#ylvehilde

These sketches were mostly inspired by the fact that despite the Nords of Skyrim being blatantly based off Viking-esque aspects/themes, none of the really interesting cultural and aesthetic parts went into the game itself- and that isn’t just for Nords, a lot of the individual races/provinces have a lot of potential for massive cultural aesthetics and differences aside from stereotypes, but they do not. So I gotta do everything myself.

So have a bastardly Dovahkiin Nord who would have turned up to the Thalmor Embassy Party wearing the most traditional Nordic outfit she would have gotten her hands on. She has enough Speechcraft to talk herself out of any situation and by the gods she’ll use it there too.

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Ever since I got my new laptop (in the summer) I’d been able to play Skyrim Ultra Modded, and had been obsessively adding mods and playing it with my dragonborn to how I imagined her to be. Also my other non-dragonborn characters, and with over 800 mods, I had to stop when anniversary edition came out and wrecked my load structure ;w;

However! That did not deter me - I just dedicated my newfound time to scribbling my dovahkiin, Ylva, and figuring out her as a character, and also dedicating myself to my past love of historical fashion and sewing, which led me down a path of research and looking at archaeological findings and excavations for worldbuilding purposes.

Sometimes when I design my characters I take personality tests as them to see what they get. It helps me be able to write their personalities more consistently. The website I use goes into a lot of detail about the strengths/weaknesses/quirks about each persoanlity type so it’s nice to have that readily accessible, even if it’s been a while since I’ve interacted with the character.

This is my dragonborn Ylva, this time not wearing her Nordic regional garb or warpaint- this time her outfit is a reimagining of the Altmer’s regional fashion, since I feel like they should be decadent and with silks and be comfortable, summery and beautiful - I understand videogames have limits, but we can dream! I took inspiration from Ancient Greek statues and art, as well as Romantic interpretations of the fashion since they are full of colour and decadence.