Okay, it sort of resembles bikini armor. But, thanks to the sea-serpent skin portion, the ratio of bare skin to armor is much lower than your typical artwork. Maybe call it one-piece swimsuit armor.
I think it's time for me to explain the insanity of fairy knights and their armor preferences. It's fair to criticize its obvious shortcomings, but that's from the human perspective on armor.
The ero design is not just Mother having fun at my expense, no matter how much I feel like it is. It's actually the standard practice of fairy knights. Fairies don't bulk up like human fighters, and they are difficult to damage even without armor, so they like to use skimpy stuff that puts their lithe figures on display, to mess with the minds of male opponents while fighting. Apparently it's especially effective against orcs.
I inherited these physical traits, so Mother insists that I use my looks the same way any other fairy knight would. In her words, 'You are a fairy, you are a knight, so you are legitimately a fairy knight. You must take pride in it.' It seems a lot of fairy knights were knighted by someone other than the king of the fairies. Being knighted by Uncle Owen was sufficient.
What do male fairy knights wear? No such thing. All fairy knights are female.
Male fairies are extremely few in number, and they seldom participate in combat. Given the extreme ratio of female fairies to male fairies, they're too busy drowning in feminine companionship and other pleasures. If they do fight, they stand alone, and they don't bother with armor or rules, since they are frighteningly strong creatures with no interest in knighthood, or service, or questing.
# # #
Drusella stepped back and admired the results briefly, then allowed the guys back into the smithy and woke her grandfather.
The way he had been sound asleep while his workers were hammering away, I was surprised at how fast Firgolmir came awake. But, dwarves seem to switch gears at ridiculous speed. Dead drunk or sound asleep one minute, hard at work the next.
"You should try out all motions, not simply swing your sword around," he critiqued while I was testing the new armor in the back yard of the smithy.
He and Drusella had come out to observe me, and from the door into the smithy, several of Firgolmir's underlings were watching as well.
I nodded and tried running in place, sitting, kneeling, laying down, standing up. Everything was fine until...
"What about your wings?" he demanded. "I want to know if that flap worked."
Here I was about to fly five hundred miles in the stuff, and I had totally forgot about that. That was a bit embarrassing.
The way I materialize my wings, they sprout and grow out of my back. I can make them materialize in the folded position only with great difficulty; instinctively they want to appear at about three quarter spread, grow from mini to full size, then fully open.
The back flap on my tea gowns, or this armor, gets pushed out of the way in the process. It works well for the silk or taffeta material of the dresses, but...
I frowned at the resistance from the wyvern hide as my wings came out. It was considerably less than comfortable. After a moment, I decided I needed to try it out in practice.
I don't fly quite like a bird. It's true that I get a lot of propulsion from wing strokes the same way a bird does, and like a bird, I steer by flexing and warping my wings. But I also use wind magic, and that allows me to take off and hover in a way that would be unnatural for a bird. I rose into the air with a series of wing beats and grimaced.
Settling back into the scrapyard, I shook my head. "The flap just doesn't work. It interferes with my wings as I move them. Take it off."
Firgolmir stroked his beard and scratched his sideburn as he puzzled over the flap, saying, "It might be possible to give it a bit more flexibility at the attachment."
I shook my head. "No time. Take it off."
It occurred to me as Drusella removed the flap that Mother was going to be thrilled with all the bare skin of my upper back. That galled me, but I couldn't see any choice.
# # #
Flying in my armor was more work than without it, but it was a lot easier than lugging my armor in a sack. The only issue I had was that the bases flapped in the airstream like Superman's cape, but that was tolerable.
My speed outward was faster than it had been inbound, and a lot less tiring, and only five hours into my journey, I was already winging my way past that village and following the road that the party was taking northward when I last saw them. Cara Ita lay seventy miles beyond that.
In this region, a simple dirt road cut through untamed wilderness, and the border crossing was a pair of garrisons facing each other next to a pair of crossing gates. I spotted it in the distance and immediately landed before anyone spotted the 'succubus' approaching.
Tiana Full Battle Mode identified that danger without a problem, but when I began blithely walking toward the crossing without considering any alternative, I realized that FBM was Tiana operating on her experience alone. And she was a very straightforward, honest sort of girl.
In other words, she didn't have years and years behind her of reading stories about evil villains, underhanded tactics, treachery, dishonesty, dirty tactics... worse, she wasn't even very experienced at human interaction. Not to mention she wasn't human in the first place. Her skills at reading the character of human enemies was at best questionable.
"Let's think about this, Tiana" I told myself as I walked. "We have no idea what happened to the Hero's Party. We have no idea if the Kingdom of Hamagaar is involved. We don't know if the border guards are honest or taking bribes. The other side of the border is not run under the tight legal structure of Orestania. In fact it's a minor country with weak organization that is well-known for being a haven for bandits and slavers. There were any number of ways that my presence could be reported to the enemy ahead of time, or that I could be detained or delayed.
"The last thing we want to do is show up saying 'Hi, I'm a royal knight of Orestania, here's my identification papers'!"
Let me make something clear. I am not developing multiple personalities.
I think.
Thus it came to pass that Robert vetoed Tiana's plan to walk straight up to the border crossing. From the air, I had seen a ridge of broken hills running parallel to the road a couple miles to the left, so I came up with a plan to find them and follow them into the neighboring kingdom instead. The forest swallowed me up in no time.
I walked without incident for about a half mile, until my fairy senses felt the approach of a monster. At the very last second, I dodged left.
Where I had just been, a wolf went sailing through the air past me. I immediately leapt right again, because another was coming through the spot where I had just escaped to. By this time, I had my hand on the hilt of my sword. Drawing and whirling in one move, I slashed the neck of a third wolf, whose legs were splayed wide with skin flaps between front legs and hind legs stretched tight to catch the air. He sprayed a lethal quantity of blood as he passed.
The remainder of the pack veered away, having now realized the fact that I was dangerous.
Flying wolves look like natural beasts, but they are mid-level monsters. They use their skin flaps just like flying squirrels, and if they just used gravity like their squirrel kindred spirits, they would drop like rocks because their surface to mass ratio is too high. But just like me, they use wind magic for propulsion.
It not only makes them crazy fast, it allows them to actually fly, not just glide to a lower altitude like flying squirrels. As the pack circled around for another attack, Tiana's brain began warming up for combat, identifying enemy positions, priming for the next wave...
But the Robert side was thinking, 'Tiana's a battle junkie. We should just outrun them.'
Tiana vs. Robert had become my version of fight or flight.
I sprang into the air and was flying low above the forest canopy immediately. The wolves gave pursuit and together we flew toward the ridge that was my destination.
Hmmm..... Has she considered drinking some of that monster blood? Even if it tastes like rocks, she should give it a try.
I wonder if Tiana will eventually visualize the Tiana vs Robert personality conflicts as a shoulder angel and devil or something like that....and which one would be which.
I wonder if Tiana is going to end up unintentionally bringing a pack of air wolves with her when she runs into someone else...and if she'll use that to get away from both the wolves and whoever she runs into.
So fairy armor is mostly decorative since fairies are much tougher than humans? I wonder if Tiana's skin is as tough (or tougher) as regular fairy skin and she'll be able to get away with the skimpy armor (aside from her sensibilities not liking the skimpy armor for aesthetic/embarassment reasons). Have we seen Tiana's skin toughness described yet? We know she was injured/killed by the dragon and she's been injured by some weapons (I think?), so she's definitely not invulnerable (yet?), maybe she'll get better personal defense/protection once she's able to start using magic aside from instinctive? Since Robert's personality is in the mix of the new Tiana, I think she might be able to learn to use magic now since she may be able to get past whatever was blocking the original Tiana from learning magic
The fairy gender ratio thing reminds me of the Viera from Final Fantasy and the Gerudo from Legend of Zelda
I think if she had tougher skin or a tougher body i'd be more ok with the skimpy Knight amour. A double standard I know
@Sirris_Velka Well, thinking of it differently-do you think male skimpily clothed barbarians/berserkers and such are dumb/underdressed? It’s not a direct equivalent to the female bikini armor, but it’s fairly close.
On the other hand there are all sorts of shirtless/open chested “armors” that you can see male characters with, like men that only wear leg armor and no upper armor, or they have an armored coat that isn’t buttoned up. They usually have the same concept of either not needing the armor because they’re tough, or they don’t want to wear it for whatever reason
@MarkofWisdom Yeah I get what you mean, I do think they're underdressed as well. I guess I don't really think about it when I well think back on it. About how "underdressed" they are whether in fiction, games or other stuff
Thanks for replying back btw
@Sirris_Velka Yeah, I think it's something a lot of people make jokes about and such (dumb barbarian's gonna get himself shot, etc.), but otherwise mostly tune out. I think there was a time a while back where people didn't think much about the female fur bikinis/bikini armor, but it became more noticed later when the concept was used poorly so much-a lot of old fantasy book covers have scantily clad women on them, as an example. Though-there are also *tons* of shirtless/scantily clad men on romance novel covers, so it's not like they're being neglected/ignored.
On a somewhat related note I remember seeing some videos and analyses on decorative female armor in games/books and how if there were widespread female knights and warriors back when full heavy armor was the main thing it would probably look fairly close to what some games/books describe it as-varying from being basically indistinguishable from male armor except for a bit more chest room, to being the highly decorative armor with lots of impractical/ceremonial extra details and such to emphasize that the wearer is female. Also that there were a lot of male armors back in the day that were similarly detailed/decorative, even to the point of being impractical. I've seen at least a few stories/games that have a bad guy end up falling because the armor they used was too impractical like being weighed down with tons of gold and detailing
It was interesting to be reminded of this series after so long. The author stopped releasing it on this site and moved it entirely to another site, and I eventually just kinda lost interest in the story. It started really interesting, then got less so as the story went on =\
@MarkofWisdom Yeah I, not too long ago, started reading the rest of the series as I got to the end of what's on here,
I dropped it or maybe put it on hold? as Tiana's grandmother taught her how to conserve? her blood that she intakes and is able to take out her fangs at will. Something like that
I agree that it got less interesting as it went on, somethings left a bad taste in my mouth in what occurred. That's also some interesting information to know by the way!