The Lover (Patreon)

For this month's Oathman print, I decided to carve the Lover constellation, which reigns over the month of Sun's Height (July). 

For the body, I went with the Dwemer design, found exclusively in The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard. The hair, meanwhile, is based loosely on Oblivion's version of the design. 

I've always been fascinated by the TESA:Redguard versions of the constellations. Whereas the designs have remained relatively similar for most of Elder Scrolls history and across multiple cultures depicted, the Dwemeri designs are often radically different. There's a lot of implicit worldbuilding in these differences, as well as in what the images depict. Take the Ritual, for example, depicted as a wadjet eye design.  The Dwemeri version instead shows some sort of machine (an orrery, perhaps?) piloted by four dwarves. The Steed is instead a Scarab (a symbol for both change in general and Lorkhan in particular), and the Mage does not exist at all, being replaced by the Machinist. 

The Lover is more similar to other Tamrielic depictions, though her pose is far more active, running or lashing out rather than a static contrapposto. Her clothing appears to be a crop top and a loincloth, as well as either tight pants or wrappings around her knees, which doesn't look like anything we've seen the Dwemer wearing. Additionally, she's missing her right foot and left hand - both potentially significant symbols (see, for example, Sermon 1: " For I have crushed a world with my left hand, but in my right hand is how it could have won against me.") While it's impossible to know what exactly the intended meaning was, it's certainly evocative in a way her other designs are not. 

You can see a full list of constellation depictions in this TIL article.