HOMM3 Modification - Caitlin the Cleric

Well, I feel foolish. I'd been running around with Caitlyn for some time, only to find out literally as I started typing this post that I'd mispelled it on all my filenames, my collage, and elsewhere. I decided not to do the collage image all over again, so you'll just have to look at Caitlyn instead of Caitlin and know who I'm talking about.

Caitlin... ahem... actually has a somewhat interesting look compared to the girl clerics. Whereas Sanya and Adela are severe monkesses (if that's even a word, which according my spellcheck it isn't) and Adelaide is the pretty one, Caitlin gets to look like a middle-aged battle-ax with a fancy Medieval headress with some gold brocade on it. While I won't say that her look is necessarily... attractive, it is at least somewhat unique (except for the Wizard Cyra who looks very similar) and individual. More of that is to be encouraged, in my opinion. So, again, I won't be looking to deviate too far from the Original vision, as long as there are options that don't deviate from it and which also look good. As it turns out, there are:

I've said before that the Stable Diffusion collections are clearly simple img2img jobs, and without taking some time to either run lots of iterations, or do some regional replacement, or manually do some work on the images, they often look funky, or lose resolution and detail. In this case, both of them lost all fo the detail from the brocaded headdress which is her most distinguishing feature. Stable Diffusion 2 arguably has a prettier (or at least smoother) face, plus she has a pleasant hint of a smile. I actually kind of like the more blank unsmiling look; if we're going to have warrior-nuns in the Castle faction, they shouldn't really be cute most of the time. That's sometimes my complaint with ensrick's girls; they almost invariably look prettier. Here, however, he captures the same stern middle-aged blank look of the original better than any, except maybe the melted butterface of the Stable Diffusion AI collection.

Her bio—not that anyone cares—makes some vague references to her being rumored to have been possessed by evil spirits, yet still making tons of money at the donations box. I have no idea what to make of that, since I see no evidence of it in her portrait. Also, she comes with the fairly boring Cure spell and the pretty useless Intelligence secondary skill. She also has the Gold specialty, though—if paired with Estates, she can be a pretty good passive money-maker. Maybe Intelligence isn't so bad for a character who may be holed up in a castle doing defense and being a passive money maker.

Curiously, given that, Pack 01 is a better choice than it otherwise might be, since I can see that face sporting that bio and weird backstory. I don't know why StrikerX looks like a belly dancer and Vallex looks like a pirate, but maybe they were both just trying to get that brocaded headdress represented somehow.

WINNER: once again, ensrick