Under sun and sky

A little over 3 years ago I asked Farlibarcai to port this Musa outfit from BDO, partly because I didn't have access to the original models and above all because, let's be honest, I was lazy and it was nice to have someone else do the dirty work in my place.

Back then, however, I didn't have a suitable character for wearing this kind of outfit so I decided to store the files on my hard drive and wait for the right moment to dust them off. It seems that that moment has finally arrived. My most recent character Mana is the perfect actor for sporting oriental style clothes thanks to his Akaviri social and cultural background.

Of course I wanted to add my personal touch to the outfit and, after fixing some clipping issues here and there, I embellished it with a shamisen and two katanas. The final design is hopefully a good mix of Chinese, Korean and Japanese elements. Only one katana is functional, the other one is part of the scabbard and it's there only for aesthetics. The Lotus Shamisen was made by DaveGouge in Maya and can be found online. 

This mod can also be considered sort of a testing subject. In fact I've been experimenting with NifSkope properties in the attempt to implement animations and special effects, even though the game's engine does not support animations for skinned meshes. As expected some properties work effectively whereas other don't. The alpha transparency controller for example works like a charm and allowed me to make the body tattoos glow at regular intervals. Simple animations such as rotating meshes instead, despite being displayed correctly in NifSkope, will glitch like crazy in game (possibly a problem on my end).

Nonetheless I used a workaround to incorporate a rotating arcane glyph in the shoe file. The transparency may act up when you look at the glyph from certain camera angles but overall the result is acceptable and gives the outfit a magic vibe. By the way, while the shoes are equipped a dedicated script will boost sneak, athletics and acrobatics by 2 points each.

Lastly, I attached a Mini Musa to the katana. It doesn't do anything special, it just floats around your shoulder, but it's really cute. It comes from Fiesta Online and it's similar to Chakaru's Mini Lich. I retextured its face to make it look even cuter. I like to think it's the spirit of a warrior defeated in battle that dwells in the sword. 

On a side note, this armor was specifically made for Mana, who will be released later as a playable race, therefore it only includes a SLAth body option. It comes with two variants: one is fully clothed, the other one is shirtless leaving half of the torso and the tattoos exposed. The set can be purchased from Maro Rufus at The Best Defense in the Imperial City Market District.