Meet Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a metropolis in southern Dalmatia, Croatia, by the Adriatic Sea. Between the 14th and nineteenth centuries, Dubrovnik dominated itself as a free state. Dubrovnik was allied with Ancona, a rival of Venice, creating competing commerce routes.
Notably, Dubrovnik extremely valued liberty (abolishing slavery within the fifteenth century), utilizing diplomacy and its financial wealth to ship service provider ships (often known as argosy) everywhere in the world. Their ships flew with a white flag and the Latin phrase “Libertas” (freedom) prominently featured on it.
The Wall
Dubrovnik is a walled metropolis, which runs over 1 mile round, and is from 12 to twenty toes thick. The partitions attain a most top of about 80 toes and are bolstered by three round and 14 quadrangular towers, 5 bastions (bulwarks), two angular fortifications and a big fortress.
Dubrovnik’s partitions have served it nicely. Town was saved from a sneak assault by the Venetians because of the prescience of St. Blaise, town’s patron saint, who warned Dubrovnik of an impending assault by the Venetian fleet simply exterior town partitions. Seeing that their shock assault was thwarted with little hope of scaling town partitions, they retreated.
Dubrovnik’s walled metropolis has served because the backdrop for George R. R. Martin’s personal walled metropolis, King’s Touchdown in Recreation of Thrones tv sequence, with a number of scenes filmed on location. There are vacationer points of interest all through town celebrating this truth, together with a copy of the Iron Throne and a chance to decorate up and take photos with a life-sized dragon.
In a fantasy marketing campaign, these partitions can function a robust image of protection and safety, but in addition of the isolation and rigidity that comes with residing in a fortress metropolis.
Fashionable Medication
Dubrovnik was one of many first cities to make use of quarantine to guard it from plague. The 2-week quarantine required guests to be housed exterior town partitions earlier than getting into, a key consider preserving the closely-spaced inhabitants secure (to see how unhealthy this could go in a walled metropolis, see the plagues of Edinburgh).
However quarantine was simply one in all Dubrovnik’s medical improvements. Town had medical providers as early as 1300, with the primary pharmacy (nonetheless working to today!) opening quickly after. Different improvements embody an almshouse and orphanage.
In a fantasy marketing campaign, a Dubrovnik-inspired metropolis is perhaps a middle of therapeutic and alchemical data for clerics and druids.
Relics
Dubrovnik’s most beloved church is dedicate to St. Blaise, constructed within the 18th century in honor their patron saint. The Baroque Cathedral homes an infinite treasury crammed with the Saint’s relics. Seeing this for the primary time as a vacationer is kind of the expertise; it is wall-to-wall gilded physique components in a vault.
St. Blaise’s relics in Dubrovnik embody components of his cranium, a proper hand, and quite a lot of different smaller physique components. These are displayed through the metropolis’s annual feast in his honor, on February third, and are carried in procession by the streets, believed to offer safety and blessings to town and its inhabitants.
Along with these of St. Blaise, Dubrovnik’s treasury holds: the arm of St. Stephen, believed to be the primary Christian martyr; a bit of the True Cross; and numerous bones, enamel, and different physique components of saints, every with its personal story and significance (images should not allowed of the treasury, the objects pictured above are displayed within the pharmacological museum).
In a fantasy marketing campaign, these quite a few relics is perhaps lent to highly effective characters in instances of want. They have been thought-about key to defending Dubrovnik itself and in addition attributed therapeutic powers.
Dubrovnik in Your Marketing campaign
By drawing on Dubrovnik’s wealthy historical past, distinctive cultural heritage, and the real-world areas that impressed fashionable fantasy, you’ll be able to create a fantasy marketing campaign setting that’s each historically-grounded and crammed with countless prospects for journey. Whether or not your gamers are defending town’s partitions, trying to find uncommon medicinal herbs, or uncovering the mysteries of historic relics, Dubrovnik provides a template for a thriving fantasy walled metropolis.
