Wish: Guardian of Dale

Most wishes I receive from readers are role-playing based. I love working on these, because I often learn much about the lore. This was also the case of an outfit for Edna, a female guardian of Eldar server. She is a character of Edward of Les Furets du Gondor, one of the biggest LoTRO fansites of the Francophone community. Edward described Edna as a very strong woman, about 45 years old, honouring her Dale origin. She wears no cloaks, nor helms or hats.

Edward outlined the requirements for Edna's outfit:

• battle ready and heavy,
• colour scheme around burgundy, red, crimson, brown and eventually some green shades,
• no cloaks, helms or hats used, only circlets,
• if possible, matching Angmar Prized Steed of the Free People,
• and most importantly, outfit should be Dale themed.

He also sent me current picture of Edna:

I did a little research on Men of Dale, but I wasn't successful in learning more about their clothing habits. We can assume they mostly wore cold climate suitable clothes, but that's basically all - all I found was a few fan art pictures which didn't show many common characteristic features different from other men clothing. So I took a free hand and sent Edward first two designs without any specific elements of Dale origin:

In the first design, I went for a simple combination of good old ringmail and burgundy/gold plate. The chest piece creates nice cleavage and is still functional. Boots and gauntlets are also plated to offer protection of crucial bones. There is a simple touch of elven design on the leggings and shoulders, but they make the ringmail interesting. Edward loved the asymetric spaulders. But as men of Dale got their weapons and armours from the dwarves of Erebor, it would seem inappropriate to incorporate such significant elven influence into the outfit. However, he decided to try other combinations keeping the circlet, chest piece, gauntlets and boots from this outfit.

In the second design, I tried a more colourful and daring combination. I reused the beautiful Annúminas pieces Edna was already wearing, with goal to still match the horse. I thought the outfit looked interesting from back also, which might be an advantage when staring at character's back while playing. However, Edward didn't like this design - it's a mixture of styles and doesn't fit Edna at all.

So, we decided to try more leggings to pair with the rest of design number one, adding furry shoulders Edward liked. I was a little worried because I knew the elven leggings I used before are the only ones with this type of ringmail. All the others (man, westernesse and dwarf ones) have much bigger rings in the ringmail and it looks much less "noble". Also, they don't match the chest very well, so I knew I will have to experiment with the chest pieces as well. I sent Edward different chest & legs variations of design 1:

I also offered to try something completely different, in case Edward didn't like any of the combination. In the end, he was happy with number 1 and 5, but asked for the "different" design, to be more sure of his choice :) Meanwhile, I also thought of other combinations, so I sent him both new (hauberk) designs and more variations of the design 1:

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I'm personally not a big fan of hauberks, especially on women, but I thought they could work as they have clear dwarf (design3) and man (design4) heritage. Anyway, I was happy when Edward said he also didn't like hauberks, but totally loved the first of the new design 1 variations, with the dragon scale!

I read a few more notes on Men of Dale and learned they were fighting the dragons of Lonely Mountain for a long time. I created the design 1 variation using dragon scale armour, so the outfit could be justified as wearing trophies of Edna's enemies. This fit Edna's role-play very well, because she's already had legendary weapons named after dragons.

The piece I listed as a chest piece in a shopping list for Edward was drop from Rift. He wanted to avoid stalking the AH, so he found the same looking armour in skirmish camp. Now, we proudly present Edna in her new signature armour :) Being heavy and protective, it still allows enough agility to move around the enemies and doesn't limit the character's movement.

This outfit consists of:
Chest: Breastplate of the North-Drake, burgundy dye (drop from the Rift; also available as Frost Covered Hauberk from Skirmish heavy armour barter)
Legs: Scalemail Leggings, burgundy dye (Heavy armoursmith vendor; also available as Restorated Soldier Leggings bartered for Arnorian coins in Evendim)
Head: Ceremonial Hat of the Elder Days, default dye (Skirmish barter - Cosmetic vendor, Rift cosmetics)
Shoulders: Fated Westfold Campaign Shoulder Guards, burgundy dye (T7 crafted)
Hands: Hyrde-folme, burgundy dye (Dunland quest)
Feet: Rusted Boots of the Dunland Berserkers, burgundy dye (Dunland quest)

What do you think of the outfit? Please let us know in the comments! :)