Day 27 of #28DaysOfBlackCosplay2021 showcasing @panteronacosplay in her UNBELIEVABLE Queen Neptulon costume build! You MUST visit her page to see the video! Unreal! 🙌 • • • • • • Trinidad and Tobago Queen Neptulon: The Tidehunter! Elemental Goddess of Water! Write up below........... This cosplay was a doozy and I am proud to say it is my most difficult, detailed and challenging project yet! I entered this into @blizzard Cosplay Contest for #Blizzconline this year...finally! I initially made it for Blizzcon last year but was unable to finish it in time so when this online competition came around it was the perfect opp to get it done. I designed the costume obviously using the actual character (Neptulon the Tidehunter) as very close reference. Being possibly the first contestant from Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean, I wanted to reinterpret him not only as a Queen but also incorporating elements and design features of my own, influenced heavily from organisms found in the Caribbean ecosystem and also stylistic and crafting elements found in our carnival crafting culture. I created 8 coral sections in total showcasing a total of 5 coral types (carnation coral, tubular/organ coral, two types of table coral and a brain coral piece along side various rock and barnacle formations). We here in Trinidad and Tobago have the largest brain coral in the world as one of our big tourist attractions and I wanted to pay homage to that and the Buccoo Reef found in our sister isle by recreating it on my cosplay! Unfortunately, the state of the reef has been deteriorating over the years and coral bleaching is also an issue so I tried to also mimic some aspects of that on the brain and table coral pieces in my look. The cosplay was shot on location at Tyrico beach here in Trinidad 😀 I will be sharing more factoids about the costume and build in my other posts so if you are into that sort of thing, stay tuned! Photography @gurukast.photos Special shout out to Dwayne for all the help in getting it done! #blizzard #blizzardentertainment #neptulon #elemental #tidehunter #blizzardcosplay #blizzconline2021 #cosplaysubmission #tyrico #trinidad #tobago #coralreef https://www.instagram.com/p/CL01xLlj5sW/?igshid=ygxblbixib1l
I was surprised when Neptulon showed up in the shaman order hall. Um, like, weren’t you being kidnapped by Azshara/The Old Gods/a kraken last we saw you? What happened?!
Oh well, he gave me Hydraxis as a follower, so I’m not going to ask questions.
Now if only there was a mission where I could make Hydraxis go to a zone on a different continent, go out into the middle of nowhere, swimming through an area full of elites, in a time when water-walking mounts didn’t exist yet, to a tiny island, to pick up a unique reagent necessary for a raid every single week. (Why yes, I did do Molten Core in vanilla, how did you guess?)
Sketch sheet for Tsunami. Top left is a simple harness so Neptulon doesn’t fall off when she’s speeding through the water. It’s just some straps around her wings and across her back with ropes to hold onto/latch his feet into. Tsunami is an ice mantarune and uses ice magic to take down her opponents. She often leaves the clan shore for months at a time to mate or just wander the sea, then returns to deliver her young and resume her normal, aggressive, reef guarding.
And bottom left is ??? because she can’t stand like that but it was cute.
Neptulon has a mantarune familiar by the name of Tsunami. Tsunami is incredibly aggressive and will only allow Neptulon to handle him. The ray is useful for deterring predators (and sometimes maren...) from the reef and undersea cave lairs. Nep can be seen riding the ray from time to time, patrolling the shore.
[[ The Sea Witch Lady Naz’jar first appears to the player in the Quel’Dormir gardens of Vashj’ir in the Shimmering Expanse. She is a part of the questline “Visions of Vashj’ir Past” in which the player, with the help of Wavespeaker Valoren (a member of the Earthen Ring), attunes with the owner of a blade belonging to a Naz’jar Battlemaiden, Nar’jira. The blade brings memories of Nar’jira’s battles with Kvaldir during their invasion of Vashj’ir, culminating in her victorious crowning as the Champion of Azshara by Naz’jar herself. Naz’jar also earned Azshara’s favor during this time due to her involvement in the Nagas’ victory against the Kvaldir.
Later on, she is the one of the bosses in the Cataclysm dungeon “Throne of the Tides” located in the Abyssal Maw complex. She is spearheading the Naga’s assault upon Tidehunter Neptulon, lord of the ocean and a former servant of the Elder Gods. Naz’jars’ ultimate goal seems to be his capture using a Kraken named Ozumat, and the capture of his throne (with the aid of the faceless ones, servants of the Old Gods themselves). Capturing the Throne and Neptulon would, according to Naz’jar, solidify Azshara’s control over the entire ocean and enable the Naga to “look beyond”, (and possibly kickstart their long-planned invasion of the surface world). Her partner in this venture is Commander Ulthok, one of the leaders of the Faceless Ones. The fight with Naz’jar involves taking down many of her minions (Honor Guards and Tempest Witches) while dealing with her abilities: Summon Geyser, Fungal Spores, Shock Blast, and Waterspout. She also summons a Water Vortex which, if it touches the player, will suck them in for five seconds, dealing 5000 points of damage per second. Her death brings the following rewards: in Normal: Lightning Whelk Axe, Aurelian Mitre, Wrasse Handwraps, Periwinkle Cloak, and Entwined Nereis. In Heroic, the same items appear to be dropped, but with higher stats.
Fun Facts and Speculation:
--A player can earn the achievement of “Old Faithful” in Heroic difficulty mode, by getting Lady Naz’jar to kill one of her minions using the Water Vortex. To do this, the player has to deal damage to one of the Honor Guards or Tempest Witches, then position them where a Vortex might erupt.
--In the graphic novel “Pearl of Pandaria“, a Sea Witch who bears a striking resemblance to Naz’jar is seen ordering a naga named Zahara Darksquall to find the continent of Pandaria, saying it holds the “future of Azeroth”--Wowpedia.
--Nar’jira, the Battlemaiden from the “Visions of Vashj’ir Past”, was thought to be slated to appear in an Abyssal Maw instance that was later scrapped by developers.
--During the “Visions of Vashj’ir Past” quest chain, Lady Naz’jar is seen remarking to Nar’jira that “Lady Vashj is nothing like her mother. It is little wonder that she left this city ages ago” (in reference to Vashj’ir). One can take several meanings from this cryptic comment. To begin with, if the player looks at the commentary on Lestharia Vashj’s statue (Lady Vashj’s mother), it is stated that Lestharia ruled Vashj’ir justly for many centuries. As the statue is of a Kaldorei it may be assumed that Lestharia was Kaldorei at the time of the inscription. It is possible that Lady Vashj was sent to Azshara as befitted her station as daughter of nobility, but that Vashj ended up going in a very different direction than her mother intended, or simply, that Vashj did not necessarily approve of the way her mother did things, or care to maintain her mother’s empire after the Sundering. Another entirely different line of thought might be that Lestharia Vashj’s position as a “just” ruler in the past may have seemed a weakness to a savage race such as the Naga and, as Lady Vashj is the near embodiment of perfection among their kind, that she was a vast improvement over her mother. This is pure speculation, of course, but the comment raises many questions that the Blizzard lore-masters have yet to answer. Whatever the case, in this writers mind, it strongly suggests that Naz’jar had close ties to the Vashj family.
“Fish Fridays” is a look into the various Naga personalities that populate the waters of Azeroth and Draenor, to gather all their histories and lore into one place, and to give our worthy readers a greater sense of the Naga world and the creatures Vashj often interacts with. Information is mostly gleaned from these sites: wowwiki, thottbot , wowhead , the world of warcraft tcg database, wowpedia, or my Warcraft roleplay books (apparently no longer seen as canon), artbooks and novels (copyright Blizzard Entertainment). ]]
