Siochain

**We do not require your character to wear Renaissance-specific clothing--just don't wear jeans and t-shirts and other such things, please. This section is for reference and interest only.**





Renaissance clothing in Western Europe was, in a word, ornate. Women tended to wear long, flowing gowns of brocade and linen with several under-dresses. These dresses were fitted to the waist and flared out down below. The waist of the dress was often quite high, as you will see in images if you click on the link above.

Hats and hoods were also common and grew more and more ornate over time. Typically, a linen cap, called a coif, was worn under these hats to absorb sweat and oil and keep the hat pristine. In warmer climates, women wore their hair in ribbons and braids, often pinned up.

Jewelry was common in this time period, and women wore rings, earrings, bracelets, and large broaches. They also commonly wore necklaces. While sumptuary laws prohibited the lower class from wearing many of these things, I'm not going to bore you with making everyone adhere to those.

For the curious, the sumptuary laws were laws that divided the nobility from the lower classes. Only nobility and royalty could wear certain fabrics, metals, jewels, or other items. If you are interested, you can read about Europe's sumptuary laws here.

Men's in this time period wore a linen shirt or chemise that gathered around the neck. This evolved into the neck ruff in later periods. In addition, they typically wore a doublet (often worn in landsknecht style with slashes to show under material). A jerkin (a sleeveless tunic) covered the doublet and the fabric fell to the knees. Beneath that, they wore hose, often ending above the knee, with a prominent codpiece (sometimes hidden under the jerkin).

Both sexes wore the same shoes during this time: flat, often slashed, and fastened with straps over the top of the foot. These shoes were made of soft leather, velvet or silk. For more rugged use, they had boots that came up to mid-calf, usually made of soft leather.

Linen, silk, brocade and fur were some of the most popular fabrics in this time.

In Siochain, we have food more resembling what the upper class ate. We aren't going to make you all live on a diet of bread and water, we promise.

In the Renaissance, the average person was, as we all know, a peasant. They didn't get great food. They typically ate soups and stews and gruel for almost every meal. They sometimes had black bread if they were lucky, but that was rare. Soups were typically made from scraps like carrots, eggs, cabbage, and so on. Gruels were made from grain such as wheat or oats and cooked in water.

Meat was, for peasants, expensive and rare. In this time period, salt was needed to preserve meat to survive long enough to be eaten, and salt was an expensive commodity in that time period. Peasants living around the coast ate fish with some regularity, and inland, peasants could fish for their dinners if they had an adequate water source.

The nobility, on the other hand, ate very well. They often ate soups and broths, but these soups were often spiced with exotic spices and sweetened with sugar. The rich also had access to meat, unlike most of the unwashed masses. Roasts were a popular dinner and often featured beef, stag, or pig. They also ate chickens and pheasants with regularity. These roasts were often boiled in a large vat and basted with juices and rose water to impart flavor.

At feasts (weddings, festivals and other occasions), the best food was set on the table. They ate large game birds like swans, peacocks and cranes. After cleaning and cooking, they often reattached feathers for decoration. There are many courses for a Renaissance feast, and they included soups, fruit, jellies, nuts, cheese, meat, pastries, bread, and sweetmeats.

As an aside, you may know this, but few people during this time period drank water. The water available to them was dirty and unsafe to drink. Most people drank wine or beer with meals.

Renaissance weaponry consists of a number of categories, including sword, cannon, firearms, crossbow, longbow, spear, halberd, shield, and so on. Most weapons that you’d think of as a medieval weapon are perfectly acceptable, though I recommend that, if your character has Eastern weaponry there be a good reason.

Firearms in this time period were limited to the matchlock and wheellock types. There were, however, not many wheellock firearms anywhere in Europe in this timeframe. In RP combat, unless we are in war, you are only likely to have a single shot per engagement, and they were quite inaccurate. In RP combat, you will be permitted to fire once per engagement unless you actually prep reloading the weapon, and that’s unlikely to happen in normal combat.

In the Renaissance, technology wasn't what we know today. Clocks existed, but they were large things driven by weights rather than intricate pocketwatches. The printing press, for example, would not exist for fifty years. There was technology driven by water or animals (like mills, for example), and there were some advancements to convenience made at the time, like a mill wheel that worked off a foot pedal rather than someone manually turning a crank.

As may be evident by the gates, Siochain is a magitech-friendly dream, however the technology portion of the magitech cannot be more advanced in flavor than typical technology available in the time frame. If your character comes from an area that is "more advanced" you either get to play a time traveler who has shown up naked with no technology (sorry!) or you have the option of leaving all technology that doesn't fit with the dream's theme and feel out of all roleplay in the bounds of the dream.