This week I took a break from the ship and instead worked on the cast. This is Lieutenant Yarosvet Breslav (Yarik to his friends), one of the main characters on the Bereg side of the plot.
Bereg is one of my two almost-warring countries. The other one is Halcia, which in many way resembles a standard fantasy kingdom (with a twist that it’s actually a republic). With Bereg, however, I wanted to do something different, so it’s drawn from a mix of historical Central/South/Eastern European cultures, primarily the Tsardom of Muscovy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with a bunch of fantasy elements thrown in for good measure.
That odd mixture is demonstrated by Yarik’s get up. He’s got Muscovy-style hat, a Muscovy-style coat (“kaftan”, though I shortened it quite a bit); pointy boots fairly common to both Muscovy and Poland, and a fur cloak which I still have no idea what to call, but which the Polish Winged Hussars apparently wore in winter. Or something like it, anyway. The saber is based on the type carried by the Muscovy guardsmen.
He also looks vaguely Wallachian as a result. I mean, check out the outfits of Vlad Dracula and his dad.
That effect was not intentional, but in the end I decided to keep it. I like the aesthetic, and if it does allude to Dracula a bit… well, a) there is a lot more to Wallachia than him, and, b) not all is perfectly well in the Realm of Bereg, either. Yarik would be the first to agree 🙂
