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Ket is a political state in the fictional ''World of Greyhawk'' campaign setting for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' roleplaying game. Because it lies in the only gap in the north-south spine of mountains that divides the eastern Flanaess from the western Baklunish Basin, Ket is a nexus of important trade routes, a nation of caravans and merchants where peoples and cultures from all parts of the Flanaess mix and mingle. Various editions of material published about this region between 1980 and 2000 have changed its character from a self-serving state often at odds with its neighbors to an evil state in league with the enemies of Good, and back again. Using Ket as a setting enables dungeon masters to present adventures within a pseudo-Persian or Arabian background, or to use Ket's grassy plains or primeval forest as a geographical setting, or to highlight tensions between major cultures of the World of Greyhawk, or to use the themes of trade, bazaars, caravans, evil viziers or horse-centered culture. From 2001-2008, Ket was also a region of the Living Greyhawk campaign linked to play in most of Eastern Canada. ==''The World of Greyhawk'' folio edition (1980)== In 1972, as part of the development of the game that would become ''Dungeons & Dragons'', Gary Gygax created the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk and the nearby city of Greyhawk. As his players began to venture further afield, Gygax created other regions and cities for them to explore. With play sessions happening seven days a week, and sometimes twice a day,〔Gygax: "An average of seven gaming sessions a week was typical even when I was busy working. Often I played more than that. " 〕 Gygax didn't have the time to create the map for a whole new world; he simply drew his "world" over a map of North America, with the city of Greyhawk located near the real-world Chicago,〔Gygax: "The planet was much like our earth. The city of Greyhawk was located on the () lakes in about the position that Chicago is, and Dyvers was north at the Milwaukee location. The general culture was pseudo medieval European. Some of the kingdoms shown on the WoG map were around the adventure-central area, the City of Greyhawk." 〕〔Gygax: "When I was using the pre-World of Greyhawk map for my world setting, the West Coast of North America was the Pleistocene region inhabited by savage cavemen and their contemporary fauna." 〕 then adding new cities and regions as his world slowly grew through on-going adventures.〔Gygax: "When I initiated the Greyhawk campaign, I envisaged a world of parallel earth sort. Thus the geography then assumed was pretty close to that of earth. Being busy running game sessions, creating dungeon levels, the map of Greyhawk City, writing new material, and also really enjoying 'winging it', I never did a large-scale map for the world."〕 In 1973, Gygax founded Tactical Studies Rules (later TSR, Inc) with his friend Don Kaye in order to publish the rules to D&D. By the late 1970s, Gygax sensed that D&D players were interested in learning more about his world of Oerth and decided to publish some of the details of his campaign world. However, rather than use his old map of "Oerth/North America", Gygax decided to create an entirely new planet from scratch and then publish several campaign settings that would eventually encompass every part of this new world. For the first campaign setting, he focused on one corner of one continent, an area he called the Flanaess. He divided the Flanaess into 50 states, regions and city-states. Some of them, such as the cities of Greyhawk and Dyvers, were taken from his old campaign world. Others, such as Ket, were new creations. Once the geography was finished, Gygax then created a thousand-year history for the Flanaess, complete with its own "Common Year" (CY) calendar, and set the date as the year 576 CY. In 1980, Gygax published these details in the 32-page folio ''The World of Greyhawk''. Due to space considerations, his thousand-year history was very condensed, and regional descriptions were extremely brief; Ket's single paragraph describing its people and history was a mere 154 words. In this edition, Gygax portrayed Ket as a belligerent nation often at odds with its neighbors. Its population was given as "50,000+", 23,400 of whom lived in the capital of Lopolla. (Although not mentioned in the descriptive text, a second Ketite city, Molvar, was shown on the map of the Flanaess that accompanied the folio.) This edition did not provide a name for each country's ruler, and Ket's leader was simply called "His Illustrious Glory, the Beygraf of Ket, Shield of the True Faith". (There was no indication of what god was served by "the True Faith". Gygax had originally planned to create a specific deity for the True Faith; however, other projects intervened, and it was one of the details that Gygax never finished.〔''Q: You list the leader of Ket... as the Shield of the “True Faith”. What “True Faith” would that be?" Gygax: "One that I never had the opportunity to elucidate. That was to come, but... in short, the deities for the folk there were to be other than those enumerated by me."''〕) Since Ket lay between Baklunish lands to the east and Oeridian lands to the west, it was considered a buffer state and a crossroads of trade and culture; its people were a mix of human races (although Baklunish culture predominated), and the court and military showed strong influences from both east and west. Other than trade, its resources were silver and gems. Militarily, Ket had been both the victim of invasion and an aggressor seeking new territory, although in 576 CY, its most pressing concern seemed to be raiders from the Plains of the Paynims. Much of southern Ket was covered by the Bramblewood, a vast primeval forest that had one main road "and possibly some secondary tracks". Ket lay on a high plateau, and two major rivers, the Tuflik and the Fals, originated within Ket before flowing off the plateau to the north and south respectively. The lack of space in the 1980 folio edition precluded an in-depth history of the Flanaess, but some of Ket's history can be pieced together from details contained in the descriptions of surrounding lands. Keoland's article mentions an invasion of Ket some 220 years before, a military adventure that ended in grief for Keoland at the battles of Molvar and Lopolla. If Ket was at one time the victim of an invasion by Keoland, it also had a reputation as an aggressor: neighbouring Bissel stands "as a bulwark between the Ket masses and the rest of the east", and Perrenland's description mentions "Attempts at expansion into Perrenland... by Ket were vigorously resisted by the inhabitants." Ket's aggressive character can also be seen in its frequent use of mercenaries from Perrenland (in disputes with Tusmit), tribesmen from the Plains of the Paynims (in disputes with Tusmit and Ekbir), and hillmen from the nearby Tusman Hills. Coats-of-arms for all of the states were illustrated on the inside covers of the portfolio. Ket's was blazoned thus: ''Gules, a scimitar in pale argent, the point to the base''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ket (Greyhawk)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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