Naomi and Ashara at the beach. Of course, Naomi is enjoying herself, but Ashara... she wasn't built for this kind of weather. Bringing someone from the northern mountains of Birschmark down to Vannaleona, the hottest (and sometimes wettest) part of Esperada, feels like a cruel joke...

I'm mean to a lot of my characters. I can even be mean to Ari without Karami minding too much (she deserves it). But Ashara has a certain type of dignity. So I was actually wondering "How could I be mean to Ashara in a way that is cute, respectful, in character, and passes the Karami Test."

The answer was a hot summer day. Some character and lore notes.

• Naomi is an avid surfer. As she gets older and more tired of fighting, she'd MUCH rather be a beach bum than a future duchess.
• Flag bikinis and swimsuits are such a trope so I had to try one out. The Esperadan flag worked out pretty well.
• One of the hardest decisions was figuring out what kind of surfboard Naomi should have. Going with a long board apparently makes sense with the very gentle looking sea in the background
  • I didn't realize that you'd have a bunch of boards for different conditions.
• Doing the sea was FUN. I was originally going to just leave it as the stock 3d asset I was using, but Doodlemancy said I should make it ✨SPARKLE✨
• Ashara's uses black and gold, patterned withe ermines. This is based on her heraldry
  • Ashara is of "common" birth. Common, but a rich trading/merchant family. So this is something that mostly just came up in RP.
  • Karami says Ashara's flag bikini is funny but Ashara's ermine bikini is classy 😭
• We keep going back and forth on Vannaleona's weather. It seems, luckily for Ashara, that the heat and humidity tend to come in waves and breaks. Gets really wet, storms for a few days, then gets relatively dry and mild. This apparently happens in parts of the mediterranean sea, while other places more consistently get mild weather.
  • Ashara also REFUSES TO DRESS FOR THE WEATHER most of the time. She's always going to dress up, look good, and pretend the heat isn't bothering her at all.
  • This is what happens when you grow up in the tundra.
  • It's okay, Ashara makes Naomi take her to the Cruz summer home up in Ixone up north a lot to escape the weather.

Anways feel free to play around and swap between the finished version and the pure 3d original.