Xandr: The Nude Barbarian of Baldur’s Gate

Nudism is losing ground in the battle for acceptance. Every day, it seems, we are under attack by social media. Our way of life is perpetually misrepresented, when all depictions of nudity, however innocent, are lumped in with p@rn. Earnest YouTubers promoting the lifestyle are quietly erased. My account was recently flagged with a violation, not for something I posted, but for favoriting The Isis Fashion Awards. This event was entirely, refreshingly non-sexual—a legit runway pageant based in Europe featuring fully nude models. YouTube not only removed the video but deleted my favorites folder, just for liking a video they originally allowed! Can you get more Big Brother than that?

Not only are we censored from exposing our natural selves in public, but we are demonized for showing interest in what we believe. Meanwhile, my feed is inundated with “hot wifing” and “gangbang” interviews, and how so-and-so got into the adult film industry (I made the mistake of clicking on one of these videos). The message social media sends is clear: hate speech is OK, praising the murder of innocent people by ICE is fine, turning OnlyFans creators into celebrities for banging a thousand guys in a day — all good! — but protect us from female nipples!

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Growing up before the Internet, before knowing there was a term for people like me, I feared for my sanity, that I was a deviant to be shunned by society, that I was not normal, or worse, not a good person. It would have greatly helped me to meet others who lived the way I did. I would have loved to see nudity normalized in books, movies, TV shows, or even video games. After all, if I could live free of shame, without having to wear that stuffy underwear I loathed, why couldn’t my heroes? Children need more than p@rn stars when they question their bodies. They need natural, realistic-looking people doing laundry, walking the dog, or cooking dinner. Better yet, I’d love to see us return to the days of the heroic nude! This was my goal when I created Xandr, who was inspired by and loosely based on my childhood hero, He-Man.

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It was not uncommon in the ’80s to see nearly-nude cartoon characters on TV. He-Man sported a furry loincloth and little else, while the women of the show, Teela, Evil-Lyn, and the Sorceress, went traipsing about Eternia in what amounted to a one-piece swimsuit. Thundercats went even further, suggesting the original cat-folk lived as naturists on their homeworld before its demise, with the main heroes appearing naked in the pilot episode, albeit furry and sexless. Even the original Dungeons & Dragons’ books featured quite a bit of titillating imagery, with a scantily clad rogue held captive by a towering demon on the cover of the ’70s Dungeon Master’s Guide, while a fully nude succubus tempted us from the pages of the Monster Manual. Unfortunately for me, America went right as I turned left, and skin became largely taboo in fantasy and Sci-Fi outside of HBO. You won’t see sexy covers like mine anymore (unless you’re buying my books), and even our childhood heroes are being forced to cover up. The 2024 edition of Dungeons & Dragons gives us nostalgic throwbacks to the old ’80s cartoon with grown-up versions of Hank and Presto, but God forbid Diana the Acrobat be seen in anything other than pants, when she used to go bare-legged. I’m willing to bet my life savings that in the upcoming Masters of the Universe film, Teela won’t be exposing her thighs. This isn’t a tragedy, mind you. Far from it. I have no desire to ogle fictional women — I can enjoy kickass babes decked out in full plate — but for the sake of artistic expression, I’d prefer to live in a world free of body taboos. I’d prefer to live in a world where some heroes are free to live as I do. As it is, our past is being erased by prudes who consider our childhoods an embarrassment, but I digress . . .

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My DeviantArt gallery is rife with Thelana pictures, and in none of these is she wearing a stitch, but very few Xandrs grace the pages of the site. Admittedly, as a straight guy I prefer the sight of a beautiful woman, yet this sends the message that nudism is about sex and titillation. (Mea culpa.) Of course, Thelana attracts mostly male readers. But if the goal of nudism is to rise above our baser, animal instincts, it doesn’t help that a pretty young girl is doing the advertising. Per the nudist ethos, it shouldn’t matter whether the hero is male, female, young, old, or butt-ugly. But even AANR (American Association for Nude Recreation) falls into this trap, often featuring its more attractive members on its magazine covers. And why shouldn’t they? Sexy actresses advertise cell phone plans, and cell phones aren’t exactly about sex. So why not show us the better-looking couple when promoting a romantic getaway? Advertising reflects who we want to be, and we all want to be pretty.

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Beauty isn’t just a contentious issue for naked heroes, however. The protagonist in just about any story is almost always conventionally attractive. Thelana is “hot” because she’s a heroine, like Black Widow and Red Sonja, not because she’s showing us her goods. And, like Superman, He-Man, James Bond, and almost every male hero you can think of, Xandr is a “looker.” Unfortunately, my skyclad barbarian has not been getting the love he deserves, which is a real shame, given he’s arguably the main character in Ages of Aenya. A lot of this, I surmise, has to do with homophobia and a fear of male genitalia. The penis remains the boogeyman of the art community. One of my fans, who makes custom figures from clay, straight up told me, “I’m not sculpting a penis.” Another artist from the Netherlands, no less, refused to post the full-frontal Xandr I commissioned without drawing Thelana next to him, just to make it clear to his viewers he wasn’t gay. Thankfully, homophobia has been declining over the decades, barring concerted efforts from MAGA and the Man-O-Sphere, and young men are no longer afraid to admit they find other men attractive. Then came video games like Conan (where you can play as a nude Conan) and Baldur’s Gate 3 from Larian, a European studio (no surprise) offering its players a choice of genitalia.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 has been a dream come true for me. At long last, I could play my characters as I imagined them! But my first instinct, naturally, was to build Thelana. At the time, I didn’t even know I could create my own NPCs (hirelings), so I never bothered making her male lover and counterpart. Now, for all you nudie gamers out there, the mistake I made with Thelana was to go with the barbarian class, which seemed the obvious choice at the time, given that barbarians often go into battle in just a loincloth, receiving bonuses to AC for NOT wearing armor. A fully nude barbarian made thematic sense. The problem was, if you’ve read (or written) the books, you’d know Thelana isn’t that type of character; she doesn’t fly into a bloodthirsty rage in the heat of battle; she doesn’t go charging into melee swinging a giant ax. Rather, she is cunning, quiet, and clever. She hunts dinosaurs from afar with bow and spear, and dammit, she makes for a much better rogue . . . which is why, on my second playthrough, I went with rogue. This is really the best option because when you’re sneak-attacking from a distance, dealing 40 to 60 points of damage per hit, what you’re wearing doesn’t matter. The other problem I had with BG3 was the limited selection of body types — only TWO — for human females: a buff wrestler and a skinny waif, neither of whom represented my heroine well.

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That said, the huge, bodybuilder physique fits Xandr perfectly, and the barbarian class suits his MO to a T. It’s great to see him brought to life so vividly. All he’s missing is his trademark scar and two-handed sword. It would have also been nice for the other party members to acknowledge his utter lack of clothing. Maybe the world of Faerun, where the game takes place, is more accepting of public nudity, but when EVERYONE is dressed, from the goblins and ogres in their rags to the seductive demons in their fetish gear, you’re forced to wonder why nobody notices all that giggling going on between your thighs, which was especially distracting during the cut scenes, and further makes me wonder how accurate those physics really are. Still, playing a nude Xandr in Baldur’s Gate gives me hope for the future. Nudity is so popular in games these days, the modding community jumps over every new release, letting us virtually shed our clothes in titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, Street Fighter, and Tomb Raider. One tournament had to be stopped mid-fight after a player forgot to turn off his Chun-Li mod. Admittedly, this pervy programming caters to lonely incels drooling over pixelated fantasies, but somewhere along the line, I imagine some of them may be inspired to consider the reasons we wear clothes, and why the human body should be deemed so offensive, as many of my readers already have. When, in a recent poll, I asked my mostly male fans whether they’d like me to write a book about a young Xandr, 80% responded that they would.

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