It's Orc Season Eve! Tomorrow is the first day of the local Ren Faire. My partner and I will do our usual cosplay which is somewhat involved. For whatever reason, I've never documented the whole costume. I changed almost the whole thing from last year. The only parts that remain from the old costume are the pants, boots, mask, gauntlets, chain and goodie bag. The armor, kilt and shoulders are all new. This adds a lot of weight I managed to strip off but I think it helps Basher look more rough. The Lorica and cloak I had made him look too clean to me. We'll see how it goes. There's usually some adjustments along the way. The kilt is the only hand made part and it was a pain in the ass. My partner did most of it. He also did most of the initial grunt work in drilling holes to attack the yak and goat fur to the pauldrons as well as the padding that will make Basher look about twice as broad as he actually is. It's all good fun. And we get a lot of people who want photos. This year, we got one more fan than we knew about: the Faire itself. My partner texted me this poster the Faire is using to help sell tickets. Makes me kind of tingly to be noticed that much. And before anyone asks, no, there's no compensation for this and that's fine. We don't want to be beholden to the Faire in any way. Then they get to tell us where to be, what to do. We go as customers, not workers. That way, we're free to do what we want.