What is the prototype of the real civilization of the barbarian race in Diablo? The answer to this question is not explicitly stated by Blizzard, but the vast majority of fans, including diablo.wikia.com, believe that it is the ancient Germanic people, but after much research, I found that this is not the case. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

First of all, it is undeniable that the Barbarian setting does have some elements of the ancient Germanic people. Each of the cultural systems designed by Blizzard is actually the product of a fusion of multiple real-world civilizations, such as the warrior monk, which is a strange mixture of Indian, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Slavic cultures. For the barbarians, the most typical embodiment of Germanic culture is the second-generation ultimate skill: "Berserker", sacrificing defense in exchange for superior attack power.

However, beyond that, there is no more trace of typical Germanic culture in the barbarians, but there is a strong Celtic style in all aspects:

1. When we enter the class selection interface of the second-generation game, the barbarian standing in the middle is the most eye-catching, and when we click on him, we will find that his face is smeared with blue patterns. This is a typical Celtic cultural trait: before the start of the war, the "war paint" is painted on the body with blue paint to wish victory, boost morale, and intimidate the enemy. This behavior is documented in Caesar's "Gallic Wars", and Mel Gibson's film "Braveheart" is directly visualized: the Scottish warrior with his bare arms covered in blue war paints impresses the audience. Blue war paints are unique to the Celts, and similar American Indians also painted war paints on their bodies, but the colors were mostly black and red, and the patterns were relatively simple. The Germanic peoples, on the other hand, had no such habit at all, and would tattoo their totems on their bodies, rather than paint them before the war.

2. If you carefully study the background setting of the Dark series, you will find that the belief model of the barbarian race is a typical ancestor worship, which is in line with the current interpretation of the "traditional culture" of the Celtic nation in the current Celtic cultural revival. As we all know, after a series of events such as the defeat of Rome, the rise of Germanic peoples, and the introduction of Christianity, the traditional Celtic culture withered seriously, and it was not until modern times that it began to be "revived", and this process of "being revived" has a very deep romantic idealization, which is very different from the actual situation in ancient times, and there are many "invented traditions" in Scotland and Ireland, among which the ancestor worship of the gods is a very important one. In fact, the ancient Celts had myths, but the modern revival of the Celtic tradition no longer emphasizes this, but worships the mountains and rivers of nature and the ancestors of the nation like the barbarians of the Dark series, and dilutes the specific gods into various natural spirits. The Germanic religious content that preceded Christianity, the familiar Norse mythology, no longer appears in the culture of the Dark Barbarians, except for the skill "Berserker".

3. The official background information of the Dark points out that the Barbarians and the Druids are of the same origin, and although they later split, the Druids are also a side branch of the Barbarians. This premise can almost be said to be a direct reference to Caesar's description of the Celts in the Gallic Wars: "The Gauls had only two classes: warriors and druids".

4. If you are familiar with the ancient architecture of Europe, you will find that the architectural style of the fortress of Harogas, the carvings and ornaments are all Celtic, not Germanic.

5. From the perspective of dark gold equipment, the dark gold version of the "Luo Jiabo Axe" with a typical Celtic style is added to the Barbarian skill, while the dark gold of the Germanic style "Gothic Sword" and "Goth Bow" are all added with paladin-related attributes. It shows that the dark production team defined the Germanic culture more in the period after the civilization and Christianization of the Middle Ages, and placed the barbarian territory in the north, not alluding to the Germanic region north of Rome or Northern Europe in the Roman era, but alluding to the northern part of Celtic Scotland in Germanic England.

6. In terms of clothing, the Barbarians of the second generation did not wear the typical Viking double-horned helmet in the stereotype, but instead used a wing-shaped helmet that was not often used by Germanic peoples, which is commonly known as the "airplane head" by players. This kind of "plane head" was more often used by the Celts, and it is said that Caesar drove the flag victoriously, and when he escorted the king of Gaul to parade through the streets of Rome after the triumph, he made the king wear his original battle helmet bare-buttocks, which is this system.

7. The second generation of the manual states that the barbarian ancestor Bourkeso was the first to discover the secret of metal and forge a powerful steel sword. In real history, for a long time, the steel smelting technology of the Celts was far ahead of other European peoples, and the early Rome suffered a lot of losses in the wars with Gaul because of this problem, not to mention that the Germanic people of the same period still used bronze weapons and even wooden clubs to fight.

To sum up, I think that when Blizzard designed the Barbarians, it was more based on the real-life Celts, and a considerable part of it came from the "revived" Celtic tradition in recent times. And then on top of that, it incorporated some Nordic Germanic things, such as the "berserker" attribute and the freezing environment. In fact, the Celtic-style Dark Druid has also been added with some Germanic elements, such as the transformation of the ability to transform into a wolf and a bear, which is more similar to the content of the ancient Germanic berserker legend: the enraged berserker will use the power of the wolf and the bear to tear the enemy to pieces with his bare hands. The druids in the traditional Celtic culture are more about the ability to talk to animals and plants, and even though the modern revival of the new Druid belief that the druids can be shaped, there is no emphasis on the changes of wolves and bears. Therefore, in my story, the depiction of the barbarians will be modeled after the Celts, and some details based on the real Celtic people will be added to the brain, such as bagpipes played at festivals, and some sensational dramas will also appear in ethereal female voice barbarian songs.