I decided to splurge again during  cybercat 's latest stream!

This time it's a bust of Annemarie, a character I didn't have any art of. I came up with her for a furry historical fantasy GURPS tabletop game that was inspired heavily by the old PC-DOS RPG, Darklands. That game is what kicked off my inspiration for Late Middle Ages Germany - in doing research for the character I got into an entire new martial art in real life, Kunst des Fechtens. My mania for Western European history only grows further each day.

Annemarie herself is from the 15th century in a history where, after the fall of Rome, everyone conveniently turned all fuzzy for some reason, but history played out more or less the exact same as it did in our world. (Yes, it's silly, I know, but it's fun. I have human versions of the characters too.) Born to a Danish banking family that was in local competition with the ever-prevalent Fuggers and Medici, her family attempted to use her to improve their position by marrying smartly into other noble circles, but, being a born rebel, she did not like this one bit. Much drama ensued as they tried to find her a suitable husband in the midst of her "adventures", some of which were illegal in nature.

Eventually they found her a husband who she could tolerate and she reluctantly settled down for a while, but then another blow to her relations with her family occurred. She turned out to be sterile. Now, her family insisted, she had to learn how to administrate and run one of their bank branches, for what good was she to the family if she could not produce children to further their lineage? She would have to find some other way to contribute, and working to help the bank was the only option.

Fed up with their micromanagement of her life and the idea that she was only good as a walking baby maker, she took what money she could get and abruptly left, without so much as a goodbye to her husband or to her family. Learning the art of German longsword fighting from a traveling practitioner, she traveled south into the Holy Roman Empire as a wandering mercenary. Often having to disguise herself as a man, she accepted this minor indignity, as she was determined to prove her parents wrong and show that she was worth more than the life they had set out for her, or die trying.