Still happily working on my awesome new creature! I have completely re-drawn her chain mail several times, now, and am doing it yet again... think I'm liking it better this time. I haven't done chain mail since I drew the bottom two panels here for my Honours exhibition paintings of my first-born, kick-ass babe, Creaturina. I knew it had been tedious and hard, but had not remembered exactly how tedious/hard! As this is a WIP, it shows some of my process... her whole body (the armoured parts) are covered with the lines you can see on her arms, but the ones on her body have been turned off in this picture... those lines are what I use as a guide for the chain mail. I haven't even started on her wings/hair/sword! About her sword...

Hammer’s sword is an 11,000 year old Elven claymore, given to her as thanks/gratitude from an Elven king, whose daughter Hammer saved from 3 Trolls when she was just a 400 year old child. Hammer did this bare-handed, killing all the Trolls herself, except the last one, whom the Elven princess helped dispatch (there had actually been 4 Trolls, but Elves are pretty tough, too, and the princess had managed to kill one herself, before being overpowered by the other 3). Hammer sustained life-threatening injury; several broken bones, a punctured lung and severe concussion, but managed to stay conscious till the princess was safe.

At the time, Hammer was called Wind Child, but, after the Elven princess explained to her father the way the young Sprite, who had already had 350 years training in un-armed combat, had struck the Trolls like a hammer on the wind, Hammer of the Wind became her name. This was 1000 years ago, making Hammer a very young, Sprite teenager.