#asari nobility

[yarrayora]

so like khr didnt bother being historically accurate i mean why would they? it's basically an urban fantasy manga about mafia fighting with magic flame

but realistically Vongola would have been around since 19th Century, which means in Japan it's nearing if not already the Meiji era. So, Asari might be a Shinto priest! but considering that he was definitely meant to be a Heian era nobility there's only one conclusion to make if we want to make it make sense in-universe: he was fucking with Giotto and friends

all those stupid Vongola's celebratory traditions Reborn introduced to them? it happened because Giotto asked Asari what he did for new year in Japan and Asari just fucking lied to him for fun

[herpronuonsarefemslash]

Black and Blue - Teaser (3/3)

A lightly horror-themed, mid-length (60,000 word) work setting up my "Blood and Treasure" story and introducing bits of my altered ME worldbuilding.

Chapter 1 to 5 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-1-58119478

Chapter 6 to 10 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-6-58262841

Chapter 11 to 13 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-58353145

Out of context teasers for Chapters 6 to 10: =====

Tally wipes the steam from the mirror’s screen. She has to hand it to the salarians; they know their showers.

Pain shoots up her ribcage, roiling under her skin on both sides. It’s like something wants out and is going to tear her skin to get it.

Next to the mirror, Kitty welded a shelf for medications, crest oil, and other bits and pieces for grooming on top of the DRAG-Zero insignia next to the on-wall computer terminal. Pushing aside Kitty’s lotion, Lola’s crest oil and–Terrific! Absolutely belongs there rather than in a drawer–Lola’s favorite biotic pulse dildo, she finds the painkiller-spiked Hallex, holds the mister under her nose, and gives a single twist to the dial to release a puff.

The face in the mirror is hers, but she doesn’t know what that means. She looks ‘human’, she is told. But she’s not so sure. Kitty looks human: Her skin a dusty brown in rest state, her figure very much that of a woman, her lips, her nose, her eyelashes…all look like the humans they pass. The fissures on the back of her head, where her asari crests are, would not even be extreme next to some of the body modifications and cosmetic surgery they’ve seen on Omega.

Tally doesn’t. She’s tall–not too much, but more than usual–her limbs a bit too long, body bit too muscular, hands broader and longer than they should be, and now, a sudden broadening to accompany this pain in her shoulders, her ribcage spanning out, her shoulders thickened like round rocks. She hopes it passes.

Her face is so pale and smooth that she hates looking at herself in bright light. In shadow, she has personality– the slant of her nose, the shape of her brow, her jaw, her chin–because the pure paleness is cast into relief.

In bright light, she’s just white, absolutely white. Her skin shimmers with an ever-shifting film of something damp, and smooth, and slightly slippery. Usually it’s an opalescent, shifting rainbow like oil on water, but today, it is bluish, thicker and glowing in the dimmed lights of the cabin.

The glow is new. Far too confusing before breakfast.

=====

“Morning, Tal!”

No sooner has Tally stepped off the ladder onto the bridge than Lola has gathered a palmful of her ass to give it a squeeze.

Kitty turns from her seat at the helm and looks her up and down.

“Ooh, new flavor of Tally. Clear your schedule ladies, we are having some fun tonight.”

Across the screens showing them the outside, blue and green swirl. Nitrogen and hydrogen. The planet is fat with the building blocks of starship fuel, yet small enough that keeping altitude in this layer doesn’t burn too much. Every day, the fuel indicators for helium for the reactor, and the indicator for the engine’s antiproton bottles climb another bar, sometimes two.

“Given any more thought to looking for the other triplets?”

“Nah,” Kitty replies. “One of you’s plenty sexy. If they’re anything like you, Tal, they’re safe.”

Lola turns to look at Tal.

“You miss them.”

“I never met them. Still frozen when we broke out, remember?”

“Yeah, but there’s what, fifty who are like me and Kitty? Just two like you. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“Forget it. Maybe someday,” Tal sighs.

“You’re the captain,” Kitty mutters. “…fucking swear that dice was loaded.”

Tally climbs down the ramp into the depression in the deck where the captain’s chair is located. The walls around her wrap her entire field of vision in screens, haptic controls, and rotating three-dimensional holos rising from a ring of emitters. Her seat is actually probably welded to the next deck down, given how deep the station is sunk. She turns on her comms to video-to-video between their stations so no one has to shout.

“We were just discussing our pirate name,” Kitty tells her. “Now that we’ve actually captured a cargo.”

“Mmph!”

She gives a swift kick to the sleeping pod containing their batarian hostage.

“No one asked you. Since we named our ship Toad, I was voting for the Three Witches.”

Sara jams her foot into Scott’s uninjured thigh.

“Wake the fuck up, baby bro.”

“Please don’t kick my patient,” Greer grumbles, popping another plate off of Scott’s armor to create a larger area around the bare bone of his shattered leg. She grits her teeth and pushes harder–how the fuck do asari do this?–to spread her dome barrier around herself, her brother and the doc again.

Kirkland sits just outside, his rifle barking occasionally when he gets a bead on the varren.

“We are properly fucked if we do not deal with that signal,” he grumbles. “So is rescue, if they get our mayday.”

“You got any suggestions on shutting down ancient, ridiculously fancy tech with a control panel and labels written in a language no one in the galaxy has learned to read after thousands of years of trying? I’m all ears,” Sara huffs before putting a pinhole in her dome long enough to launch a singularity at a three varren that got too close together. 

Kirkland chuckles and drops the beasts with three shots.

“Thanks, wizard.”

“Anytime, jarhead.”

=====

Tally trips over something just inside the airlock, bouncing herself off the deck with her biotics and then off the ceiling.

Really need to work on not overpowering it.

Turning back to look at the ramp, she sees a naked human girl–sixteen, probably younger–with muscular limbs, shaved head and pronounced ribs. Raised rough scars run circuits on her arms, legs, and outline her spine. Amp implant utility ports, Tally realizes. But seven, not one. Her feet are muddy and her legs sliced and scratched by the jungle’s thorns.

“Whoa!” Kitty exclaims when she looks up the ramp. “Why is there a naked small human on our ship?”

“She’s smart enough to want to be out of the rain, I suppose,” Lola grumbles, pushing her half-dome barrier farther over her head to try to do the same. “Must have crawled in.”

Tally bends down and puts her hand on the child’s neck–just above a barcode and a symbol with a black diamond flanked by two orange bars. She instantly regrets it when a lifetime of distilled trauma blasts into her mind, widening the meld.

“What have they done to you, little one?”

“NOT ZERO!” the girl shrieks, foaming at the mouth and thrashing. Nightmare?

Tally wonders.

“M’not Zero…” she moans. “My name is Jack.”

=====

David shoves a hand in the pocket of his dress blues and rubs the OSD he was given while he looks around. Just outside the tinted, jewel-faceted windows of the asari embassy, the lower Presidium gleams, and beyond Dilinga opera hall, Tayseri Ward sparkles with a thousand different tiny lights, each one an asari’s apartment celebrating the Days of Flowers after Janiris ends. Tomorrow night, each will be lit a different color, and neighbors will visit each other and catch up before they swap color swatches and reprogram their lights.

I wonder if we’d have packed it in and gone home, if it was just the turians out here? He wonders.

He doesn’t have to feel the same way young soldiers do about the asari to see that they’re the glue in all this. Turians could keep the lights on, but it’d be bloody. They wouldn’t put up with salarians without asari between them. Elcor would stay turtled up without the asari’s aid in colonizing and their eager defense of their old friends. Salarian dalatrasses would stab everyone in their sleep if they didn’t know that asari were just as sneaky as they were, but didn’t do it for fun. Smart enough to keep everyone else from ripping each other apart. Careful. Long-gamers. Everyone has enough citizens of the Republics in their borders to fall under the asari's mutual-assistance treaties and no race could survive letting Thessia bleed. Too much family wiring them in. Better to go to their aid than sit at home and wait for the uprising and be lynched from a flagpole.

What a gentle conquest they’ve managed.

“Quite the place to show up to work every day,” he says, mostly to himself. “Beautiful.”

“Goddess. It is, isn’t it?” the asari at the desk gushes. “When the the Ascension has Presidium duty, she fills the whole ring. Just a big, sparkling starburst that makes the streets twinkle when the nebula flares. I look at it and wave at my sister.”

“Oh? Maybe I’m just new,” he jokes. “But I don’t meet the sisters of many asari commandos.”

“Few humans have.”

=====

Shepard rolls the rubber ball that the guard gave her between her fingers, glances at a few points on her cell walls for her implants’ AI to mark and calculate, and throws it. Hard.

Seventeen ricochets later, it plops right back into her open hand.

The intercom lights up, and she hears slow clapping.

“I’ll be here all week,” Shepard jokes, twirling her hand at the camera in her cell like an actress taking a bow. “You know me, I just love being in lockup because fuck only knows what piece of Cerberus tech implanted in me phoned home. Good chow?”

“They say it’s chicken, beans and cornbread,” the guard tells her over the intercom. “…and they are liars.”

“Oof. Think I’ll waste away in my cell then, Bob.”

“You know damn well you’ll be out in the morning. Just need to talk to Counter-Intelligence like always.”

“Bob! You’re ruining it,” Shepard whines, waving a hand at her rumpled fatigues, messy hair and general sweatiness from the mission that triggered the emission. “Got a whole top-dog-bitch lesbian convict vibe going. Been in so long I know the guard rotation by heart. Just need a harmonica.”

“Well, if I get any doe-eyed petty officers sent in for stealing from the officer’s mess, I’ll send them right there for you to straighten out.”

He laughs a moment before Shepard does.

“So to speak.”

=====

(Attention, Zealot Nine. Stand by for mission parameters)

“Oh, hell no.”

She bashes her head on the bar of the bunk. Hope that hurt you too, you artificially evil bastard.

(Please rendezvous with Zealot Fourteen for debrief.)

“Oh, fuck no.”

The smell of lotus blossoms and rain fills her nose.

(Graybox user identified. Shepard, Elizabeth, Alliance Marine Corps. Citadel Council Medical Exemption 483-B for use of pre-existing illegal implanted technology, specifically artificial intelligence. Stand by. Copying from read-only storage and overriding unauthorized AI engrams…)

“Thanks, Amaterasu.” (You are prettier than the dreadnought I used to be installed in.) The AI teases. (Though the Fuji was less cramped.)

“Bob!” She screams at the camera.

“Shepard, what’s wro-oh, weird. We just went to backup power.”

“Bob, listen to me. Cerberus is sending another Zealot after me. Someone like me, but dumber, stronger and way too in love with his sword. He’s got more metal in him than I do. He will kill you to get to me with a smile on his face and brag to me when he gets here. Tell ICT to get some heavies here, and then you hide and clear a path to my cell. Please.”

“Shepard…”

“This isn’t about you being a good soldier. I’m the best the project made. He’s probably second. Higher strength, harder skin. But shitty field generators to emulate biotics, rather than the real thing. Bulldozer shit. No flexibility. And I’m faster. He will kill you but I can kill him. Either way, I’ll be here in the morning. If the brass wants to put a bullet in someone for breaking regs, then I’m someone.”

“I can’t even give you a weapon…”

Shepard tosses the rubber ball.

“Decent amount of iron in beans. Pop some chow in the chute and unlock my omni.”

“Done, and���done.”

“Go, Robert. I got this.”

=====

It’s dark. Leng likes to kill in the dark. Makes him feel like a badass. Shepard pockets one of the rubber balls that she re-jiggered: Filled with shards of carbon-tipped steel and a canister of liquid helium from the backups in her right-arm omnitool implant. Bob sent her a spare ball, and extra silverware, and not the plastic kind.

“This is going to hurt. Ammy, assume a low-grade warp sword, telescoping, stamped aluminum blade, single line of refined eezo. Say, one-half centimeter thick. The biotic…” she snorts. “Unskilled class four. I need to know where I can take that so it won’t kill me.”

(You really don’t care if you get hurt, do you? Displaying…)

She glances at the indicated points.

“Phew. Bicep means I can’t fight with that arm. Gut wound…pass. Collarbone on the right side it is.”

She rolls her shoulders, turns away from the door and pretends to read the paperback novel she bought off of an asari at a swap meet for antiques.

“Shepard…” Leng purrs. “The guard was kind enough to give me your key.”

(Corporal Grave’s transponder indicates he is not in the facility. Dead or alive.)

Leng's omnitool chirps and whirs as it tries to hack the lock.

“Bluffing? About kills and keys? Really, Kyle?”

“Kai.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s Kyle. Or was it Kevin?”

The lock clicks open. He screams.

Shepard calls on her barriers with everything she has. He stabs and swipes at her back and her neck, glancing off, and then metal and atom-shredding fire plunges into her flesh. She’s bleeding into her lung. She grabs his sword hand, warps the armor he welded into his skin, and twists the bone underneath. Leng bellows in pain.

She throws him over her shoulder and onto the ground with the leverage she has on his ruined arm. She slams her heel into his ribcage. She hears the human core of her leg bone snap, but the kick hurt him. He wheezes, mouth falling open.

“Bouncy, bouncy, lengy, lengy.”

She flings the ball at the ceiling as hard as she can, and just after it bounces off, the rubber snap-freezes.

=====

Kneeling on the floor waiting for the N-teams to secure the lockup after a Cerberus incursion. Is it Thursday already?

“Hands on your head!”

She wiggles a pinky.

“Already done.”

“Jesus Christ, Shepard. Why is it when I get called here, it’s because you iced some Cerberus cyborg in your cell?”

“You mean it’s not because of my feminine wiles, Vega?”

James snorts. He knows she’s not buying what he’s selling, but they get along.

“The fuck is he?”

“Rattlesnake Team, meet Kai Leng. He’s a bit out of it. Ice cream headache.”

“You know…I seem to recall we have a Citadel kill-on-sight order on him. So if the eggheads in Medical and Research were to maybe…”

She puts as much barrier around her fingers as she can manage with one lung pierced, then she slams her fist into his spine at the C5 vertebrae, which gives the most relaxing little crunch and Leng’s limbs go still. Keeping one hand on her head, she slides the other up the back of Leng’s and peels back the skin–he had plastic skin glued on, the freak–over his graybox and removes the power cell.

“…want to pick apart someone with implants like mine…with at least one of everything in working order, and he maybe doesn’t have any legal right not to be stripped for parts…”

“Fuck, girl. You are cold!” Vega laughs. “Spike, get a biotic inhibitor on that asshole! Bear, if he tries to get up, blow an arm off.”

“With pleasure,” she purrs.

Oh, to be a shot of vodka on her tongue, Shepard wishes. Why must all the hot gay snipers with icy Russian accents be happily married?

She looks at Leng’s face in the mirror.

“All work and no play. Gotta take your time, Leng. Relax. Have fun with life. Otherwise, you might get dropped by a shrapnel snowcone.”

“-uck…you.”

=====

Liara mumbles to herself, running through the list of supplies as she walks towards the ship. The markings are for a minor asari shipping company that does business with the Terminus but under her belly, House Guard techs are inspecting weapons emitters, and two massive antimatter missiles are being slotted into one of the ‘cargo pods’. Flanking the ‘freighter’ that Liara had booked passage on are two clearly military vessels; which kind, she’s not sure, as they’re a type of ship Liara’s never seen in the inventories Benezia that forces her to read. Both have long, pointed hulls, the surface is blood red in the early morning light, and black in the shadows underneath, sparkling and faceted as any jewel. One has not only the House Sigil on her hull but also the pictograph for ‘primacy’ in old Soni.

From the pristine look of their landing pylons, she doubts either has been in service more than a few years.

The flagship, Liara realizes. Mother really is worried.

Archon Shiala stands at a workbench, checking over the huntresses who will be sent to shadow Liara. She smiles and nods to Liara, glances at the Zealot rifle she’s inspecting, and folds it back into a single piece with a crisp motion that makes the metal ring. She hands it off to her second, Slaere, who clicks it into her armor. She waves the other three soldiers on her team forward and they lift their packs and file onto the ship.

Benezia waits at the bottom of the ship’s ramp, ancient and storied warpsword on her hip–Starless Hope, the blade that slew the last Malari Queen in Thessia’s darkest hour–the mask of the Lover of the Unknown tied to her bicep, and a chest at her feet with the sigil of the Chaser of Secrets. She is clearly seconds away from tears.

“I am One of the Thirty,” Liara mumbles to herself. “I am one of the Thirty. I am an Officer of the Thirty…”

She doubts it will ever feel real, but muttering to herself like a lunatic before she has to speak to other officers makes that easier to fake.

Benezia opens her arms. No longer a leader of the asari, no longer strong. Just a mother afraid for her daughter. Liara dives into them, feeling more like three years old than a hundred and three.

“Come back to me, child. Whole. Please.”

“I promise.”

[kukolnyyvalerian]

What if They Were all Humans... - Introductory Post to my upcoming Mass Effect Human AU

Starting today, I will be posting a new story called “Calibrating Relations” with updates every Friday. It centred around the characters from the video game series Mass Effect. More specifically, it's centred on Garrus Vakarian, a private investigator on the Citadel, and Tali'Zorah vas Neema, a Computer Science student. It's basically a romance with some action on the side, and a homage to one of my favourite ME ships, Talibrations.

Since this is an AU story in which all characters are humans, and the story itself doesn't allow for all those little details and questions about the universe's mechanics to be included without it becoming somewhat clunky, here's a post collecting all this information (i.e. it’s pretty long, and more meant something to look up certain things that might come up in the story):

General Info:

The story is set in 2017/2018, ergo there is no advanced space-faring technology. The technological standard is the one we're using today, nothing more, nothing less.

It plays on an alternate Earth – I say 'alternate' because it's the same as Earth but I've inserted a new continent... more on that down below in the section on geography.

Since there is no space-faring in this AU, every alien race is human. To still allow for cultural differences, you can basically image every planet as a country – Palaven is a country, Rannoch is a country, Tuchanka is a country... you get the idea. But since there is no technology apart from the one we're having today, there is no single Geth race. More on that in the section on the separate races and cultures.

Geography Info:

Imagine we make Earth a little bigger, and squeeze in a new continent somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean... that's where this AU plays.

On this continent, there are different countries representing the homeworlds of the ME races; Palaven, Tuchanka, Rannoch, Sur'Kesh, Thessia... and so on.

Some of these countries – after several wars, e.g. between Palaven and Tuchanka – are part of a continent-wide alliance of nations, called the Union. Imagine the European Union if you want to have a real-life counterpart.

The Union's capital is the Citadel, a metropolis that doesn't belong to either country.

Palaven, Thessia and Sur'Kesh are the closest countries to the Citadel.

All other nations that are currently on Earth still exist, as do all the other continents. Imagine the AU continent (I never even named it... O.o) somewhere between Europe and both American continents.

For simplicity, the Union speaks English.

On Palaven and the Turians:

Palaven has sea-borders, and borders with Tuchanka.

Before the Union and shaky peace contracts, Palaven used to be at war with Tuchanka many times.

Starting in the middle ages, Palaven also developed a rather impressive fleet and was known as a sea-faring nation. There are multiple smaller island nations around the continent that are under Palaven authority.

Palaven is still a meritocracy, the head of state is the Primarch. They have a large military and most of the civilian life is somewhat influenced by it.

Turians are all expected to serve in the military, much like in the games. Their service starts with entering a military high school around the age of fifteen, and mostly expands until they're about thirty. Leaving service early is uncommon, and while not a punishable offence, it's frowned upon.

Generally, everything about their ME culture is still in effect here, just that “Turian” refers to their nationality, not their race, and that instead of being space-faring people, they are a sea-faring nation.

On Rannoch and the Quarians:

The Quarian home country is Rannoch in the south of the continent. Parts of it are a big jungle. It has a sea border, too.

Multiple centuries ago, a war broke out between the Quarian tribes and a separate tribe that lived in this jungle. The Quarians lost and had to flee Rannoch.

After facing heavy losses, the Quarians lived on ships (known as the Flotilla) for a while – they were sea-bound nomads and travelled in between multiple little islands.

After a few centuries, they left their ships and became land-bound nomads – the sea was at that time mostly controlled by the Turians and little skirmishes and conflicts involving the Quarians and the Turians weren't unheard of.

After again living a few centuries as nomads on the continent, the Quarians started a different strategy relatively recently: They began to settle down close to the Union's large towns and formed their own quarters. They use the infrastructure of the towns they're docked on without being ruled by their government. In this way, the Quarian Admiralty Board aims to collect resources, manpower and knowledge to wage war against the tribe that drove them away from Rannoch, which is now living closed off from the rest of the continent.

The Quarian quarters, named after famous ships from the Quarian Flotilla, are tolerated by the rest of the Union at best, and frowned upon at worst.

Quarian society is experiencing a divide as of late: There are those Quarians who believe that winning back their home country is the only thing that counts, and those who believe that further integration into their “host towns” can lead to a wider acceptance of the Quarian people, and that winning back their home country shouldn't be a priority that tops everything else.

On the Geth:

The Geth are not an artificially created race here (due to the technology issue of having the story set in 2017/2018).

Instead, their role is split: There is a tribe that drove the Quarians from Rannoch, which I won't call 'Geth' though. I do refer to something in the story as 'Geth', but I won't mention it here because spoilers.

On Thessia and the Asari:

The Asari are a little challenging when it comes to transfering them into this AU, as they all have the same sex in the game which is vaguely female after human standards.

To avoid the obvious problems with human procreation, I decided that 'Asari' as a term does not refer to the inhabitants of Thessia as a whole.

I distinguish between 'Thessians' as inhabitants of Thessia, which are not necessarily of the female sex and/or gender; and 'Asari'.

The Asari are a circle of very influential individuals in the Thessian society. Some of them have inherited an influential position, some of them are simply very well-educated, but they are the Thessian elite. Asari are often advisors, and one of the Asari is usually the elected head of the Thessian nation.

Asari are, for the most part, of female sex. This is because the Asari evolved from a matriarchal nobility. This concept is sometimes considered outdated, but some families still value this tradition.

Thessia as a nation is very democratic, very focussed on arts, culture and diplomacy.

On Tuchanka and the Krogan:

The Krogan are the culture/ race native to Tuchanka, which has borders with Sur'Kesh and Palaven, and also a sea border. Parts of Tuchanka are a huge desert region.

Like in the games, the Krogan are a warrior nation and are often seen as underdeveloped by the other nations of the Union.

Krogans are organised in clans, and after a devastating war against the united forces of the Turians and Salarians about two centuries ago these clans began drifting apart and waging war against each other.

There was no Genophage (because of technological aspects), but the Salarians started to explicitly target camps with females and children in the war to lower the chances of the war dragging on. It is seen as a war crime by both the Krogan and the Turians, though the Turians agreed with the Salarians that it was a necessity in winning the war.

Needless to say, the Krogan don't get along with neither the Turians nor the Salarians.

Even a few centuries later, the Krogan haven't recuperated from this last war. Their numbers decimated and their clans at odds with each other, many Krogan work as mercenaries or in Mafia-like structures in different countries these days.

On other nations and organisations:

The Salarians live in Sur'Kesh, their culture is matriarchal and they are known to produce the most talented scientists in the Union. They are also feared for their very strategic way of waging war.

The Volus are one of the races living on a Turian-administered small island. They are a nation of traders, and in medieval times they used to have a sizeable trading fleet, as well.

The 'humans' of Mass Effect basically loose their status as a separate race – there is no need since all are human here. Whenever I throw in a formerly 'human' character, I will instead keep their nationalities in line with the games as far as I can (e.g., I think if would make sense if Kaidan would be Canadian and Ash American).

The Spectres are basically the Union's own Special Tactics group, just like in the games. They operate independently from the countries their operatives come from and only serve the Union.

About Shepard:

It's Jane Shepard in this story.

She was born in Vancouver, lost her parents early and grew up on the streets.

She enlisted in the military at age 18 and worked her way up to Commander.

About two years ago, she took part in a mission on 'the continent'; in a desert in Tuchanka (called 'Akuze') where she lost her whole unit under circumstances she doesn't talk about often.

After that, she was in rehab for a while with PTSD; she tried it as a soldier once more later but it didn't work out for her any longer.

One of her best friends from the military is a pilot named Joker, who serves the Union's Allied Military force. He offered her to live in his apartment on the Citadel for a bit while he was serving on a tour, to get her head free.

Shepard took the offer, decided to stay on the Citadel and after a while founded a detective agency there.

The rest... will be explained in the story :D

[timeforelfnonsense]

3 Things OC Meme

I was tagged my @pink-lyrium to write the first three things I think of when I think of my OCs. Thanks for the tag love! 

Dragon age:

Sylvas Mahariel: A confident stride, shoulders back, radiating nobility and pride . Other worldly and vaguely intimidating. A silver tong always ready to debate. 

Ygritte Hawke: Nose crinkled with laughter. Weaponized sexiness. Rebel with a cause. 

Ashalle Lavellen: A contagious, gap toothed smile. The sound of a lute and sea shanties on the breeze. A curiosity that will never be satisfied.  

Bonus: 

Telana Lavellen (Ashalle & Solas’ daughter): Her mother’s eyes. Exploring the fade for things lost to time. Carving runes and flowers into her staff.  

Mass Effect:   

Titania Shepard: Mom friend. Loss and found family. Punk rock ballerina.     

Juno Ryder: Adventure is out there. Half empty bottles of asari blue hair dye. Awkward flirting.   

I’m tagging @lyrium-lovesong @ladylike-foxes @cattivacomelaglio @freyanuris @wardenofmyheart

[berryshiara]

WIP Whenever

Tagged by @1esk19 thanks for inviting me to play! Part of my Asari Centric Mass Effect Fic called, Inescapable Honor

--------------------

Cast: Tasoula - Charis Tasoula Adrasteia - her family is minor nobility - Asari Matriarch - she is bound to House T’Soni Amelie - Amelie Du Pont - Human - her family was called nobility from earths 19th century. Markets change when her financial portfolio shifts... when she married Tasoula a whole storm was created in large part due to the speculation of her family riches being stolen by Thessia. Elektra - Daughter of Amelie, adopted by Matriarch Tasoula, it is the Matriarchs name on her birth certificate under Father.

Setting: Amelie is dying from cancer. It has been eating at her for years. She has sacrificed pieces of her body to slow its forward progress.  When they met it was in remission. When it returned it was very aggressive, she and Tasoula have forgone treatment in hopes of getting pregnant. She is currently at her limit of life, and they are worried they will not succeed, and all they have suffered will be for nothing. We pick up with Tasoula mourning the loss of her wife, the terrible process of unweaving her person from Amelie just enough that she will not go mad with her death... and Amelie soothing her Asari wife’s battered soul. --------------------

For a long time she held her strong wife feeling a sense of love and peace she had not known was left. Though Tasoula cried such wracking sobs Amelie was convinced she would make it through now. She had worried that her mate would never allow the poison of such grief out… it would consume her until both Elektra and by the grace of the Goddess, the child they still had not managed to conceive would grow up without either parent. Though it would hurt as healing often did… Tasoula would recover, more so she would grow with their girls into the powerful protector and provider all of them needed in the years ahead. 

“I love you so much…” Amelie admitted in a husky whisper, her throat squeezed tight by the emotions pouring between them. Using the new found strength she gently pushed Tasoula back into the bed and leaned into her. Pressing kisses against her brow, down the bridge of her lover's nose until her trailing kisses soothed her enough to capture a soft kiss upon Tasoula’s lips. Fingers slipped under her wife’s crest massaging sensitive folds drawing a groan from her partner. She smiled and kissed her again, deeper with increased hunger. It had been several months since she had felt this good… this empowered, and she wanted to use all of it to ease Tasoula’s agony and fill her once more with joy. 

It was not the frenzied lovemaking of a dying woman desperate to make one last happy memory. It was powerful, every touch with purpose, every kiss with meaning. Pouring their love into the bond that just before Tasoula’s release sunk deeper than either of them had ever gone before. It may have been Tasoula who initiated the bond, but it was Amelie who kept them suspended in it until both of them fell asleep at peace at last. Tired, sated and renewed for the final test that still lay ahead. Tagging @bunabi @raedmagdon @skyllianhamster ,share a wip you are working on?

[fleet-admiral-red]

Archives: Astropolitics - Initiative/Bouzac Relations

The history shared between the Galactic Defense Initiative and the Bouzaculan Empire has been a tense and often abrasive one. The two polities are so starkly different in many aspects that more often than not, conflict has emerged, though such has been mostly non-violent.

Public opinion on the Bouzac within the Initiative varies from person to person, though a significant portion of the public has had a negative, even hostile view of them since the Resurgence War of 2451. However, the recent analysis of Bouzaculan ancient history has gradually begun to turn the tide of public opinion towards them, with revelations that the various threats that manifested being a result of a curse placed by the historical figure of Demise.

The single largest and oldest point of conflict between the two powers has been one of culture and societal outlook. Where the Initiative’s myriad peoples are progressive beyond all else, the Bouzac tend towards conservatism. This has influenced many fields in their interactions, with GDI members and scientists often dumbstruck by the unbelievable level of resistance to progress they face from Bouzaculans. As well, the post-scarcity and peace-focused nature of GDI society has been derided by most Bouzaculans, whose society has been shaped by a warrior culture similar to that of the Klingons and ancient Earth’s Japan.

The aristocratic, brutal politics of the Bouzac has often clashed with the far more open, total-democratic nature of Initiative society. History is rife with criticisms exchanged between societal figures in the two societies. Where control of Bouzaculan society lies in the hands of the monarchy and nobility, the leadership of Initiative society is split in a tripartite of the civilian Executive Assembly, the military Admiralty, and the scientific Technology Council.

The sheer difference in technological advancement between the two polities has also been a sore point of contention for nearly 4 decades. While the spacefaring elements of the Bouzaculan Empire had technology equal to that of the Galactic Republic, for the most part, their technology remained in pre-spaceflight levels. GDI has built a reputation for being one of the Coalition’s most advanced members, with technology decades or even centuries beyond that of their allies in nearly every field.

Fortunately, efforts made towards reducing this technological gap by the Bouzac has softened this view, to an extent.

Even the militaries of the Initiative and Bouzac weren't spared from this ideological divide. Every official war game conducted between them since 2440 has resulted in a decisive GDI victory. The difference in strategic doctrine has also soured the interactions of military leaders from both nations. Until recently Bouzaculan tactics largely relied on 20th-century massed infantry charges, whereas Initiative tactical doctrine relied mainly on high-mobility forces, precision assault, and nigh-unbreakable defense, echoing that of the Asari Republics and the Salarian Union.

Moreover, the Bouzaculan fixation on honorable combat/warfare has drawn much derision from Initiative tacticians, who have espoused a far more coldly pragmatic view of war since GDI’s inception. This has extended to the Initiative’s use of several contentious weapons of war and level of threat response in many of the conflicts in Bouzac space, including the hotly-debated Juno Protocol, and the Jarellian extinction.

A major triggering topic of debate has been the complete quarantine of the Bouzaculan universe from 2456 to 2471. Owing to the many major threats to multiversal security that originated from their universe, the Bouzac were contained and prevented from interacting with the wider multiverse. This has caused a severe deterioration in Bouzaculan society beyond the lifting of the quarantine, when the Scorpion's Hand terrorist organization struck, a move that has crippled the Empire up until now.

Currently, relations between the Initiative and the Bouzac are in limbo, as almost all contact between the two universes has been lost with the destruction of the primary Transdimensional Gate in Bouzaculan space. Public opinion of the Bouzac, given the recent revelation, has since shifted into a precarious balance between those opposed and those sympathetic towards them.

[unmartyrd-blog]

@justiccr​ requested an audience.

Although Jaal was hardly the submissive one, he knew when the level of formality and proper amount of respect needed to be beckoned. It was from the air and how the Asari presented herself that indicated to Jaal she was a woman of. . .nobility? class? respect was definitely one thing she brought with her; although he did recognize that she was a woman not to be trifled or scorned with. given his upbringing, he could spot these types of individuals--ones that could conquer and not be conquered in return. . .it did bring a sense of dread to the Angaran--but a sliver of exciting bewilderment as well. 

❛ A moment of your time.

[leysendris]

Interview Meme

I was tagged by my lovely peach Princess @djfatchip :D I couldn’t decide and since she did it for her sibling OCs I will do the same, so here comes Keyra and Leyla :D (it was really hard to decide if I will do them or Faye/Deidre or maybe Akeelah)

I am tagging @erubadhriell, @mando-ad and whoever wants to join in :D

What is your name?

Keyra: It’s Keyra Shepard Leyla: Leyla T’Naris

What is your real name?

Keyra: Why, isn’t it good enough? Leyla: Well it isn’t your FULL name, right? Keyra: We are NOT talking about my middle Name. And don’t distract from the fact that Leyla T’Naris is actually an alias. Leyla: Oh well then... the real Name is Amelie Hagen, although I wasn’t called that since I was six.

Do you know why you were called that?

Keyra: No, I have no guess.

Leyla: Same here. And it’s not like I could my mother about it, no?

Are you single or taken?

Keyra: *shifts uncomfortably* I’ll pass

Leyla: *chuckles* Taken.

Do you have any abilities or powers?

Keyra: I am a good Marksman, also I am good with tactics and tech. Leyla: Oh, I am a skilled biotic, and I am the sister with the hand for diplomatics.

Stop being a Mary Sue

Keyra: I think a Mary Sue wouldn’t get her face ruined with a scar. Leyla: Oh shoo, you look cute nonetheless. And I couldn’t stop being a Mary Sue even if I wanted. Not my fault that I am perfect. Keyra: *snorts*

What’s your eye color?

Keyra: We both have Skye Blue eyes. Our father had his genetically altered and we inherited this modification. How about your hair color? Keyra. Red. And no, they are not dyed. Leyla. *giggles* Black as my soul. Keyra: Something I believe you on the spot...

Do you have any family members?

Keyra: My mother and her *waves in Leylas direction* Leyla: My Sister is my only family remaining.

Oh? What about pets?

Keyra: I have a hamster and some fish Leyla: You mean the ones you keep killing? Keyra: I didn’t kill them! I just didn’t know that this damn Eel was going to eat them...

That’s cool I guess, now tell me about something you don’t like.

Keyra: Politicians.... Leyla: Oh boy, too much to even start.

Do you have any hobbies/activities you like doing?

Keyra: Well... uhm... Leyla: She’s a workaholic. You either drag her out by force or she wouldn’t even take shore leave. I for myself like playing piano in my downtime. Keyra: I risk her ego going off by stating that, but she is pretty good, with singing too. I enjoy listening to her.

Ever hurt anyone before?

Keyra: Yes, I guess so. Leyla: Oh I most definitely.

Ever….killed anyone before?

Keyra: Erm... Soldier, Hero of Elysium...  How exactly do you think I stopped all these Batarians? By talking them down nicely? Leyla: *giggles* You CAN be very charming if you want. And to answer the question, yes, me too.

What kind of animal are you?

Keyra: I am called the Vixen of Elysium soooo, I guess a Fox? I am sometimes compared to a lioness, too. Leyla: I was compared to a nightingale once. But mostly people refer to me as snake *laughs*

Name your worst habits.

Keyra: I can be a bit short tempered and also stubborn. Leyla: Very stubborn. Keyra: What absolutely runs in the family, by the way. *glares at her sister* Leyla: Alright, alright, I am stubborn too. And I can be manipulative.

Do you look up to anyone at all?

Keyra: I look up to Admiral Anderson. He was my mentor for a long time and I learned a lot from him. Leyla: I look up to my sister. She can be a pain in the ass, and I don’t even want to start about her bad taste in men... *squeaks and rubs her ankle while glancing at her sister who acts totally innocent* BUT she is a very remarkable person nonetheless. Keyra: Love you too sis.

Gay, straight, or bisexual?

Keyra: Is this really necessary?

Leyla: It WOULD get some of your fangirls off your back. Keyra: Oh well then. Straight. Leyla: I am straight too. I think... Keyra: You think? Leyla: I normally aim for guys but... do Asari count as woman or not? Keyra: You slept with one, you tell me. Leyla: One? *laughs* Keyra: Please, no details....

Do you go to school?

Keyra: I mostly attended extranet-courses since I lived on ships most of my childhood. Leyla: I was home schooled until I was six. And after that I was mostly an autodidact.

Do you ever want to marry and have kids one day?

Keyra: I am not sure if I would make a good mom. Leyla: You are already some sort of mom for the whole crew Sis, and given what a madhouse that is a few kiddos of your own shouldn’t be a problem at all. I for myself would like to marry and maybe have kids.

Do you have any fanboys/fangirls?

Keyra: *growls* Leyla: That means yes, and she is not very happy about it. Keyra: The only thing I have to say about this is  “very tasteful shrine”.... Leyla: I wish someone would make a shrine for me... Keyra: You can have all of them!

What are you most afraid of?

Keyra: What most people are afraid of I think. Loosing the ones close to me. Leyla nods in agreement.

What do you usually wear?

Keyra: On duty I wear my battledress uniform and on missions my armour. And in my downtime.... Leyla: More often than not your BDUs too. I prefer fancy or elegant clothes. Oh, and dresses. I wish I had more opportunity to wear them.

Do you love someone?

Keyra: I care deeply for many persons close to me. Leyla: *doesn’t comment on that this time* I am in love with an amazing turian badboy.

When was the last time you wet yourself?

Keyra and Leyla are looking at each other, than back to the questioner: Keyra: Are you Leyla: fucking serious?

Well, it’s not over yet!

Keyra: Hurray...

What class are you? (high class, middle class, low class)

Keyra: I am not sure, I come from a family of Officers, so you could call us military nobility? We never had a lack of money either. Leyla: My mother actually was quite wealthy, not sure what happened to the money after she died. So, middle class at least I think.

How many friends do you have?

Keyra: Enough I would say. I think the quality of friends is more important than their quantity. Leyla: I can second that. Rather one true friend that stands with you when everything goes to hell, than a dozen who bails as soon as it gets heated. And hanging out with Commander Shepard it gets heated very often. Keyra: I know...

What are your thoughts on pie?

Keyra: Yum. Leyla: Me too!

Favorite drink?

Keyra: Coffee. Leyla: I really like red whine. The sweet one!

What’s your favorite place?

Keyra: I really like my cabin on the Normandy or the observation lounge with its view on the stars. Leyla: Oh I am pretty sure the stars are not your favourite view there... Outch! Stop kicking me! Anyway, I really like the presidium on the Citadel with its lakes and trees and all that.

Are you interested in someone?

Keyra: Maybe. Leyla: I have my interest pinned to my boyfriend.

What’s your bra cup/willy size?

Keyra just raises a brow. Leyl: I have the larger cup size from the two of us, that’s enough information.

Would you rather swim in the lake or the ocean?

Keyra: In the ocean. Leyla Neither of them. I could drown in one of them, then I would prefer the ocean. I heard drowning in salt-water is faster than in fresh water.

What’s your type?

Keyra: I’ll pass. Leyla: Oh I could tell.... *glances at Keyras slightly raised foot* Now that I think about it, better not. Anyway, for me, am not sure if I really have a “type”

Any fetishes?

Keyra: Does headbutting reporters that ask stupid questions count as fetish? Leyla: Uh oh, she gets this look that she always has before headbutting a krogan.

Seme or uke? Top or bottom? Dominant or submissive?

Keyra: Why do I get the feeling that Kasumi wrote this questions? Leyla: Please, Kasumi would just hack your inbox, getting all the saucy details first hand. Keyra: There are no “saucy details” in my inbox...

Camping or indoors?

Keyra: Indoors. Normally when I sleep outside it means I am on a mission, not very comfy.

Leyla: I am for indoors too. Sleeping under a blanket of stars looses a lot of its appeal, when you lived on the streets for years.

Are you wanting to quiz to end?

Keyra and Leyla unanimously : Yes!

[rockiesturnrose]

I’m back on the nonsense of wanting both to run a D&D campaign and wanting to play in one. I don’t know. Or I just miss character creation and having a creative outlet so much I’m developing stories. NEITHER ARE GOOD.

(Apparently I’m the D&D player who’s like “Here are seven pages of backstory that fits into the confines of your universe, and here are nine things you could do to my character to make the narrative interesting.” My DM, meanwhile, is more the ‘looks like it’s time you fight a bunch of ogres and some wolves and I’ll tangentially work in some backstory maybe.’ It’s fine, it works for me, but it also forces me to write out things I wish would happen)

So I made Sarya’s mother for the sake of Sarya, you know, having a mother. And then thought ‘this woman has got a little hellion sorcerer who was born in the Feywilds. What the fuck did she do with her life?  So the basics are:

-Sarya’s mother, Eslen is an elf who, at age 200-something, decided she needed to see the world. I had a discussion with one of my fellow D&Ders about elves, and he thought it would be kind of interesting if they were like Asari. You know, they’re ‘children’ for a hundred years or so, then a lot of them go off to join mercenary bands and live a crazy few years of wild hedonistic abandon, only to eventually settle down after a century or so. Eslen is like that. Whenever her ‘campaign’ started, she was in the middle of her hedonistic lifestyle phase—joining mercenary bands, exploring the world, sleeping with anything that showed interest, and drinking herself silly a lot. (I picture her looking like Missy Peregrym) (AT THE MOMENT THIS IS ALWAYS SUBJECT TO CHANGE).

-As per a character sheet I just kinda drew up for her, she’s a wood elf Rogue with the Scout archetype, and the outlander background. She was originally a ranger, but I decided that one thing she really wanted to learn was how to pick pockets and cheat at cards, and sleight of hand isn’t a ranger thing.

-Peren Abrase is a High Elf wizard that she randomly encountered one day. Elves, I’ve decided, are kind of…rare to see alone. You see them as part of a delegation, but never wandering alone, mainly because the general mindset among them is that ~lesser~ humanoids will taint them. So unless they have a wild sense of wanderlust like Eslen, you’ll only meet them if you go to them. Peren was actually innocently minding his own business when this wildchild elf was like “OH MY GOD NEW BEST FRIEND” and he realized he was stuck with her.

-Eslen never bothered asking Peren what he was doing out in the ~wild~. When they join up with other people, he gives off the vibe that he’s running from a dark past and doesn’t invite questions. And, weirdly, no one does question. They respect that his past is tough for him. 

-In reality, he’s basically Elven Royalty who feels like he’s being pressured into accepting a…a crown, or something? Or he’s exiled for something he did. Or for his own safety. I didn’t think this through for him. But I’m leaning toward ‘exiled to keep him safe while his family figures out who’s plotting against them and their throne. I don’t think he’ll end up being the first in line, but he’s pretty damn close. But his entire party knows he keeps his secrets close at hand. It’s annoying, but considering nothing from his past ever really comes chasing after them, they don’t care.

-Eslen, not being a High Elf and also having been cut off from elven politics for the last 75 years (again ,you don’t run into a lot of elves outside of their cities, so she wouldn’t be well informed), doesn’t know anything about internal elven struggles. So she never connects any dots and also doesn’t give a shit.

-One of their party is a human fighter-type named Matrin. He’s unabashedly from a shit background—urchin, charlatan, something of the like, and he owns that. But he’s confident, funny, and attractive. Rough around the edges, but not unwilling to learn. Eslen likes him immediately, and they occasionally decide to use the other to blow off steam. Basically their first meeting is ‘wanna get drunk?’ ‘I’m already halfway there, get on my level!’ ‘Wanna makeout?’ ‘DUDE YES’

-...though maybe not? Maybe they just click and there’s like..unresolved sexual tension/mutual attraction there that’s complicated by other dynamics. 

-Peren doesn’t like Matrin, somewhat because of his background and his boisterous nature, but also because along the way, before they joined up with these other assholes, Peren has developed feelings for Eslen. Feelings that he initially rejected for a myriad of reasons, but really can’t fight anymore. Feelings he doesn’t know how to bring up (I imagine him as not only being demisexual/demiromantic, but also as not having a lot of romantic experience in general. Eslen’s more promiscuous life style and mindset is…strange to him).  And he resents Matrin for having Eslen’s affection, when he thinks he’d be a much better choice. 

-Matrin, meanwhile, likes Eslen just fine but he wouldn’t exactly say he’s in love with her. At least, not initially. She’s a great friend and a fantastic drinking partner, and like, he imagines the sex would be uncomplicated and fun, not that he thinks about that all that much. He doesn’t get what Peren’s problem is, mainly because Peren doesn’t spit that out either, just seethes when he sees them together.

-Eslen starts developing feelings for Peren. Oh, she’s not exactly pleased about it because he’s a stuck up jackass who doesn’t talk about himself like a normal human, but he’s also a friend and there’s something loveable behind all those walls.

-Matrin might actually fall in love with Eslen, but by that time he’s noticed she’s got the hots for the grumpy wizard as well and he’s convinced elf/elf just makes more sense. Like, he’s a human and will die long before Eslen. So might as well just give up now and let her find true happiness with the elf she totally likes, but won’t admit to liking. His thinking is something like ‘if I cut ties with her, she’ll realize she belongs with Perren and it’ll be simpler’. Spoiler, it won’t be.

-Which means at some point Matrin and Eslen just (mutually?) decide to stop acting flirty with each other? Or something? They put up walls, basically, though maybe only Matrin does? Or he downplays/quashes his attraction in the hopes she’ll do the same/not question him. I don’t know why, maybe Matrin is starting to sense the bad energy coming from Peren. Maybe Eslen is sensing it. Maybe whatever quest they’re on isn’t conducive to carrying on with this bad energy starting. Whatever, something happens.

- Near the end of the ‘campaign’ Eslen and Peren mutually acknowledge that they have feelings for each other. Maybe it’s just been a tense and emotional day and they seek solace with each other. But Eslen is wary of really starting anything with him because she really knows so little about him. 

-There are probably some opportunities that arise where Eslen wants to tell Peren she wouldn’t be averse to starting something with him, officially. But every time she thinks she’s found a way past his walls, he throws something else at her. So she eventually makes it clear to him that, while she loves him, she’s not putting up with his bullshit. Either he trusts her with everything, or they won’t work out. He promises to let her in after they finish this grand quest, since telling her before that seems distracting and pointless, and she considers the matter settled.

- Once they survive whatever the final battle is, they agree to tie up some loose ends and meet at the inn where everything began so they can start their life together. Peren intends to give up his title, but the situation is infinitely more complicated than first expected (Like if he was sent into exile for protection, he learns that the enemies have found him and are going to try and take him out?? Or his dad dies and suddenly his brother is in charge and needs him to stay on as adviser or something because the alternative is Not Good for the Elves?) Whatever the case, he doesn’t think it’s a thing Eslen would want to be part of/it’s something that would put her in peril. He figures a clean break will be kinder than showing up with more excuses and a whole set of baggage and basically thrusting her into this life she probably doesn’t want, so he just…never shows up at the inn. 

-Look, I’m a huge fan of the ‘I wanted to tell you but I didn’t want it to change the way you looked at me’ thing. Peren is convinced Eslen only liked him because he was ~more down to earth~ then the Elven nobility she’d constantly roll her eyes about. Also he’s a high elf and she’s a wood elf, so I’m imagining a kind of...class divide there where wood elves aren’t very high on the High Elf Sovereign’s List of Priorities because they’re less adept with magic. He’s terrified that if he came to her and was like ‘okay so basically I’m actually your sovereign-to-be but I do love you’ she’d reject him because she’d believe he was just using her for a lark. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, as far as he can see. Either he tells her the truth and she rejects him for lying, or he just...doesn’t ever see him again. Either way, he believes he’s getting rejected.

-Meanwhile, during the campaign, Matrin secretly makes a deal with someone in the Feywild to act as their protector if they grant them some help during this battle. Or something. Basically, he makes this agreement to marginally raise their already slim chances of winning, while fully believing he’s not actually going to make it out alive. But he does, and once the adventure is over he has to come to terms with the fact he has five years left on his own plane before he goes to serve the Fey. Feeling aimless (what’s he going to accomplish in five years?) he returns to the same inn Eslen is currently waiting at, trying to figure out how he got to where he his now

-He finds Eslen essentially wallowing in sadness. Offers her a choice-she can continue waiting for the stuck up asshole, or she can join him in crossing the world and righting wrongs and just having fun. She chooses the latter. So, again, she still has no clue that Peren is actually like…huge Elven royalty. She has no clue what is happening with her people because she chooses not to go back.

-These two finally act on the UST/restart their prior arrangement, and it devolves (evolves?) into legitimate feelings of love after like...a romantic dance or something. Because that’s also a very good trope

-They know their time together is limited, so it’s not like they promise each other much. Just companionship and happiness for a few years. Except with 5 months to go before his bargain comes due, Eslen discovers she’s pregnant. Matrin is overjoyed, but also a man of his word. The Fey he made a bargain with, though, is like ‘Dude I’m not just going to pull you away from your pregnant girlfriend. She can come with!’

-And Eslen does! She lives in the Feywild long enough to give birth to their daughter, Calise. But Matrin definitely doesn’t want his daughter growing up in this strange and terrifying place, and he’d prefer if Eslen is safe. Her choice, ultimately, and she decides he’s right. Besides, he’ll earn vacation time. He can come visit one day. So she takes her newborn and heads back to her home settlement after nearly a century away. 

-Of course, by then the elven political situation has calmed down, so if she hears about High Lord Sabrae, she assumes it’s the old fucker who was around when she left home almost a century ago. She doesn’t know it’s switched over to his son, and if she does learn it again, doesn’t concern her much. She’s from a small settlement (and she’s a wood elf, which in this world is kind of lower on the rung than high elves. I dunno, magic is super important and wood elves don’t show as much ability with it) they don’t get royal visitors. She can raise her little half-elf in as much peace and safety as possible-at least until Calise’s own story starts up. Then the fun happens. 

-Calise latches onto the ring that Peren gave Eslen as a promise and assumes that because her mom won’t talk about either the ring or Calise’s father, the two are related. She eventually stumbles into (a branch of) the elven high court and meets Peren, whose acting as a high and mighty adviser for his Brother the King, or something. He immediately recognizes the ring and thereby discovers the love of his life had a kid. With someone else. But he tells Calise there’s probably no way her father is in the elven lands. 

-Peren, who has tried so hard to not think about Eslen for the past 20-odd years, is now given a Sad. But he also now knows where Eslen is, so he goes to visit her. Basically, he thinks seeing her daughter is a sign that maybe it’s time to make amends

-So he goes, and she is NOT PLEASED but also kind of is because she still loves him. And he finally explains everything and begs her forgiveness and hopefully asks if the two can be friends again

-Eslen is...well, she’s touched that he did this, even if it took thirty years. But she also knows he could’ve gone another 300 without seeing her, if he’d wanted to. But she lets him know she’d be amenable to friendship, even as she lets it slip that she still kind of loves him. Which makes him hopeful. 

-they probably end up sleeping together. And re-establishing their relationship. Even though she tells him she also still loves Matrin

-Maybe Matrin comes back for a prolonged vacation and the three enter into an arrangement. Polyamory could solve so many triangle problems...

-Oh GOD I MISS WRITING. If you see snippets about this, don’t be surprised. 

[herpronuonsarefemslash]

Black and Blue - Teaser (2/3)

A lightly horror-themed, mid-length (60,000 word) work setting up my "Blood and Treasure" story and introducing bits of my altered ME worldbuilding.

Chapter 1 to 5 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-1-58119478

Chapter 6 to 10 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-6-58262841

Chater 11 to 13 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-58353145 

Out of context teasers for Chapters 6 to 10:

The hard plastic of the seat under her slams into her when the shuttle hits a pocket of dense air. Kelsey tries not to look outside at the orange plume of flame outside the kinetic barrier, or wonder if the hairline crack in the seat across from her is indicative of how well they take care of the engines, or…

WHAM!

“Did we just hit a rock?” Nina snarls, reaching up to rub her crests with a massive hand. “Do rocks float here?”

“Not at this altitude,” Trini whispers back. “Highest recorded eezo-levitation incident wa-mmph!”

Kelsey claps a hand over what looks like thin air. In her annoyance, Trini’s camouflage fades for a moment and what looks like the faintest outline of a human woman–bald, hairless, and lushly curved–flickers into view for an instant.

“Shh…” Nina reminds Trini.

All of Nina’s specialness is swallowed up by the fact that asari don’t usually hit ten feet tall, so she can pass through a crowd without alarm–just a lot of stares–because all her obvious hybrid traits hide in plain sight. Huge eyes, silver irises with tiny gold eyes lurking within, like the gears in fine watch, dark, wet tips on the pads of long, quick fingers, spooky black frills and fronds hidden under larger-than-normal scales on her arm, neck, and head. Longer and thicker crests don’t look strange in the scheme of things. 

So it was Trini they had to hide. Trini’s almost right, but the deep, wet, glimmering fissures on her bare head don’t look like a human feature, just a bit longer, thicker, or bigger. When she’s stressed–or horny–they weep like any asari’s would and after the lady at a terminal on Knossos called a medic because they assumed Trini was bleeding, they didn’t have much choice. She’s kept her hand around Kelsey’s waist–thank God for modern maternity fashion–so that she’s present even when she’s invisible. The day-in, day-out practice Trini has gotten with her camouflage has led to giggly, stupid, clumsy sex in freighter cabins, with her trying to make a smiley face appear on her back to crack them up and Kelsey watching Nina try to distract Trini with her tongue, while curling a big hand around her thigh to share orgasms that Kelsey’s swollen body was too sore to chase.

=====

The Voice says she is here to do something, in the back area of this club, where the powerful eat and drink. The Memories like the place: Drunkenness, proffered flesh, the expectation of rough pleasure and keeping of names like precious secrets.

They overindulge. They are trusting.

Prey.

“Heya darlin’.”

She turns her head just slightly. Human male: Dirty, underfed, unshaven. She loosens her hold on her energy, letting it channel outward. Energy gathers between her fingertips, cords of red and black dancing and entwining.

“Now, now, little lady. Ain’t gonna hurt ya! No need to use…that. No need to use ol’ devil’s yarn on me! Just need a bit to get by, y’know?”

Ah. A beggar. The Memories remember these, not from the silver, blue, and pink place, where silk flowed across blue flesh like the water did, and the streets echoed with whispers from lovers who pulled each other into niches in buildings and slid curtains across, and carts were stacked with fruit almost till they spilled, and wine, and meat. No. The Memories tell her that beggars are from the black and brown place. Dirty, grimy, hidden in rock. Rough. Wild. Bloody. Uncaring. The perfect lair for the Memories.

She has credits. The Memories told her to never use accounts, only fixed chits. Accounts have names. Names… Names leave a scent? No, names leave a trail. Trails make the Memories afraid. The Voice told her where to find some credits buried in a rock outside the dome along with white metal things, red cloth, and blue bars of grit: The Voice said they were armor, civilian clothing to go over it, and a weapon.

=====

“Holy fuck. Stace.”

“Yeah?” she calls out over the thumps, electric screams, and cymbal crashes of the music.

“Total babe, at your three o’clock. Go get that pussy, buddy.”

She looks and there, at the edge of the floor, is a shimmer, just a silvery flicker of a woman’s body. She can see the booth behind her, but not see her–except for a thin sheen, like ice over a clear pond. It’s enough. It’s the juiciest, softest set of curves Stace has ever seen, on a giantess big enough to wrap around her, make her disappear into the hug.

She knows every queer that comes in here, so New Girl is not only in need of tips about the menu, she’s dancing alone. Shame. New Girl dances like no one she’s ever seen: Hands raised over her head, hips swaying on some notes, shaking on some and thrusting slightly on others, turning in a slow circle. Every motion is smooth–arms curling rather than waving, hips rolling in an S rather than swinging side to side, her thrusting matched by a bend in her back and curls of her arms–as if nothing she ever does is less than smooth, sleek, and seductive. It’s like watching water dance.

A red dress is flung over a nearby chair.

Ok. Right. Person, probably alien, who can make herself invisible–or invisible-ish, because damn–but only if she gets naked first. Naked’s good.

A shot glass slides into her hand.

“Liquid courage.”

“Thanks, Mack.”

“Go! You’re scaring off all the dick. Swear to God, you draw a no-men-allowed circle around you somehow.”

=====

“CHRIST!”

“WASTE HER!”

Red glop runs down the side of her face and drips onto the trick’s pants. Some red bubble of fuck knows–biotics? Does anything that fancy even happen in this shithole?–covers Nikki and the trick. It slices his head off, too, which slides slowly down the outside, blown in half above the jaw, with half his braincase just gone and half hanging at an angle like a scoop of lard. It rolls down, smearing blood, gray grease, and bits of bone the size of confetti until it hits the floor.

A shape walks by her–so bright and white it hurts to look at her–but obviously a her. Obviously a woman, and naked, and either turned on or recently well-fucked–Nikki hopes that this is not turning her on–because her nipples are stiff.

One of the Reds lunges, knife in hand. Something that looks like black smoke shot through with drops of blood forms into a plate and he smacks into it, breaking his nose. The shape turns her head for a moment, looks at him, and the bones of his arms and legs break with cracks so loud Nikki can hear them and then his spine punches its way out through his voicebox.

Little blue things pop like raindrops hitting concrete all over the stranger’s skin. Bullets. Hundreds of bullets spattering across that white light. Others hit the red bubble around Nikki but don’t break it, just bend it. Another man flies into view, suspended on another plate of red and black, and burns slowly with white fire, from the ribcage out, and up, until his skull melts. His gun tumbles in an orb of red energy and then crumples into something the size of a drink can.

“M-4 Shuriken Submachine gun,” the figure mutters. “Altered chamber, low grade phasic mod. Strong against kinetic barriers, tissue, weaker against armor.”

The outline of the glowing figure smiles.

=====

Tevos cannot stand being inside a ship she can’t see out of. She knows it’s beyond ridiculous–what good will her eyes do?–but it’s something she needs. She told the pilot she was up here to sign off with the Nefrane’s captain but she’s not sure her feet will work.

“Citadel-One, you are cleared for launch. Pleasure having you aboard, Councilor. Goddess light your path.” 

She presses a finger to her omni.

“May the rains be gentle, the fires warm and the hunts easy, Captain.”

The pilot of Citadel-One detaches the ship from underside of the Nefrane’s hangar and taps the thrusters, passing between two Sunfish fighters which angle their flattened hulls to let the larger corvette slip between them, sliding out of the atmosphere containment field and performing at least four maneuvers with two flicks of her gloved fingers and intimate familiarity with ships, mass effect, and momentum.

“You’re welcome to have a seat, Madam Councilor. Soon as I ping the Exclusion Zone, we’re going to be moving slow. Twenty, thirty minutes at least to these…coordinates…inside…”

The pilot forces a cough. She glances from her controls, to the etching glass map Tevos scrawled out, and back. She soon decides against digging in. She’s seen Tevos’ face and any huntress worth handing a rock and a stick–let alone training as a pilot–knows that Officers of the Thirty conceal their identities at any cost. A name and a face cannot be paired with the office she holds.

So the pilot doesn’t ask.

“Taking the hint and flying the ship, ma’am. But feel free to have a seat. Once we hit atmo, not much more to see than being on the ground.”

“It’s a marvelous view.” The pilot nods at Thessia. “That’s why we both took the job, ma’am, isn’t it? Keep her safe.”

Thessia sparkles below them, the massive Tescani continent sprawled pole to pole, wrapping the seas around it rather than the seas wrapping around the land, taking half the planet for itself and leaving the other to the Great Ocean.

=====

Goddess cast shadow over the wardrobe expectations for a successful matron. Floor length, somber, gently corseted, skirted, and un-decorated by ruffle, embroidery or anything but the body within. These are matriarchal fashions. She won’t belong in them for two centuries, perhaps more.

Aria would blind in this, with her larger-than-life frame cradled by curves generous as the seas. Then again, that’s sort of the point of Aria’s style, Tevos supposes; Aria has fully embraced the idea of hotness over beauty, her stance, her motion, her hungry eyes and ever-flirting lips. Tight clothing and arresting motion replacing the latest fashions or the smoothest words. Aria was hot long before the turians and quarians stole that term from the humans.

As her bondmate, Tevos might be biased, but she could likely get a vote through the forums on maidens alone if she could just find a way to post it slyly.

She, on the other hand, does not have the hips for this and wouldn’t have the bust if she nursed two more daughters in the next decade. Her tailor is beyond reproach–and the most delicious source of batarian gossip–but there is nothing to be done.

“You look great, ainthar,” Liselle says without looking up. Tevos sucks in a ragged breath. Ainthar. Inspiration. As if she could have inspired her from the depths of Aria.

“Your mom’s idea, wasn’t that?”

“Just her observation that you could be. No one knows how long you were together. Pretend you raised me and bonded later. Prevents questions. I asked. Nyreen agrees with it…except you have to play rockball with us next time.”

Oh, Goddess. Who throws a ball, in gravity, standing on a sloped pile of boulders…for fun?

“Hmm.”

Liselle grins, well aware that she’s right. Simple, direct deception will do, and goes back to her tutor’s work on oration, seduction, and salarian cultural quirks.

=====

The Thirty know of Lycoris. How could they not? One of their own, on the Council–rare enough, they prefer minor clans or clanless for the role–and some great secret love and birthing her first? She flew to the Student’s Hall, as is custom, for the recording of a new Daughter. Aria was a shadow most of the guards never saw–never wanting to allow what was hers out of her sight–and old friends from every house present stopped by to comment on Ly’s eyes, or her attentiveness to nearby elders even with her fists in Tevos’ dress and pulses of biotic energy running down her arm to quiet her.

Benezia had already given her praise by vid–off with that turian on some mad quest to either tame or slay the galaxy’s horrors, as is the T’Soni way–and blessedly few of the matriarchs that Tevos did not want to see were in attendance that day. She collected many new names and faces: Maidens attending the hall to speak and not to listen, wide-eyed and trembling with gratitude, late-joining matrons, and even the newly elected B’Kapaesii representative for the colony at Hyetiana.

Even old Akkru K’Teyen chimed in, thus disproving the theory that she was in fact dead and just stayed in her chair at the Great Table, far too sturdy and wise to rot. She rapped her palm down on a T’Van maiden’s greedy fingers as they snuck towards a bowl of sweets before the hulking matriarch rose like a primeval spirit–she is formidable at fourteen hundred–counted a few from the bowl into her big palm, and came over to offer crumbs on her fingertip.

Lycoris nipped her–toothless, but still–and while a sputtering Tevos dumped her brain upside down and shook it hoping to find an apology, the matriarch laughed. Akkru laughed as loud and harsh and honest as the krogan bondmates her family–herself included–take along with their asari. She pronounced Ly a lovely baby and a ‘good mean pup’, and lumbered back to the table to split the bowl of ajahe juice puffs with the properly chastened–and suitably awed–initiate from T’Van whose mother had no doubt lied and said that the massive, dusky-scaled and black-clad matriarch was statuary or some nonsense.

“Goddess!”

Liselle’s head jerks up, her textbook flung onto the seat beside her, one hand at her thigh, near one of Goddess knows how many weapons secreted away, and the other had stretched over Lycoris’ crib, crackling with biotics to entertain her.

“Not that. I forgot to look at your outfit. Stand up, let me look at you.”

“I must look the part, mustn’t I?” she sighs.

She smiles white and toothy as a shark, stands, and smooths down her dress.

Archetypically maiden: It has freedom to move, dance, misbehave. ‘Energy over assets,’ Aethyta once huffed, pointing at a maiden and matriarch on the Presidium. The dress has no bodice, and only the clasps fit it closer to Liselle. The hang comes from gravity more than anything.

“Stand still.”

“Feels weird,” Liselle huffs, eyes on the ceiling as Tevos tilts her head up. “I’m not a prizefighting varren. We’re all asari here, right?”

“The Council is close to, yes. Some bondmates, of course, children from marriage or adoptions. A dozen turians between bondmates and bond-children, perhaps two. Three krogan pups, where triads with two krogan had the luck.”

“Right? Asari. Fancy asari. Bonding ceremony before eye contact asari. So I don’t have to look…sexy.”

Is she a maiden? Likely. She’s nearly seventy. Liselle never talks about that, so either she isn’t interested yet or she doesn’t want her mother involved…

“Lissi,” she murmurs, rubbing her shoulders.

“The Thirty are not shy about…”

“Purebloods?” Liselle whispers. “I’m ninety-five percent sure the word doesn’t bite. Ninety-three, for sure.” Tevos chuckles.

“Two things spring to mind: You are not pureblood, daughter dear. Though you might seem it to others, especially in the Thirty. Between ourselves and the other clans who bond elsewhere, we can compare. We learn to see the differences. You do have the build and the face. Your mother’s lineage is simply that strong.”

“Families in the Thirty have more purebloods than the Peeresses or the clans. By far. We don’t announce it. We don’t hide it. The asari know our clan names. Anyone who follows bonding notices and tabloids would see the pattern. Last I looked at the registry, all the officers have either an asari bondmate or an asari bondmate along with alien bondmates.”

“Fascinating,” she replies, keeping her chin up for no reason other than to seem put out.

Sarcasm won’t hide that, little one. You jumped when you put it together.

“Turn around for me, let me see the whole thing,” Tevos instructs.

=====

Tevos raises her hand and wraps it in the Art. She’s about to knock on the door to the Great Hall when a voice echoes down the hallway.

“Councilor!”

She turns to see a teal-scaled maiden in laboratory clothing sprinting down the hallway. Nimble but careless, sliding past a server who finds herself forced to use a ballerina’s spin to keep her tray from spilling.

Her bodyguards train their weapons.

“Stop!”

Tevos turns and puts her hand on Archon Igeni’s rifle.

“Gun down,” she hisses, before turning to Mylei and doing the same.

Skidding to a stop in front of her, the maiden flicks her eyes from weapon to weapon. No fear, even with such a well-armed squadron facing her down.

No fear. Eyes as pale and blue as the light of the Art itself. Disinterest in fashion or expectations…

“Liara? It’s been decades. I hadn’t seen you grow into your good looks,” she jokes.

“Greetings, Councilor. Matria-” Liara swallows her mistake. “Matron T’Reve. I was instructed to give this to you.”

She holds out a large datapad and a read-only storage device.

“My…” Liara stammers.

“She is your mother, Liara. Call her such,” Tevos teases.

“Yes. I was on the planet seeking a grant, and Archon Shiala gave this to me. She said that mother said I was to give it to you, and only you.”

=====

“Goddess.”

Liara’s nearly as pale as her jumpsuit–the side is stained with dust, Tevos notes fondly–after seeing that.

“It’s certainly not good,” Tevos agrees.

“Not good?” Liselle sputters. “Not good? That’s a pyjak-fucking ardat kill. On Earth. Found by human police and taken to a human hospital where they’re going to notice something, maybe everything that’s unusual about it. With a name written in the mirror. Not that I know who Morinth is.”

“She should be dead.”

“Perhaps the Justicar failed? Was deceived?” Liara suggests. “Rare, but not unheard of.”

“She was not killed by a Justicar, Liara.”

The Will of Sunset put her down. Your father. Not that I can tell her that. Goddess, Aethyta. Get up the courage to tell her she’s yours.

“Was the agent…competent?” Liara asks.

“Extremely. You would like her, Liara.”

“I find that unlikely.”

“Nearly everything about you is unlikely, Liara. Someone like you being the Heiress T’Soni is beyond unlikely. Embrace it.”

How long will you make me lie to this brilliant daughter of yours, old friend?

=====

Lanya flicks through the local news updates, like she has on every planet. She can’t lose the feeling they’re being followed even though the more she looks, the more it becomes clear it’s her imagination.

“S’really good,” Mascha mumbles, big blue fingers covered in some brown sauce as she lifts a massive sandwich–massive even in her hands–to her mouth.

“What s’it?”

“Hamburger. Human idea, apparently. Sakhoi meat, local. Nevosian flatleaf for lettuce.”

Masha lunges for her water and guzzles it.

“Krogan hot sauce, local artisanal brand.”

“Explains it. There are a lot here, aren’t there?”

She dismisses the window and looks around. At a nearby fountain, two krogan pups are playing with a taele of twenty-five or so, racing after her. They’re half her height but probably only a tenth her age. Their plate-studded heads are round, not flat, and the plates on their arms where they peek out of the sleeves of their jumpsuits are spaced out, rather than closely packed.

“Are those her…”

Masha is too surprised to finish.

“…sisters?” Lanya asks. “Why not? Asari and two krogan bondmates. Tell you how it works when you’re older.”

The pups launch after her like giggling rocks and she ducks, spins, pirouettes and weaves away, all maiden’s speed and nearly all of a maiden’s height, but not yet grown, lacking the muscle she’ll get as she fills out. So she moves suddenly, twisting her thin body between them like electricity arcing through a short. She doesn’t use her biotics, even when they barrel their rock-hard bodies straight towards her. She ducks instead.

She’s playing their way.

“With the genophage…I didn’t know there were any except on Tuchanka. Krogan children, I mean.”

“Besides here, there probably aren’t. The colony has been krogan nearly as long as it has been asari.”

Layna turns.

At the bar sits a huge female krogan with a stack of etching glass plates and small denomination credit chips to one side, and to the other, empty liquor glasses, the shells of the fried swarmers from an appetizer platter, and crumpled paper. Actual paper. Her voice is deep–that of rumbling earth, boiling mud, and cracking rock–and raw at the edges. Perhaps age or injury, perhaps stress. An impressive row of empty glasses sits beside her, each with the glowing green film that only krogan ryncol leaves behind.

The maiden bartender is collecting the glasses with a fond shake of the head.

“After the Rachni War,” she sighs. Without being asked, the bartender produces a small, bubbling shot of ryncol, which the big krogan downs immediately. “Some krogan and asari who fought together settled here.”

Lanya feels as compelled to listen to this krogan as she did to Aethyta. She has the same sense of experience. The big krogan chuckles and Lanya feels the laugh in her guts, it’s so low.

“War is a great place to fall in love.”

She fought in it, Lanya realizes. Needing the drink, the way the war made her smile when she talked about love…The Rachni War ended two thousand years ago. She’s twice the age of a matriarch.

=====

Sura looks over her notes, then back up at her students.

Is this how matriarchs feel all the time? Telling people about stuff I know more about is amazing!

“…and that’s the basics. Fertility festival. Sex and crops, but once we had spare crops, more or less became just sex. Five days. You’ll take turns watching ‘the kids’,” she scoffs, making quote-signs.

“One day, probably. I’m actually going to go see my friends for the first two. One’s human. Loves the pups to death and they’re never rough with him. He said it was Halloween on Earth…three days ago, or so? We ordered a rush shipment of candy. It’s so cheap after Halloween that it costs the same even with the extra shipping. Should get here on day three.”

“We’re the help,” Mascha points out.

“You’re new in town,” Sura retorts. “New is sexy. Uahi, Kesh, Argah, that’s dad…you’ll meet him at, I bet…they’re old school. Janiris is where people meet people. Sometimes a matriarch gets a thrashing she really likes and some maiden suddenly gets a call about a job or someone drops a hint that gets something out of her way. Everybody pretends it’s an accident–matriarch sneakiness and all–and never ask for that, but it’s a thing.”

=====

The moment Lan opens the door, she’s faced with a svelte asari with what looks like a biotically charged whip coiled around her neck like a purple snake of pure energy. The handle is between her breasts, glowing with energy as someone in the living room below manipulates it. Each time a pulse wraps around the handle, the stasis fields in the cord swell, and the matron’s breathing hitches.

Blessed Janiris!” she pants.

“Uh, hi.”

“Mistress wants to see if I can be good even if other people touch me,” she explains. She presses a pouch of tokens into Lan’s hand before taking one out and stroking it through her swollen azure, flushed nearly black with long-denied need. “You can’t touch anywhere else. But you can try to make me come, if you want.”

“I’m sorry. I really need breakfast.”

She chortles. “Don’t apologize to me. That’s not what I’m here for. What about you, tall, blue and quiet?”

Lan hands the pouch to Mascha, and as she walks away, she hears a surprised squeak.

“Can you take big?” she hears Mas ask. “And deep?”

=====

A little girl wanders through the backyard. Behind her, a titan of steel, ceramic, circuits and weaponry sits unseen in the gathering dusk. A twig snaps underfoot.

The metal monster unfolds from its rest.

“Intruder detected. Activating weapons systems. Targeting…”

The heavy machine gun on the mech’s right arm spins up as three dots of blue appear on her forehead. The left arm’s plates spread apart, revealing a rocket.

“M’not scared of you,” she huffs.

“Organic intruder has five seconds to vacate the premises before I use lethal force.”

“Mechs don’t say ‘I’,” she huffs, hands on hips as she shakes her head to flip her pigtail out of her face. “S’lot of them at mommy’s work. Not even the big ones…jimmies…no. YMIRs.”

“So…uh…YMIR-8 suffering operating system error. Error. Error. Err….bloooop! Powering down.”

A blonde woman armed with a barbecue fork and a half eaten caramel apple appears around the corner of the patio, making the giant backpedal.

“Nina! Don’t scare them.”

The mech’s ‘head’ splits apart as Nina opens the suit’s mask.

“It’s all right!” the girl chirps. “I’m not scared, Mrs. Maller. Cool Halloween costume, Nina. It’s neat that you’re so tall.”

=====

Trini carefully hands Delilah off to the greedy, flexing fingers of the minister’s wife. Mrs. Howard takes the tiny, blue-and-red-spotted body into her arms and rocks it with nigh-instinctive motions of a mother, grandmother and soon to be great-grandmother.

“Oh, they are darlings! And you look well rested. Do you take turns, or what?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, just that when I had my first, I couldn’t get more than an hour’s sleep. Always waking up to crying and trying to figure out what they needed.”

Trini grins.

“See, that’s the thing. Asari babies are pretty agreeable. Put them in bed with momma, who wants to sleep, give her a little skin to rest on, and she’ll want to sleep, too. Unless she really needs something. And they don’t cry much.”

The look Trini receives is one of such jealousy that it goes far, far beyond the mortal sin of envy.

Trini reaches between their armchairs and brushes a thumb across Deli’s soft little crests.

“They meld. So you just wear short sleeves and keep them on your hip if they’re awake. Right now she is…a little hungry.”

“You can tell what she’s thinking?”

Trini shrugs.

“Thinking is a generous term. More like…I’m not sure how to describe it. Half of a feeling? What urges she has, if she’s scared or not.“

“Deli and Sally will grow slowly. Walking by four, five. Reading by nine, though with Kelsey’s smarts involved, I’m afraid at least one will learn to read first. Back hom-”

Trini winces at the near miss. “That’s how Nina grew up too. All asari. It’s how they keep the eezo from hurting them. Grow into it.”

“Fascinating,” the town’s unofficial queen whispers, though she clearly means Deli’s scrunched pout and her attempt to biotic the woman’s locket into her mouth.

Salome fusses awake in her crib and Trini reaches out with a cupped palm, cradling her in her biotics and bringing her close. She’s back asleep before Trini catches her and slides her into the crook of her arm.

“And you can jus-oh my, that’s handy!”

“Gentle biotics nearby means mom nearby,” Trini whispers.

“Works…maybe a third of the time. Rest of the time, just do what you’re doing,” she jokes.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Mrs. Howard admits, staring at her own hand where it has come to rest on Deli’s crests of its own accord.

=====

The door to the office swishes open and Garrus glances in the corner-check mirror. She can’t quite shake the shock of seeing her face, real face: Sleek, flush mandibles, tips refashioned into sturdy jaw-horns, spikes another soldier once called ‘studly’ bent into a close, wavy crown that wraps around her wider, stronger neck. Her collar sawed down to a quarter its height, and the material added to the carapace, arms lengthened and hips broadened to match her shoulders and height–door width be damned–and fifty other tweaks to skeleton, carapace and innards. Her old, blocky male plates were removed from chest, legs and shoulders and refashioned into hundreds of wedges that dot her entire body and shimmer in the right light. Donor tissue from her mother and Solana.

Now that that will be a fun favor to repay someday, Solana calling the debt so she can continue corrupting her semi-nieces…

The doctor who helped her seemed shocked that she wanted the same name. Apparently, most turians passing through that particular deck on the hospital ship switch theirs.

“Hello?”

Shaken from her reverie, Garrus looks in the mirror again and sees an asari with powdery, dark red scales poke her crested head in and tries to look around the teetering stacks of datapads.

“Detective Vakarian? I have a…Tali’Zorah nar Rayya asking to see you. Are you even in here? Goddess. Better you than me but no one deserves sorting duty on the varrenshit files.”

“Back here,” Garrus croaks, waving and hoping her hand pokes above the top of the stack. Spirits, talking hurts. “Go on in, Miss Zorah.”

“Thank you, Officer Palero.”

The new hire for Zakera ward. Who stayed on after she heard what Fisk did to the old one and asked for the only krogan on the force as a partner.

Garrus hasn’t had the misfortune to spar with the cheerful matron–or youngish matriarch? she never knows if she should ask–but if Palero isn’t killed or driven off by Harkin’s drunk leering before the next raid on Fisk’s place, he’s going to learn what ‘retired huntress’ looks like and Zakera ward is going to need a replacement scumbag-in-chief.

[herpronuonsarefemslash]

Black and Blue - Teaser 1/3

A lightly horror-themed, mid-length (60,000 word) work setting up my "Blood and Treasure" story and introducing bits of my altered ME worldbuilding.

Chapter 1 to 5 (patron exclusive) 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-1-58119478 

Chapter 6 to 10 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-6-58262841 

Chapter 11 to 13 (patron exclusive)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/black-and-blue-58353145  Out of context teasers for Chapters 1 to 5: “Deploy scanner pylon, Daniel. This station concerning. Must restore power, dehumidifiers.”

“Yeah, you did not say we’d be boarding the ship from Alien, Doc. Reading around forty asari, roaming freely. Two in cells. Six each of krogan, humans, drell, salarians, turians, and…quarians. Weird. I don’t see any decon equipment for quarian. Two hanar. Two not recognized but they’re big. Five cryo pods in rooms that are throwing up a lot of chemical warnings. Labs, probably..”

“Respiration advisable, Daniel. Attempt to lower heart rate. Blood oxygen crucial in humans.” “Doc, I’m seeing probably a hundred dead salarians. Mostly in armor. With guns.” “Good.” “Good?” “Station markings indicate DRAG Zero group. Highly unethical. Exclusively conducts Council-banned projects. Success unlikely, but value massive. Virus-delivered explosives. Corpse re-animation as psychological warfare. Proposal for using multiverse theory to awaken theoretical ultrafauna. Allegedly a pachyderm-cephalpod hybrid. Attempted to open file. Heard moaning instructing me not to speak its name. Parasitic lifeforms utilizing oral impregnation and carnivorous larval emergence through sternum.” “Yeah. Was actually just joking about the movie doc, didn’t even think you’d seen Alien. But good one.” “No time for humor, Daniel. If interested, audition for open mic night.” “Surely not! Asari to alien ratio consistent. Matches experimental design. No… Cannot be. Project too dangerous. Assurances that it was thought experiment insufficient. Deleted files. Killed co-designer. Evidence disagrees. My work, my responsibility.”

=====

“Do you hear th-SHIT! RUN!”

“Excellent. Subject approaching. Must locate additional storage. Omnitool! Begin recording mode.”

“Doc, I’m begging you…”

“Return to the ship, Daniel.”

“That does it, I’m going back to law school.”

=====

“In law school, no one ever asks m-YAAAAA!”

Standing directly in Daniel’s path and no longer perfectly matching the dim corridor behind her, is a very much naked, very much dripping wet asari. About his height, but juicy for an asari so young. Broader shoulders, broader hips, every inch of her powerful frame is used to hang springy curves that just need a little squeeze. A whole plate of creamy desserts, cheesecake and meringue and whipped cream, not just an appetizer of two honeyed blueberries.

Little sparkles all over her skin from the bathwater make her look fucking lickable, like a cinnamon sugar do-

“You interrupted my bath,” she purrs and fuck. He’s not sure how many sexy voices that was, but a choir echoes in her every word.

Her eyes are liquid and the ‘eyelashes’ that keep asari eyes clean in the water flicker temptingly as she pouts and bats her eyes. Large. Adorable forest-creature large, drawing attention like a magnet.

Also, he realizes, her eyes are numerous. The dark gray ring around her eyes isn’t eyeshadow. The lower curve blends into raised, not-quite-opaque gray scales–or actual skin, because who knows with her–in swoops shaped like she’d dipped her thumb in ink and traced a curve from her eyelids out, curling back to and then running down her cheekbones.

Something makes her blink, and under the smoky gray cover, four pairs of eyes blink in unison. A string of yellow orbs with splotchy figure-eights of blue for pupils, separated by rings of protective muscle, filling a finger-wide channel in her skin. The size and color remind him of yellow grapes more than anything. At the tip of the swoop, crowning the sharp ridge of her cheekbones, are a pair of all black eyes that are unmistakably drell, but well-disguised by the same protective membrane. Given their location on her cheekbones, a passerby could decide that everything was obviously just tattoos or face jewelry and the drell eyes would merely seem like ostentatious obsidian.

Daniel would’ve thought she was an asari maiden with weird tastes in makeup and cosmetic surgery and scalestain unless he got close enough to lick her, or unless he knew that it was possible that a drell-like asari was on the loose, and he was looking for camouflage skin, borrowed anatomy and differences that went beyond shorter or less curled crests, or clunkier, more bone-like scales on the top of the head.

=====

“Director Vint, a pleasure doing business…”

Her audio’s feed reverbs, making all present wince.

A massive biotic field lifts him off his feet and pulls him down the corridor before spinning him around. The matriarch’s dark gray dress from this morning has been replaced with ornate, customized commando leathers of purple, red and orange–the colors of a Thessian sunset on a day when the eezo clouds are chokingly thick–that fade downwards from neck to boots. Her leathers are several layers thicker than is usual and segmented hardplates protect key parts of her body.

A long warpsword that hums faintly in the quiet and sizzles with teal light is gripped in her left hand. The slight curve of the blade and the angle of the handle means that she could cut ten throats with a pirouette. A shorter and straighter blade is sheathed diagonally across her midsection, to be drawn in a flash if she needs to parry. Clipped to her shoulder is a hand-chiseled mask of smoky crystal with an armored inner lining.

He remembers that blade. It came up in the do-not-engage lists of possible alien combatants. Blackfin. A blade that only asari holding the office of Will of Sunset may wield. The assassin and thief sworn only to the needs of the Thirty and by extension, their plans for the asari.

“The asari thank you for your service.”

“You…Thirty…” he rasps, spitting blood at her feet. “Figures.”

“Don’t feel bad, kid. Of course I tricked you: I’ve once had a bruise on my ass live longer than your kind do. Your diligent work on our behalf and innovations regarding our reproductive health and the Ardat-Yakshi condition will be the talk of our universities, I’m sure. Publish or perish, you know how it is. And now that you’ve seen the armor and seen my face, we should wrap it up.”

A noose of invisible force closes around his throat. Satisfied that he’s silenced, she raises her omni to speak into it.

“Cover your ears, kids. You too, Dr. Solus. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

A flicker of teal in the dark.

=====

A large hand lands an unkind swat on her ass and she wakes with a start.

“Tev, get…up.”

Aria rolls over, clearly bothered at the interruption but not so bothered as to break their sleeping-clasp. She winds her longer legs around Tevos’ ankles to keep her own half of the siame meld as Tevos reaches for the dish on her side of the spatter of massive, supple cushions that to Aria is a ‘bed’ and uses it to cover the blinking light of her omnitool long enough to let her bondmate go back to sleep.

Lycoris’ coos grow louder for a few moments, making Tevos’ entire body go taut. Comfort your child! A gentle halo of sea-blue and salt-white light wraps around the little one and draws her from her sleeping cushion over to Aria’s arms, where she immediately quiets…and the most ruthless asari in ages chuckles happily as the newborn murmurs nonsense into her ainthar’s skin.

“Better if you deal with whoever’s calling than me,” Aria whispers, her biotics yanking a small pillow from who-knows-where in this varren’s den of a bedroom and swatting Tevos with it. “Sleep…” she murmurs, bringing her lips to Lycoris’ crests. “Sleep little scholar, sleep little warrior, sleep little shadow.”

=====

She blunders into the wall and topples backwards. Reflex kicks in and her biotics suspend her before she hits, but it’s not a graceful save. In the Chambers, finding her way from nearly sprawled on her ass back to her feet would be about as embarrassing as actually falling, although the latter would no doubt prompt rumors–Are the Councilor’s biotics failing? Read here!–that no one wants or needs.

A sinewy arm appears in the light her biotics cast. Liselle wraps her hand in a tight grip and pulls her up easily.

“Sorry, mom.”

“I walked into you, Liselle.”

“And I’m flattered,” she shoots back, entirely jokingly in Tevos’ case. “As you should be.” It’s banter between them, but aimed at any other asari be they maiden, matron, matriarch, happily bonded or thrill-seeking…Tevos reminds herself to ask their doctor about getting high-grade contraceptives for Liselle and her bedmates. First thing in the morning.

Mother and daughter regard each other for a silent moment. ‘Lissi’ is the product of an intense fling with two turian cabalists on Omega, one of whom still visits. By her age, she was conceived when Tevos and Aria were talking about the ceremony in rough outlines and laying plans to announce it to enough people to keep Tevos from being called a traitor but not so many it became the only topic of discussion in asari space.

Jealousy never came into it for Tevos. Aria couldn’t even remember the name of the male cabalist but she’d remembered Tevos’ pillow talk nearly verbatim, carrying it for a century. Sweet, soft-spoken Nyreen isn’t Liselle’s ainthar, they finally discovered, but she’s a good influence and a welcome addition to the family.

“Mark it read and go back to bed, mother. Even Valern will notice if you don’t start sleeping.”

Liselle presses a kiss to her cheek, and a blast of pure affection cut with a maiden’s exasperation at her silly old mother flickers through the mother’s meld she forms.

“Good night.”

=====

Aria yawns. Lycoris mimics her, her tiny tongue scraping across Aria’s scales. The antique wall-mounted chrono tells her that it’s morning, but that fact can damn well stay outside the bedroom where it belongs.

Hungry. It’s an awareness, not really a thought–like it always is for newborns–but it hits hard. Tiny fingers drag against her breast, the meld Ly’s using widens and Aria pushes back her regret that those aren’t the breasts she wants

“Breakfast time for you and me both, little one. Let’s see what your mother got up to.”

Curling her arm around Lycoris’ swaddled shape–she is so tiny–and nestling her in her elbow, Aria climbs out of the pillows and silks and waves her hand at the robe on the hooks inside the door, calling hers to her.

“Silly me,” she whispers to Lycoris, draping her house-robe over one of the Nos Astra doublebar’s anchors and retrieving Tevos’ robe instead. She lets the smell of cream-based scale oil–hand stirred, because of course Miss Perfect Councilor stirs her own skincare products, switching fruits week-to-week–and a jungle’s worth of Thessian crops fill her lungs. Ly pulls the loose end of the upper sash into her fingers and then her mouth, gumming happily at the familiar smell.

She pats back another yawn.

“Your big sister is smart,” Aria chuckles, watching Ly lift her tiny hand to her own mouth and stare up in puzzlement when it doesn’t magically make her yawn. “Like your mom.”

“I’ll put you on her pillow later and you can tap her on the crests if she’s not awake in a few hours,” Aria suggests. Lycoris looks up at her with blue, blue, blue eyes–how can Tevos not see herself in them?–and she could swear the agreeable little half-thought she gets back through the mother’s meld means she understood and is looking forward to her first-ever little sister prank.

Aria leans into the kitchen only to find an auto-oven twinkling with yellow warning lights, half a cremated loaf of cream-and-berry bread in the sink and a jam-smeared knife beside it. Goddess, she was in a hurry. She ate the other half of that catastrophe. She fires up her omnitool and taps out an order for actual breakfast and fires off a message to Griff and Mylei to do their turian playboy and asari floozy routine at the street-visible entrance downstairs.

Note to self, figure out how to poach Mylei and her squad from Eclipse…she’d be a good Archon and the team could be House Guard.

Even if she herself can never admit to being Arikolai T’Amal, her daughters are damn well going to wear T’Loak with pride as a truly titled name before she goes. Between Tevos’ old friends, stacks of favors she never remembers to use, Aethyta voting yes just to piss people off, and two or three who’d rather not see what Aria’s like pissed, she’s sure they could get the ennobling vote through the Thirty and as for what she’s accomplished to warrant inclusion, they should ask when the last time was that two thousand systems that share nothing submitted to anyone when tax day or inspections rolled around?

=====

The abbess’ chime rings out just as someone raps her knuckles on the cell of Falere’s door. She glances over at Rila’s empty bed–still hurts, years later–and throws on the rough ravion-wool modesty robe before opening the door.

“How may I serve, Matria-my apologies. It seems you are not the abbess.” The turian outside her door is tall, sharp, silver-scaled and carrying enough weapons to outfit half a team of commandos. His face and hands glitter with circuits and metal plates. His eyes are prosthetic, and across his entire face he wears a deep crater of scarring that likely cost him the original set. The irregular, surging pulses of turian biotics roll off him, fearsome because of the surges and spikes, not weak because of the dips and valleys.

He looks over his shoulder at the abbess and then raises his hand and points a long, void-black and quite clearly sharpened talon down the hall before flickering his biotics down it.

He has done everything he can to enhance the already-deadly gift of biotics and turn himself into this grim wraith.

“A moment with your priso-”

“Novice, SPECTRE Saren. Novice.”

“I see,” he rumbles. “And her devotion to the Goddess was born of her morality, not yours? This monastery exists in secret, atop three fusion warheads on a populated planet–a violation of Council law, law the asari set– and watched by commandos on the nearby hills, as what? Tribute to Athame’s light? No asari under the age of a hundred recorded as boarding a ship coming here has ever returned, save on military vessels?”

The most awesome and fearsome asari matriarch Falere has ever seen–and she can count six Justicars in that number–glides out of the shadows in a many-layered silk gown of crimson and flame yellow and presses a kiss to the turian’s mandibles. Standing in the shadow of her biotics, even now–even when the way they crash against Falere says she’s happy–is like standing naked on the rocks as the sea crashes against them.

Her pale blue face is decorated in a splash of midnight-blue–A birthmark? Surely not? Goddess–and once she has that obvious clue, there’s no question in Falere’s mind. Everything from the finely made bondmate bracelet on her wrist with the gap-link indicating a lapsed bond, to the spirals of diamonds, rubies, tideglass, sharkpearls and other jewelry embedded between the scaled of her face screams her status as one of the Thirty.

“Hello, Falere. I am Benezia T’Soni, from the Sonalere Republic.”

Falere drops into a hasty bow, arms flung wide.

“Matriarch Benezia Qena Zsasi Mehn-Piar-Kanyru T’Soni, Protector of Sonalere, Leader of House T’Soni, Traveling Speaker of the Temple of Athame. Out of the line of Cellinis T’Soni, first Justicar. Under Tevura through Athame, I am honored to meet you.”

Benezia makes a displeased hum.

“They made her memorize that, didn’t they?”

“Takes me longer to recite the Citizen’s Oath,” Saren quips.

=====

“Of course, Matriarch T’Soni.”

“Goddess, you’re going to be stiff about titles, aren’t you?”

She tugs off one of her long, slick gloves–leviathan skin, naturally and probably from a roll of hide ten times older than the monastery–and offers her bare hand to Falere. Bare skin. Bare skin that a meld could pass through, a meld Falere could kill her with. It would take just a moment’s lack of control.

“You honor me, bu-”

“Hush and take it. I doubt you have a thousandth of the danger in you that you think you do. Trust requires a lowering of blades, little one. I am choosing to lower mine first.”

Saren’s mandibles flick.

“And you will not be making her regret that.”

She lays the gloved hand on the back of his head under the spines and drags her fingers, drawing a purr from deep within.

“He fusses so,” she whispers to Falere, as if they were two maidens gossiping.

“Scherd tat,” the big turian slurs, his mandibles slack with drowsy pleasure.

=====

“The fact that your mother was allowed to swear a vengeance-related oath at her induction is a sign of deep rot in the Orde-”

“Surely n-Apologies, matriarch.”

Matriarch T’Soni chuckles.

“Wound so tightly, aren’t you?” she jokes, grinning and rolling her shoulders playfully.

“Leaping to defend the Justicars in all cases without qualification, including correcting me, who has read both Charter and Code, in their untranslated form and who keeps the originals in a case in my study. Programmed to defend your captors to the point of overriding the reflex they’ve hammered into you to tremble in fright at the sight of a matriarch.”

“That…” Falere stammers. “Truth in the latter, surely, and I would never presume to speak to the history of the Order.”

“We need Justicars to hunt monsters, surely. Such protection was and is one of the Order’s oldest and noblest works.”

The matriarch sips her kaffe. Falere wants to reply in the pause that follows but the matriarch raises her hand before the thought can form, let alone the words on the tongue.

“And know that I do not mean Ardat-Yakshi, exclusively.”

She smirks. “After all, when was the last time someone got eaten by a leviathan on a swim, or picked up by an eezo drake? The order is especially useful in the outer Terminus. Laws are few and often lack enforcers but the Temple can be messaged by all and that is a Justicar fighting evil. Because evil is most often ordinary, not fantastical and worked by the healthy rather than the sick.”