Of Course It Would be Armor

Some days I struggle finding things to write about. Other days I know what to write about but simply have no time to do so.

And then there are days like today, where I'm reading things in the morning and a topic --or two or three-- literally appear right before my eyes.

Okay, maybe not the best choice of words.
(From YouTube, That Works' channel.)

The kernel of this post came from a comment I made on this post by Bhagpuss, wondering about why so many Asian MMOs and RPGs have women/girls in frilly skirts/dresses. in the mini discussion that followed, Bhagpuss pointed out that it's pretty much a trope among Asian video games akin to chainmail bikinis among Western MMOs/RPGs, and why should I be taking it seriously anyway*?

I never miss a chance to bring out the old chestnut from Collegehumor, but my mind immediately went from the ubiquitous chainmail bikini to its cousin, boob plate.

This looks better than my copy.
From amazon.com.

Precisely ten days later, the princess, with Durnik once again in tow, returned to Delban's workshop. The mail shirt the craftsman had fashioned was so light that it could have almost have been described as delicate. The helmet, hammered from thin steel, was surmounted with a white plume and was encircled with a gold crown. The greaves, which were to protect the legs, fit to perfection. There was even an embossed shield rimmed with brass and a light sword with an ornate hilt and scabbard.

Ce'Nedra, however, was staring disapprovingly at the breastplate Delban had made for her. It would quite obviously fit--too well. "Didn't you forget something?" she asked him.

He picked up the breastplate up with his big hands and examined it. "It's all there," he told her. "Front, back, all the straps to hook them together. What else did you want?"

"Isn't it a trifle--understated?" she suggested delicately.

"It's made to fit," he replied. "The understatement isn't my fault."

"I want it a little more--" She made a sort of curving gesture with her hands.

"What for?"

"Never mind what for. Just do it."

"What do you plan to put in it?"

"That's my business. Just do it the way I told you to."

He tossed a heavy hammer down on his anvil. "Do it yourself," he told her bluntly.

"Durnik," Ce'Nedra appealed to the smith.

"Oh, no, princess," Durnik refused. "I don't touch another man's tools. It just isn't done."

--From Castle of Wizardry, by David Eddings, pg. 315.

Trying to make sense of boob plate armor --outside of the simple aesthetics of the matter, which are to emphasize a woman's chest-- you kind of have to go into the historical record. Oh, not that a lot of women fought in wars in ancient history, but what armor was supposed to represent. After all, in ancient history, we have this sort of breastplate too:

This bronze cuirass dates
from the 4th Century BCE.
From The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
there's even an audio description!

So it's not that unusual to see ancient breastplates made in (male) heroic proportions. But of course, that's not the reason why in F&SF art you find the boob plate: something something something sexy.

I'm not one to deny that it can make a woman look sexy, because I'd be foolish to say otherwise. As opposed to the chainmail bikini, at least it's on the "protective armor" side of the spectrum, but not as far on the spectrum as armor meant to be protective from the start yet also accommodate a woman's build**, such as this modern piece:

This is Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the US Army
surgeon general (in 2013), trying on the new
tactical vest specifically designed for the
female physique. From an army.mil article.

As you can see, not sexy, but damn impressive and practical.

***

But just how protective is boob plate anyway? 

While the intent from an artistic standpoint*** is to emphasize that the person is a) a woman and b) sexiness, as a practical matter does it protect the wearer? Or is it, as some have asserted, worse than wearing no armor at all?

I think of the assertion as a bit of a straw man, because boob plate that covers the abdomen --and along with other pieces the arms, legs, and head-- are obviously better than no armor at all. The question isn't that, but whether creating artificially enhanced metal boobs actually weaken the armor in the breast area and provide a false sense of security.

Well...

Let's just say that you can go down the rabbit hole on this subject and spend a lot of time on research.****

Okay, let's get started here.

There's historical precedent --as I demonstrated above-- for male attributes to make it into armor. I'd forgotten about the codpiece (I know, get thee to a Renaissance Festival) but I'd also forgotten that in Medieval times a small waist among men was considered ideal, and guess what made it into Medieval armor? Yes, the small waist. 

So if more women did fight in Medieval times than the historical record shows, odds would have been good that armor would have been made to emphasize certain aspects of female anatomy. 

Now, about boob plate...

As Shad pointed out in this episode of Shadiversity, the complaint about boob plate funneling strikes into the sternum would have to also be applied to that small waist, where two separate metal plates intersected, which would have actually been more dangerous than boob plate made of a single piece of hardened steel. 

However, there's a big caveat: both areas would have been made of hardened steel, which is still pretty damned strong. So an attacker would attempt to hit areas where there wasn't any hardened steel instead. If an attacker were using a polearm --a pike or lance, for example-- then the "weak points" wouldn't matter, because the blunt force that such a big weapon would deliver would hit home whether or not it struck the boob plate.

(I know, kind of obvious in retrospect.)

Understanding the historical aesthetics behind armor is also important, and here's a relatively long video expounding on that from That Works:

Considering the sex appeal inherent in historical armor that we never see because we see the pieces through modern eyes, it is entirely feasible that in a Fantasy world where women fight and have power, they too would wear armor that demonstrates such power via sexuality. 

That's not to say that Fantasy armor as seen in art is, uh, realistic at all. And we're not talking codpiece level of snickering, but a whole other level of "you gotta be kidding me". Like so...

Yep, someone we'll be seeing a lot
of, starting next month. And don't
even think about calling her a barbarian.
But Neve certainly recognizes those Wanderer
Stitched Trousers. From Wowhead.

By comparison, some of my own toons are just fine the way they are. I've no problem seeing Shereleth like this:

Standing next to an honor guard at
Vivec City. The armor is actually
the Frostedge Bandit Disguise,
you get for a quest in the Dunmer
faction's starting area. I just liked it so
well that I've kept it all this time.

Or Briganaa:

The accents to the armor are designed
to draw the eye to the chest, which
is fine. It's a thing, and actually
more understated than a codpiece.

Or Linnawyn:

Even though it's more boob plate,
it's understatedly so. Don't
mess with the Knight of the Silver Hand.

But.... No...

Josh Strife Hayes described TERA as
feeling "like you've invaded a Victoria's Secret
Fashion Show and given everyone a giant
medieval weapon and one girl you've
given a massive SciFi laser cannon."

But I think this is the real reason why people bitch so much about boob plate:

Yep. From dailydot.

And they're not wrong. Give female toons the option of ridiculous boob plate/chainmail bikinis or boob plate on "normal" armor, and there's nary a complaint. It's the lack of options between the two that's the problem.

#Blaugust2022

*That "why I should take it seriously" is a topic for another time.

**This reminds me of big innovations that Cincinnati Children's Hospital and other children's hospitals around the country are making toward medical equipment that fit children's sizes. For the longest time, people simply thought they could make adult sized equipment small and that would fit children, but it turned out not to be the case. Hence, the ongoing research on the matter is hugely important. In fact, this research came in handy when the Cincinnati Zoo reached out to Cincinnati Children's to help in saving the life of Fiona, the hippo born six weeks premature, back in 2017. Be warned, you can spend a ton of time on YouTube watching Fiona's story. (I know from experience.)

***And yes, the male gaze. I'm not a dummy, you know.

****Okay, Rule #0 is that men forget that women's breasts don't behave like someone attached rubber balls to their chest. If nothing else, this is where having sisters --or mothers who aren't so freaking uptight that they don't even want to fart while being in the vicinity of their sons-- is a godsend. And yes, my mom was that uptight: the biggest laugh my (now) wife ever had was when one time we were some place and she happened to rip one, and I had a look of disbelief on my face. 

"What?" she asked.

"I didn't know women could fart," I replied.

"WHAT??!!"

"My mom never farted."

My wife practically collapsed on the floor laughing. "I can tell you that yes, women do fart, and yes, your mom did too," she replied while gasping for air. "She was just so anal retentive that she hid it all the time!"

EtA: Really? A "they're/there/their" error? Sheesh.

"This is a Fantasy. You DO know that, right?"

"You don't mean--" 

"It took me a while to accept it myself, actually. Poledra was very patient and very determined. When she found out I couldn't accept her as a mate in the form of a wolf, she simply found a different shape. She got what she wanted in the end." He sighed.

"Aunt Pol's mother was a wolf?" Garion was stunned.

"No, Garion," Belgarath replied calmly. "She was a woman -- a very lovely woman. The change of shape is absolute."

"But--but she started out as a wolf?"

"So?"

"But--" The whole notion was somehow shocking.

"Don't let your prejudices run away with you," Belgarath told him.

Garion struggled with the idea. It seemed monstrous somehow. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "It's unnatural, no matter what you say."

"Garion," the old man reminded him with a pained look, "just about everything we do is unnatural. Moving rocks with your mind isn't the most natural thing in the world, if you stop and think about it."

"But this is different," Garion protested. "Grandfather, you married a wolf --and the wolf had children. How could you do that?"

--From Castle of Wizardry (The Belgariad, Book 4, page 290) by David Eddings

 

Garion and Belgarath, cropped from
the original cover of  Enchanters'
End Game, Book 5 of The Belgariad,
by David Eddings.

All eyes turned to Silvara.

She was calm now, at peace with herself. Although her face was filled with sorrow, it was not the tormented, bitter sorrow they had seen earlier. This was the sorrow of loss, the quiet, accepting sorrow of one who has nothing to regret. Silvara walked toward Gilthanas. She took hold of his hands and looked up into his face with so much love that Gilthanas felt blessed, even as he knew she was going to tell him goodbye.

"I am losing you, Silvara," he murmured in broken tones. "I see it in your eyes. But I don't know why! You love me--" 

"I love you, elflord," Silvara said softly. "I loved you when I saw you injured on the sand. When you looked up and smiled at me, I knew the fate which had befallen my sister was to be mine, too." She sighed. "But it is a risk we take when we choose this form. For though we bring our strength into it, the form inflicts its weaknesses upon us. Or is it a weakness? To love..."

"Silvara, I don't understand!" Gilthanas cried.

"You will," she promised, her voice soft. Her head bowed.

--From Dragons of Winter Night (Dragonlance Chronicles, Book 2, page 244) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Dragon of Mystery, by Larry Elmore.
You can go buy prints of Larry's work,
like this one, at his website.

I finally got my prior post about my dislike for the lack of mystery surrounding the Dragon Aspects out of the way when Shintar, in her traditional manner of getting me to think, poked me about my dislike for the Jaina and Kalecgos romance in a quip within her comment.

And I'll admit that it brought me up short. I have a specific aversion to that entire relationship, and I ought to be able to explain it better than I already have. Therefore, this short interlude will cover why I'm not a fan of a dragon relationship with one of the "mortal races" as is presented in WoW.

1. It's a power imbalance.
   
   Let's be honest for a minute. If we grant Jaina the title of "most powerful arcane wielder ever" --something that some Titans would raise an eyebrow at-- she's still a mortal human. She will kick the bucket. No amount of arcane power will prevent her death, and it won't even delay it without veering into necromancy*. However, A Warcraft dragon is immortal, and even if they are mortal their lifespan is so long compared to one of the mortal races as to be rendered moot. So no matter what Jaina can do, she will not be able to spend the rest of Kalecgos' life with him. There's also additional power perks of being a dragon, such as the physical dragon form itself. Being the alpha predator in the environment conveys a large degree of power in any relationship, no matter what the mortal might think, and the dragon ought to know this better than anyone else. After all....
   
   
2. They're a dragon, not a mortal. Their thought processes are different than a mortal's.
   
   The timeless Blizzard miscue of "You think you do but you don't" definitely applies here.
   
   A lot of ink has been burned in Fantasy novels and RPGs about relationships between dragons and protagonists, from Dragonlance (Gilthanas and Silvara, Huma and the Silver Dragon, etc.) to the Truth Series by Dawn Cook (who is better known as Kim Harrison). If you want to extend it beyond dragons to other non-bipedal species there's an additional rabbit hole to fall down, from David Eddings' Belgariad to a lot Urban Fantasy that uses were-creatures to all sorts of weird and dark corners of the internet. The stories tend to follow a few distinct patterns, from the "hey, when they're in human form you're having a relationship with a human, not a dragon" to "I can't forget that this person is not a human despite outward appearance, and that poisons the relationship" to "who cares? let's bang!"
   
   I fall under the camp of "this dragon/wolf/whatever is a different species and we might think we know its thought processes but we really don't." If the dragon truly becomes a human (or elf), then it is subject to the same biological frailties as that human or elf, --which means the dragon would have to give up all of their physical advantages-- and that includes emotions. However, the ability to shift back and forth --while retaining memories, intelligence, and their mental abilities (such as wielding magic)-- also implies they retain more than just that. So from my perspective, they may look human but they definitely aren't.
   
   I guess that puts me in the camp of how Michelle Sagara writes the Cast series of novels, where the dragons that Kaylin encounters might have a human form, but everything from the carriages they ride in to how they walk implies that their entire dragon weight is still there, only just "hidden" by something that's better than an illusion but not as good as a total change of form.
   
   Since I fall under the camp of "they retain enough of themselves that they shouldn't fall in love or feel jealousy or anything else the same way we do," that leads me to...
   
   
3. A dragon falling in love with a human is likely a lot closer to a human falling in love with a dog.
   
   Dragons are the apex species --Old Gods and Gronn notwithstanding-- of Azeroth. The mortal races can see them in their human form and experience the usual gamut of emotions, but a dragon still views us through their eyes, in which we have a lot more in common with the cattle that they may decide to feast on than as equals. After all, Onyxia said the quiet part out loud when she makes the quip during the initial pull about how she typicaly "must leave [her] lair in order to feed." The other flights aren't so blunt about it and may avoid eating the mortal races as a general rule, but the cat is out of the bag: dragons look on us as "talking meat" or "talking pets" than anything else. And if they do care a lot about mortals, it's more of the paternal, often patronizing type of caring. A dragon falling in love with a human would likely also be frowned upon by draconic society in the same manner as a cross species romance would be in human society. Even if a bonobo or a dog or a dolphin could love in a similar manner to that of a human, the species are still different enough that our society certainly wouldn't view it as a love between equals.
   
   Fantasy novels have an end run around these problems, of course, and typically involve wish fulfillment more than anything else. These relationships in a Fantasy or Science Fiction setting can --and frequently are-- a stand-in for commentary about our own racial prejudices, merely taken to an extreme. Being able to use a character's inner voice to demonstrate that the dragon or elf or draenei has the same mental and emotional acumen as that of a human allows an author to demonstrate that despite outward appearances, "we're all the same inside".
   
   But as a practical matter, there's a huge difference in falling in love between species versus different races of the same species. And despite authors (or the Blizzard story team) waving their hands and allowing inter-racial children to exist (gee thanks, ancient Mythologies!) what we know of genetics basically renders that sort of outcome impossible. And before anybody starts catcalling "Mules!" from the rear of the auditorium, let me remind you that the genetic differences between burros and horses are a lot fewer than humans' closest living relatives, the bonobos. And we can't interbreed between bonobos. Those relatives of modern humans we could interbreed with are those that no longer exist, such as Neanderthals and Denisovians.
   
   But still...
   
   
4. I can't swim against the tide forever, and a story team --or an author-- with the blessing of management is going to get their way, whether I like it or not. And that, more than anything else, gets my goat. It's their vision that is implemented, and their story to tell, not mine, despite that I'm the one playing their game. It obviously has no direct impact on the game, because it all happens "off screen" in the novels, but the concept of the whole thing just kind of bugs me. And that it happened to one of the two characters in the WoW-verse that are most in Mary Sue territory probably annoys me even more. If it was anybody else, I'd probably not care, but I look at it as a continuation of the storyline concerning the destruction of Theramore for no other good reason than to make sure we know that Garrosh is "the bad guy". Again, my complaints about setpieces versus good storytelling fit perfectly here. Blizz' teams are enamored of a nice setpiece, and frequently confuse those setpieces or cutscenes with good storytelling in general. And the Jaina/Kalecgos romance is an omnipresent reminder that those scenes do not necessarily make for a good story.

So there you have it.

I know that this post is gonna get buried in a few hours by people excitedly talking about the new WoW expac --or the release date for Wrath Classic, or Diablo 4-- but I felt I ought to get this out there. At least I can say that I explained my position; not well, perhaps, but at least I explained it. 

And if anybody has wondered about where I learned to write dialogue, these two series quoted above provide part of the answer to the puzzle.

 

 

*Ars Magica notwithstanding. Yes, in Ars Magica, you can use magic to artificially extend a Magus/Maga's lifespan, but at the cost of being rendered infertile. For a Magus or Maga, this is pretty much a tradeoff they're comfortable with, but even then they can't extend their lifespan indefinitely. At the very least, a Final Twilight will eventually catch up to them, or an enemy will finally end their life.

EtA: Corrrected a grammatical error.

Because Walking into a Throne Room in Full Plate is Just Normal

Silk and Barack stood in the corner, talking quietly. Barack was hugely splendid in a green brocade doublet, but looked uncomfortable without his sword. Silk's doublet was a rich black, trimmed in silver, and his scraggly whiskers had been carefully trimmed into an elegant short beard.

"What does all of this mean?" Garion asked as he joined them.

"We're to be presented to the king," Barack said, "and our honest clothes might have given offense. Kings aren't accustomed to looking at ordinary men."

Durnik emerged from one of the rooms, his face pale with anger. "That overdressed fool wanted to give me a bath!" he said in choked outrage. "

It's the custom," Silk explained. "Noble guests aren't expected to bathe themselves. I hope you didn't hurt him."

"I'm not a noble, and I'm quite able to bathe myself," Durnik said hotly. "I told him I'd drown him in his own tub if he didn't keep his hands to himself. After that, he didn't pester me any more, but he did steal my clothes. I had to put these on instead." He gestured at his clothes, which were quite similar to Garion's. "I hope nobody sees me in all this frippery."

--Pawn of Prophecy, by David Eddings


One thing I've puzzled about over the years is how a toon in an MMO (or RPG) interacts with leadership in-game. Now, I don't mean the local constable or even some minor noble, but rather a titular head of government or a leader of the military*.

Unless you're starting off as some sort of noble (or ex-noble), a character in an MMO or RPG is simply not important enough to draw the attention of any ruler of any game universe. Now, if the size of the ruler's country is tiny, yeah, there's a better than average change that Durek The Smasher might actually have met the King of Tinyacropolis.** However, given the insularity frequently found separating the nobles/upper class from the common folk, your not very likely to have any real interaction between the classes other than in a master/servant (or worse) situation; drinking with Prince Hal ala Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays ain't very likely, and even if it did happen Prince Hal would deny it did happen once he ascended to the throne.

So why does your toon end up hanging around kings, queens, Great Mages/Wizards, and other leaders of the world?***

***

I've mentioned in the (far distant) past that I consider this scenario --found in MMOs from LOTRO to WoW to SWTOR and ESO-- something that you see right out of David Eddings' series The Belgariad. The story revolves around the most powerful people in the game world, the faction leaders and whatnot, and they go off and have adventures along with any protagonists/narrators.

While I really love The Belgariad --having read it as a middle school student right as it was released-- I do recognize that the main players in the story really shouldn't be doing what they're doing at all, and instead having other people do the work for them. Think about it this way: if you were at a university, how likely would it be that the best football player were a cousin of the President, your advisor is Elon Musk, your Resident Assistant is a combination of Black Widow and Jeff Bezos, and you happen to be dating Beyonce and Jay Z's daughter? Oh, and that all of these people are incognito, too?

Yeah, I thought not.

But at the same time, this sort of thing eventually ends up happening in a lot of MMOs and RPGs. And that's not even counting the Mary Sue-ism aspect of your toon, either, rising over the course of a very short time to being the counselor and best friend of the most powerful people around.

This whole scenario is pretty damned unlikely to me.

When the Skeptical Kid meme has more
caution than Amalexia or Emeric.

***

I thought about this situation a bit after having finished the original ESO storyline for the Ebonheart Pact, and since I'm about a bit over halfway through the storyline for the Daggerfall Covenant this has been really bugging me more and more. You don't go from being a nobody to the King's trusted confidant and advisor that quickly. Hell, it's more likely that the King would take the credit and give you a token or trinket to essentially pay you to go away. After all, you're not from the upper class.

Think of one of the basic quest types that you find in an MMO: the delivery of a letter. Think of what is behind such a simple quest:

• The ability to read.
  
  In a SF or modern setting, the assumption that everybody reads (or reads well enough) holds, but in a medieval setting that is not likely the case. If you're middle class or upper class, then yes, but if you're lower class...
  
• The amount of trust the quest giver has in handing you the letter.
  
  This kind of goes without saying, but someone who "just shows up" and is given a letter to pass along sounds a bit fishy. Would you entrust a letter to a relative stranger? Would you simply stop a passerby and give them a letter to deliver? Or better yet, deliver tidings to the King? If you are truly a loyal subject of the King, why would you trust a delivery to someone who you may have fought a few battles with, but before that nothing was known?
  
• The ability to even deliver the letter in the first place.
  
  It may be one thing to finally reach a destination and deliver a letter to a tradesman or a merchant, but quite another to deliver a letter to a member of the nobility. A tradesman may see you directly, a merchant may make you wait in an outer "office" room before delivery to a secretary or bookkeeper, but a noble? It's must more likely that you'll deliver the letter to a minor functionary, who will in turn hand it over to a courtier or advisor, and then the letter will be delivered to the noble. And if it was going to the King? The King would likely not receive the delivery in public, and if he did, he certainly wouldn't read it in public.

All that means is the simple "delivery" quest has the potential to be completely wrecked by reality.

***

Before you say "Hey Redbeard, you're missing the point. The entire point is to advance the plot and move you up the chain in the circle of nobility," I get it. Before you snort and say "Hey, you're supposed to be The Chosen One (or whatever)," yeah, I understand the why behind it. But to me, the end isn't as important as the journey itself.

If you're going to deliver a letter to a noble and you're not a formal courier, the noble's handlers aren't going to let you close to said noble. If you're as dangerous a person as you're supposed to be, it would be a short matter for you to assassinate a noble if you had that in mind, and believe me, the nobles know that.

Ah, Mel Brooks. You put it so plainly.

Besides, there's the Divine Right of Kings, and even in a Fantasy environment --especially so, given that the gods can be pretty active and direct in a Fantasy setting-- that means the nobility believe they have the supreme right to be where they are, and that anybody not of their ilk had better remember that.

***

Okay, so what's the point?

Well, the point is that a game's story can be better than what it is right now. Just because you don't get to meet with the king directly doesn't mean that the plot is shot to hell; I'd argue that because you have to navigate the bizarro world that is the nobility a story can be made much richer.

Instead of "deliver a letter to the King, who sends you out to deal with the next item on the plot", how about something like this:

• Because of XXX, the courier has no choice but to give you the letter to deliver.
• Along the way, someone tries to kill you or steal said letter.
• Once you arrive, you're
  a) Not Believed and you have to try to prove you are who you say you are
  b) Believed, but you're sent to a room to be cleaned up and presented to a minor functionary who then makes you wait (via cutscene) and he provides you with a quest in return.
• If you perform a few quests right, you're granted an audience with a higher member of the nobility. Maybe that person likes you and maybe not, but more quests are given instead of the King doing it directly.

What this does is provide that obscuring layer between you and the King. You don't know if you're truly acting in the King's interest, and the minor nobles say so, but what if they're the ones plotting against the King? Couldn't they be setting you up to take the blame if their plot fails, and the ire of a nation if it succeeds? Maybe you have to find a way to meet with the King without them acting as a go-between just to make sure. Or should you even trust the King at all? Does he have the interest in his kingdom at heart? Or is maybe your mind playing tricks, and you were the bad guy all along?

All of these little interesting plot points add to the richness of a story and allow the paranoia and class arrogance of the nobility/upper class to improve the story beyond the basics of "deliver a letter to the King".

***

In the end, I suppose, money is the critical part here. All of this extra work in a game means extra money spent on development, and software companies have to choose between plot development and extra time spent on enriching a story. If more time is spent on the main quest line, does that mean the side quests suffer?

Perhaps that's why in ESO at least, the side quests are frequently better written than the main quest line in a zone.

But another reason the way quests are is more a matter of fan service: some people want to play an MMO to see some of the key NPCs in action. A LOTRO fan wants to see Aragorn or Gandalf or Elrond; an Elder Scrolls fan wants to see Vivec; a Warcraft fan wants to pal around with Thrall or Khadgar. And for those fans, the more interaction the better.

I guess that there's no truly easy answer here. But still, I'd at least like to see things a bit more realistic than the current state of quest design.

*Although they are frequently separate in modern times, in prior centuries the leader of the military was also the leader of the country/empire. Sure, in the US the President is also the Commander-in-Chief, but I can't think of a President after Washington who led troops into battle as President.

**Or in a barbarian campaign where there is no overlord for barbarian clans, your clan chief is pretty much it as far as leadership goes.

***It kind of goes without saying that includes gods/goddesses/primal dragons/demons/whatever and their leading support staff.

Now This is an Odd Gear Check

Silly me.

And here I thought I was going to proceed with the story for LOTRO's Mines of Moria expansion without running into a grind.

But a few days later, and I'm slaying Orcs and Angmarim and Dunlendings in Eregion, grinding away at getting a legendary weapon up to L10. Apparently a legendary weapon demands sacrifice, bathing in the blood of my enemies. (Who knew?)

The first five levels weren't so bad.

The next two as well.

But by the time you reach L8, you have to whack a bunch of orcs just to move up a level, and I dread what it's going to be like when I get to, oh, much farther downstream, such as L20 or so.

I had no idea that I would end up wielding Stormbringer in LOTRO.

This was what the cover of the first Elric book
I owned looked like. From tor.com.

And maybe I ought to start getting concerned about LOTRO's endgame, given how the Elric Saga ended up.

(And no, I'm not going to spoil that one; the Moorcock books are very quick reads. But given that Michael Moorcock has rather publicly stated his dislike for Tolkien's works, I'm not sure what he'd think about my comparison.)

Friday Musings

Yeah, it's a gloomy kind of day today --both outside, where it's rainy, and inside at work-- so my mind has turned to more whimsical musings.

• Do Elves ever get seasonal allergies? When I see the Night Elf pic below, all I can think of is that in September and October, I'd be miserable.

From walldevil.com, based on a Blizzard artwork.

• Unlike their common counterparts in fiction, the dwarves in Terry Brooks' Shannara series are scared as hell of being underground. (It was mentioned heavily in the very first book about how the Dwarves had to deal with all sorts of things underground during the years that they "became" Dwarves that it left a scar on their collective psyche.) Why don't you see that sort of thing more often in Fantasy fiction?
• The Star Trek Next Generation Federation jumpsuit is one of those outfits that flatters most forms, so why did Cryptic Studios feel the need to sex up their loading screens and whatnot? There's absolutely no need, and I can tell you from having been to Star Trek conventions before that a well done ST:TNG jumpsuit does VERY well all by itself without having to unzip or sexy up anything. To quote George Takei: "Oh mmyyy....."

I'm not posting the pic from A New Dawn, as it likely shows
someone from the alternate ST "Imperial" universe. (From reddit.com)

• I realize that for the sake of continuity that Governor Saresh had to disappear from Taris' questlines on SWTOR, but I still miss her. Even though my Smuggler was unable to successfully flirt with her. (Hey, it fit that the Old Man would find an older woman like Saresh attractive.)
  

  

  Yeah yeah yeah. I've heard that one before, Saresh.
  From Reddit.com

  
  
• Yesterday I pulled out my old copy of The Tolkien Scrapbook (now called A Tolkien Treasury) and perused the articles inside. The article The Evolution of Tolkien Fandom by Philip Helms reminded me how I really really wanted to run my own fanzine back in the day, using mimeograph to put everything together. But I never a) had the money for a mimeograph machine, and b) never really had the oomph to start and keep running a fanzine all by myself.
  
  And now the Tolkien fanzines at least are either mostly gone or have evolved into real scholarly works, and I'm not that into the History of Middle Earth series. Blogging is about as much of a "fanzine" mentality as I can handle.

A copy of Orcrist #3, circa 1969/1970, published
by the University of Wisconsin Tolkien Society.
From tolkienguide.com

• I've been tossing around the idea of splurging on a used Xbox 360 so I (and the mini-Reds) could play the Mass Effect trilogy (among other titles) without having to buy multiple copies of the game for the PC. I'd consider a 360 over the current gen consoles because the multiple disk games (such as ME2 and 3) aren't quite ready for backwards compatibility with the XBone, and the PS4 is now going to release yet another version of the PS4, and I don't want to get on that treadmill. Besides, I'm more likely to find a used 360 (or even a PS3) at garage sales than the current gen consoles, anyway.

As if I don't have enough things to do.
From masseffect.bioware.com

• The Boss has the day off, and is over watching Muhammad Ali's funeral procession on television (thank you, Chromecast). And the news just broke a short time ago that another sports legend, Canada's Gordie Howe, passed away. The fact that it is raining outside is somehow appropriate.

EtA: Fixed some grammatical issues.