queensthief | Attolia's Guard

The perks of study abroad include being able to visit really cool museums that don't exist in your itty bitty home town. Even better perks include finding little bits of Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis as I travel (especially since I've always associated the three more with Spain than anywhere else). This week I went to the Museo Naval (Navy Museum) in Madrid. It mostly had models of famous Spanish ships, but one really cool section included old weapons. Including these really cool muskets from 1600, 1525, and 1630 (top to bottom). They made me really excited since I can defintely see this being the type of gun issued to Attolia's guard. They're functional but ornate at the same time.

Pictures below cut. I have more if anyone's as interested in 17th century Spanish weaponry as I am.

Okay, I added a powder horn from the same time period as the muskets, the stock of the 1600 musket, a pair of firing mechanisms shaped like snakes/dragons, and Sounis' fleet right before Eugenides' plan gets to it.

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I know what you're talking about. Old-fashioned stuff from the Renaissance, especially weaponry (and fancy jackets), always makes me think of QT. These are great pictures! I can definitely see Costis using one of these to blow the lock off a door. What other kinds of stuff did you take pictures of?

Also! I want to add that it's really cool the way old guns were treated as such works of art. The people who made them really took time to decorate all over them. Probably because they were so expensive that only rich people who really wanted fancy guns could afford to buy them, but still. I was just looking at that little monkey next to the firing mechanism on the third picture and it's one of those details that you'd only notice if you spent a while looking at the gun close-up. Not something you see on guns nowadays.

Drashizu, I love your icon. Totally awesome.

As relates to the Guard, I've got pictures of more muskets, the same muskets, pistols, powder horns, firing mechanisms. There are also some pretty cool African and Japanese weapons, but they are random and off topic. There's also model boats, maps, and dice. Also not exactly relevant.(Although I would bet good money that the Guards played dice in their off time.)

I'll post them once I fiddle around with LJ some more. I'd love to post it in a comment, but I'm not sure I can do that.

Yes, do. I'd love to see the pictures of pistols and powder horns and such. Also the maps, since Eddis had a bunch of old maps hanging on the walls of her council room for decoration, didn't she?

Thanks about the icon ;)

Beautiful. I'd love to see more pictures.

But then I love the arms and armory sections in good museums... the contrast between the weapon's intended use and their elegant decoration is always so fascinating.

I can see the guard using those, especially with the brown drawing replaced with Attolian blue and gold

You think of Spain and not Greece? Why's that?

It probably started just because I'm so much more familiar with Spain than with Greece. When I was younger, I had a somewhat unhealthy interest in history after Rome and before the Enlightenment, and many of the best historical battles/innovations/ideas/contrasts/etc come from Spain or Spanish-Controlled Lands. Then the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me.

Spain's got lots of mountains and rivers that isolate small areas. It produces more olive oil than Greece. It's always been composed of small kingdoms, and even now the communities are wary of central power. The books mention somwhere that Eddisians are darker skinned (which I - probably in a very Western isolated manner - never interpreted as black but as sort of tan) and the people of Andalucia are generally darker skinned. If we put them in the more isolated northern mountain kingdoms instead (where Galicia, Austurias, Eukadi, and Navarra are now) we have a small isolated dark skinned nation the raises lots of sheep and has all the mines in Spain. I generally put Attolia and Sounis in the South, sort of splitting the rest of the Peninsula.

And for me, the history fits, too. The oringal "merchant invaders" could be either the Phoenicians or the Greeks, the second group could be the Romans (same gods, different names). The Visigods were essentially Christain Romans by the time they arrived in Spain and fractured the Peninsula into small kingdoms. For me, the Medes are los musulmanes (Muslim Africans and Arabs) who conquered Spain in a ridiculously short time, in part because the Visigod Kingdoms were warring with each other. To me, the events of QoA and KoA are what could have happened if they allied with each other. (Alright, so I'm missing a Volcano, but not bad for a fictional land.)

I know I've gone on forever, but I've been thinking about it for a long time.

I was about to ask the same question and you answered it already! Wow, you really thought about this long and hard. What you said makes sense though.

The books mention somwhere that Eddisians are darker skinned (which I - probably in a very Western isolated manner - never interpreted as black but as sort of tan)

Me too, I thought they were more bronze, just darker than fair skinned people. And I live in Asia so it's not an isolated Western thought.

Also, thanks for uploading the pictures. Pretty weapons!

These pictures are awesome! I LOVE old weapons... so much artistry involved.

I picture the guns in Attolia being of the wheellock variety... I'm not sure why? Maybe because it's an earlier design (though very state-of-the-art in its time), and for some reason I think of guns as being a relatively new technology in Attolia.

You're right, it says in The Thief that guns are a pretty new invention. (They're impressive but not accurate, I think is what Gen says when the Attolians start shooting at them from across the river near the end of the book.) Also, the wheel lock came after the match lock but before the flint lock. It was only popular for a short while in the 1500s since the flint lock innovation came so quickly. At least, in *our* world.

Highlight for a CofK spoiler:

Edited 2010-03-19 00:48 (UTC)

Wow, this are gorgeous. Fantastic carving - looks like ivory. Probably the ink-in-carving method? did it say?

Thanks for the pics!

Depressingly, no. Every other museum in Spain I've been to has always stated materials and/or methods. These cards just indentified them as muskets and their time. But I'd be willing to bet on ivory, too. Exeept for the parts that are silver.

Heh the fleet! Haha, Sounis. Lovely.

Attolia's Guard

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