User blog comment:Gundam Legilis/NYCC Tomorrow/@comment-3257939-20151008042754/@comment-4010415-20151008054604

And really, it shouldn't be too hard for them to come up with the kingdoms' cultures. All they have to do is look at their placements on Monty's colored climate map and study up on how cultures tend to form.

Generally, the way the deepest, oldest parts of cultures form has a ton to do with the geography and climate.

Example 1: Japan. They're an island nation. They have very limited space for farming and ranching. As such, they chose foods that take up the least amount of land as their staple foods. Rice requires less land to grow than potatoes. Fish take up zero land, as they can just collect them from the sea. You can raise chickens on a roof if you want.

Example 2: Pretty much... every culture that originates from a hot region and enjoys super spicy food. Hot regions are exactly why certain cultures have a lot of very spicy food in their diet. Certain proteins in a lot of spicy plants absolutely massacre bacteria. Bacteria tends to grow faster in hot places, so it was really hard to keep food edible before the invention of the refrigerator. They put spicy ingredients in, to protect themselves from disease.

So, they could easily come up with something like...

Atlas:


 * Climate: Snowy


 * Architecture: White, to stand out less from the snow. A lot of the main city consists of clusters of buildings with covered, closed, or semi-enclosed walkways so people can minimize the amount of exposure they have to the freezing temperatures.


 * Food: Hot foods, hot drinks, a habit of using certain ingredients to help keep food, and sometimes drinks, from freezing as easily.


 * Other: Big focus on robots because robots can't get frost bite. A lot of white clothing (see: Weiss, Ironwood, Winter) because, again, they want to stand out less in the snow. Some of the most common jobs revolve around robotics and possibly Dust.


 * Natural barriers: Nestled against a mountain range. The exposed end of the main city has walls with robots stationed at entrances.

Vale:


 * Climate: Temperate


 * Architecture: Well, we've seen it. We could probably go with Vale having a bit more varied culture.


 * Food: A wide variety of foods, due to plenty of temperate land with fertile soil. The biggest problem is making sure the farms are safe from Grimm.


 * Other: Eh...


 * Natural barriers: We've seen in the show and from the map of the main city that it's backed up against a cliff on the coast. Forever Fall may even be raised up on a cliff, forming a barrier on the side.

Vacuo:


 * Climate: Desert


 * Architecture: A lot of emphasis on being able to handle the hot days and cold nights. During the day, they want to encourage air flow through buildings. At the same time, they want a way to seal out dirt, especially during sand storms. At night, they want to keep the cold out.


 * Food: Lots of spicy food, but also lots of food that has a focus on water content.


 * Other: There's an oasis right in the middle of the main city, with food being grown around it. Many ancient civilizations began on the banks of rivers and around lakes and ponds, so that people had instant access to water for drinking and farming. If Vacuo's main city began in a desert, it makes sense that they would use an oasis as its base.


 * Natural barriers: I dunno, a rocky cliff of some sort? Something separating that desert area from the greener area seen right next to it on the colored map. In real life, there are places where a mountain range or other such geographical formation causes rain clouds to mainly only drop rain on one side, as they can't go over it to the other side.

Mistral:


 * Climate: Tropical?


 * Architecture: Some focus on precautions for if the city floods (see natural barriers below) - buildings raised slightly off the ground, raised walkways allowing for travel on foot when the city is flooded, some of the streets are a bit wider for boat travel.


 * Food: FIIIISH!!!! And tropical stuff.


 * Other: Mistral specializes in boats and ships and has trade routes via the ocean (Remember Yang mentioning a Mistral trade route while playing Remnant: The Game?). A common occupation is fisherman. Common hobbies include fishing, swimming, and surfing, as long as it's within the secure zone (the zone that Hunters and security measures keep Grimm away from).


 * Natural barriers: Personally, I would have Mistral's main city situated on the land bridge that its point of light is on in WoR: Kingdoms (we've found that Vale's main city isn't where the Vale point of light is). They only have two small areas on land where they have to guard from the Grimm, essentially bottlenecking any potential Grimm invasion.

See? Easy. They could release a video describing that kind of stuff, or find ways to slip a lot of that into episodes. Maybe have Sun talking about how awesome it is to parkour through Mistral's main city and that it's "almost like it's designed for travel from roof to roof," and then Pyrrha cuts in pointing out that it actually is, in case of floods from the ocean.

(Btw, on the off chance that anyone from RT is reading this, I completely and totally give you permission to use any of these ideas in RWBY for actual world building. Please, please do. Make Remnant feel more alive and fleshed out.)