Since Dedue's family comes from a village of blacksmiths, they probably lived near Sacred Gwenhwyfar and the other mountains leading into Fódlan proper.
It's likely that some members of the community were familiar with the basics of Fódlan language, given the mineral wealth of Duscur being its primary interest to the nearby kingdom. Dedue may well have had an easier start than Petra, though he speaks the truth when he says he is stronger with spoken Fódlan than written. Partial immersion upbringing. Maybe he always had an idea of representing the culture of his people to the wider continent.
I actually headcanon that his mother comes from an agricultural town northwards— and that in a different future, he might have left the place of his birth to worship the god of earth in another way than his father, alongside his maternal grandparents.
Other worldbuilding thoughts on Duscur I might eventually move to their own post:
I also headcanon that Duscur was formerly closer to Albinea, and the Sacred Gwenhwyfar mountain range was formed when the geologic plate slid into Fódlan's continental plate. (This would be related to my ideas on trade with Albinea, local ecology of northern Fódlan, and extant relict populations of elk descended from Albinean domestic reindeer. The berries are like salmonberries or gooseberries.) (Alternatively, Albinea broke away from Fódlan and is moving north on a tectonic scale.)
There's probably also long tradition of smoked, pickled, and salted fish, considering the peninsular marine access and nearby salt mines in the mountains bordering Pryderi territory (latter info from Hopes). It's said that Duscur has rich forests, implying that wood (likely larch and bristlecone pine) is not a popular building material for typical domiciles or water vehicles. The flowers of Duscur in Garreg Mach's greenhouse are drought resistant, but easily overwatered by the freshwater available for that purpose, possibly indicating a brackish origin with halitic soils and saline water table. Seals are abundant along the coasts of rocky cliffs, similar to in the real-world northern United Kingdom. Perhaps selkie folklore can also be found in Duscur. Sealskin is probably the boatbuilding material of choice.
We know that Duscur culture also has a bear totem; this could be like real-world Korea's, or Siberian and Inuit, origin myth cosmologies. Bear meat is sacred to the Ainu of Hokkaido and Kamchatka, consumed ritually as part of ceremonies honoring the relationship local people have with the land as participants of a cycle both spiritual and ecological. It is likely that Duscur bears are closest to the Eurasian brown bear. (I have a special place in my heart thinking of it as the Ussuri subspecies!) Due to the presence of bears, wolves have less prey and territory for hunting and a lower population in the region.
With mountains, coasts, and bears, we can assume Duscur to have an annual salmon run and plenty of rocky postglacial waterfalls. Add that to the tourism bureau's pamphlet right up there with the wildflowers— I prefer to picture something like bluebell woods, personally.
The Duscur people have probably domesticated some sort of gourds, like calabash or pumpkin or acorn squash. Root vegetables may be more common than leafy greens, depending again on soil salinity.
Something many may not have considered before is the presence of beavers in Duscur. Beavers are an excellent way to decenter European ecology and culture from wider historically inspired fantasy works, since they went nearly extinct in that region just before the Colonial Age. The second largest kind of rodent, and the largest endemic to our planet's northern hemisphere, beavers are what are referred to as 'keystone species' and 'ecosystem engineers'. A really effective way of representing the negative effects of imperialistic colonization is through the degradation of local ecology as beaver populations decline from fur hunting. Using the beaver as a symbol, we can represent a shorthand for the reintroduction, reconstruction, reparation, and respect for indigeneity promised by King Dimitri Blaiddyd I of United Fódlan to the native Duscur people.
A fantasy setting offers fascinating opportunities to think about what defines something in our world and to look at how it might be different with different physics. What if beavers had gills? What if otters could transition from sea to river? What if seal blubber had flavor? What if flowers were salt-tolerant!? I really enjoy exploring potential answers to the questions Fuukasetsugusu doesn't even realize it asks, and I hope my posts can get some readers experimenting with what the more mundane aspects of fantasy world might look like.
Glad to provide! :D I actually would like to host an informational panel about SHf next year at a convention for Japanese media. As a fan of the game's contents, may I ask what things you find most important to know about it? What information or experience contextualizes the finer points of this game that the average consumer might miss? Since you seem to have been engaging for quite some time, perhaps you could help me narrow down what to include!
Thank you for the question!!
Hmm, there's the historical setting aspect that it takes place in 1960's Japan, during the second Wave of Feminism. So there's this conflict between change and tradition, with more women entering the workforce but still having this expectation to eventually quit and become child-rearing housewives.
Shf also plays with common Japanese folktale tropes, such as Fox spirits taking human form to marry humans. There's also the fear of "divine punishment" when insulting the gods.
It also takes religious inspiration from not only Shintoism, but Buddhism. NG+ esp seems to revolve around Hinako going through samsara multiple times before reaching enlightenment. There's also things like the Tsukumogami's design looking like an Asura, the Jizo statues, and the Agura no Hotei-sama which are all derived from Buddhism.
Oh! Also the common misconception that certain endings are "good" and others are "bad". The game director and writer have mentioned multiple times that there are no official "good" or "bad" endings in shf, simply choices and how you, as the player, feel about them.
That's all the things I can think about right now, hope it helps! 🤔
Things I think Fódlan does not have: crowns, guillotines, fireworks, indoor plumbing outside of Enbarr proper, bathrooms, paper (controversial) or cardboard, any copies of printed text books, polyurethane or polyester or polycarbonate, bananas, sun–tanning, strong glue, ikea, industrial–scale anything but especially textiles and clothing, pepper trees, chiles, christmas, full mimicry of catholicism in culture, colourfast textile dyes, proper siege towers, cacao, different alphabets (written language was gifted by seiros last milennium and maintained since)
Things I think Fódlan does have: fountain pens, oil lamps, silver mirrors, charcoal drawing, tooth brushes, mascara, some form of rubber via boiled tree sap, lions (in Sreng), hopscotch, original linoleum, dictionaries, joinery, mills, possibly magically grown skin for grafts and leather, raingear, ergot, decoratively carved wooden bowls/spoons/goblets, sod roofs, funereal pyres, incense, falconry, bobbin lace
(Edited to remove forks from the list, it seems the inclusion of forks was very intentional!)
Dead goblin wife mention! Thank you for your contribution! I just read on the wiki that her return would have been Bandos's condition! Her power!
She technically breaks up with us in City of Um and I want you to know when I found that out I didn't play for a week from sheer Mad At Jagex.
I will argue to the heavens and back that Zanik is genuinely one of the very best characters in RS, and no other series will EVER do goblins as well as RS did. The fuckin goblin temple miniquest where you find out that Bandos bred them to be stupid ripped my heart out.
It's us and our dead goblin wife forever and my WG should've been allowed to marry her for real.
Do we think Gustave Gilbert Dominic was there for the taking of southern Sreng territory by the Northern Lords? I get the feeling he's watched Rodrigue for longer than Rodrigue has watched him.
Dimitri, after escaping Fhirdiad, scavenged and stole rye grain (typically only grown as fodder) which had been infected with ergot fungus growth during the early frosts and unseasonably wet winters mid-war. The enlarged red wulfzähne (wolfteeth) fungus seemed drenched in blood, fuelling his paranoia that the dead were leading his path.
Paranoia, delusion, dementia, aggression, confusion, malaise, epilepsy, spasms, numbness, mania, psychosis, peeling skin, take your pick of symptoms to torture him with!
Having someone tell him not to eat something he just found could have changed the course of the continent.
