Talk:The Continent/@comment-85.84.219.98-20170624085309/@comment-30086411-20170624101026

That subject has come up once or twice in different places on the wiki, with most of them having come up with similar conclusions, with Free Cities representing the extremely mercantile cities in Germany and the Netherlands in 1400-1700, JAPAN a Japan with tidbits of Africa and other regions, Helman and Leazas being pretty obvious, Zeth being a flavorful India (though I'm not sure why you mention France, except for the names like Pentagon, but culturally I can't recall much similarity) and Shangri-La being Middle East.

However, I'm not sure whether we can really talk about much equivalency with real-life countries for Pencilcow and the Monster Realm, due to their much more fantastical natures, but I think I'd give Pencilcow to Eastern Europe, both for the greater amount of wild-life and fantastical setting, (and at the risk of sounding cruel to Russia, the fact that they get their resources taken by Helman on occasion), and I would definitely associate the Monster Realm to Central Asia steppes for the reason you mentioned (that, and that currently it is still responsible for border skirmishes, and the only reason that they're not currently running the world is that they're not united yet)