Talk:Empire (Oko Yrrhedesa)/@comment-178.149.0.110-20191019222355/@comment-3131473-20191021102452

I agree that Etolia seems to be Nilfgaard's precedessor, but I wouldn't say that Nordlings are from Etolia / unnamed Empire. There is a passage in TTotS about how they named creatures such as griffins and elves after entities they knew only from ancient legends - if they were Etolian or Veverian sailors, they'd perfectly know these beings from real life, not obscure mythology. And it isn't much to deliberate on the prevalence of Common Speech in northern Nilfgaardian provinces - they were simply Nordling lands before Usurper's and Emhyr's armies arrived, formed by the same culture that founded lands like Cintra or Temeria north of Amell.

As for the Empire from Yrrhedes rpg, keep in mind that the game, while published in 1990s, was actually written earlier in the 1980s, before Sapkowski started to work on the Saga. We don't know to what extent should it be considered "canon": names such as "Yarra", "Wood Elves" or "Breza" made it to the Saga with lesser or greater changes, but we don't see any orcs nor kobolds being a noticeable threat, nor nature priestesses riding tamed griffins (though I can imagine druids performing the second).