Lol, when you craft or use a map while in a costume in LOTRO, it just floats there. I'm sure this looks even better on Gollum. (Amarthiel can totally craft with no hands, though)
@rohirric-hunter asked about the swan knights so! detail shots and swan knights post, oh, twist my arm! ;P The names might be... butchered Sindarin but I'm trying lol
From the right:
Angranc! Axe-master extraordinaire, Belfalas native, and long-time disregarder of the brain-cell. he's prepared for you to point at something and then go hit it. most trustworthy as a babysitter, least trustworthy holding a cheese tray
Súlduil! Twin 1/2. Left-handed swordsmaster and one of Imrahil's elite knights. Lover of pastry and despiser of seagulls. Champion swan-catcher three years running.
Firieth, Swan Knight and undercover Dol Amroth Ranger (they've got to have some, right? for all of Belfalas!) She's not one to play cards with, but she will win the shirt off your back at dice. Very fond of luring seagulls to places they shouldn't be
Rodiniel, full time Swan Knight, part time pest control officer of the Keep. First on call to kill spiders, last on call to clean up the fallout. Besties with the wharf cats, and procurer of dried flowers
Egduil, Twin 2/2. Right-handed swordsmaster and one of Imrahil's elite knights. Lover of fried vegetables and despiser of spiral staircases. First-Runner-Up swan-catcher three years running.
Laerandir, former spearman of the Blackroot Vale and runner-up for Swan Keep's Tidiest Bunk. Can hypnotize chickens but not swans, and therefore has a scar on his left- well, you get the picture.
Imrahil of Dol Amroth. Look at this man and tell me he's slept in the last week and a half. I dare you.
completely feral (justified)
and look at his boots! the render came out so nice
ok sorta-crack theory for why the Black Numenoreans are called Black Numenoreans despite being Very Pale (in LOTRO specifically I mean, that's where my support for this comes from)
I mean sure it works fine if you just say they're called that because they're serving the Dark Lord or their hearts are blackened in a more metaphorical sense, but a little idea came into my head and has been rattling around in my brain
(ok this ended up longer than expected, I'll need to put it under a cut)
so my thought kinda came from looking at them in LOTRO and being like "ok but why is their skin purple-grey????"
and then it hit me, their blood is black!
it probably has a lot to do with the evil sorceries they all seem to be so well-versed in, maybe the result of a ritual they willingly undergo to intentionally make themselves look Like That as a sort of badge of honor to them.
like a way to more clearly differentiate themselves from the other humans in Sauron's order, because if their one thing we know about these guys it's that their incredibly prideful. they're Black Numenoreans, the favored servants of the Dark Lord, entrusted with powerful magic, and they want everyone to know that! so of course they want black blood and yellow eyes and are willing to endure physical mutilation to get it, what self-respecting servant of Sauron wouldn't?
more support for this lies in the fact that in the early game, (iirc) the only purple-ish Numenoreans we see are Mordrambor and Amarthiel's other champions, y'know really high ranking dudes, and the lower ranking unnamed ones actually have pretty normal skin-tones.
it makes sense that Mr. "Horrible Dark Magic Man" Mordrambor would have these traits while the others haven't earned the right to it yet.
weirdly enough tho, later on as we get closer to Mordor every Black Numenorean you encounter seems to have it. I don't know if that's the devs retconing the idea that only higher-ranking guys have the Black-Blood™ and saying they all have it, or if the ones located within Mordor are considered More Important by default. because like, we see some labeled as "apprentice" who still have that signature purple-grey skin.
or maybe they've just been getting their character models mixed up and I'm overthinking this! (I mean that first picture of the Normal Looking Guy is actually from the Dale-Lands which is post-Mordor content sooo *shrugs*)
anyway I'm just rambling, I thought this was gonna be a short post but I guess now that I've started posting about my OC that has a Personal Connection™ to this stuff I now have Opinions and Theories about it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk I just think the visual of blackened blood is neat. yes my OC has black blood, what of it? am I not entitled to a little shameless edginess every now and then? as a treat?
(as for why Margim still bares those marks despite having never undergone any of those rituals and knowing approximately zero magic, it's probably that in some uncommon cases those traits can be passed down to their children. not often, but it happens. wow Margim is so lucky! :)))))
another thing about lotro that I love is that there’s not a lot of extra-canonical ‘damsel in distress’ situations for the leading women who would most likely not be in that situation in the first place. while i do, in fact, love it when that trope is well done, lotro doesn’t go for it at all with the main ladies TM. I think especially in the case of Galadriel, who is in a lot of what I’d call ‘expanded canon’ and is involved in expanded danger. but she’s never captured or has to be rescued by a someone in her party, including the pc
her husband Celeborn, however–
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