Fantasy cultures that aren't obviously based on a real life historical one with some names switched around?

Fantasy cultures that aren't obviously based on a real life historical one with some names switched around?

They all fuck sheep.

Wait.

The Uratha from Werewolf: the Forsaken were pretty good about it, although the books outright state their naming conventions are Babylonian. Their culture revolves around fighting a war they already lost, so there's a lot of threat and other aggression, even in daily communication.

Most fantasy cultures are based on existing cultures though, even the Dunmer. The difference is they were given a distinct look, and memorable traits that, while not necessarily unique, offered up a compelling race, even if they were filthy elves.

Obviously, any imaginary culture is going to resemble real world cultures in SOME way because at the end of the day they're going to have to grow SOME kind of crop, have SOME kind of architecture (and it turns out humanity has mostly covered what can be done with bronze age technology that's practical), SOME kind of language that's pronounceable to humans (and we've basically covered that range as well), practice SOME kind of religion that makes sense, etc.

But there's a difference between "well, their names sound sorta Babylonian" and "their country is called Gaulinia, their capital is Parin, their king is named Louis and they all drink wine, eat cheese and play the accordion".

Your best bet in that sense is to do a Greg Stolze and combine features of completely unrelated cultures from around the world. The challenge here is making it believable. I don't mean in the sense of Veeky Forums autists who will throw a tantrum if the guys with dark skin have Nordic sounding names, I mean more in the sense of like "a culture that lives on a mostly barren island and gets most of its food from the sea probably wouldn't also have a thriving cattle industry".

A fair point.

Still, the specific example of the Dunmer aren't really much further off from their real world equivalents, they are just mixed in an interesting way, and given their own set of stories that explain why they are the way they are.

I think it's entirely possible to make a "TOTALLY NOT JAPANESE" race for instance, if you build a believable scenario for the race to come out that way.

Why so pointlessly specific?

Actually the most common equivalent people draw from the Dunmer is Jews (they were led to Morrowind by a Moses-like figure, practice a religion principally different from everyone else, their cities are named in Hebrew, and they had a rivalry with the Mespotamian dwarfs), except that the Ashlands are pretty Mongolian-ish and the monotheism is replaced with ancestor worship. In a way, any similarity we do see there might well be us trying to force things to fit a pattern we recognize because we find it hard to accept a fantasy culture that ISN'T a historical counterpart anymore. Just look at people breaking their heads over whether the dwarves from LoTR are Nordic or Jewish (missing the fact that they're neither, they're INSPIRED by ELEMENTS of both).

The qunari from Dragon Age. Closest anyone came up with is "Islamic Confucianists" but given that this is literally a contradiction it shows how difficult they are to classify.

You may now begin a shitstorm about gender politics at your leisure.