My West is a mixture of Islamic Spain, Arthuriana (Excalibur for Seshnela, Broadway's Camelot for Loskalm, Mallory for the Castle Coast), and 8th Century India, with specific nations getting extra influences - Seshnela got a bit of 14th century France, Loskalm has some 20th century Scandinavian socialism, the Castle Coastlings got pre-Christian Latvia because I liked the serpent and earth goddess imagery Latvia could provide to me for old old-fashioned, 2nd Age God Learner orthodoxy in Seshnela proper.
This gives me a lot of freedom in how I can depict costumes and armor.
I like it.
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> The gloranthan West is NOT the medieval West of Europe and their costumes should not be based on that. I agree fully with ian's points.
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> Jeff
> (BTW i am texting this from the Site of the Battle of Teutoburger Forest.
>
> - In WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com, "ian_hammond_cooper" <ian_hammond_cooper@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com, "markmohrfield" <markmohrfield@> wrote:
> > > Er, some maybe, but not all. Kind of hard to find an appropriate Bronze Age model for the west, for example.<
> >
> > I don't have anything to do with Moon Designs efforts with the West, however, I'm less sure on this idea as time goes by. For an example of what can be done simply, look to what R Scott Bakker tried in his Prince of Nothing series mixing the history of the First Crusade with Hellenistic Greece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Nothing).
> >
> > Montheism, wizards and knights may be things we associate with medieval Europe, but the caste systems is not. I don't think that the West has to look like C15 Europe. I appreciate that much has used that analogue in the past for familiarity, but I think it has the danger of overwhelming what is not like that.
> >
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