Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

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AOW
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Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

hi, I intend to make a series of portraits of Aragwaithi, covering seven L1 branches and one leader. Therefore, I need to carry out a series of cultural textual explorations to expand the unit description. As far as portraits are concerned, I've vaguely outlined the general appearance. In any case, the workload sounds arduous and may not be short-term. (Any text feedback is welcome :geek: )


Update(2020/8/20): I further identified the unit shapes from the draft and replaced the original manuscript with them. Later on, I'll add some new texts about aragwaithi's social organization and business activities.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

Captian/Pikeman.

[Heraldry]
In the upper right corner, according to sprites' imagination, I drew the aragwaithi crest, a purple lion on a black background on the surface of the lacquer shield. In the real context of heraldry, black is tough and purple is noble. The lion is the most common heralded animal, and in both eastern and Western cultures, there is a tradition of using the image of a lion to represent bravery and awe, although this animal is rarely seen in the local area.

In the end, the effect was better than expected, reminiscent of the lines of the Athenian pot or Han murals, which could be identified at a glance as ancient and elegant.


[Banner&Family ]
In the upper left corner is the ancient banner, a family heritage banner made of silver fabric. I refer to Celtic in the pattern. Due to its long history, banners have been constantly restored and re framed. Some of them were destroyed in the war and had to be remade. However, aragwaithi despised such new banners and their families, and even regarded them as worthless.

The patterns in the middle are different according to the family, but they all symbolize the continuation of the family.


[Armor&Obligations]
To highlight the difference from the Wesnoth culture, the aragwaithi shield surface is curved, and the shield itself is not large enough to hinder flexibility. Captian takes on more armor than normal aragwaithi, which is obviously contrary to aragwaithi's combat training method, so I see it as a duty born in the battlefield, not just a means of protection.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

Adept.

[Clothes&Accessories]
Aragwaith's magic is more based on a talent, magic training seems to be just to accurately and well control and guide the "tinder" in the body. And because these people will be well protected, adept's clothing is likely not focused on adapting to the battlefield, but decorative, so that others can well identify their identity in the field of vision. In addition to the high-end clothing itself, such decoration also means that some useless but gorgeous clothing accessories will appear.

These accessories are not ordinary metals. High purity gold and silver jewelry is common to them, but the most noble metal is made of paktong, a unique aragwaithi alloy. This ideal alloy has excellent luster and plasticity(which can be seen occasionally in other Aragwaithi units). For adept, the total amount of paktong refined is also rare.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

Archer.

[Stepbattle]
Aragwaithi's archery skills are not suitable for fighting on horses. Archer's bow bag is hung around his waist, and if necessary, he can grasp several arrows with his bow hand in advance and shoot continuously and rapidly. Their armor is leather, with a wild goose down on their heads, and a perfect aragwaithi bow takes Archer years to make, accurately grasping each material.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

Swordsman

[Armorless]
Aragwaithi was hard to accept the helmet's occlusion of vision, which affected their judgment of the rapidly changing battlefield situation. Instead, they use headband. However, for the close combat units like swordsman, they completely give up their protect and concentrate all their resources on the sword. After repeated forging and forging, the consumables of such weapons are far higher than those of ordinary weapons or even two to three times. When swordsman kills a respectable opponent, he will dissolute opponent weapon and merge recast it with his own sword.This is not only respect for the opponent, but also improve the forging quality of the weapon. Such swords will accompany the whole life of swordsman(the lacquered scabbard can protect the sword from moisture), and some swords will be handed down from generation to generation and handed over to the new members of the family who have entered the battlefield.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

Spearman

[Model]
Those who use long handled weapons are respected in the Aragwaithi family, which means loyalty to family responsibilities and a mainstay of the army. The Aragwaithi spear used by Spearman is thin, narrow and long, with a sharper edge(Aragwaithi spear on the horse is shorter and suitable for rapid puncture). Like all Aragwaithi armor, its armor is asymmetrical and focuses on protecting vulnerable locations.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

Scout&Eagle Rider

[Tamer]
Both horse riding and hawk training are regarded by aragwaithi as a part of unconventional operations. they can expand the scope and depth of the battlefield. In peacetime, even though it's not life,they family will hold relevant sports event maintenance training regularly. In wartime, they are very important to grasp the enemy's intelligence, and they can also support the main forces to attack for a long distance. like all aragwaithi weapons, the eagle's claw blade and spear are made of steel, and passed on from generation to generation. In this way, the continuous recasting and renovation has promoted the development of alloy and high-purity metal products to a certain extent.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by LordBob »

I'll admit, you caught me with that post over in art contributions :whistle:.

Sketches are headed in the right direction, you obviously know your way with drawing. They're still a bit too rough at this stage to give precise feedback, though; poses are interesting, but gear is often difficult to make out. Your horses could be a bit small, both the one here and over in the elvish rider sketch. It's hard to tell for sure at this point.

If the aim is cultural exploration, you might want to do a couple pages of sketches dedicated to clothes, armor and weapons before jumping into portraits. Temporarily leave characters aside unless you also want to establish their facial & body features. Focus on cloth color and cut, hairstyles, ornaments, shape language, different types of weapons, small props such as the pouch on the spearman's back. Don't leave them too vague, keep pushing and solve problems until you have a solid concept. You may have done a bit of this already, I see recurring shapes in their clothes. But again, sketches are too rough to be certain at the moment.


One thing I'm not too keen on is the lion sigil. It's commonly used so not very original (unless you design your own take on it), and yet completely absent from Wesnoth as far as as I can tell (I'm not even sure there's a lion sprite in the bestiary). Long story short, it could make your aragwaithi better integrated into the world of Wesnoth if you picked an animal that players have had a chance to see somewhere else in the game.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

LordBob wrote: August 20th, 2020, 10:44 pm Sketches are headed in the right direction
So far...but after that I have to slow down.

I'm very grateful to receive opinions from professionals like you. I put the feedback on the painting in the aragwaithi portrait post.
https://wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php ... 87#p657587
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

As you can see, I'm trying to figure out the right color and skin for aragwaithi, and I've done three sets Wizard portraits (I won't finish). A is inspired by the real Nordic people; B the color of blonde hair and skin looks like wesnothi, which is quite possible considering that they belong to the same branch as aragwaithi, but I think it's bad because the image is easy to be misunderstood by ELF; C is the original color drawn from sprites and contains beautiful sapphire eyes.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

I see the independent family as the smallest political unit in aragwaithi, each with about 300 to 800 people, which happens to be between the village and the urban population in the medieval environment. There are two reasons for adopting such a minimum political unit

First, this concept can be easily recognized by both eastern and Western cultures;

Secondly, we can use this method to simply create chess confrontation.


[family]
By convention, the greatest aragwaithi family in a region is called the great caste, and may be accompanied by family enclaves and numerous small family offshoots - so that we can quickly get a political structure similar to the kingdom of Wesnoth, but with a different flavor. The elite system is widely used in the management of affairs in aragwaithi family. The interests of every family member, including farmers and the elderly, must be clearly protected. Otherwise, such a family will not last for a long time, and each family member has the obligation to become a family soldier in his prime. One's family should always be trustworthy. Even if a clansman behaves despicably, he is still trustworthy. In an emergency, only the family can be counted on. Therefore, a person is not helpless in the face of the world, and he can always count on assistance from his family. A man's loyalty and affection to his family is regarded as the primitive nature of nature. In some families, there are even stories of revenge for the dead domesticated mount. It's unthinkable that someone will go against his family. People who kill relatives are hard to accept. In marriage and war, the family has the obligation to accept the remaining relatives from the family of the deceased unless the other party explicitly refuses. The armed armaments of family members are jointly funded by the family and individuals. Family compulsory education covers all members, involving martial arts training, literacy and moral cognition. In aragwaithi society, the value of an individual is measured by his sense of morality, ability and family status. High morality is always respected, regardless of his age, economic status, social and family affiliation. Philosophy, poetry and vehicle contests are the most popular entertainments for aragwaithi.


[business ]
The benign competition among different families has formed a highly mobile business system. The mobile market is composed of carriage or Eagle package assembly. Admission fee must be paid. But more often than not, it's a barter between family managers, such as mining rights of several years in exchange for regular food. Based on the core environment of a stable society, aragwaithi will pass a special kind of credit currency, paper money, which cannot be circulated among foreigners.


[Banner]
Finally, we will talk about the family symbols on the Banner. I happened to find an early Chinese phonetic system (which is regarded as the origin of Japanese katakana, a kind of writing used by women when learning Chinese characters), It's quite strange. It seems that we can combine it with Nordic runes to evolve into the aragwaithi family symbol.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Hi, I like the direction you are going in with the Aragwaithi culture, hierarchy and traditions.

If you would like to make revised unit descriptions and portraits, I would be happy to add them to WoL since the Aragwaithi is one of most favourite factions.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

Lord-Knightmare wrote: August 23rd, 2020, 4:59 pm Hi, I like the direction you are going in with the Aragwaithi culture, hierarchy and traditions.

If you would like to make revised unit descriptions and portraits, I would be happy to add them to WoL since the Aragwaithi is one of most favourite factions.
my pleasure,
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by AOW »

Keep trying, I mixed original A and original C, and I ended up with two medians.

Sapphire eye B looks more colorful expressive than pure A, so she will be the basis of everything I draw aragwaithi's face.
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Re: Cultural Exploration of Aragwaithi

Post by northcat »

AOW wrote: August 23rd, 2020, 4:52 pm I see the independent family as the smallest political unit in aragwaithi, each with about 300 to 800 people, which happens to be between the village and the urban population in the medieval environment. There are two reasons for adopting such a minimum political unit

First, this concept can be easily recognized by both eastern and Western cultures;

Secondly, we can use this method to simply create chess confrontation.


[family]
By convention, the greatest aragwaithi family in a region is called the great caste, and may be accompanied by family enclaves and numerous small family offshoots - so that we can quickly get a political structure similar to the kingdom of Wesnoth, but with a different flavor. The elite system is widely used in the management of affairs in aragwaithi family. The interests of every family member, including farmers and the elderly, must be clearly protected. Otherwise, such a family will not last for a long time, and each family member has the obligation to become a family soldier in his prime. One's family should always be trustworthy. Even if a clansman behaves despicably, he is still trustworthy. In an emergency, only the family can be counted on. Therefore, a person is not helpless in the face of the world, and he can always count on assistance from his family. A man's loyalty and affection to his family is regarded as the primitive nature of nature. In some families, there are even stories of revenge for the dead domesticated mount. It's unthinkable that someone will go against his family. People who kill relatives are hard to accept. In marriage and war, the family has the obligation to accept the remaining relatives from the family of the deceased unless the other party explicitly refuses. The armed armaments of family members are jointly funded by the family and individuals. Family compulsory education covers all members, involving martial arts training, literacy and moral cognition. In aragwaithi society, the value of an individual is measured by his sense of morality, ability and family status. High morality is always respected, regardless of his age, economic status, social and family affiliation. Philosophy, poetry and vehicle contests are the most popular entertainments for aragwaithi.


[business ]
The benign competition among different families has formed a highly mobile business system. The mobile market is composed of carriage or Eagle package assembly. Admission fee must be paid. But more often than not, it's a barter between family managers, such as mining rights of several years in exchange for regular food. Based on the core environment of a stable society, aragwaithi will pass a special kind of credit currency, paper money, which cannot be circulated among foreigners.


[Banner]
Finally, we will talk about the family symbols on the Banner. I happened to find an early Chinese phonetic system (which is regarded as the origin of Japanese katakana, a kind of writing used by women when learning Chinese characters), It's quite strange. It seems that we can combine it with Nordic runes to evolve into the aragwaithi family symbol.
Quite impressive! Feel like you are creating a brand new language / civilization out of air - with a taste of ancient Chinese / Japanese culture. Well done.
Last edited by northcat on September 10th, 2020, 3:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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