Comments | sounis: Attolia's Guard

ornon in sounis

Attolia's Guard

Mar 18, 2010 18:21

The perks of study abroad include being able to visit really cool museums that don't exist in your itty bitty home town. Even better perks include finding little bits of Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis as I travel (especially since I've always associated the three more with Spain than anywhere else). This week I went to the Museo Naval (Navy Museum) in ( Read more... )

queen of attolia, costis, geography, teleus, general discussion

Comments 14

drashizu March 18 2010, 17:27:42 UTC

I know what you're talking about. Old-fashioned stuff from the Renaissance, especially weaponry (and fancy jackets), always makes me think of QT. These are great pictures! I can definitely see Costis using one of these to blow the lock off a door. What other kinds of stuff did you take pictures of?

drashizu March 18 2010, 17:30:07 UTC

Also! I want to add that it's really cool the way old guns were treated as such works of art. The people who made them really took time to decorate all over them. Probably because they were so expensive that only rich people who really wanted fancy guns could afford to buy them, but still. I was just looking at that little monkey next to the firing mechanism on the third picture and it's one of those details that you'd only notice if you spent a while looking at the gun close-up. Not something you see on guns nowadays.

ornon March 18 2010, 19:59:20 UTC

Drashizu, I love your icon. Totally awesome.

As relates to the Guard, I've got pictures of more muskets, the same muskets, pistols, powder horns, firing mechanisms. There are also some pretty cool African and Japanese weapons, but they are random and off topic. There's also model boats, maps, and dice. Also not exactly relevant.(Although I would bet good money that the Guards played dice in their off time.)

I'll post them once I fiddle around with LJ some more. I'd love to post it in a comment, but I'm not sure I can do that.

drashizu March 19 2010, 00:36:33 UTC

Yes, do. I'd love to see the pictures of pistols and powder horns and such. Also the maps, since Eddis had a bunch of old maps hanging on the walls of her council room for decoration, didn't she?

Thanks about the icon ;)

auriaephiala March 18 2010, 18:14:45 UTC

Beautiful. I'd love to see more pictures.

But then I love the arms and armory sections in good museums... the contrast between the weapon's intended use and their elegant decoration is always so fascinating.

emerald_happy March 18 2010, 18:26:10 UTC

I can see the guard using those, especially with the brown drawing replaced with Attolian blue and gold

diadactic March 18 2010, 19:09:33 UTC

You think of Spain and not Greece? Why's that?

ornon March 18 2010, 19:53:44 UTC

It probably started just because I'm so much more familiar with Spain than with Greece. When I was younger, I had a somewhat unhealthy interest in history after Rome and before the Enlightenment, and many of the best historical battles/innovations/ideas/contrasts/etc come from Spain or Spanish-Controlled Lands. Then the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me ( ... )

chachic March 18 2010, 23:45:31 UTC

I was about to ask the same question and you answered it already! Wow, you really thought about this long and hard. What you said makes sense though.

The books mention somwhere that Eddisians are darker skinned (which I - probably in a very Western isolated manner - never interpreted as black but as sort of tan)

Me too, I thought they were more bronze, just darker than fair skinned people. And I live in Asia so it's not an isolated Western thought.

Also, thanks for uploading the pictures. Pretty weapons!

freenarnian March 19 2010, 00:14:47 UTC

These pictures are awesome! I LOVE old weapons... so much artistry involved.

I picture the guns in Attolia being of the wheellock variety... I'm not sure why? Maybe because it's an earlier design (though very state-of-the-art in its time), and for some reason I think of guns as being a relatively new technology in Attolia.

drashizu March 19 2010, 00:42:17 UTC

You're right, it says in The Thief that guns are a pretty new invention. (They're impressive but not accurate, I think is what Gen says when the Attolians start shooting at them from across the river near the end of the book.) Also, the wheel lock came after the match lock but before the flint lock. It was only popular for a short while in the 1500s since the flint lock innovation came so quickly. At least, in *our* world.

Highlight for a CofK spoiler: There's a specific line in the fourth book where the gun given to Sophos is described as "wheel-locked". I did my research after reading that---I don't just know about this stuff off the top of my head.

Also, it would be helpful if I could figure out how to white out text the first time...