KR|Horizon Review #11: Elahdin

Toy prototype details

Name: Elahdin^TM

Subtitle: watchful companion

Line: KR|Horizon

Item type: action figure - Nº 10 in the line.

Character details

Name: Elahdin

Classification: primivod mammal

Sex: female

Relationships: Mor-Rak's fiancée

Home: Tahron

Era: 15 years after Foundation

Affiliation: Theriom

Rank: captain; espionage expert and master of capture weapons.

Background

First appearance: KR|Horizon #1 - The Destructomorph legacy

Brief bio: the descendent of an ancient clan that had crucially helped bolster the Theriom cavalry during Tahron's pre-modern era, Elahdin was an incredibly skilled and resourceful warrior maiden with almost peerless agility thanks to her long prehensile tail. Aiming at mastering the most advanced techniques to seize outlaws and vandals, she joined the Theriom army and trained alongside Mor-Rak, for whom she eventually developed strong affection. Whilst she succeeded in becoming one of the most trusted chief trappers guarding Theriom City from potential attackers, Elahdin also gained the ability to deceive, infiltrate and spy on her adversaries by disguising herself during undercover operations. Despite taking her role as a captain of the Theriom Guardians very seriously, she sometimes bypassed her commander-in-chief's formalities and regulations, putting herself in harm's way. Yet, her determination was without equal and always enabled her to find solutions to difficult situations. After learning of Nemhetra's ambition to defeat the Therioms and unlock the multiversal walls' portals, Elahdin's only desire became to help free the people of Tahron from that evil menace.

Articulation

Standard, excluding hinged abdomen. The figure also has a ball jointed tail.

Description

Head: predominantly ape-like (similar to a black-and-gold howler, even if she's a primivod, a fictional anthropomorphic marsupial), characterised by dainty features, short whitish to yellowish-buff fur, a pair of round ears with silver earrings, and big brown eyes. Her long hair, which is partly arranged in a ponytail and gradually fades to a reddish-brown colour towards the tips, has a fringe cut straight across the forehead

Body: the exposed portions of her body (i.e., arms and hands, legs and feet, parts of the torso and a long tail) show a short whitish to yellowish-buff fur. Bands of light-green leather are worn around her upper arms and left thigh

Wearables: a close-fitting one-piece leather armour, a silver shoulder guard composed of two spaulders and a collar, two metallic light-green bracelets, two metallic light-green shin guards, and a narrow metallic light-green belt. The armour, similarly to a leotard, covers her body from the shoulders to the top of the thighs, and displays a star-design (with a silver jewel in the centre) that separates the light-green upper part (covering the chest) from the red lower part (covering the abdomen and extending below the waist). The shin guards feature star-shaped knee guards (their design is similar to the armour motif) and are worn over a pair of tubular light-green leather garments (which have turndown tops and cover the legs from ankle to knee).

Elahdin's stylised armour (part above the waist).

Action feature

At the beginning of the Horizon comic book series, Elahdin is shown to disguise herself as an aristocratic woman during a sting operation, by using several fashion accessories that can turn into hi-tech capture weapons. Many of those accessories are included with the figure. The first weapon is a H-shaped silver tiara/mask that doubles as a boomerang/grabber. This removable accessory pegs into a hole in the forehead of an alternative head and, when it's worn, it vaguely resembles the cheek pads (or flanges) that characterise certain male apes. I think this piece turned out really nice: a red gemstone and a pair of bright, shimmering translucent red inlays adorn the centre and the sides of the mask respectively, while its metallic green backside looks delightfully techy with sculpted wires and gears. It is also designed to be reversible: you can fit it so that the eye slits either line up with her eyes (i.e., partially covering her face) or lie above her brow (i.e., showcasing her face); additionally, the peg serves as a handle, so she can hold the throwing weapon in her hand. If you cared about the hole in the head, you'd be happy there's an alternate tiara/grabber (without mask, and with slightly different design and colouration - the comics suggest that she has a huge collection of these items) that is held on the standard head by means of two clips. Unfortunately, I’m not with PoliganToys on this display option - the clips seem too fragile, and due to the bangs that are behind the tiara, she doesn't look good with this accessory.

The second weapon is a cape that transforms into a capture net by pulling a pair of hidden drawstrings. The separate cape piece is made of real fabric and is amazingly well tailored; it's also iridescent and double sided, so she can have a dark-red cape with dark-blue lining or a dark-blue cape with dark-red lining. This is a really stunning piece and it definitely changes the overall look of the figure, making her seem more regal. Its upper side has two pegs that plug into the spaulders, so it can be detached from the shoulder guard and be replaced by an alternative piece - a blue net-cape, also made out of fabric, which can be held by the two pegs in her hands when it's unattached.

The third weapon is a red stole, i.e., a narrow formal shawl, that can turn into a double-headed meteor hammer. The stole is a long piece of rubbery, pliable plastic that can be wrapped and carried about her shoulders and arms, with the two silver-lined ends trailing along the ground. The alternate version of the accessory is a weapon consisting of two spherical silver weights connected by a red rope, which, like the stole, is moulded from a very pliable material, meaning that it can actually be posed and moved around quite a bit.

The fourth and final weapon is a clawed light-green baton that doubles as a flying claw. Elahdin carries this baton on her left thigh (the handle has a peg that plugs into a hole in the thigh band) and conceals it using a belt-plus-sash additional piece; the Y-shaped green belt is adorned with a central tassel, while the long ends of the red sash below hang down on the left side in front of the weapon. When the piece is turned, causing the sash ends to move towards the front of the figure, it reveals the hidden weapon in the thigh band. The alternative version of the weapon consists of a light-green handle and a metallic light-green claw on the end of a wave-shaped, rigid silver wire.

Weapons and accessories

You might legitimately think I could skip this section, given the plethora of weapons I described in the action feature segment - let's summarise it:

• An alternative head with a removable tiara/mask-boomerang/grabber
• An alternate tiara-grabber for the standard head
• A reversible cape
• A net-cape
• A stole
• A meteor hammer
• A belt & sash piece
• A clawed baton
• A flying claw

However, in addition to this overabundance of accessories, the figure includes a loose fitting light-green leather belt, with an attached scabbard that connects to the thigh band. The sheath envelops the blade of a removable sword, which is done in a nice two-tone silver with a red handle and a seven-point star-shaped glittering, translucent red jewel embedded in the base of the blade. Actually, the whole sword vaguely resembles a seven-point star, with two silver points situated at the end of the handle, four forming the X-shaped cross guard, and one being the long, techy blade.

Finally, Elahdin comes with a circular, flute-like golden musical instrument, which she received from her mother-in-law-to-be Sih-Len. In the comics, she's highly skilled in playing this woodwind instrument, and the music from it is so mesmerising that Elahdin can use it to calm and sedate aggressive foes and even wild beasts.

Comic

Together with the action figure we get the second comic issue In the eye of the storm. As every year, at the annual spring celebration, Masq-Lor visits the city of Ra-Hal, to commemorate the defeat of Deptilion 15 years ago as a symbol of a good harvest upcoming. Nemhetra observes the event from the sky and discovers that the townsfolk have a powerful machine with the ability to influence the local weather, which her parents utilised to cause huge storms on Tahron in the past. The Destructomorph leader decides to siege the city, and aims, this time, at using the machine to absorb energy from the atmosphere and concentrate it on her. After the Therioms have left, the Destructomorphs land on the town and activate the machine immediately. The Therioms receive a distress signal from Ra-Hal and Masq-Lor, understanding the danger, works towards preventing Nemhetra from using the machine’s power; so, he and his soldiers head back the city. On their way to Ra-Hal, they meet an army of Goblins, and the fierce fight that ensues drains CoBoN’s power sources. The heroes continue their journey by foot and, as they come nearer to the city, are attacked by Nemhetra’s soldiers. The Therioms can hardly handle the fight, but eventually succeed in getting the upper hand. In the meantime, Masq-Lor follows a mysterious figure, who is revealed to be Mohrdax. The two have a confrontation, during which the priestmonk uncovers Masq-Lor's secret (he is still convinced that he killed a man 20 years ago). Mohrdax blackmails Masq-Lor into becoming his secret accomplice, as part of his plan to outsmart Nemhetra, seize control of the Destructomorph army and dominate Tahron behind the scenes. Mohrdax hands the memory bank with the evidence that he has used to blackmail Masq-Lor to his soldiers and orders to destroy it. The Goblins are just about to bring the memory to an incinerating apparatus when Sajron, who was aboard CoBoN unbeknownst to everyone, shows up and is taken prisoner, but he subsequently manages to escape and to steal the memory bank. Back to the location where CoBoN is parked, he examines the content of the memory using the vehicle’s equipment and sees that his young father is shown to kill a man; however, after fast forwarding, he sees that it was a trick orchestrated by Mohrdax and Wordron. Finally, the heroes reach the centre of the village and approach Nemhetra, but, to everyone’s surprise, Masq-Lor helps the enemies resist the attack made on them. Soon after, Sajron arrives with CoBoN and reveals the truth to his father. Upon learning of his efforts to outjockey her, Nemhetra injuries Mohrdax. Then, the evil chief marshal channels the energy through the machine, which makes her nearly invincible, and nobody seems strong enough to oppose her with that fierce power. Even so, the two factions face each other for the final fight. It doesn't look too good at first, but while the heroes manage to get rid of all the opponents, Masq-Lor rips the machine’s control panel apart, causing all the power to flow back to its origins and thus saving Ra-Hal once more. The threat has ended and the evil guys fly away, while the Therioms return the machine to the cheering townspeople. Suddenly, the machine crumbles and falls apart, and the inhabitants of Ra-Hal decide that from that moment onward they will only rely on natural farming.
Overall, the idea of someone being doubtful of their own status amongst the heroes isn't new, but it's nicely done here. The secret that Masq-Lor has been carrying for two decades gives the story a lot of tension, and the solution is pretty spectacular. The artwork is also of top class and the whole thing has a fine, gloomy atmosphere.

Final thoughts

Character value: ♦♦♦ Although I never clamoured for a figure of Elahdin, when she got announced to be prototyped instead of an unspecified Horizon CoBoN figure that was originally planned but is too difficult to produce, I thought it was a decent choice

Articulation: ♥♥♥ All the articulation is the standard stuff found on all KR female figures (plus the tail) and most of the POA are solid. However, giving a figure swappable heads that are still ball jointed is a challenge and something went amiss on Elahdin. The heads are very difficult to swap, particularly in getting them onto the peg. The easiest solution is to use a hair dryer to heat up the socket of the head before planting it on

Sculpt and paint: ♣♣♣♣ The sculpt is done really well, especially on the heads, armour, and shin guards. The paint applications on the armour is nice and clean, with just a little unevenness around the tips of the star. The work on the faces is good - both heads look great and capture the look of the character

Accessories: ♠♠♠♠♠ Definitely PoliganToys didn't skimp on the accessories for Elahdin. Among them, I think the cloth cape/net pieces look really good on the figure and help her stand out from the other characters. On the other end of the spectrum, the tiara for the standard head has those big ugly clips that help ruin the figure's aesthetic look

Playability: ♪♪♪♪ What makes me happy is how much I like this figure after playing around with it. I thought this would be one of the figures I’d look at just to get through my review, and I’d be done with it. Thankfully, I was wrong

Overall: ☺☺☺☺ I wasn't that excited for Elahdin. I thought I wouldn’t care about it so much, but now that this figure is in-hand, she's much more interesting and appealing than I imagined.