Just two renders today ... too busy to even think, and my health is a major problem again. But I did manage to have these rendering in the background while I was doing other stuff, and --
The plot thickens. These follow on from yesterday's renders, where a story was spinning itself. And the plot surely does thicken indeed! The general just appeared ... the one for whom the hostage (who could be a courtesan) has been waiting. And he's worth seeing at full size:
This is one of my favorite faces -- he's an absolute beauty! Sometimes, when you're designing a face nothing works and you wind up ditching the whole thing and starting over. Other times it all falls together and something gorgeous just happens:
[That's the Journeyer Scout costume with all the textures changed; and these two renders today are both raytraced ... I could afford the time because I was working on other stuff while these chugged away in the background (boring, boring, boring work going on in the foreground).]So here's the plot, as it unfolds itself: the general is sunny side of 30, a great warrior since the age of 14, trained for the role ... his father died in battle when he was still a little kid, his grandfather has been his mentor, and passed away on his deathbed in extreme old age four years ago, leaving the kingdom in this guy's hands, to keep it safe. Hence, after each victory he takes a wife, a hostage, a courtesan, to guarantee the fealty of their enemies...
But what few people knew is that these two, here, have been mates (probably in every sense of the word) since they were kids, and this arrangement ... suits them right down to the ground. The dude with the serious hair is the youngest son of a priest-king from the other side of the mountain -- and they'd love to be on another jihad. The fact their youngest prince is a hostage will keep them good for a while...
Mind you, if/when the priest-king loses patience and launches the jihad anyway, the general here is supposed, under the law, to execute the hostage. By which time these two are -- close, if you take my meaning. And there's the pivot point of the classic romance.
To borrow a phrase, "Write your way out of that one, Joan Wilder!"
Jade, March 8
