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Description

(I hate the way this drawing came out btw, but whatever. it's been so long since I've drawn a human and shaded in this style that I'm pretty shit at it. the linework's also garbage)

The Legion is something that has been talked about fairly extensively in the deviation titled “(old) Esparia.” However, for those who have not seen it, or who have forgotten it, I shall paste the main description of the Legion here.

___

The Legion was an elite group of artists and craftsmen who specialized in the fine arts and art of the like, such as visual art, music, literature, poetry and other art forms. While from a distance the Legion may seem like a simple group of passionate artists and craftsmen, the purpose of the Legion is deeper than that. While the Legion excelled in the arts, they were not working on their own wishes or accords. Instead, the job of a Legion was to express the art inside one’s mind. In essence, the Legion’s job was to realize the imaginations of those who could not do it themselves, either due to a deficiency or a simple lack of talent. Sometimes, though, the artistically talented would hire Legions to do work they themselves were capable of doing so that they instead had time to focus on other aspects of their business, but this was seen as cheap and was frowned upon by the culturally inclined. Rarely did a Legion create art of their own mind, as that was not their purpose. The Legion was split into several guilds which perfected in different areas of art. Some of the most prominent Legion guilds were the Literary Guild (creative writing), the Instrumental Guild (music), the Canvas Guild (painting and drawing), the Cleave Guild (statues and claywork) and the Vision Guild (literature meant to educate and not for entertainment). However, by far the most prominent guild accessible to the public (could be commissioned by the public) was the Literary Guild, which specialized in writing poetry, novelism, biographical endeavors and other things that pertained to literature meant to entertain. While the term for and individual of, say, the Literary Guild was a Literary Legion, a Legion who specialized in, say, poetry was called a Poet Legion, and a Legion who specialized in novelism would be called a Novel Legion. Often, to help people identify the profession of any given Legion, a Legion would wear an armband on their sleeve with a symbol corresponding to their profession.
Often, Legions would either enter this elite service through their own will or through other means, such as having this profession selected for them. But with selection, not everyone could join, and selection often was carried out by someone who knew the person well enough to gauge how valuable and proficient of a Legion they would be.
While the exact reason the Legion was created has been lost to history, it is agreed upon that the Legion was formed to supply more jobs in society. A few decades before, Esparia had gone through an employment crisis where there were not enough open spaces in jobs for the unemployed to attain. In an effort to counter this, the Esparian government activated the Legion Project, a project meant to increase the amount of jobs while still having them be meaningful. While the project did manage to employ thousands, it was largely unsuccessful, but Legions had become such an integral part of society after the over one hundred years of the project’s launch that the Legion was kept, and, through the power of both the culturally inclined and normal citizens, was elevated to a practically exalted state of reverence.
Legions would often work alone, never really gathering in large groups. The only time they would congregate was at the train stations used to help them get to where they needed to if the distance was far. Though most of the time a Legion spent his or her time with whoever it was they were working with. More unskilled Legions, such as Legions who had just joined the service, would often be mentored by a Legion Master, a Legion who was proficient in a field of art who could afford to travel and mentor when needed.
Regardless, while the Legion was a highly revered and elite service, with anything, it had requirements that had to be met in order to keep that job. The Legion was no exception to this, and the rules and requirements to both become and remain a Legion were very strict. Firstly, to become a Legion, an applicant must first be proficient in at least three art forms. Let us say that for an example individual, they choose to be proficient in novelism, traditional drawing and music. To be proficient in novelism, the applicant must display an understanding of prose, an extensive vocabulary, and understanding of sensory detail, an understanding of how to use language and the ability to pace a story. To be proficient in traditional drawing, an applicant must display an understanding of shading/lighting, composition, perspective, depth, form and clean sketches and clean finished products. And lastly for our hypothetical Legion applicant, to be proficient in music means to display an understanding of musical language, such as how to read musical notation, how to write musical notation, how to correctly identify notes based on someone’s hum, how to accurately transcribe that hum and how to arrange music for different instruments, both the same composition and different compositions. If this hypothetical applicant were to prove proficient in those three fields, which are selected by both the applicant and interviewers, then he or she is allowed to choose which procession they wish to serve in.
To remain a Legion, a Legion must undergo a series of week-long tests every year designed to make sure the Legion not only retains the skills they had in the year prior, but also to slowly build on those skills. Typically, a Legion would have to take the yearly tests for around a decade or more before they could be relieved from it. At that point, they would be proficient enough in their craft to be given the title of Saged Legion. This segways into a smaller side note of Legion fashion.
Typically, male Legions would wear a dark blue vest with dark blue pants and black shoes, and underneath they would wear a white buttoned shirt. On the other hand, female Legions would wear a long white dress with a dark blue unbuttoned vest over it and black boots. Each would wear cuffs on their wrists. But aside from that standard fashion, there was a more nuanced fashion specific to the Legion. Starting with beginner Legions, or Minor Legions, they would wear nothing on their face, nothing to cover their eyes or anything. Moving up were the Junior Legions, Legions with decent proficiency, yet not enough to be worthy of any intellectual’s time. They wore nothing on their face, either, yet they did wear a badge to signify their rank, although Minor Legions didn’t have a badge. Moving up were the Legion Knights, Legions who were proficient in their craft and could work with both the common man and the intellectual. Legion Knights wore a cloth over their face which obscured (covers) one of their eyes but left the other eye visible to all. This piece of cloth, often called a half-visor, was a symbolic representation of the Legion Knight’s skill. The Legion Knight was proficient enough to understand many things said at them and to transcribe it with fair accuracy, yet still sometimes asked again what the words being said at them mean, and sometimes paused to consider the meaning of the words themselves. And lastly are the Saged Legions, Legions who were so proficient in their craft they did not need to ask what the deeper meaning was. A Saged Legion excelled in such a way that they can discover perhaps three meanings in a single utterance and not only know these different meanings but also accurately choose the correct meaning without hesitation or wrongness. Saged Legions wore a piece of cloth, a full visor, or simply a visor, that covered both of their eyes from view, effectively eliminating the eyes from the visual face. This hiding/concealing of the eyes from everyone else was symbolic and represented how they knew the exact meaning without seeing it. In more simple terms, relying on the essence of the statement rathan the appearance of the statement. Eyes are a key sense in understanding the world, but for the Saged Legion, they relied on other senses to interpret the world, and by relying on these senses were able to understand nuances in their craft.

___

Anyway, now that the mind has been refreshed on the Legion, I shall now speak of the deviation above. The deviation displays the stages a Legion goes through, from Minor Legion, to Legion Knight and all the way up to Saged Legion. While the more minor stages of each rank are omitted here, the main ranks are listed. The expressions each Legion has in the display is supposed to be reminiscent of how their mentality changes over time. The older a Legion gets, the more and more they begin to understand the human mind and human behavior, and typically the realization of humanity begins to cause the Legion to descend into a spiral of anger and resentment, anger that people must be that way and resentment that they will always be that way. The Minor Legion, having little experience prior, sees the world as a wonderful wealth of imaginative people waiting to have their ideas manifested in the physical form. The Legion Knight, having a good amount of experience under his belt, and having begun to work with more higher-minded people, begins to realize that the world’s beauty resides not in the masses but in the minority, and that the majority of people he has worked with up until that point have been small-minded. This realization that many who surround him are mentally dull begins to aggravate him, and so he grows resentful of society. And lastly is the Saged Legion, who typically has had over fifteen years of experience under their belt. While the Legion Knight is resentful of society, the Saged Legion has accepted society for what it is, and so harbors no ill feelings toward anyone but themself, as they had hated the world for things that likely could not be changed. The Saged Legion has given up hating, and has instead grown stoic. The Saged Legion, while relatively indifferent to the world, harbors feelings of excitement and wonder for the intellectuals she works with.
So this display of Legion ranks descends from excited and hopeful of the world, to more aware and resentful of the world as is and lastly to indifferent to the world as is.

The job of a Legion is not one for anyone, and Legions often have the highest suicide rate out of all civilians, minus war veterans. Many people are hesitant to join the Legion for this very reason, but those who eventually become Saged Legions can often finally rest with a new-found appreciation for existence and the human condition.

Legions are supported by the Legion Commission, and while many live in small apartment flats termed Legion Mansions, others will choose to live with whoever they are serving if it’s more optimal. Legions who live in Legion Mansions tend to have their basic expenses paid for them by the Commission Board itself, which is funded federally, with the Legion paying for more personal expenses, but Legions who choose to live with whoever they’re serving must pay for all their individual expenses.
The Commission’s funds are also tipped by the civilians, but many do not help fund the Commission directly, instead paying the Legions individually. Legions will typically give around 20% of their earnings to the Commission Board. Because of the Legion’s very high-brow position and occupation, the cheapest a civilian or scholar can pay a Legion in exchange for work is upwards of three hundred (currency) total, but for some things, like letter writing, a Legion is only paid twenty dollars. Everyday a Legion works, he typically makes three hundred currency, which means it’s a well-paying job.

Description

(I hate the way this drawing came out btw, but whatever. it's been so long since I've drawn a human and shaded in this style that I'm pretty shit at it. the linework's also garbage)

The Legion is something that has been talked about fairly extensively in the deviation titled “(old) Esparia.” However, for those who have not seen it, or who have forgotten it, I shall paste the main description of the Legion here.

___

The Legion was an elite group of artists and craftsmen who specialized in the fine arts and art of the like, such as visual art, music, literature, poetry and other art forms. While from a distance the Legion may seem like a simple group of passionate artists and craftsmen, the purpose of the Legion is deeper than that. While the Legion excelled in the arts, they were not working on their own wishes or accords. Instead, the job of a Legion was to express the art inside one’s mind. In essence, the Legion’s job was to realize the imaginations of those who could not do it themselves, either due to a deficiency or a simple lack of talent. Sometimes, though, the artistically talented would hire Legions to do work they themselves were capable of doing so that they instead had time to focus on other aspects of their business, but this was seen as cheap and was frowned upon by the culturally inclined. Rarely did a Legion create art of their own mind, as that was not their purpose. The Legion was split into several guilds which perfected in different areas of art. Some of the most prominent Legion guilds were the Literary Guild (creative writing), the Instrumental Guild (music), the Canvas Guild (painting and drawing), the Cleave Guild (statues and claywork) and the Vision Guild (literature meant to educate and not for entertainment). However, by far the most prominent guild accessible to the public (could be commissioned by the public) was the Literary Guild, which specialized in writing poetry, novelism, biographical endeavors and other things that pertained to literature meant to entertain. While the term for and individual of, say, the Literary Guild was a Literary Legion, a Legion who specialized in, say, poetry was called a Poet Legion, and a Legion who specialized in novelism would be called a Novel Legion. Often, to help people identify the profession of any given Legion, a Legion would wear an armband on their sleeve with a symbol corresponding to their profession.
Often, Legions would either enter this elite service through their own will or through other means, such as having this profession selected for them. But with selection, not everyone could join, and selection often was carried out by someone who knew the person well enough to gauge how valuable and proficient of a Legion they would be.
While the exact reason the Legion was created has been lost to history, it is agreed upon that the Legion was formed to supply more jobs in society. A few decades before, Esparia had gone through an employment crisis where there were not enough open spaces in jobs for the unemployed to attain. In an effort to counter this, the Esparian government activated the Legion Project, a project meant to increase the amount of jobs while still having them be meaningful. While the project did manage to employ thousands, it was largely unsuccessful, but Legions had become such an integral part of society after the over one hundred years of the project’s launch that the Legion was kept, and, through the power of both the culturally inclined and normal citizens, was elevated to a practically exalted state of reverence.
Legions would often work alone, never really gathering in large groups. The only time they would congregate was at the train stations used to help them get to where they needed to if the distance was far. Though most of the time a Legion spent his or her time with whoever it was they were working with. More unskilled Legions, such as Legions who had just joined the service, would often be mentored by a Legion Master, a Legion who was proficient in a field of art who could afford to travel and mentor when needed.
Regardless, while the Legion was a highly revered and elite service, with anything, it had requirements that had to be met in order to keep that job. The Legion was no exception to this, and the rules and requirements to both become and remain a Legion were very strict. Firstly, to become a Legion, an applicant must first be proficient in at least three art forms. Let us say that for an example individual, they choose to be proficient in novelism, traditional drawing and music. To be proficient in novelism, the applicant must display an understanding of prose, an extensive vocabulary, and understanding of sensory detail, an understanding of how to use language and the ability to pace a story. To be proficient in traditional drawing, an applicant must display an understanding of shading/lighting, composition, perspective, depth, form and clean sketches and clean finished products. And lastly for our hypothetical Legion applicant, to be proficient in music means to display an understanding of musical language, such as how to read musical notation, how to write musical notation, how to correctly identify notes based on someone’s hum, how to accurately transcribe that hum and how to arrange music for different instruments, both the same composition and different compositions. If this hypothetical applicant were to prove proficient in those three fields, which are selected by both the applicant and interviewers, then he or she is allowed to choose which procession they wish to serve in.
To remain a Legion, a Legion must undergo a series of week-long tests every year designed to make sure the Legion not only retains the skills they had in the year prior, but also to slowly build on those skills. Typically, a Legion would have to take the yearly tests for around a decade or more before they could be relieved from it. At that point, they would be proficient enough in their craft to be given the title of Saged Legion. This segways into a smaller side note of Legion fashion.
Typically, male Legions would wear a dark blue vest with dark blue pants and black shoes, and underneath they would wear a white buttoned shirt. On the other hand, female Legions would wear a long white dress with a dark blue unbuttoned vest over it and black boots. Each would wear cuffs on their wrists. But aside from that standard fashion, there was a more nuanced fashion specific to the Legion. Starting with beginner Legions, or Minor Legions, they would wear nothing on their face, nothing to cover their eyes or anything. Moving up were the Junior Legions, Legions with decent proficiency, yet not enough to be worthy of any intellectual’s time. They wore nothing on their face, either, yet they did wear a badge to signify their rank, although Minor Legions didn’t have a badge. Moving up were the Legion Knights, Legions who were proficient in their craft and could work with both the common man and the intellectual. Legion Knights wore a cloth over their face which obscured (covers) one of their eyes but left the other eye visible to all. This piece of cloth, often called a half-visor, was a symbolic representation of the Legion Knight’s skill. The Legion Knight was proficient enough to understand many things said at them and to transcribe it with fair accuracy, yet still sometimes asked again what the words being said at them mean, and sometimes paused to consider the meaning of the words themselves. And lastly are the Saged Legions, Legions who were so proficient in their craft they did not need to ask what the deeper meaning was. A Saged Legion excelled in such a way that they can discover perhaps three meanings in a single utterance and not only know these different meanings but also accurately choose the correct meaning without hesitation or wrongness. Saged Legions wore a piece of cloth, a full visor, or simply a visor, that covered both of their eyes from view, effectively eliminating the eyes from the visual face. This hiding/concealing of the eyes from everyone else was symbolic and represented how they knew the exact meaning without seeing it. In more simple terms, relying on the essence of the statement rathan the appearance of the statement. Eyes are a key sense in understanding the world, but for the Saged Legion, they relied on other senses to interpret the world, and by relying on these senses were able to understand nuances in their craft.

___

Anyway, now that the mind has been refreshed on the Legion, I shall now speak of the deviation above. The deviation displays the stages a Legion goes through, from Minor Legion, to Legion Knight and all the way up to Saged Legion. While the more minor stages of each rank are omitted here, the main ranks are listed. The expressions each Legion has in the display is supposed to be reminiscent of how their mentality changes over time. The older a Legion gets, the more and more they begin to understand the human mind and human behavior, and typically the realization of humanity begins to cause the Legion to descend into a spiral of anger and resentment, anger that people must be that way and resentment that they will always be that way. The Minor Legion, having little experience prior, sees the world as a wonderful wealth of imaginative people waiting to have their ideas manifested in the physical form. The Legion Knight, having a good amount of experience under his belt, and having begun to work with more higher-minded people, begins to realize that the world’s beauty resides not in the masses but in the minority, and that the majority of people he has worked with up until that point have been small-minded. This realization that many who surround him are mentally dull begins to aggravate him, and so he grows resentful of society. And lastly is the Saged Legion, who typically has had over fifteen years of experience under their belt. While the Legion Knight is resentful of society, the Saged Legion has accepted society for what it is, and so harbors no ill feelings toward anyone but themself, as they had hated the world for things that likely could not be changed. The Saged Legion has given up hating, and has instead grown stoic. The Saged Legion, while relatively indifferent to the world, harbors feelings of excitement and wonder for the intellectuals she works with.
So this display of Legion ranks descends from excited and hopeful of the world, to more aware and resentful of the world as is and lastly to indifferent to the world as is.

The job of a Legion is not one for anyone, and Legions often have the highest suicide rate out of all civilians, minus war veterans. Many people are hesitant to join the Legion for this very reason, but those who eventually become Saged Legions can often finally rest with a new-found appreciation for existence and the human condition.

Legions are supported by the Legion Commission, and while many live in small apartment flats termed Legion Mansions, others will choose to live with whoever they are serving if it’s more optimal. Legions who live in Legion Mansions tend to have their basic expenses paid for them by the Commission Board itself, which is funded federally, with the Legion paying for more personal expenses, but Legions who choose to live with whoever they’re serving must pay for all their individual expenses.
The Commission’s funds are also tipped by the civilians, but many do not help fund the Commission directly, instead paying the Legions individually. Legions will typically give around 20% of their earnings to the Commission Board. Because of the Legion’s very high-brow position and occupation, the cheapest a civilian or scholar can pay a Legion in exchange for work is upwards of three hundred (currency) total, but for some things, like letter writing, a Legion is only paid twenty dollars. Everyday a Legion works, he typically makes three hundred currency, which means it’s a well-paying job.