Editing Renaissance (section)

==The Appeal of the Renaissance==
The Renaissance heralds the end of the Middle Ages. A lot of medieval mechanisms were still in place in various forms, but things were beginning to change. There were still knights in shining armor and they were still formidable battering rams, but they were facing competition from the new and lethal combination of pikemen and arquebusiers. Even as smiths and armorers learned to make bullet-resistant or bulletproof armor, knights found themselves on the way out. All the while there was a lot of shrewd political scheming and intrigues. Why mobilize a few thousand levies and a hundred knights to kill someone when a few drops of poison or a well-placed stiletto could accomplish the job much more cheaply and with far less fuss? The game of dynastic power was still being played, but with a rules update that favored a more subtle style.

At the same time, inventors and engineers were tinkering and contriving a wide variety of new machinery. If one was to ascribe a heroic ideal to the Renaissance it would be the Renaissance Man, an archetype reflected in the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, a brilliant engineer, scientist and artist all rolled into one. On the battlefield, the men of power were beginning to take notice of these new novelties and so active patronage of inventors was encouraged. At the same time, explorers and conquistadors carved their place in history by finding new lands, settling them and conquering the [[Bronze Age]] societies they encountered there. For those who want to see what da Vinci could’ve accomplished if the technology of his time had been equal to his imagination and he'd been a bit more of a mad scientist (i.e. if his tanks and other war machines were actually built), [[Clockpunk]] has you covered.

In general, if you like your medieval fantasy to have a dash of the modern in it, the Renaissance is where you look for ideas. Besides, the stuff associated with this period is frankly pretty. This period is often associated with its art more than anything else and it did provide plenty of classics. William Shakespeare operated at the tail end of the Renaissance, though since he was a big classics nerd many of his plays dealt with earlier time periods.