What are the influences for the high elves of warhammer?

[UserU]

I have a few idea and here they are

-Elric of Melnibone

-Near east aryan groups such as sarmassions, Sasanians, hittities, scthians. Its really obvious in the armor and clothing, along with having various named classes like the magus. The scale armor in conjunction with plate and a long gown in with a conically pointed helmet is one example, dragons on helmets, heavy use of dragon/phoenix symbols, scales, etc.

-Near east societies/orders likes the zoroastrian priest's, magus's, sufism(more jedi-esque though) etc. And of course, the asurian shrine looks like a cross between a pyramid and a mosque, almost like a jedi temple. I see various sorts of similar symbols from groups like rosicrucians for instance.

-Norman style, around the 10th to 13th century, of which, most of the style tends to come from one of the groups above.

-14th to 15th century german and british architecture, armor, and various clothing types, all along the gothic style in particular in armor andarchitecture.

-Moors anc christians festivals, and history, unparallel artistry and an obvious influence for both dark and high elves in general as this video will show : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGLHlllX-TQ&t=1m55s

-The Safavid Dynasty, up to the Qajar dynasty in persia, obvious clothing, armor, artistry and architecture influences

-Tolkien, alot of this is all cut from the same tolkienesque cloth, and lets not forget the accents

-Last and not least, The Antedilvian world, because its the closest to immortalism as it gets that is tangible, such as atlantis, mu, etc.

These are just my idea's, what do you see? Obviously the tomb kings are egyptian, and the lizards are west hemisphere aboriginals for instance.

I am very curious as to where some of those shoulder armor pieces come from. I have seen various persian designs have them, around the 14th/15th century with the long gown and breast plate in a sort of asur style, but I do not recall.

Obviously I like everything about the high elves.

[UserU]

Originally posted by GrapplingHook!:

Great topic of discussion, to clarify however: the focus of OP is on 'real world influences on the visual aesthetic and cultural/religious character of the Asur in the Warhammer setting', so a lot of the above posts are kind of off topic IMO.

Given that this is lore that has been fleshed out of 30+ years with input from lots of different people, there's gonna be lots of different influences, pooling from literature (of course Tolkien) and real world cultural myths and past civilisations.

Aesthetics

There are a mix of influences on different units, buildings etc. Prominent among which are the Sythians as inspiration for lots of the helmets and scale armour (though of course the scale armour is much more historically ubiquitous so you could say it came from lots of places). I went to a Sythian exhibition at the British museum a while back and I remember there was this really tall helmet/headdress with an eagle (i think) on top, very reminiscent of the swordmasters/dragon princes helmets. Sythians also wore tall cloth caps which might be the inspiration for the ellyrian reavers caps.

Scale armour on the silver helms is reminiscent of scythian/persian/byzantine cataphracts.

Plate armour/cuirasses on various units is obv 15+ century western influence, with the fluted armour on the dragon princes and their horses looks 15c to me (albeit exaggerated for fantasy effect).

The puffy cloth clothing on the archers - not sure, turkish maybe? And then the rest of the units (sisters, shadow warriors) is just artistic licence me thinks.

Buildings - i'm thinking the influence of fantasy literature is the primary one here, Tolkien and all its derivatives. As for what those were based on historically, prob a variant on 19c imagined romantic past ( think of those 19c castes made to look like fantasy medieval castles).

Politics

Quite a clear Byzantine influence here, all the intrigue and back stabbing.

Religion

So they have a pantheon of Gods, heavenly and cthonic who sometimes work with, sometimes against, each other, and the creator god is male.

In a general sort of way this places it in the ancient Mesopotamian tradition which inspired various different stands which went west (think greek mythology, hephastus- vaul etc) and east (the light/dark religions mentioned about) and principlally the enuma elis (i think).

There’s a whole big mix of this stuff in the Warhammer elves pantheon, and some stuff they just threw in. Just research some of those mythologies and you'll see the parallels, hard to see which was drawn from which off hand though.

Theres prob a bunch more influences that i missed, but those are the main ones i think.

Well I definately like your input, the scythian influence both culturally and artistically I dont think can be denied. I almost want to say its a best of both worlds with regards to organic symmetry, and of course, as one person pointed out, they are based off of angels in theory, from the tolkien literature.

I was never quite sure what to make of the pantheon, as it has a sort of structure from say greek myth, but more like an early monotheistic aim and aspect like in zoroastrianism with a pantheon.

For the clothing and architecture, Their is a definative persian style to it that was style that influenced medieval and renaissance europe, and this is more notable in the areas from around the sarmations and scythians as you pointed out too. While the game does a more europeanized variant, the base influence is very persian in the era's I described from the safavid and onware, its very clear in the architecture too. This is all not to obvious at first given the different color scheme, but if you look purely as the symmetry for clothing and architechure, then it becomes more obivous, especially the heavily angular fractal designs.

[GrapplingHook!]

Originally posted by Matheoryon:

For the clothing and architecture, Their is a definative persian style to it that was style that influenced medieval and renaissance europe, and this is more notable in the areas from around the sarmations and scythians as you pointed out too. While the game does a more europeanized variant, the base influence is very persian in the era's I described from the safavid and onware, its very clear in the architecture too. This is all not to obvious at first given the different color scheme, but if you look purely as the symmetry for clothing and architechure, then it becomes more obivous, especially the heavily angular fractal designs.

Really good point, especially in regards to the buildings, didn't notice it at first but the more i look at them the more i see it: its a blend of 19c European romantic and Safavid architecture.

Though i would say that, to me, most of the fractal(ish) designs are curvy rather than angular, which would place their influence in the earlier period Druids, who were themselves inspired by the Pythagoreans. Its essentially the same concept as in the later Islamic tradition, that of sacred geometry and the notion that the world is full of patterns that form a sort of language to describe the ineffable divine (which fits perfectly with how the Asur are presented in the setting, having 'secret/sacred knowledge of the world), but given the Druidic emphasis on natural cycles, most of the patterns are circular, which is closer to what we see with on the clothes and buildings of the warhammer high elves. Also fits with citadel of dusk/dawn maybe? I know druid stuff is more wood elves, but i still think theres something of that in there.

As an aside, not sure where the association with dragons fits into all this; i can't think of any real world myths relating to ancient civilizations working in concert with another non-human ancient race (its invariably in conflict with), other than Greek heroes like Bellerophon and Perseus flying the Pegasus. I guess also the dragons represent a mixture of the visual European variant but with the more positive role/personalty of the eastern.

[UserU]

Originally posted by GrapplingHook!:

Originally posted by Matheoryon:

For the clothing and architecture, Their is a definative persian style to it that was style that influenced medieval and renaissance europe, and this is more notable in the areas from around the sarmations and scythians as you pointed out too. While the game does a more europeanized variant, the base influence is very persian in the era's I described from the safavid and onware, its very clear in the architecture too. This is all not to obvious at first given the different color scheme, but if you look purely as the symmetry for clothing and architechure, then it becomes more obivous, especially the heavily angular fractal designs.

Really good point, especially in regards to the buildings, didn't notice it at first but the more i look at them the more i see it: its a blend of 19c European romantic and Safavid architecture.

Though i would say that, to me, most of the fractal(ish) designs are curvy rather than angular, which would place their influence in the earlier period Druids, who were themselves inspired by the Pythagoreans. Its essentially the same concept as in the later Islamic tradition, that of sacred geometry and the notion that the world is full of patterns that form a sort of language to describe the ineffable divine (which fits perfectly with how the Asur are presented in the setting, having 'secret/sacred knowledge of the world), but given the Druidic emphasis on natural cycles, most of the patterns are circular, which is closer to what we see with on the clothes and buildings of the warhammer high elves. Also fits with citadel of dusk/dawn maybe? I know druid stuff is more wood elves, but i still think theres something of that in there.

As an aside, not sure where the association with dragons fits into all this; i can't think of any real world myths relating to ancient civilizations working in concert with another non-human ancient race (its invariably in conflict with), other than Greek heroes like Bellerophon and Perseus flying the Pegasus. I guess also the dragons represent a mixture of the visual European variant but with the more positive role/personalty of the eastern.

The dragons largely come from the scythians and surrounding groups such as the sarmations as well, complete with pointed headdress. Looking at their culture, art and government shows it with titles in government such as the "dragon king", etc.

The origins of the druids are something of a mystery, though interestingly, they can be traced back to magi groups given the heavy similiarities.

I think you got it on architecture, though with a more gothic touch is what I see, which doesnt have much of the greek influence that romantic architecture has.

The safavid emphasisies more blues, while the european gothic and romanitc is more about the whites, and combined you get a sort of high elven look. And lets not forget the magi/sufi order groups of the east.

[TaurusBully]

Or , you know, it’s all really just made up , like those huge shoulder pads on world of Warcraft are made up.

[GrapplingHook!]

Originally posted by TaurusBully:

Or , you know, it’s all really just made up , like those huge shoulder pads on world of Warcraft are made up.

Yeah well duh, whenever you're creating the thematic and visual character of a setting there's plenty of stuff you are going to put in which are original or help to convey the idea of the setting: in the case of fantasy, exaggerating stuff like the big shoulder pads and ornate armour is an important part of the immersion so that the audience/player/reader feels rooted in something pointedly NOT of our world.

But alongside that is a whole wealth of attributes which are from our world, so that we can pool from our own background cultural and historical knowledge to infer 'these guys are sophisticated' or 'these guys are primitive'; you need BOTH in order for a fictional setting to feel interesting and alive.

The question of 'what is original?' and 'what is historically influenced?' - and in regards to the latter, 'how is this appropriated?', ‘what is the same?’, 'what is different, and why?' is an interesting topic because it really allows you to get inside the heads of the people who made it, and to see interesting connections and reasons why something was done in a certain way or with a certain emphasis that you couldn’t see before.