Okay, as much as I’m loving the look of the new Aquilonian stuff, it strikes me as very odd that we’re getting new DLC armour for some races when there isn’t base game armour for others. Specifically here, I’m talking about Picts as I tend to play one. I find it very annoying seeing all these cool new armour sets, and yet my Pict on the RP server I play on can’t even wear her own race’s armour. Please, pretty please, can we have some pict armour?!
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Read Robert E. Howard’s “Beyond the Black River”, there is no Pict armor to make because they do not wear it, just loin cloths and war paint.
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As a fellow pict player I feel that something should be done.
That ia correct, pict is kind of an amalgamation of various native tribes of americas, which traditionally also didnt develop any kind of armor. At most loincloths and aways warpaints.
In the setting, they could pass well with a darfari armor as its the one closer to naked armor.
But I also wish they do a pict DLC with some armor even if it is just loincloth with decorations and stats.
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It be cool to see the ‘precautionary’ armor that did develop in tribal and stone age cultures of that type. The glass and stone bead necklace work (like the Darfari chest piece has), to double up and protect the major blood vessels of the neck from slashes. As well as the leathers, bone, bead, etc, arm and thigh bands used to protect those parts inner sides from wounds meant to bleed you out. The ornaments and such on it be great for playing a pict, the eagle feathers to show place in a clan, ears and fingers from downed enemies, taken heads, etc.
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I hope you realize that the Celts developed chain mail. Many Picts also wore armor. Ignoring several Roman accounts and going upon archeological data including burial mounds.
And I hope you realize that we are playing the Picts of Robert E. Howards’ fictional Hyborian Age, not the semi historical stories he wrote about, much more closely based on the historical Picts, and set thousands of years later. The Picts of the Hyborian Age are utterly stuck in savagery, except for some copper ore mining, they are overwhelmingly stone tool users. The Picts de-civilization, and reversion from their Atlantean civilization highs, is an ongoing element of Howard’s writing in this setting.
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Picts might have a smattering of bone and hide “armor”. It’s not inconceivable that they would use wood to protect especially vulnerable areas.
I can see a whole savage themed DLC that could include Pict gear as well as stuff for the other uncivilized cultures.
Funcom are sticking to the style choices in “Age of Conan: Unchained” - so the Aquilonians are more classical style than Medieval French style as some might expect.
Picts will probably be similar - use a lot of animal pieces e.g. skull helmet, bone bracers, flint spears etc.
Picts also had shamans in the stories, so they should have a prominent feature in any Pict expansion/DLC.
The thing that maybe stops a Pict DLC straight away is that the building designs are round, so the existing building pieces won’t match for a simple reskin - this could mean an entire biome could be dedicated to pictland, but I’m not sure it would be different enough from the highland biome.
A ‘Beyond Black River’ biome, maybe? Would be like the Ho Rainforest of the Pacific Northwest with Douglas Fir trees, and a few primordial Redwood giants put in. Biggest thing would be capturing the ‘extinct everywhere else’ sense of its wildlife, which is primordial even for the Hyborian Age. And that be a problem, as sabertooths and great apes also exist elsewhere in game. Although ‘Ghost Snake’ be a cool world boss. Maybe if it focused on the coastal Picts, and their hunting of giant sea fish, shells, turtles, etc?
I’d say for Pict building (if it were going to be done), it might take a radical departure, and make it all placeables, like tents and focus on living at the mouth of caves, etc. Other than wooden fences, and seasonal lodges, there is not strong sense pf permanent Pict structure building at all in the REH stories. Actually their inability to do so is a plot point within the beginning of ‘The Black Stranger’ when Conan finds that wood door with metal working, and instantly knows something is really up as he is in the middle of Pict land and seeing something that ‘sophisticated’ there.
Yeah, premade placeables would work perfectly I reckon - you’d only really need three sizes of roundhouse because they all basic ground dwellings the size of tents (made out of branches, heather and grasses), or noble dwelling (same but 2-3 times the size) and a meeting hall - there wouldn’t actually be variety of design (maybe a variety of materials they built with would be the options for them).
I imagined the Picts as a mix of ancient Scottish Picts and Native Americans - then I saw how Frazetta painted them, and suddenly the came alive as the “missing link”… base, savage, and cannot be reasoned with, hehehe.
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