I'm very happy to have Kayelle Allen on my blog today. She's talking about her character Pietas and how what he wears, or doesn't wear, shows his character. Welcome Kayelle!
Clothes Make the Character
I'm Kayelle Allen, and I'm excited that Jana invited me to share a bit about my Bringer of Chaos series with you. I write SciFi Romance, SciFi, and Space Opera. My books feature misbehaving robots, mythic heroes, immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. I live in a huge, rambling stone castle guarded by dragons. Okay, the castle part is fiction. So are the dragons. Unless you think the dragons in my books as real, in which case, then—yeah. The dragon part is totally true.
I have a new book coming out September 22, 2023, set in the same overall universe as my Bringer of Chaos books. The Thieves' Guild Academy series is currently three books, and the new one is a bundle of the three plus a copy of the Thieves' Guild Handbook. You can pick it up online via this Universal Buy Link - https://books2read.com/tga-bundle1
What do the clothes tell us about the character?
In the Bringer of Chaos series, when the immortal king, Pietas, prepares for battle, he performs the Ritual of Strength. In 2018, I was fortunate enough to work with the cosplayer, Nik Nitsvetov, to create scenes of the ritual. The resulting photo shoot provided some of the most-used images on my site and in my marketing. A subsequent shoot provided a set with armor, and the third gave me a performance with a handmade halberd (a pike fitted with an ax head).
Nik's natural hair color is quite dark, but when he dons a platinum wig, he's a dead ringer for my immortal king. I have a set of wallpaper images of him as Pietas and change them depending on what I need for inspiration at the moment. The one I'm using now has a rather cryptic expression. It's hard to tell if he's about to smile, or going to tell me to stop looking at him and go write more of his story.
Since Jana asked me to talk about a character's clothes, I thought I'd start with what's different or special about them.
They say clothes make the man. Sometimes, it's what you aren't wearing that tells the story.
In Origin of Pietas, Pietas wears only a pair of loose white pants and a mask to reveal his power. How can a mask reveal anything? You'll see in the excerpt below.
Excerpt from Origin of Pietas:
After exiting the bathing pool, Pietas brushed off the water and wrung out his hair. From a tray holding half a dozen clasps, he chose a silver dragon studded with six turquoise stones, twisted his wet hair and fastened it up, out of the way.
He dried his face, gathered a brush and black face paint. Leaning in close to a freestanding mirror, he outlined a bandit's mask from beneath his eyes to over his dark eyebrows and filled it with black.
He'd worn the mask in battle ever since defeating the First Division, a human special-ops group formed to fight Ultras. It came about because Pietas had slain an enemy and blood had splashed across his eyes. Thinking the blood belonged to Pietas, the Ultra troops had rallied to him and slaughtered the humans. The blood dried almost black.
Stories of how their "bandit king" had conquered the First Division filled the night. The name stuck. To his troops, he was First Conqueror, War Leader of the Ultras.
Pietas turned his head side to side, surveying the effect.
His body would reject foreign matter on his skin. The Ultra metabolism protected from every perceived attack, even harmless face paint. He closed his eyes and sprayed sealant over the mask to delay its disappearance by a few hours.
Satisfied with his looks, Pietas pulled on a pair of loose white lounging pants. With a deep, cleansing breath, he opened the door. Damp, shirtless, barefoot, he padded into the adjacent room.
Watch the Ritual of Strength
Treat yourself to a live performance by Nik Nitsvetov. Be sure to listen with the sound on. The words are on the screen, but the unique music and voice add a wonderful layer of richness to each scene. Voiceover actor Zack Black.
Origin of Pietas: Bringer of Chaos
Exiled on a planet with no one but Six, the human who guarded him, the immortal king Pietas faces the ordeal of survival. Imprisonment transformed him from superman to a man who cannot even feed himself. He must surrender his pride and accept help.
If the human deserts him, Pietas will die, permanently. This human is the perfect foil for Pietas, who's a seething mess of ego, angst, and self-loathing, angry at the universe in general and humans in particular.
Pietas might need Six, but that doesn't mean he'll humiliate himself by admitting weakness.
But saving his people means depending upon the one thing Pietas swears does not exist—the honor of a human...
Universal Buy Link https://books2read.com/origin-pietas
Meet Kayelle Allen
From her comfy, ergonomic office chair Kayelle Allen forges the very fabric of the Ever-Expanding Empire using only the tips of her fingers and her powerful imagination. Her passion is to create both commissioned and original art, employ extensive worldbuilding with inventive behind-the-scenes peeks, and write tightly woven tales with unstoppable, unshakeable, unforgettable characters so real you'll swear you've met them.
Enter the Empire at ReamStories.com/KayelleAllen, claim your immortality, and discover a whole new universe of stories. Visit the Homeworld KayelleAllen.com/Immortality
