#Lou the dahu

[archibaldtuttle]

Alright that's it, I'm tired of pretending I'm not a furry.

Lou the Dahu

[note : a Dahu(t) is a French cryptid that is essentially an ibex/mountain goat type creature with legs shorter on one side than the other to stand on slopes] [it's very silly]

- They have one leg shorter than the other (wears a short prosthetic on their right hoof to level it with the left one) and one arm shorter than the other (doesn't need a prosthetic for fine motor skills but carries around a collapsible grabbing stick)

- He works as a window cleaner specialized in very tall buildings, hosts a guided meditation radio show on a local station on weekends (has a warm husky voice)

- He comes across as kind of a weird loser because they don't really put much thoughts into how they dress and end up looking like a washed up hippie

- They have 3 pet geckos that were all born through spontaneous parthenogenesis and therefore look so similar that he can't tell them apart - he calls them all JC

- They love making weird ice cream flavors at home and beta test them on their friends. Their latest ones are "tobacco" and "cheddar-cumin"

- His biggest claim to fame is having done the audiobook version of a cookbook which gained unprecedented popularity with housewives and househusbands everywhere

- They taught themselves how to carve wood to make custom "hooves" for their prosthetic and leave very weird prints behind

- They make very, very small birds out of self drying clay and leaves them around for people to find, sometimes on windowsills of skycrapers he's cleaned, so completely unreachable on the other side of a window twenty stories high

- He has seen exactly two films in his entire life : Godfather Part II and Over the Hedge. he dislikes both

[violets-in-her-arms-writes]

Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday!

Tell me about the culture in your world in regards to death and the afterlife.

i.e. what are the most common beliefs about it, is there fear surrounding death or something else, are there any gods of death and how to people in your world feel about them, is there an afterlife that people believe in and how does it work, what rituals and practices are there in regards to the dead (burials, mummification, burying them with important objects, burning the body, etc), and anything else you would like to share

<333

Thank you so much for this !!! ♥♥

It took me forever to answer because I actually had to think about this one, but here I am 😅 I went into details for two species instead of the 5 (vampires, Faes, mermaids, werewolves & witches) I had in mind, because I need to think more about the others, but I hope you'll like it anyway ^^

So... The thing about La Fledgling is that it's a story about endings. Lou is immortal, Jo is not. Lou (and most of their friends) will live forever or something close to forever, Jo will die. She has limited time and so much to do, which means that, concrètement, she hasn't really thought about what comes after.

(Which means that I, the author, hadn't thought about it either, but let's blame it on the character, shall we? 💀)

So... Death...

For the vampires:

Vampires can die (insert *people die if they are killed* meme here), as vampires tend to do in other fantasy stories. So decapitation, silver, symbols of faith (and real faith, just waving a symbol won't work - you have to believe), fire, sunlight, stake through the heart... the classics will work, but if you really want to be original and take them by surprise, you could also poison them through the blood servants they feed from. I'm just throwing this out there, no reason.

Several vampire families were killed during the hunter/vampire wars, entire Coven burnt to the ground, knowledge evaporated, entire lignées brought to the brink of extinction. Needless to say, it terrified the vampires who then decided to retire from the public eye and live secular lives among themselves, where they don't have to interact with humans (much. Feeding is another story entirely).

They feared death during these few centuries when it came knocking at their doors, but during the novel, none of the vampires think about death as something that concerns them. Death is something humans and semi-mortal creatures go through, and something that happened to them a thousand years ago.

There is no afterlife for vampires, because they are not supposed to die.

(The rest of the species and their view on death can be found under the cut 🦇)

For the Fae:

Fae live until they get tired of living, at which point they can choose between several options :

become a tree -> really popular, as long as it's not in the moral realm because on Earth you tree might be cut down and you will spend the rest of eternity as a very ugly couch or coffee table

spend a few years as an animal and live as a cryptid in either the fae realm or on Earth (I'm not saying le Dahu is a Fae but... yeah that's exactly what I'm saying) -> marginally less popular and often time not the definitive choice. Old Faes who don't know if they really want to "fade away" or not will spend a few decades or centuries as an owl, a cat or some kind of made up animal/creature, and when their time is up, they'll seen if they want to go for option 1 (*be the seed*), option 2 (go back to their ancient life and keep on living until they get bored again) or option 3 (below)

reincarnate -> the least popular choice by far (Iris Adam, who chose to get reincarnated 250 times is an outlier and shouldn't have been counted), because the fates like to mess with faes and there is no guarantee a Fae will be reincarnated as a Fae in her next life. She could be human. Or a cockroach. Or the southern wind. Or she could be a Fae but come back wrong. Really, there's nothing sure about this option.

Fae who chose to become trees all planted their roots in the same forest and they can be heard, from time to time, giving unsolicited advices to the younglings having fun beneath their branches.

For the witches:

They mostly have the same approach as the humans, except they live up to 500 years instead of 80, which mean they start worrying about it a lot later. They still are the weakest (physically speaking) of all the magical and semi-mortal species, which means they are much more prone to accident and very few actually reach past their second or third century.

For the mermaids:

They also live very long lives and have the advantage of being away from humans most of the time, so when wars or conflict start again on the surface, they can just... swim away and wait for the storm to pass. The older a mermaid gets, the bigger she is, and the more she has to eat. There are only three really old (we're talking several thousand years old) mermaids because they feed on weaker mermaids - or, more precisely, younger, weaker or otherwise hurt mermaids are send bound and pre-broken to the deep caves in which the dwell and the three leviathan feast of the flesh of the unwilling.

Death is either a sacrifice (eaten by a leviathan) or a victory (not eaten by the leviathans bc they 1) died in combat so they at least were not eaten alive or 2) ran away on land to escape their fate which brings its own problems)

For the werewolves:

Mix between the witches and the mermaids. They die of old age (live longer than humans, less prone to disease or accident than witches) or in a fight and then they get eaten by the rest of the pack so that their spirits and knowledge can stay with the pack. Yay.

For Jo (sole human in this crazy friend group):

She doesn't think about it. She'll die when she'll die. She used to be really religious, but her faith was shattered when her whole family was murdered and Lou became a bloodsucker, so she doesn't really believe in an afterlife (be it hell or heaven). But should she be proven wrong, she's ready to throw hands with whomever is here to welcome her.

[lakemojave]

your sabrina and cryptotheism's mattie should kiss

The only confirmed crossover lore is with @radiofreederry's Muirgel, the coral reefgirl (they're smoking buddies, but because Muirgel smokes seaweed and Sabrina is ForeverHigh, they don't actually share anything) and @archibaldtuttle's Lou, the Dahu (they're roommates, Sabrina forgets to do the dishes a lot but takes good care of their pet geckos, plus the dick is insane.)

[archibaldtuttle]

- He feeds almost exclusively on snacks, which he is great at making, however he cannot be asked to actually cook a meal

- They have severe ADHD but they meditate at least an hour every day. When asked about it, they shrug and say "I just power through it"

- They write very bad poetry in their free time. It's mostly haikus about birds in English. The metering is off in 60% of them.

- He's bi but he somehow never noticed when a woman is hitting on him. However his gaydar is unmatched.

Alright that's it, I'm tired of pretending I'm not a furry.

Lou the Dahu

[note : a Dahu(t) is a French cryptid that is essentially an ibex/mountain goat type creature with legs shorter on one side than the other to stand on slopes] [it's very silly]

- They have one leg shorter than the other (wears a short prosthetic on their right hoof to level it with the left one) and one arm shorter than the other (doesn't need a prosthetic for fine motor skills but carries around a collapsible grabbing stick)

- He works as a window cleaner specialized in very tall buildings, hosts a guided meditation radio show on a local station on weekends (has a warm husky voice)

- He comes across as kind of a weird loser because they don't really put much thoughts into how they dress and end up looking like a washed up hippie

- They have 3 pet geckos that were all born through spontaneous parthenogenesis and therefore look so similar that he can't tell them apart - he calls them all JC

- They love making weird ice cream flavors at home and beta test them on their friends. Their latest ones are "tobacco" and "cheddar-cumin"

- His biggest claim to fame is having done the audiobook version of a cookbook which gained unprecedented popularity with housewives and househusbands everywhere

- They taught themselves how to carve wood to make custom "hooves" for their prosthetic and leave very weird prints behind

- They make very, very small birds out of self drying clay and leaves them around for people to find, sometimes on windowsills of skycrapers he's cleaned, so completely unreachable on the other side of a window twenty stories high

- He has seen exactly two films in his entire life : Godfather Part II and Over the Hedge. he dislikes both