Deedlit & Ashram from Record of Lodoss War

Originally, we made those costumes for WCS Russian preliminaries in 2013 (and we actually took 2nd place then with those costumes). Making armor was a pain then, ’cause we wanted to fight in them, and anime designers definitely NOT taken in account the usability of, say, Deedlit’s armor or Ashram’s neck-piece. Also, the cloaks should be HUGE to match anime (more then 5*2 meters of fabric in each cloak). And I had troubles with Deed’s ears, wig and diadem. But we managed somehow :) Both swords are steel, with hand-made guards and handles, for we are always fighting with steel foils, swords and such.

As for the characters - I love Deedlit in original RPG game best, she’s strong and independent there. In OVA she’s strong when alone, as soon as Parn is near she seems to became the embodiment of ’damsel in distress’ or something. Still. she’s a fighter, and definitely good :) Ashram, on the other hand, seems evil, though somehow lawful evil, with his own moral principles.

We think of those two as a weird sort of yin-yang, good versus evil. A good pair to stage a fight, light armor and speed and light sword versus heave armor and might and zveihander (of sorts).

Main idea of this photoshoot was: riding horses. Well, it’s canon thing, both Ashram and Deedlit ride most of the travel-time. So – we (Desler and me) took Tis, who agreed with our plan and went to the stables. When the three of us arrived and Desler and me were ready with our costumes-wigs-swords-make-up it was already 6 P.M. And we were in the forest. AND there were bogs nearby. So imagine mosquitoes, thousands of them!

First thing first: the photoshoot began with me falling off the horse, ’cause saddle girth was loose and nobody checked it. Stable stuff freaked out after I fell, but mostly because of the first questions by me: ’Have I cracked my armor? Is there a dirt on my cloak?!’. I’ve got nice durable costume: nothing broke :) But! It was the least of our problems with horses that day. Horses were very nervous because of: mosquitoes, our cloaks, Desler’s… oh, well, Ashram’s armor, and, above all, our swords (we could not make left-turn: both of our mounts considered swords on our left hips as the command ’wrong turn’ or something). And they refused to stand still! More so, they wanted to go home and no, they did not like the idea of the photoshoot in the field near the forest with so many biting insects and some strange people on their backs.

So we had our 1,5 hour of horses and handed them over to the stuff in the forest, several minutes walk from the place we parked our car. And we did came to the car!.. 3 hours after we dismounted. Because: ’oh, nice pine trees and grove! Want to take a picture there? Oh, dead trees! It’s so very fitting for Ashram!..’ and so on. THEN we decided to fight. Well, we did have our swords with us. So – 30 battles and several SFX later Tis managed to take a whole lot of wonderful pictures, we were all bitten about thousand times and we finally decided to go home. And that is a true and sad story behind our ’photoshoot with horses’ :)

Cosplayers: Leetah & Desler aka Sword Art OFFline

September 6, 2014