Looks at dialogue...

....http://static.thecia.com.au/reviews.....-old-men-4.jpg

I love it! Quite a way back reference, unless the new editions are really pushing Iuz or something.

I always did imagine him as a much more disgusting, vile creature, but your interpretation is fresh and interesting.

Naw, 4e and 5e default to the Realms. I honestly kinda wish they'd stuck with 3e's thing for Greyhawk. Even though both are kinda generic D&D settings, something about the energy of Greyhawk is a little more appealing.

And thanks! I didn't have much of any idea of what Iuz was supposed to look like, before I started on drawing this. The only descriptions which are easy to find are sort of vague, enough so that the armor and sword are guesswork (what's the opposite of a weird but seemingly harmless old man, so much as an armored hulk?).

I always had the idea that, because his change was a form of divine punishment, he'd look absolutely grotesque. I actually read a fair bit of his descriptions from the "Gord the Thief" books, but that was a while ago and my memory is fairly rough.

Oh wow, I've never actually gotten to read those, that's awesome!

Yeah, they're not the -best- in the world, but they are pretty neat, you can genuinely see bits of game rules poking in through the cracks in a fun way.

Not that, of course, your depiction isn't valid or anything. On the contrary, quite remarkable!

Totally dig the armor here. Everyone should strap a skull on the shoulder plate, I mean, that's never out of fashon, isn't it so?

Part of what I was thinking about is, I copied some photos of historical armors recently to try figuring out how they worked and something I really noticed was how pauldrons tend to be asymmetrical, even on the functional battlefield armors and not just the giant plates on the tournament suits.

I suppose it might have to do with the usage of one handed weapons? I'm presuming that in one such case one arm is used for offense whilst the other for defence, thus the different need of both mobility and protection? Also, I've read some papers on hand to hand combat related injuries in which the high frequency of wounds being on the left side of the skull (the skeletal district on which the paper focused) was supposedly related to the fact that most people are right handed and therefore when facing an opponent most blows should land on his left side; this also might be a factor in asymmetrical paldrons. I realize this all sounds quite obviuos but, I must admit, I know almost nothing of medieval archaeology and most european iron-age armor did not have pauldrons.