With my initial interest in Bojza Southern Front having cratered following my personal clash with the design goals at its core and my primary relic weapons complete for the time being, gameplay’s been taking a back seat for me in the game once again. Instead, I’ve mostly been leaning hard into roleplaying to pass much of my time (which is, if nothing else, a fun way to find excuses for new glamours). As I write Alahra more following the conclusion of the principle narrative for Shadowbringers, it’s also becoming clear that I see her as more of a Monk than a Ninja these days.

Her canon job would be a custom one blending elements of Dark Knight, Monk, and Ninja (with lots of inspiration from FFXI), and none of the three quite capture everything on their own, naturally. I think that’s why I’ve always gravitated back toward Monk, though: as far as her actual Weaponskills and flavor go, Monk’s unarmed combat and focus on meditation have always formed the core of Alahra’s means of battle in my head. With Monk due for a long-awaited rework in Patch 5.4, I’ve felt more comfortable letting those elements shine in roleplay, since I might actually be able to play the job in a more dedicated fashion (though I’m not leaving tank behind as my primary role now).

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Glamour Components
Jobs: All Classes — Level: 1 — Gender: Female
Head: Head Bandage (Pure White)
Body: Summer’s Flame Top (Pure White, female morph)
Hands: Nezha Lady’s Gloves (Pure White)
Legs: Pagos Gaskins (Pure White)
Feet: Moonfire Sandals (Pure White)

Monk-adjacent elements have been a much stronger part of my roleplay lately as a result, and recently, I needed to throw something together for a scene involving some personal training. I’d seen someone using the Summer’s Flame Top with a pair of cropped pants a little while ago (the Mheg Deaca Bottoms), and I thought the sort of sporty result might work well for Alahra, so I bookmarked the idea in my mind. At first, the idea wasn’t much more than that, and I never intended to post a proper glamour write-up for it.

But the more I stared at it before the planned roleplay happened, the more I wanted to perfect it. The Mheg Deaca Bottoms don’t work all that well in Pure White, since they have some grey secondary color channeling, and I wanted to find something better. After a bit of digging, I found the Pagos Gaskins and took to the low-cut waistline, slight bagginess and the drawstring quite strongly. I liked them enough that I wanted to really put some effort in and make a proper glamour.

But once I’d done that, I needed more than elements cobbled together from previous glamours (like the Lady’s Clogs from this older casual glamour for Monk), so I started looking at different sandals and gloves that I thought might reasonably work as active wear for a trained Puglist. I settled on the Moonfire Sandals first, which I’ve kept stowed away for years at this point but never actually use. Then I thought I might use the Pagos Field Dressing for some handwraps, but they strangely seemed out of place with the Pagos Gaskins, lacking the right dye tone.

Instead, the Nezha Lady’s Gloves ended up being what I needed: light and thin with the right shade of white when dyed. After that, I thought I was done, and put the look aside while waiting to write out the scene I created it for in the first place. While waiting, though, I realized I wanted something a little extra, something to set the look apart from the usual things I do (though lacking thighboots, this one was already outside my normal wheelhouse!). That lead me to the idea of a blindfold to assist in meditation and focus, with the Head Bandage seeming the best fit for everything else I had picked out.

And the result is that I’ve been using a look I intended to be for a one-shot bit of writing as a casual glamour ever since (with the blindfold toggled off for the most part—her senses aren’t that good!). The only problem is that I now presently have three separate glamour plates devoted to Monk, and I really need to scale that down some so that I can experiment more with Ninja and Dark Knight, which feel like they’re both due for something new! We’re 4–6 weeks away from Patch 5.4 and new Main Scenario, so I need to have proper glamours for all three potential story mains, after all!