Electro Queen
Minstrel
So recently, I’ve been playing some Smash Bros Ultimate with my friends and something I’ve just found out about one of my most played characters, Ganondorf, is that he’s wearing a piece of armor that I can’t seem to find anywhere on the internet.
www.deviantart.com
The armor appears to manifest as some sort of hybrid between two pauldrons and a gorget. Unlike traditional gorgets however, this one only protects the back of his neck and the entire piece appears to be made up of only a single piece of metal without any straps of mechanisms to hold the pieces together (at least, I THINK it’s made of metal, some of Ganondorf’s attack animations show the edges of his armor moving along with his arms as if they were just made of leather or some other similar material. Body clipping animations are of abundance in this game though).
I tried to find other fictional characters with an armor piece similar to Ganondorf’s and the closest things I could find were Queen Nephthys from Darkness Rises and King Fluminox from the LEGO Chima TV show.
www.deviantart.com
legolegendsofchima.fandom.com
As you can see, both of these characters have a golden (or maybe just gold-painted since actual gold would make for really bad armor) version of this type of armor that guards their shoulders and wraps around their neck in the same way that Ganondorf’s does. Queen Nephthys I know significantly less about but she’s a magical user and a Goddess in the mobile game she’s a part of, so any issues in relation to difficulty moving her arms over her head or chafing from rubbing metal against bear skin are easy to ignore. Fluminox is an interesting case due to his LEGO anatomy and the fact that the back of his armor has holes in it to compensate for his giant wings (he is an anthropomorphic phoenix after all). He’s only ever been a part of a single fight in the entire series and you can see multiple times in the fight his armor tilting back as he puts his arms up in the air for a downward swing. The one thing the armor of all three of these characters have in common though is that they lack straps found in traditional breast and backplates and seem to rest atop the wearer’s shoulders (so trying to jump or flip around whilst wearing this would cause it to bod around.
With all of that out of the way, here are my three questions:
1: Assuming this armor piece actually existed in real-life and isn’t just a product of fiction and fantasy, what would its technical name be?
2. If this armor really did exist at some point in history, was it ever actually used for proper battles or was it strictly ceremonially/cosmetic?
3. How practical would a fully metallic variation of this piece of armor be in combat? Obviously, the wearer would absolutely be wearing a gambeson under this and it would probably have be made out of a metal lighter than steel in order to avoid weighing down and easily tiring the wearer (I’m thinking of making the armor piece out of titanium but I can’t decide which grade of the stuff would be the most efficient. Right now, it’s a tossup between Grades 2, 5 and 23). Here’s some concept art of what I had in mind:
Pyromancer Armor
The drawing on the left is what the piece looks like on its own, and the drawing on the right is what it looks like on a human body (it’s a really bad outline, I know). The flames on the armor are there for decoration and the red and gold coloring is the result of a fancy paintjob.
23 Ganondorf - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate by ElevenZM on DeviantArt
www.deviantart.com
The armor appears to manifest as some sort of hybrid between two pauldrons and a gorget. Unlike traditional gorgets however, this one only protects the back of his neck and the entire piece appears to be made up of only a single piece of metal without any straps of mechanisms to hold the pieces together (at least, I THINK it’s made of metal, some of Ganondorf’s attack animations show the edges of his armor moving along with his arms as if they were just made of leather or some other similar material. Body clipping animations are of abundance in this game though).
I tried to find other fictional characters with an armor piece similar to Ganondorf’s and the closest things I could find were Queen Nephthys from Darkness Rises and King Fluminox from the LEGO Chima TV show.
'Darkness Rises' Nephilis XPS ONLY!!! by lezisell on DeviantArt
www.deviantart.com
Fluminox
Fluminox is an elder and current leader of the Phoenix Tribe. When eight other Phoenix sacrificed themselves to ignite the Great Illumination, Fluminox stayed behind to care for his son Flinx. This decision had consequences for all of Chima. He led Eris to Mount Cavora and allied with the tribes...
As you can see, both of these characters have a golden (or maybe just gold-painted since actual gold would make for really bad armor) version of this type of armor that guards their shoulders and wraps around their neck in the same way that Ganondorf’s does. Queen Nephthys I know significantly less about but she’s a magical user and a Goddess in the mobile game she’s a part of, so any issues in relation to difficulty moving her arms over her head or chafing from rubbing metal against bear skin are easy to ignore. Fluminox is an interesting case due to his LEGO anatomy and the fact that the back of his armor has holes in it to compensate for his giant wings (he is an anthropomorphic phoenix after all). He’s only ever been a part of a single fight in the entire series and you can see multiple times in the fight his armor tilting back as he puts his arms up in the air for a downward swing. The one thing the armor of all three of these characters have in common though is that they lack straps found in traditional breast and backplates and seem to rest atop the wearer’s shoulders (so trying to jump or flip around whilst wearing this would cause it to bod around.
With all of that out of the way, here are my three questions:
1: Assuming this armor piece actually existed in real-life and isn’t just a product of fiction and fantasy, what would its technical name be?
2. If this armor really did exist at some point in history, was it ever actually used for proper battles or was it strictly ceremonially/cosmetic?
3. How practical would a fully metallic variation of this piece of armor be in combat? Obviously, the wearer would absolutely be wearing a gambeson under this and it would probably have be made out of a metal lighter than steel in order to avoid weighing down and easily tiring the wearer (I’m thinking of making the armor piece out of titanium but I can’t decide which grade of the stuff would be the most efficient. Right now, it’s a tossup between Grades 2, 5 and 23). Here’s some concept art of what I had in mind:
Pyromancer Armor
The drawing on the left is what the piece looks like on its own, and the drawing on the right is what it looks like on a human body (it’s a really bad outline, I know). The flames on the armor are there for decoration and the red and gold coloring is the result of a fancy paintjob.
Last edited:
Myth Weaver
