The Dragonlance Series is a good set of books to give you perspective from both sides of the RP field, as well as some in betweens. I also like the Forgotten Realms, the dark elf series. (Drizzt)

I'll add my two cents on this.

As you'll quickly notice from the list, I don't really use much medieval or pulp fantasy inspiration for my roleplaying - instead I draw my ideas from assourted sources and then alter them so they fit the standards of whatever roleplaying setting I am using. They are powerful images of places and events, or interesting characters, usually just general feels and ideas that are then transformed into something new as I adopt them for my characters. I encourage you to do the same.

Books

H.P. Lovecraft and his short stories
A perennial source of inspiration for me, Lovecraft's language and imagery will forever remain stamped in my brain. His stock words, such as "titanic", "cyclopean", "eldritch", and his common descriptions of vastness and cosmic horror, such as "black voids between the stars" are a mainstay in my own understanding of roleplay. And it's not even so much the stories about the Cthulhu mythos that are inspirational, but rather, the stories that very lightly or not at all touch upon the mythos, or even more so, the stories of his Dreamlands mythos. A good introduction to his works that aren't entirely mythos-centric would be "Rats in the walls", his strongest work in my opinion, then "Haunter in the Dark", "Pickman's model" and "The Hound". An inspiration of mood, setting and events, but not characters, as they tend to be bland.

Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
Some of you might know Virginia Woolf as a pedantic, boring modernist writer who mostly wrote about old ladies and cake. You probably didn't know she wrote what's easily understood as a fantasy novel (despite there being a movie about this book). Regardless, in what's often been described as "the best love letter in literature", Woolf describes the journey of young lord Orlando though some five centuries and through a sex change, from Elizabethan England to the 20th century. No explanation is ever provided why he only ages some 20 years in 500 years of history, or why he changes sex suddenly, probably because those are completely irrelevant questions. It is a parable of rarely matched narrative strength, with imagery as vivid as Latino-American Magical Realism, half a century earlier. Orlando finds himself in England, falls in love with a Russian princess during the coldest winter in history, becomes the English ambassador for Turkey, becomes a gypsy, a man, a woman, and everything inbetween. It's pointless trying to explain it here, but the amounts of inspiration you can get for a RP character from this book is amazing, since Orlando him/herself becomes tens of characters in tens of settings, while remaining fundamentally the same. An inspiration of mood, setting, events and primarily character.

Umberto Eco and his novels
This one goes without saying, especially "The Name of the Rose". But yeah, richness of setting and detail, tremendous amounts of information on a vast array of topics, that gives hundreds of ideas for roleplaying? Eco is king here. The Name, Baudolino, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, these are all books a serious roleplayer SHOULD read. Eco is a great medievalist and lover of history, and these novels contain that plus a thousand more things, ranging from conspiracy theories to storytelling. I shouldn't even be telling you to read these. Just bloody fucking do it, they are mainstream, universally acclaimed pieces. Also, watch the Name of the Rose movie, at least. Darkness and brooding monastery life. Want to play a Scholar? How dare you without seeing this movie. An inspiration on everything, because it contains a load of things.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I think most of you know this book, but have probably never thought of it as RP inspiration. Just think of the vast array of things that the inhabitants of Macondo go through. Everything happens to them. What better inspiration to RP than variety of events? Read it, love it, draw from it. Everything from droughts to maritime vessels in the middle of the jungle, from whores to guns, from flying to endless sleep. An inspiration on events, although they don't directly relate to customary RP on Khaeros, but... you can still draw a lot from it. Give it a shot.

William Blake and his poetry
This is a far shot for 95% of you out there, but I'll include it nonetheless. The immensely powerful poetry of William Blake, with its earth-shattering prophetic charge, its forceful statements, the Proverbs of Hell. Really, fantastic inspiration for clerical, poetic and prophetic characters. The charge that reading this poetry gives you is just so UNNNNNNNNGH I COULD TAKE ON THE WORLD WITH THE WISDOM OF GOD AND THE WRATH OF THE LION. An inspiration on... something. Try it out, or maybe not.


Movies

Le pacte des loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf)
A very straightforward RP inspiration. A french biologist, a native american monk-bodyguard, a terrifyingly huge wolf running across the country and slaughtering innocents, a mysterious brotherhood behind all of it. A superbly entertaining, visually pleasing (if dark) movie. Action and combat scenes aplenty, plus cool looking characters. An inspiration on... mostly characters, I think, though mood might be in there somewhere too.

Dead Man
Before judging me, watch it again with RP inspiration in mind and tell me you don't get something. Rich characters. Weird events. A journey into the underworld. Mood and characters mostly, and aesthetics too. I won't even try explaining exactly what it is that radiates the inspiration from within this movie; my best bet is simply saying "everything does".



I will probably add some more when I think about it.

I forgot one very huge, huge influence, that I think most people should read;

The Golden Bough

Nowadays it's outdated, but this seminal early 20th century work on the nature of magic and religion is still a great read for anyone. It tries to explain how humanity evolved from magic to shamanistic stuff to pagan religions to organised religions nowadays. It offers an insightful glimpse into the world of our pagan ancestors, a view of pre-history, if you will. Read it, and it'll broaden your horizons, even for RP. It is important to try to understand these notions, because they aren't that far off from the ones we experience nowadays, even if it may seem so.

Want a brooding anti-hero or a believable rebel? Watch westerns. Most older westerns (good ones at least) have very gritty character archetypes that you can draw from. They may not all be "deep" or well-written characters, but there some diamonds in the rough that you can really draw from.

It really just depends on how far back in movie history you can go and still enjoy the film. I mean Angel and the Badman is a 1947 film, but a great one for inspiration for some of our characters. Hang 'em High is a pretty badass movie, so is the Good the Bad and the Ugly.

But maybe the more recent ones will be best, things like The Quick and the Dead and Tombstone... which are two of my favorite movies. I based my mage on DA on Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday (because he's literally the most bad ass character in movie history).

Very much so. Also Tristan and Isolde is about an Alyrian who fights against the Vhalurian oppressors.

A very useful web utility: The Medieval Sourcebook

Sections of Note:
For Merchants: Price List I've found the wages, and some of the prices in 1346 to match the existing economy. (Using the Vhaluran Guard wage per season v. the armored infantry/cavalry wage per day x7 (days in a week) x4 (weeks in a month) x3 (months in a season). It totaled 504 pence, so if you relate that a pence is a copper it is fairly accurate.) Of course you should charge whatever you feel is fair for your effort, but it could be useful for looking at price relationships between items.

For players in general: Selected Sections The sections here if you scroll down to "Varieties of States" and "The Flowering of Western Civilization" the subsection headings are full of useful information based on what you are looking for. For political structure in that era, Varieties of States covers most the government types up until the 1700s. The Flowering of Western Civilization has useful sections for a few classes: Scholar - Intellectual Life, Cleric - High Medieval Church Life, Peasants v. Nobility - Social Life, and how women, and men were viewed and behaved in the Sex and Gender Section. Of course not all of this translates directly to Khaeros, but it can give you ideas of course.

Lastly: Movies Which is their list of movies available on various ideas/time periods of medieval/late classical life.

((If you are unsure how to use the utility once you've selected a section such as "Intellectual thought" and you just see a bunch of links, clicking that link will take you to the document in question, which is generally a translation into modern English of a primary source from the time in question.))

You can also order a copy of this in hardcopy somehow, the DM for the D&D game I play has one and uses it to set up sample towns/carvans, etc on the fly.

Seconded on The Prince. QUITE LAWFUL EVIL IMHO!

For knight wannabes: Le Morte Darthur - Sir Thomas Malory.

That book is written by a knight himself. The stories in the book isn't that bad. He tells of Arthur and his knights. Still, it is very old english and pain in the ass to read. But! A great book to learn about pure chivalry.

Think the Arthur legends would refer to Vhalurians too, if not more.

The 2004 movie would sure have a lot for Alyria though.

Got another one,
Battles BC On the History Channel, they break down some of the greatest victories from the ancient world.