Lady Incognita
Cazador Szarr's "niece" is named Amanita Szarr.
You can find her story scattered throughout the palace's attic, dungeon, and the House of Hope. She was a girl who grew up near Anga Vled raised by old servants. At 13, she was brought to visit her uncle in Baldur's Gate...
The day her entire family exposed themselves as vampires.
Alternate Text: An east Asian girl with medium-brown skin and dark brown then red eyes looks away from the viewer. One with brown, facing away. Twice with red and shoddily cut away dark hair, looking away in despair and notably darkened, red, downcast eyes and short hair. Once more with darkened eyes and a cloak and red eyes to match, long dark hair flowing from her hood.
Unfinished, but hey. I want to show fellow artists that things just don't come to you. Sometimes, you have to work the lines and paint until they do. Use Glaze to protect your art from AI scrapers.
The notes you can find in order:
Alturiak 1477
Tarsakh 1477
Mirtul 1477
Kythorn 1477
Flamerule 1477
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The city palace, straddling the wall between the Upper and Lower City, was more than creepy, it was somehow chilling.
Cazador Szarr the Avid rose to power in 1296. She stayed at the estate for at least four months before she was killed. She was turned in Kythorn 1477, 15 years before the start of the story.
'Uncle' Cazador made me a vampire, but I refused to participate in the family rites. He gave me the Hunger but he could not break my will. He had Blovart imprison me in the attic. I weakened. They sent up human blood, and eventually I drank it. For a year, they stopped sending anything. I tore at the walls in frustration. Then they sent up a bound captive.
Cazador's favorite punishments are cruelty, hunger, and isolation.
His staff, "Woe:" The gentle tap-tap-tap of a staff on stone sparked terror for all in Cazador's palace. It signalled an approaching storm, and all they could do was shrink into the background and pray its wrath would not fall on them.
His dagger, "Rhapsody:" Cazador's love of poetry arose after he read on the naked stomach of a dead child in his homeland. The child was hung from the lowest branch of a tree. Cazador read the poem, and looked at the child, and he knew that here was the artform for him.
Her coffin is on a wooden table overlooking a window. There are chains by her bed, a candle, and a skull. There are three skeletons in the attic, one headless with a crossbow and garlic cloves in their cage.
I succumbed. I am a vampire, and damned. I curse the name of Szarr and reject it.
Now I stay in the attic by choice and write my little histories. I am Lady Incognita. Amanita is no more.
I think the snippets of her story were so impactful because of the complete betrayal. The fact her family were never around. The fact they lied for her entire life. The fact they forced her to transform, which we know from Astarion's partial ceremorphosis dialogue is incredibly painful:
Player: Unlike you to be so unwilling to receive a new power...
Astarion: That was before I knew the cost. Before I knew it meant transforming into some grotesque beast. I remember how it hurt when I turned to a vampire. My body writhed and warped while I was utterly helpless, the grip of death owned my heart as it beat its last. I - I don't want to turn into anything else. I can't do that again. I can't watch my body be taken over.
Player: You're afraid?
Astarion: I'll happily murder my way to whatever powerful artefacts we can make use of. Point at the back and I'll stab. Just don't ask me to sacrifice my body. It hasn't been mine for so long.
We know thematically there is a parallel between vampirism, abuse, and sexuality. Cazador appeared to lose interest in his 'niece' altogether. Nonetheless, he locked her into an eternal childhood under "true vampirism," never to grow to adulthood, and denied her a "typical" life forevermore. There is something particularly grotesque about that.
Astarion: Nearly two hundred years and I never came back. Not since the night I woke up down there. I had to punch a hole in the coffin and claw my way through six feet of dirt. Then when I finally broke the surface, retching up dirt and congealed blood, Cazador was waiting. From that day on I was his. Until today.
Player: You were never his. Whatever he had, he took by force.
Astarion: Maybe, but he did take it. There's almost nothing left of the person I was. Just a name on a rock. For nearly two centuries, I stalked the streets like a ghost while the person I was lay here, dead and buried. Now I need to figure out who I am. What I want.
We find The Tourmaline Depths in the room beneath Cazador's room. She wrote Diseases of the Blood to tackle vampiric illness. She wrote the names of ruling vampires, their titles, and their successors. She is, what, 28?
I like to think she knew all of Cazador's secrets, from the corpses in the suspended cages to his dungeon. I'm impressed by her mental fortitude in the face of such odds as a child and young woman. I'm impressed she chose to do what she loved, escaped, and became such a relevant figure in the study of vampiric physiology. I wish we knew her better. I wish we had the opportunity to meet her.
She is the historian who sullies his name and documents his endless crimes. She escaped. Cazador underestimated her.
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Prompt 300
Danny squirms and hisses, trying to dig his claws into dark scales as the clouds whistle by. “Wait- Ancients dammit- STOP!” he shrieked, cursing how tiny his own ghost form was compared to his other not-quite-future-self. Wings that could easily dwarf the entire Ops center beat through the air, fast enough to cause his eyes to sting.
“Dan- bring me back- stop-” he wailed, despite the grip on his scruff not even loosening. Yet the larger dragon didn’t so much as twitch back towards Amity, the city disappearing into the distance like a speck. “We have to go back-”
The GIW were- were- They had to go back! The portal was gone (exploded, broken and all of Fentonworks a smoldering mess, oh Ancients he’s gonna be sick-), no one could return to the Realms, they were all sitting ducks-
“Jordan please-” he begged, even though he already knew that between the city, between every other ghost and them, Dan would always choose to keep them safe. But Jazz was hurt, she wasn’t waking up from where she lay limply cradled in Dan’s claws.
There was so much blood, and he only knew she was still alive from the weak fluttering of her core, growing stronger as her heartbeat faded. She needed help, she needed doctors- he doesn’t know if she would be able to come back, not with how they were leaving the ecto-rich city behind and he didn’t want to lose her- Dan’s blank panic was swamping his own, drowning both of them in the emotion as the dragon tore through the sky. Some part of him knew they couldn’t stay in Amity anymore, but- But Jazz needed help- Danny couldn’t help the tears that dripped from his yes, pretending it was merely the clouds as they flew to places unknown to him.
If you are interested in their designs, here is a link: HERE
Heey mutual @radiance1 Dragon buddy o' mine & @hdgnj u might enjoy
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