Why the Theocracy of the Pale is the Best Region to Play In

by Ron Levy

First, we need to realize that all the historical background in Greyhawk is stolen from real-world history. And why not? Steal from the best. Humanity has thousands of years of intricate history in hundreds of countries to steal from. Just file off the serial numbers and you have game background.

Here's an example: The Great Kingdom. Get your Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and read pages thirten and fourteen, especially the last paragraph, first column, page fourteen. "The Aerdi Overkings grew lax, caring more for local prestige and wealth than for the affairs of their vassals in distant lands. ... As each Sovereign passed, he was replaced with a more dimwitted and less competent successor, until the outer dependencies of Aerdi declared their independence."

You've just read `The Rise And Fall of the Roman Empire' summarized into a page or so. Sure, it's not EXACTLY the Roman Empire. It has something called `The Celestial House of Rax' which to me shows that someone was sliding in Eastern influences like the concept of a dynasty. And it has magic and elves. But it starts up a new calendar — historically one of the most important Roman innovations — and it splits into a North and a South faction, and every one of those `outer dependencies' has its own little story of rebellion just like the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire. If we take a more Eastern view of the Great Kingdom, Iuz and his armies are obviously Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes.

Why the Theocracy of the Pale is really the United States

Keeping in mind that things in Greyhawk are generally real and historical with some other influences mixed in (`The Rhennee will be like the Romany Tribes, but on boats instead of wagons!') and perhaps some innovation, it's easy to see what the Theocracy of the Pale most represents.

The United States.

Let me draw some parallels.

Both were started by zealots fleeing from religious persecution.

Both were begun by pioneers living in a harsh, distant land amongst native people. Where the United States had the Puritans and the Native Americans; the Pale had the incoming Aerdi and the native Flan peoples.

Many different countries had imperial holdings in the `New World', like Spain and France as well as England. Through a combination of diplomacy, purchase, and clearly losing rebellion they gradually coalesced into the US. The parallel is sort of backwards in time event for event, but the Pale successfully broke away from the Great Kingdom and began its own government — the Council of Nine. Later, it was annexed in the creation of Nyrond and lost a war of independence, then achieved it nearly a hundred years later through mainly diplomatic means. (Actually, this seems to echo the Spanish and American occupations of the Philippines nearly exactly.)

Let's move away from ancient history. The Pale is portrayed recently in the Greyhawk Wars as refusing to honor pleas for aid that didn't come out of formal alliegances already made. Only when Iuz's forces had decimated Tenh and rested on the Pale's doorstop did they move into dramatic action. Shades of World War II, where the United States did their level best to ignore the Axis until Japan's actions made it impossible to continue. And just as the Pale's military forces are considered in the top echelon as far as skill and power goes - consisting of well-trained, devout, clearly high-powered clerical Justicars — so too were the forces of the United States in World War II once the `sleeping giant' awakened.

Now, the big one.

The Pale is portrayed as `having one religion'. However, outside the cities it's clear that worship of Beory and other nature gods takes place amongst the Flan; that no one cares to put down the elves for worshipping whatever; and indeed that the laws only say that you can't proselytize publicly for other deities. If you want to worship other gods in the privacy of your own home, fine. Then again, Ogburg is specifically mentioned as a comparative `bastion of freedom' where unusual tolerance for outsiders is allowed.

Shades of the United States again. I don't mean the United States of the current day, or even the United States you might imagine if you read our Constitution. I mean the United States of the 1940s and 1950s; the United States of the Bible Belt, the United States where every day schoolchildren used to stand up and Pledge Alleigance To the Flag and to One Nation, Under God, Indivisible. I was one of those kids in the 1970s and I only lived in the Midwest. And I remember that if a kid, for some family religious reason, didn't want to Pledge Alleigance every day they had to get a note from their parents and they could expect to eat a little dirt on the playground for their religious beliefs. I could only imagine what it might have been like for someone in the South, not the Mild Mild West where I lived.

The United States has had internment camps as late as 1942, when thousands of Japanese-Americans were rounded up from the West Coast without so much as a shred of evidence linking any one of them as any kind of spies or perpetrators. And I'm not even getting into Native American Reservations, or the camps the United States has right now for legal and illegal immigrants held without recourse for legal trial awaiting `hearings' through the overbooked immigrations `system'. Compared to these, the `New Dawn' internment camps listed in the Pale's justice document are just an echo.

You don't have to look far to find intolerance in America. Swap `religion' for `nationalism' and the Pale rapidly becomes the United States. At one time in the United States, your life and career could be destroyed just by someone standing up, pointing at you, and saying you were a `card-carrying Communist.' Your business would be boycotted, your house would be firebombed, there'd be no trial, and you'd wonder why they don't call it an `Inquisition.' Intolerance to the point of lynching for personal beliefs still happens in this country.

But enough of that. Any of the supposed `badness' in the Theocracy of the Pale can easily be found in the United States. Maybe hard to find our CURRENT United States, but easy to find if we go back a few years. The US has perhaps the richest history of all when it comes to actually triumphing in the end over all the bad things we do to each other through the value of our founding morals alone.

And the Pale can too.

It's specifically stated that the monasteries in the Pale have some of the most impressive libraries and most respected philosophers and sages in the entire world. Of course it would; the entire country is devoted to a God of Knowledge. Similarily, the United States, while it may or may not have the best college, certainly has the best educational system and the best library system in all the world. And when it comes to scientists and physicians, try to find me a country that beats the US in quantity and quality... and if you come up with one you'll find that they came here to learn in our colleges then went home.

Ogburg in the southeast is a prodigious trading center; and nicely located too if you look at the map, with a decent number of countries fairly close by. Just like trade is one of the US's largest strengths. Freedom of speech is beginning to blossom there, actually a fairly radical concept in any kind of medievalist fake fantasy reconstruction. So just like the US, that freedom of speech is something that isn't really guaranteed, it's something you have to fight for both overtly (against laws and Inquisitions) and covertly (against censorship and prejuidice).

It's my belief that the more one looks, the more parallels one can find between the United States and the Pale. Sure, if you look to minutiae and ancient tiny bits of supposed `canon' you can find things that don't fit; until you look at them through the right lens, correct for magic and gods, and link them to the correct past points in our history. I think `The Pale As the United States' is a good selling point, as well as a good direction to take our future growth.

-Ron Levy