Gilgalad

Ereinion Gil-galad
Last High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth

with all accessories
with crown, cloak, and spear
with cloak and crown
with crown only
no accessories

Gil-galad was an Elven King,
Of him the harpers sadly sing:
The last whose realm was fair and free
between the mountains and the Sea.

His sword was long, his lance was keen,
His shining helm afar was seen.
The countless stars of heaven's field
Were mirrored in his silver shield.

But long ago he rode away,
and where he dwelleth, none can say,
For into darkness fell his star,
In Mordor where the shadows are.
(the Lay of Gil-galad by J.R.R. Tolkien)

I've been asked why I use the word "Ereinion" elsewhere on this site, and it's because of its association as the birthname of Gil-galad ("star of radiance") that I do (since my general site is "Shadowstar"). Those who came to know Tolkien's world only through the movies will doubtless wonder why he doesn't look like Mark Ferguson, who portrayed him in FotR (very briefly). As I've said before, it was for one big reason: to my eye, he looked old and worn, like a Man, not like an Elf (can't say how well he acted the role, he never got a chance to show us). And while his outfit was attractive, it was also battle armor, and I didn't want to make a Sim who would be clanking about the neighborhood ready to fight (the accessories I made are really just for the pictures; I've tested them in the game, but I have no intention of using them in his daily living). Jackson's armory did a very nice job of designing Aiglos, his spear, and his shield -- although what they designed for Aiglos is really more akin to a glaive than a spear. And the attractive shield they made was blue and gold, rather ignoring Tolkien's description of it as being bright silver. So I went with their depiction of Aiglos because it looked nice, and used their design for the shield, but changed the color to silver, and used Gil-galad's heraldic device -- as drawn by Tolkien himself -- in its center. I put him here in the Ages of the Sun because of his association with Elrond, who was his herald, and because he was the first bearer of Vilya, the Elven Ring of the Firmament.

Once again, there are bunches of pictures, largely because so much work went into the meshes and skin. The hair, which falls in braids on both sides of the head, one in the front and one to the back, is a "stay-put" mesh, and does distort the thumbnails in the game more noticeably than my other stay-put meshes. Both braids lift up in the thumbs, and the one that comes forward over his shoulder will obscure his left ear and occasionally a little bit of the curve of his left cheek when you move the head in the pie menus. Otherwise, the face is unobscured, and the active Sim works just fine. One little weirdness, though: because of the stay-put hair, the braid in the back will be obscured by his cloak when he wears it. If I had made it stay put and be visible when he wears the cloak, it would then stay put floating away from his body when he wasn't wearing the cloak, and I decided it was better to have it stay in place on his uncloaked back, since I generally play my Sims without major accessories, like cloaks, spears, staves, etc.

Lastly, his crown is a deliberate variation of Turgon's, since Gil-galad was Turgon's successor. Turgon's own crown was doubtless lost in the sack of Gondolin, and I felt it would not have been considered inappropriate for Gil-galad's to be similar, if not the same, in honor of his fallen kinsman.

Gil-galad Outfit #2

with demi-circlet
without demi-circlet

In an attempt to add a little variation to the wardrobe of the characters without adding all new meshes, I came up with this outfit for Gil-galad. The head and demi-circlet meshes are new, but the body is the mesh I made for Turgon (b8k0) and is not included in the files; the new skin, however, is properly named to work with that mesh if you have it in your game (if not, you can get it from Turgon's page in The Elder Days. It's in the "clothing and head only" download; what you need to put in the game are the b8k0 cmx and skn files). Because I'm trying to avoid adding a lot of extra files to peoples' games, I've attached the circlet to the head rather than the body, so if you prefer the version with the demi-circlet, he will, alas, always be wearing it (until you use a program like Sim Enhancer or Sim Metamorphoser to change his head default). The demi-circlet uses the same skin as the crown in the first version, so if you have that in the game, you can simply allow it to overwrite the old one. The head itself is new (although the skin is the same skin, so his face will remain the same). This hair style causes a fair amount of distortion in the menu-pie thumbnail, although it doesn't really obscure the face, it simply looks odd. It actually causes less distortion in the character thumbnail than the first head. It's also what I would refer to as a "semi-stay-put" mesh. Because the front braids are so long, I could have assigned them to two extra body areas and had them very glued-in-place, but I found that it was better to let the bottommost parts of the mesh poke through his body than to have them quite that stuck in place, because the resulting movement was extremely strange and not very pleasant to look at.

The device on the front of the collar is based on a combination of a embellishment used for Gil-galad's armor in the movie, along with Tolkien's arms for the High King. The movie design did try to incorporate a version of that device, but it was not particularly distinct, and I wanted it to be a little more obvious. No point to having a heraldic device, after all, if you have to put your nose up to it to recognize it.