SMOOSH JUICE
The Eastern Continent
Dragon Quest III had to get creative when it came to adapting the Americas to a medieval fantasy world. There’s still plenty of historical parallels to be found in these regions, and some of them are deep cuts indeed, but they’re fit into the framework of an earlier time. Most people would consider the colonization of the New World to be decidedly after the medieval era, or at least pushing the envelope on what counts. However, that didn’t stop the developers from making it work – and they wouldn’t be the only ones to try and fit the New World narrative to a sword-and-sorcery milieu. Some of Robert E. Howard’s stories are practically Westerns without guns, and even I have cribbed from the history of the Americas for my own homebrew setting.
In fact, as I’m going to explore in the next series of posts, DQ3‘s take on the Americas is particularly pulpy. In these lands, you’ll find barbarian tribes, roving pirates, and decadent city-states run by tyrannical overlords. If the pseudo-Old World of Erdland is colored by historical fantasy, the New World is where we can put all the pulp fantasy tropes we didn’t have a good place for elsewhere. Since The Saga of the Ortegids takes great inspiration from pulp sword-and-sorcery traditions, I’m going to be taking advantage of this.
The pseudo-Americas aren’t given any proper name in-universe, so I’ll be referring to them collectively as the Eastern Continent. Yes, eastern – the overworld is consistently depicted using what we would consider a Pacific-centric projection, which both helps the map feel otherworldly despite the familiar geography and places Aliahan in the center, supporting the clues as to it once having been the seat of a bygone empire. Notably, there’s no real indication that this is a new world. No one alludes to the Eastern Continent as being recently discovered; in fact, numerous NPCs there reference contact with other powers across the sea. This, to me, implies that the major continents of Erdland have known about and been in contact with each other for much longer than those of our Earth, perhaps pointing to a smaller planet (as I’ve posited before), greater connections via the ancient Aliahanian portal network, or both.
However, much of our pop cultural perception of the Americas is colored by colonial history, and that is reflected in the Eastern Continent. There’s a town on the eastern coast in the process of being established by settlers – you can actually appoint one of your party members as the leader of this settlement, causing it to grow and develop over time, in a feature I’m still amazed that they pulled off on the NES. The comparisons to early European settlement in North America are self-evident here, but perhaps in this setting it would be more akin to an ancient Greek colony, or the settlement of Iceland – less a response to newly-discovered land to conquer, and more a case of people fed up with their homeland for whatever reason and going somewhere else (I realize this also applies to a few early European colonies in North America, but you get what I mean). It’s worth noting that the founder of this colony actually came from the barbarian tribes to the west, so it is not really a foreign colony.
To see how a setting like this could work in a fantastic context, we need look no further than Beyond the Black River. In The Saga of the Ortegids, this unnamed town would likely look quite a bit like Conajohara; a border settlement in a precarious position jostled up against the western barbarians. More on them in a later post. And by the way, I know what you’re thinking, but that’s what the game calls them, not me.
Likely, this settlement would be one of several found along the coast of various sizes. Some of these settlements would be independent city-states, but we also know that Edina had a presence on the continent as well, with a history of conflict with the barbarians further inland going back at least two generations. There are likely towns and castles established as Edinan outposts in the same vicinity as the settlers. This, in turn, suggests that Edina is a greater naval power than the limited look at it we get in-game would suggest. It’s the closest kingdom to the eastern coast of the Eastern Continent, so it likely has a robust seafaring culture to expand its reach across the ocean and establish frontiers on both shores.
Also in the vicinity is Grimland, a frozen island to the north where Greenland would be. Alas, I once again have to concede to the modern localizations here – very modern, in fact; the name “Grimland” was first used in the 2024 HD release. Before that, the island was consistently referred to as “Greenlad.” But…come on, that’s not even trying. “Grimland” is a much cooler name, anyway. Regardless, the island isn’t home to much of note; its only apparent inhabitant is a hermit wizard. You could put some Vikings here if you wanted them in Erdland, though Norse themes are far more prevalent in Torland.
