It actually makes me think more of Pandora from Borderlands than any real life place.
Creative Director
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None. The primary inspiration for Numeria was the writing of Robert E. Howard, particularly the Conan stories, and then sprinkled with a liberal dose of science fiction (itself inspired by a wide range of fantasy/sci-fi mixes, ranging from a few key Saturday Morning cartoons, D&D adventures like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Temple of the Frog, video games like Might & Magic, and movies like Krull).
So, Numeria has a VERY strong literary inspiration source, but nothing from real-world culture, really.
^I had been going to guess some kind of really depraved nerd fraternity like the one depicted in Real Genius (although that movie actually makes it look like the whole university), but turned up to 11.
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Pretty sure Real Genius was inspired by Cal Tech. But with some better looking students.
Was Borderlands an inspiration at all? The Scrapwall and the smilers seem like something right out of it.
In running an Iron Gods campaign set in Numeria, I got the impression of several post-apocalyptic moves such as Mad Max, The Postman, and Damnation Alley, ones where barbaric descendents of the survivors pick through the remains of civilization. In those movies, the image of the barbarians is how civilized people view barbarians, not based on any actual culture of tribal people. Nevertheless, the barbarian tribes in Numeria are Kellids, so we could give them the same culture as the Kellid barbarians in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, which I view as a mixture of the horsemen of the Russian Steppes combined with some caveman imagery.
I have read more post-apocalyptic books, such as The Postman, Earth Abides, Alas Babylon, and A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World than watched post-apocalyptic movies. In those books the primary characters think of themselves as holding onto civilization. The main difference with Numeria is that the technology comes from elsewhere.
And as with any Golarion setting, the players put their own twist on it. They came from Torch, where a remnant of alien technology is used to make new tools. The players embraced the philosophy of making things and studying the alien technolgy to make more things. They became more like the science fiction stories of colonists on a new planet starting with a minimum of tools and building a viable settlement, such as Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky. I had to dig into Ultimate Campaign to handle the businesses they created in Torch.
Two party members, the fighter Kheld and the bloodrager Val, where Kellids. Kheld's backstory is that his family fled the Worldwound in Sakoris. Val's backstory is that she was a survivor of the Mountain Crow tribe wiped out by the Technic League, raised by a Technic League wizard who rescued her and hid from the Technic League. Thus, both were survivors rather than raised in Kellid culture. The strix Kirii, in contrast, was seeped in strix culture: the player purchased Nightglass by Liane Merciel to study the culture.
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While different Kellid nationalities are differentiated to different degrees, I would look at underlying culture as drawing on ancient barely "civilized" residents of Eurasian steppe, possibly "proto-Indo-European". Stuff like mound graves (kurgans) is archeologically associated with these cultures, which beyond proto-Indo-European can include later Cimmerian/Scythian/Sarmatian (with Greek sources sometimes assuming relation to Celts or Thracians). Mammoth Lords can be seen to exemplify earliest phase of this, and Numeria a later phase with trade kingdoms led by warlords where metalworkers' power is mystical. I would probably place natives of Old Sarkoris and Mendev as closest to Numeria, but other wings of Kellids included Nidalese, Druma (whose campaign setting Profit and Prophecy holds most info on broader Kellid history in Avistan), and a broad presence in all of Central and North Eastern Avistan that may have been assimilated/influenced modern nationalities. (Just from naming conventions used, you could even guess a new ethnogenesis (pseudo/"not" Slavic) is occuring in NE Avistan, fusing Kellid, Ulfen and to some extent Taldane, which is vague parallel of real Slavic nationalities)
I believe that the real world element that created the 'half-naked barbarian' sterotype were priamrily Roman gladiator fights; some types of gladiators wore little to no armor, which was unrealistic in a real war, but could have created the image of a barbarian in a Roman mind. Romans left some art depicting gladiators, and so the image was passed down to later generations.
There's also the thing that once the Europeans started exploring the world, a lot of the 'primitive' cultues they discovered lived in a hot climate, and thus wore little in the terms of clothing.
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Something I keep forgetting to ask: am I correct in thinking there's no real government in Numeria? I know it has a king but he's a drug addict and doesn't seem to really care about his duties as king.
I believe that the real world element that created the 'half-naked barbarian' stereotype were primarily Roman gladiator fights; some types of gladiators wore little to no armor, which was unrealistic in a real war, but could have created the image of a barbarian in a Roman mind. Romans left some art depicting gladiators, and so the image was passed down to later generations.
There's also the thing that once the Europeans started exploring the world, a lot of the 'primitive' cultures they discovered lived in a hot climate, and thus wore little in the terms of clothing.
The Romans also had a certain amount of fear for the Caledonians/Picts (and also the Gaels/Celts). Some warriors from these cultures would wear little or no armor. And in some cases little or no clothing; this may have primarily been a way to show bravery or confidence, but there may have been a secondary benefit: wounds from edged/pointed weapons to bare flesh would not contain bits of clothing and would be less likely to become infected.
{. . .}
This is Bob Howard country.
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You Know The One - he mistook Jazz Music for the Music of the Sphere (and thus, Madness).
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Well, some jazz music IS Music of the Sphere . . . .
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Something I keep forgetting to ask: am I correct in thinking there's no real government in Numeria? I know it has a king but he's a drug addict and doesn't seem to really care about his duties as king.
Depends on when in the timeline you are.
Before the Iron Gods AP (in 4716 AR), The Technic League are ruling Numeria much like many drug cartels rule some parts of Mexico, but without a lot of concern for which chieftain claims to be in charge as long as they do what the League says when necessary, and were keeping the king drugged up to keep him out of the way.
After that AP, per the Lost Omens World Guide, the power of the Technic League is broken, and a number of those local chieftains have become full-on warlords unwilling to bow to their theoretical king...of course, said king is in the process of shaking free of his addictions, and is a 15th level Barbarian who conquered the region successfully in the first place, so we'll see how that goes for them, but in the meantime there's no real centralized authority.
Also is Kevoth-Kul based on Conan himself? He is a barbarian after all.
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His name suggests more Kull the Conqueror