Horse-lords of Rohan Preview - Cover!

[Glorelendil]

Gees, it's like you guys didn't even notice the bee design from Childeric's grave goods on Beorn's gate...

I just did a Google image search of "Childeric's grave"....wow, treasure trove (literally) of evocative images. I love those little bees.

[Jon Hodgson]

Some amateur philological/etymological thinking about Beorn, bees, honey and warrior in various European languages was very fruitful (all credit to Francesco for most that) as well as knowing about warriors being thought of as honey-eaters for it's antiseptic and health giving effects.

It's all there. The tragedy is how much of that hoard was melted down.

Back briefly to the Horse-Lords of Rohan cover:
I've taken a bit of a liberty by using the Anglo-Saxon imagery from several centuries before Hastings - Tolkien describes the Rohirrim as looking something like the Anglo-Saxons from the Bayeux tapestry. I've shifted that to an earlier period of Anglo Saxon dress because I think it looks amazing, fits the direction we're going in culturally, I'm not too shy of some anachronisms in Middle-earth, and it will contrast all the more wonderfully and appropriately with the plans we have for the look of Gondor cultures.

The White Horse of Uffington just seemed too happy a fit to pass up, and I'm thinking ancient imagery doesn't necessarily just disappear in the secondary world where we have people living so much longer, and age being such a virtue.

If you'd like to see some more of my inspirations head over to https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wulfheod ... 3802621780 They're a great bunch of archeological recreationists, as well as agreeing to help me out with their areas of expertise, since some of them are Tolkien nuts! They make the most amazing things. I've not copied anything directly, apart from known archeological finds, but you can see the influences from the latest thoughts on Anglo Saxons.

[Ernst-Jan]

That's fascinating, John. What kind of historical precedents did you mine for the Bardings/Lake-Men?

[Jon Hodgson]

That's fascinating, John. What kind of historical precedents did you mine for the Bardings/Lake-Men?

Bardings were a kind of mash up of Romano British and Vikings, if there'd been more mixing of those cultures (hey perhaps there was, in a way...) around Eboracum/York. The red cloaks, more spatha-like swords, splinted armour, helmets from that era. That made sense to us, since the Dwarves were largely Nordic inspiration, and their cultures were close neighbours. There are echoes of the dwarven architectural styles in the buildings in Dale (Though I'm looking forward at some point to having another crack at Dale, I was never completely happy with the one image I made for the core manual). We also wanted that slightly imperial feel to the Bardings, but without drifting too far into inappropriate classical themes. You could tie your brain up in knots thinking about Romano-Britons in a world without Romans, but I try not to...

Lake-men were an interesting one. I really didn't want to go for the obvious clichés connected to living on water, using a lot of water transport, and fishing a lot. The obvious thing would be to put them in waders and draw fish all over them. I think that'd be really clumsy design work. What we actually settled upon is that due to their relatively anachronistic government and culture they would be the first mannish culture to split their clothing up the front and use buttons. Buttons are quite a luxurious item in some ways, especially if they're gold, ivory, jewels and so on.

We made the Lake-men sort of softer, less martial, subtler, more mercantile compared to the Bardings. They were less about steel and red cloaks and more about furs, ivory, fine cloth - more mercantile goods. It's a tough one since there's such an overlap, but we sort of did some accelerated cultural development of the two cultures to give them stronger identities. There's some Rus elements in there too. Trading people that use fur and lots of cloth - seemed to fit, and also gave us the connection to the Nordic dwarves.

[Angelalex242]

...Including Fangorn forest?

That's...an interesting idea.

An Ent culture. Now YOU Can play an Ent!

[Eucatastrophe]

...the plans we have for the look of Gondor cultures.

Hi all, first post here. The One Ring is a terrific game, congratulations to the whole Cubicle 7 team working on it!

Jon, I love the game's art direction and your comment here caught my eye. I'm hoping, hoping that perhaps we'll get a Byzantine-inspired look for the Men of Gondor...? I know you probably don't want to give too much away about your plans for the look of Gondor but that's something I'd love to see.

[Falenthal]

Dorwinrrim should be spanish-italian people, of course. Wine, olive oil and sun. And beautiful women. Undebatable.

[zedturtle]

That's fascinating, John. What kind of historical precedents did you mine for the Bardings/Lake-Men?

Bardings were a kind of mash up of Romano British and Vikings, if there'd been more mixing of those cultures (hey perhaps there was, in a way...) around Eboracum/York. The red cloaks, more spatha-like swords, splinted armour, helmets from that era. That made sense to us, since the Dwarves were largely Nordic inspiration, and their cultures were close neighbours. There are echoes of the dwarven architectural styles in the buildings in Dale (Though I'm looking forward at some point to having another crack at Dale, I was never completely happy with the one image I made for the core manual). We also wanted that slightly imperial feel to the Bardings, but without drifting too far into inappropriate classical themes. You could tie your brain up in knots thinking about Romano-Britons in a world without Romans, but I try not to...

Lake-men were an interesting one. I really didn't want to go for the obvious clichés connected to living on water, using a lot of water transport, and fishing a lot. The obvious thing would be to put them in waders and draw fish all over them. I think that'd be really clumsy design work. What we actually settled upon is that due to their relatively anachronistic government and culture they would be the first mannish culture to split their clothing up the front and use buttons. Buttons are quite a luxurious item in some ways, especially if they're gold, ivory, jewels and so on.

We made the Lake-men sort of softer, less martial, subtler, more mercantile compared to the Bardings. They were less about steel and red cloaks and more about furs, ivory, fine cloth - more mercantile goods. It's a tough one since there's such an overlap, but we sort of did some accelerated cultural development of the two cultures to give them stronger identities. There's some Rus elements in there too. Trading people that use fur and lots of cloth - seemed to fit, and also gave us the connection to the Nordic dwarves.

Absolutely brilliant stuff.

[Arthadan]

Great news! Allthough if these statues are supposed to be púkel-men I'm not sold.

There sat Théoden and Éomer, and before them on the ground sat a strange squat shape of a man, gnarled as an old stone, and the hairs of his scanty beard straggled on his lumpy chin like dry moss. He was short-legged and fat-armed, thick and stumpy, and clad only with grass about his waist. Merry felt that he had seen him before somewhere, and suddenly he remembered the Púkel-men of Dunharrow. Here was one of those old images brought to life,or maybe a creature descended in true line through endless years from the models used by the forgotten craftsmen long ago.

So Púkel-men statues should be (short) man-sized forms of squat men with short legs and fat arms.

However, I'm completely fine if they are supposed to be any other statues. In fact they look like "nordic" to me, for example from the time the Eorlings settled in Calenardhon.

Edited: Now that I think about it, I think there were smaller ones as well, I'll have to check my books.
And I've forgotten to say I love all the rest!

[Jon Hodgson]

It's truly a thing of wonder, and one of the joys of the job, how people can interpret the same text in different ways.

The Pukel-men like statues (though clearly we're not at Dunharrow here, and it's a fair assumption that there are other statues in Rohan of a similar if not identical type, made by similar cultural groups) in this painting were based on a mixture of the Boa Island figures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boa_Island#Stone_figures and the Venus of Willendorf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf and some La Tène stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts#/med ... c_hero.jpg which seem very likely candidates for, or at least representatives of, Tolkien's inspirations.

Personally I think it would be a mistake to take what a hobbit remembers of a statue, and how the appearance of a person reminded him of that statue, and render that statue too directly or literally, without any further thought on what Tolkien means about the secondary world when he speaks through Merry. I think you have to work backwards from the lens of Hobbit recollection and a Hobbit's view of the world. And of course work in your own lens for some consistency. It is remarkably effective prose for that process - it's one of the things I love about Tolkien - he rarely describes directly, it's all layers of inference and reference. Once we dig into these references we can start to expand outward a little and broaden our depiction of the world he's describing with his hints and similes.

Tolkien's method of writing also means it's very hard to argue that one interpretation is the correct one and another is incorrect - all you can do is make the most well considered interpretation for the purpose you intend it for. And any interpretation is just that - an interpretation. It's a lasting frustration to me, especially with locations like Rivendell, that we're forced to pin them down into a single interpretation, when in my head my imagination makes them far more fluid.

We can't say "That isn't what statues of Pukel men look like". All we can say is "That isn't how I imagined them, for these reasons" and if we're intelligent people something interesting comes out of comparing our interpretations. Which is great!