The Road to Conquest 2026

This post is months overdue. Originally, I intended to make smaller posts documenting the process of character creation and costume making for my Conquest of Mythodea character Alestus. I was too busy between work, general life stuff and working on costuming things.

This was my first Conquest, my first big LARP and only my second character that needed a costume beyond throwing together a modern outfit of existing clothes. The outfit for my first character (which gave the title to this website) was made in less than two weeks and not much thought went into it. Perhaps too much thought went into this one then but I like adding details that have meaning other than "it looked cool". I will try to keep this brief, more of a summary than going into detail.

The Design

I had never designed a costume before. Even when I draw characters, I usually stick to portraits so outfits are rarely more than a vague hint at something. So where do you even begin? What did I want this character to be? I looked for inspiration from Elden Ring and history (which I did not know a lot about) and made a mood board of stuff that I liked. The basic idea was a cleric-ish. Due to time and money constraints I decided not to do any armor to start with.

I don't remember what came first, the heraldry or the map. The former to inspire the colors and details (with which inventively also come background politics), the latter to inform naming conventions for my character and his family.

But hold on— what are the rules of heraldry? Well... down the first research rabbit hole I went only to make up my own loosely inspired by English conventions as far as I can remember. I went through many iterations to see what would look most aesthetically pleasing and finally landed on this:

The tower is his family's crest, passed down through his father. They're a steadfast house and protectors of old.

The stars represent the ruling family, the emperor Saint's chosen. They have been allied since before his house gained lands and titles.

The amphitere wrapped around a staff for secret background lore reasons but also for its similarity to the Rod of Asclepius representing healing.

The costume itself went through about as many iterations before settling on the final design (the four on the right side). Though I'm still very fond of the four way checkered design.

At this point, the character still didn't have a name so I made a map and started thinking about naming conventions for different parts of the place but quickly gave up on it because it became a bit too involved for what was supposed to be just background story. Map and politics take heavy inspiration from A Song of Ice and Fire (although the similarity of the shape was more a coincidence). This is now also the background land for my other LARP character and probably more to come in the future.

His house is from the Western Reaches with its capital Crestfall, guarding the border around Veilmark from whatever strange beings— undead? trickle out from under the Veil which shrouds the entirety of The First Territories.

Alestus Legaht is the name I settled on. I was going for a Latin-ish sound without being anything real with the last name being a mix of "legate" and Old English for "bright".

The Making Of

My husband is a tailor and costume maker so I'm in luck to have a professional at home. He was also working on a costume for his own character. Most of the garment construction was done by him, with me helping cut and hand-sew and stitch and making a few smaller pieces myself (like the not initially planned coif).

Here are some progress pictures:

The embroidery that I unfortunately couldn't finish due to materials not arriving on time:

The shield:

Other bits and pieces (belt, prayer beads, hat and nails/claws) and bonus cat:

Conclusion

So how was Conquest? Admittedly, some of it was a bit of a struggle bus but I still had a lot of fun and want to go back. Maybe next time as an NPC. My highlights were meeting an evil fae by the name of blood moon in the Atteron prince's dream, being slaughtered by the Black Dynasty while guarding the bodies of those who had gone beyond the threshold and having undead steal one of my legs.