A cheat sheet for picturing the Flanaess. Each realm, city and people gets a rough counterpart from history or from famous fiction, and a line on why. For what each place actually is in 576 CY, follow the links to Lands of the Flanaess and History of the World.
How to read this. The Flanaess isn’t Earth with the names changed, and no realm is a copy of one real country. Most of what follows is interpretation: the GM’s, and long-running fan readings. Where Gary Gygax or a later official source said something, the line is marked Stated and gives the source. Treat the rest as a mental picture, not a rule.
The big picture
- The Flanaess ≈ late medieval and early Renaissance Europe, laid over North America. Stated: Gygax wrote in the 1970s that most of his campaign took place on “what corresponds to North America” (letter in Alarums & Excursions, quoted in Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World). Fans place the city near Chicago, Gygax’s birthplace, with the Nyr Dyv as a Great Lake. The published map of 1980 is new, but the feel is European: feudal kingdoms, a decaying empire, church-states and free cities. Greyhawk writer Joseph Bloch makes the same case (The Flanaess as European Analogue, 2012).
- Fiction: Gygax listed Tolkien, Leiber, Howard and Vance among his influences (Dungeon Masters Guide, 1979, Appendix N). That’s stated. Which corner owes what to which author is interpretation.
The four peoples
- Flan ≈ the native peoples of North America, with a dash of ancient Britain. The first humans, tribal, never an empire, pushed aside by newcomers. Gygax’s World of Greyhawk gives them bronze skin. The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (2000) names the Rovers the Arapahi and their elite warriors the Wardogs, echoing the Arapaho and the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. Their survival in hills and old duchies (Tenh, Geoff) feels like the Welsh and Bretons.
- Oeridians ≈ the Germanic migration-era peoples (Franks, Goths) who became Europe’s feudal nobility. Warlike tribes from the west who conquered, settled and founded the kingdoms. Stated: Gygax wrote that Oeridians mixed with Suloise give “a typical European-mix looking population” (Dragon #52, 1981).
- Suloise ≈ a fallen classical empire whose refugees became Norsemen. A proud, ancient, sorcerous empire that destroyed itself, plus fair-haired raiders of the fjords. Stated: Gygax described them as very fair, some nearly albino, and made them the people of the fjord-cut Barbarian Kingdoms (Dragon #52 and #55, 1981).
- Baklunish ≈ the Arab, Persian and Turkic world. Sultans, pashas and a beygraf; old learning, old faiths and steppe horse-clans. The titles do most of the work here; Gygax didn’t spell it out.
The two lost empires
- The Suel Imperium ≈ Atlantis, or Rome remembered as a lost golden age. Brilliant, cruel, and gone in a day. Its ruin, the Sea of Dust, recalls Sodom and Gomorrah or Pompeii. Bloch notes the Flanaess shares Europe’s habit of dreaming of an empire it can’t rebuild.
- The Baklunish Empire ≈ the Abbasid or Persian empires at their height. A rich, learned eastern empire, its heartland now the desert of the Dry Steppes, like the buried Silk Road cities of Central Asia.
The Central Flanaess
- The Free City of Greyhawk ≈ Renaissance Venice or Florence, with a touch of Lankhmar. A merchant oligarchy (the Directors) running a rich trading city, plus the guilds of thieves and assassins of Fritz Leiber’s city. Fans also read the name as a nod to the Black Hawk War of 1832, fought near Chicago.
- Dyvers ≈ Genoa to Greyhawk’s Venice. A rival merchant republic with a stronger navy, competing for the same water. Fans place it about where Milwaukee is.
- The Nyr Dyv ≈ Lake Superior. Huge, cold and deep; fans note the outline is close.
- Furyondy ≈ high-medieval France with an Arthurian gloss. A chivalric kingdom that broke from the empire and now holds the line against the north.
- Veluna ≈ the Papal States as they ought to have been. A church-state run with justice and learning. Bloch names the Papal States as the model for the Flanaess’s theocracies.
- Verbobonc ≈ Luxembourg or a Rhineland county. A small lordship squeezed between bigger neighbors.
- Celene ≈ Tolkien’s Lothlórien. A beautiful, aloof elven realm under a queen, keeping out of the world’s wars.
- Highfolk ≈ Tolkien’s Woodland Realm meets a free Alpine town. Elves and humans holding a forest against a spreading shadow.
- The Shield Lands ≈ the Crusader states and the Knights Templar. An order of holy knights holding an exposed frontier.
- The Horned Society ≈ a Hellfire Club with an army. No real model: a devil-worshipping secret society that has taken a country.
- Land of Iuz ≈ Mordor. A blighted land of monsters under a dark lord. Historically, a horde from the steppes in waiting.
- Perrenland ≈ Switzerland. Mountain cantons on a lake, famous for mercenaries. The name is stated to honor Jeff Perren, Gygax’s Chainmail co-author; the Swiss reading is the fans’ and Bloch’s.
- The Wild Coast ≈ the Wild West, or the Welsh Marches. Free towns, outlaws and exiles, with no lord strong enough to rule.
- The Pomarj ≈ the Barbary Coast with orcs. A raiders’ and slavers’ nest on the edge of the civilized sea.
The Eastern Flanaess
- The Great Kingdom ≈ the Holy Roman Empire, rotting like late Byzantium. A vast empire of near-independent princes under a weak center (Bloch’s reading), decadent, cruel and losing its edges. Ivid V plays the mad emperor (Caligula, Nero).
- Medegia ≈ the Papal States under the Borgias. A church-state run for power, not faith.
- The Sea Barons ≈ England’s Cinque Ports. Coastal lordships that owe the crown ships instead of knights.
- Rel Astra ≈ Ghent or Bruges under a Burgundian duke. A rich city that serves its overlord in name and wants out.
- Nyrond ≈ Habsburg Austria facing the Ottomans, or Plantagenet England. Big, old, conservative, and the main bulwark against the empire.
- Duchy of Urnst and County of Urnst ≈ the Duchy and the Free County of Burgundy. Two wealthy sister states with the same name, a river between them, and a marriage that could unite them.
- The Pale ≈ Calvin’s Geneva or Puritan Massachusetts. A strict, closed theocracy. Its name recalls the English Pale around Dublin.
- Tenh ≈ an independent Wales. A Flan realm surviving between bigger neighbors.
- The Bone March ≈ Byzantine Anatolia after Manzikert. A frontier province lost to invaders, with armies trying to win it back.
- Almor ≈ a prince-bishopric such as Liège. Ruled by a church, independent of the empire, on the front line.
- The Iron League ≈ the Lombard League. Cities and small states banded together against an emperor. Irongate is a fortress port like Gibraltar or Ragusa (Dubrovnik). The Lordship of the Isles shares its name with the real medieval Lordship of the Isles off Scotland.
- The Scarlet Brotherhood ≈ the Jesuits crossed with the Assassins of Alamut. A secretive order with monks and agents. Bloch sees a hint of the Jesuits in it.
The Northern Flanaess
- The Bandit Kingdoms ≈ the Rhineland robber barons or the Scottish Border reivers. Petty lords whose business is raiding.
- The Barbarian Kingdoms ≈ Viking-age Scandinavia. Fjords, longships, raiders and skalds, and a love of learning like Iceland’s sagas. Bloch calls it the Flanaess’s one plain Viking region; Gygax’s fjords (above) make it close to stated.
- Stonefist ≈ the Cossack hosts. A hard frontier realm founded by a war-chief and filled with runaways from everywhere.
- Rovers of the Barrens ≈ the Plains nations of North America. Mounted Flan clans, worn down by stronger neighbors. See the tribal names under the Flan, above.
- Wolf Nomads ≈ the Mongols. Steppe horse-clans fighting a dark power on their border.
- Tiger Nomads ≈ the Turkmen and Kazakhs. Horse-clans with trading posts who keep their horses’ pedigrees, like the breeders of the Akhal-Teke.
- Ratik ≈ a Norman marcher lordship. A small border barony holding its frontier alone.
Old Keoland
- Keoland ≈ Visigothic Spain, later at peace. An old kingdom born from a classical people (Suloise) mixing with Germanic newcomers (Oeridians). Once an empire-builder, now content.
- The Gran March ≈ the Teutonic Order’s state. A military land with an elected commandant, like the order’s Grand Master.
- Bissel ≈ Alsace-Lorraine. A border march every neighbor claims.
- Geoff ≈ Wales. A Flan-flavored duchy in the shadow of mountains, with a long memory of fighting giants.
- Sterich ≈ the Tyrol. A mountain march close to the crown, guarding the passes.
- The Ulek States ≈ Tolkien’s elves and dwarves as feudal vassals. An elven duchy and a dwarven principality on a mountain range, in the loose way of the German states.
- The Yeomanry ≈ Iceland’s Althing, or the Free Frisians. A free republic of armed farmers who elect their leader. Bloch reads it as a warriors’ democracy.
- The Sea Princes ≈ the buccaneers of Port Royal. An oligarchy of pirate houses with a strong fleet, going respectable.
- Valley of the Mage ≈ Shangri-La with a wizard in charge. A hidden valley out of legend that strangers don’t return from.
The Western Flanaess
- Ket ≈ the Ottoman frontier and a Silk Road crossroads. Where east meets west in trade and war. Its ruler’s title, beygraf, joins the Turkic bey to the German graf.
- Ekbir ≈ Abbasid Baghdad as a port. A strong, devout trading sultanate. Later sources call it a caliphate.
- Tusmit ≈ an Ottoman pashalik gone its own way. A province under a pasha that gets rich by playing its neighbors off against each other.
- Zeif ≈ the Ottoman Porte, or the Arabian Nights court of Harun al-Rashid. The oldest and proudest realm, under a sultan who prefers philosophy to war.
- Ull ≈ a Turco-Mongol warlord state. Nomads who took land and kept the harsh habits of the steppe.
- Plains of the Paynims ≈ the Bedouin and the Mongol steppe. “Paynim” is an old English word for pagans, used for the Saracens of the Crusades.
- The Dry Steppes ≈ the Taklamakan desert. Sand over the ruins of a great empire.
- The Sea of Dust ≈ the Cities of the Plain. A whole empire burned by fire from the sky, as in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Other peoples and groups
- The Rhennee ≈ the Romani, with something of Irish Travellers and river bargees. Wanderers who live on barges on the Nyr Dyv and its rivers, keep their own language, and are distrusted by settled folk. Their own lore says they came from another world, Rhop, which no Romani parallel covers.
- The Olman ≈ the Aztecs and Olmecs. A jungle people of the far south with temple cities and fierce gods. Stated: Dragon (2007) linked their gods to the Aztec pantheon; the name echoes the Olmec.
- The Touv ≈ the kingdoms of sub-Saharan Africa. A dark-skinned people of Hepmonaland’s jungles, added in later sources.
- The Knights of Holy Shielding ≈ the Knights Templar. A crusading order holding a frontier (see the Shield Lands).
- The elves ≈ Tolkien’s elves. Old, aloof, long-lived, keeping their own calendar and their own counsel.
Real-world comparisons are the GM’s and fans’ interpretation except where marked. Readings credited to Bloch and Peterson are from Joseph Bloch’s Greyhawk Grognard blog and Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World*. Greyhawk details drawn from the* World of Greyhawk gazetteer (1980), the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer*,* Dragon magazine and the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide*, © Wizards of the Coast, summarized under the Fan Content Policy.*