Old World of Iron: The Badlands and Osmanli

Well, I couldn't stay away from Age of Iron, turns out. Good thing is however that I think I have an interesting way to do it/look at it. My goal is to go back to the very EARLY days of the setting when it was called the 300 Years War and keep the setting focused on Early Modern Europe.

However, I have a different approach. I'm going to take the dozen regions I consider in the Old World in the Warhammer setting, discuss their origins, and then discuss what their REAL WORLD counterpart was like during the 15th-17th century - and make the region closer to that in the Age of Iron setting.

The first place I wanted to focus on was The Badlands.

What It Is

The Badlands are ostensibly the 'goblinoid' area of the Old World. Though there are more goblinoids running around in the Dark Lands, that region has really been overshadowed by the Chaos Dwarves. Geographically, the Badlands is roughly analogous to the Middle East, though not really in a cultural sense. The Marshes of Madness and Morgheim don't have a real direct analogue as far as I know aside from something resembling a Romani homeland, but they could be considered similar to Judea or the Kingdom of Israel at a stretch. Again, that's mostly historical rather than cultural.

The Real World

By the Early Modern Period, the Ottoman Empire had basically conquered all of the Near East aside from Persia - even claiming ownership over Arabia. The Ottoman Empire does exist in the Old World, but 'Araby' is in the region the Almohad Caliphate was roughly 300 years prior (being northwest Africa). It's also reduced to a minor player, when in reality the Ottoman Empire was the most powerful empire in Europe.

My Version

My Badlands would thus be replaced with Osmanli - a fairly straightforward Ottoman Empire perhaps mixed with some Arabic and Persian elements to resemble caliphates of old. The goblinoids in the Badlands would basically disappear. I like the idea of goblinoids being a spread out, unconcentrated force of nature rather than a force of 'othered' barbarian invaders. When greenskins appear, it should be less like an invasion and more like a plague.