The beginning.

I have always wanted to build a set of Boba Fett armor.   Once I got started, it became clear to me that just "recreating" Boba's Armor wasn't going to work.  The imaginative part of my brain always identified with the Mandalorians, and Boba Fett in particular, but even as a kid, I never envisioned 'being Boba Fett' so much as 'living in that world, in a manner similar to Fett.'   So, it became more of a desire to have my own "Mandalorian armor."   Once I realized that, then I started to think about that person; who he is, how does he think, what does he do and how does he do it?   Answering those questions lead to more, and so on.   As it is, the armor is an extension of the man,  and as you see it, you see who he is.    The armor tells his story.  Or part of his story..

 

So, within this blog, I'll track some of the adventures involved in making the armor, and other random things that go along with it.   

The base build here is for a heavily armed and armored mercenary, with a particular aggression for force-users.   In essence, his entire mentality is based on a rejection of the elite status that force users bestow upon themselves.    Knowing full well that no mortal can stand toe-to-toe to the mind-fogging magics of these wizards, no matter how well trained, he wears a small amulet encapsulating a slice of taozin flesh suspended in a bacta bath.   With that cancelling the magics of the force users, he's more than willing to close in and take them down vibro-blade to lightsaber.   While force users are trained to fight, they're also very dependent upon their special talents.  With those taken away, they find themselves on completely unfamiliar ground, and the skill of a trained swordsman becomes a much more lethal threat.

 His primary motivation is more than that of a typical mercenary, he has a sense of justice that makes him, in the words of 'the Operative,' a believer.  In the Galaxy of his home, the force users hold themselves as an elite, better and above those who are not force-sensitive.  They are the rulers, the non-force sensitives are, at best, subjects to be ruled.  In most cases, they are the pawns for wars, minds to be manpulated, free will to be squashed.   Jedi.  Sith.  Gray.  They're all the enemy of the common good.  The only control to their immense power is their willingness to not use them, and for millennia after millennia, that "restraint" has been shown through war after war.   And while the Wizards battle for domination, the common man and woman and child are ground underfoot like chaff. 

 With that in mind, I started to work on the armor.  The helm is a custom build, slightly larger than the typical mandalorian, with a deeper chin.  The T-visor is of a crusader style and is intentionally built with angles rather than curves, to give a more menacing, harsh edge. 

 The torso armor also is similar to the Exalted armor in SWTOR, but has a heart-diamond plate  reinforcing the center.  This gives it a stylistic similarity to the future incarnations of the breastplates.   The rest of the plates are layered and also follow a similar hard-angled style as the helm.   The pauldrons are double-layered for protection on the upper body and upper arm and this is where we see more of the story about the wearer.

The right hand pauldron, rerebrace and vambrace all are more heavily armored than the left and bear the scars of being used for blocking.