Cosmetic Heavy Armour: Brrokk Barrowbane

Here's how I've made up my armour appearance.

I've always liked the Armour of the Seven Fathers. I think it's mostly a well-designed, realistic looking, dwarvish set, coherent in appearance, but there are a couple of niggles. Here I am wearing the entire set.

Seven Fathers setSeven Fathers set

It's clearly based on some low-level pieces sold by armour vendors, but the textures make it look good. There's some dwarvish chain mail, and the individual pieces are marked with "runes" which match nicely. I like the score marks from combat too.

The main problem is: the helmet! This doesn't match the other pieces so well, and it looks like it was added to the set as an afterthought. What's more, it looks slightly too small; my ears are squashed. And why is it blue on top? (It can't be dyed). Finally, there are some odd clipping issues around the back of the neck, which seems strange considering that this is meant to be a whole armour set. Experiments have convinced me that the back of a character's neck is actually a component of the chest item being worn, which is why clipping happens with some chest/helmet combinations and not others. Here is a close view of the clipping:

Seven Fathers helmet

Oh, and one more thing: where has my hair gone? Some dwarves may be baldies, but I have thick flowing locks. Am I to assume that it's coiled up tightly in the helmet? That sounds uncomfortable.

Hair

For a while I made a vow that, when goblins were slain by me, the last thing they saw would be my face. This solved the problem in story terms, but I still experimented with various helms to see if the clipping could be solved. Here's another example of a low-level NPC-sold helmet dyed black, which worked quite well:

Fur helmet

A reasonable match, but I didn't like the rather "eastern" shape. Finally, one day in the School of Tham Mirdain, I picked up the solution: the Mutnul-Khudh. It's big enough, nicely detailed and matches the rest of the set well. Clipping isn't an issue although the effect on my hair is still mysterious if I think about it. Here it is, dyed black:

Mutnul-KhudhMutnul-Khudh back

I considered this an ideal look for some time, but eventually became dissatisfied with the chest piece. Yes, it's a good match for the rest of the set, but I began to feel that the whole effect is a bit drab. I experimented with swapping pieces out one at a time, and came to the conclusion that the chest piece was messing up the whole look by its drabness, and also those strange light areas under the shoulder pads. Inspriation struck when I got the chest piece of the Armour of Durin's Guard (here dyed black):

Durin's Guard chest

I didn't like giving up the rune decorations, but this is just the right colour level. It's been my standard heavy armour appearance for some time now. Just recently I've been able to add the Algraig shield and a cloak which dropped in Northcotton Farm (dyed, er, black). This cloak finally hides any neck-clipping problems and obviously my unruly hair is just hidden underneath it. (It's just a shame that crossbows and cloaks don't mix). Here's Brrokk Barrowbane at last in his fine armour, ready for battle:

Brrokk frontBrrokk back