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lynxgriffin · 1 year ago

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Eldritchrune - Story Setup and Character Info

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Hometown was once a quiet, largely rural community…until, as often happens, much larger powers decided to move in. An expanding empire takes over the land around the small community, and the old town is now surrounded by a rapidly growing fortress and city. A more threatening military presence is felt, and poverty quickly creeps in as the expanding empire takes advantage of the residents still in Hometown.

[Image of a smaller, more rural Hometown with a much larger city and fortress walls behind it]

While the younger generation at least attempts to adapt to all the changes, the older generation deeply resents this intrusion into their old home. Many of the elders, including Asgore and Toriel Dreemurr, Father Alvin, Mayor Holiday and her husband Rudolph, form their own tight-knit group that soon spirals into a cult.They’re a small community with no means of standing up to an empire’s armies. But, there’s always been old whispers of things far more powerful and terrible…old gods and strange horrors that hail from a Dark World parallel to their own. The cult focuses their attention specifically on tales of a Dark Prince, a goatlike entity made of fire and shadow that can pacify any enemy. Surely, if they can gain the favor of something so dark and powerful, they’ll have a means of driving away all of these intruders and restoring Hometown to the way it used to be.

However, as everyone knows, trying to call up old gods demands sacrifices. Mayor Holiday, having gotten the group together, tries to take the brunt of this duty and first sacrifices her daughter, December. However, it seems to be a botched ritual, and nothing useful results from it, leaving the Mayor extremely bitter. The other elders are tasked with picking up vagrants or other troublemakers to try and successfully complete this ritual, but none seem to work.

Unwilling to offer up their own dutiful son, Asriel, the Dreemurrs instead adopt an orphan from the poverty-stricken streets of the encroaching city: Kris. However, they find that upon adopting them, Asriel quickly forms a close bond with Kris. Asriel, like most of the younger generation, is unaware of his parents and grandparents’ intentions. Kris is not easy to take care of sometimes…they have weird interests, aren’t very clean, and are often disobedient. Despite this, Toriel and Asgore find Kris growing on them, too. The thought of sacrificing them gets harder and harder to swallow. [Image of Kris and a human Asriel hanging out together and talking while Asriel sits at a writing desk. Toriel and Asgore look on the both of them from a nearby doorway.] However, the other elders start to pressure them, questioning why they’re so intent on keeping this weird orphan around. Aren’t they a symbol of everything going wrong with their little community, and with this invading modern future? Toriel continues to put it off, using the excuse that she is doing extensive research to make sure that they finally do this ritual correctly. While she is indeed conducting research, she also knows that they can’t do anything with Kris as long as Asriel is around with them.

However, when Asriel is offered an extended stay at the city’s new university to get advanced training as a scholar, the Dreemurrs don’t have an excuse anymore. At the other elders’ behest to do what’s necessary for the good of the town, they decide to conduct the ritual with Kris. The cult brings Kris to an underground shelter in the woods outside town, with Kris none the wiser about their intentions until they are incapacitated and unable to escape. Toriel’s extensive research pays off, and Kris is appropriately sacrificed to the Dark Prince. The ritual causes them to vanish from this plane, seemingly dead…but there’s still no sign of the old god they were trying to summon.

[Image of Asgore, Toriel and other older townsfolk, dressed in various goat or deer masks and robes, with Asgore carrying Kris towards an altar.]

The Dreemurrs are distraught at this seeming failure, after they worked so hard to ensure that they did this right. The remaining elders double down, though, insisting that they have to keep trying. Asriel returns from his training, and is devastated to find his sibling missing. Toriel and Asgore, unable to admit what they did, lie to Asriel and say that Kris had a huge argument and left home on their own. Asriel vows to search for them and bring them back home, and while his parents try to dissuade him from this, they’re unsuccessful.

[Image of Asriel stepping out the door of his home, a large backpack slung over his shoulder, and waving off Toriel and Asgore in the foreground. They stay indoors while he heads out into the world.]

Meanwhile, unknown to anyone in the Light World, the ritual was actually successful, and transported Kris to the Dark World…right into the home of Ralsei, the very Dark Prince they were trying to reach! Ralsei is delighted to finally have an actual human from the Light World visit him! Sure, he’s heard about all those previous sacrifices, but they never actually got to him. The Dark World and the afterlife aren’t really the same place, after all. [Image of Kris floating down into a new Dark World, where Dark Prince Ralsei stands next to a large cauldron and welcomes them.]

Kris, however, is infuriated and despondent…they’ve already had a very hard life as an orphan, and now just when it seemed like they had a new family they could trust, that trust was broken by adults who once again threw them away for their own purposes. Ralsei, ever cheerful, assures them that they must be here for a reason…and that he has a means for them to not only return to the Light World, but get retribution for what’s happened to them and their Hometown.

[Image of the silhouettes of many large eldritch beasts: Susie, Noelle, Berdly and Catti.]

The Dark World is full of eldritch beasts, strange demons and old gods, after all. He can grant them the forbidden knowledge and ability to speak to and even command these eldritch beasts. Once they form a strong enough bond with the beasts, and make it through the bound gods that may bar the way, they can bring them back to the world of light…and command them to do whatever Kris would like to the people living there. However, such power and ability comes at a high cost…Kris’s human soul.

[Image of Kris giving their soul to Ralsei; the soul emanates a red glow between them.]

Kris, seeing little other option and not feeling much attachment to their humanity anyway, agrees and sells their soul to the Dark Prince Ralsei. Ralsei excitedly promises that he’ll take extra good care of their soul, and that he’ll accompany them as they befriend the eldritch beasts lurking in the Dark World. This arrangement certainly has some other benefits for Kris, too…in addition to this forbidden knowledge, Ralsei’s control over their soul grants them a degree of invulnerability. If Kris dies or is somehow psychologically destroyed, Ralsei can use it to revive them completely.

[Image of Kris, now decked out with armor and a sword, standing on a cliffside looking out over the Dark World. Ralsei stands nearby.]

Ralsei gives Kris suitable armor and weaponry for this venture, and the two set out into a vast Dark Realm of strange horrors, lost cities and twisting paths in search of new friends and a means back to the Light World. While Kris is unsure about this journey at first, Ralsei is all smiles, excited for them to gain some friendships that they clearly desperately need! Of course, he’s excited for other reasons, too…those cultists have been calling out to him for such a long time, and now with Kris’s human soul, he can finally enter the Light World. Kris can forge the bonds they’ve been lacking, Ralsei and the eldritch beasts they find will finally have access to the human world, and the people clamoring for terrible things to happen will get exactly what they asked for. How could that not be a happy ending?

#lynx art #deltarune #deltarune au #Eldritchrune #okay I'm finally consolidating some of this!#a handy thread for reference!

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blindtaleteller · 1 year ago

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thank you for previous explain. It was so long and detailed. I had now another question. About lady's life in Asgard. Sigyn x Loki for me. And Sigyn is not warrior, but typical lady. Can you write something about it?

Honestly if you're looking for an example of that in canon MCU, much of Frigga's character and especially her surroundings as expressed on screen does have quite a few examples.

In fact, we aren't even given the idea she can still fight until she absolutely has to in The Dark World.

And, it's in Dark World (and a little of both Ragnarok [geh] and Endgame if you take both the premise of the Valkyries and the time travel scenes in it seriously) that we are given those examples.

Remember, whether they are fighters themselves or not: if they're Asgardian, they're still raised as a part of that previously mentioned warmongering imperialist society: and that would be (as also told to us in their dialogue about Jane and Sif, and their King Odin's expectations) even more strictly observed by someone like a lady in that kind of royalist/imperialist hierarchy, rather than a warrior.

That is why I say 'much' of Frigga's character and surroundings.. but not all. It's not the fighting you need to look at, though that can help. It's her mannerisms, her rooms (look at TDW including the fight with Malekith), her maids, and more. Frigga is, as Queen and even without the fight or ability itself: the top and more importantly leading example of what to expect of a lady of the royal court: as she should be in that kin of society.

And that's also VERY probably why she doesn't fight in any of THor 2011 on screen: even when Laufey shows up, regardless of her being nearer to the main palace then, than she was in TDW: where she was shown being in a separate side palace at least a few miles away when Algrim/Kurse broke out of the dungeon: all the way up until her life, and Jane's, are in immediate danger after having left that portion of the palace during the attack that Kurse opened the shields to manage.

(Which side note was REEEEALLY questionable at the time with a human housing an infinity stone in tow at the time, but is neither here nor there with other things taken into account... just a very dangerous for Jane choice, given what enemies they did have even without the elves being taken into account.. but eh, it is canon and it does fit the flavors of Asgard's, Odin's, and Frigga's own arrogance and ignorance in regards to Asgard's 'impervious' mindset state, as far as the upper echelons of their society seems to be concerned as portrayed on screen.)

In a way, it's made pretty clear that while Frigga still retains much of her skills as a fighter and mage/witch (Or the daughter of three witches at least as we also now know through canon dialogue:) the things she does and doesn't do, while also comparing that to someone like Brunhilde (aka Valkyrie) and how they were clearly recieved during and well after their term as an active female-only fighting force, the canon makes it pretty clear that unless they do retain that fighter status, women (perhaps including the queen) either do not tend to hold as much sway or dignity in other pursuits outside the household.

In other words and as an canon example.. even as the other ruler on the throne and his adoptive mother; Frigga is easily able to set aside the throne and any responsibility for doing so even in that situation. Regardless of, the fact that; at that point the situation is that Jotunheim had declared war in response to Thor's treasonous invasion, and regardless of being closest to Loki (we know this through the words of every character in the family: Thor says it repeatedly, Odin goads and attempts to guilt trip him with that close relationship too, and Frigga does the same with her own wierdness during her conversation with him in TDW's dungeon cell scene) knowing full well not only what she was asking of Loki, but also what Loki was going through in having just recently discovered that he wasn't only not of the same species: but on top of that was Laufey's biological son AND Jotunheim's only known of prince. Whom, Odin admitted he had taken to 'forge a permanent peace.'

A peace that, probably wouldn't have happened anyway if he and it had been handled just as poorly as well, it was.

Think about that for a little bit; really think about it: and the fact that she did so, while playing the part and claiming she was closest to him and cared about him the most.

That canonically casts some seriously gross and awkward truths into the realm of how their their relationship actually is versus how Frigga and the rest of them tried to paint it. As well as touching her own guilt evasion there too: and is something that both in the first Thor and the second film both: Frigga absolutely side steps taking any responsibility for, as the mother, the mentor, and the lady who raised him with that lie: regardless of their supposed closeness.

And, why that's important? Is because, under that king, husband and society as it goes: she is not just allowed to do that without complaint from any of the above, their society OR the foster-brother that she raised and lied to right next to him: she's allowed to thrive and remain in her position STILL without that question or any apparent explanation of ANY of those nuances or her part in putting him in charge in taht mental and emotional state; well after the fact and into 2013 two years later.

When she refers to that massive erasure of not just who but WHAT he is? Frigga almost always shifts that blame fully onto Odin in her dialogue; and steers as hard as she can away from words reminding the viewer that, she was Odin's wife and partner: through all of that. Instead, it's always 'your father' or 'he' rather than 'we' or 'he and I.'

Which is very blatantly another portion of Loki's response in this same scene when asked 'And am I not your mother..?' because, he's right in every form of the answer.

youtube

It's -possible- that she was being honest about her relationship with Loki, at least later on? But it's -not- very -probable-, or believable at that stage.. and her lack of self awareness and ownership of her part even when alone with him in Thor 2011 (not to mention carrying that on a year later in Dark World) makes that very hard to miss as a thing in truth: especially with the given facts being that this went on for over a thousand years.. and still over all that time she didn't have enough regard, respect, or love for her supposed favorite son, to even hint at any of his origins even after she taught him to shapeshift or cast illusions herself, to change the outcome.

And again.. no one raised a question as to why. Or held her accountable. No one questioned the one person in the royal family who was capable of taking Loki's place on the throne back in 2011 either.

Given how little we see women in honored fighting positions in Asgardian culture, and are given the very blatant information between the films that it's been literal centuries since even since a female fighting force has been a thing, PLUS the literal views we've been given with Sif as the only woman in the training yard in modern eras...?

It's pretty likely that raised-in bit of social ugly is pretty well dug into their society as well.

Again and that said: figuring out how a lady rather than a fighter might run her life, or fit in at those upper tiers without picking up a weapon: has been put on some display.

Asgard has a very wonky, heavy half ren/medieval approach to their upper heirarchy on display, complete with ladies in waiting (which Tony takes a little off jab at in GROUNDED too lol,) and healers especially seeming to be a majorly female profession.

There wasn't a single dude in that scene with Jane that wasn't either royalty or a guard, if you look at it again. Every single one of the healers is a woman.)

That mentioned, another place to look for examples, are again: Frigga's personal surroundings. And Dark World gives us a good look at those.

One thing to note, is that besides the healers: pretty much every Asgardian lady has armor in some portion of their wardrobe. Whether that's a breastplate, vanbraces (wrist/forearm,) gorgets (neck guard, like Loki's) or something else to accompany their dresses.

Vanbraces (Thor 2011)

Vanbraces and Archer's breastplate (Dark World Dungeon Scene)

Vanbraces, Pauldron, and partial Chestplate (Dark World, final scene)

There are moments when we see her and them without armor pieces (or in some scenes with even fewer of them at least, like teh carefully disguised set in the top gif) but for the most part those outfits are reserved for really important parties that are the equivalent of formal-dress parties: in which case we can see that even Sif doesn't escape from the expectation of wearing a literal dress: though even then.. hers is the odd one out of the others shown/on display in the room as far as style:

Which tells us a couple of things, but first and foremost and something that makes sense in their culture: is that even if they're not mainline fighters, and having been invaded enough to need and upkeep those shields in the first place?

Other than fancy events/celebrations and or coronations? The armor pieces are definitely as much local every day cultural fashion thing, as they are functional in some cases.

It's pretty likely that even the ladies of the court at least know and are expected to upkeep at least minor skills in self defense, if not the defense of their own homes: and are probably taught to do so from a very young age. They're not going to be as good at it outside of their own personal territory, or a territory they know well like say the Valkyrie were supposed to be, as the equivalent of a special forces military task unit: but they probably are expected.

Another side note..? This above, is ultimately; also among the forgiving reasons I don't question why Frigga went to the main palace outside of her taking Jane with her when she went. As Queen and lady of the house under that form of society, it absolutely passes without Jane in tow. However.. without Jane in tow, there's also the bit she couldn't have known at the time; that the writers did of course .. the fact that any of the elves were even alive and kicking. [And gee; thanks for that again Bor, lol! like father like son, I guess? Bor, his son, and said son's wife DO seem to have a habit of -not- telling their kids about world and universe ending enemies being alive after the fact, don't they? coughcoughHELAcoughcough.. XD]

There is one other bit, besides that: that we do get about the society from all that too though. At least about the surviving upper echelons of the ruling class: and that is?

That Odin had a really tight reign on the upper royals and his fighting forces surviving the Great Wars as King.. lips and all: unless amongst the entirety of their armies, council, other generals (besides Hela, which HOO is that a whole conversation unto itself Loki and Laufey related when you look at that timeline with Hela in it omg..) and pretty much every lady in waiting, servants .. or just other lords and ladies? Just didn't notice a surprise baby that the Queen -didn't- give birth to, was randomly being presented as a new baby prince to the Asgardian Empire. Which.. is next to impossible; especially when you take into account that this wasn't another country he took this kid from, or a society unfamiliar with magic: he took Loki from an entirely differing species and PLANET elsewhere in the universe in the middle of the last battle of one of the largest and bloodiest wars in their generation: and forced passing him off as his own.

Even if, he did manage that; maybe sequestering his wife and passing Loki off as a twin or some shizz? Someone if not a whole lot of someones probably knew.. but especially the healer or healers who would have treated any wounds throughout Loki's lifetime.

We could, almost say that they could have presented him as an adopted Asgardian kid.. and maybe he and Frigga did, to some of them on the sly to help keep it under wraps.. but that doesn't fit how their relationship is depicted, shown or talked about prior to or even after the reveal of his species and bloodline at all, either.

And that still wouldn't pass the first time this kid hurt himself, or was injured in battle under the scrutiny of an uninformed healer's ability in that society, with magic and high tech and more very much at their fingertips and in their alliances and enemies too, to be recognized.

Meaning, at least a portion of the populace closest to the crown, and especially those types old enough to have taken part in the last of the Great Wars or tending Loki as he grew and fought and more as a captive prince: were either just as complacent or, shut up by either if not both portions of the crown house really damned fast and really efficiently likely through threat, exile or worse. Keep in mind, the Great Wars and especially that one was still freshly finished, and they made a great show of making sure we knew there would be problems having the future ruler of the enemy they had been killing for an un-foretold length of time next to the crown in how even mention of Jotnar was allowed to form in Asgardian society: through Loki's words, through Thor's reactions and words, through Odin and through Frigga too.

The hate was strong enough even a thousand years plus of Odin's rule with Loki as prince later, that Thor thought it was A-Okay to go ahead and invade the planet and restart that war, against the literal warnings not just from every single person around him before he did it: and not just warned but told outright by his father and the King 'don't you fuckin' dare' well before even that.

That.. is the kind of society and expectations, an Asgardian Lady would have been raised into and led by along with the rest.

All that said, this is getting long; and there are metas rather than canon they come from that I could mention regarding Vanaheim as the most prevalent colony of Asgardians/partial Asgardians too, but.. we don't get a whole lot of them or their off world society other than to know that Odin doesn't care about them NEARLY as much: or at least not enough to even provide them defensive cannons or other defenses that Asgard otherwise VERY clearly has and has had for literal ages as put on display in the Dark World.

Being a woman in that society would probably be a very, well...

Probably, brainwashed to accept a lowered expectation of self worth over all, without the ability to fight on a greater tier than just home and self defense. And those who don't fall into those already asserted social standards would definitely be outliers if not outcasts. We have Loki himself and how Frigga's skills are viewed and worded even by her own family, as example of that.

So.. that's a lot to keep in mind but.. yeah. It is there, and more that; I probably haven't touched or missed while in the process of going on and explaining that.

For Sigyn though, for me: I do have some planned for her but as she doesn't exist in the MCU and adapting her would for me have to take all of that in mind: that is being approached very back burner for late Vestibule 2 (after Mixology) and Vestibule 3 as what ultimately boils down to an OC version of her. In part because I like that character in real life lore, and Skadi's character: and when I do write for them both.. I want to try and convert them to fit into the MCU base in a way that feels right to me.

Which is going to be rough when getting into more detailed versions of stuff like the very brief mentions of Skadi's tale and others I've already done in fics like Simon Says/Bail: given the MCU is twice removed from actual Norse Mythos; being Asgard in the MCU is more loose in being based off of Marvel, which in turn is then just as loose in the comics' basing their characters from that Norse Mythos.

Also, am tired .. is eleven PM lol sorry for not continuing, and getting extra rambly. But will add more pretty pictures to make up for it a lil bit? lol

If you have more questions or want some elaboration on anything, by all means feel free to send me asks just like this one.

I generally try to answer pretty quickly when I see them lol.

#Ladies of Asgard #examples given #it's pretty open #but there are established rules shown and in some rare places told #at least as far as the MCU version is concerned #I am very interested in doing at least two Unis with if not more with Sigyn though #that's always been a plan #Asgard lore #Asgard on screen examples #MCU Asgard #MCU #Lokiverse references #also armor references #blacksmithing study sometimes comes in handy.#editted a bit cause I hate typos #especially overly dumb plabet typos lol

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