#They're supposed to be like hybrids/chimeras so it'll be interesting trying to get that to work

[elf-simp]

With the advent of the benchmark and the information that's given us in way of textures, models, and materials: This is going to be the final experiment with this specific body texture before Dawntrail. If I can help it I'm going to be directing my efforts to making a new texture entirely, hopefully one that's completely custom made.

Fullbody + Kinda shitty closeup under cut lol (also very scattered and chaotic exposition)

So why this design? Well the short answer is that Seiei is a monster/demon. Even in early drafts of her lore she fell to corruption and had her entire being changed irrevocably.

The long answer is given both the nature of her being, her past, and the area she lived in I wanted to try and draw upon specific themes she has when designing this more beastial form to get a more truly finalized picture of this character.

The biggest themes being Corvids, Emotions (namely rage), Tengu, and the final player that spurred the decision to add scales: Alatreon (yes, from monster hunter). Going in reverse order to explain starting with Alatreon; it was the final piece of the puzzle as every aspect of it fits Seiei nearly to a T with a short blurb of it stating: "Known as a symbol of destruction, people fear even uttering its name. It’s rumored to control all of the elements, but most, if not all, records of its existence have been burned." Going hand in hand with much of what is stated in this writing I posted a while ago. This on top of the fact that when fighting, Alatreon is inherently chaotic and easily enraged, much like Seiei.//

Given the area that Seiei is from—that being Doma—Tengu seemed to fit the bill as well. The decision to include this only reinforced by Swallows Compass.

There is significantly more to unpack here than with Alatreon as well as some still loose ends but the main reasons Tengu play into her design are because they are often depicted as yokai, sometimes even 'evil spirits.' In art and media they are portrayed very commonly with avian characteristics which ties into the whole Corvid thing. I could very well argue that the evolution from Corvids to Tengu is due to her corruption twisting that aspect of her into something monstrous. Oh and the big nose...

But more than that there, are a few stories that portray Tengu as legendary martialists that can employ extremely powerful and dangerous magics, which Seiei has in the form of her prior kenjutsu training and "black smoke". And yes, keeping with typical depictions, she does also have a feather fan, but I'm not sure I've really ever posted her with it.//

Emotions, specifically rage, was the baseline theming for her when I was drafting up her original lore (that needs heavy refinement now but I'll worry about that later). As one might guess this also hooks into 'Dynamis'. You see; Seiei was created shortly after I'd finished Endwalkers MSQ and the idea of "Dynamis" was still fresh in my head. Specifically it's observed ability to spiral out of control (much like real emotion) and create horrid abominations that the people of etheirys do not understand (Much like how rage causes people to do things they otherwise wouldn't with no sound logic behind it).

I'd never been invested in FF's magic system until this point either as it seemed very straight forward and bland to me even with astral and umbral alignments. But with the introduction of Dynamis as the sort of 'antithesis' to Aether I was locked in. My mind had interpreted it as a sort of matter vs anti-matter type of deal given that where one is abundant the other is near absent and they do not generally play well together, so naturally I wanted to try and explore that avenue more.

It was difficult trying to figure out how to get a character to reasonably function with Dynamis at first, especially with her lore being from pre-arr. However, if you know about "The Burn" and it's alleged lack of Aether, one needn't stretch very far to see how Dynamis could have affected Seiei. Or really any character from Othard. I'd love to do a real deep-dive into this at some point but for now you get my very scattered and very raw exposition.

As a sorta related aside, this was all thought up during a very difficult time in my life. So in a way this character started out as 'vent art' to release pent up emotion.//

Anyone who's been around a while knows Seiei's original last name was 'Warcrow'. When I'd made the character at first this had literally zero meaning outside of "I like bird :) " but as time went on I started to see where it could fit.

Without going into an insane amount of detail though because I'm sleepy: The crow motif is more closely tied to her adoptive father (The bunny man) who was exceptionally clever and tricky much like crows are. However, when he had passed our Seiei inherited much of what made him who he was and subsequently twisted it (cannot emphasis enough how much I love corruption). As a result for our Seiei, the meaning of crows is no longer relates to their intelligence or trickery but their more superstitious interpretations of approaching disaster and death. Also because I like the bird and it goes hand in hand with the Tengu thing lol.//

Also: