Saturday, 21 October 2017

Guarding Gorgoroth



I've been keen on making another Gondorian outfit for Eadyth for a long time now, and I've played around with many options, especially with having the idea of a plate-bearing tower guard. However, as Mordor is such a difficult area to survive in, I thought the idea of plates on a hunter not specifically defending against sieges wouldn't be too bad an idea.



Just like with Kyix's outfit, I love the way the metal reflects even whatever little light there is, and it really does seem to give hope to anyone in Mordor who needs it (which is mostly everyone, let's be real honest here). Also, as you may be aware, I couldn't help but jump on the bandwagon of using new quest and ash rewards to come up with this, having already being beaten to that by someone else on my own blog!



I still regret my computer's lack of ability to capture quality pictures like those you may find in Wandering Around Arda and Material Middle Earth, and that bugs me a lot that such great pieces are subject to this sort of unfortunate treatment. However, one must do the best they can, and this is, I swear, the very best that I can at the moment. The U.S. is way more expensive to live in than I anticipated, and I already expected it to be pretty hard.



If you look back at Eadyth's last Gondorian outfit, you will recognise that I kept the shoulders and quiver, just changing the dye on the shoulder cloth to fit the outfit better. I thought of this as those being her more personal articles of attire that she intends to keep over everything else that she changes and upgrades to. I think it gives the outfit a bit of a personality, as in we know it's Eadyth when we see those pieces.



Now, some may be wondering why there is so much green in this Gondorian outfit - and to you, I say to look to the captain to her left. He's not wearing blue, white or black like a 'typical' Gondorian might. A lot of this association, I feel, came from the movies, where basically Rohan = Green and Gondor = Silver/Black. While that is a great tool to distinguish characters from a distance in war scenes or establishing shots from far away, it's not how things work in LOTRO. Just play Helm's Dike (you don't really have to - I know you don't want to) and you'll see so many colours adorning the Rohirrim soldiers. Whilst blue is used more often in Gondor within LOTRO, you can still find soldiers not wearing those 'typical' colours. So, that is my long-winded justification for using green.



Head: Strong Helnet of the Reclaimed City (olive);
Back: Fine Elven Quiver (white);
Shoulders: Medium Nadhin Shoulders (olive);
Chest: Reinforced Chestplate of the Last Alliance (olive);
Hands: Burnished Gauntlets of the Dunland Warlord (white)*;
Feet: Lesser Cry of the West Boots (grey).

* This would look (though subtle) much nicer dyed with Lorien Gold, but I have not been able to find any of that for months, so I left it as white. However, if I get my hands on some, I will be re-dyeing this piece.