this is the fifth 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 might have spoilers so be aware!!!

research time! (part II)

the invisible pillars of the story...

THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY...

today we'll continue the research topics i started in the previous devlog. in this one, i'll talk about:

- ethnicities

- culture (literature, more specifically!)

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 them may not be 100% accurate. i apologize if there's any inconsistency (please let me know so i can correct it in the devlog!!).

ONE THOUSAND AND ONE ETHNICITIES...

another big part of research was discovering about iran's ethnicities. i did not know that iran had a LOT of different ethnic groups... it felt familiar, as a brazilian...

if you played tod, you know that 'persian' is an ethnicity, not the name of the people who live in iran (which is often called 'persia', but that's also a misconception). each of those ethnicities also have a "stereotype". persians, for example, are associated with wealth, intelligence and leadership. mazaradani folks, by the other hand, are simple, rustic and goofy. 

i didn't get much information about each ethnicity, unfortunately (these were SO hard to find...) but i tried my best to use what i could. the ethinicities influence a lot on social status and fashion, so they were very important both for character writing and character design. so, i went to search for the ethnicities of khorasan and this is what i got.

MEET THE PERSIANS

i'll start by sherazade's family, because it is the most simple of them. mudhik, duna, sher and layla are persian. which means they're related to royalty and are wealthy. you can see that in their clothing -- rich patterns, colorful cloth, golden necklaces and earrings (men also wore earrings in ancient iran!)

i seriously tried to learn about color theory and associations in ancient iran, but sources were SCARCE. so the colors are all me. the patterns of the clothing i got from persian miniatures (i will talk about them in more detail in the next devlog!!).

mudhik came from a noble family, and this is one of the reasons he felt terrible when marwa supported him when his family was broke. it's one of the fuels of his toxic masculinity too. of course you're going to associate wealth with being a man, love with being a provider, especially when you were born rich. it is also the reason why he works for shariar -- he is royalty so LOLL that's how he got into the palace. though, mudhik isn't TOO rich or TOO noble. he's like, cousin of a cousin of a king or something. distant family, but still got the good reputation.

now, the ONLY person in this family that isn't persian is barbad. he is mazaradani, actually (remember? the simple, rustic and goofy?). i learned about them in one of farya faraji videos while i was researching, and i thought it would be really fun to add them. this is one of the reasons why barbad always feels out of place -- he lived in the fields, was a farmer and never had a proper education. layla just suddenly fell in love with him and asked his hand in marriage. he accepted it because he thought it would be a good thing and now he can't stop thinking about how strange it feels. maybe he even regrets it...

ETHNIC SOUP

shariar's family, on the other hand, is an absolute mix of many other ethnicities. partially because i wanted to explore new designs, partially because there were too many people to use the same one (i feared the designs would look too similar because of my lack of references...).

his father, almadi, is uzbek. yes, remember i told you to remember that khorasan is close to uzbekistan? (at least a little). that's why. he came from there and most of his family is also from there. so, the uzbeks are: almadi, shariar, shenazan, jamshid (brother of almadi), and maryan (sister of almadi). but what about the other ones?

afaq (shariar's mother, which isn't mentioned in the game) is arab. she's from the persian gulf and she's black, so that's where most of shariar's traits came from. she met almadi in a trip, and since then, they fell in love. it's kind of a rushed love story, but i promise you they were very happy together. i like to believe that there are people who click that fast.

as for the others: shirin, shenazan's wife (which doesn't appear in the khastegari, but is mentioned) is turkmen. yesssssss she's from turkmenistan... the country is very close to khorasan too, so that's why. she also has a design, even if she doesn't appear in-game:

paniz, jamshid's wife, is farsi. she's very proud of it. she's very frustrated with her life, though. she thinks things could be so much better, but gave up trying to make them work.

golgun (maryan's husband) is pashtun! they mostly live in afghanistan and pakistan, but are an iranian ethnic group. golgun is from an ultra-conservative rural area of khorasan, and lived most of his life tending to animals. his design was based on a traditional clothing (i CANT FIND THE REFERENCE PICTURE ANYMORE T_T).

fun fact: he is gay. maryan threatened to tell everyone about it if he didn't accept marrying her. she is a lesbian herself, though. she did all of that just to have a marriage and kids. a match made in hell, surely.

YOU NAME IT

in the first demo of the game, when there were only four characters (sher, shariar, duna and mudhik), i didn't have much problem choosing names. three of them already existed in the original story -- sherazade, shariar and duniazade (shenazan too, even if he was only mentioned in that version) -- so i just had to reuse them. mudhik's name, in other hand, i picked up from an arabic word -- "funny" (yes. mudhik means "funny" in arab). and the other ones (abbasa and almadi) i picked from random names i found while researching (vaguely..) about history: abbasa is the name of a concubine. almadi is the name of a sultan.

but when i had to implement the khastegari, everything changed. there were 8 new characters AND the previous characters from sher's story. i wanted them to have legit iranian names, even referencing to iranian culture. i tried to pick them up from iranian's history, but it was mostly about the kings and i didn't like the names at all. then i turned to literature -- and that was where i found most of the new names.

SHAHNAMEH, THE BOOK OF KINGS

shahnameh is an iconic book in iranian history, written and completed by abolqasem ferdowsi. it's a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG book of epic poetry (more than 50,000 rhyming couplets) telling inumerous tales about iran's pre-islam mythology and history. it helped save the farsi language from extinction when the arabs invaded iran and implemented their own language and islam.

i didn't have time to read it (unfortunately...) but hey what could me more cool that a book like that??? so i read some resumes and picked names from it. the ones that i used:

- Jamshid (the son of the first king/man keyumars) was a proud and arrogant man that fell from grace, being overthrowed by zahhak. i thought it fit game's jamshid very well.)

- Iraj (son of fereydun, descendant of jamshid) was the first king of Iran specifically. it was given to him by his father, who determined that he was the most noble among his brothers. (he also appears in the avesta, the zoroastrian book) (in sher's story, he's not a separate character -- the iraj that rules over iran in that story is the same iraj from the book of kings.)

KHOSROW AND SHIRIN

khosrow and shirin is a love story from the "khamseh", a collection of five narrative poems written by nizami. it was based on a true story. THIS ONE i had the opportunity to read fully, and honestly, it is very beautiful. it is available on the internet archive and i recommend it a lot. now, for the names i have picked from it:

- Barbad (a bard from the story)

- Nikisa (another bard lmaooooo)

- Golgun (a very cool horse now you get the joke maryan makes...)

- Maryam (an evil and jealous princess. her son is really an asshole...)

- Shekar (a very smartass woman. it's not really a character in the game, but someone mispronounces sher's name as this. i thought it would be funny.)

- Shirin (the lady from the title. she is a very smart and proud woman, and i really liked her name. shirin from the game is also very smart and proud, and as much as she isn't very friendly, she isn't bad. she's just too ambitious...)

- Farhad (this guy is like the coolest and most romantic guy ever. he's a great sculptor and falls for shirin and lives for her and khosrow, with jealousy, destroys his life (he regrets it later, BUT I WAS SO MAD). i wanted farhad to have a reward for his dedication so badly. that's why he's the main protagonist of sher's story)

anyway. i really loved reading it, it has a feeling much different from any other type of poem i ever read, and it was delicious to taste. i wish it was easier to find iranian poetry. they have a way with words...

EXTRA NAMES

i got the "Paniz" name from a video i watched about iranians talking about stereotypes.if you're interested in watching it... (poor paniz girl has nothing to do with the game paniz lmaoo)

and Layla is from a story called "layla and manjun", from the same collection of poems of khosrow and shirin. it's another story about love, but this one is a tragic one. (i used to have a childhood character with that name, it was fun to discover it's from so far away...)

PHEW....

damn, this was a lot lmaooo i hope it was a nice read. thanks for your interest in this story and see you soon!