Place of Birth

“I wish to cross the sea.”
His father completed the sentence for him. “To visit Jaafar’s country?”
“That is my desire.”
“Son, you will find only earth and air, fire and water, day and night. These you have at home.”
“But the people there are not as we are!”
Esclabor smiled. “Son, women and men in all places are the same.” John Erskine, Tristan and Isolde, Restoring Palamede

Where was this character raised? Usually their place of birth¹, though not always, this is usually a proxy for:

• Their ancestral heritage.
• Their major cultural influences.
• Any accents, regional mannerisms, etc. they may have.
• The context for what local legends and places they’re familiar with.
• Regional rivalries.

Effectively, it’s a way to suggest you might be more familiar in certain places and more exotic, or a fish out of water in others - and that people will probably be able to pick up on that.

How Specific?

I think this should depend on how close you are to Salsibury, where the campaign is centered. If it’s far away, simply “Persia” or “Greece” or “Africa” are enough, but once you’re closer a character probably can recognize the difference between a Welshman and and Irishman, or closer still a Bristolian vs. an Oxonian.

Once you’re comparing people within the region, you might want to highlight how you’re from the “cheese” or the “chalk”² or even up the hill vs down in the valley, or the difference between being from Over Wallop, Middle Wallop or Nether Wallop³. Petty parochial rivalries are easily fostered in a less connected world… and they’re great sources of drama and grounding in the world.

Footnotes

1. Approximately, at least. ↩

2. The southeast, roughly, has rougher chalk hills, while the northwest richer soil can graze cattle, and thus produce cheese. ↩

3. I think specific villages might be a bit too specific, if they’re harder to remember and find on a map (and especially The Map). But definitely Hundred borders, and descriptive add-ons like “east of the river” or “down in the valley” that you can get a sense for on the map are still great. ↩