Exquisite Hand-Tooled Vambraces

Frankly, these are utterly exquisite. I do think our leatherworker has outdone herself this time.

The designs are adapted from stock images, ranging quite widely from celtic beasts from the Book of Kells to heraldic beasts. There are some rather obvious attempts at tapping into recognisable motifs of the various live roleplay settings, including a green scarab bracer for Odyssey's Egypt (unlike real world Egypt, Odyssey's Egypt is rather more keen on green than blue.) There's also a very classical-seeming hippocampus (see left) again for Odyssey and various celtic knot-beasts.

There is a plan taking shape to commission some our local artists like Amy Clarke and Christopher Worth to design such armour for limited runs. Though it is (unsurprisingly) somewhat dependent on how well the vambraces do in the coming months.

And so, the tooled vambraces are finally available at £40 a pair on the Character Kit website.

More photos of the vambraces under the cut.

Flembic Splendour: Military Dress

part of a series of Maelstrom-related Portraits

done by Chris Brett

Current fashion is with the embroidered frock coat, although an impressive military uniform is still a popular choice amongst the rakish.

This dress was designed for the military-themed "Parade Ball' that the Flembic Ladies held at a Maelstrom even some years ago now. It is made with a navy light wool-mix (suiting, actually, now that I think about it), with yellow cord for the braiding and buttons from ebay. It was designed to be worn with white underskirts and a hoop skirt, but here it's worn with black trousers and a white linen shirt.

This was one of the very first pieces the Designer and I collaborated on, back when we were still drawing our concept art on paper dolls from a museum website's "design your own outfit!" children section. The picture was then scanned, tweaked and coloured (and repeatedly, indecisively recoloured) in Microsoft's Paint.

The decision was to have something that fit with the theme of the ball (uniforms and military parades) but still appear frivolous, with an undertone of a silly lady playing at being a soldier (rather than the a dashing lady who's actually in the military and shoots a dozen fallen before breakfast, which is rather more the norm in Flambard). The blue was chosen to match the outfit of a gentleman of my character's acquaintance at the time.

The beautiful rose scabbard is made by the inimitable Tim Baker (though chronologically could not have been worn to the aforementioned ball, but artistic licence and all). The sword was borrowed from the local fencing society.

To commission a similar coat-dress ensemble from the Mercenary would cost in the region of £180, though this is a very rough estimate due to the original being made quite some time ago, so you should probably just get in touch.

More photos of the military dress under the cut.