this is the fourth devlog from a series of posts regarding different topics related to talisman of dawn's process. if you have any questions or suggestions of topics, you can say in the comments! thank you. i hope you enjoy this one too.

WARNING: they'll probaby have spoilers so be aware!!!!!

research time! (part I)

who? where? when?

ACCORDING TO MY RESEARCH...

one of my first devlogs about this game mentioned how excited i was to share the discoveries i've made. since then a lot has changed, but i'm still excited to show you about what i found. i'm also going to explain what changed from the first demo to the finished game and why.

i'll have to divide this topic in many more subsections. in this devlog, we'll see about:

- geography

- history

this will be a lot of stuff but let's go...

NOTE: i'm not a historian nor an iranian. this information was all i could get from the internet (and some books). i digged a lot of sites, watched some videos and read many articles but some of this information may not be 100% accurate. i apologize if there's any inconsistency (please let me know so i can correct it in the devlog!!).

WHERE IS THE MAP?

this is the map i used as reference in general.

yeah that's modern iran. in the first version of the game i didn't have that, but as i started to research better, i felt the need for it. it helped me visualize the story a lot better. the story happens somewhere in khorasan, which is at the northeast of iran. it used to exist since ancient times, but less defined than today. it's relatively close to turkmenistan and uzbekistan (save this information for the next devlog).

i also checked other maps -- mostly ethnicies and language maps, since iran has many different dialects. i didn't get much information from them that was relevant for the story so i didn't save them, and i'm not going to show them here.

this one is the same map, but highlighting kermanshah (does that name ring a bell?)

kermanshah is the region mentioned in sher's story -- where nikisa is trapped. farhad, the protagonist, starts and ends his journey there. do you remember where did he live? i'll tell you. farhad lives at the persian gulf... yes..... at the BOTTOM of the map......

(the same map, but now you can look at kermanshah and the persian gulf (more specifically at the "oman" region at the tip of the continent) and tell that farhad was a REALLY good friend. bro walked from KERMANSHAH TO OMAN AND THEN FROM OMAN TO KERMANSHAH LIKE--)

now, you must be asking: how did i know how much time he spent going from kermanshah to oman? well. this was a very interesting thing. i was sharing that worry with my friend and she suddenly came to me with a screenshot of google maps, calculating how much time it would take to go from one point to another. it literally blew my mind. i'm never guessing how much time characters spend on journeys again.

(chatter i love you)

AND THEY WERE BEST FRIENDS

initially, the city where farhad and nikisa were was called "Syranisius" -- which is a mashup of "Syracuse" and "Dionysius". where did that came from, though?

well, their story is actually a retelling of the greek legend damon and pythias (if you played the first demo, you might remember that nikisa was called damon before). picking the description from wikipedia:

<< The story of Damon and Pythias is a legend in Greek historic writings illustrating the Pythagorean ideal of friendship. Pythias is accused of and charged with plotting against the tyrannical Dionysius I of Syracuse. Pythias is sentenced to death, but, requests of Dionysius to first be allowed to settle his affairs. Dionysius agrees, on the condition that Pythias' friend, Damon, be held hostage and, should Pythias not return, be executed in his stead. When Pythias returns, Dionysius, amazed by the love and trust in their friendship, frees them both. >>

(see what i did there? dionysisus of syracuse... syranisius...)

i don't remember where i saw their story, but i do remember feeling very warm and happy when i read about it. i was like "YES!!!!!! THIS IS PERFECT!!!!!!!!!! THEY'RE FRIENDS!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!". i thought it fit very well considering how talisman of dawn is also, in a way, a story about friendship. even with the revamp, i decided to keep it (changing the names and the setting to something more in-theme..)

YASS QUEEN, SLAY

in the revamp, i decided to dig deeper into historical accuracy. that applied to everything -- from setting to archtecture, art and fashion. many articles i read mentioned "achaemenid era" or "safavid era", but i didn't know how they were organized in the first place. it was one of the first things that i started to learn.

one of my first surprises was that sultans only came to be in 1281 AD which was. MUCH later than i expected. i mentioned darius in the first demo and he was from the achaemenid empire which was. in 550-330 BEFORE christ. and that was when i started to realize my MANY inconsistencies in the world building.

the thing was -- i wanted to write a story that featured zoroatrism, the ancient religion of the persian empire. and sultans came to be a thing some time after the rise of the muslim conquest of persia, around 998 AD. so writing a SULTAN that was ZOROASTRIAM was a BIIIIIIIIIG stretch, especially considering that a LOT of zoroastrians were converted to islam and were heavily persecuted so... i had to change it.

i watched "The Entire History of the Persian Achaemenid Empire" (WHICH IS VERY GOOD!! if you're interested in the topic i recommend it a lot) and it helped me to get a better idea of the timeline. it goes:

- achaemenian empire (550-331 BC)

- parthian empire (248-224 BC)

- sassanian empire (224-651 AC)

- muslim invasion (632-654 AC)

i focused talisman of dawn on the first one, which features many well-known historical figures: cyrus, darius and of course, xerxes... (the first two appear in the game's codex!) fun fact: the story happens somewhere after darius' reign and before xerxes'...

the sultan became satrap and the grand-vizier became the ganzabara/treasurer. their functions are mostly the same as the initial ones, but now their titles are historically accurate!! yay!!

personally it was really fun to write about a country which i only briefly heard about. as someone raised christian, cyrus and darius are names well-known to me (they appear in the bible, in the book of daniel, since their empire conquers babylon, which was slavering hebrews at the time) but i never knew them outside that. it was really nice. i love history...

(while i was revamping, i made some memes to pass the time and to have a sensation i was "working" on tod (art wise). this is when i was learning about the empires, and ended up drawing shariar like an iranian emperor lolll)

IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?

i intended to put all my research in one devlog but as i was writing this one i realized it's. a lot. and i don't want to surpass the character limit LMAO so i'll be dividing my research treasures in three devlogs. i hope you liked this one and stay tuned for more!