A mixture of real world cultures?

[King_Cagn]

Aye, so I've been brainstorming once again for another story I've got in mind. I was playing ACIII and this inspired me to go ahead and write something like this. Lately I've been interested in a mixture of two of our worlds cultures. The Mohawks and the Zulu Tribes.

I was wondering if it's possible to mix these two cultures and put them into the story, making the protagonists culture one of the reasons he pushes forward and fights the antagonist regime for his and other tribe's people.

Now the I don't know what would be better, would it be interesting to have his people believe in a deep spiritual way of living but than it reflects on their way of war?, or to have a mix mesh of what sounds good and go with that?

 

[Jabrosky]

This sounds very appealing to me. As I said in another recent thread, I'm all for mixing together different cultural influences in fantasy. I myself am fond of mixing ancient Egyptian and sub-Saharan African influences in my own work.

 

[WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade]

It can be done. The race of my MC, the main forces you'll be rooting for in the books (because its first person, not because all the others are *horrified gasp* evil!!!!!!!) are a blend of greco-roman and celtic/norse. The two lots work quite well, actually. They both have large pantheons with gods and sub-gods, all of them capricious and some, like Zeus, massive dicks.

They also have quite a warrior heavy culture (THIS IS SPARTA-couldn't resist), with the idea of the citizen soldier quite common in both, and stuff like that.

 

[Mythopoet]

Now the I don't know what would be better, would it be interesting to have his people believe in a deep spiritual way of living but than it reflects on their way of war?, or to have a mix mesh of what sounds good and go with that?

I'm not at all sure what you mean by this question.

But I also like creating fantasy cultures that take aspects from 2 or more real world cultures and try to weave them into new cloth.

 

[King_Cagn]

@Mythopoet Sorry, I'm writing while half asleep. But what I mean is, I've often liked the Native American's way of spiritually, but with the Zulu culture, it's quite deeply interwoven with war.

What I mean is, would having their culture and spiritually reflect on their way of fighting and war be better than taking the best of both bits and mixing them together?

 

[SM-Dreamer]

This is pretty much what I do. I don't take from one culture - I pick and choose from many cultures that live in the region that I'm, more or less, borrowing from.

For example, one culture I'm working on is based in an arid part of the world that correlates with the Middle East; I'm researching multiple cultures from that region, across a wide time frame, and selecting the aspects that fit best with the idea I have in mind.

 

[Pythagoras]

I was under the impression that many native American cultures could be very war-like. Spirituality doesn't depend on how militaristic a culture is. I think you could write a warrior society with animistic spiritual beliefs and get away with it easily.

 

[hots_towel]

im pretty much in full violation of this. my story has heavy allusions to england, nordic region, germanic region, the middle east, russia, india, steppe nomads, and the Mediterranean kingdoms.

i got the idea from mount and blade. before i played that game, i wasnt exactly sure how i was gonna portray each nation, as i knew this story would call for a lot. i might be treading dangerous waters considering some of them will have more "negative" than others, but id say for the most part its' pretty fair.

 

[SerCambria]

I can definitely see that, i personally plan on mixing Apache/Mohawk culture with the aggression of the Monguls and the martial discipline of the Samurai.

 

[King_Cagn]

I know this isn't part of the post but, also what about the time era?... Is it possible too have the mixture of muskets/cannons in with the background of fantasy, such as having armour and swords?

Or would it be interesting to have a transition of one culture to the other? What I'm working on is having the elves in my world follow the course of the English empire but with some still following their old customs, the story can be similar to a 1500-1700 circa coming from something of a medieval/Dark Ages circa.

What'd you guys think?

 

[Mythopoet]

I know this isn't part of the post but, also what about the time era?... Is it possible too have the mixture of muskets/cannons in with the background of fantasy, such as having armour and swords?

Three words: video game worlds.

Both Azeroth in the Warcraft Universe and Tyria in the Guild Wars universe easily mix various levels of technology. I'm sure there are many, many such examples.

 

[Queshire]

For guns to exist along with armor and swords they need to not totally eclipse armor and swords as weapons, some real world examples include the time it took to fire a gun (to the point that it might be easier to just toss the shot gun away and grab another already loaded gun than to try to reload it) and their wildly inaccurate nature making it so that you miss more often than you hit. Other than that... hmm... maybe nerf the power of guns so they aren't any more damaging than say bow and arrows? Of course rule of cool and rule of drama means, hey, go with whatever you think is cool.