Libra is a character that is very deeply mired in mythos, and her own sense of law and superstitions

Libra is a character that is very deeply mired in mythos, and her own sense of law and superstitions. I thought for a long time that she would particularly suit a tarot card drawing. In this one she is mimicing the “justice” card.

Libra is a super fun character for me. She definitely has an orange and blue mentality, and thinks karma is more of a law of all universes than gravity. She will not take something without also giving - she wont give without taking. She lives by a very fey mindset, in which all things must be even and balanced. Even if her idea of even and balanced is complete nonsense to everyone else. Finally drawing her in this sort of Tarot card pose etc was a complete blast.

(as a side note!! I am not involved with the gw2 tarot card project! I am not representing them, Libra isn’t indicative of anything they’re doing. But the project looks like a blast - check out their tumblr here: https://gw2collective.tumblr.com/  and look forward to seeing what they get up to. I know I am. c: )

also! If you want to see more of my art than just gw stuff, you can always find that over on @drawsomething

under the cut, I’ll go through some of the changes I made to the original card and why/why they suit libra better!

I changed her heavy armor into lighter cloth to represent the robes of the original card better. I didn’t want to draw her in the full “robes of the people”, because she isn’t a creature of Tyria, exactly, and isn’t “of” any of them. I decided to put her in a shendyt - a ye olde egyptian loincloth that everyone wore, regardless of class. A pharaoh might wear it just the same as a farmer, which I think works even better than some formal robes to show that you are “for the people.” I styled hers particularly after a hunters fold (as far as my research implied, anyway.) I did manage keep the shape language of her original armor.

I compromised on the shoe of the original card by having her standing on just the one foot. One foot planted on the ground, physically and metaphorically. She may not be of Tyria, but for now she is grounded to it, even if its just the barest tie.

She kept justice’s original scales for judgement, but I did change the double edged sword of truth into a fire that could burn just as indiscriminately. Libra currently lives in the body of a flame legion shaman who made a Bad Deal with her and lost his life because her offended her. The flame is a bit of tribute to her idea of karmic justice.

The chains also pay tribute to that start - Libra was a chaos spirit summoned by the flame legion for power. On finding out how the flame legion feels about women, what they do with them, she took her own retribution. The original card has a cloth backdrop blocking out/framing the sky, which I have changed to chains here. She’s stuck in this body for now, but is not chained by the expectations they had of her, of female charr.

I didn’t give her the crown that the original card has, but the face libra uses in game actually does have that crown of horns along the forehead, and I thought it worked just as well.