The information below is intended to be used to get a feel for the atmosphere of the nation and provide inspiration about what kinds of clothes, weapons and armour are common. Costume is aspirational, and attendees are not expected to have perfect kit from the start – instead we encourage everyone to put effort into improving their kit over time, starting with basics and adding to it bit by bit, and not criticise others costume. Advice should only be given when asked for.

The “Key Costume” for each nation is intended to be elements of national dress that help to identify the difference between nations, with pieces of clothing or themes which highlight that difference. A basic LARP shirt or tunic and trousers or skirt is all that is needed as base layers for every nation, plus some element of the Key Costume for the nation chosen as where that character is from. Everything else is a bonus – but it improves the look of the whole setting when everyone buys in to the world being played out and endeavour to look on brief for their own nation.

More information on the minimum costume standards and items which should be avoided in all nations is available here.

Nation Overview

Once a mining and exploration colony of Kairos, cut off and forced to adapt, Syradonia has forged their own path using metallurgy and magic, standing tall in their underground stronghold.

Syradonia is a nation of thrift and austere practicality, where skills are valued and the people have pulled together for survival. This is reflected in their clothing, where Syradonians incorporate armour into their everyday dress, ready for anything that is thrown at them underground.

Fantasy Paladins and Clerics are the largest inspiration source here, with their over-dramatic pauldrons, gorgets and arm armour, and belt pennants and tabards to show allegiance.
Roguish types also have a place, in the crack teams that hunt in the tunnels under Syradonia, removing threats before they can get to the general population in blackened armour and dark clothing.
Others wear monstrous armour that projects a terrible figure to those who would stand against them.

Metallurgy and geology are Syradonia’s main resources, so metallic trims and accents are common on clothing. Makeup is also widely worn – most commonly dark smudges around the eyes and cheekbones, with contrasting metallic paints.

Clothing is simply when they spend so much time in the darkness, incorporating the light from a glowstone, or paint made from glowmoss into an outfit can make all the difference. 

Colour Palette

Deep, dark colours, metallics and gems, practicality and sturdiness.

Heavy cottons, linens, wools, canvas and rough silks, metallic and beaded fabrics.

Themes And Key Words

“Make do and mend”, “Fixing things with gold”, “religious collective enclave”, government-provided luxury, propaganda.

The Syradonians are a people who have made do with limited resources, with fabric a precious resource that must be imported in from the outside. As a result, much of their clothing is provided by the State, and anything outside that treated with respect – clothing is mended repeatedly, stitched over to show the care given to extend the life of treasured garments. Often this visible mending is done with gold, silver or other metallic thread, resources which are far more abundant than the simple fabrics they fix.

Geodes, mineral veins and other geological motifs are common, painted or embroidered onto tabards to mark the identity of an individual Domus, or domestic group. Lanterns, glow stones and glow moss – a species of phosphorescent fungus which is native to Syradonia – are also commonly used in these designs. These sources of light are also commonly carried daily – partly as a practical element of their lives underground, partly as a symbol of the Syradonian people bringing light into dark places.

Armour is part if daily wear for all levels of Syradonian culture. Their subterranean home is not always safe; Hewers delve deeply, carving out minerals from the outlying shafts and occasionally dealing with incursions of bands of intruders. While Apostles are their main line of defence against real danger, even non-combatants wear some degree of armour day-to-day as protection from debris falling from above; gambesons as outerwear, pauldrons and gorgets – although some are purely decorative, worn more for the beauty of the thing than for real protection.

Fantasy Inspiration

Clerics and Paladin designs from tabletop roleplaying games, and the videogames and other media that have been inspired by them.
“Dark” and “shadowy” aesthetics of these are of particular inspiration, as are dutiful oathsworn organisations within fantasy settings who protect the realm at the expense of the individual.

The focus on utility, uniformity and collective “make do and mend” mentality of underground vault-dwelling communities in fiction.
A level of uniformity in base layers to display the element of the Syradonian government providing for basic needs, including clothing.

Historical Inspiration

Some 20th Century workwear elements – particularly wartime European and Soviet aesthetics such as headscarves to protect the head while working, muted colour schemes for base layers and simplicity of cut.

Medieval clothing used as personal protection equipment – helmets, arm and shoulder armour, gambesons and historical head coverings that can be used for practical purposed that would today be covered by hard hats, jumpsuits and steel toe-capped boots!

Vintage workwear-style jumpsuits may be a valid base layer for this nation, if made of cotton or other natural materials, and without zips or velcro for fastenings.

The shapes and level of decoration on religious vestments are also a great addition to this nation’s style, but please be aware of avoiding any iconography associated with real-world religions.

Headwear In Syradonia

Syradonians are used to working and living in an underground environment where it can be difficult to keep the hair and head clean, so headscarves and bandanas and other head coverings are widely worn to keep things fresh until they can visit the extensive hot spring bathhouses.

More historical options like wimples, coifs and fabric caps are also worn, as are the padded layers that might be worn inside a helmet to make it more comfortable.

Key Costume Items for Syradonia

Key Costume Items are elements of the Look and Feel of each nation that are a cultural part of what makes up that nation, informed by their history and societal norms. Ideally, an outfit for any nation should aim to incorporate at least one of the Key Costume Items to ensure that characters are recognisably from their nation at a distance!

Key Costume Item – Casual Armour

Paulrons, metal epaulettes, full arm armour and more decorative styles as form and function: protection against falling stalactites but also displaying personal traits, taste and occupation.

In the underground environment this is also a kind of beautiful functional jewellery. Incorporating armoured sections into gowns give an air of military uniform, while not detracting from the beauty of the clothing beneath.

Lightweight versions could be made of more obviously jewellery-like items, such as scale mail, butcher’s mail, foam and latex and rubber/aluminium combination chainmail.

Key Costume Item – Minerals

Minerals are all around Syradonia, and have become incorporated into the aesthetic culture, through recurring motifs of geodes and metal and mineral seams, as well as kintsugi-style visible repairs on textiles that rip or wear out. These can be achieved through visible mending with embroidery thread, metallic thread and the like, or by painting over repears with metallic or jewel-tone fabric paints.

Metallic makeup and dark makeup, usually around the eyes are also a common element derived from this. Historically made of soot and ground-up gems, these were worn under helmets to hide the human eyes of the wearer and to create a monstrous look. Now normalised beyond the battlefield and commonly worn by Syradonians of all social classes.

Key Costume Item – Mending With Gold

Personal belongings are precious to the Syradonian people, especially fabrics and other materials that are hard to come by in their underground sanctuary. For this reason items that tear, break or wear out have their lives extended by repairing them with materials that are much more abundant – metallic paints, threads and glues that beautify the mended area and show that it has been repaired with care.

This can be achieved by doing false repairs on items with paints in gold, silver, bronze and other metallic colours, stitching over holes and tears with metallic thread or giving the impression of such repairs with machine-stitching or embroidery.

Armour For Syradonia

Syradonian armour is more metallic in nature than other nations, focusing on the materials available to them underground. The cut is fantasy paladin in flavour, with a lot of variety when it comes to style.

Light and Medium Armour

• Leather is rare, especially in large pieces – leather armour tends to be made up of small pieces like scale and lamellar.
• Cloth armour like gambesons are regularly worn as a warm outer layer as well as armour.

Heavy Armour

• Chainmail is very common.
• Plate mail of all kinds, especially blackened plate.
• Pauldrons and arm armour in particular can be very elaborate and over-dramatic.
• Scale mail.

Helmets

• Kettle helms are worn widely, and supplied by the Orders when citizens work in the tunnels around their sanctuary. Many miners and warriors place glowstones and candles¹ onto their helmets as a simple way of lighting their way and keeping their hands free.
• Fantastical helmets are worn by some Apostles to give the impression of being mysterious and ferocious monsters to their foes.

Weapons In Syradonia

• Warhammers and warpicks – many of the best warriors in Syradonia are practiced with tools so find these weapons easy in their hand.
• Mining implemented and tools as weapons – pickaxes and mauls.
• Shields – tower shields are ideal, other larger shields may also work.
• One handed weapons used more than long weapons – when they are used they are usually blunt damage inducing such as warhammers and warpicks rather than zweihanders and greataxes, due to being used mostly in cramped spaces.
• Short swords and one-handed axes are also used.

Archetypes In Syradonia

Archetypes are particular types of character in each nation, which offer a framework of the default types of mage, priest, warrior, artisan etc within that culture, and a way to think about designing a character who fits into the nation as a starting point, in order to encourage a cohesive nation that can make choices about individuality from that point.

These are by no means exhaustive, but the examples below depict some flavours of common character types and the costume elements that are often worn by them.

Ferrum

The Ferrum are the people who make the city work. producing endless trade goods from the earth, fixing everything, producing in-house luxuries and aiming to join the ranks of the Venerati for doing something revolutionary.

These artisans, tinkerers, craftspeople and makers of all things are held in high esteem by their people, and so take a pride in wearing their occupation on their sleeve. Additional wearable protection such as aprons and gauntlet-gloves might be worn, and are some of the few places larger pieces of leather – a difficult to come by resource – are found underground.

Tyrians

Tyrians are the traders who travel outside Syradonia, collecting trade goods that are not native to their underground nation but which are in demand. They navigate a combination of political and trade negotiations as members of the order of luxury, and alongside the Apostles who travel and protect them – Syradonia’s face to the world.

Tyrians are likely to be more elaborately dressed than most Syradonians, as the majority of their life is centred around procuring luxuries:

• Indian kurta shirts, and sherwani jackets are excellent base layers for Tyrians as they can often be found with decorative beading and sequins, and lots of metallic decoration.
• Jewellery can be used to advertise on the surface that the wearer is a trader – especially jewellery made from fine Syradonian materials by the excellent craftspeople of their nation.

Hewers

Hewers are the defence in the dark. They are miners, they are scouts, they are cartographers and they are explorers – though explorers of their home rather than mapping the wider world. They operate in small groups and call in Apostles when needed but are ruthless in their work against any interlopers of their home.

Hewers are more likely to wear dark clothing and dark or blackened armour to avoid giving position away. This is so they can literally “go dark”, extinguish all light and take advantage of their knowledge of the tunnels.

They are also known for their candle and glowstone-encrusted helmets, used for more mundane work in the tunnels, mining ore and keeping Syradonia supplied with resources taken from the seams around the city.

How To Put Together a Syradonia Outfit

• A plain tunic or kurta or longer dress, perhaps decorated with beads and sequins if preferred.
• Slim trousers or skirts in a plain colour underneath.
• Gambeson or arming jack, which can be worn as an item of clothing as well as armour.
• Pauldrons, either attached to other clothing or to a gorget, possibly with matching arm armour and gauntlets.
• A tabard or skirt pennant, to display allegiance to the wearer’s Order and Domus.
• Head coverings such as arming caps, headscarfs, wimples and bandanas.
• Helmets and circlets worn as much for protection from the environment as for battle armour.

1. Battery operated candles and phys-reps for glowstones can be securely attached to a band around the helmet in most cases, rather than the helmet itself if made of materials that makes adhering such props difficult. Actual candles and open flames should be avoided. ↩︎