SMOOSH JUICE
Lancel
In the overworld of Dragon Quest III, Lancel geographically corresponds to Australia – a small continent and/or large island, located west of Aliahan and directly south of Baharata. That’s about where the similarities to Australia end. Even in a game that was taking so many liberties when it came to mixing and matching historical eras, it seemed like not even Enix in 1988 knew how to include Australia in a medieval fantasy world. Anyway, Lancel has very little in common with its geographic doppelganger, but I still think it’s an evocative setting with a lot to offer The Saga of the Ortegids.
Lancel is dominated by a single city of the same name, which notably boasts an absolutely massive temple, by far the largest in the game. With this temple being the dominant feature of the city, it’s reasonable to assume that Lancel is the spiritual heart of Erdland; its Vatican, or perhaps Olympia would be a closer comparison. I’d like to imagine this temple is quite a hotspot of activity, with shrines to each of the Nine Gods and frequent festivals on which rituals are performed, with incense hanging in the air and the streets choked with whirling, dancing devotees. There’s plenty of Lieber stories to refer to here. The temple is noted to be a local landmark, and seems to dwarf the rest of the town even by the admission of its people, so it may well be of ancient Aliahanian construction. There’s no teleportation shrine that leads to Lancel, but theoretically the proximity to Aliahan might make one unnecessary.
There is no king to be seen in Lancel or anywhere nearby, and the city seems self-sufficient, so it very well could be a theocracy run by the temple. Notably, the stores in the city are well-stocked, with merchandise not accessible anywhere else (even including magic items like invisibility-granting herbs) and some of the highest prices of any stores in the game. This could just be a mechanic for the purposes of game balance, but it’s more fun to assume this means that Lancel, despite its small size and relative isolation, is a very wealthy city with a booming economy. If it is a holy place, it likely attracts pilgrims from across the world, bringing in a lot of revenue for unscrupulous merchants looking to turn a profit. This could present a good hook for PCs to visit the region, and could introduce other NPCs and factions from across the world they could rub shoulders with in the process.
It’s quite interesting to note how well-connected Lancel seems to be. In the real world Australia had little contact with the outside world for most of history, but this doesn’t appear to be the case for Lancel. It goes back to my point that the world of DQ3 seems much more interconnected than the real world was in the medieval era, and is probably smaller than Earth. Of course, the fact there’s another continent right over to the east probably helps it from being too isolated.
It’s reasonable to assume that, with the continent being as large as it is, there would be other settlements there not depicted in-game. The question is if they would be governed by Lancel, or independent settlements. I’m more inclined to go with the latter, since Lancel itself doesn’t have anything notable in the way of a centralized administration, and the presence of the temple could make the city a regional power, allowing it to establish itself as a prominent city-state.
The temple in Lancel is required to access the nearby dungeon, Gaia’s Navel (this, incidentally, means that if I had a nickel for every JRPG that had a dungeon called Gaia’s Navel, I’d have three nickels, which isn’t a lot, but…). This dungeon is a proving ground that only worthy heroes can pass through. In the game, it must be completed solo, without the help of any party members, but that wouldn’t be very fun in a TRPG with multiple players, so I likely wouldn’t enforce that at the table. It is, however, one of my favorite dungeons in the game. It has a lot of fun setpieces, including an entire floor that’s one giant cavernous room, and a hallway flanked by carved stone heads that urge you to turn back, and you’re supposed to ignore them and move on anyway to prove your conviction. I’ll probably adapt it to a D&D dungeon at some point in the future, so watch this space.
The name Gaia’s Navel, and the fact that the dungeon is located at the dead center of the continent, is interesting. I’m choosing to interpret this as meaning that Lancel is at the very center of Erdland, which could explain its spiritual significance. Perhaps this is the place where the Nine Gods created the worlds, and the very heart of the universe. It would also make the proximity to Liamland, another holy island, interesting, but that’s a topic for another day…