Irishfags, lend me knowledge of your relevant cities & historic sites. Y'know points of interest.
I'm running an urban fantasy game based on Celtic folklore. Premise is basically modern druids battling it out with evil druids & the fair folk. Half the game takes place in the Otherworld and the weird western islands, other half in modern Ireland.
Although we're a bunch of burgerfats I'd rather not have everyone drinking, jigging, being poor, and saying "begorrah" every 3 seconds like stereotypes.
Scotland's better. Do that.
>>46767143
I reckon /his/ would probably have a few good stories for you
There was a motorway in Co Clare that was delayed for years because of a fairy tree.
They eventually moved the motorway.
Pic related.
>>46767143
Scotland was actually in mind as well considering the shared Gaelic relation to Irish lore
>>46767239
IIRC in Iceland they were prevented from building a road because everybody was scared of the local elves
Irish legends have an interesting take on werewolves.
Ancient kings of Ireland would seek assistance from the wolf-men in war times.
The people of the Kingdom of Ossory could turn into wolves at will, leaving their human bodies behind. If the body was moved then they wouldn't be able to return to human form.
Another take was that a man and woman would become wolves for 7 years. At the end of this time the curse would lift and they would be human again, the curse moving on to a different couple.
There is also a story of a priest who was approached by a wolf asking him to bless his dying wife.
IIRC, werewolves were generally seen as protectors. They defended children and the wounded and guided travellers to safe paths.
Irishfag here. Can post stuff later but I need to run out for a few hours. If you can keep the thread alive that'd be handy.
>"""Irish"""-Americans
>>46768194
Stellar contribution, friend.
Another Irishfag here.
If you are looking for significant places, a good one could be Sceilig Mhichíl (Skellig Michael).
It's a couple of Islands with a monastery on them down off the south coast of Ireland.
The last couple of minutes in The Force Awakens? It's that place.
Will post a few more places you could use if this thread is still here in a couple hours when I get back.
>>46767427
Why did people in the 30's and 40's call Gaelic mythology "mad" in comparison to others?
>>46766891
If it is set in modern ireland, a few movies and tv shows I would recommend are Intermission, Calvary, Frank, Grabbers and In Bruges for movies. Love/Hate, Father Ted, Moone Boy, and The Fall for tv shows.
>>46766891
if you want to know why irish people hate the church
philomena, song of a raggy boy and the magdalene sisters
>>46766891
Cities, Dublin is the capital, Galway is the party city, Belfast is the city of tension, Limrick for violence etc
Historic sites and important sites, the hill of tara, newgrange, the burren, giants causeway, a simple google will tell you more
Biggest city is Dublin, on the east coast. About half of the country lives in the Greater Dublin Area. Cork, Limerick or Galway may be better cities for your setting as they are smaller and have a lot of rustic charm and they are also more westerly. The west of Ireland is where a lot of the beauty and magic lies.
Ireland is covered in megalithic tombs, mostly in the southwest. There are a number of types, the most common being wedge tombs. These always face southwest. Others are portal tombs and cairns. They face different directions, but the most famous cairns face southeast. Many cairns are on mountains, but take note that they are positioned so that the top of their mound is not higher than the top of the natural mountain peak. These pre-Celtic structures were thought to be entrances to Tír na nÓg - the underworld where fairies and such dwelt. The remains of ancient ring forts (usually seen as round ripples in the ground) are commonly called fairy forts.
Also banshees wail before somebody is about to die. They don't kill and are not violent.
The Skellig Islands and the Aran Islands are both neat places. Also consider the larger and more populous Achill Island, which has the ruins of villages that were abandoned after the steep population decline brought about by the great famine. All of these are on the west coast.
More easterly settings could include the Boyne Valley (home of a lot of stone age tombs, such as the very famous Newgrange) and the Hill of Tara (where the old High King of Ireland sat).
If you need an atlantis-equivalent, you've got mist-shrouded (Hy-)Brasil
>>46771370
Can most Irish people speak Irish?
>>46771528
Unfortunately not. While under British rule Irish language, culture, and religion (i.e. Catholicism) were heavily restricted to outright banned at various points and, as a result, most don't have the language.
It's survived it small communities in the west of Ireland and today's Irish speaking population is upwards of 80,000 and supposedly, is growing again.
>>46768184
I'm back if anyone else is interested.
>>46772801
Carry on my potato son
>>46771528
>>46772078
If you're in any of the Gaeltachtaí, you have fair odds of finding fluent native speakers. Otherwise, it's English with the occasional Goidelic phrase and loan-word.
>>46766891
> Do my research for me
> "Oireland"
Just make an island, cover it in grass and peat, replace Halflings with leprechauns and make the main quest a pubcrawl.
Sounds about your speed.
>>46772914
It's difficult to know where to begin seeing as other anons have already contributed.
Fairy forts are a good addition though, I think. Fairy forts (or raths) are the remains of old circular ring or hillforts. Pre-Christian Ireland believed the markings were imbued with magic from both druids and fairies and any who disturbed the remains/entered unbidden by the fair folk themselves would be cursed.
Pic is an example.
>>46773117
Pretty interesting stuff
>>46766891
There are literally castles and fairy forts and shit everywhere. Also we only have about five cities anyway.
>>46775616
Cork is barely a city, to be honest.
>>46771528
Kek.
>>46775654
Its the second biggest one in the country.
>>46775616
In the field beside me there is supposed to be a fairy mound. I reckon it might actually be magic because it is full of the most random rubbish. There is a shopping cart in there and we live way out in the back arse of nowhere countryside..
>>46775699
And you never let us forget it.
>>46775902
I have only been there a few times but it beats the hell out of limerick. There was even an actual GW shop there. The only GW shit I have seen in limerick is one small door on a street with a small warhammer sign over it. Always been too afraid to see whats in there.
>>46775984
Funny you should mention, I'm in Limerick right now and yeah, it sucks. But then, everything here does compared to Dublin.
>>46776063
Not surprising since it has half the population.
>>46771528
They have to learn it in school. Think about how much of the foreign language you were forced to learn in middle or high school you retain. That's about the level of Irish Gaelic most of the Irish have.
>>46776205
Only worse because they teach it wrong and also make you learn another foreign language as well.
It's been over a decade and a half since I was there — it was a childhood trip for my dad's 50th — but I still remember how every place served salmon. Fancy hotel? Salmon. Comfy pub? Salmon. Dive bar? Salmon. Goddamn everywhere. Also black pudding. Fuck black pudding though.
Castles were absolutely everywhere, and I lost my shit at every single one. A good amount were totally on their own (my mom stole at least two bricks from different castles).
REAAALLLLY narrow roads, though maybe they just felt super narrow because I'm an Amerifat and our roads are meant to handle Hummers. The stacked stone walls running along didn't help, though.
Stone/pebble beaches and the Cliffs of Moher. I don't remember seeing any sand beaches, but that might have just been the places we were going through.
Rains every day, at least a little bit. The breeze keeps it from getting too muggy though.
>>46777168
>REAAALLLLY narrow roads, though maybe they just felt super narrow because I'm an Amerifat and our roads are meant to handle Hummers. The stacked stone walls running along didn't help, though.
Depending on the locality, there's a set easement from the edge of the roadway to where you can start putting permanent shit on your property. In the US, I've seen it as far as ten feet. In Ireland, it's apparently measured in single-digit inches if at all. As there were long periods of excess subdivision of land and constant ownership strife, there's a strong cultural push to BUILD A MOTHERFUCKING WALL right where property becomes MINE.
>>46766891
Just run a bog standard D&D game as the players starve to death and get routinely beaten up by germanic looking folk.
>>46777363
And then get blown up by the IRA.
>>46766891
>Although we're a bunch of burgerfats
Speak for yourself
>>46776205
It's far worse than that. I learned Irish from about age 5 until age 17. I learned French from about age 11 until age 17. I know far more French.
Most schools outside of the Gaeltacht don't really teach it as a language. You learn a bunch of stock phrases to regurgitate onto the exam paper to make it look like you know more Irish than you really do. It's just a jumble of letters as far as you're concerned. I can just about introduce myself in Irish, but in French I can hold basic conversations.
>>46777168
Plenty of sandy beaches in Ireland. The south of Dublin even has one called Sandymount. There's a lot of rocky beaches due to a lot of the west coast basically being cliffs that are slowly crumbling into the Atlantic.
>Rains every day
Funny you mention that. During the middle ages, the Christian Celts tried to tie the old pagan Celtic mythology in with their Christian faith. It's sadly the only version of that mythology that exists anymore. But what's interesting is that they describe Ireland being invaded by a bunch of successive forces. The first was led by Cessair, an alleged granddaughter of Noah. She and her people arrived in Ireland before the whole ark-building thing (Noah was like 600 when he built the ark, so plenty of time to have fully-grown grandchildren) and are then said to have drowned in the flood shortly thereafter. I always marvel that the Irish monks thought that 40 days of rain was enough to flood the entire world considering 40 days of solid rain isn't terribly uncommon in Ireland. Maybe that's why they built their towers so high.
>>46777168
>Fuck black pudding though.
Fuck you, that shit's delicious. White is better though.
Am Irish, Ireland sucks.
Really rural Ireland is just full of culties who have sfa to do but moan about the weather, and everyone from Dublin at least wonders why the hell people come here on holidays because all there is to do is look at tourist trap landmarks and stand in the pissing rain.
Also,
>Southside master race
>>46777945
The round towers were protection against Viking raids.
>>46778105
>look at tourist trap landmarks and stand in the pissing rain.
This instills a feeling somewhere between bleak numbness and discomfort, which is the Irish analogue to contentedness.
Why are the Irish stereotyped as jolly?
They're about as gloomy as any other northmen
>>46778352
Dunno. Insanely high rates of alcoholism, depression, and suicide.
>>46778322
Now you're getting in the swing of things!
>>46778352
I wouldn't agree, the Irish as a whole aren't jolly, but they're not glum. Irish people on average are almost the same as English people. Really, the only differences you might notice are in their speech. (colloquilisms)
>>46766891
Read up on portal tombs aka Giants' Graves like the one in the picture, or the Fianna cycle & the Red Branch cycle - Marie Heaney wrote a very good book on those myths. Folklore involving the Fae is easy to find. The Irish attitude to the Fae is encapsulated very well in a line from a poem, "I don't believe in Fairies, but I'm afraid of them." For all the bluster no one really wants to stir up trouble with them, even today.
>>46778352
Most Irish are either depressingly sombre or forcefully holly, with the particular person having a preferred state of the two.
As a people we don't deal with feels very well, but generally we try to keep the mood up and our massive suicide rate from climbing.
If that sounds ambivalent, well...
>>46766891
Try cities outside of Dublin. While Dublin has it's own distinct culture and is interesting in it's own right, it often feels as much like an English city to me as my home-town, partially because of it's history. Since you seem to be going for more of a Folklore style thing, I'd say look west, even if that means going north/south west.
>>46778684
Ah, nobledark then
>>46766891
One of my personal favourite things is Littlebody.
Hes a musician busker leprechaun that threatens to burn ya to death if ya decide ya want his gold when ya find him. If you decide against he has a chat with ya about needing to give the music some time to itself.
Also, what >>46771277 said is pretty accurate. Limerick is my hometown, its known for drug feuds, stabbings and being a student town with a load of pubs. Galway is more touristy and nice though.
>>46771528
Sort of?
We have basic conversational stuff for the most part, most of us have some phrases memorised (AN BHFUIL CEAD AGAM DUL GO DTI AN LEITEREAS) but between it being completely unnecessary and the accents and dialects being so vastly different few people would ever use it day to day.
Always remember the gift of the gab mate.
The Blarney Stone originates from the Earl of Blarney according to most accounts. Its said to give you a silver tongue because said earl once delivered a long and expertly crafted speech to parliament, so well put together as to be ambivalent that no one observing it objectively was sure was he seceding from Britain or was he declaring undying loyalty to the Queen. As a result, people on both sides thought he was on their side.
It sorta originates with old Irish. There was no word for ''yes'', just ways of saying ''it is'' or ''thats true''. Similarly, there was no word that directly translated to ''no'' but I forget what the equivalent term means.
>>46778467
>Irish people on average are almost the same as English people.
I disagree. The historical English response to setback, discomfort, or other negative outcome is to suck it up and deal with it quietly. The Irish response is to bitch and moan endlesslyand then do fucking nothing about it.
>>46779137
I was told Limerick is the place to be if I want my shit stole.
>>46779468
Sorta?
I mean, Ive never been robbed but I know lads that had their phones nicked by 12 year old scumbags. One of em asked to borrow the phone to ring his mother and then just ran off with the phone.
Its still worse for stabbings though. I know a young fella was stabbed for refusing to trade for drugs off someone. Same lad got his hair set on fire in school though so he may just have unnaturally bad luck.
>>46779468
What people are like differs a lot place to place in my experience. Ever since I started dating a Galway girl and heading up that side I noticed a lot more bitching and moaning.
I think mid-west is bitching and moaning, Dublin is kinda metro and clannish, south is angry and clannish and north is angry and paranoid.
Or such has been my experience anyway, in the broadest possible terms
>>46779521
How can an Irishman have bad luck?
>>46780846
Well he's irish for a start, that normally covers most of it
>>46777168
I live in ireland, you are mostly right about everything. more sandy beaches than you might think though.
>>46781155
Sooo, Ireland is the Korea of Britain
