Glass Elves
Appearance;
The original elven race; has an extended life. While other elves live for 300 years, Glass elves live for thousands. Reason for shortened life spans of other elves is because they are cross breeds of Glass elves and other races, reducing the life and changing the skin-tones and abilities.
These elves are not unlike other elves in appearance; similar ear shape and prominent cheek bones and jawline. They are average in height. Their skin however is what gives them their name. It is slightly translucent, as are all of their internal organs. Their veins are clear and so is their blood, meaning that it is difficult to tell if they are bleeding. Because of the unique way their bodies deal with incoming light (to protect their organs from UV damage) the water cells in the body reflect and refract light before it reaches the dermis which make it seem like they are more opaque, or to making them practically invisible in the dark.
Because of long life, they own magics which have been lost to the other races over time. They have not shared the abilities because they have been removed from society as a whole, living underground due to a grudge. They have great abilities, not due to natural skill but because of their life span. The ability to learn has been passed down to the other races in forms of natural skill. The different races the Elves bred with affected the skills they inherited based on the races own skills.
Culture;
They are a non-traditional race due to the vast length of life, as they see many races come and go. They act more like advisors to races; pointing them in the right direction but not influencing directly. They integrate into other races societies and adapt to their culture to form the path of least resistance; to ensure that others are not offended or threatened by their longevity and archaic knowledge.
They have a form of family/clan system which keeps the races free of incest and keeps them equally distributed. Each new generation of child is moved with their mother and father to a new family elsewhere in the world. The mother and father are sent to raise the child and impart knowledge of other customs to the new family while the child is sent to breed with an entirely new family. This system can be used as a bartering system or a peace offering between families.
Their History;
They have a proud streak which caused the downfall of the race. The Leader of each clan family is responsible for their entire group. Their responsibilities include living arrangements and locations. When the leaders have a grudge, they may force the family to retreat into seclusion until the grudge has been sorted out or forever.
One fateful day, the Gods themselves decided to change a decision of the race the Elves were counselling and had worked hard to achieve this decision. The decision to over-rule the Elves had angered all the leaders; not because the decision had been changed, but because the Elves and Gods had a long-standing agreement that the gods would keep out of major race choices. Both the Elves and gods could direct, but not force and the Gods had broken this agreement. So the Elves retreated. And as the gods refused to remove their decision or acknowledge their wrongdoing, the Elves stayed there. The races they were counselling fell and disappeared without them. The gods cursed the Elves for their pride and made it so the females could only birth one pure-breed child and die in the process. Cross-bred children would survive and so would their mothers but the Elves were too proud to forget the grudge for the sake of the race.
The race dwindled and no family knew whether other families still survived as contact had been cut off. Finally, the leaders died. The more zealot of the successors kept grudge of the predecessors, while the more forward thinking decided it was time to go. The remainders emerged 4000 years from the Day for Retreat, to find a world so different from what once was. Some of the elders retreated again to the land they knew, while the younger few (700 years old) decided to explore.
Thel’alain (th-ell-al-ayne) is one of these elves. She is of the Family of Qoravan (koor-a-van)
Before you start, let’s decide what she is good at.
Strength – Affects weapon damage
Dexterity – Affects trap detection, evasion and escape
Charisma – Affects how others perceive you
Luck – Affects how lucky you are
For a standard of working, I use a proportional body 'template' I drew a few years ago. It is a front back and side of a woman I used when studying fashion design in College. The way my model stands allows for clothing movement. Below is my first attempt at my character;
I drew a front and side for this attempt. I considered movement in Armour and came to the decision that a solid breastplate and Tuille would slow down movement, be difficult to move in and very heavy. I instead opted for small, overlapping plates attached to a mail vest; this is similar to a snakes scales, allowing greater range of movement. I reduced the Tuille down to a small, triangular patch over the groin to allow the ability to crouch and sneak. I didn't opt for the scale direction when designing the Vambraces, Cuisse and Greaves. These sections of the body have no movement throughout and it seemed wrong to have the same build there too.
The front view. The Greaves stretch from above the ankle to below the knee and the Cuisse from above the knee to the upper thigh. The Vambraces are from above the wrist to below the elbow on the back of the arm. The underside is left open
The side view. As you can see, the breastplate, Tuille, Cuisse, Vambrace and Greaves all stop halfway around the limbs and are secured with leather straps. This is to allow for ease of movement. The character is not designed for a rear attack and is heavily vulnerable from this point. The cloak not only keeps the character warm, but also hides this fact from others. It seems like the character is nude under the armour, but that was not meant to be the case, I just didn't draw in the clothes as I moved onto another character.
New Character!
Using the same template, I redrew the front of my character but this time abandoning the entire idea of Armour. I placed her in a dress and corset, with the cloak still. Under her dress is a pair of shorts to keep her dignity when climbing and creeping.
In this picture, she has a few leather belts around her waist holding a knife and a medium sized satchel which would be where her inventory is kept. She also has a leather strap around her lower left arm. This is for when she uses two handed weapons, and it would act like a form of shield, deflecting blows from her forwards arm. She has a bow and quiver on her back. The dress is knee length and has a cut up the left side to allow for movement. The dress was supposed to be cream coloured but the paper was the same colour so I used yellow to make it stand out. The corset is red and has no boning, just folded fabric where the bones would be. Steel boning would restrict movement and would really hurt if it came out. The corset is just a aesthetic piece.
Above is a crouching pose of the character. Her dark shorts are visible behind her arm. During this drawing and the one below, I forgot that her dress had a slit in it and didn't draw it in.
This picture is the one I am most happy with. It is a crawling/creeping pose similar to Spiderman or Catwoman. Here the shorts are clearly visible and thought of for this very reason. None of my characters have faces as these images are fairly small and a detailed face would be difficult to do. I have decided to study faces a little more.
