#and it does help! bc after a decade of trying to produce an heir they do get one! and the Inquisitor was the first to know!

[novococain]

🦴

[arlathen]

speaking of couslands i have long had a scene in me mind where elise is w alistair during in hushed whispers and she and amadea meet and it's just delightful.

[churchyardgrim]

KING OF THE DEAD by Gene DeWeese

[intro post]

oh boy, oh happy day, i get to talk about Azalin Rex

this book does some fun stuff with mild fakeouts and starting at the end and then jumping back to the beginning in a way where it's not immediately clear how one connects to the other, but it's not done in such a way that it's meant to pull the wool over the reader's eyes, which is good bc i already knew the end twist going in and lemme tell u it is very satisfying watching our charming protag charge headlong and heedlessly towards his own doom

Firan Zal'Honen is a wizard! he's the very best wizard who ever wizarded, and currently he has no idea where he came from or why he's not there anymore or what the fuck just happened

all he knows is, he was tortured with visions for a bit, as one does, and then the mist spat him out in a place called Darkon, and the guy in charge of Darkon, helpfully named Darcalus, is the object of Firan's utter and all consuming loathing, and also killed his son probably

so Firan does what any reasonable wizard would do and enlists the help of some local coup-organizers to weasel his way into the upcoming Met Gala for all the governors in this place. he sneaks out of the approved areas, argues with the ghost of his son for a bit, barges in some places he's not supposed to be, and finally finds what he's been after: the object containing the soul of his nemesis, without which Darcalus, an undead wretch, is mortal and vulnerable

smashy smashy!

unfortunately this is Ravenloft, where the universe can and will bend over backwards to fuck you over, and Firan has some conspicuous gaps in his memory. gaps that are helpfully filled when the punchup with Darcalus turns into a merging of souls and minds and oh shit, thats you Firan buddy! the thing you were hellbent on revenge for? you did all that!

and now the book takes 150 pages to explain itself, going down the laundry list of Firan's life up to this point. this is less interesting to me than what just happened, so suffice to say he was a stubborn and prideful magical prodigy that ended up the wizard-king ruler of a country called Knurl out in the prime material plane

the man's lawful evil all the way down, having some uhhhhhhh lets say draconian ideas about how to maintain peace and order, and yes it does involve a lot of beheadings how did u guess. eventually he figures out that magic can't, in fact, keep him kicking forever, and puts some effort into getting himself an heir. 

there's a frankly hilarious bit where he has a crisis of confidence upon realizing that a decade of trying has produced no viable results, and despite having mastery of the unquenchable fire of the stars he apparently never learned the Scan Ur Dick spell, so the problem might just be you, Firan, did u ever think of that before blaming ur wife

anyway turns out his wife did in fact curse his dick so once he got that taken care of he gets himself a lovely lil scion to raise in his perfect mirror image

shockingly, this goes as follows: 

Firan: "my son! i will teach you to rule as i do, with a fair and just iron fist!"

Irik: "hm. consider, tyranny bad? oh cool ur not listening immmmm just gonna go join the rebels real quick"

Firan: "........."

Firan: "anyway i need to execute you now"

Irik: "cool. i forgive you btw."

Firan, an hour later: [great sobbing wizard tantrum about how his son's dead now]

me: [also great sobbing wizard tantrum about how his son's dead now]

seriously, despite being the world's stupidest smart person, and also objectively evil, this guy has a lot of pathos! i feel for this idiot! i wanna shake him by the lapels and make him acknowledge how much he actually cares for his son!

the big thing here is he's baked Lawfulness into his own nature to the point where any emotion that doesn't follow what his idea of a Proper Ruler should be gets ruthlessly cauterized. except it doesn't work like that, you prick, so he ends up eating his own tail about how he did exactly the right thing, his only fault was not raising irik to be a "stronger" prince, and thats why he feels like his heart is breaking from grief and guilt.

except it can't be guilt bc he did nothing wrong. do u see the problem here.

anyway this is where the quote unquote Dark Powers get involved. they coerce Firan into taking the next step on his Foolproof Live Forever Through Positive Thinking And Magic plan, and one really bad baja blast later the man's a fullblown lich

lich powers! necromancy! shame the only form he's capable of bringing his son back to life in is a wretched rotting shadow of true life, in constant agony and despair, and not even Firan is gonna settle for that

so back to the drawing board! he spends the next few decades scouring the continent for magical secrets and tales of resurrection, trying to find a way to bring his son back properly and gain atonement for both of them

eventually the mists take him and drop him into Barovia, bc Strahd's the fuckign welcome wagon for new arrivals i guess, and Firan, by now called Azalin, sets up shop in Castle Ravenloft for forty fuckign years

they were tombmates

oh my god, they were tombmates

to my unending outrage, the book spends barely a chapter on this period. give me more damn you! show me the petty squabbles, the arguments over who keeps leaving corpses in the hallway, the lingering sexual tension on movie nights! i deserve to know who tops goddammit!

but no, we just skip to Azalin chasing after a mirage into the mists four decades later, and then uhhhhhh getting split in two? like when a cartoon character gets zapped with a science laser and splits into Good Half and Evil Half? except it's Human Half and Lich Half, which hate each other on instinct

and we're back at the beginning! with human Firan acting on his loathing for the lich Darcalus, only to fuse together again and force him to confront the fact that the person he holds such hatred and anger for is himself

thus, Azalin Rex settles into his final form. a wretched, undead genius, locked in his own prison domain and given a country to rule the way one gives a highly maladjusted macaw a rubix cube with a peanut hidden inside

in conclusion, i am now in the stage of grief labeled "memes"

[transmimir]

*asks u abt ur bnha sona* blease tell me abt them 🔫

Oh i never saw this !!!!! His name is Klaus Itō and ive been revamping him a teeny bit from his original version made in 2017 so NOW his story::

He was born to a father who was a white american pro hero who had moved to japan and married a non-hero lady, when then had kids and popped out Klaus and his oldet brother. His father died when Klaus very young, prolly from hero work idk it doesnt rly matter. He ended up wanting to be like his father tho so he aspired to be a pro hero, which led him to applying to UA!!!! And he got in!!!!!!!!

He was a year behind Aizawa and Mic in school, but the three of them ended up becoming friends pretty quick, bc Klaus and Mic sought each other out as fellow heard of hearing kids and then klaus became friends w aizawa thru mic. Which hey!! Speaking of them being hoh heres the lore!!

For one Mic is totally hard of hearing bc of his own quirk. Probably has tinnitus too fuckin L (i feel you man). Klaus also has lost parts of his hearing bc of his quirk! (I think Mic’s would probably be a lot more severe since much louder + a lot more exposure to it before hes even at UA let alone as an adult. I think once both of them are at UA they both have control over their quirks in that they dont release them out of nowhere so if they do hurt their ears with heir quirks they could hurry to recovery girl and get fixed up a bit [but its not gonna help past damage yk]) oh also Klaus has Waardenburg Syndrome which includes high likelihood of hearing impairments in some way as symptoms so he really wasnt lucky on any front for his hearing.

SO WHATS HIS QUIRK THEN??? It used to be imo kind of stupid so i changed it and now its cool™️ lol. Basically, at will Klaus can release a powerful explosion off of his body. Basically just like emitting an explosion from his whole Self. It doesnt damage him (so long as nothing catches on fire after the blast yk) and he cant only ignite one part of his body or direct it, it goes out from everywhere on his body. The strength of the explosion that is produced is entirely dependent on his emotions! The stronger the emotions, the bigger the blast. Since ur usually not super joyful during battle, its mostly used w negative emotions lol. Once he’s grown up he has a pretty good idea of how big the explosion will be by gauging his mood, and hes practiced a lot of self restraint / meditation type exercises to help him control his emotions when he needs to. If his emotions got the better of him, not only would he make a much bigger bang than needed/intended, he’d also have worse decision making. Both those factors add up to easily hurting civilians or other pros when fighting villains, so he has to be very cautious about using his quirk.

Okay so. He goes to UA. Hes friends w Aizawa and Mic. WELL. when he enters his 3rd and final year (and aizawa and mic have graduated), his mother passes away quite suddenly from illness. It takes a very heavy toll on him, and leaves his older brother as his primary guardian; and he happens to be a huge nasty prick. Klaus very quickly spirals into depression, and its all just very bad. He prolly barely graduates bc when in such a volatile emotional state, his control over his quirk is terrible. Aizawa and Mic try to comfort him as friends ofc, but they both have already been rushed into their lives and signing up with agencies and things, so theyre way too busy to really help him. So, pretty much as soon as Klaus graduates and gets his provisional hero license and shit, he just picks up and fucks off to America, here he works at the agency his father used to work at before going to Japan. And he stays there. For nearly a full decade.

He’s called up by UA either the year before, or possibly the year of when the show/manga first starts, and hes asked to come back to Japan and teach there. And so he Does. I’m pretty sure I had him as..,, a Math teacher 😭 gays dont know math tho so idk how he did that but no matter what he teaches, he is a teacher at UA. And thats!!! When he reconnects with Aizawa and Mic!!!!!!!! And they fall in very gay disconnected childhood friends to lovers fashion. The students get to see their disaster relationships. Its good.

Here is the sketch of a new ref i am making for him currently but its transparent bc i was transferring it to a different device to color a couple days ago (and then didnt color it what a surprise). His hero outfit is just this little spandex suit made of super heat/blast resistant material prolly special made, then he wears regular clothes on top if hes at school or in public and such. When he uses his quirk it Will incinerate his clothes lol so he kind of wears the hero outfit 24/7 just in case

I think thats it tldr he is gay and so am i

Oh also hes probably trans too who knows