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An idea. Technology doesn’t progress in the same sequence in Motherland as in real life.
People in real life often take for granted that technology progresses as it currently does. Many feel it as this inevitable thing but I disagree. without specific people with specific ideas, specific inventions would never have come along at the same time, and they never would have influenced others in the same way. There is no reason something like the compass couldn’t have been invented centuries earlier or later than when it was. The vast majority of people only know about inventions because they are already known and recorded. Say the concept of global magnetism was never discovered. Do you think you could invent a compass single-handedly without ever seeing one before or knowing the mechanism of its function? I never would. I only know about it because someone told me, who was told by someone else, who some where back in the depths of time was discovered by some sharp (and perhaps a bit lucky) individual who caught something that everyone else missed. I think that’s incredible.
The world population didn’t even hit 1 billion until the 19th century. We have septupled in population in just over a hundred years. Some estimates place the entire world population at 1000AD around the current population of the United States. Think how much more rapidly group knowledge and learning occur in the current environment compared to the days when cities of 30,000 were considered massive. I don’t think we’re smarter now the in the past, we just have more access to the knowledge of people before us to build on.
When it comes to technology as related to different eras, I see the same pattern constantly – especially from european-influenced works – history is inevitably shown as going from: ancient -> classical -> medieval -> renaissance -> industrial -> modern – > future. This is hardly the only way it could have gone (and it only represents the sequence in a small corner of the world anyway). I want to play with this concept a lot in the comic. Not to mention the Motherland world is not earth – different wildlife, climate, seasons, chemistry, etc. This changes a lot. I threw around an idea that fire is either nonexistent or difficult to create due to the atmosphere composition. Just imagine life on earth if fire wasn’t a thing. Apart from the obvious like heat and cooking, imagine trying to forge metal without fire. No metal means no tools, and much later down the line no industrial revolution. Coal and oil would be useless commodities and access to electricity would not exist. But what if electricity was discovered early? Lack of fire would mean coal generators to power the current wouldn’t be viable, leaving hydroelectric generation as the primary source. Maritime nations having access to electricity while neighboring regions without river or sea access would drastically change the balance of power practically overnight. The butterfly effect can be extremely pronounced with even minor changes.
Obviously the effects are different in the Motherland world, but just think about it as an example. Who is to say some bright individual wouldn’t come up with an alternative to fire that no one had ever thought of? What if a unique chemical compound from alien fauna not found on earth combusts without access to oxygen? What if the planet has ready access to geothermal power? Tons of possible ideas and solutions. Just because something wasn’t done in real life doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done. What if the cure to cancer is the one mundane compound everyone overlooked? What if the secret to time travel is peanut butter? How would you know?
Humanity is much more naive about the world than it likes to think. I’m okay with that.
Did some more concepts. looking again at a lot of real life designs, these have elements influenced by a variety of asian and middle-eastern pieces from cultures like the Mughals. It’s difficult to come up with original designs that are practical, because most of the practical designs people came up with in the past were already made. Generally if you can think of a ‘unique’ design there is often a reason it wasn’t used historically. A major issue with a lot of fantasy armors is they are often impractical on or off the battlefield, sometimes both. Designing a bulky suit of armor to provide ultimate protection might work for its intended purpose but would be extremely heavy, hindering its user in combat. Not to mention something oft forgotten – you end up wearing a suit of armor out of battle much more than in battle. I doubt anyone would want to wear an extra 60-100lbs (or theoretically more in the case of many fantasy designs) any more than they had to especially when marching on foot, sitting down for dinner, etc. People in real life sure didn’t.
People tended to wear what they could get away with and what they could afford. Armor was expensive and difficult to manufacture, especially large plates of metal. European knights were often wealthy and could afford plate armor, the lower status footsoldiers and such as far as I know generally wore cheaper materials. Mail and lamellar was cheaper and easier to make than plate armor or more people would have used it. I’ve heard that some cannibalized common tools like scythes into helmets and such in emergencies which wouldn’t surprise me. Thick fabric is also much better at protection than many people think. If something was useless in real life it quickly died out, but even a crummy helmet is better than none at all.
Feudalistic societies don’t really exist in the current Motherland setting and the economics of resin production and crafting is different than that of metal (easier to create large sheets), but the general principle of cost and practicality is still very applicable. People are still people even in alien lizard land.
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some armor design concepts. on the whole metal is rarely used in Motherland due to a variety of factors, but the majority of regions have access to substitute materials. these alien ‘resin’ compounds are mass-produced from several species of wildlife and have no true real world analogue, though most have properties somewhere in the realm of rubber, chitin, ceramic, and polymer. among a myriad of other uses, they are used to make armor and weapons. it’s a big goal of mine to have some crazy setting weirdness and still try to make designs that make sense. I’m heavily basing armor and weapon designs off of real life ones since they actually work instead of hypothetically work.
pretty much all of the armor shown here would be ‘elite’ models that would be very expensive to create and own. common soldiers and guards would make do with much less. chainmail doesn’t really exist per se due to the tensile properties of resin, the city guards in ch 1 were using scaled or spined hauberks which is much cheaper than plate armor but still fairly effective. many of the (wealthier) renes shown were using plate armor which was inspired by the designs of real life armenian cataphracts, the manicas in particular. i just think they look cool.