The dwarves had rented a room in the inn, as well as a local smithy to do the fitting. There the man went to meet them, and he deemed it suitable . It was one of the few smithies in town where the forge was indoors, as that required fancy gimmicks with flues and stonework to make sure the building didn't catch fire. Plenty of light came from the furnace, and plenty more shone through the many windows, all open for some ventilation. His eye immediately caught what he came for. Greeting and pleasantries and small talk, but they soon got to the fitting.
The harness lay on a great table with a large cyan tablecloth for contrast. The arming doublet and trousers were both made of cotton, dyed in a strong crimson. Both thickly padded, with various buckles to secure the armour and mail where the armour wouldn't be: arms, armpits, crotch, and the back of the legs - save the buttocks, those had only the padding. The gloves looked quite strange, red leather, with only the knuckle piece and a few other still bits poking through, all painted black. But as he picked them up he realised they were proper gauntlets, and the rest of the metalwork was hidden under the leather - and inside, another layer of leather to keep the steel away from the skin.
The breastplate was amazing in its ingenuity. It was made of seventeen different plates, nine on the front and eight on the back, that could move one against the other. All painted black and gilded, with a rim of floral designs and the shallow relief of some small scene in the middle. Some scenes had animals, some others had men, some had both. The man recognised the tower of the White Wizard in one scene and Minas Tirith in another one, but that's as far as his knowledge went. It had straps on the lower rim for the tassets and on the shoulders for the pauldrons, and also on both sides for the front half to connect with the back half. Many buckles secured it to the arming doublet on the inside, too. The small gorget, also articulated, had to be worn under it, so it was put on first. The tassets were very similar in style, and they had buckles to be secured to both the breastplate and the arming trousers. They consisted of six plates each, and they came down to about mid thigh. The pauldrons were also similar, with a big plate covering the shoulder and the armpit and three smaller ones reaching down to about half of the upper arm. All the pieces had nice black leather trims, which were in turn trimmed in gilded steel.
He took a brief look at the buckler, with its relief of the face of a drake in the middle, the rim decorated with flames rather than floral patterns, but the most impressive piece was the helmet. A light helmet, complete with its own lining, and still with reliefs, black paint and gold leaf. Mermen were hitting each other with clubs on each side of the crest, while two-tailed mermaids made proud display of their bare breasts on each side of the helmet itself. The cheek-guards were a single piece which reached down to cover the chin as well and interlocked itself with the gorget. The visor was clearly only decorative and meant to be kept up as it had no hole one could see through, but it was as much a piece of armor as it was a statue. It would have resembled the face of a sabre-cat if it didn't lack the two huge teeth that gave the beast its name; a sabre-cat with a crown fit for a king.
The boots were nothing special at all, black leather with a gilded rim on the top to match the rest.
It was perhaps a bit warm inside all that, but it did really fit like a second skin. It was so comfortable that he sat there and talked with the dwarves, laughing at their jokes, drinking ale with them - he would have fancied scratching his crotch, but the mail prevented him from doing that - and he only took off the gauntlets. The rest of the armour, he had it off only just before leaving.
Inspired by:
Helmet - Burgonet "alla romana antica" created for the Archduke Ferdinand II of Tirol by Filippo Negroli
Breastplate and pauldrons and tassets - from the harness of the Archduke Ferdinand II of Tirol created by Giovan Battista Panzeri and Marco Antonio Fava
