The History of Molatero (in Progress)

As I made the mistake of not making any notes for my Molatero backstory I now cannot remember where I was going with the project! So, I'm sorta having to start from scratch...

Now, I realise that not everyone needs a backstory for their Funny Little Wars faction - in fact you can opt for a 'off the peg' army using the pre-generated ones, such as 'Army Red' or 'Army Blue' which are loosely based on historical national armies - but I, personally, enjoy making up 'stuff'! 😄

Anyhoo, so back to the drawing board. Now, I am a visual sorta guy - I prefer to doodle than write - so it's easier for me to construct a backstory using pictures. My starting point, then, is to sketch a map of 'Molatero' - where it is in it's fictional, alternative version of our world and what kind of cultural it would therefore have...

To my mind 'Molatero' is a fictional equivalent to Bulgaria (and/or Roumania), occupying a south-eastern position beside an inland sea which mirrors the Black Sea. Though I have borrowed Molatero's cultural flavour from a few different Balkan states, you get the idea.

Having sketched out my map and got a feeling for it's place in 'my world' in relation to the real world I filled in - tentatively - it's neighbours. These would be the protagonists in my make believe war-gaming arena with Turania being the principal 'baddies'! 😉

Situating Molatro's 'culture' gives me a jump off point by which I can then start fleshing out the rest of it's history - political, military and social. And as my interest was in creating a small army for war-gaming a Funny Little Wars campaign chronologically I was particularly interested in a period that equated to the late 19th century (I actually had in mind a date of around 1890).

Romanian soldiers c. 1913 - some historic reference material on which
I based my idea on what Molatarian uniforms might look like.

And that's as far as I got when I originally started this blog - though I had already started getting a little side tracked when I started making little 'peg aircraft' and was already looking at Molatero's later history (1919-1921). But that's a by-product of my fertile (some would say over-active) imagination! 😄