There are times in which a well made cosplay can really make my jaw drop, but in this case it didn't just drop. It bolted away and I'm still looking for it. My cat probably got its greed paws on it and is still playing with it in some dark corner of my house.

Jokes aside (and I'm just partly joking), with the release of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn drawing near and the anime/cosplay convention season in full swing, it was only a matter of time until someone put the two things together to create something really fantastic. That's exactly what happened here, and it's good enough to rip me away from my usual straight-laced approach to gaming news and into a post about cosplay.

If there's a set of armor in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn that is well known to be beautifully baroque and incredibly complex, that's the Dragoon artifact armor. You'd think no one would raise to the challenge of reproducing it in painstaking detail, and you'd be wrong...so very wrong.

A lady from Austria that goes by the nickname Evil Siren did raise to the challenge, and beat said challenge into the ground with what could very well be the best Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn cosplay ever. Not only she reproduced the armor and the Gae Bolg relic lance in a way that would make Lead Character Designer Akihiko Yoshida proud, but she also gave it a nice twist by personalizing it on her own character, a lovely blue-haired Miqo'te named Esumi Aoi.

But without further preamble, I'll leave you with the gallery just below (the pictures are taken by Cloud-Dark1470). If you want to see more cosplay pictures by Evil Siren you may want to check her DeviantArt page. Not only she's an amazing cosplayer, but she's also a talented artist. You can check her Final Fantasy XIV-themed artwork here. If you want to find out how the costume was made, you can check here for a lot of "making of" pictures decorated by Evil Siren's cute artwork and commentary.

Disclaimer: the pictures below have been published with explicit permission of the cosplayer, that retains full rights and credit for them. No innocent cosplayer has been harmed to write this article.