Welcome to the fantasy world of Sirania!
Sirania is a fantasy world where many myths, legends, sagas and stories take place. You can find the legends here written down in the form of a short story, saga or a comic book, but for the most part Sirania is a vivid world setting used for diceless ruleless narrative RPG campaigns (and can be easily adapted to many RPG rule systems).
The main reason for Sirania’s existence is of course the joy of fantasy and imagination, but there is also another side of it. Sirania’s rich history and legend is created through in-depth study of our own world’s mythologies and past societies. Many of the motifs and dramas in Sirania are either conscious or inspired metaphors and elaborations on things just hinted at but not realized in our own world.
At present time the pages are in Czech and the English version is only rudimentary. There is incredible amount of text here and – as this is noncommercial just-for-fun project – we have neither money nor time to translate it all en bloc. We hope in time the English section will grow. However even non-Czech-speaking visitor can have fun with our map section (upper right corner). And if you are interested and want to know more, surely write to us! (If you are a native speaker interested in polishing machine translations, we will pay you for language check, let us know.)
What can you find here?
Interactive maps of lands and cities that you can explore by hovering over or clicking on various regions.
Ideas for roleplaying and worldbuilding together with gamer typologies and narration strategies.
Novels, stories, sagas, comic books and board games set in the world of Sirania and Clans.
Original and lively mythology of a fantasy world based on the study of world religions.
Succinct and useful description of several fantasy languages including their grammar and vocabulary.
2.2.2021 – Another interactive map is now accessible and functional. This time it is a map of the island of Vaktar, known for its Grey Towers growing around the river Arbinversa.
The Sirania pages are devoted to a fantasy world of the same name. It is a “literary world”, “secondary creation” as Tolkien would have called it. It is similar to our own world, but you cannot reach it by walking, just by your mind and imagination.
This web is a kind of an encyclopedia. You will find here detailed descriptions of various lands, kingdoms, cities, histories and myths. Active maps that you can explore. Short stories, sagas and comic book which are set in the Sirania multiverse. And visual art inspired by the world.
Role Playing Games. Storytelling games where one player is the Narrator and the others play Characters in an adventure. The story and world background is prepared by the Narrator, but the players have complete freedom to act as they deem fit (in accordance to the psychology and abilities of their characters). The final story is thus a surprise to everybody involved. Some RPGs need pen, paper, rules and dice, some can be played just by collective narration, without any tools.
The pages function as a chronicle of our adventures, an encyclopedia of the multiverse and a “nest” of related stories and visual art. Stories, fantasy and inspiration should be shared so that they can inspire other people. We invite visitors to delve into our universe. You will find that it is a coherent world of interlocking legends and themes and settings, ready to work as a RPG game setting.
Why write and read fiction at all? Good fiction tells truth by telling lies. Sirania is mostly creativity and fun for us. But we are also aware of the fact, that it is a kind of test-space of imagination and possibilities. How would people act in this or that situation? What is evil? Is there evil at all or do we just demonize those who oppose us? What are the forces that clash in an important conflict of principles? How would it look like if we could enter a dream-realm where our unconscious and our thoughts create the landscape? What kind of values and character would immortal beings have? Etc. It is an immense fun to explore what our most sincere intuitions about these questions are. And that is Sirania.
Just from a quick look at the style of the maps and letters, forms of some names and the preoccupation with fantasy languages, it must be clear that J.R.R. Tolkien is an important influence and inspiration. JRRT has our undying love and admiration. However, the original inspiration of our creativity (Tolkien) was soon enriched not by some other fantasy writer, but by the study of historical cultures and mythologies of our own world. Many names in the world of Sirania are derived from Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek or Old Norse and many characters or kingdoms are inspired by the customs and worldviews of ancient cultures.
If you want to see the real richness and span of the Sirania pages, you have to switch to the Czech version. In the English version you will find only the introductory page and links to the maps. We will try to translate at least parts of the pages. But there is such an enormous amounts of text that we sincerely pray that the neural networks will get better with the machine translation soon (even if we don’t believe that machine translation will ever be “real” translation), so that Sirania can become accessible at least to a certain extent to the speakers of lingua franca of today’s world. We are looking for native English speakers who would like to check the machine translations – we are ready to pay you some modest sum out of our pockets.
a historian of religion, ‘necrophilologist’ (knows a number of dead languages) which specializes in the research into Old Norse culture and Comparative Mythology, calligrapher and fencer. Jan is the Narrator of the world of Sirania.
a geologist with a deep interest in astronomy, music and history. Apart from playing a character in the world of Sirania Jakub is the designer of the previous generations of the pages and webmaster of the current one. Most importantly he is the author of the various maps you find in the map section.
librarian and anthropologist by education, mostly known as an author of Czech fantasy and scifi. Lucie wrote numerous short stories and several novels. Apart from playing a character in Sirania, she wrote a number of short stories set in the Sirania universe.
an architect by education, but switched to a career of hologram designer. Jan is best known as a painter and graphic artist who illustrated number of books and board games. Apart from playing a character in the world of Sirania, Jan is the co-author and illustrator of a comic book set in the world of Sirania and an author of numerous illustrations on the pages.
is a religious studies scholar focusing on modern myths and popculture; she is the author of the portraits of races and nations in Sirania.
studied English and Finnish and is a professional translator of contemporary fiction; she is the author of the English translation of the texts on the Sirania web.
an IT specialist and an avid gamemaster and player in many RPGs. Tomáš, apart from playing a character in the world of Sirania, is an author of many written recordings of the game.
(in memoriam) Vojtěch was a teacher of yoga and martial arts and played a character in the world of Sirania. Apart from that he was a chronicler of a large portion of the past adventures. He wrote down stories with surprising fidelity to the dialogues and atmosphere to the original game and he thus recorded this part of our shared experience forever.
