As promised, this week we are focusing on something critical to the KINGDOMS Series: the Masks worn by Defender Cultivators!
When I first was working on KINGDOMS and bringing it into my own world as its own magical story, I kept thinking about the idea of identities as well as protection, and masks seemed an incredibly logical junction between the two. Masks feature prominently in a lot of magical anime, as well as stories at large, but I wanted to take it to something simultaneously physical and yet magical. Here's how I describe the Masks right from the official glossary (which in its entirety will be released after the final book):
The item used by a Defender to summon their armor. A Mask is a condensation and manifestation of the Flower Element magic of each world, and donning it will both shield a Defender's identity as well as give them magical armor for protection. A Defender does not need to wear their Mask in order to access their magic or weapon, but it is usually safer to put on a Mask before pissing off evil things. All Defenders of a world have the same Mask, and armor is identical on males as well as identical on females (which is determined by the Defender's identity).
The Masks, being magical, don't have to be completely practical, which allowed complete freedom of creation for their design. And for their designs, I turned to one of the most amazing mask artists I've ever met, Sabrina from Sapphire Masquerade. I provided her with the trademarks of each world (colors, flower, meaning, stones, etc) and told her 'have fun.' Boy did she, and she did her absolute best to find the flowers that I actually used, with some "close cousins" standing in for those she could not exactly match. And here they are, all of the Defender Masks!
Ranunculus and Carnation:
Similar in style, as a reminder that Defenders can be alike across universes as well as galaxies.
Statice and Daffodil:
What can I say, I love both of these for different reasons. The simplicity of Statice seems to perfectly balance for how amusingly complex the world seems to be compared to the rest.
Delphinium and Protea:
I thought that Sabrina was incredibly clever with the Protea design, because try as she might, she could not find any flower that looked enough like a protea—but she did find leaves!
Iris and Orchid:
Fun fact, Sabrina is uncannily intuitive. Look at the Iris Mask. Notice something? Something like music notes? I had not told her at all about the tendency of music to be connected to Iris, and yet there she used a bit of sheet music. Now that is Destiny.
Gladiolus, Hyacinth, Aster:
I absolutely love the fan on Gladiolus, and it is exactly the sort of "not practical but that's okay because magic" I mentioned before.
Hmm . . . that's all of the Defenders we've met in the story so far, so I wonder what Mask this is and what world it belongs to . . . . you'll have to come back in THE CHAOTIC KINGDOM and find out!
©Stacy J. Garrett. Do not reprint or redistribute without permission.
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