Submitters of my favorite three get a free PDF of NOD 8 and credit in the text.
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Image from Alcatena's blog.
Seriously, if there was one artist I could impress into lifelong service on illustrating the Land of Nod, it's him. Astounding creativity and attention to cultural quirks and details, all blended seamlessly into a unified style. Love it. I'll stop raving now.
The Durian fruit! Truly, the foulest fruit nature invented, with a smell, a taste, and a texture that has to be experienced to be believed. And yet, the majority of Asian people seem to love it.
ReplyDeleteFace. Very Weird.
ReplyDeleteHanging Cliff coffins as in china. Those are pretty interesting and surely worth working in somehow.
ReplyDeleteThe An Lushan Rebellion. Specifically, that 2/3rds of the empire's population died as result of it. That's a lot of people... especially at that time.
ReplyDeleteThat's also a lot of bodies. And a lot of hungry ghosts.
Also, cannibalism as a form of taking victual or as a severe punishment. I think I read it in Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty but I'm not entirely sure...
The number 4 is considered unlucky because it is pronounced the same way as death.
ReplyDeleteRed is the wedding color, not white (at least in China). White is the color of death.
Strong prevalence of mystical societies and peasants rebelling and almost overthrowing the established order (Yellow Turban, Red Eyebrows, White Lotus, Taiping, Ikko-Ikki).
Civil service tests to decide government bureaucrats based on literary classics, very different from the west in that time period.
Social hierarchy was based on Gentry Scholars at highest, then peasant farmers, then artisans/craftsmen, and then merchants at the bottom. Soldiers weren't even among them, nor were religious leaders.
Repeating crossbows used at time of the Roman Empire. Wouldn't that be cool to have in a dungeon?
An international system not built on balance of power, but tributary states arranged around the great power.
The Terracotta Army; over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. Each soldier had individual facial features and carries real weapons.
ReplyDeleteThere is no tooth fairy in China. When a Chinese child loses a baby tooth from the upper row, the child's parents plant the tooth in the ground, so the new tooth will grow in straight and healthy. Parents toss a lost bottom tooth up to the rooftops, so that it too will grow upwards.
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I am picturing a cross between the Tooth Fairy from the Hogfather miniseries and the scene in the Jason & The Argonauts or Clash of the Titans (I think) where skeletons sprout up from the ground and then do battle.