Morideryn

Source: flickr.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Here is Morideryn! She should be celebrating because I started a layaway for her real body today!

I did want to get her an Ariadoll Elegance 14yrs body, but Ariadoll are closing on the 31st of March and Switch are taking over their moulds and sculpts after that. I didn't know whether to rush and get an Ariadoll body now, or wait and see what Switch would do...but I could end up not liking the new things they do with the sculpts.

Eventually I saw a Volks SD13 girl body on the MP at DoA at a really good price and decided that was the right body to get.

While I really love the Aria body and think it is very elegant, I did worry about if I ever was able to go to a Volks Dolpa (a dolls party held by the Volks company), I wouldn't be able to bring Deryn because she'd be on another company's body. This way, I know that the resin-match would be perfect and she'll be a full Volks doll, rather than a hybrid, so if there ever was any chance I could go to a Dolpa, I wouldn't have to leave her behind.

The other consideration is Deryn's actual character. She is the daughter of the chief of a nomadic, forest-dwelling tribe and a crack-shot with a bow and arrow and a sling. Princesses are supposed to be willowy and lithe, like the Ariadoll body, but a tribal princess who herds reindeer and lives off bread and stew isn't going to be a skinny minnie. She's going to have some meat on her bones and the Volks SD13 body is like that. It has soft curves and some musculature, which is perfect.

Here is Morideryn's backstory;

Deryn's full name is Morideryn (a Welsh-Japanese portmanteau meaning 'forest bird') and she comes from a northern nomadic people called the Mori, who are all red-haired, raucous and brave. They move from high-ground summer lands in the north to low-ground and sheltered winter lands in the south every year and drive their herds of reindeer and well-trained herdwolves with them.

Deryn is the daughter of a chief, Moribran, and his wife, Alis, who is an outsider to the tribe. As Deryn is only half-Mori, her father decides to send her to her mother's people to be educated at a very posh school called Graiglwyd College for Young Ladies, where they speak her mother's language.

Deryn is a very sweet-natured girl, but this is sharply contrasted with her abilities to hunt things single-mindedly - she can kill, skin and joint a rabbit inside ten minutes and she's a crack shot with a sling. She never forgets she's a Mori princess and although she's never snobbish about it, she does expect to be treated with respect.

Her prized possessions are her reindeer hide boots, decorated with hand-carved buttons and leather cord by her Mori grandmother, and her lucky wishbone and pearl necklace which is the inheritance of the eldest daughter of the Mori chief. She is supposed to have traditional tattoos of birds in flight on her shoulders, (I haven't done this yet because she's sharing another doll's body!)

In Mori culture, it is more important to be brave and strong than pretty, and although she is flattered that her new school friends think she is beautiful, Deryn thinks it's the least important thing about her.