Eep… worldbuilding. What do the Wild Tribes wear?

Okay. So, for the Anthropologist sub-series of the Planners’verse…

The narrator. I picture her original clothing a combination of a British explorer – thus and Evie from the 1st Mummy movie – thus, or dollies.

Her look is something like this girl and this girl (here).

Okay. That’s the easy part. Librarians wear robes, see icon. They have textile production, at least small-scale.

This is 300+ years after the “Conflict,” which, as I can picture it, is a massive economic meltdown leading to total social collapse. Enclaves of “civilization” exist, along with tribes who have gone back to a nomadic lifestyle, who distrust the Tower(s), the villages, etc.

So. What do the Wild Tribes wear?

Also, why hasn’t more technology reasserted itself? *why* is so much of the country still wild?

But more importantly right now, what do the Wild Tribes wear?

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18 thoughts on “Eep… worldbuilding. What do the Wild Tribes wear?

  1. Easy one! What native flora and fauna do you envision? And I would say, 300 years is long enough for native distrust to keep people from trying something – if tech was involved in destroying civilization, lingering tech-antipathy-trauma is a lovely reason to use.

    • (hrrm, I thought I logged out. Well.) So, a NYS/NE gone back to wild. Deer. White deer. Normal deer. Hrmm, say the white deer took over, I like that. Wild dogs (mistyped that TWICE as “wild gods,” no, Lyn, that’s your OTHER apoc). Puma. Bobcats. Brown bears. Minkie things – fishers, weasles. Skunks, possums, squirrel (SQUIRREL!) …what was I saying?

      • Mammoths! Sorry. I hear ‘NE goes back to the wild’ and jump immediately ‘and someone cloned mammoths because they’ve very healthy for the ecosystem!’ I did a paper on it once, I can’t help it. So, in the NE. They’d wear a lot of leather, in that case, and assuming wild sheep and goats and cattle from various farms – wild horses? Leather is practical. We don’t have all that much in the way of great textiles, but porcupine quills are good for decorating and quartz jewelry is nice. Dyes – yellow, green, brown are easy. We don’t have much native for good reds or blues, but I think you can pull off black with stuff around here, maybe a purple or two. Rust red, maybe. Orange from overdying reddish with yellow or vice versa. Lots of good furs in that lot. (Beavers!) As for textiles, flax/linen can be grown here. Wool, especially felted. They’re migratory, so it’s probably a follow-the-herd thing, plus when the different fields come due to be harvested – drop by the valley with the flax during Xseason every year, etc.

        • Mammoths! *GRIN* Okay, so a combination of leather worked with dyes and quills, and short widths of natural-colored cloth. Felted hats. Felted vests. So here’s our captive anthropologist, in her battered straw hat, with a felted or leather vest over, and a necklace of curled coke-cans and melted plastic beads.

          • It’s a bit silly for this setting, but in a less serious post-apoc setting: Mimmoths! Given sufficient technology and genetic knowhow you know some uber-fan of Girl Genius is going to do it. Inevitable in much the same way that you know that the continued existence of Japan + sufficient genetic/cybernetic knowhow will result in the existence of catgirls.

            • *looks up* *giggles* You know, I’ve always been a bit irritated by catgirls. Mostly because I don’t think of myself as one.

  2. They would likely wear simplified versions of what they were wearing before whatever cataclysm occurred, made from local materials. You can look at the clothing of contemporary peoples living in environments similar to what you’re envisioning to get an idea of what kind of clothing is favoured.

  3. Why hasn’t technology been taken up.. easy.. it’s exceedingly difficult to reboot a technologically advanced civilisation. Lots of the early skills need to build the tools to build the other tools needed to mine the materials to make the machines have been lost… we’d need to reinvent so many intermediate steps. 300 years is long enough that remainder technology has run out mostly, and nowhere near long enough for people to have reinvented and rebuilt the industrial base. And that’s even assuming we can… there are lots of essential mineral supplies that can only be got at using modern technology… loose that and what with all the easy to reach stuff we started out with having been used already, we’d actually have a harder time of it. I’d hazard a guess that the wild tribes would wear whatever they could get… probably lots of leather made from pelts of prey animals, possibly dyed using natural plant dyes, maybe sewed together using bone needles and sinew. Basically, think native American. However, I’d also imagine that any remaining relics might be items of great ceremonial importance.. think of ancestor worship.

    • Ah, good point there. And a reminder why I posited a permanent and just ever so barely self-sufficient collection of settlements in space in one post-apoc setting I tinkered with. During the worst of the fall they turtled up and avoided near earth orbit as much as they could and after things settled down provided a surviving enclave of functioning modern technology including manufacturing capabilities since they were planning on building additional infrastructure. It helped as well that the fall was mostly a major economic collapse followed my a cluster or mostly regional conventional wars; with no one being quite mad enough to unleash any of the nastier biological weapons or launch an all out nuclear attack with any of the major arsenals. * * * And pulling off a comment higher above: I can picture someone either sacrificing a pair of blue jeans or grabbing a worn out pair and undoing the seams to get a template for making more. And people 200 years later in no longer ‘blue’ jeans still wondering what they heck the tiny pocket inset in the righthand pocket is supposed to be used for (best theory I’ve heard so far is holding a small amount of loose coins). And too the horror of corporate lawyers, probably a bunch of brand names become utterly generic. Levi’s as a name for pants made from a jeans template anyone? Or travelers generations later coming up with all sorts of folk-reasonings for why clothes for people who will be spending alot of time wandering around is called various variations on the word Bean? (from L.L. Bean). “Oh, sure, those boots are fine for around the farm. But if you’re going to me heading upcoast the bean boots are in the back.”

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