPC that can give you quest and dialogs?

 

[CtrlAltDe1337]

This would be really cool.

 

[tullyccro]

I like any idea like this that adds historical depth. This got me wondering if you could add a bishop or a friar to each realm and cardinals/bishops to the Papacy faction. If you completed a mission for the regional friar or bishop this should increase your popularity throughout the entire faction with certain characters but alienate you from others, depending on their loyalty to the church, or if you completed a mission for a cardinal in Rome this should increase your standing throughout all Catholic nations, with the exception of the HRE of course which was vying for control of northern Italy at the time and for secular independence. This might be a way of incorporating some of the Guelphs/Ghibellines conflict into the game, or at least representing the struggle between church and state. Just a few thoughts, keep up the great work.

 

[Orety]

Ok, this weekend I'll start to write down quest ideas and dialogue lines for Bacon, Polo and Acquinas. if anybody could help me implement these in module?

Also, I'll try to build a proper faces for these persons in game.

 

[Alyosha]

I think you've already picked the best known people of the 13th century. But you can have a look for others under 'Significant people' in Wikipedia's entry for '13th century': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_century

 

[Tsewe]

If you want to add them as Companions, I suggest you to read this awesome "creating a companion tutorial" made by Malik Faris.
It's really simple and well written (but believe me, it takes quite some time to write the "story-lines", the last part)

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,130815.0.html

 

[Orety]

I don't think companions... rather static NPC in the cities. I don't suppose Thomas Acquinas would like to wander all around Europe, fight robbers instead writing Summa Thaelogica.

 

[Tsewe]

I totally agree, I had misunderstood the previous posts.

Here are some more suggestions:

1-Albert the Great: "also known as Saint Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, was a [german] Dominican friar and bishop who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge of and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion. He was born sometime between 1193 and 1206, to the Count of Bollstädt in Lauingen in Bavaria.[2] Contemporaries such as Roger Bacon  applied the term "Magnus" to Albertus during his own lifetime, referring to his immense reputation as a scholar and philosopher."

He was the mentor of St. Thomas D'Aquin (but he died after him, precisely in 1280) and was made was made provincial of the Dominican Order in 1254. He introduced and translated many Arabic philosophical texts such as those of Averroes.

2-Bonaventure: "born Giovanni di Fidanza in 1221 – died 15 July 1274- was an Italian medieval scholastic theologian and philosopher, the seventh Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor. He was a Cardinal Bishop of Albano.In 1253 he held the Franciscan chair at Paris and was proceeded as master of theology. Unfortunately for Bonaventure, a dispute between secular and mendicants delayed his reception as master until 1257, where his degree was taken in company with St Thomas Aquinas - in 1255 he had received the degree of master, the medieval equivalent of doctor.

It was by his order that Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar himself, was interdicted from lecturing at Oxford and compelled to put himself under the surveillance of the order at Paris. In philosophy Bonaventure presents a marked contrast to his contemporaries, Roger Bacon and St Thomas Aquinas. While these may be taken as representing, respectively, physical science yet in its infancy, and Aristotelian scholasticism in its most perfect form, he brings before us the mystical and Platonizing mode of speculation."

3-Boetius of Dacia: "was a 13th century Danish philosopher. All that is known is that he went to teach philosophy at the University of Paris. Boetius was a follower of Aristotle and Averroes, and wrote on logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and ethics, though some of his works have not survived.Despite his radical views, Boetius remained a Christian, and attempted to reconcile his religious beliefs with his philosophical position by assigning the investigation of the world and of human nature to philosophy, while to religion he assigned supernatural revelation and divine miracles. He was condemned for holding the doctrine of double truth, though he was careful to avoid calling philosophical conclusions that ran contrary to religion true simpliciter."
He was friend with the following one, Siger of Brabant.

4-Siger of Brabant: (Sigerus, Sighier, Sigieri or Sygerius de Brabantia; c. 1240 – 1280s) was a 13th century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism. He was considered a radical by the conservative members of the Roman Catholic Church, but it is suggested that he played as important a role as his contemporary Thomas Aquinas in the shaping of Western attitudes towards faith and reason.
The importance of Siger in philosophy lies in his acceptance of Averroism in its entirety, which drew upon him the opposition of Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. In December 1270 Averroism was condemned by ecclesiastical authority, and during his whole life Siger was exposed to persecution both from the Church and from purely philosophic opponents."


*Basically number 3 and 4 had little problems (in or after 1257) with the catholic church, because of their diverging opinion...and, well, mostly because the Roman church did not want anyone to oppose its dogmas XD
This would be veeeeeeery interesting to add all of them because there were a lot of "competition" and opposition between those scholars.*

There was also St Margherita de Cortona (1247-1297) of the important group called "Berrettini della Penitenza" but as you can see she was only 10 years old in 1257...

Unfortunately, the 2 great arab philosophers Averroes and Maïmonides died in 1198 and in 1204 respectively so they can't be in the mod =( But this doesn't mean the characters from above can't talk about them!
John Duns Scot and William of Ockham were born after 1257, it would have been interesting to have them in the game too hehe...

It would be nice if a fransiscan character talked about Francis of Assisi (1181 - 1226) because he was more than important. He was THE man of medieval Europe. Actually, he was like a second Jesus... during the crusades, he even went to meet the Fatimid caliph in Cairo and told him to repent and convert to Christianism...the Caliph laughed at him and sent him back to Italy.

A Dominican could also talk about Dominico de Cuzman, the spanish scholar which led to the foundation of the Dominican Order, which by the way became very powerful by being in charge of the famous Inquisition.

**Everything between "_" is quoted from Wikipedia**

I will search for Arab and Slavic or Byzantine scholars and let you know about them.

**EDIT: I changed the characters' "number" so the 1st one could be the "most important one" and the 4th one is the "least important one". Personnaly I think 3 & 4 are a bit less important than those who will follow in my next post.

 

[Orety]

Great work, thanks.

Also I had an idea to post about Robin Hood, but his life is rather late XII century.

But I could create some kind of descendant of Robin Hood - for example ... James of Locksley - and use him as a companion.

 

[Tsewe]

I think he's already been suggested in the "companion / new hero submission" thread. You could go and verify, but this thread is more than 20 pages haha

here, i found it:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,115315.msg3048507/topicseen.html#msg3048507
just type in "robin" in your search bar
I thought people debated more about adding Robin, but I didn't read all the 25 pages...
I think it would rather be good to talk only about NPCs-non companions characters here. They could give you one or two difficult quest(s) and a nice reward too. Of course the player would be warned that those are not companions, and that their quest are ones of high difficulty.

***EDIT The fact is that some people consider Robin Hood as a "legendary character" and not a historical one...and since this mod is willed to be historically accurate, well some don't like the idea of adding Robin Hood...
Personnally, I think he (or one of his fictive descendant like you say) could/should be in the mod -- as a companion. That'd be fun, because he really existed. It's just hard to find who he really was.

 

[Tsewe]

Jexela wrote in the "New Hero submission":

What about him?

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

Here's a short résumé for lazy peeps:

Nahmanides - "also known as Rabbi Moses ben Nachman Girondi, Bonastruc ça Porta and by his acronym Ramban, (1194 – 1270), was a leading medieval Jewish scholar, Catalan rabbi, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator.
For Nahmanides, divine revelation is the best guide in all these questions, and proceeds to give his views on Jewish views of the afterlife. He holds that as God is eminently just, there must be reward and punishment. This reward and punishment must take place in another world, for the good and evil of this world are relative and transitory. Nahmanides, first as rabbi of Girona and later as chief rabbi of Catalonia, seems to have led a largely untroubled life." (Wiki)

Nice one too

Here are some more, get ready, I found many interesting! I will put the "most important one" at the beginning, and the "least" one at the end:

1-Rumi - " aka Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī was a Persian muslim poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. He was likely born in [1207] the village of Wakhsh in what is now Tajikistan. Rumi's family traveled west, first performing the Hajj and eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya (capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, in present-day Turkey). This was where he lived most of his life, and here he composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature which profoundly affected the culture of the area. [died in 1273]

Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. His original works are widely read in their original language across the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular in other countries. [His father] became the head of a madrassa (religious school) and when he died, Rumi, aged twenty-five, inherited his position. For nine years, Rumi practiced Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became a teacher who preached in the mosques of Konya and taught his adherents in the madrassa." (wiki)

I love this man, I really love his writings and all. One simply cannot avoid him if he's talking about the XIII's cultural great persons.

2-Ibn al-Nafis (Arabic: ابن النفيس‎)(1213 - 128 - "was an Arab Muslim polymath—a physician, anatomist, physiologist, surgeon, ophthalmologist, Hafiz, Hadith scholar, Shafi`i jurist and lawyer, Sunni theologian, Islamic philosopher, logician, Arabic novelist, science fiction writer, and scientist. He also wrote on Islamic psychology, Islamic sociology, astronomy, Islamic cosmology, futurology, geology, Arabic grammar and linguistics, and history. He was born in Damascus, Syria, and worked in Cairo, Egypt.

Ibn al-Nafis is now most famous for being the first physician to describe the pulmonary circulation, or pulmonary transit of blood.  His work would not be surpassed until the 17th century, when the theory of the entire circulatory system, i.e. the continuous circular motion of the blood throughout the whole body, was proposed by William Harvey. Soon afterwards, he began work on The Comprehensive Book on Medicine, for which he had already published 43 volumes by 1244, by which time he was about 31 years old. Over the next several decades, he would write down notes for 300 volumes, though he was only able to publish 80 volumes before he died." (Wiki)

3-Cimabue (1240 – 1302) - "also known as Bencivieni di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto di Giuseppe, was an Italian painter and creator of mosaics from Florence. Cimabue is generally regarded as the last great Italian painter working in the Byzantine tradition. Cimabue was a pioneer in the move towards naturalism, as his figures were depicted with rather more life-like proportions and shading. Even though he was a pioneer in that move, his painting Maesta shows Medieval techniques and characteristics. He is also well known for his student Giotto, considered the first great artist of the Italian Renaissance.

This is one of his paintings representing St Francois of Assisi
He could be interesting to add because of his young age (17 years old in the mod). Thus, he would be ambitious and searching for a new look into italian medieval art - which will end with his life (his students will start the Renaissance arts).

4-Raymond of Penyafort (1175-1275...he actually lived for a 100 years wow!) - "was born in Vilafranca del Penedès, a small town near Barcelona, Catalonia, around 1175. He was educated in Barcelona and also at the University of Bologna, where he received doctorates in both civil and canon law. From 1195 to 1210, he taught canon law. In 1210, he moved to Bologna, where he remained until 1222, including three years occupying the chair of canon law at the university. He was chaplain to Pope Alexander IV, and confessor of King James I of Aragon. Not long able to remain in seclusion, however, he was made General of the Dominican Order in 1238, but resigned in 1240. It was during his tenure that he revised the Dominican Constitutions. Having reached his sixtieth year, Raymond retired in Barcelona.

He exercised great influence over King James of Aragon and succeeded in persuading him to order a public debate, concerning Judaism and Christianity, between Moshe ben Nahman, a rabbi in Girona, and Paulus Christiani, a baptized Jew of Montpellier who belonged to the Dominicans (in 1263 though). He was among those who established the Inquisition in Catalonia." (Wiki)

5- Vincent of Beauvais (1190-1264~) - " Though Vincent may well have been summoned to Royaumont even before 1240, there is no actual proof that he lived there before the return of Louis IX and his wife from the Holy Land, early in the summer of 1254. Vincent's Speculum Maius ('The Great Mirror'), the compendium, of all the knowledge of the Middle Ages, seems to have consisted of three parts, the Speculum Naturale, Speculum Doctrinale and Speculum Historiale. All the printed editions, however, include a fourth part, the Speculum Morale, added in the 14th century and mainly compiled from Thomas Aquinas, Stephen de Bourbon, and a few other contemporary writers.

The vast tome of the Speculum Naturale  ("Mirror of Nature'), divided into thirty-two books and 3,718 chapters, is a summary of all the science and natural history known to western Europe towards the middle of the 13th century, a mosaic of quotations from Latin, Greek, Arabic, and even Hebrew authors, with the sources given. The second part, Speculum Doctrinale ("Mirror of Doctrine'), in seventeen books and 2,374 chapters, is intended to be a practical manual for the student and the official alike; It is a summary of all the scholastic knowledge of the age - It treats of logic, rhetoric, poetry, geometry, astronomy, the human instincts and passions, education, the industrial and mechanical arts, anatomy, surgery and medicine, jurisprudence and the administration of justice. The most widely disseminated part of the Speculum Maius was the Speculum Historiale, which provided a history of the world down to Vincent's time.

Finally
6-Ramon Llull (1232 - 1315) - "was a Majorcan writer and philosopher. He wrote the first major work of Catalan literature. Recently surfaced manuscripts show him to have anticipated by several centuries prominent work on elections theory. He is sometimes considered a pioneer of computation theory, especially given his influence on Gottfried Leibniz. Llull is well known also as a glossator of Roman Law.

don't ask me what the "smokish"-like thing that comes out from his mouth is...

He was well educated, and became the tutor of James II of Aragon. He was conversant in Latin, Catalan, Occitan (both considered the same language at the time as "popular Latin") and Arabic. By 1257 he had married Blanca Picany and they had two children, Domènec and Magdalena; yet despite his family he lived as before, a troubadour's life. About this time he became the seneschal (the administrative head of the royal household) to the future King James II of Majorca. Ramon Llull also had a strong mystical side, instanced in his work The Book of the Lover and the Beloved, written in order to illuminate weary, sterile souls. He was also interested in, and wrote about, astrology. Llull traveled through Europe to interest popes, kings and princes in establishing special colleges to prepare future missionaries to convert the infidels of Tunis to Christianity." (after 1275 though...) (Wiki)


So that's basically it. I searched for Slavic/Eastern european scholars and did not find any (I searched especially for "russian" scholars). Most of the important europeans were sent (from western europe) to eastern europe to learn about eastern maps or to convert Mongols/Tatars...

I did not search for Greek/Byzantin  scholars.

 

[Orety]

Great, thanks for help.

If you want, you can also give a ideas about character background:

1. Where should I find this person in game? (Town, but also place)
2. What kind of quests, plots or maybe books or events in game, may be attached to that character.

I,m little late about writing my plots, but I got some ideas.

 

[Tsewe]

I will edit my posts instead of adding countless posts, allright?

I will eventually add background ideas, quests, or location at the end of each character description.