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fosermi · 3 years ago

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SEMI BACK FROM THE DEAD PEOPLE

That's right! I'm back! And I bring to you CHAPTER 3 OF GUARDIAN MACAQUE AU

WHY?! Well because I couldn't sleep well and it's 5 am fuck my headache I give you content!! Fair warning: Macaque is a soft monkey especially to kids AND YOU CAN PRY THIS HC FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS ABDJFKCMCM

Some days, Biming would leave to sell the rice cultivated in their field to the neighbouring village. An oddity, Hóu realised. Why sell to another village? He didn't understand… After all, there were other houses in their village.

"Hóu?" Ai's soft voice called for the demon. Oddly enough, it wasn't her usual tone that came through her call.

Immediately detecting the shift from her usual beat, the black monkey jumped down from his position on the plum tree that grew in the back garden of the couple's home. The tree upon which the monkey would spend most of his free time on whenever he could. "You called, Mrs. Ai?"

"Oh! Yes, dear…" her voice dripped with worry - fear even. In her arms a red cloak, outstretched as if allowing him to take it. "Could you please accompany Biming to the town today…?" Her eyes glimmering under the morning sun with worry, begged the black monkey to take on her request.

Hóu, with an immediate nod, complied as he gently took the cloak from Ai's grasp. Hesitantly, the black monkey built up enough courage to ask the kind lady, her worry affecting his own.

"Mrs. Ai… is everything alright…?" His hand reached out to Ai’s in an attempt to comfort her as his eyes locked with hers, taking notes of the high level of worry embedded deep within her honey-brown eyes.

Seeing the concern in Hóu's golden eyes, Ai's tense shoulders fell as she let out a shaky breath. "Ling Fa… he warned us that demons moved in close to the rout Biming takes to the other village…"

Ling Fa… yes…

He was the family's guardian spirit… it was his duty to protect the family, right? Of course he would warn the kind couple.

By late morning, Biming and Hóu had headed out on the road on the small mule-pulled cart with their cargo safely secured. Ling Fa had stayed behind to ensure Ai's safety as he would not have been much help with manual labor.

Hóu rode on the back of the cart as his mind drifted off to the thoughts of the strange family guardian. They had previously met a couple of times. Ling Fa wasn't a concerning figure, in fact Hóu believed he was incapable of fighting due to his pacifistic tendencies.

Throughout the journey, Biming and Hóu held up a small lighthearted conversation, a conversation that seemed to have only lasted a couple of minutes was in fact just two hours.

Soon the duo were at town close to noon, Hóu couldn't believe how lively everything was! Carts and vendors and buyers were everywhere! If he was being honest, Hóu's entire world seemed to start spinning due to the overload of his senses.

"Welcome to the market, Hóu!" Biming said with a bright smile as he handed Hóu some earplugs. "They might not completely drown out all the new senses but its something at least… if you ever need a breath at all, then tell me and we can go to a more tame part of the town were we can rest for a bit"

Hóu's reply came in the form of a nod. However, even though his senses are over exerting himself, Hóu knew that he had to allow Biming to sell their crops so they could earn the money needed. So, the black monkey decided to sit right behind the cart after putting on the earplugs, mostly hidden from the front view as she observed how Biming bargained and sold his crops.

Eventually, daylight started diminishing as the sun was starting to head down the horizon, turning the shy a nice shade that reminded the monkey of orange peaches… something about the sunset seems to have upset the demon and he felt a pang of pain in his chest.

Upon noticing the sadness embedded on the monkey’s face, Biming decided that it was time to head home. "Hóu, let's go home." Came the familiar voice of the young man that got Hóu moving onto the back of the cart, and once again head off back home. "We should be back home just after sunset" Said Biming in an attempt to comfort his companion, which seemed to have worked somewhat.

The ride back didn't have many complications, it was a smooth ride back with a few conversations every now and again. Once home, Biming and Hóu carried their goods into the home as they announced their return, only to be greeted by the smell of Ai's amazing cooking as they sat down by the table to eat.

Biming was telling Ai how well Hóu had taken to the city and how well behaved he was. He kept on flattering the black monkey demon which got Hóu to stutter every now and again when he decided to speak up. Soon enough, it was time to head to bed after it was decided that from then on, Hóu would accompany Biming to the market.

His days spent here in the small farm house by the valley with Ai and Biming went by faster than he expected. And soon, they would have a new addition to their family in the form of a child between the couple.

The couple at first didn't know how Hóu would react to children, as throughout Ai's pregnancy, he had done his best to avoid her as much as possible without angering her. He however instead spent his time with Biming learning how to trade and sell as well as bargain and buy goods.

When their daughter was born, the couple found something they never had expected to see. That night they had awoken to the sound of soft cries coming from the adjacent room that Hóu had offered the baby to stay in with him so he could make sure that their daughter was safe from all harm. Surprisingly, Hóu had also swore it as his duty out of the blue one night before she was even born.

What surprised them however, was what they saw in the room that night. They had found Hóu gently cradling their small daughter in his arms. Biming most of all was surprised at how Hóu could be so delicate with such a small fragile being and yet possess strength strong enough to carry the entire cart filled with supplies.

Hóu looked over at the couple with worry laced all very his face. "S-sorry… she won't stop crying… she must be hungry!" It surprised Ai how well he knew how to manage a baby and how he could tell what was wrong. She stood there for a moment as she smiled at the panicked monkey before taking her daughter to feed her in the other room, leaving Biming and Hóu together in the room.

Biming sat down next to Hóu on the bed who seemed a bit anxious. "Is something the matter Hóu?" Came the concerned question from Biming.

Hóu's tail flicked anxiously like an irritated cat, he lowered his head and talked in barely a whisper "she's just so small Biming… will she really survive?"

With a comforting hand on Hóu's shoulder, a smile found its way onto Biming's face "with you worrying about her like this… I know she'll be perfectly fine Hóu…" and with that, Ai came back in, carrying their sleeping daughter in her arms.

Without a second to lose, Hóu was up on his feet to give the bed to the sleeping baby. But instead, Ai gave him the small bundle of joy with a smile. Something within him clicked that night, and for the first time he remembered something from his past.

A conversation?

"Hey, [~~~] why so stiff?"

"Because! They're so small! So defenseless! How can they survive?!" A chuckle rang out throughout what seemed like a cave as the sound echoed.

"They're children! Of course, they're small! But hey! They seem to like you!"

"I… I guess they do…"

"You know… if you're really worried about them so much why not take care of them?"

"Don't you already do that?"

"Well, technically, yes? But what I meant was you could watch over the little ones and make sure they're safe?"

"... alright, I'll do it!"

Hóu held the small child close to his chest, a stifled sob escaped him as a few tears flowed down his face and onto the blankets that wrapped around the baby. This concerned the couple as they barely see Hóu cry, in fact. This is only the second time they've seen him cry ever since finding him that fateful day.

Just before they could react, Hóu faced them. Face stained with tears but his eyes held a strong determination. "No matter what, I'll make sure she becomes big and strong. I swear on my life"

With his sudden declaration, the couple found a sense of peace and comfort. Ever since then, Hóu had appointed himself their daughter's caretaker and would help Ai and Biming with their daughter in whatever way he could. There had been countless times when Ai or Biming would search for their daughter only to find her asleep on Hóu who had her safely asleep on or under his favorite tree in their garden, sometimes asleep himself.

Such were the peaceful times, the days he wouldn't have to worry about much except for their family's safety. Nothing could happen to them, he used to think. Not until the incident.

Golden eyes fluttered open as he heard a faint sound of someone calling out to him. "I'm heading off to work dad!! Text you later!!" Followed by a door slamming shut and a soft ringing of a bell.

With a sigh, the black monkey sat up and combed through his messy black hair before getting up and heading to the bathroom to freshen up. Mi Hóu looked at the mirror and examined himself only to be taken back to see a human face before remembering that his life with Ai, Biming, and their daughter Chu-Hua had ended a couple of hundred years ago.

He had remembered everything since that time, and his true name is Liu er Mihóu otherwise known as the Six Eared Macaque. And he remembered that at this current time, he has a son. A son that he had to look out for in a world of hidden demons. But here's the catch, he can't let his son know that he himself is a demon even though he already knows about demons. Which is why he uses a human disguise.

"Another regular day of work I guess…" he mumbled as he heard the ringing of the bell hung at the door indicating that someone had entered their home, or to be more specific, his clinic. Little did he know that this day would be the end of his daily routine of curing demons and teaching at a dojo.

#monkie kid #lego monkie kid #lego monkie kid au #monkie kid au #guardian macaque #guardian macaque au #lmk macaque #six eared macaque #monkie kid macaque #listen i live for dad macaque #and now i give you macaque being soft with babies #my writing

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wichitalk · 2 years ago

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Hi! I was wondering if I could hear about your ocs? I've seen a bit of art you've made of them i think, but don't know much! (I love peoples ocs so much. They are always so cool and interesting)

Yea ofc!!!!! They mean so much to me lol I love telling people about them !! under a readmore cus this got SO long. sorry it took so long btw!! i was struggling to type this all out

Their names are Casper and Will ! Will is the one on the left and Casper is the one on the right !

They’re both 22 rn in the story (Casper’s birthday is in January, and Wills birthday is September!) and they belong to a story I’ve been writing with my friend Rowan (who is @rabies--innit ), their two OCs are juice and Lilith, but I’ve only ever drawn juice lol. Here he is :)

(Funky design, but so hard to draw LOL)

The story *technically* starts with Juice and Casper meeting, but I’ve played around a lot with writing about Casper and Will before they met juice.

Casper and Will have been friends since they were babies, because their parents lived right next to eachother when they were born, and it was out in the middle of no where so they really had no choice but to be friends lol cus there were no other kids.

They live in a fantasy-ish world, there’s wings and hybrids and a lot of fantasy elements, but with modern technology like phones and stuff. There’s definitely cities, but it’s much more spread out and rural in general then the modern world is. When I was first writing their story I was really obsessed with dsmp (still am lol) and I absolutely love the idea of a “canon life system” I.E. multiple lives, so me and Rowan found a way to factor that into the story !!

Both Cas and Will have wings, but I rarely draw them because they’re kinda a pain to function into every drawing, but here are Casper’s wings !!

(Rest of the drawing cropped because I don’t like it LMAO)

Casper and Will’s parents are both really shitty (read:abusive) in different ways, and Will has kinda a.. like. Really impulsive, passionate, fiery personality, so when he was 17 1/2, ish, and Casper was freshly 17 they moved out/ran away (however you want to put it lol).

They were homeless for a while, which is when they met juice for the first time who was homeless because their village got burned down by terrorists.

but anyway cas and will got back on their feet eventually, in a relatively small city. the way I have the canon life system is that when you die there's like... a waiting period that functions kinda like limbo does in the dsmp. so you die, you go to limbo for a little while, then you're alive again. the waiting period can be really any amount of time, but it averages 6 months to a year. it seems longer for those who are dead, just because you're alone for that time and being dead kinda twists your perception of reality.

will also had bipolar and ptsd, which is important to the story and especially this part and post coming back to life. at some point after him and Casper got their own apartment he killed himself (saddest part in the story for me to write!!!!!!!!!! its horrible) because of a mix of mania and mental distress caused by his ptsd.

it took him an abnormally long time to come back to life, probably because of how he died/the intent behind the death? idk the universe is weird I'll figure it out. it took him about a year and 7 months, and in that time casper became really close friends and roommates with juice! their friendship was rocky at best, both because of his unstableness at losing the only person he ever really trusted, and because of Juice's unresolved trauma.

Eventually Will comes back to life, and he now has to deal with readjusting to real life and dealing with the issues the afterlife caused for him. him and casper move out from living with juice, and onto a farm! Casper and Will really enjoy working on the farm and eventually Will decides to open a coffee shop!

thats pretty much where the story is rn, but here are some other fun facts about them

casper has ocd, which is relavent to the story, especially his relationship with juice, but I couldn't find a way to explain it here lol so here it is

him and will use he/him pronouns :)

will is bisexual and casper is gay

they weren't really always dating?? they were ambiguous for a long time especially because their parents were shitty but if you saw them or knew about their relationship it was pretty obvious they had feelings for each other

despite the above, after getting back on their feet after running away will DID date a woman for a little bit. she ended up being a lesbian, lol. but they broke up mostly because will went to her and confessed "hey bro this is awkward because we're dating but I think I'm in love with my childhood best friend" and she went "huh?"

they are still very good friends tho :)

they have lots of dogs on their farm ! i have a massive c/w interest board with sections for all their dogs.

ty for askin about them!!! i love them so much and I love talking about them. feel free to ask any questions :)

#wilbur.txt #c/w #cookie tag #asks

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mrs-cavill-wife · 3 years ago

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Forbidden Witch (1/?)

Pairing: Charles Brandon x Female Reader (Cassandra of Boudicca)

Warning: Fantasy. Language. Forbidden Love. Tell me if I miss something.

Author's Note: Here I go again writing inspired on a dream I had. I can say, besides "The Tudors", there's a little of "The Witcher" too because there's familiar monsters and characters. Most of the name of places on this fanfic is all my creation but some I searched on Google or asked help from my friends. Hope you guys enjoy it, reblog if you do and I'm all ears to feedback! My tag List this time is for my last followers, THANK YOU SO MUCH! Part 2 coming soon!!

Tag List: @lexyvaldez26 @thereisa8ella @natura1phenomenon @mrsavery @number1chonie @themanfromu @littlefreya @legendarywizarddetective @lovingbearherringhairdo @zealoushound @deangal-101 @everydaymultifandom @summersong69 @jgtfvhsg @tellingyouastory @sillyrabbit81 @nuggsmum @pussyverson @oh-for-fic-sake @foodieforthoughts @fanficlover91 @r-t-doll @its--fandom--darling @poledancingdinos @hlkwrites @rmtndew

Riding under the moonlight, this is definitely one of the things that brings me peace. I love to run aimlessly with my horse, Atlas.

Was having a little party in the village, my village, the place where I was born. Boudicca. In fact, I spent more time at Aretuza, a school for witches, sorceress. I was "discovered" when I was about eight years old. My parents were simple traders, workers, but the income was never enough for the three of us.

I remember the day when I was playing with the pigs, few of which had not yet been sold and that woman appeared. Skinny, with a beautiful gray dress, perfectly neat hair, looked like a queen at the time. Tissaia. I saw her watch me for a long moment, before the question that would change my life.

"How much do you want for the girl?"

Yes. She wanted to buy me. I was in shock for the moment. She and my parents argued for a long time and I just wondered what would a rich woman want with a muddy little girl? A new servant, perhaps? No, she must surely have millions.

Today I know, Tissaia is tricky, smart, knows the words to use. Like a snake observing the prey, taking notes of the moves, the weakness and the best moment to the first attack. She had been watching me and my family. I had called her attention when she was passing through Boudicca, she saw a lot of potential in me, despite my young age, I would be her apprentice.

And so it was done. She made a deal with my parents. She would pay them a kind of penance, a new house, enough to live in safe and happy, but they would have to forget me. I could hate them but I know they didn't have much of a choice. I knew that they loved me and did it to save me, they had in mind that I would have a good life and become something bigger than any opportunity I would have there.

And technically, that's what happened. Aretuza was difficult, the other students were much older than me, more sure of themselves, some came from noble families. I was scared but over time I became determined. I became one of the best and youngest witches in Aretuza, Tissaia said that my power was pure chaos and more. I could destroy an entire kingdom if I wanted to. So good, Tissaia said that I could become a dean just like her, or maybe something like an assistant, she would love to have me by her side but it was never my will and unfortunately for her, I went down my own path when she had nothing more to teach me anymore. It was the first time that I saw a small hint of sadness in her strong image on the day I left.

She is the one who gave me the Atlas. She said it was an albino horse, rare, just like me. I hugged her. Tissaia of Vries is a tough woman, obviously she didn't return my action, but she watched me as I rode away. Until my image disappears from her field of vision.

It was a long journey but I returned to Boudicca. A few years had passed and unfortunately, when I arrived, the city lived in poverty and my parents.. had died of an illness. I blamed myself for a few days. I could have helped them but I couldn't have known they were succumbing.

I remember visiting our old house, or what was left of it. I felt something so strong inside me, I think it was the first time that I lost control, when I realized, my hands were red, bleeding from my nose and fire was mirrored. After that, with the help of the surrounding residents, I built a new home.

And since then, I decided to stay. I help people. With their illnesses, attacks by monsters, thieves, disappearances and every kind of problem you can imagine. I even once helped a poor gentleman who was "unable to fulfill his duty as a husband" with his young wife.

There is a bit of everything here and I venture to say, since I stayed things improved a lot, I was known, at least here. "The famous Cassandra of Boudicca, our savior".

My thoughts of my story went away, a noise in the water caught my attention. It was night, everything was dark, except for the moonlight. I left Atlas eating grass and went looking for the sound. I passed through a bush and saw. A little blonde boy. Swimming. All by himself. What a dumb idea.

I was determined to leave but something in the water caught my eye. A pair of eyes? Oh no. At least, six pair of eyes. Getting closer and closer to the little boy. FUCKING NEKKERS.

"BOY, GET OUT OF HERE"

My scream was enough to make the Boy look at me and stop. Of course, an opportunity for those monsters to attack, and so they did. FAT FUCKING SHIT.

I ran towards the boy, held out my hand and he grabbed it. I pulled him out of the lake and behind me, casting a spell towards the group of Nekkers. It was enough to push them away, but not enough to make them give up.

Now, I was the first option. They tried to attack me but they are nothing to me. I lures them out of the lake, with the boy behind me, and as soon as they are all on dry land, I cast a fire spell, turning them into a "beautiful" barbecue in a few seconds.

Seeing their dead bodies, I took a deep breath and looked at the boy, crossing my arms. He signed, it seemed like something part of his everyday because he knew what my first question would be and answered me.

"I know it is late and dangerous. I ran away. I was to swim a little and knew that my father would not let me. But don't worry, the royal guard must already be behind me, it's not the first time."

Dear lord, what's up with those kids those days?

"Do you know your way back home?"

He nodded and I huffed. I grabbed his hand walking on my way back to Atlas.

"Where are we going?"

I put him on my horse's back, climbing immediately afterwards and starting to ride.

"Back home, little troublemaker"

It wasn't a long journey, but that boy talked a lot. I learned that his name was Eric, son and heir to the kingdom of Aluma, his father was Alexander, and his mother, Queen Madeline. I also learned that he loves to escape. Poor parents.

#henrycavill rp #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill #henry cavill x female reader #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill fic #henry cavill imagine #henry cavill x reader #charles brandon #charles brandon x reader #charles brandon x you #the witcher #the tudors

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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“...The domesticated horse is not native to the Americas. There is perhaps no more important fact when trying to understand how the horse-borne nomadic cultures of the Eurasian Steppe relate to those of the Great Plains. The first domesticated horses arrived in the Americans with European explorer/conquerors and the settler-colonists that followed them. Eventually enough of those horses escaped to create a self-reproducing wild (technically feral, since they were once domesticated) horse population, the mustangs, but they are not indigenous and mustangs were never really the primary source of new horses the way that wild horses on the Steppe were (before someone goes full nerd in the comments, yes I am aware that there were some early equines in the Americas at very early dates, but they were extinct before there was any chance for them to be domesticated).

Horses arrived in the Great Plains form the south via the Spanish and moving through Native American peoples west of the Rocky Mountains by both trade and eventually raiding in the early 1700s. Notably firearms also began moving into the region in the same period, but from the opposite direction, coming from British and French traders to the North and West (the Spanish had regulations against trading firearms to Native Americans, making them unavailable as a source). Both were thus initially expensive trade goods which could only be obtained from outside and then percolated unevenly through the territory; unlike firearms, which remained wholly external in their supply, horses were bred on the plains, but raiding and trade were still essential sources of supply for most peoples on the plains. We’ll get to this more when we talk about warfare (where we’ll get into the four different military systems created by this diffusion), but being in a position where one’s neighbors had either the horse or the gun and your tribe did not was an extreme military disadvantage and it’s clear that the ‘falling out’ period whereby these two military innovations distributed over the area was very disruptive.

But unlike guns, which seem to have had massive military impacts but only minimal subsistence impacts (a bow being just as good for hunting bison as a musket, generally), the arrival of the horse had massive subsistence impacts because it made hunting wildly more effective. But the key thing to remember here is: the horse was introduced to the Great Plains no earlier than 1700, horse availability expanded only slowly over the area, but by 1877 (with the end of the Black Hills War), true Native American independence on the Great Plains was functionally over. Consequently, unlike the Steppe, where we have a fairly ‘set’ system that had already been refined for centuries, all we see of the Plains Native American horse-based subsistence system is rapid change. There was no finally reached stable end state, as far as I can tell.

Though there is considerable variation and also severe limits to the evidence, it seems that prior to the arrival of the horse, most Native peoples around the Great Plains practiced two major subsistence systems: nomadic hunter-gathering on foot (distinct from what will follow in that it places much more emphasis on the gathering part) on the one hand and a mixed subsistence system of small-scale farming mixed seasonally with plains hunting seems to have been the main options pre-horse, based on the degree to which the local area permitted farming in this way (for more on those, note Isenberg, op. cit., 31-40). Secoy (op. cit.) notes that while there is some evidence that the Plains Apache may have shifted through both systems, being hunter-gatherers prior to the arrival of horses, by the time the evidence lets us see clearly (which is shortly post-horse) they are subsisting by shifting annually between sedentary agricultural racheirias (from the Spring to about August) and hunting bison on the plains during the fall.

...Bison hunting on foot required a lot of cooperation (so a group) and it seems clear that it was not enough to support a group on its own and had to be supplemented somehow, at least before the arrival of the horse. Some mix of either bison+gathering or bison+horticulture was required. Isenberg argues (op. cit.), that at this point the clear advantage was to what he terms the ‘villagers’ – that is the farmer-hunters who lived in villages, rather than the nomadic hunter-gathers. These horticulturists were more numerous and seem quite clearly to have had the better land and living conditions. Essentially the hunter-gatherers stuck on marginal land were mostly hunter-gatherers because they were stuck on marginal land, which created a reinforcing cycle of being stuck on marginal land (the group is weak due to small group size because the land is marginal and because the group is weak, it is only able to hold on to marginal lands). That system was stable without outside disruption. The horse changed everything.

A skilled Native American hunter on a horse, armed with a bow, could hunt bison wildly more effectively than on foot. They could be found more rapidly, followed at speed and shot in relative safety. It is striking that while pedestrian bison hunting was clearly a team effort, a hunter on a horse could potentially hunt effectively alone or in much smaller groups. In turn, that massively increased effectiveness in hunting allowed the Native Americans of the region, once they got enough horses, to go ‘full nomad’ and build a subsistence system focused entirely on hunting bison, supplemented by trading the hides and other products of the bison with the (increasingly sedentary and agrarian) peoples around the edges of the Plains. Many of the common visual markers of Plains Native Americans – the tipi, the travois, the short bow for use from horseback – had existed before among the hunter-gathering peoples, but now spread wore widely as tribes took to horse nomadism and hunting bison full time.

...We’ll come back to this later, but I also want to note here that this also radically changed the military balance between the nomads and the sedentary peoples. The greater effectiveness of bison hunting meant that the horse nomads could maintain larger group sizes (than as hunter-gatherers, although eventually they also came to outnumber their sedentary neighbors, though smallpox – which struck the latter harder than the former – had something to do with that too), while possession of the horse itself was a huge military advantage. Thus by 1830 or so, the Ute and Comanche pushed the Apache off of much of their northern territory, while the Shoshone, some of the earliest adopters of the horse, expanded rapidly north and east over the Northern Plains, driving all before them (Secoy, op. cit., 30-31, 33). Other tribes were compelled to buy, raise or steal horses and adopt the same lifestyle to compete effectively. It was a big deal, we’ll talk about specifics later.

Horse supply in this system could be tricky. Unlike in Mongolia, where there were large numbers of wild horses available for capture, it seems that most Native Americans on the Plains were reliant on trade or horse-raiding (that is, stealing horses from their neighbors) to maintain good horse stocks initially. In the southern plains (particularly areas under the Comanches and Kiowas), the warm year-round temperature and relatively infrequent snowfall allowed those tribes to eventually raise large herds of their own horses for use hunting and as a trade good. While Mongolian horses know to dig in the snow to get the grass underneath, western horses generally do not do this, meaning that they have to be stall-fed in the winter. Consequently in the northern plains, horses remained a valuable trade good and a frequently object of warfare. In both cases, horses were too valuable to be casually eating all of the time and instead Isenberg notes that guarding horses carefully against theft and raiding was one of the key and most time-demanding tasks of life for those tribes which had them.

So to be clear, the Great Plains Native Americans are not living off of their horses, they are using their horses to live off of the bison. The subsistence system isn’t horse based, but bison-based. ...In any event, the arrival of commercial bison hunting along with increasing markets for bison goods drove the entire system into a tailspin much faster than the Plains population would have alone. Bison numbers begin to collapse in the 1860s, wrecking the entire system about a century and a half after it had started. ...Consequently, the Native Americans of the plains make a bad match for the Dothraki in a lot of ways. They don’t maintain population density of the necessary scale. Isenberg (op. cit., 59) presents a chart of this, to assess the impact of the 1780s smallpox epidemics, noting that even before the epidemic, most of the Plains Native American groups numbered in the single-digit thousands, with just a couple over 10,000 individuals.

The largest, the Sioux at 20,000, far less than what we see on the Eurasian Steppe and also less than the 40,000 warriors – and presumably c. 120-150,000 individuals that implies – that Khal Drogo alone supposedly has. They haven’t had access to the horse for nearly as long or have access to the vast supply of them or live in a part of the world where there are simply large herds of wild horses available. They haven’t had long-term direct trade access to major settled cities and their market goods (which expresses itself particularly in relatively low access to metal products). It is also clear that the Dothraki Sea lacks large herds of animals for the Dothraki to hunt as the Native Americans could hunt bison; there are the rare large predators like the hrakkar, but that is it. Mostly importantly, the Plains Native American subsistence system was still sharply in flux and may not have been sustainable in the long term, whereas the Dothraki have been living as they do, apparently for many centuries.

Well, what about Steppe Nomads? The horse is native to the Eurasian Steppe – that is where it evolved and was first domesticated, though the earliest domesticated wild horses were much smaller and weaker (but more robust and self-sufficient) than modern horses. The horse was first domesticated here, on the Eurasian Steppe, by the nomadic peoples there around 3,700 BCE. It seems likely that the nomads of the steppe were riding these horses more or less form the get-go (based on bridle and bit wear patterns on horse bones), but the domesticated horse first shows up in the settled Near East as chariotry (rather than cavalry) around 2000 BCE; true cavalry won’t become prominent in the agrarian world until after the Late Bronze Age Collapse (c. 1200 BCE).

I wanted to start by stressing these dates just to note that the peoples of the Eurasian Steppe had a long time to adapt themselves to a nomadic lifestyle structured around horses and pastoralism, which, as we’ve seen, was not the case for the peoples of the Americas, whose development of a sustainable system of horse nomadism was violently disrupted.

That said, the steppe horse (perhaps more correctly, the steppe pony) is not quite the same as modern domesticated horses. The sorts of horses that occupy stables in Europe or America are the product of centuries of selective breeding for larger and stronger horses. Because those horses were stable fed (that is, fed grains and hay, in addition to grass), they could be bred much larger what a horse fed entirely on grass could support (with the irony that many of those breeds of horses, if released into the wild in their native steppe, would be unable to subsist themselves), because processed grains have much higher nutrition and calorie density than grass. So while most modern horses range between c. 145-180cm tall, the horses of the steppe were substantially smaller, 122-142cm. Again, just to be clear, this is essential because the big chargers and work-horses of the agrarian world cannot sustain themselves purely on grass and the Steppe nomad needs a horse which can feed itself (while we’re on horse-size, mustangs, the feral horses of the Americas, generally occupy the low-end of the horse range as well, typically 142-152cm in height – even when it is clear that their domesticated ancestors were breeds of much larger work horses).

Now just because this subsistence system is built around the horse doesn’t mean it is entirely made up by horses. Even once domesticated, horses aren’t very efficient animals to raise for food. They take too long to gestate (almost a year) and too long to come to maturity (technically a horse can breed at 18 months, but savvy breeders generally avoid breeding horses under three years – and the Mongols were savvy horse breeders). The next most important animal, by far is the sheep. Sheep are one of the oldest domesticated animals (c. 10,000 BC!) and sheep-herding was practiced on the steppe even before the domestication of the horse. Steppe nomads will herd other animals – goats, yaks, cattle – but the core of the subsistence system is focused on these two animals: horses and sheep. Sheep provide all sorts of useful advantages. Like horses, they survive entirely off of the only resource the steppe has in abundance: grass. Sheep gestate for just five months and reach sexual maturity in just six months, which means a small herd of sheep can turn into a large herd of sheep fairly fast (important if you are intending to eat some of them!). Sheep produce meat, wool and (in the case of females) milk, the latter of which can be preserved by being made into cheese or yogurt (but not qumis, as it will curdle, unlike mare’s milk). They also provide lots of dung, which is useful as a heating fuel in the treeless steppe. Essentially, sheep provide a complete survival package for the herder and conveniently, may be herded on foot with low manpower demands.

Now it is worth noting right now that Steppe Nomads have, in essence, two conjoined subsistence systems: there is one system for when they are with their herds and another for purely military movements. Not only the sheep, but also the carts (which are used to move the yurt – the Mongols would call it a ger – the portable structure they live in) can’t move nearly as fast as a Steppe warrior on horseback can. So for swift operational movements – raids, campaigns and so on – the warriors would range out from their camps (and I mean range – often we’re talking about hundreds of miles) to strike a target, leaving the non-warriors (which is to say, women, children and the elderly) back at the camp handling the sheep. For strategic movements, as I understand it, the camps and sheep herds might function as a sort of mobile logistics base that the warriors could operate from. We’ll talk about that in just a moment.

So what is the nomadic diet like? Surely it’s all raw horse-meat straight off of the bone, right? Obviously, no. The biggest part of the diet is dairy products. Mare’s and sheep’s milk could be drunk as milk; mare’s milk (but not sheep’s milk) could also be fermented into what the Mongolians call airag but is more commonly known as qumis after its Turkish name (note that while I am mostly using the Mongols as my source model for this, Turkic Steppe nomads are functioning in pretty much all of the same ways, often merely with different words for what are substantially the same things). But it could also be made into cheese and yogurt [update: Wayne Lee (@MilHist_Lee) notes that mare’s milk cannot be made into yogurt, so the yogurt here would be made from sheep’s milk – further stressing the importance of sheep!] which kept better, or even dried into a powdered form called qurut which could then be remixed with water and boiled to be drunk when it was needed (this being a dried form of yogurt, it would presumably be made from sheep’s milk, as mare’s milk wasn’t used for yogurt). The availability of fresh dairy products was seasonal in much of the steppe; winter snows would make the grass scarce and reduce the food intake of the animals, which in turn reduced their milk production. Thus the value of creating preserved, longer-lasting products.

Of course they did also eat meat, particularly in winter when the dairy products became scarce. Mutton (sheep meat) is by far largest contributor here, but if a horse or oxen or any other animal died or was too old or weak for use, it would be butchered (my understanding is that these days, there is a lot more cattle on Mongolia, but the sources strongly indicate that mutton was the standard Mongolian meat of the pre-modern period). Fresh meat was generally made into soup called shulen (often with millet that might be obtained by trade or raiding with sedentary peoples or even grown on some parts of the steppe) not eaten raw off of the bone. One of our sources, William of Rubruck, observed how a single sheep might feed 50-100 men in the form of mutton soup. Excess meat was dried or made into sausages. On the move, meat could be placed between the rider’s saddle and the horse’s back – the frequent compression of riding, combined with the salinity of the horse’s sweat would produce a dried, salted jerky that would keep for a very long time.

Now, to be clear, Steppe peoples absolutely would eat horse meat, make certain things out of horsehair, and tan horse hides. But horses were also valuable, militarily useful and slow to breed. For reasons we’ll get into a moment, each adult male, if he wanted to be of any use, needed several (at least five). Steppe nomads who found themselves without horses (and other herds, but the horses are crucial for defending the non-horse herds) was likely to get pushed into the marginal forest land to the north of the steppe. While the way of life for the ‘forest people’ had its benefits, it is hard not to notice that forest dwellers who, through military success, gained horses and herds struck out as steppe nomads, while steppe nomads who lost their horses became forest dwellers by last resort (Ratchnevsky, op. cit., 5-7). Evidently, being stuck as one of the ‘forest people’ was less than ideal. In short, horses were valuable, they were the necessary gateway into steppe live and also a scarce resource not to be squandered. All of which is to say, while the Mongols and other Steppe peoples ate horse, they weren’t raising horses for the slaughter, but mostly eating horses that were too old, or were superfluous stallions, or had become injured or lame. It is fairly clear that there were never quite enough good horses to go around.

The other major source of meat, especially when on campaign, but also when in camp, would be hunting. One might expect the mighty Mongols to only hunt the more fearsome game, but the most common animals to hunt were smaller ones like the marmot, although the Mongols would hunt essentially anything on the steppe, including deer, antelope, even bears and tigers. Mongol hunting practices are quite developed (especially the large group hunt known as the nerge, which we’ll talk about when we get to warfare). Hunting, especially hunting small game with a bow from horseback, was a skill a good steppe nomad learned very young; one source describes Mongol boys learning to ride on the backs of sheep and practicing their archery by shooting small game (May, op. cit. 42), which is both adorable and terrifying. Needless to say, a warrior who can drop on arrow at distance onto a marmot while riding at speed on a horse is going to be a quite lethal archer in battle.”

- Bret Devereaux, “That Dothraki Horde, Part II: Subsistence on the Hoof.”

#native american #the dothraki #history #bret devereaux #food #grrm critical #mongol

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bondsmagii · 4 years ago

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This is definitely one of the… wilder stories here, but as always, I suppose people will believe what they will.

This will unfortunately require some backstory, but I guess you could say the long and the short of it is that I played at being God, and it. Well. Kind of sucked, actually.

So, the backstory. I’ll try to keep it brief. I grew up in a small country village about forty-five minutes away from Belfast, Ireland. There wasn’t much going on there, as you could imagine – just a standard rural Irish town, where the most exciting thing that might happen in a week was old Farmer Joe getting a new tractor or something. Anyway, I’m not sure how many of you know about Ireland’s rather troubled past, but for the most part I missed all that. I was born around the time things were finally settling down, and while my earlier memories are filled with bomb scares and low-flying helicopters and gunshots in the night, the distant sound of shouting and the acrid smell of smoke burning a little too close for comfort, by the time I hit my teenage years most of it had wrapped up. Of course, there was the occasional scare here and there, and I’m not saying my friends and I didn’t go out looking for trouble once we were old enough, but it wasn’t the same. I’m not saying that out of a sense of, I don’t know, regret or annoyance or anything. Now I’m older, I’m not so enamoured by the idea of that much violence. I’m just saying it wasn’t really a patch on the kind of violence that used to happened there – the kind of violence that fascinated my friends and I so much. It sounds bad, but really we were just kids being kids. Little boys everywhere play at war games. It just so happened that the war we were playing had happened in our own country. It’s difficult not to be obsessed, when you see the reflection of history on the faces of every generation around you. Even slightly older siblings would know all about it – it wasn’t something you asked your grandfather, distant war stories over some vague European country that you’ve only seen on a map in your Geography classroom. This was our street corners, our high streets, the road outside the house. Here the grass verge at the side of the road where the bodies were dumped; there the lay-by where over a dozen people were blown to pieces. It was awful, but we were children. We were enamoured.

Anyway. The only violence we got really involved in was the summer rioting that happened yearly, like clockwork. It sounds like a joke, but that’s how it goes. You don’t need to know the details, but suffice to say in mid-July every year, the city would light up like we were back in the 1970s. Localised, of course, and still nowhere near as drastic as it used to be, but enough to get a taste. Petrol bombs. Police lines. Armoured cars. Water cannons. Unrestrained summer fun, you could say. But that’s for a bit later.

I’m a writer. I have been since I was four years old. Generally speaking I’m a horror writer, but I’ve branched into historical fiction a fair bit over the years. Living in Ireland, growing up how I did, it was inevitable that I would develop a fascination for Irish history. I was always a very curious child, my head in books, chasing up stories that would keep me awake at night. I never knew any boundaries. I would go after answers with military precision, asking questions, going places I shouldn’t. Dangerous for anyone, of course, but in a country like mine, where crossing the road could quite literally lead to your murder? It was reckless. I was reckless. But that’s the thing about being that age. You think you’re invincible. You think you can do anything.

I was about fourteen or fifteen, at the height of this obsession. I believe I was fifteen when I wrote this particular story, but it’s difficult to say. It was part of a series, and I was going back and forth on it and other projects for many years. Here we finally get to the point of the whole story: I had developed an obsession with Irish history, as I said, and specifically the more “modern” history – from 1916 onwards, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, all that. I was fascinated by the Irish struggle for freedom, and while age and hindsight has lessened my… enthusiasm for the violence, I do maintain a strong opinion towards the whole thing, which is not the point here so I won’t get into it. What I’m trying to say is that my stories reflected this enthusiasm, and were undoubtedly glorifying in nature, and also at that age I was more concerned with living the fantasy than doing the research, so it was all very self-indulgent. I’m sure anyone who wrote at that age knows what I mean.

My main character… well. I’m sure you know what to expect. He was—well. Me, really. In the way of all main characters at that age, and perhaps a little even as we get older, there’s a piece of us inside all our main characters. Sometimes a little piece, other times just a cooler and more badass version of yourself. Michael was that for me. I suppose that must is obvious; I wasn’t even trying to be subtle. My name is of course Miceál, which for those of you keeping track is the Irish form of Michael. I’m just grateful that I didn’t go as far as to give him my last name, too, but everything else was there. He looked like me, he held the same views and beliefs as me, he acted like me – or at least, he acted in the ways I liked to think I’d act, or how I imagined acting later that night in the shower, reliving the scenario again. He was the best kind of self-insert character, indulgent and fun and a good friend to me. I poured a lot of myself into him. I poured everything into him. He was a constant companion, something that became ever more important to me as my real life—well, went to shit. To put it mildly. I would sit in my room writing my stories, and Michael would go out there and fight the good fight, killing and bombing for good old Ireland, and then I’d shut my computer down and go to sleep feeling just a little better than otherwise.

I’m not afraid to say that I can be obsessive. I like to get into the heads of my characters; I like to know them as well as I know everything. Yes, Michael was me, but he was also a version of me who had done things I have never done. Sometimes I would try to imagine myself as him; wonder what it was like to see through his eyes. Wonder what a me who had done that would look like. Wonder what he would do in a situation. I asked myself that a few times; a lot of times. What would Michael do? I could have put that shit on a wristband. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I’ve always been a bit of a method writer like that. It was normal, until it wasn’t.

I first saw Michael on a hot July day, in Belfast. What we call the rioting season had come around; my friends and I were there to take advantage. Just at the sidelines, mind you – nobody wants to get a face full of water cannon, even on the hottest of days. Michael was in the thick of it though. Of course he was. I’d written him to be that way.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. At first I thought I must be seeing things, but the more I looked the more I realised he looked exactly like me. Only he was a little taller, a little fitter, and his hair looked different. His clothing was different, too; perhaps a couple of decades out of date, but looking at him I saw his clothing didn’t remain consistent. The changes were subtle – material, tone – but I noticed. Looking back, I assume it’s because I never did give a specific date for his story to occur in. Well, wherever he was from he was there now, throwing rocks with the best of them, skipping from stone to stone and hurling them at police lines with an easy swing that could only come from years of practise. When we had all finally cleaned out the area – soldiers coming, a helicopter, the kind of trouble you don’t want to toy with – I managed to catch up with him. He was talking to my friends. They noticed we were both there, but didn’t seem to realise we were two different people. The whole time we were all talking, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Michael. I tried, because I knew how obvious I was being, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t work him out. I couldn’t even trust that’s what I was seeing. And the whole time, Michael watched me back. I knew the look in his eyes. It was his smug little, I know something you don’t know look. Of course I knew it. I had made him like that. I had given him that look.

I didn’t see him for some time after that. Believe it or not, I put it out of my head. I mean, come on. It was probably some other guy that my friends knew. We were in Belfast enough, and Michael isn’t exactly an uncommon name. I put it out of my mind, but I was sure that sometimes, I saw him. I was sure I’d see him in Belfast, ducking down side streets or leaning in close conversation with someone I couldn’t make out. He was always watching me. Sometimes I’d feel eyes on me and know it was him, but when I looked around I wouldn’t spot him. On some occasions – and these were always the worst – I would feel his eyes behind my own. Like he was on the inside looking out, moving independently in there, a set of eyes swivelling around over my own. It happened most often when I was trying to write his story. As you can imagine, I was nervous to do so. The more I thought I saw him, the less I wanted to write, but I didn’t think that was a good idea either. I didn’t know what to do.

It was a sunny weekend just before school started back after summer that I finally resolved to do something about it. I didn’t even feel stupid as I booted up my old Windows 95 desktop and opened Word. Michael’s story was there, in 12-point font as I always wrote then, plenty of enthusiasm but a lot less technical skill. My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment, and then I typed.

Hello?

Nothing, of course. I deleted the word, wondering what I had expected. Feeling a little stupid now, I tried to think about where to go with the story. It was difficult to write now I had some kind of real person to assign to it all – what were the ethics here? How could I—

I won’t get into that. It would be a philosophical essay all of its own. I sat for a while wondering what to write, and then it hit me that the story had changed. The words Michael had spoken, in the paragraph that I had left off – they were no longer the words I had written. I forget what the original words were now, but they were something relatively simple; some response to another character, and I remember that another name was mentioned in it – the name of Michael’s in-universe best friend, Eamon. Now that name was gone, and the rest of the text had changed, too. Now the writing read something different entirely.

I thought you wanted to know?

I lied earlier. I said that age and experience and perhaps some more emotional maturity had led me to turn away from the kind of violence that fascinated me so much then, and I have no doubt that under normal circumstances it would have done. I had somewhat of a speed run, however; I turned my back on it because

I’m getting ahead of myself.

I had often wondered what it would be like to do what Michael did, of course. To kill and risk death for a cause, to face down prison, torture, exile. I had wondered what it would be like to commit those acts; how easy or difficult it would be to pull a trigger or push a detonator. I liked to think, in my foolish, idealistic teenage mind, that if it came down to it I could. Of course, I was in the very privileged position to not have to actually answer that question.

Michael, on the other hand, knew. And Michael was, if not me, than a product of me. Could it be possible that he could show me?

I ignored the message for several days. I didn’t know what to think. Truth be told I thought I was going mad. School started again and I got so busy that I almost, almost forgot about it – and then I opened the document by mistake one day, got into reading it over, laughing at my brilliant comebacks, you know how it is. And there it was again.

I thought you wanted to know?

Yes, I remember thinking. It stunned me – I remember that. I didn’t want to mess with this kind of stuff – I’ve always been a huge believer in the paranormal, always been cautious when it comes to fucking with that kind of stuff. I believe that magic like this, it requires intent. It needs you to be sure. It knows how you feel, true in your heart. So even when I ignored it again, even when I deleted the words and re-wrote whatever the original had been, even as I didn’t reply… I knew in my heart that my question had been heard by something. I could feel Michael’s eyes on me again, though now I wondered if it was Michael’s eyes, or something else entirely. It felt like a weight. Have you ever been in an old, old place, where you can practically feel the people who lived and died there; reach out and touch them? It felt like that. Like the weight of history was pressing down on me. I didn’t fall asleep easily that night, but when I did sleep was dark and endless.

I don’t know how long I spent in that state. In reality it was only seven hours; I woke up with my alarm. In that time period, wherever I was – because I was not living – I seemed to witness a hundred different lives. Over the course of Michael’s story I had him do all kinds of things; live all kinds of situations. I deleted things, changed others, added things in. I wrote what would now be called alternate universes. In that night I experienced them all. I know how it feels now. I know how it feels to pull a trigger; to watch the spray of someone’s life splatter a wall or a windscreen or the screaming backseat passengers of a car. I know how it feels to push the button, the one that sends a charge surging down a wire or flickering out over my head in an invisible wave of death, notifying the bomb, detonating the explosives. I know how it feels to sit in a hotel bar across a border, listening to the news, sipping a drink and feeling my heart beat in my chest as I add more numbers to the tally, more blood to my hands. I know how it feels to be shot, to be beaten, to watch a friend die, to kill someone who used to be – who still is, despite everything – a friend. I know how it feels to cough blood into my hands, onto the ground; to grip a wound that won’t stop bleeding; the blinding flash of an explosive detonating too soon and how the whole world seems to roar and how there’s a difference between the thud and slap of wet mud hitting the ground and the warmer, denser rain of something that used to be human. For days, weeks, years – I walked in Michael’s shoes, I lived his life, I committed every act.

I felt his pain. His fear. This hellish world that he lived in, created to kill and die and lose and fear, over and over. To meet his God and to finally, finally ask – why?

And what could I say? Because I wanted to know?

Well. Now I do.

#creeptastic #creepypasta #my creepypasta #writing #my writing #short story #fiction #can you tell i've been listening to tma lately?#anyway VERY tempted to record this seems i'm a decent voice impressionist and i have the right accent for the statement lmao

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everyothermouse · 3 years ago

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A lil group portrait of the time au adventuring gang!! Them <333

Basically tol fucked up as a kid and is now on the run from the law, but realized that since his life was so crazy he could live off of telling stories of his wacky adventures. When he met Jay he wanted him to come with him, and when he found out jay couldn't come cus he was virtually a demon/god/magic magnet he decided he NEEDED to bring him to capitalize on how it'd make more cool stories. And yeah it worked so since then he's been collecting wackos to aaa go crazy aaaa go stupid (and also bcus safety I numbers or whateva, pop and pip are also criminals and pastel and jay are crimes against god <3) more about each individual under the cut!

Doin them from left to right :)

Pastel: died when she was messing around with some friends and got stuck under a big rock and left to starve. But because of a fluke in the underworld her God decided to resurrect her, a right usually only belonging to saints. Because of this she's now poorly pretending that she totally did something to deserve being revived (she tells a different story every time someone asks, she thinks it's funny) to avoid being persecuted for suspected witchcraft. She met Jay when they were both drunk and they had fun fucking around in the city, and she spilled the beans to him that she was revived for no reason. She regretted it, but jay didn't kill her because even though he's religious he knew what it felt like to be magically cursed and have everyone be pissed at u for it. Also she's really funny with jay so tol begged her to come with them to add more Comedy(tm) to his memoirs

Pop: a time traveller and angel who is trying to hide both of those facts but only really succeeding at hiding the time travel thing. When they were a kid they traveled to this time with his friends Lustre and Cherrybomb, but when they were attacked by the vicious royal guard they weren't able to escape without leaving Lustre behind. Cherrybomb super repressed that memory, and while pop recovered from some minor injuries they vowed to never time travel again. Yeah they only kept that up until they were like 15, but they still couldn't bring themself to go back to when they left Lustre. But now they're 26 (well technically they're like 33 but in their time their supposed to be 26) living with their boyfriend cherrybomb and have years of time travel experience under their belt, and they're ready to go back. Except they can't go back because they created a travel block for themself by accident because of how upsetting the event was, so instead they traveled as close as they could, about 10 years in the future of the time. Now they search for any form of closure, all they need to know is what happened to their friend, and they will do whatever it takes to find this out. But angels aren't super welcome in the past, especially not with uncut wings, so it's not exactly easy for them to navigate this time period. But after a while of their search they met two lovely children (well young adults), a demon and a "cursed" (nowadays they call em spiritually gifted) and felt so bad for how much the world seemed to be against them they decided they could travel with them, just for a bit, to protect them. They tried not to get attached. They failed. They're in it for the long run now aren't they TwT also as they explore this time and learn more about the gods, they start to realize that they might... be the God of longevity???? Or at least an older version of them became them? Time travel is fucked man

Btw Lustre plays a big role in this plot, her hyper futuristic knowledge, 'blessed' white eyes, and strange God gifted clothing would all lead to him rising to a much different role than fugitive rather quickly, but they're not who this post is about ;) also I'm gonna go bottom to top for the 3 in the middle let's go

Lune: just a little guy :) lune is a young rancher/gardener who worships the God of the wood, who kind of goes missing sometimes and is lowkey the least loyal God but shhhh he loves them. Lune and tol were childhood friends (along with their pal cleo) but on one of their little excursions tol took something very important to a very powerful king, and refused to give it back. As retribution the king destroyed their entire town, and cleo put all the blame on tol, tol and lune both knew lune had to take the side against tol in order to not have the town turn on him. So yeah he moved with the town to bring up a brand new farm, long awaiting the day when tol would come home and say that things were OK and they could settle back in town together, hopefully with cleo too. That didn't happen, but tol did come back and peer pressure lune into part time adventuring with him! So yeah generally lune just runs his lil farm and prays, but when tol comes to pick him up he gets a chance to go be free to act batshit crazy, just like when he was a kid 🥰

Pipes: DEmon! One time lune and tol had a little squabble so lune was like 'im gonna get a new best friend and ur gonna regret this' and tol was like 'yeah right, u live with a bunch of criminals right now no one's gonna wanna be ur bestie dumbass' so lune just walked into a cave at night and dragged out this little nonverbal demon because demons who live alone in caves don't have high standards for friends. Even tho it was just a ploy to make tol jealous lune went super hard on it and now pipes is actually friends with the gang lmaoo

Tol: like I said with lunes, stole something important from a king as a kid, monarch got pissed, blew up the town, town got pissed at tol for it, and since then he's been on the run because he's too stubborn to give back the damn thing (they could have just attacked HIM for it, but since la queen decided to fuck with his town, his family, tol thinks he doesn't deserve to have it back.) He had to run from town to town and got into a lot of danger in his attempts at finding places to hide, but he lacks fear and tended to fight stuff off. As a kid he found that he could get enough pity to be welcomed into towns if he told people he had to fight a monster to get there, so he told stories at every town and camp he went to of his hardships. But as he got older, those he stayed with beckoned him to keep talking, and more and more people said they had heard of his adventures. And that's when when it clicked, his shining ticket to true freedom wasn't a place, it was his stories. They gave him food, shelter, fun, memories, a life. So he made it his mission to never settle down, to make his life as crazy as possible and to talk about it as much as possible, and if he ever ran out of energy to adventure, he'd spend the rest of his dying days writing and writing his entire life story. He thought this was a life he'd live alone, but one day he sought refuge in jays little lonely house because he thought it was abonded, luckily though Jay had just been praying for a second chance at life and decided that considering the timing, tol must be that second chance. So yeah jay patched him up, found out on his monthly supply route he was harboring someone very wanted, and took care of tol even harder because he didn't know or care why he was wanted, he just knew that anyone who had a drawing of them as a child on a wanted poster definitely didn't deserve it. So yeah they're besties now.

AAA I wrote out a really long description for jay but tumblr glitched and I lost it :'O ble here's a shorter rewrite cus I'm not writing out that whole thing again >:P

Jay: brought up in a church village,, he was born with the curse, which allows him to tap into magical properties very easily, and be very easily controlled, manipulated, and possessed by them. This allowed him to be very connected with his god (the god of longevity) but also meant he was often treated as a security risk and a monster by the adults of his town since he could let in evil spirits so easily. He spent most of his time praying and he became obsessed with acting on compulsions (repeated prayer, overscrubbing, scratching himself, touching religious things until he felt like he touched them "right") because he believed they were messages from God and would prevent him from becoming evil (look he was a teenager and everyone told him he was a monster his whole life leave him be.) He gets possessed twice, mage as a rep of the town is like "either have ur cursed removed or leave town forever" (uncursing is only hypothetically possible, it's hella dangerous) and he's scared itd sever his connection to his god so he leaves and he's upset bcus his entire life plan was built around his church, so now he's livin alone on a hill and leaving like once a month, he stays up there and sews and prays mostly, he sort of works on himself and becomes vaguely mentally stable, so he prays for a second chance at life since he lost his original path and needs a sign where to go, and then boom tol shows up and the rest is history. Now he has his own little family and things are going great :) other than the still getting possessed like once a week but shhhh

Pip: in between the entrance to hell and the religious central of the continent is a little town that sides with neither. They mostly fuck around and find out, and in this town lives a monster researcher and her less formal wife, pip! Pip is just a silly goofy little guy livin life, and when the crazy bunch shows up she feels like he's finally found her people :3 and for the first time the group gains a member who's begging to join them as opposed to the other way around

Ya and together they all go on wacky lil adventures with demons and monsters and monarchs and what not.

Tldr pastel is a funny lil dead guy, pop is a time traveller and the Adult of the team, lunes a lil farmer man, pipes a hobo demon they picked up off the side of the road, tols a little criminal demon adventurer, jays a religious weirdo who tol dragged out of his hermit hut, and pips an insane little guy

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foulserpent · 4 years ago

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ned has the most fleshed out history of any of my OCs. i typed it out over the past couple of days, theres some stufff missing but its over 2000 words as is.

here is neds life story prior to the oblviion crisis

ned was born in a village near falinesti’s summer rooting site. his father died before ned was born, and ned was raised by his mother and various farmhands in the community.

his mother was a farmer (though she had a shady past he was always peripherally aware of but never privy to), and they raised hogs and chickens for milk/meat/eggs and would be part of falenesti’s supply chain every year. niviiran also lived nearby, and the two were close friends throughout their childhood and adolescence.

“nasty ned” was in fact his birth name and a name he continued to use, though going by the latter part. he was never able to find out why his mother named him that. the name came in handy, given that ned is transgender and already had a fairly “masculine” name. he was recognized as a boy since he was around 10, but his mother was unable to afford the hormone replacement potions until his later teens.

when ned was 16, he started taking jobs at falenesti, mostly as a bouncer at its taverns. he had been a bit of a nervous child before that and to this day isnt sure why he chose that line of work, but it toughened him up considerably.

when he was about 20, his friend niviiran was being heavily pressured into marrying off to secure her family’s inherited silk business. niviiran saw this as the only chance to escape her emotionally abusive parents, and proposed the notion of entering into a (false) marriage with ned until she could get away. he agreed, both desiring to help his friend and hoping to benefit from niviiran’s far wealthier parents.

during this time, he had his first Actual intimate relationship, but it only lasted about a week. he had picked up a girlfriend at his job, but being emotionally immature and a bit of a dick, he thought that he did not need to inform her that he was TECHNICALLY married, since the marriage was fake and him and niv both did not mind. she left when he found out.

this marriage fell apart within a year, largely as a result of ned panicking and letting it slip while drunk at a gathering with niv’s family. this caused a huge commotion mostly directed at him (and was worsened by his continued panicking), and culminated in niviiran’s brother beating him and attempting to run him over with a horse as he fled. his leg was badly crushed and was saved by his mother.

though their marriage was fake, niviiran and ned had a real falling out as a result of this. both obviously felt bad for the harm to the other, but niv was very angry at ned for having let it slip and putting her in the position of having to run away from her controlling parents rather than leave freely. ned at the time was surprised and hurt that she was so mad, having taken her friendship for granted, and responded in kind. they separated angrily and did not see each other again after that point, and the way he treated niv is one of his first and biggest regrets.

after his leg was mostly healed, he decided he wanted to leave valenwood, at least for a while. he had developed some skill as a bodyguard, and managed to get himself hired to guard a merchant caravan that looped through valenwood, elsweyr, and cyrodiil. this was the time where he really came into his own in mercenary type fields, learning to use swords/shields/armor and how to hold his own against much larger foes. he also learned how to cook at this time, and had his first boyfriend. this relationship was not serious and did not last past ned’s contract with the caravan, but was significant and fondly remembered.

he chose not to continue as a caravan guard, and became interested in mercenary work instead. he joined up with cyrodiil’s fighters guild, and spent the next decade or so working for them. late in this period, he was subcontracted out to mainland morrowind on a longterm job as a hired guard. during this time, he met and began a relationship with yaksha gra-dralas, a morag tong agent. their relationship lasted about three years until ned’s contract ended. it was somewhat serious, but neither felt it was working out well enough to continue (and neds ass was too small). they went their separate ways, and ned returned to cyrodiil.

ned continued working for the fighters guild for an indeterminite amount of years, culminating in the events of oblivions fighters guild questline occurring. when ned was demoted for the death of the guildmaster’s son that he had nothing to do with, he decided that the guild was going to shit and that he was leaving. he resigned, and spent a few years hiring himself out independently as a mercenary or whatever else was paying.

eternally bad at settling, he became unsatisfied and decided to move again. he moved to vvardenfell, where he would live for the next 30 years or so. during this time, he joined their chapter of the fighters guild, took many odd jobs, and became more radicalized against the empire than he had already been (which was a lot).

notably, in the latter half of his time there, he met the disowned son of a hlaalu nobleman named ondryn. he and ondryn were assigned together on a longterm fighters guild job out in the wilderness, and began a relationship that would last a decade. it was ned’s longest relationship, and also the first one that he seriously considered the possibility of being permanent and settling with. he had loved all his partners before this, but ondryn was very special to him and brought out something much more serious in him.

it was this relationship that would also lead to ned’s involvement with daedric cults. ondryn was dissident against the tribunal and a follower of azura, boethiah, and mephala. this was just casual everyday worship, but the two joined an active sect of boethiah worshippers (at least partially trying to impress each other). ned had never been religiously motivated and believed that gods were not owed worship any more than anyone else, but was drawn to the “good daedra” for their seemingly mutually beneficial relationship with mortals.

ned was never the most devoted of boethiah’s sect, but through skill and luck he continuously proved himself worthy, and eventually was challenged to and won a tournament of 10 bloods. he was granted a title as champion of boethiah, and bestowed with the artifact goldbrand.

for a while, he proved himself worthy by continuing to maintain his position and defeat any challenger who came his way. but at one point, he was successfully kidnapped along with a fellow boethiah worshipper to be sacrificed to molag bal. he managed to free himself of his binds and escape, and came back with reinforcements to slaughter the rest of molag bal’s faithful, but it was too late for his friend.

this was the first decidedly traumatic incident of his life, and marked the beginning of a slow downturn of his life and his mental health. he was wracked with guilt at having left his friend to die, and was beginning to realize he wasnt really cut out for the whole champion of boethiah thing, rightfully fearing that he had lost favor for this weakness. in a stupid move (that would turn out smart in the long run in bargaining for his soul back), he kept goldbrand but fled with ondryn from the cult, ghosting boethiah and just hoping it wouldnt come back to bite him.

the blight was also worsening in vvardenfell at this point, with things beginning to get pretty scary. ned had repeatedly expressed desire for him and ondryn to flee vvardenfell, but the latter saw all this as just another crisis that would pass with time, and ned accepted this. around the time of the beginning of morrowind’s events, ondryn fell sick after an encounter with one of the ash creatures from red mountain. when it became obvious and undeniable that it was corprus, ondryn resigned himself to dying and asked of ned to help him be properly cremated and interred in his family tomb. all of ondryn’s living relatives had disowned him, but he still desired to be buried in his rightful place.

agreeing to this was the hardest thing ned had ever done. ondryn said goodbye and took poison, and ned was left alone to burn and lay his body to rest. he almost couldnt bring himself to do it, but eventually succeeded. after it was done, ned remained in the tomb for a few days, catatonic and just waiting to see if he would show symptoms himself. when it became clear that he had not contracted corprus, he considered suicide but became disgusted with himself and decided against it.

he remained in vvardenfell for a short while after this, but when his beloved guar (“jelly”) passed away of old age (mercifully peacefully), he decided enough was enough, and returned to cyrodiil. he had a couple of brief encounters with a person who he would later learn was the nerevarine, and left only weeks before the defeat of dagoth ur.

upon returning to cyrodiil, he was in a rut. he had become near-broke, had newly acquired mental health issues, had a constant fear of boethiah sending prospective champions after him, and had nothing to do with himself. he settled into the imperial city waterfront as a squatter, and attempted to join the thieves guild, but failed the initiation. desperate, he began thieving on his own, sometimes doing jobs for others and sometimes just to have money to get by.

he took a very large risk in agreeing to steal and imperial watch captain’s heirloom sword, and was captured in the act. he resisted arrest and injured the captain, and the captain personally intervened to get him a much steeper sentence than he otherwise would have. he was put into the imperial city prison for a few weeks, before being transferred to the arena and being put to work as a gladiator.

this was essentially a death sentence, with no determined ending besides dying in the arena. he met shap-mota here, a bard who had been blamed for a string of brutal assaults in spite of being pretty unquestionably Not the culprit. the two of them had an intimate relationship throughout this time, and struck up a friendship, but they were under a painful and unusual situation and it could not really be called a romantic relationship.

for a time, ned was managing well. he managed to get some serious dirt on one of the guard captains and effectively blackmail him. he wasnt able to secure his freedom, but was able to force his hand into giving him his sword (goldbrand) back and giving him and shap a bit more leeway as prisoners. having goldbrand is likely the only reason he survived and won all his death matches, but his uncooperativeness and humiliation of a few of the guards gave them a massive grudge.

after about 5 months, shap narrowly won a match, but had been gravely injured in the process and collapsed. ned last saw him being dragged out from the arena, and never saw anything that would indicate shap being alive, and had to assume he died. things got really bad after that, with ned having no buffer against the ire of the guards and other prisoners. he lost his blackmailing opportunity (though was allowed to keep goldbrand, due to the crowd loving his signature flaming sword) and was given absolutely terrible treatment from his captors.

he became incredibly disgusted with being forced to kill other prisoners and enraged at challengers who fought willingly. as he rose in the ranks, he was kept going by not knowing what else to do and by a grim satisfaction at murdering people who willingly chose to be combatants. this was very traumatizing.

ned achieved champion rank, though he almost lost his final match. his opponent disarmed him and instead of killing him, gloated and slashed at him with goldbrand, ripping his abdomen open and giving him his biggest scars. ned managed to take him by surprise and kill his opponent before passing out from shock and blood loss.

he woke up a day later to find he had been released. evidently, no one expected him to live that long and it was decided he might as well be let go. ned already had trauma to deal with, but was suddenly experiencing very unusual and new symptoms (which was ptsd and an anxiety disorder) that he had no idea what to do with. he was also convinced that his challenger was there on boethiah’s behalf, though he cant be sure of that, and the fear of being killed and left to the daedra who probably owned his soul took hold of him again.

he had been given some prize money, and he collected himself and left. he moved into kvatch, and rented an attic from some dunmer in exchange for proofreading his stupid “opus” about him killing all the cliff racers or whatever.

ned spent a few years in a haze, kind of just drifting through life, getting into shit here and there. there was an “incident” involving the towns blacksmith at the general store, and he was not arrested but was considered to owe a favor to the town’s watch captain due to the chaotic results that few dare to speak of.

this favor was finally cashed in when kvatch was burnt down by mehrune’s dagons invasion force and they needed someone to try and close the gate, and lo and behold here comes ned “owes a favor” nasty and some argonian from out of town who just kind of wandered in.

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mystiika · 3 years ago

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re; wesley

h i s t o r y

meet adrastos wesley sharpe ! so to start, he was born as adrastos zika but his legal name in present day is adrastos wesley sharpe, going exclusively by wes or wesley so no one really knows his first name aside from doctors or the bank. he’s from an ancient race of people that we would call high humans but for him, all he knows is that there’s something different about him. there was no way of knowing if his family was the same as him, but as his life went on, it seemed more & more like it was pure chance he’d ended up the way he did. regardless, he’s been alone since he can remember. whether or not he was given up willingly or if something happened, he really has no idea who his parents were. but for the most part, it never bothered him. he did well enough. he was smart & charming & could talk his way into or out of almost anything. hailing from greece, he grew up as a sort of apprentice to the blacksmith in his village. he was good at it too. he had a talent for the craft & could create designs & small sculptures that his senior was happy to sell along with the usual catalogue of tools. he liked it too, quite a bit actually. but around 17 he decided he wanted to travel, see the world that lay beyond the horizon. so he did.

adrastos became a merchant trader at that point. their ships had mainly been contained to be within the mediterranean, traveling from coast to coast. & eventually they decided to branch out further than their usual trading route. they made their way across the mediterranean, heading through the middle east to a port town in kuwait. it was there that they chartered a large cargo ship that then carried along the coast of the arabian sea, hitting more port towns along the way.

then, they landed in a place they’d picked at random. but in that growing city, his life changed forever — or rather, to forever. he jumped down from the ship & in the midst of taking his bearings he locked eyes with a stranger, a beautiful one at that. for a moment they were both frozen ( at least for adrastos ), he was mystified. it was love at first sight. he managed to break his thoughts long enough to offer a smile, small but genuine & she offered one of her own in return.

it was a few days before they’d meet again. & while the language barrier made it difficult, it was clear she’d fallen for him just as quickly. they made it work. his troupe stayed at that town for a few weeks, but at the end of the stay, adrastos couldn’t bring himself to leave just yet. so he left his old life & stayed with her, beginning to build a new life for himself with her — myra.

it’s been a long time since that day, & they’ve spent a lot of lives together. but even if he has to go through the pain of losing her, it’s still that much more time he’s able to spend with her, loving her.

present day he finds himself as a chef & owns his own restaurant. it’s a nice place with great staff & he’s happy. well, as happy as can be while he waits for myra to show up in his life again. he’s got so much to tell her.

i n f l u e n c e s

very loosely inspired by hancock ( 2008 ) but largely is the result of original lore we’ve come up up with on our own. some influence from generic soulmate tropes but nothing too concrete.

l o g i s t i c s / l o r e

figured i’d make this its own section lol. they met in ancient times, thousands of years ago. fated soulmates with a twist. one of them is close to immortal & the other is the same species but is fated to die. in their case, wes is the former & myra the latter.

as such, wes has to watch myra die over & over again, the universe drawing them together where they live happily for a few decades, a few centuries, until myra dies & reincarnates, always with the same face.

they lived the first 20 years of their lives completely normally. maybe they didn’t catch a cold as often as some of their peers or that they were marginally faster/stronger but it was never anything that stood out. it wasn’t until they met that something changed. it was almost as if their genetic code was somehow unlocked.

the two of them belong to a race of beings myself & sofia have thought up & what we’re calling high humans. historically, this race of beings have existed since the beginning of humanity, living among the ancient humans, helping them move along through time. being more advanced than the regular humans, they acted as a sort of guide, assisting them in advancing their technology & techniques to help them through life. almost guiding them through evolution if you will.

so, the human race has evolved to be what we know as homo sapiens, there was still cross species breeding between homo sapiens, neanderthals, denisovans & other unknown species sub archaic sub-species of human. & just like this successful cross species breeding, the high humans began to intermingle with them. as a result, the genetic code of high humans began getting covered by other species & became recessive. whether or not that gene will become the dominant is random, but it’s fate that ties the two as soulmates.

now, what exactly does it mean to be a high human. they look the same, talk the same, act the same as any other human. but their abilities & their senses are strengthened & enhanced. they’re faster, stronger, healthier etc. they heal faster than regular humans, & sickness doesn’t affect them the same way if at all. their bodies are quite simply, built different. aging is also affected.

growing up wes & myra aged normally & blended in normally. as far as they knew, they were normal. then they met in their early 20s & things sort of started to change. then after they met, their enhanced abilities only grew stronger & after a few years, it seemed like they stopped aging. technically, they did age, but it was a long time before they realised because of how slow the process became. the reality was they they had no idea what was going on, or why it was happening really. everyone in their lives were still unaffected. it was so sudden for them & they sort of had to go with it & figure it out as they went along. there was no blueprint to follow, no people to ask for help. still, they had each other & eventually they adjusted to the new normal.

for a century they lived like this. & then myra dies for the first time. wes was mourning of course, he’d lost his first & only love, his soulmate. but part of him assumed that he would go back to how he was before they’d met & that he’d become ‘normal’ again. but it didn’t take long for him to realise that now that his new abilities/aging process was awakened, he was stuck with it. he also realised that after a while, he wasn’t aging at all anymore. but now he was living on his own & didn't really know how to process any of it. for all he knew, he was now stuck with this existence, forever & without myra.

then after some time, myra reincarnated & they met again. they’d been drawn together by the universe just like they had when they were young. myra had no memories of her previous life but after they met, she went back to the same enhanced state as when they met the first time. which meant that wes had to explain, what was happening & their past together. he had to teach her how to adjust to this new life of hers. but the cycle just sort of repeats.

myra ages normally until they meet ( matching wes’ visual age ), then her aging slows down drastically. but on his end, he starts aging again but matches myra’s speed. basically, his life is in a standstill in time until they meet again & he only ages when he’s with her. present day she’s in her mid 30s & visually he looks to be about the same age.

#this got so long my god #still i'm so excited for him and this story #long post #long post //#wes tag tba.

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starsailorstories · 4 years ago

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In other news I finally finished the long, wild, aristocratic-nonsense-fraught history of altamai

The first officially-sanctioned superatmospheric settlement on Altamai broke ground in the year 2190 of the ninth Taregan cycle, and her first official citizens arrived just under a (Taregan) decade later, after a long and dangerous building process largely carried out by the indentured and indebted of the ancient city-state of Solreg. In this early period, the population was scattered between “legitimate” landing sites, fly-by-night towns, and nomadic groups. The planet was a frontier: land changed hands via sword and seduction; criminals held territory with no trouble but the occasional vigilante; and vigilantes operated however they saw fit for good or ill, living in their starships and chasing bounties across the foggy plains.

The supposed descendants of the original Captain-Queens who settled Tarega had long had an informal international council, which became formal in the early years of Altamaian habitation. Gradually, national lines began to be drawn--most of the wars had already been fought, and there was a period of non-violent, albeit not necessarily just, claims and concessions. By virtue of the ancestry of their leadership, the Oghai, Saiven, Solrega, Nadega, Avesian, and Faellran peoples emerged as major powers.

In an oathing ceremony performed at request by a praeceptor-trained priestess, these seven world leaders would become (in addition to the queenly titles most of them brought from their homeworld) the Avesian Maximatas--to this day, the highest offices of Basillan nobility outside the royal family, passed down in a continuous line for over 600,000 planetary years. Here they swore to be mothers to the planet, to care for all of her inhabitants and follow the will of the goddesses. The language of the oath would later become a rallying point for commoners seeking accountability for their rulers, although ruling classes in the Binary have always had the kind of accountability problem that only revolution really solves.

Anyway, for holding to a vow of such profound importance, the priestess exacted a high price--she asked that if, as had been discussed, they chose a High Queen for the planet, it be her own country’s queen, Athaema Seflioma of Aves. They technically could have refused this request, but it would have been, to use the proper terminology, a Whole Thing. To turn down the bargain of a priestess and an oracle, and one sanctioned by the holy city, would be seen as akin to disrespect for the goddesses if it got out that it had happened, and wouldn’t start the new seat of power off on a popular foot. And so, in 10230 19th cycle, High Queen Athaema was crowned by her peers and sisters, and immediately got down to business setting up a royal court designed to serve the entire Sol Jenya system, planning and constructing ten state-of-the-art “civilized” cities to centralize industry and government in the various population centers, placing unaffiliated frontier towns under the jurisdiction of local landed gentry, and bearing over 2,000 children, her successor Aviana among them.

The crackdown on unaffiliated settlements was indiscriminate--lumping peaceful, self-sufficient villages established by poor colonies seeking freedom from the abuses of the feudal system in with organized-crime strongholds rife with violence and exploitation. The decree was presented with a spin that basically guaranteed its popularity with those who had no firsthand experience with the situation--without the care of the nobility, the court instructed its messengers to say, fly-by-nights were vulnerable to extreme poverty and plagued by thieves. A select few hard-luck stories were treated with highly public charity, and the project is still widely understood as a benevolent one by Basilean citizens at the time of the story. In reality, many fly-by-night towns were happy, prosperous, and most concerningly, egalitarian; and these fought tooth and nail to remain free until they could fight no longer. The far left wing of Basilean opinion remembers as martyrs a handful who went down swinging to the last girl standing. During Aviana’s comparably unremarkable reign, others simply vanished into the mists, operating in such secrecy that only the archaeological record attests to their existence. Fairly recently at the time of the story, a colony was discovered who had been living in self-imposed isolation for so long that they had developed a unique dialect of the Solrega Aundell language, a unique projection style adapted to their low-visibility home in the Tonevan cloud forest, and even a few subtle but distinct physical adaptations.

As the 23rd cycle drew to a close, Athaema’s granddaughter Ouriama died suddenly before she could produce an heir. Although an assassination was suspected, no proof was uncovered, and it remains an unsolved mystery and system-wide legend. The crown passed to her wife’s colony (and to another of the seven powers) in Faellra, where a new mother had just been born who could inherit it, and the guardian of this new queen, Analemma Olaean, jumped at the opportunity to make her ward Daemarima the best-connected and most legally powerful High Queen yet. This unwittingly made her a prime suspect in the previous Queen’s death, but from the international council’s centralizing perspective, it was all worth it. High Queen Daemarima commissioned the construction of Standard Altamaian, a single lingua franca for the planet, less than a turn (not that they measured turns back then, but it’s a good way to describe a period that feels like ‘a quarter year or so’ in astraea lifespans) after her coronation. In the ninth year of the twenty-fifth cycle, the planetary government financed the implementation of the new language in schools and other institutions, and in a more sinister move, outlawed the speaking of local languages in a handful of key centers of resistance to the hierarchy.

The Olaen dynasty lasted six cycles, during which interstellar exploration flourished in this new era of semi-forced international unity. Worlds in the ante-dome and outer disk were “discovered” by Altamaian newcomers on the regular and treated like matrona gifts in potentia for the various queens and aristocrats, although the era of outright invasions was still long to come. A sailor named Via suddenly appeared claiming to have lived on isolated, well-defended Esmrrrder for nearly thirty planetary years, and told tales of an advanced civilization perched high on its planet’s abundant mountains. The dream of crossing the vacuum between galaxies was already being heavily discussed as well, but before an expedition could be mounted, Daemarima’s great-great granddaughter married a commoner and abdicated the throne to her sister Leiliora, who would bring their dynasty to an abrupt end when she challenged Sastiena Fortefemen to a duel in defense of her sister’s honor and lost, dying that same night of an infection from a wound on her side. The Fortefemens had merely accepted the Queen’s challenge, but they stepped obligingly into the power vacuum and proceeded to rule the planet for longer than any other family, effectively controlling a throne they won in a sword fight for like 30,000 years. This is basically all you need to know about the Fortefemens.

It was early in her reign that Sastiena’s former ward Deracoura--named for the scriptural “protector” of the Taregan desert wayfinders--reached out to the leaders of the various Basillan-controlled worlds, as well as those of Sitheria, to spearhead the first intergalactic exploration mission. As you know from my broader historical overview of the Seven Suns, this expedition went in search of sapient life and returned with the first Cadrian delegation, who toured the cities of Ovaiakon, Solrega Nova, Neroka, and Alegia. It was on Altamai that the initial commoner-owned shipyard was founded via Cadrian investment and began exporting to the Maculata (as well as importing from the Elorican asteroid fields) and providing a colony-estate-esque setup for workers who viewed the Cadrian-style wage system with suspicion. As it turned out, providing the bare minimum was more profitable, at the time, than paying workers in flexible currency, and it had the added appeal of letting owners of capital basically act and live like nobility.

Within the next two cycles, the business interests of commoners continued to grow, and the Union of Commons was formed to protect those interests. They published a manifesto expressing their belief in the right of landholders of low birth to govern their own lands--basically a “hey, we have money, so why don’t we also have power?” directed at the High Court and the nobility. Practically in response, nonroyal nobility from every clan and country began clamoring for international lawmaking power as well. They formed a planet-wide legislative council of their own, and while they declared no hostility to the royal tier of society, they asked no permission from them either. In the middle of all this, while en route from a visit with the Council of Emperors far across the intergalactic sea, Queen Deracoura unhelpfully died.

Trying to please everyone, keep the peace, and maybe punish her insubordinate maximatas just a LITTLE bit, her heir Felixania Fortefemen ordered the creation of the High Parliament, which included representation from the nobility of each nation as well as for gentry of common birth. She still had the final say on everything no matter what, and it led to the creation of a lengthy court season that allowed the royal family to keep their nobles under close scrutiny, so in a way it was a devil’s bargain.

In this era, there were clashes of interest between a variety of Basillan and Cadrian notables. In space and even on-planet, business owners enforced their deals like crime bosses and crime bosses did a steady trade. In a climate where the penalty for a breach of contract could be a village burned to the ground, the nobility increasingly styled themselves as the protectors of the people, loyalties strengthened, and divisions grew. Among the common people, favor was split between the common capitalist class--who seemed to offer freedom from the whims of the nobility by offering a relatively secure income, as well as representing the promise of moving up in the world; and the old aristocratic families, who represented tradition, family loyalty (Altamaian nobles overwhelmingly ruled over their own historic colonies and their offshoots, meaning their peasants were all actually related to them--providing, to be fair, accountability that later Basilean aristocratic rule would lack) and a kind of symbolic cultural function--still today conservative Altamaians take the tack that the gentle Great Ladies suffer for their sake and must be defended from (in modern times largely imaginary) outside threats. The nobility was more broadly fractured, with favorites of the one-nation queens and the High Queen defending them stridently while others feared their unchecked power would leave the ancient families destitute to be overrun by the nouvelle riche. Just outside the metropolis of Solrega Nova, a shipbuilding-business billionaire bought a castle, noted for its beauty, built by the Celetorias--an original-lander colony--and announced plans to demolish it to build a complex of vitruvol foundries, giving the entire planet something to throw down about for five seasons straight (she eventually chickened out).

Just as these ideological tensions were reaching a fever pitch, Felixania and High Queen Esthardine of Glasmiri announced that their scionettes were betrothed--an unprecedented consolidation of power in a single household. The marriage of Delianae Fortefemen and Celafina Vividel was the event of the cycle whether you were for the high court or against it: three of the planet’s titled first daughters lost their crowns in duels that day, and three more lost their lives. Scholars took to the streets to warn the peasantry while by and large the peasantry took to the public houses to toast the beautiful young princesses who after all looked so smitten in their official portrait. It was the middle of fiber harvest season in a good market year; people were exhausted and ready for a show.

Following her mother’s death, Delianae laid low (letting the nobility handle urgent matters themselves) until all but the most paranoid aristocrats practically forgot about her, focusing on well-received local historical projects such as the restoration of the first Aivuran temple and a modernized housing for the shrine where the Avesian Maximatas took their oath. Behind the scenes, she reached arrangements with multiple once-hostile Cadrian interests and secured a substantial income from intergalactic trade which was primarily socked away for the use of her daughter Deracoura (styled as Deracoura the second, or sometimes, when she was really feelin’ it, the third).

Early in her reign, under the guidance of her elder sisters, Deracoura II established the highly profitable Fila Fenaeta swarm, a specialized, state-of-the-art vapor-harvesting operation set amongst the young stars of a resource-rich nebula. While the floating settlement started small, it was destined to grow into a veritable nation of employees of the crown. Almost immediately there was conflict over working conditions in this deep-void environment and the protection of the residents’ few rights as peasant-class planetary citizens (which were still meant to be upheld by the law despite their distance from home, but were not always, particularly with regards to due process in criminal trials and oversight of tribute apportionment--it was common practice for representatives of the nobility to embezzle a great deal of something valuable from a peasant colony and then disappear on a fast spaceship, leaving them on the hook to explain to their rarely-sympathetic lady where all the product went). Repeated uprisings were quelled through mass evictions that displaced families in far-flung space--often with inadequate supplies to get much of anywhere--and forced many to live as outlaws deep in the clouds, gaining the area a reputation as impoverished and dangerous. Dia “Acutri” (Altamaian: sharp-eyed) filia Senema, a second-born mother exiled by her noble sisters, founded a multigenerational pirate colony there that still persists at the time of the story.

The unrest was ultimately no hindrance to the prosperity of the Altamaian throne, and Deracoura continued with zeal the illumination of the galaxy (and beyond) to Basillan and Sitherian travelers that her great-great-grandmother had begun, opening trade routes in the ante-dome that would go on to gradually rob entire cultures blind. The deep roots of the Hyperian empire lead to things sown by the Fortefemens, even if they would later consider themselves rivals.

For two generations now, the narrative that the Old Ways had died with Deracoura I and been buried with the creation of the parliament had been kept at the top of the political toolbox, but no one had used it quite as Siderina Hyperia did from the beginning. With Altamai becoming increasingly inhospitable to its peasantry with the ongoing consolidation of wealth, her appeals to a kind of populist escapism--complemented by her position at the helm of the construction of the Rings and in guardianship of the heir to a little-known but prosperous landed colony--struck a chord with those who saw their planet’s new capitalist class as inadequate caretakers. While she never made any rhetorical attack on the High Queen, she took the angle that the enfeebled royal line now needed to be taken in hand for its own good. With her beautiful ward Estartina, she would revitalize the noble matriarchy of old and lead it to a glittering future in the Rings.

Siderina’s wholesome public image hid the mind of a shrewd general. Weeks after the Rings were announced complete, she commanded her knights to such a decisive victory against the royal guard that she was famously allowed to walk in and kill the old queen (Deracoura II’s daughter Athaema) with a small ivory dagger. In the aftermath she announced that she had acted to protect her world and avenge its integrity, claiming that the Fortefemens had sold information to a hostile Cadrian interest. This may or may not have been true--evidence did materialize here and there, albeit a bit conveniently--but the story was mainly believable because assertions of overfriendliness with Maculatan enemies were not a new thing for the dynasty, and a large segment of the public was willing to accept it.

Siderina was tried for her regicide in a number of courts, but, by slipping names in the elderly queen’s ear, she had rallied those with judicial power on Altamai mostly to her support, and was never convicted of anything. While the coup had certainly not been a formal duel, the transfer of power was adopted mainly on the strength of the precedent set by the Fortefemens. While Glasmiri was a center of popular resistance, the thrones of the two worlds were still heavily tied together for economic reasons, and the Vividel line remained effectively in Altamai’s thrall. When the Sitherian Archpraeceptor objected to the matter of Estartina’s coronation, Siderina had her ousted, either bribing or threatening practically every organization of priestesses in central Ovaiakon. All of this occurred in the space of two planetary decades--a blink in astraea reckoning. In the twelfth turn of the Rings, Estartina Hyperia was crowned not with the traditional Avesian coronel but with what would come to be called The Diadem of The Empress of the Seven Suns.

At the time of the story, almost two hundred quinturns later, Altamai--the Motherworld of the Basileans, as it is called by the aula--is a place of extremes even beyond its dramatic terrain and climate. Below the cloud line, it is an industrial powerhouse where thousands live in sprawling underground complexes and spend their workdays extracting rapidly depleting natural resources. Above, the last children of the old nobility rehearse the motions of the ancient ways between the pink cloud-carpet and the blue sky. In this dreamlike setting, heavy security, subtle propaganda, and armies of carefully vetted servants work to evoke the memory of a utopia that never existed, tailored to the political predilections and aesthetic whims of the Last Great Ladies. The granddaughter and heir of the deposed high queen, who escaped the coup with her governess as a young child, remains in exile far away in the Perseus Cluster, dreaming, as the old Royalist battle hymn goes, of double sunlight on plumafore fields.

#sweet chariot #planets - altamai #worldbuilding

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carriagelamp · 4 years ago

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November 2020: A Months of Familiarity

This November ended up being a month of me either rereading old favourites, exploring new books by favourite authors, or a mix of both.

…Be prepared for so much Terry Prachett, I found his audiobooks on Libby last month and since that I’ve been unstoppable.

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

The first of my Terry Practhett books to mention! I chose to include this one on my list because it’s a beautiful stand alone novel, perfect to read if you’ve never touched on of Pratchett’s works before, and is often overlooked.

The book is about Maurice, an “amazing” cat by his own admission, who has teamed up with a stupid boy and his very own plague of rats. The moneymaking scheme is simple: set the rats loose on a town and after causing a panic let the boy stroll in and offer to play his pipe and lead them away… for a fee. This is working well, until Maurice, the boy, and the rats arrive in the town Bad Blintz. Here the rats are beginning to question the morality of their work, the boy gets entangled with a young, mischievous local girl, and they’re all shocked to find out that the town already has a real rat infestation… or so the rat catchers claim. Things quickly turn sinister and deadly as the group is forced to confront not only the cruelty of humanity, but something even more sinister living in the small, dark, hidden place of the town.

This is a YA book, unlike some of Pratchett’s other novels, so it’s a quick, fun read, while still having all of his dry wit and heavy, complicated thoughts about society, morality, belief, and what it means to be a person. It’s a genuine delight to see Maurice and the rats, recently made sentient by wizards’ rubbish, struggle to come to terms with who they were and who they are now.

Black Pearl Ponies: Red Star & Wildflower

Y’all it ain’t a secret at this point that I enjoy a stupid horse girl book, right? I picked up the first two books of the Black Pearl Ponies books from the library on a whim and they were basically what they promised. Girl lives with family on ranch, father helps train horses, girl goes on pony adventures with ponies. A particular focus is given to horse welfare and care. Very mediocre but a nice thoughtless covid read if you, like me, get a craving for animals books written for seven year olds from time to time. Plus this comes with the added humour of it being written, as far as I can tell, by a British author who thinks all Americans are stetson wearing cowboys which I find unreasonably funny.

Crenshaw

I love Katherine Applegate’s work; I read the Endling series earlier this year and they are overwhelmingly good. Crenshaw was also an enjoyable read, though not my favourite by her. It read a little bit like a book I read last fall, No Fixed Address, which was also a very good read though not my usual genre. Crenshaw is about a boy, Jackson, whose family, though close-knit and loving, is experiencing financial difficulties and struggle with food scarcity, homelessness, and all the instability and stress that results from this. During this tumultuous time, Jackson is surprised by the reappearance of a tall, bipedal, snarky cat — Crenshaw, his old imaginary friend. This is a charming book that blends genuine, real world hardships with whimsy and magical realism.

The Enemy Above: A Novel of WWII

Since it was Rememberance Day this month, I decided to pick up a holocaust novel. This book is about 12-year-old Anton, a young Jewish boy who finds himself fleeing from his Polish farm in the middle of the night with his old grandma when a German raiding party that attacks their village in an effort to make the countryside “judenfrei”. The book is, perhaps, not the most well-fleshed out, but it’s fast-paced and exciting for a child/YA audience that’s being introduced to holocaust literature, without trying to downplay the absolutely horror and brutality of the Nazis. It manages to strike a satisfying balance between fear, tragedy, and hope.

“Everything he had heard was true. He was just a twelve-year-old boy and yet they hunted him. He had broken no laws, done nothing wrong. He was simply born Jewish. How could anyone want to kill him for it?”

Gregor the Overlander

Somehow I never knew that Suzanne Collins wrote anything other than The Hunger Games? I stumbled across this series at a used bookstore and was first taken by the cover and then shocked when I realized I recognized the author’s name. Well The Hunger Games was such a good read, how could I not pick up a book with people riding on a giant fucking bat?

Such a good choice. I’m almost done book two and bought book three today after work. It is exactly the sort of low fantasy that I live for, when a fantasy world lives so close to the real world that you can practically touch it. I also love the fact that while all the wild fantastical elements are happening, you still have the main character taking care of his toddler sister the whole time. It’s at times charming, hilarious, and nerve-wracking!

It’s about Gregor, a normal kid who’s doing his best to help his mom take care of his two younger siblings ever since his father disappeared years ago. Gregor expected months of boredom when he agrees to stay home over the summer instead of going to camp like his sister in order to watch his baby sister, Boots, and their grandma while his mom is at work. He never could have expected that a simple trip to the apartment’s laundry room would lead to both him and Boots tumbling miles beneath the earth into the pitch black Underland, a place filled with giant rats and bugs and people with translucent skin who fly through the massive caverns on huge bats. He also could have never expected that he would get wrapped up in a deadly prophecy that would force him to travel into distant, dark lands into the waiting claws of an overwhelming enemy.

Kings, Queens, and In-Between

A Canadian queer novel that I’ve seen trumpeted everywhere. Libraries, classrooms, bookstore, this book got so much hype (and has such a pleasing cover) that I had to get my hands on it. Now, I’ve got to admit that it’s not really my genre; I don’t love realistic fiction. But that being said, it’s a fun, heart-warming, queer romp through that explores gender, sexuality, love, family, friendship… there’s a lot of lovable, quirky, complicated characters that get thrown together in unexpected ways at a local summer carnival. While there’s tension and misunderstandings and mistakes, this is overall a very optimistic and loving novel, and would be a great read if you want a queer novel that reads like cotton candy.

Love, The Tiger

This book is the graphic novel equivalent of a nature documentary. There’s no text, but you follow a day in the life of a tiger as it moves through the jungle on the quest for food. The art is honestly beyond outstanding, and though it’s a really quick read it is so very worth it. I’ve also read Love, The Lion in this series (also good, though a bit more confusing imho) as well as one of the books from his other series Little Tails which is still very nature and education based, though for a slightly younger audience.

Making Money

More Pratchett! Making Money was the first Discworld book I ever read, and it’s one of my most reread ones — it’s an ultimate comfort read! This is technically the sequel to Going Postal (another book I reread this month), in which conman Moist Von Lipwig is saved from a rightful death at the noose in exchange for agreeing to work for the city. Going Postal sees Moist narrowly dodging death in many varied forms as he tries to get the Anhk-Morpork postal service back on its feet and get the drifts of dead, whispering letters moving again. In Making Money things at the post office have become… too easy. Moist is bored, restless, until he finds himself thrust into a new job: head of the Royal Mint. There he has been given not only charge of the biggest bank in Anhk-Morpork, but also a dog with a price on its head, a lethal family with all the money in the world out for his blood, and the fear that his secret past life may be on the verge of being exposed to everyone, all while he’s desperately trying to make money…

The Moist series is honestly an example of Pratchett at his absolute best imo, and the amount of humour, wit, adventure, and scathing commentary he can build around a bank is outstanding. Cannot recommend enough.

The One And Only Ivan

Another book I’ve been hearing everyone talk about, as well as another Katherine Applegate book. It’s been on my radar for a while, but with the sequel and a movie coming out, it had everything at a fever pitch and I finally picked it up. Fantastic read, I definitely enjoyed it more than Crenshaw. This book was based off the true story of Ivan, a gorilla taken from his home in the jungle and sold to the owner of a mall, where he spent years of his life growing from child to adult silverback in a small, concrete enclosure. In this fictionalized version, everything changes for Ivan and his friends, when a new baby elephant is bought to help revitalize the mall attractions and Ivan makes a promise he doesn’t know how to keep: to protect this baby, and keep her from living the life Ivan and his friends were forced to. This book made me very emotional. Applegate’s picture book that goes along with it is also a great companion read.

Ranma ½

I realized that our library had the 2-in-1 editions of Ranma ½ and honestly that was it for me. This has been a favourite series of mine since I was in middle school and realized that the creator of Inuyasha had written other things. It is unapologetically ridiculous and larger-than-life and you have to love the shameless joy it has at being ludicrous. It does start to feel a little repetitive the further into the series you go, but at the moment, with covid, I find I have a huge tolerance for rereading slightly repetitive things so long as they make me happy. And boy howdy does the vaguely queer undertones, endless pining, and relentless slapstick of Ranma ½ make me happy. This is classic manga y’all and if you’ve never read it you should!

The basic premise, for anyone that doesn’t is that of an bonkers martial arts comedy. It follows Ranma and his father who, while training in China, fell into cursed springs. Each spring has the tragic legend of a person or animal who drowned in it, and if someone falls in they inevitably turn into that creature any time they’re doused in cold water. Ranma had the misfortune of falling into “The Spring of Drowned Girl” and, indeed, turns into a girl anytime he’s hit with cold water. Things continue to spiral out of control when Ranma meets his arranged fiancée, Akane, who is as exasperated by this situation as Ranma. Both would rather be fighting people than worrying about things like romance. And don’t worry, there is lots and lots and lots and lots of some of the goofiest martial arts fights that you can imagine for a bunch of high schoolers.

Through the Woods

A beautiful and creepy Canadian graphic novel. I honestly really don’t even know how to describe it in a way that does it justice. It’s a collection of short horror stories, with beautiful, flowing art style that draws you in and sends chills down your spine. I’ll let the art doing the talk, and honestly beg you to go find a way to read this graphic novel:

The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner: And Other Stories

The last Terry Pratchett book on my list (though shout out to the others I’ve listened to this month: Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky, Men At Arms, and Snuff) and one that I actually physically, rather than listening to the audiobook. I included this one because unlike the others, this was a Pratchett book I had never read before. It collects a number of Pratchett’s short stories that had been written for children over a number of years. These weren’t necessarily my favourite examples of Pratchett’s writing (I prefer his longer work that can really dive into social issues) but it was such a quick, easy, fun read that you can’t really help but be charmed by it. I liked the stories that took place in “the wild wild west (of Wales)” in particular.

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meteor752 · 4 years ago

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Tilda of Mirkwood

This is the one I’ve been waiting for.

Out of the Bardlings, Tilda is easily my favorite and the one I think about the most, which is why she has a bit more info than the other two. Let’s just get into it.

Tilda was born on the hottest day Laketown had ever experienced since Smaug literally burned their city, so it should have said a lot about the ocean eyed girl.

Tilda quickly became known throughout Laketown as Bard’s troublesome child, that her siblings always could be found chasing after.

The young girl had always been a fan of climbing, and would try to literally climb anything she came across, including people. Her own da was her favorite, and he didn’t mind.

Tilda has always been a lot like her ma, assertive, stubborn, playful, and all over the place. Think five year old Yuki from Wolf Children, but spanning over the majority of her life.

Tilda was too young to remember anything about her ma, so she didn’t feel any sadness about her death, which she was happy about considering how many nights Bain has cried into Sigrid’s arms about her. It did make her feel a bit isolated from her family however, as they had something that she didn’t have.

During the battle of the five armies, this gal was hyped.

When the elves had arrived to help out the men of Dale, she basically bombarded every single one with questions, including the elven king himself.

And when her da and the king eventually fell in love and got married, she didn’t hesitate leaving dale to live in Mirkwood and get trained as an elf.

And I’m not going to talk so much about that, since I already covered that here.

But because of the fact that her da married the king of Mirkwood, it also meant that she was technically a princess of Mirkwood, and she hated that part.

Tilda is not one to just sit still and listen to when people talk. Either she will fall asleep, or she will start to babble about something irrelevant, causing quite a few problems here and there.

Legolas found her hilarious.

She’s not someone who holds her tounge while speaking with people she do not agree with, so more than once has she gotten into an argument with a council member about something, and she’s not one to hold back on the profanities.

Again, Legolas found her hilarious.

When it came to studying she was the same, mostly falling asleep during lessons or just not paying attention at all.

But when it came to more physical stuff, like hand to hand combat, or sword fighting, or archery, she was an expert.

She still stuck to her roots though, and could always be found climbing stuff, because she likes to feel tall.

It got out of hand for a while, as every time she traveled through a forest she would jump between the trees instead of walking on the path.

Because of the fact that she always stayed in Mirkwood and didn’t visit Dale much, she gained a much better relationship with Legolas than she did with her other siblings.

The two bonded over their total lack of self control, their love of nature and their archery skills.

Despite Legolas being her best friend, Tilda has other Elven friends.

There was Aria, the tailor who was a total snob but still kind enough.

Mambar, the soldier who had two daughters but no wife.

Taleki, the pretty much outcast who cuts his hair with a piece of glass so it looks jagged and spiky.

Kamarind, the fisherman that has never been clean in his life.

Vivian, the blind artist who lost her brother.

And Talalia, the kindest, most beautiful and most amazing person in middle earth.

Or, that’s at least what Tilda thinks.

Tilda is, to put it simply, a bit of a slut.

She sleeps around, she flirts with everyone, and she won’t shy to have sex with people of other races. What she’s attracted to changes every day, and she’s quite fluid in her sexuality.

And that applies to everyone except for Talalia.

Talalia is a tall, slender, pale, red haired elf, with soft freckles and a beaming smile. She works with the animals of Mirkwood, like horses, rabbits, elks, cats, and sometimes even spiders.

Tilda met her when she was about fifteen, when she’d found a small injured elk calf, and took it to Talalia for help.

Talalia helped Tilda nurse the small calf back to health, and while doing it they got talking.

Tilda ended up keeping the calf and named it Aloe, and Talalia was more than happy to help her take care of the small little fellow.

Aloe grew up beside Tilda, which made him very attached, and quite spoiled. Tilda often used to say that the only one who could rival the elks ego was Thranduil, so she always made sure not to give him to much praise or it would go to his head. She gave him plenty of treats though.

Anyways, back to Talalia.

Talalia was like Aloe’s other mom, as she was honestly the only other person he was okay with (He totally hated Legolas, always tried to bite his fingers off). She did not hold back on the praise and scratching, and Tilda always grumbled a bit when she did as she knew he would preen like hell the next few weeks.

Tilda didn’t know when she fell in love with Talalia, she just did all of a sudden, and to her own surprise she had a hard time confronting her feelings about it, but she just assumed that it would all work out fine.

It was when she received an invitation to Talalia’s wedding that she realized that it would not work out fine.

Tilda’s biggest personal problem in her life, was that she often felt coddled and felt that no one was taking her seriously.

Sure, she was a bit wild, but she was a master archer, a trained elven soldier, the daughter of a dragon slayer and a king, and one of the best climbers of middle earth, and yet people still one saw her as the family’s annoying youngest sibling.

It didn’t help that Legolas was one of the best archers in middle earth and the heir to the throne of Mirkwood, Sigrid was the queen of Dale and the best healer there was, and Bain was an excellent soldier despite his blindness and captain of the royal guard of Dale.

Meanwhile Tilda was just...okay in comparison. She was a good archer, but not as good as Legolas. She was an okay healer, but Sigrid was better. She had it easy to get along with people, but Bain was a master at it.

She could climb stuff fairly good, but that wasn’t much to boast about.

Plus, because of the fact that she was the youngest, and had a habit of getting herself injured, her family didn’t quite trust her. They didn’t want her leaving Mirkwood without an escort, and she always had to ask for permission, despite being way over an adult.

So when she was given the opportunity to follow Legolas to the council of Elrond, she turned it down just because she didn’t feel like doing something they wanted her to do.

And she regretted it ever since, because if she would have followed then she would have had the chance to really come out of the house and do stuff.

She still got Aloe and rode off when she got a message from Sigrid about coming to Gondor, without telling her da or Ada because they would have stopped her.

It was the feeling of total freedom as she rode to Gondor, that made her want to do this and never stop. Aloe was strong and quick, and only needed to stop a few times for about half an hour, so Tilda managed to arrive before Dale.

It was then that she met the hottest fucking person she’d ever met in her life, and she was just ready to go down on him right then and there.

Unfortunately, he was her brother’s loved one, so she didn’t make any moves on him. Well, she made a few, but it was just some light flirting.

Both Tilda and Aloe made it out fine, thankfully, and Tilda was already planning on letting everything go and just live in the woods with Aloe for the rest of life.

Which she did, after a long argument with both her Da and Ada and her siblings.

Tilda became known throughout small villages in Middle earth as the witch with the elk, despite not being a witch at all. She was just a weird girl with ocean blue eyes, wandering around with her elk and killing beasts that some Villages had problems with.

And one of those beasts was a Forest Dragon that had killed six people of the village, and had stolen a lot of their gold.

And Tilda didn’t even hesitate, she just grabbed the black arrow she stole from her da a long time ago and started to hunt down the dragon.

She didn’t think of The Dragon Curse for the moment, or of the consequences of her actions, she only thought of the idea of becoming a Dragon Slayer, meaning that she would actually be something other than the troublesome younger sibling of the family.

She killed the Forest Dragon, it wasn’t that hard they are pretty meek and doesn’t have too much of a defense, and Tilda didn’t think too much more of it, just that she could now brag about being a dragon slayer.

It was about three days later that she realized exactly what she’d done, in the middle of taking a step as well, so she fell to the frown in shock with a very confused Aloe beside her.

It took a few hours for Tilda to get out of the hole she’d fallen into, as she ended up having a panic attack right then and there, with Aloe just helplessly prancing around her, buffing her shoulder in an attempt to calm her down.

Tilda then decided to not return to Mirkwood, or Dale, or Gondor, or anything like that, as she was to ashamed of what her pride had lead her to.

Instead, she decided to set out to find other Dragonlings and Dragons, that could teach her of what would happen to her exactly, as it wasn’t really widely known.

The first she went to was of course Moln, the ice dragon in the north that was known to not kill you, as long as you didn’t try to steal from him.

Moln was ancient, with little memory of the past couple millennials, and wasn’t too much help like that, but he did recommend to find a Swamp Dragonling, as they are generally not too agressive or deadly.

It took almost two years for Tilda to find another Dragonling, an at that point scales had already started to form on her hardened neck, and she was getting a bit impatient.

The Dragonling was a former elf named Reskal, that had killed a Swamp Dragon almost a hundred years prior. He told her about the pain of the wing formation, and the behavior differences she would experience, neither of which was something that she looked forward to.

And Reskal was right, around ten years after she’d killed the Forest Dragon she had the worst year of her life, and when her wings were finally out and ready to go, she was practically just skin and bone as it hadn’t been easy to hunt while in constant pain, so the meals had been rare.

Tilda has been forced to send Aloe away, as she feared what she might have done to him if the dragon instincts kicked in.

That turned out to be a mistake in her part, but also probably the best thing she’s ever done in the long run, as Aloe was quickly to run to Gondor to find Legolas.

Aloe didn’t like Legolas at all, anyone who would try to get the attention of his mama away from him was automatically evil, but his mama was in pain and he knew that the mean elf could help her.

When Legolas saw Aloe willingly come up to him, without Tilda by his side, he immediately knew something was up and Aragorn barely had time to follow after him when his husband got on his horse and rode after the elk.

Aloe led the two to a Forest, where they at first couldn’t find Tilda. It was first when she jumped out of a tree, her wings spread out and her teeth and claws barren, that they realized why Aloe had been so stressed.

Tilda had gone into beast mode, and it took a good while for her to fully catch Legolas’ scent and calm down, as he was a part of her treasure and she wouldn’t hurt him.

It took two days for Tilda to come back to her senses, and during that time Legolas and Aragorn managed to piece together what had happened, Tilda had become a Forest Dragon Slayer.

When Tilda had finally calmed down and had returned to her less animal behavior, she was held by her brother as she cried into his arms, scared of what she’d become, and what she might do.

After the two doing their very best to calm her down, which was not easy since Tilda was not one to show any vulnerable emotions so she’s been bottling up shit for years, they helped her up and separated, as Aragorn needed to go back to Gondor while Legolas would follow his sister to Mirkwood.

Legolas tried his very best to get out what had happened out of Tilda on their journey, as she knew the consequences of killing a dragon, and why in Valars name she did it anyway. Tilda didn’t feel like talking however, she just sat on Aloe as he walked, completely trapped in her own mind.

When they arrived at Mirkwood, Legolas took her straight to her da who just a few years prior had gone through his own wing transformation, though as a wyvern they had grown out of his arms instead of his back. Very painful indeed.

Her da was more than shocked when he saw his his daughter with wings growing out of her back, and horns halfway done on her head.

Bard forced Legolas to leave and sat down with his daughter, trying to comfort her while at the same time try to make her explain why she’d killed a dragon.

It took almost half an hour for Tilda to break, and explain that she’d just wanted to be something like her siblings, and that her pride had gotten in her way.

Bard was very comforting, and he told her that he wasn’t angry, just scared for her.

Tilda stayed in Mirkwood for a few years, just to be able to fully calm down and get a grasp of what had happened. She was gifted an enchanted cloak that could hide her wings, horns, and tail, so she wouldn’t get weird or scared looks while outside.

Tilda couldn’t stay in Mirkwood forever though, as she now had gotten a taste of freedom and felt like a caged bird. She grabbed her stuff one night, left a note, and then rode off on Aloe.

And it went okay. She continued to help small villages with their issues, and even taught a few kids how to fight with a sword.

It was during winter, when Tilda and Aloe had wandered through the cold weather for three (stinkin’) days, that she fully snapped, and when she came back to her human form, all that was left of Aloe was a bloody pile of bones and mush.

That day basically only consisted of her crying and throwing up.

The next day a dagger entered her chest, and after 346 years of constant hyperactivity, she finally got to rest.

•

If modern, Tilda would not really have a sexuality, as it’s constantly changing. Instead she would just get a lot of small pride flags from all the sexualities and sew them into a giant flag.

Tilda hater saddles more than anything else, as she found them restricting and uncomfortable. She would never use a saddle when riding Aloe, or reins for that matter, and she would just trust him of where to go.

Legolas made it his life mission after meeting Merry and Pippin to not let them meet Tilda, as he knew that it would be the death of them all.

Tilda absolutely loved Fire, and would always sit in front of it for hours when it was lit. She’s gotten a lot of burn marks because of it.

Despite being a fire lover, her favorite season was winter, as she found the snow so fun.

Tilda and Legolas would always have something to argue about, as siblings do. The most common thing was that one of them stole the other’s hairbrush.

Tilda absolutely loved Rivendell, as they weren’t so strict about what she could and couldn’t do, plus her favorite activity was to annoy Lindir.

Because of her amazing climbing ability and the fact that she never used a saddle unless forced to, she had gained an amazing balance.

AU Masterpost

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purplesurveys · 4 years ago

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1011

1. Five facts about your current relationship OR five facts about your single life.

a) I haven’t been truly single in...around 6 years, so it’s been a bit of an adjustment.

b) It was my last day as an intern yesterday (but they hired me, so I’m staying after all, haha) and since I’ve felt like I gained a family in the last two months, I thought it would be okay to give professionalism a break and share what had actually been going on with me on my first day on the job, aka when the breakup was still fresh and I was still figuring out how to function all over again. It unsurprisingly surprised everyone and my superior said something like, “Omg it’s the [company name] curse; it’s so strong it broke you guys up before you even got hired” which got a laugh out of me.

c) I’m not interested in seeing other people.

d) Probably wouldn’t be, for a long time. My trust has been irreparably broken.

e) Seeing couples in public has now become annoying. I’m happy for them, but it’s still annoying.

2. Five facts about a past relationship.

a) I’ve known her since kindergarten, but we didn’t become friends till 7th grade and didn’t start dating until junior year of high school.

b) We were legal with her family and her parents loved me and I them. On the other hand, I was never able to come out to my family because she broke up with me before I could be able to do so.

c) She introduced me to vaping.

d) We were never able to truly travel together, which we always planned to do after graduating. The farthest we reached was Batangas.

e) She never knew where she wanted to eat whenever we were out, so I was mostly the one who decided which restaurant we were going to have lunch or dinner in.

3. Five facts about your mother.

a) She has always worked in hotels, which is great because it has always allowed us to get room and buffet discounts, heh.

b) Her family (aka my grandparents, her, and my uncles) struggled financially for a little bit when my grandpa lost his job when she was in college. When her friends would go to fast-food restaurants, my mom would always decline, saying she had schoolwork to finish. In reality she just couldn’t afford anything, and the only money she held was for public transport.

c) She is a little childish considering her age, and I cannot stand her petty tantrums. She was childish even when I was a kid, and I believe my emotional well-being suffered because of that.

d) She has a high pain tolerance and the only time I’ve seen her struggle was when she was getting a tattoo on the back of her shoulder.

e) She is also extremely religious and it especially grinds my gears when she gets hypocritical about it, which is just about all the time.

4. Five facts about your father.

a) He has only ever dated my mom.

b) He grew up extremely poor and at some point his parents actually stopped being able to afford his tuition. Instead of being kicked out, a few nuns who served in the school paid my grandparents a visit and told them my dad would be given a scholarship since he had good grades and it would have been a waste if he got expelled.

c) He was a dancer in high school, knows how to play the guitar, and he also apparently knows how to draw very well. There’s a lot I don’t know about him, considering he has worked abroad my whole life.

d) He breaks or loses his reading glasses once every few months. I know which parent I definitely take after.

e) I have never seen him cry.

5. Five facts about your sibling. If you have more than one, pick one. Or do them all!

a) She had problems crying in school until she was in around 2nd or 3rd grade.

b) She’s in college and is currently taking up digital filmmaking.

c) She’s the biggest introvert I know. I’ve never seen her be willing to do anything silly; not even with her friends.

d) She can’t handle spicy food.

e) Her main interests have shifted from Harry Potter, to One Direction, to 5SOS, and now K-pop. I believe she’s into Seventeen the most.

6. Five facts about your town.

a) The upper part of the city offers amazing views of the Metro Manila skyline, which has recently made the place a kinda popular nightlife destination.

b) There’s a lot of hidden gem restaurants here but because most people spend more time complaining about how far my city is and how difficult it is to get to than actually just making the damn ride over here, the restaurants stay hidden and uncrowded. Their loss.

c) Used to be massively underdeveloped for most of my childhood and teenage years. Now there are several malls and I can easily go to a McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks right outside our village.

d) Because you basically have to drive through a mountain to get to the upper part of the city, it’s not the safest highway and fatal crashes are unfortunately common.

e) The city is known for its suman, except I hate Filipino rice cakes and this actually doesn’t do anything for me.

7. Five facts about your house.

a) It used to have a balcony until we had that transformed into another bedroom. So technically it is still a balcony; it just hasn’t had that purpose for a while now.

b) My mom used a little cheat in our dining room and installed a huge wall mirror. Most people visiting for the first time always note how much larger it made the room (and thus the house) look.

c) I live in a neighborhood where the houses are of the same model and look (think the Squidville episode from Spongebob). That said, balconies are included in all properties. When my parents decided to renovate ours and turn it into a room, so many houses slowly followed suit as well. It was amusing to see it unfold, knowing the idea undoubtedly originated from us. It was like a revolution.

d) We don’t have a gate, which irritates me to no end because it allows noisy neighborhood kids to just march and run around our property. Sometimes they even make it to our carport and backyard, ugh. :(

e) Speaking of backyard, the landscaping for it used to be a pebble mosaic designed to look like a swan. But over the years the quality deteriorated, so my parents to opted to have the pebbles crushed into tiny rocks and embedded onto the ground. I don’t exactly know what this technique is called, but yeah.

8. Five facts about your niece or nephew. If you have more than one, pick one. Or do them all! Skip if you don’t have one. I don’t have any, but I do have a godson so I’m going with him as I don’t want to leave any section blank.

a) He was born sometime in December. I honestly don’t remember when, loooooool. Worst godmother ever.

b) He’s actually one of my first cousins, but I guess my aunt saw something in me and wanted me to be his godson. I’ve been a terrible one, though; I’ve never bought him gifts or money or anything – to be fair, I was made a ninang when I was like, 14 or 15 lmao. But I can definitely make up for it now that I’m starting to earn my own money.

c) He’s the calmer, sweeter version of his older brother. His kuya was a pretty naughty kid when he was his age.

d) He mainly speaks English, as how most younger parents raise their kids these days. He understands Filipino of course, but he mostly communicates in English.

e) The last time I saw him, he was in the middle of a ridiculously adorable interviewing phase where he’d approach anyone in the family and start asking them a series of questions: what’s your favorite color? What food can’t you live without? What’s your favorite subject in school? Would you rather win $1 million dollars or know how to fly? It typically got exhausting after the 25th question, but it was so cute nonetheless. None of us have any idea where it came from.

9. Five facts about your education.

a) I went to a private, all-girls, Catholic school from kinder up to high school, and then moved to a public, co-educational, non-sectarian university for college. It was the very epitome of culture shock, lemme tell ya.

b) Some classes I had in my first school that might be uncommon in others have included penmanship (because my school has its own brand of cursive), environmental education, and I don’t remember what this next class was called anymore but we were basically taught how to write professionally? Like how to write cover letters and resumés and all.

c) My first school is extremely homophobic and went so far as to ‘hire’ spies tasked to check up on who’s been in same-sex relationships, list them all down, and report them to the guidance office so that they can be called one by one and be interrogated, and for the most part, pressured to come out. I don’t know if they still do this, but the younger batches are definitely more vocal and woke now thanks to social media and I doubt those practices would still fly today.

d) My university education was a breath of fresh air. Suddenly people were wearing sleeveless tops, mobs and rallies were a common sight to me, and my instructors were now atheist and not shoving Catholicism and Jesus and salvation down my throat. I loved every single day of it.

e) The most interesting class I took in college was a course called Pornography in Electronic Media, under the broadcast communication department. Getting to tell people I take a class where we sit down to watch porn was such a fucking ride.

10. Five facts about your job.

a) I got hired last Wednesday, but I had been interning for the company for around two months before they extended the offer.

b) I’m pretty much gonna be doing the same things I did as an intern, except I’m now accountable for any boo-boos I make HAHAHAHA. Also, I’m gonna be paid a lot more, obviously, which is sweet. I really thought we interns were severely underpaid considering the work that we help with on a daily basis.

c) My role is going to be with another department which is a little scary because it means the things I learned with the department I actually interned at will be pretty much useless. I’ll be starting from scratch again, but I’m still excited.

d) It’s a work-from-home situation, which is a relief for me because I don’t have to wake up early and I don’t have to face traffic.

e) My job interview for the position was actually a bit of a bomb because I absolutely fumbled with and messed up the first question I was asked; and since first impressions matter, I really thought I lost the gig from the very start of the interview. I made up for it as the interview continued and fortunately was able to break the ice and build a rapport with the team members who spoke with me, and I guess I did enough for them to want to take me in anyway.

For those who are curious, I blanked the fuck out when they asked “Tell me something about yourself that isn’t in your resumé.” Slowest 15 seconds of my life.

#survey #surveys

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