#Restarting the Game

[jeding-png]

Spoilers from the short story, spoilers of the manhwa, spoilers of EVERYTHING! Unless you like spoilers, or are not afraid of them, or can distinguish between AU and real spoilers, lol.

Leila's kingdom.

What about the rest of the clan?

A coloring page from Restarting the Game about the meeting between Leila and her brother.

You don't have to read the description, it's long. The following is an explanation of the AU and a discussion >>>

♤Part of a story from a novel♤

History of the Leila Clan.

During the reign of the Golden Dragon, darkness was forced to hide underground, covered by golden wings. When the mighty ruler ended his life and left his fangs as a legacy, the darkness came to the surface. They called themselves gods, founded the country of Balta, and began to kill in the most brutal ways. They were stopped by the ancient Wizards, who trapped them in the Mirror of Truth.

For starters, what's the difference between wizards and the Leila clan?

The main difference between wizards and members of the Leila clan was the very nature of their magical abilities. That is, the wizards had magic as a middle ground between "mana" and "nature," they used magic without worrying about their own health. Whereas Leila's people tried to create something similar to that magic, but at the expense of life force (i.e., sucking mana from other creatures so as not to waste their own strength). However, the people of the Empire do not see the difference between them, because of the curse imposed by the representatives of the Leila clan on the wizards who risked their lives to imprison them. This is one of the reasons why I understand the reason for Winter's caution.

About Leila from the novel.

Little Leila, who managed to avoid falling into the ominous expanse of the Mirror of Truth, stood over the remains of her brothers for a long time and cried bloody tears. As the years passed, she stole life force and lost her original nature until she took over Yvonne's body. Thanks to brainwashing by the clan's artifact, Leila finds herself in the ducal Eckart family and meets Penelope, a descendant of ancient magicians. Penelope was instinctively wary of Yvonne and tried to harm her in every way possible, but because of her own stupidity, she died every time (she was killed by the main male characters). When Yvonne became engaged to Callisto, she received the fangs of the Golden Dragon and became immortal, destroying the world. However, Winter (who decided to cosplay as his grandfather and grew a beard; I shouldn't joke about it) was able to get rid of Leila's spell, wandering for a long time in the desert, looking for Leila's temple. He shed tears of regret for his own indiscretion and sacrificed his soul in a ritual, turning back time. Leila remembered all the regressions, and later abandoned the idea of saving her brothers because she wanted to rule the destroyed world herself.

◇Part of the story from my AU◇

Leila's brothers. What happened to them?

"As the mirror broke, the souls of Leila who were in the dragon were also destroyed. Finally, peace had arrived in the world." That part of the novel seemed to me to be rushed. So, Leila's brothers did not play a special role in the future, they were defeated in this way. That is, they had a hand in making wizards hated, and in making Leila's first goal revenge for their imprisonment.

The two main antagonists.

At first, I planned a cute story about Reynold & Winter, and a quick way to defeat Leila. But then I got bored and added a character who was even supposed to reveal Leila herself. So I introduced Leila's brother, Leil, into the story.

Performing the new ritual was like entering into a new contract that destroyed the old one. Sensing the forbidden magic, Leil tracked down its source and saw a weakened Winter, who "stole" some of the mana of the Mirror of Truth itself, and thus allowed the clan member to escape from the "prison" in the next regression.

Equally weak and completely unadapted to the changes in the world, Leil stole the life energy and knowledge of his victims, thanks to which he learned the language. And when he took possession of the second prince's body, he gained a great advantage over Leila - he was reflected in a mirror. The blood of the Imperial family gave him strength, but at the same time it also destroyed him when he used the powers of his clan. It was also difficult to get fangs because of the Emperor's protective artifacts. Leil knew how to wait, so he was in no hurry.

He doesn't feel fear, but excitement and ticklish anticipation from watching, wondering to himself how long it will take him to take over the body he wants and take dominion over the world from his sister.

Secrets within secrets, hidden in the middle of a large maze.

The Crystal of Light artifact is the only reliable weapon against the destruction of darkness. Thanks to a descendant of ancient magicians (Penelope's father), Mr. Verdandi (Winter's father) and Evelyn Eckart (the Duke's wife), the secret of the clan's defeat has been revealed. Penelope will find her father's final records, and Callisto will do anything to prevent his Princess from suffering in this war.

But will they win? Who knows...

Fun fact. No one will read this post, but at the beginning I wanted Leila's brother had to kill Derrick's soul, so that he would be killed in the end :) But I decided to develop this character, so he must live((

[musubiki]

my favorite fields of mistria boys 🥰

[doesephs]

aftg fans may disagree on this one but kevin day and his most beautiful daughter ever

[sharkorganz]

The text Vers is ugly but I'm too lazy to fix it atm lol!! Harry I love U. This is probs low quality whoops

[starry-bi-sky]

Out of Context Stuff for a Danyal Al Ghul au i haven't posted - Pit Beast Danyal

Damian, 13: Look, Danyal, -- I am so sorry for everything that happened between us in the League, I hope you can forgive me.

Danny, 10 (allegedly): (has been secretly plotting to murder Damian this whole time, is still gonna do it obvs, but is going to make it significantly less painful now)

Danny: I-- of course, older brother. :]

--------

Bruce: what do you have there, Damian?

Damian:

Danny: (a hulking 10ft pit beast standing beside him, growling idly with ram horns gouging out his eyes and a second set of horns jutting into the air, spines down his back, and a long, spiked tail with an animalistic, skull-like face)

Damian, who smuggled him in (they've made amends): a smoothie, father

----------

Damian: this is my little brother Danyal, i murdered him when he was five. He festered in rage for the last half-a decade, took over a League mountain base in Switzerland, murdered everyone inside and then tried to murder me when I went to investigate with Drake.

Danny: hello!

Damian: we're cool now

----------

Damian: thoughts on resurrection

Danny, (a full ghost): i will succeed in murdering you if you try it

Damian: we'll put a pin in it then

----------

Danny (still instilled with League values): why don't we just murder him??

Damian, on patrol (Danny followed him): we don't murder people, Danyal

Danyal:,,,,are you sick, Dami?? Have you been possessed? Why not!?

(There is raucous laughing through the comms)

----------

Danny, five, pre-death: Dami! :D

Danny, dead, vengeful: Older brother (:

Danny, post-forgiveness: Dami! :]

-------

For some actual context: Danny is fully dead in this au, its a result of the classic DPxDC Demon Twins "death duel" trope but instead of Danny getting revived, he stays fully dead. Danny was five, Damian was seven. His ghost lingered though, and due to the proximity of the pits his ghost steadily absorbed the ambient energy it was letting off. The pits are not corrupted ectoplasm in this au, it's just liquid ecto.

Which means Danny's corruption from an angry and hurt little ghost boy to an unrecognizable monster is from his own doing. It's a result of him stewing in his hurt and anger for years, it physically warped him. He's very powerful. Danny can travel between League Bases but chose a small, out-of-the-way base in the Swiss mountains to fester in and then just. Never Left.

His influence steeped into the very foundations of the building, allowing him to transform and warp the rooms and hallways for his own bidding, Meaning he could turn it into a seemingly unending labyrinth if he so wished to, and block the entrance.

Eventually, blinded (both metaphorically and physically) by his own rage, Danny grew powerful enough to appear physically in the living realm and attacked everyone in the base, slaughtering them all and leaving the base abandoned. He attacks anyone who dares enter -- whether that be other league members, or the unfortunate hiker who stumbled across the base. His conscious is steeped into every nook and cranny of the building, there is nowhere you can hide where he can't find. Nobody leaves without his explicit say so. Nobody ever does.

Him appearing as ten years old before Damian in the skits above is his own physical doing. First it was to prevent Damian from being suspicious of him. Damian initially thought Danny was revived with the pits, he was too busy with his own training afterwards to notice that Danny never showed up again, and when he did notice, he assumed it was because Danny was too ashamed of his loss to face him. He'd always forget to ask about him.

Then it becomes a personal choice to appear as ten. It's how old he would've been had he been alive.

danny forgiving Damian is kinda for an offshoot branch of the main au. Whereas the main au takes the form of a ps4 first person horror game where Damian and Tim are investigating the Base for Plot Reasons. There's no sign of the rumored "monster" living inside until the end, where Danny, who was found inside the Base and has been happily "helping" them look around, manages to persuade Damian into splitting off from Tim in order to "show him something."

This something turns out to be Danny revealing that he never really forgave Damian for that fight, and he reveals through a horrifying transformation, that he was the monster the whole time. Which the game subtly hints at throughout as Danny's strange behavior becomes harder to ignore.

First from his insistence to only refer to Damian as "older brother" (when before the duel he always called him Damian or Dami), to him right off the bat denying the existence of a monster when questioned. ("There's no monster here, older brother. It's just me.") To other various things, like his knowledge of the outside world not matching up to modern times or things going on with the league outside of the base, or what happened to the other league members.

This whole idea was inspired by the song "Scylla" from Epic the Musical, with Danyal being the voice of Scylla as well as Odysseus, while Damian stands as Eurylochus. The instrumentals after Scylla says "hello" is him turning into the pit beast, and Scylla's "drown in your sorrow and fears" part is danny, as the pit beast, snarling at Damian while he attacks him.

There's a Good Ending, a Bad Ending, and a True Ending. The Bad Ending results in Damian being killed by Danny, it happens when Damian decides not to question or suspect Danny and treats him kindly. The Bad Ending is a cutscene, where Danny kills Damian quick and painlessly.

Meanwhile the Good Ending is Damian killing Danny. This is a boss fight, and it happens when Damian treats Danny coldly and suspiciously the whole time. Danny as a result, decides to make Damian's death painful as he had planned to, which is why it's a boss fight because it only causes him to double down on his anger.

The True Ending is Damian escapes with Tim. It happens when you treat Danny warmly up until the last minute, where when Danny proposes to Damian that he wants to show him something, Damian goes to talk to Tim and finally, reluctantly agrees that something is off with Danny, and that he'll be careful going in. It starts off with the boss fight until a third through, where it then changes to a cutscene where Tim manages to get the door open and Damian escapes out. It's then a chase scene down a never-ending hallway as the building actively works to keep you trapped inside. But you eventually make it to the exit so long as you avoid all the projectiles and doors.

Remember when I mentioned that Danny only lets people leave when he wants them to? That's where the treating Danny kindly throughout the game comes into play. It causes him to second guess himself and, eventually, reawaken and strengthen the love and admiration he had for Damian prior to his murder. It's why in the Bad Ending he kills Damian quickly -- because by then, he loves him enough that he doesn't want him to suffer, but is still so consumed by his rage and need for vengeance that he kills him anyways. That quiet part is what allows Damian (and Tim) to find the exit, because some part of Danny still loves Damian enough that he wants him to live.

The True Ending ends with a cutscene of Damian and Tim tumbling out into the snow/grass outside of the base. Damian looks up back to the entrance to see Danny standing there. But rather than a ten year old boy, there's a little five year old Danyal Al Ghul instead. He stares at Damian emotionlessly, blood seeping from his chest, staining his clothes, and little, bloody sword in his hands and tearstains on his cheeks, before he turns away and disappears back into the building.

[maelfe]

what the FUCK (🔗)

[styxbugg]

Im stuck in waterloo world purgatory

[sunderwight]

disciple luo binghe, running errands for his shizun one day, somehow manages to be in the exact wrong (right) place at the exact wrong (right) time and catches shang qinghua meeting with mobei jun

in order to keep luo binghe from tattling right away, shang qinghua dissembles in a panic and claims that his clandestine meetings with mobei jun are happening because they're lovers and definitely not because shang qinghua is betraying the sect and handing their secrets over to demons in order to save his own hide. when that almost doesn't work, he also tells luo binghe that he knows he's part demon, and that if luo binghe rats him out then shang qinghua will take him down with him. mutually assured destruction

it works, and even though luo binghe threatens him quite a bit (jeez kid calm down, you might be the almighty protagonist but also you're like sixteen) he agrees to keep shang qinghua's fraternizing a secret. but if ANYTHING BAD should happen to the sect or especially to luo binghe's shizun because of this, luo binghe will take shang qinghua down even if it does ruin his life too

shang qinghua, now sweating even more bullets about the impending immortal alliance conference: cool! cool cool cool sounds great cool yeah

so shang qinghua can add "being blackmailed by the punk ass brat I sort of created" to his list of stress-inducing woes. which gets even worse when luo binghe keeps somehow sensing if mobei jun is around for more than a couple hours and showing up, and picking fights with him?? kind of??

wtf has the protagonist been taking tips from liu qingge or something...?

shang qinghua feels like he's gonna have a heart attack when mobei jun just snorts and tosses luo binghe by the scruff like he's an annoying yappy dog

mobei jun actually knows what's up though. teenage half-demon who has never been around his own kind has become spoiled by the lack of competition on this front, and now his hackles are all up because he wants to claim the whole mountain range as his territory, and his instincts are screaming at him to challenge mobei jun about it so that they can decide who is actually top dog. since mobei jun could easily kill him, especially with his blood sealed, and has been clawing rocks and pissing on trees along the borders of an ding peak since before luo binghe was born, he's clearly got seniority here

and since qinghua doesn't want mobei jun to just kill the little shit (fair enough -- that sealed bloodline does look kind of interesting) that means it's up to mobei jun to teach him how to do things like interact with other demons without making a complete fool of himself. lesson one: what to do when you challenge someone out of your league and they win, assuming they don't just kill you

so luo binghe reluctantly gains another demon tutor

meng mo actually approves. he's been out of the loop on demon high society for a long time, and has lacked a body for long enough too that he's forgotten a lot of the particulars of socializing. it'll be good for luo binghe to pick up some manners that aren't just silly human tea ceremonies and things. maybe he'll start addressing meng mo more respectfully for a change!

(lol no)

luo binghe is partly like "I don't need to learn demon social skills since I'm spending the rest of my life as a disciple of qing jing peak" but partly like, well, if shizun knew about this and didn't freak out about it, he'd probably say that knowledge is power and learning how to handle politics and diplomacy of all kinds is important. and despite himself luo binghe is also interested, because this is a whole perspective on his own nature that he's never really gotten advice about

also, mobei jun is the lover of shang qinghua? mobei jun is a demon who successfully seduced a cang qiong peak lord? does he have any advice about that?

(he does -- all of it very bad)

anyway all of this sort of fucks up the immortal alliance conference developments really good, so the system kind of gives up and settles on some other big transformative achievements that luo binghe has to complete in order to be suitably heroic

but shen qingqiu has no idea and so the reprieve just seems to come out of nowhere until several years later, when he walks in on luo binghe with his claws out and huadian gleaming in the company the demon king of the northern desert, the two of them playing weiqi or something while they wait for shang qinghua to get back from some random logistics crisis he had to rush off to

shen qingqiu: ...?!?

luo binghe, panicking: wait shizun I can explain it's not what it looks like SHIZUN I SWEAR I WAS GOING TO TELL YOU PLEASE DON'T BE MAD--!

shen qingqiu: all this time I thought you were sneaking out to meet a girl, and this was what you were doing instead?!

luo binghe: WHAT?? shizun no I'd never do that I swear I don't even like girls!

shen qingqiu: that's not -- wait what do you mean you don't even like girls?!

mobei jun, unperturbed and still focused on the weiqi board: he's gay

[capydoodle]

who's your favorite animal crossing character?

[buttercupshands]

Had another one of "YOU HAVE TO DRAW NOW" moments

I actually did the scene above on my second try of the battle, lv 90 doesn't exactly make it easy to lose

Also I think it's time to show those sketches too

The Siffrin practice once more, but this time a bit earlier

Also first try on figuring Loop's full body ref too

Also this little thing, not as polished as digital would've been

Imagine my reaction when I accidentally gave Loop a flower after trying already and they accepted it. I adored that 'yeah we won't speak of this, but I accept your stupid flower' scene more than anything and it was pure text after little scene

[minrathous]

"The same blood runs through your veins, warden."

[legitimatesatanspawn]

I remembered a Cosplay Magical Girl video game's demo was still installed so I decided to see if I could recreate some costumes in it.

Aika, Eclipse, and Lady DeVoid are from "I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl" by @kianamaiart

I wasn't expecting anything absolutely exact, but I'm surprised at how close I could manage it with Aika and Eclipse. RIP DeVoid, the skirt options didn't extend to Evil Villainess design schemes.

[bean-writes]

[fennelwasp]

Guys i wasn’t ready for the Murky crowstone quest even a little bit

[deimcs]

The Chantry lost control of both the templars and mages. Now they argue over a new Divine while the Breach remains. The Inquisition could act when the Chantry cannot.

[skunkes]

its a shame acnh was ultimately so insanely flawed and devoid of the Feelings of the previous entries bc it really is so beautiful