#JSYK you pronounce it like curse

[ticktockstuck]

TTS Flag Friday: The District of Qerse

The district flag of Qerse is set against a field of nuclear green, one of the national colors of Derse which here is meant to represent innovative energy and power. The only other color on the flag is black, inspired by the black carapaces of the original population, which here represents magical force.

A checkerboard pattern takes up half of the space on the flag, starting from the furl and descending towards the lower side of the hoist. The pattern is created by splitting the flag into an 8-by-9 grid, and is referred to as the “Staircase of Progress”. As a symbol of the district the Staircase represents its penchant for endlessly inventing new technology and making discoveries in the name of forwarding progress, and the checkboard pattern can be seen decorating many different public sectors of the district.

The national symbol of the seven-toothed cog sits in the upper-left corner, as black for Dersite carapaces as the cog on Prosperia’s flag is white for Prospitian carapaces.

The early history of Tick-Tock Town saw its northern half housing mainly carapacians before its population grew increasingly diverse. That diversity, along with what the north had become as the city grew, led Prospitian citizens to move westward and bring the nature-loving ways of Prospit to shape their side of the city. When the districts were properly established, the north was split in half; the northwest became the beautiful and organic Prosperia, while the northeast became the artificial and industrious Qerse.

Qerse is the largest of the city’s eight districts, even after Prosperia and eventually the human-centric district were carved out of it. Where Prosperia is coated in plant life, Qerse takes after Derse in coating itself in machinery and odd devices of all sorts. Function dominates form here, and in the scant places where “beautification” is a concern, the aesthetics lean towards the geometric or else take after the machines around them. Even outside the north side of town where the factories lie, it’s not hard to find some impractical piece of clockworks jutting from the side of a building like a parasite.

By far the most important of these industrial sites is a gaping hole in the ground the size of a city block known as The Factory Pit. It’s a swelteringly humid place born during the Reconstruction and the city’s attempts to forcibly remove the Clockwork Network after it ceased worming through Tick-Tock Town. Those attempts had started by amputating large sections of the machine and had worked well enough at first, leaving stumps which are still visible across the city. When the same method was tried on a piece of Clocknet in Qerse, however, it started to spill out huge quantities of scrap metal, uncontrollably and with no visible end. The city prevented itself from drowning in junk when they attached a floodgate to the stump, and afterwards quickly realized how it could stand to profit from a seemingly endless supply of metals. That gated “out tunnel” pours out a wealth of copper, iron, bronze, and other metals for the city to repurpose on a daily basis, while a nearby “in tunnel” leading back into Clocknet serves as a disposal for not just unusable junk but city trash. Qerse had already been the industrial sector of Tick-Tock Town prior to its creation but The Factory Pit marked the point where Clocknet started to become a cultural landmark for the city and especially the district, which to this day has a gigantic arch formed by Clocknet still standing in its skyline.

Not that machines are the only cultural touchstone that Qerse can lay claim to. Before machines completely dominated the district, it also used to be a major hub of magical activity in the city, with some old landmarks and families able to attest to that history. The title of magical hub has slowly moved westward to Qerse’s neighbor district, but magic still plays a vital role in its operations. Specifically: those vital roles are staffed by dolls. The majority of dolls in Tick-Tock Town can claim Qerse as their birthplace...though just as many would prefer to live anywhere else. The doll manufacturing plants create dolls for two purposes: to lessen the burden of an organic workforce with efficient mechanical servitors, and to export that workforce to other destinations in the Verse to serve the same end. The Mayors’ Office mandates that dolls have to be treated as citizens, but Qerse tries to avoid going any further than that minimum; dolls have more protections here than in Seaside but those protections come at the cost of being treated as an obligatory workforce, as a means to an end. There’s an effort by free dolls elsewhere in the city to slowly improve conditions for dollkind here, partly through politics and partly through revolutionary acts, both methods seeing heavy pushback by local industrialists and aristocrats.

As for the rest of the population of Qerse, it’s a highly mixed bunch. Carapacians dominate like nowhere else, but there’s roughly even numbers of humans and trolls scattered throughout. The district’s status as an import center is helped by chunks of the city that have become home to immigrating families from across the Verse. Notable examples: folks from the Land of Rot and Sparks (whose culture already favors machines and science), the Land of Haze and Comets (whose underwater cities have the same clustered feeling that residency in Qerse has), and the Land of Coal and Trials (who are perfectly at ease in the local smoggy atmosphere). The cheap supply of metals available here means that many dabble in the mechanical arts, with inventors and gadgeteers just a knock on a door away. 

[bloodthirstymoonstone]

Meet Walter!

Just a few basic facts about my new OC muse Walter, who I’m now RPing as on this blog! More information to come with later installments of these new mini-metas I’ve been doing so that I don’t do a massive dump on you guys at once. But if you’re dying to know something that wasn’t covered here, feel free to inbox me!

Also, all icons and art for him drawn by and used with permission from @prodiigious! (I love heeeeer!!!)

He’s Valter’s identical, “mirror” twin. Walter is 35 minutes older.

He’s just as tall as Valter at 6′7″, but is only 155 pounds, compared to Valter’s 245 pounds of raw muscle. That’s nearly a 100 pound difference!

Has glasses. Valter needed them, too, before the cursed lance sharpened his eyesight, but refused them because they were for nerds.

Was told in his teen years that Valter would kick his ass if he ever started growing his hair out like Valter was starting to do. Kept his hair short for years due to this threat, but has grown it out long enough to be kept in a ponytail in recent years as a quiet act of rebellion

Left-handed, unlike Valter, who is right-hand dominant and ambidextrous

Looks “healthier” than Valter despite being thin as a reed, due to eyes that aren’t sunken af and a face that doesn’t look vaguely corpse-like.

Suffers from just about every anxiety disorder known to man (except OCD). Also suffers from major clinical depression, for obvious reasons. Prone to tears and sometimes (very rarely) fits of rage.

Is bad at self care, but isn’t quite as bad as Valter. His hair is probably in much worse shape, though. Has A LOT of greys and split ends.

Has a very pronounced stutter. Speaks in a quiet, unsure voice. Uses very simple, basic language. Tries not to talk much, as he knows he “sounds dumb”.

Dresses like a standard mage who’s also a part time hobo. Has a hood so he can cover his face if he’s in danger of being spotted by Valter or someone close to him.

He is classified as a Sage, but has very poor offensive magical ability. Promoted from the priest line, and only took up magic in hopes that it would possibly serve as a defense against Valter if he was suddenly attacked.

Due to the horrible, permanently disabling injury Valter gave him the last time they met, Walter requires a cane in order to walk 

Frequently wears a leg brace as well to help with weight distribution and balance. Wears this under his mage robes, so very few actually see it, but his walking is obviously quite... odd. (And it squeaks sometimes too)

Effectively is an armored unit in Heroes, due to this limited movement ability. Heroes stats to come soon (jsyk they’re pathetic).

Also suffered several hairline fractures due to being pushed down the stairs by Valter, most notably on his hip and clavicle. These weren’t able to be healed completely because he was forced to go so long without treatment.

Tends to always have vulneraries on hand to sip on when pain from his injuries start bothering him. Booze also works, but doesn’t actually serve any real function when it comes to aiding the problem.

Afraid of everything. Literally everything. Hard not to be when the world is against you

Despite the glasses making him look smart, he has extremely poor reading comprehension and even worse handwriting. Valter used to make fun of him and call him illiterate. It’d probably be a shock to anyone that he’s really high nobility by blood.