Magic Knights, Spell-fencers, Spellblades. Among one of my favorite concepts in fiction is the idea of the "martial mage", a wizard who augments their sorcery with more physical craft of swordplay or general melee combat, a true hyrbid between the two arts. If a fantasy game and especially an MMO has one of those, I'll usually gravitate towards them.

Of course, none have really caught my eye quite like the Red Mage from FFXIV, users of the four classical elements as well as holy and flare, while also being skilled swordsmen with their rapiers that double as staffs and doing their combat with a type of dashing style and flair that makes them regular heroes to the commonfolk.

The Red is a noble force that protects innocents and still work within the measure of the law, when forced into situations where he has to fight in his Anthro form and can't just eat and step on enemies, Vel's spellcraft would be similar if not 1:1 to how Red Magi fight, though given his magically charged body he can forgo the rapier and crystal and just fight with his claws if needed.

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This commission was a long time in the making, I've had this idea floating around in my head for months and finally got the money together to get it done, and  Leilryu did an amazing job with bringing it to life with an interplay of colors and elements and making Vel look dashing in the Red Mage's main armor.

This is also a sneak preview of some upcoming redesigns to Vel's appearance, mostly in his wings but we'll get to that later once his new ref sheet is finished.

Vel belongs to me.

Red Mages belong to Square Enix and Final Fantasy XIV.