c.c You may all blame  leinir for my lack of productivity these past few days. I was introduced to C.J. Cherryh's Faded Sun trilogy, and didn't come up for air until it spat me back out again. Leinir mentioned being frustrated by a lack of illustrations of the alien Mri without their all-concealing robes and veils in place. I had to concur. There is precious little of them, even on the internet, and in my casual search I didn't come across any drawings of them unveiled. All the cover art is fairly typical of the late 70s when these books were written. There are some depictions of what is probably supposed to be a female Mri without veils, but they look mostly like your typical 70s scifi pinup girl.

The Mri are not human.

They are humanoid, and near-human enough that humanity looks on them and finds them beautiful. I tried to make a catalog of the distinguishing features of the species while I was reading, because the bug bit me and I wanted to try my hand at attempting to illustrate what these proud, noble warriors might look like without their concealing veils. Ironically, the notes and doodles I made are something the Mri themselves would find invasive, immodest, and horribly offensive in the hands and sight of tsi-mri (those who are not Mri). They are an intense and private people. They do not show their faces to strangers, but the artist in me is perhaps to human and too curious to leave it alone.

*chuckles* It's funny how even fictional characters can sweep you up in their ideologies if the world-building is good enough. Cherryh is a master of such things. If you prefer your aliens fuzzier but no less complex, I highly recommend reading her Chanur series. So anyway, this is my personal interpretation of how the Mri might look.

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