Clothes and favoured weapons
Dec. 18th, 2019 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have been hypothetically designing characters again.
... aesthetics design, thus far. I'd need to understand even more rules to pick out their character options.
Pathfinder, Golarion, Inner Sea area.
Half elf rogue/cleric of Calistria, The Savoured Sting, goddess of lust and revenge.
Her symbol is three daggers, her sacred animal is the wasp, and her favoured weapon is a whip.
So her clerics are going around wearing black and yellow and looking sexy.
There is plenty of artwork of this
if you're looking for women.
But I have previously read safety instructions about whips, and they recommend wearing a hat and eye protection. Whips are weapons, and they can do all kinds of nasty.
I reckon I can handwave the technical capabilities of the eye protection because Golarion has both magic and crashed spacecraft, so a slight tech detour into glasses seems fine and fair enough to me.
There's some very dashing impact protection eyewear these days. In black frames with yellow lenses even.
But then there's the hat.
Tis tricky, picking the right hat for a character.
... especially knowing that I've seen some very excellent actors who could not get the hang of hats. The way they amplify movement in particular directions just makes a caricature of so many motions.
But hats are handy.
So if we're going medieval...
There's a particular sort of hat that started the medieval equivalent of wearing your baseball cap backwards. The chaperon, on wiki. It developed from a hood, a seperate caped garment, with a long tail, the liripipe. Someone decided to put the face hole on top of their head and let the hood cape hang down, which was... a look. But then someone sort of rolled it up so the rest of the hood stuck out in decorative fashion. Big round roll around the head, hood edge sticking up and falling down around it, and that long liripipe hanging ready to be wrapped around loosely under your chin. Probably the description makes no sense, but if I'm going to write someone wearing one I'd need to work on that.
The hood's cape edges, if particularly fancified, were called a cockscomb, and made quite frilly intricate shapes if folded thus and so.
But the part that seems fun to me, for a rogue, is the hat could still be a hood under there. And the hoods often were bicolored, so in this case they'd be black and yellow, one color inside and one out. Fold and roll it and you'd have intricate stripy hat, shake it out again and you'd have a plain black or yellow hood, and it would shift you a social class, if I've understood aright.
There's reversible cloaks in the equipment list, a reversible hat isn't much different in principle, though the pricing for hats is very handwave because too many possibilities.
There's also some nice magic item cloaks that are for blending in, hiding in shadows, or drawing attention to yourself. Or there's one that stores a whole Disguise, like a full makeup face, or actually three of them. You'd have to paint it really good once but after that you can just wipe on wipe off with the magic item.
Fancy Society face, Everyday Working Courtesan face, and Masc But With Standards seems like three different sets of Disguise to me...
... the ability to quick change into makeup has such potential for shenanigans. Mrs Doubtfire aside even...
So I went on HeroForge and chose like three tops and three lowers that can mix and match into outfits. The most masc he gets is the Soldier's Waist Wrap, which is basically two layers of tunic or skirt with a wide belt, split in front, inner layer mid thigh and outer one knee length if you pull it down a bit. Everyday casual is the Habit Waist, which looks like a long skirt from behind but in front is pulled up and falls in a thinner bit so both legs show through the gaps, possibly with a shorter layer showing beneath. Can't quite figure the construction, but I reckon you ciuld let it down to look long all around. And for fancy there's the Loincloth and Train with the big gem, the one that's wide in the back but in front basically a few strips of fabric. In any of them you can see his legs, but I figure he'd be wearing hose unless magical healing wipes all the scars. Or he'd have makeup for more places.
You can quickchange the skirts to make them longer and layer them to be different colors and stripes if you fold them just so. They'd have to be a bit fancy like stage dancing costumes to do some changes, but a certain level of handwave goes with the genre.
I was thinking though, to us the skirts look like a gender thing, but I vaguely recall reading that in the robes and hose sort of medieval clothes hemlines were more age related? Young men wore them scandalously short to show off their... legs, and elders let hems sweep the floor, because dignity.
So the clothes mixed messages could shift his apparent age as well as class, all by how much leg and which color was showing on the outside.
I imagine this character letting his hems down with much pouting. Like yes he's forty, but he's a half elf, he's still got it.
... when your profession so plays on your looks the pouting isn't purely vanity.
Though his profession is as much James Bond as anything. Seducing people for access and information is as I understand it a traditional Calistrian role.
For tops I kind of want to do that conservation of skin showing thing that women's dresses do now. Like the number of times I've found that you can get a high neck, with a high hem, or a floor length gown, with no back.
But I won't subject him to three quarter length sleeves. I have standards.
... also the character is being emphatically Nope in my head about sleeveless clothes. Don't know why yet. But he does not want to show is arms. They're shapely, but staying covered.
Huh.
But the Heroforge model has options:
So the most masc version is the Commoner's Shirt and Jerkin. Got that 70s plunge neck going on, and is still the most covered he'd like to be. There is an Ancient Robe which goes higher, all the way up to the neck, but that's for when the temperature gets to be a problem. Looks casual, feels frumpy. The sleeves are good though, long and big at the ends. The Low Cut Kimono has the biggest sleeves, and the most chest on display. I figure that and the Kimono are actually one garment in two different arrangements.
The sleeves are good for hiding things in, making gestures flow, and trailing across people playfully. But for practical adventuring there's Leather Wristbands in the Gloves section. They pull the sleeves in tidy, and match the lacing on the outer layer on the Commoner.
Three tops, three lower halves, all combinations come out interesting, though the big gem version would take some attitude to wear...
But nothing on Heroforge is really quite as nuts as medieval robes could get. The layering assumes weather warmer than here, and the sleeves look wearable. Medieval costume had no such constraint.
Also, the edges were all sorts of shapes. Castle edges would be pretty plain. Cuts got super fancy.
The word I found is Houppelande. Long long trailing sleeves, sometimes with buttons and or laces, ways to fasten them more or leave them flapping from your elbows with the insides showing. Houppelande was the outside layer, over a much tighter layer underneath, which could be in a contrasting color. And the sleeves were lined in all sorts of show off.
So I'm envisaging sleeves that can be fastened all the way to the wrist, but still dangle widely, or could be drawn in at the wrist to look baggy, or that could be opened up to the elbow and wave from there, or all the way to the shoulder to make a sort of split cape effect down each side.
In my head they could even be pulled back to look like wasp wings.
Very adaptable outer layer.
And again, changing it quickly and neatly seems ambitious, but in theory all the fancy edges and the colors inside could be turned into black baggy sleeves, and look much cheaper.
So he's got several outfits depending on how he layers them and how layers are folded back.
... you wouldn't want the sleeves long and loose for fighting, but loose from the shoulder seems harmless. If you can use a whip in a cape the adaptable outer layer should be possible to tie out of the way.
And all the skirts or longer robes would be tested for how they dance.
It would make a very distinctive aesthetic, and one that could go from plain black hooded figure to suoer fancy black and yellow without any extra clothes.
... it would also be a variety of medieval that I don't recall seeing in many costumes.
And quite a lot of hat to manage.
I'm not sure the goal of sexy outfit can be achieved in an unfamiliar idiom. We'd just be going ??? about the hat.
He could add a layer in the skirts area if he takes the hood off, tuck it underneath.
... but he'd need the hat before using the whip, because Safety, so I'm not sure how quick hat could be re rolled...
So having written all that I have decided
heroforge is a place to start, not a limit on his Look
and his skirts only go below the knee at the back.
Also, I need to learn more vocabulary, because in robe times I donlt know if they'd call the skirt and train bits the same thing or what.
Trailing sleeves present many challenges
and anyone who can manage to look sexy in a rolled up hood hat
must be very good indeed at sexy.
Might have to go back to the drawing board and give him a more swashbuckler Look.
... if I write.
So, that was a productive daydream morning.
:eyeroll:
... aesthetics design, thus far. I'd need to understand even more rules to pick out their character options.
Pathfinder, Golarion, Inner Sea area.
Half elf rogue/cleric of Calistria, The Savoured Sting, goddess of lust and revenge.
Her symbol is three daggers, her sacred animal is the wasp, and her favoured weapon is a whip.
So her clerics are going around wearing black and yellow and looking sexy.
There is plenty of artwork of this
if you're looking for women.
But I have previously read safety instructions about whips, and they recommend wearing a hat and eye protection. Whips are weapons, and they can do all kinds of nasty.
I reckon I can handwave the technical capabilities of the eye protection because Golarion has both magic and crashed spacecraft, so a slight tech detour into glasses seems fine and fair enough to me.
There's some very dashing impact protection eyewear these days. In black frames with yellow lenses even.
But then there's the hat.
Tis tricky, picking the right hat for a character.
... especially knowing that I've seen some very excellent actors who could not get the hang of hats. The way they amplify movement in particular directions just makes a caricature of so many motions.
But hats are handy.
So if we're going medieval...
There's a particular sort of hat that started the medieval equivalent of wearing your baseball cap backwards. The chaperon, on wiki. It developed from a hood, a seperate caped garment, with a long tail, the liripipe. Someone decided to put the face hole on top of their head and let the hood cape hang down, which was... a look. But then someone sort of rolled it up so the rest of the hood stuck out in decorative fashion. Big round roll around the head, hood edge sticking up and falling down around it, and that long liripipe hanging ready to be wrapped around loosely under your chin. Probably the description makes no sense, but if I'm going to write someone wearing one I'd need to work on that.
The hood's cape edges, if particularly fancified, were called a cockscomb, and made quite frilly intricate shapes if folded thus and so.
But the part that seems fun to me, for a rogue, is the hat could still be a hood under there. And the hoods often were bicolored, so in this case they'd be black and yellow, one color inside and one out. Fold and roll it and you'd have intricate stripy hat, shake it out again and you'd have a plain black or yellow hood, and it would shift you a social class, if I've understood aright.
There's reversible cloaks in the equipment list, a reversible hat isn't much different in principle, though the pricing for hats is very handwave because too many possibilities.
There's also some nice magic item cloaks that are for blending in, hiding in shadows, or drawing attention to yourself. Or there's one that stores a whole Disguise, like a full makeup face, or actually three of them. You'd have to paint it really good once but after that you can just wipe on wipe off with the magic item.
Fancy Society face, Everyday Working Courtesan face, and Masc But With Standards seems like three different sets of Disguise to me...
... the ability to quick change into makeup has such potential for shenanigans. Mrs Doubtfire aside even...
So I went on HeroForge and chose like three tops and three lowers that can mix and match into outfits. The most masc he gets is the Soldier's Waist Wrap, which is basically two layers of tunic or skirt with a wide belt, split in front, inner layer mid thigh and outer one knee length if you pull it down a bit. Everyday casual is the Habit Waist, which looks like a long skirt from behind but in front is pulled up and falls in a thinner bit so both legs show through the gaps, possibly with a shorter layer showing beneath. Can't quite figure the construction, but I reckon you ciuld let it down to look long all around. And for fancy there's the Loincloth and Train with the big gem, the one that's wide in the back but in front basically a few strips of fabric. In any of them you can see his legs, but I figure he'd be wearing hose unless magical healing wipes all the scars. Or he'd have makeup for more places.
You can quickchange the skirts to make them longer and layer them to be different colors and stripes if you fold them just so. They'd have to be a bit fancy like stage dancing costumes to do some changes, but a certain level of handwave goes with the genre.
I was thinking though, to us the skirts look like a gender thing, but I vaguely recall reading that in the robes and hose sort of medieval clothes hemlines were more age related? Young men wore them scandalously short to show off their... legs, and elders let hems sweep the floor, because dignity.
So the clothes mixed messages could shift his apparent age as well as class, all by how much leg and which color was showing on the outside.
I imagine this character letting his hems down with much pouting. Like yes he's forty, but he's a half elf, he's still got it.
... when your profession so plays on your looks the pouting isn't purely vanity.
Though his profession is as much James Bond as anything. Seducing people for access and information is as I understand it a traditional Calistrian role.
For tops I kind of want to do that conservation of skin showing thing that women's dresses do now. Like the number of times I've found that you can get a high neck, with a high hem, or a floor length gown, with no back.
But I won't subject him to three quarter length sleeves. I have standards.
... also the character is being emphatically Nope in my head about sleeveless clothes. Don't know why yet. But he does not want to show is arms. They're shapely, but staying covered.
Huh.
But the Heroforge model has options:
So the most masc version is the Commoner's Shirt and Jerkin. Got that 70s plunge neck going on, and is still the most covered he'd like to be. There is an Ancient Robe which goes higher, all the way up to the neck, but that's for when the temperature gets to be a problem. Looks casual, feels frumpy. The sleeves are good though, long and big at the ends. The Low Cut Kimono has the biggest sleeves, and the most chest on display. I figure that and the Kimono are actually one garment in two different arrangements.
The sleeves are good for hiding things in, making gestures flow, and trailing across people playfully. But for practical adventuring there's Leather Wristbands in the Gloves section. They pull the sleeves in tidy, and match the lacing on the outer layer on the Commoner.
Three tops, three lower halves, all combinations come out interesting, though the big gem version would take some attitude to wear...
But nothing on Heroforge is really quite as nuts as medieval robes could get. The layering assumes weather warmer than here, and the sleeves look wearable. Medieval costume had no such constraint.
Also, the edges were all sorts of shapes. Castle edges would be pretty plain. Cuts got super fancy.
The word I found is Houppelande. Long long trailing sleeves, sometimes with buttons and or laces, ways to fasten them more or leave them flapping from your elbows with the insides showing. Houppelande was the outside layer, over a much tighter layer underneath, which could be in a contrasting color. And the sleeves were lined in all sorts of show off.
So I'm envisaging sleeves that can be fastened all the way to the wrist, but still dangle widely, or could be drawn in at the wrist to look baggy, or that could be opened up to the elbow and wave from there, or all the way to the shoulder to make a sort of split cape effect down each side.
In my head they could even be pulled back to look like wasp wings.
Very adaptable outer layer.
And again, changing it quickly and neatly seems ambitious, but in theory all the fancy edges and the colors inside could be turned into black baggy sleeves, and look much cheaper.
So he's got several outfits depending on how he layers them and how layers are folded back.
... you wouldn't want the sleeves long and loose for fighting, but loose from the shoulder seems harmless. If you can use a whip in a cape the adaptable outer layer should be possible to tie out of the way.
And all the skirts or longer robes would be tested for how they dance.
It would make a very distinctive aesthetic, and one that could go from plain black hooded figure to suoer fancy black and yellow without any extra clothes.
... it would also be a variety of medieval that I don't recall seeing in many costumes.
And quite a lot of hat to manage.
I'm not sure the goal of sexy outfit can be achieved in an unfamiliar idiom. We'd just be going ??? about the hat.
He could add a layer in the skirts area if he takes the hood off, tuck it underneath.
... but he'd need the hat before using the whip, because Safety, so I'm not sure how quick hat could be re rolled...
So having written all that I have decided
heroforge is a place to start, not a limit on his Look
and his skirts only go below the knee at the back.
Also, I need to learn more vocabulary, because in robe times I donlt know if they'd call the skirt and train bits the same thing or what.
Trailing sleeves present many challenges
and anyone who can manage to look sexy in a rolled up hood hat
must be very good indeed at sexy.
Might have to go back to the drawing board and give him a more swashbuckler Look.
... if I write.
So, that was a productive daydream morning.
:eyeroll: