#almyra

[arabian-batboy]

Prince Khalid and his parents, King Rashed and Queen Tiana.

[zyphemblem]

so i was playing alois and shamir’s paralogue again last night and found something pretty interesting. if you bring claude, he has unique dialogue for it. for anyone who needs a refresher, the paralogue is basically there are pirates in derdrieu claiming to be the almyran navy. first of all claude recognizes the ships as looking almyran at the very beginning of the battle. if you have him fight the enemy commander, he calls them “two-bit miscreants” and gets mad at people like them for causing so hate against almyrans. then at the end when you’ve defeated the commander, claude says they didn’t even fight like almyrans.

so claude i hate to break it to you but you are not being subtle. like at all. also in lorenz’s paralogue if you have claude fight acheron it’s hilarious because he basically calls claude a nobody and claude just laughs at him for not knowing who he is. fun times. i love all the unique dialogue in the battles, it adds so much to the game.

[midday-headcanons]

FE3H Faction Fashion Aesthetics

Making a personal resource for myself and others to use. Hoping to make it easier for myself when designing ocs for the universe going forward. It's a lot more obvious in Three Hopes than in Three Houses, but the same thing applies.

Adrestian Empire

Exemplifying the supposed opulence of Adrestia, there are a lot of curves and flares in Adrestian armor and clothing. While the armor is built with a heavy emphasis on form, it does not sacrifice function. They favour the warmer colour spectrum, with some exception.

Tassles, fringe, balloon hems, and large capes are used en masse, creating a larger, tapered frame that can also be interpreted as imposing or meant to attract attention. Like the large plumage of a peacock or, well, an eagle.

They style themselves like birds, a regal distraction from their strength. (How appropriate.)

Holy Kingdom of Faerghus/Faeghus Dukedom

Layers, layers, Layers.

The clothing in Faeghus is entirely meant to keep you warm, and the armor is layered, sturdy, and functional. Even the mages and speed focused warriors wear layers to protect themselves from the elements, usually following the cooler colour spectrum.

Accessories and jewelry are typically simple - likely a nod to the poverty of the country itself and a focus on knightly culture - and most of the catching details come in the form of colour and the way the layers are implemented.

Also, very important, furs!! Like the manes of lions, nearly all of the noble characters hailing from Faerghus in Three Hopes wear some form of fur. (Sylvain is the only exception to this rule, as he wears a scarf instead.)

Leicester Alliance/Federation

Leicester has very little in the way of cohesive clothing design. That is, however, because there is a heavy emphasis on form and ease of movement.

The armor is typically light, if available at all, and is comfortably located primarily around the chest. Clothing is loose and airy, a physical representation of the city-state's very fluid nature.

As for the colours, they are vibrant and colour a wide range of the spectrum, not totally centered around one particular side - another nod to their unorthodox standard of living. Spots, eye-catching patterns, and long fluid lines -- that's the Golden Deer for you.

Duscur, Brigid, and Almyra

So, it took some digging, but I believe a lot of the basis for these three specific places is heavily borrowed from African, Celtic/Hawaiian, and Persian cultures respectively.

Using Dedue as the basis, Duscur style appears to be very much inspired by a mix of the ancient Nubians - particularly the Kushites - and the ancient Egyptians. Focusing mainly on the golden or potentially copper adornments and textiles he wears, I imagine their style was heavily focused on mixing patterns with a wide array of colour. (Dedue mixes that alongside Faerghus-style armor and layering, a very good example of character-driven character design.)

At first, I had assumed Brigid had more of a Hawaiian leaning due to a number of factors concerning Petra specifically, how the location is a tropical archipelago historically sought after for resources/colonization by foreign armies, and a lot of... other less than savoury historical tidbits. But, after some research, I discovered a lot of Celtic inspirations as well! Flowing clothing with form fitted areas only where necessary, tattoos around the arm and upper back, golden neck rings and bangles, and elaborate hair braiding styles are the name of the game on Brigid.

Almyra is, almost incredibly so, inspired by the ancient Persian (Achaemenid) Empire -- an empire known for its warriors and its lustre. So, you know what that means. Gold. Gold everywhere. But only elite warriors (or royalty, in the case of Shahid and Claude) use gold in their armor, so for a lower soldier, iron and bronze work best. Natural colors like yellow, orange, and green are commonly used for their loose and flowy clothing, normally accented by deep browns, black, and white linens. Like the Duscur people, they too use complex patterns and dyes. Boots and shoes are sometimes curved at the tips, but greaves are not. Head accessories range from headwraps to turbans to tiaras and diadems.

[slotumn]

My headcanon on how Almyra sees Fódlan is that Fódlan is basically a training dummy: you keep it at the training ground (over the mountain to the west) to hone your skills on, but you don't bring it into the house (Almyra) with you as furniture (official province).

I don't think it was always that way, for example the big invasion in 961 was likely to be a serious attempt at conquering judging by the fact it traumatized Fódlanis into establishing the Officer's Academy specifically so elites of the three countries could learn to cooperate were something like that to happen again.

But in the aftermath of that, I think the Almyran calculus also changed to something like:

okay so the primitive savages with weird bone weapons got hands

the effort it takes to conquer and incorporate them into governance probably not worth whatever we can get out of them in exchange

but a bunch of guys who reliably fight back hard when you attack them is good for training soldiers

The governance part in 2 is important because a military victory is not all there is to things. The story doesn't end at "we successfully conquered these places," you actually need to govern them, and that's a lot harder. And for whatever reason Almyra decided that even if Fódlan could be militarily conquered, trying to govern them was probably not worth it.

I don't think it makes sense for different language/religion/ethnicity to have been the main factor in that conclusion either, even if prejudices around that exists. First because western Almyra and eastern Fódlan canonically share languages, second because the West~Central Asian empires Almyra clearly takes motif from were multilingual/multiethnic by default.

Biggest reason imo is the closed political system of Fódlan revolving around something that's neither comprehensible or respectable to those outside of it. The ways Fódlanis define power and the things they do for it probably looks completely insane to Almyrans, not because Almyrans don't have power struggles or political intrigue but because Fódlan's shit operates on multiple layers of convoluted hidden lore/context about Nemesis/Nabatean genocide/Agarthan infiltration and manipulation/etc that make no goddamn sense to outsiders (or themselves, for that matter).

If you're Almyran and you hear reports about Fódlani politics without knowing the deep lore you'd think they were just insane. Incorporating new territories into governance usually requires incorporating the pre-existing political elite but how the fuck do you incorporate political classes with Crest-status/Crest-Relic-honor psychosis into a system that doesn't revolve around Crests/Relics or at least something adjacent to Crests/Relics (ex: Church of Seiros as dominant religion and soft power).

Leicester isn't as bound to those bc they're more mercantile and decentralized, but even if Almyra only took over Leicester there's the issue of now bordering Faerghus/Adrestia/Garreg Mach trio of excessively high context political insanity. Even if Leicester eventually became okay with being an Almyran province, the bordering countries wouldn't be, and they'd make it a problem that would likely force disproportionate amount of Almyran attention and resources towards the western border.

Why do that when you can just keep Leicester as a buffer/training dummy state that you can simultaneously trade and do skirmishes against. Don't fix what's not broken. Let new soldiers beat up Gonerilites at Fódlan's Throat, let merchants trade with Rieganites at Derdriu's port, and let Leicester take care of whatever convoluted Crest/Relic politics they haven't fully detached from. Fódlani dragon genocide politics aren't Almyra's problem and it's pretty rational for them to want to keep it that way. (Shahid is like that because he's stupid)

Tl;dr what you miss from Fódlan's perspective being the only perspective in canon is that to everyone else Fódlan would be ungovernable and not in a good way (and to be fair Fódlan is barely governable to the Fódlanis)

[manic-pixie-dream-sheep]

If we take the FE3H countries cultures literally and roughly translate them to our world, Claude is essentially a Persian prince being sent to Britain. No wonder he immediately leaves once the war is over. Completely understandable reaction

[ask-the-abyss-keeper]

Y’know… it’s one thing that Verdant Wind ends the way it does with Claude and Byleth’s S support… but what we really got robbed of was Jeralt getting to meet Nadar and having some kind of drunken tough-guy contest at the wedding reception! They’d have broken furniture over each other’s backs, landed a few good punches, and then had some beers afterward. And that would have been their single support conversation that goes from nothing to A support like that. Kronya took that away from us…

Also imagine if Claude did have a retainer and it was friggin’ Nadar! Picture this full-grown Almyran man with his beard and his battle-scars, squeezed into an academy uniform, having tea parties with Byleth and supports with the other students. Lorenz would blow a gasket. Claude would have even more difficulty keeping his dual heritage under wraps. But it would all work out because Nadar would simply head-butt anyone who starts asking the wrong kinds of questions around the future leader of the Alliance. Most of his supports would end with Nadar giving the other character a concussion.

[wanderingmind867]

If Fire Emblem Three Houses is indeed getting a spin-off in Fortune's Weave, my hope is actually not for a prequel. At least…not a prequel in the same place as Three Houses. I don't know exactly why. Some of it is because I don't want a prequel that just leaves us on a tragic, somber note. And any prequel would undoubtedly do that. Fodlan is not the happiest land by the time of Three Houses. There's prejudice and massacres and secret ancient civilizations plotting in the shadows and so much more. I don't want a prequel, in as much as I want something like a spin-off or a sequel or something.

My fingers are currently sore as I write this from inside the college. I'm waiting for my second class to begin, but I have like forty minutes before it does. So maybe I can use this time to describe what I want from continuing stories in the world of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. As a disclaimer though, let me just remind people that I've never played There Hopes and I never want to play Three Hopes. My knowledge of Fodlan comes solely from playing Three Houses.

I've already tried to explain why I'd want a sequel to Crimson Flower before, and I don't feel like rehashing all that. But I can explain why I want spin-offs instead of prequels (or at least prequels that double as spin-offs or something). Adrestia, Faerghus and Leicester are all interesting countries. But we've already seen a lot of the sights there. We know Enbarr, Fhirdiad, Arianrhod, Derdriu, etc. We know all the signs in Fodlan. Even seeing them in the past wouldn't be nearly as interesting as fleshing out the other regions on the continent, in my opinion.

Besides the three countries we saw in Three Houses, there's a great many other lands to explore. There's Almyra, where Claude and Cyril and Nader are all from. There's Petra's home, the island nation of Brigid. There's Shamir's home, the far off other continent of Dagda. There's also the far off continent of Albinea, apparently a frigid land where not much grows. There's Sreng, although I don't remember a lot about them. Hell, there's even Agartha! The underground, hidden country of Agartha, which we only ever see in one chapter on some routes of the game.

Of all these continents, I think Almyra is the one most likely to get a spin-off. Almyra already has a decent amount of characters in Three Houses, so it wouldn't be hard to build onto it and create a new game set there. But personally? I think Dagda or Albinea would be interesting. I would love a Fire Emblem game set in a mostly icy terrain, and I think albinea could really deliver on that. I think Dagda also has potential, if only because we know so little about it. I want a game fleshing out the world of three houses, but I don't want to completely retell the same story we told before.

I think setting a new game in Almyra or Dagda or Albinea would be the right way to go. If we want to stay in the world of Three Houses, then let's worldbuild. Let's see the landscapes and political situations of these different continents. Are there different mythologies and gods in different lands? Could we get a game set in a foreign continent that runs concurrently with Three Houses? That would be pretty interesting. There's lots of potential here. That's really all I'm saying. There's lots of potential storylines here, and I'd love to see these things explored.

So yeah, I'm hoping Fortune's Weave or whatever the name is chooses to explore more than just Adrestia, Faerghus and Leicester. I'm all for staying in the world, and I'm even fine with a prequel. But I'd love it if we got more focus on Almyra or Dagda or Albinea or something. That's just what I'd most like to see from a new game in the same world.

[denpring]

Almyra worldbuilding, with ideas by @slotumn and art by yours truly!

...And I drew some hats purely for my own amusement(?)