Ten new characters, forty new legs

Sunday 24 April 2011

On the Plumb Bob Keep forum I’ve been helping out renegadewolfe by taking preview pictures of the dogs she’s been creating. Really, in this era and this setting, there should be dogs all over the place in Lothere, so it was a great opportunity for me to add some period-​appropriate dogs to my neighborhood as well.

The dogs are all mastiffs, and they’re all available for download now, on the forum. You should check out her post even if you’re not interested in downloading them, since she gives lots of info about the history of the mastiff breed. The dogs she creates are authentic to the medieval period. She has done a ton of research, and thereby saved me a lot of time.  

Since I had to create the dogs as Sims anyway to do their preview pictures, I went ahead and gave them names and owners and distributed them throughout my neighborhood. Here’s an introduction to the nine of them (plus a bonus dog). Some of them may prove to be recurring characters, especially since poor old Belsar is either dead already or close to it. I haven’t thought much about bloodlines, but I am sure some of these dogs are either descendants of Belsar or at least nieces and nephews.

First up is a dog who is almost certainly related to Belsar, and who has been mentioned several times in the story so far: the great William, of “But Gunnie, William is a dog” fame!

He still lives with Gunnilda, but he’s definitely Beddy’s dog. That, of course, is shirtless Beddy in the background with his big brother. Their former house is on the hill behind them.

Bertie has brought his own dog from home with him: another product of the Duke’s kennels, named Odo.

(Alred names his male dogs after famous Normans. He has too much respect for ladies to do likewise for the females.)

Here Odo and William are discovering that neither docked tails nor curly tails are particularly amenable to being chased:

They should learn to cooperate and chase each other’s tails.

Next up are two more of Alred’s dogs, who guard the outer bailey at Nothelm Keep. Robert is one handsome mastiff:

He looks impressive but he seems to be a playful dog.

The other is Henri, who also appeared in the picture at the top of this post.

Here he is with the guard Sicga. Maybe it’s his eyes, but something about Henri makes him seem rather elderly to me.

Next are two bitches who may also have come from Alred’s kennel:

Normandy is the dark fawn color, and she belongs to Alred’s former squire, Sir Eadwyn. Empress belongs to Sir Baldwin.

Next is Stein’s red bitch, Bjarki:

In this little photo shoot I had Sophie and Astrid walking her down “Princess Street” but it just so happened that Shirtless K was outside.

I love this picture of Shirtless. He looks like he’s remembering his old dog who got poisoned back on Man. Somebody needs to give this gentleman a puppy.

Finally we go to Sigefrith’s castle and two of the guard dogs he has on duty there:

Jacob is the brown brindle and Dinah is the pale fawn. Jacob is quite a character. I used this opportunity to take a few pictures of Eadie’s deerhound as well, and Jacob seems to be in love.

Here’s Jacob doing an Aengus-​like “Don’t fuck this up, man” face:

While Daisy remains haughtily unaware.

Alas, Jacob, I just don’t think it’s meant to be.