It really do be like that sometimes, though. =]

Content Warning: SELF-HARM, BLOOD, TORTURE REFS

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Sander Truman: There are those that think that a full plate harness makes the wearer slower than an arthritic snail carrying very heavy shopping. This is not so, and Sander is only too happy to teach them the error of their ways. It's still very tough, though, which suits him just fine. The armour itself is made in a style recognizable to an observer from our world as Italian white armour, but with some notable differences. His helmet looks more like an English-style three-barred lobster-tail helmet; its open face trades protection for visibility, a far more valuable asset for an unmounted adventurer in the Grass Sea. The gorget of his armour is rather thicker than normal, perhaps to protect against vampires. The pauldrons are unique in that they are asymmetrical: the left pauldron is large and having a raised ridge to aid face protection, while the right is more of a rerebrace, composed as it is of close-fitting separate bands that let the wearer's right arm be more mobile. The cuirass, or combined breast- and backplate, closes at the side in a modern style rather than at the back, as is more common in cheaper harnesses made for the rank and file of, say, large cavalry organizations. The fauld and tassets hang over a mail skirt, as does the culet or bum-plate. It's not vital, I just like the term bum-plate. The cuisses and greaves are single pieces of thick steel, with the knees covered by articulated banded poleyns that connect greave to cuisse; a thing of note about the poleyns is that each one's outermost plate has had something snapped off it and the subsequent mark filed down. Finally, since he is unmounted, he doesn't wear sabatons, instead opting for thick chocolate-brown leather boots with mail sewn into them that come up to about mid-calf. Oddly for something as obviously expensive as a tailored plate harness, it's almost entirely free from decoration, with what little there is only visible in the right light due to its having been diligently and painstakingly filed off. Those who know Sander's history with the Outer Orders know why it was filed off, and what that decoration was in the first place; they're keeping schtum about it and so should you. In contrast to the burnished but plain steel armour, Forgiveness is a work of art. It's a two-handed greatsword made of what someone from our world would immediately recognize as Damascus steel, the flowing patterns within the metal obviously not hailing from the armouries of Meadowkeep, even those of master weaponsmiths who would otherwise have outfitted someone of Sander's rank within the Outer Orders. The most obvious indication of it being foreign to the Grass Sea, however, is its shape: it is a flammenschwert, its blade wavy almost to the point of looking like a giant, straight-bladed breadknife. The crossguard is wide and thick, and the sword features a pronounced ricasso with parrying hooks as seen in the picture linked. Only Sander knows why this beautiful instrument of killing is called Forgiveness, and he's not telling.

Faceclaim: David Threlfall in Midwinter of the Spirit (right)

Cassandra Jane: Where Sander is decked out in the armour of the Outer Orders and, by extension, of Balazebal the Last, Cassandra Jane wears the traditional garb of the Free Peoples. She wears a flannel short-sleeved tunic, mid-grey in colour and decorated with a pattern similar to our world's tartan; the pattern is in lighter greys and blacks, and a reasonable reference may be found here. It's pinned at the left breast with an ornate bronze brooch in the shape of a horseshoe, long the unofficial symbol of the Free Peoples. It's useful for letting the other bands recognise each other in the Grass Sea, otherwise there'd probably be a lot more infighting and accidental skirmishes. Over her tunic, she sports a heavily adapted and decorated buff coat, liberated as a trophy from a cavalry commander of an Outer Order. The once plain tan leather has been dyed pitch-black and decorated with shimmering hagflints - round flints with holes worn in them by the passage of time or some other strange force, each one a little portal to the Feywild - that are sewn into the sleeves and along the front like brass buttons on a Royal Order officer's smart red coat. She wears it open most of the time. Like so many woman warriors of the Free Peoples, Cassandra favours a baggy trouser; hers are a dark grey, the colour of a storm cloud. Her dark brown leather sword belts are worn at the waist, each featuring just one sword each, which is very unusual. Normally, warriors of the Free Peoples carry a few different daggers as well; a sword won't do against every opponent, particularly the plate mail of a Knight of the Last King. Her power, though, is not just with swords, but magic as well. Thus she uses twin blades named Oath and Promise that look like our world's smallswords, their dextrous nature and fine points making them ideal for channeling her magic. Her flowing movements and precise carving of runes into the air form spells that burn and blast and shatter, and it is these that have kept her band safe from the predations of the Outer Orders for years. The final part of note is her elaborate facepaint, done on the eve of battle to help her channel her power and her warrior spirit. It's picked out in an ash grey and is a quite complex design, giving her a hawklike appearance.

Faceclaim: Lee-Anne Liebenberg in Doomsday (here)

Young Cassie: Cassie is a devout priestess and worshipper of Olwyn, the queen of the dawn and enemy of death. While the Ever-King holds all faiths other than the worship of himself to be the utmost heresy, he reserves a special hatred for gods like Olwyn; Balazebal's power is derived from death, from the Black Veil that cuts this world away from others, and gods of healing from any pantheon are absolute anathema to the Veil. Thus was Young Cassie's underground sect arrested by the Outer Orders and taken to the White Rooms to be brutalized for a decade. Being in there honed her connection to Olwyn out of desperation, as she healed herself and the only family she'd ever known over and over again. Once out in the world again, the only way she could channel the power of her goddess was through her own suffering, so entangled were the two things in her head. Despite Olwyn herself trying to heal this poor girl, keeping her in the bloom of youth for eighty years now, Young Cassie cannot heal her mind; she merely heals others, and uses her blood and pain to do it. She wears a simple, sleeveless, unembroidered tunic dress that reaches to her knees. It's a pale grey in colour and seems far too thin and short to properly keep the cold out during the winter months. One peculiar note is that the dress is also backless; she removed the panel because it was just getting in the way of her scourging. Her lash is a homemade thing, a black leather handle attached to a sheaf of long pig-iron chains; it never leaves her hands, even when she's asleep, and yet still has no name. The heavy chains themselves are bad enough, but some enterprising soul sought to attach heavy iron cubes filled with lead to the ends. It's these that cause the real damage, and when she works herself into a frenzy of self-mortification, these cause the wounds that take her longest to heal. A day or two at most, despite the flying blood that flecks her gown and leaves the sides speckled with rust-coloured spots. She wears little else than this backless dress; only a baggy burlap hood with crude eye-holes hacked into the fabric. The hood is undyed brown cloth, but still manages to be red at the edges. Draw your own conclusions.

Faceclaim: Danielle Harris in Hatchet III (TW: blood)

Dr. Cassiopeia: The Doc's not just a wizard, she's a historian; a student of ancient lore with both a long memory and a gift for copying the contents of spellbooks while nobody's looking. As such, she wears the robes of a scholar of magic. These robes are reminiscent of our world's panling lanshan, the traditional robes of the Chinese imperial scholar-bureaucrat. The good Doctor's robes are a voluminous affair, with wide, hanging sleeves that trail two feet down. The whole affair gives her the appearance of some kind of sailing ship, especially when she's in a hurry. The robes themselves are a dark grey, with the collar, cuffs, and edges trimmed in a pale blue to represent her study of higher-order arcana. The robe's sleeves are delicately embroidered in pale blue with a pattern of elaborate spirals and knots, each one representing a different spell she has mastered. The knotwork reaches up to her shoulders. Her robe is fastened by a wide and very long broadcloth belt knotted about the waist; it's the same shade of blue as the robe's trim, and the trailing tails of the belt are pinned in place by a silver horseshoe brooch. Completing the look is her long dark hair pinned back in a fashionable style with small wire-rimmed spectacles on her face. Underneath her robe she wears a long-sleeved shift dress of black velvet; upon her feet she wears black button boots of soft, stitched leather, a far cry from the hobnailed boots of her compatriots among the Free Peoples. Eladrin always were ones for the touch of class...

Faceclaim: Embeth Davidtz in Matilda (You knew who this was gonna be from the film title. Also bung some pointy ears on.)

The Witch of the Heath: First things first: the Witch is a firbolg. She's eleven feet tall. She's not exactly overburdened with clothing options. Still, she cuts quite a shambolic figure even by those low, low standards. Her pile of thick, curly hair spills down to the hollow of her back and has the same dark green colour as an old oak leaf. Her clothes are patched and mended and smell like dirt and growing things, which is probably to be expected considering her occupation as a druid. She wears an enormous grey cloak, held on with a clasp made not of metal but living wood, complete with leaves and berries sprouting from it. The thing is simple homespun cloth in sufficient quantity to act as a tent for anyone of conventional human size. It also features a hood, though when she wears it she looks like a pile of boulders with a load of vines hanging off them. Underneath, she wears a simple dark brown smock dress that's absolutely festooned with pockets, patches, and pouches of interesting stuff. It's worrying just how much stuff she has on her person at any given time, from old bits of string to interesting mushrooms to spell components to waterskins the size of a lamb that smell suspiciously of really, really strong booze. In similar vein, she carries around an enormous backpack full of... well, full of the things that won't fit in any of her pockets or pouches. On her feet are enormous gumboots that look like they'd be able to survive a direct hit from a ballista, and on her front is a heavy-looking leather apron with several arrows stuck in the front pocket. Finally, there's her staff Long Walk, which (as covered in the intro post for the party) is a huge slab of bog-oak from the marshy up-country of the Reaches. Fourteen feet long before we even get to the enormous granite hagstone lashed to the top with thick sisal rope, it's covered in so many charms, fetishes, and totems of magical power that it practically constitutes a flail, or possibly a shop. Given the size of the portal into the Feywild she's carrying around on the top of her staff, some might consider it overkill to have even more sources of power. Those people have never had to organize a fighting retreat from an entire Outer Order of heavy cavalry intent on butchering everyone in your band. A lot of blood was spilled that day.

Faceclaim: Jessie Cave in Various Harry Potter Films I'm Not Sure Where This Still's From Probably Half-Blood Prince (Except, y'know, a firbolg.)

CJ: CJ's outfit was already described in their intro post, with their mix of greys, blacks, and reds. They did name their sword, though. It's a rapier, a proper cup-hilted design but with the long blade in the style of our world's espada ropera, the Renaissance progenitor of what we call a rapier. The hilt appears at first glance to be wrapped in red-painted eelskin, but upon closer inspection the wrap doesn't look like it came from any kind of animal found in the Grass Sea. And there's some capital-W Weird Stuff in the Grass Sea. Much like Cassandra Jane's blades, CJ uses it to help cast their spells; unlike Cassandra Jane, however, they aren't using it to draw signs in the air. Instead, it's there as part of the presentation, part of the show needed to make the magic happen and channel the madness inside their soul into something tangible, or at the very least productive. A lot of people wonder why the people in the League of the Weald, especially people like Sander who normally suffer fools like CJ about as gladly as they would a dose of galloping syphilis, but those people haven't seen CJ backed into a corner. Their pact tome appears in the form of a long scroll that seems to go on far longer than the size of the case would imply, it rolls out, and then all bets are off. The many-angled magic of the warlock's patron is unpredictable, yes, but they've managed to rip apart an entire squadron of heavily-armoured knights in one single gibbering moment of squamous horror. Sander knows a thing or two about needing time to come to terms with a new reality, and sees them with compassion as well as exasperation at their cringe-inducing antics outside of battle. This is evidenced by Sander being the only person aside from CJ who knows that their rapier is named Volunteer, and who knows why.

Faceclaim: Fairuza Balk in The Craft. (Presumably addressing her memories, her patron, or both.)

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So, that's the costume porn for this set. I tried to have a themed colour scheme - grey - mixed with an additional colour representing their relationship to my own mental health. Sander, my protective streak, gets white. Cassandra Jane, my love of wordplay, gets silver. Young Cassie, my self-destructive tendencies, gets rust-orange. Dr. Cassiopeia, my trivia memory, gets blue. The Witch of the Heath, my desire for growth, gets brown. CJ, my dramallama tendencies, gets black.

I hope these are of interest and use to anyone who reads them.

...about the adventures that result when the Twisteys, Kaitlyns, and Scapegraces all meet. That would just be so fun!

-Twistey