#balthazar lucienne

[outeremissary]

So happy to be able to share this really really beautiful commission from @pauvre-lola of Balthazar and Tristian!!! Lola's fairy tale storybook style is so so beautiful and magical and it's so delightful to see for Kingmaker of all games. I could gush all day about this. The color. The beautiful twilight, the glimmer around the characters. It's made me very happy and it's been a privilege to see it develop over the past few months. Thank you again <3

[scribblesscribblings]

@mountainashfae @outeremissary I like to think about the banter they’d get into

[stolenlandsshitposts]

Although it didn't wind up finished until over a week after the date, happy belated Sunwrought Festival! This is something of a more joyful follow up to my 2022 art- something I'd wanted to do last year but didn't have the capacity for due to life circumstances. I hope everyone enjoyed their solstice!

(some of the process stuff under the cut.)

[mountainashfae]

I'm also going to be doing OC kiss week :3c

Day 1 is Balthazar and Vio... up to their usual nonsense. Photos taken 2 seconds before Balthazar is knocked on his ass for being an asshole. Their early dynamic is just fun like that.

As always, Balthazar belongs to @outeremissary. They will make a return this week.

[alteremissary]

Archiving the alts for an ask- Balthazar

“Oh, this feels like a sleepover now, doesn’t it? What other scenarios will we be running? Perhaps you have them written on cards- come on, show me, I won’t be left out.” He reaches for your bag with exaggerated curiosity, pulling back with a laugh when it’s tugged away. “Don’t look so put out! What else was I meant to do? You’ll admit it comes off a touch juvenile for the circumstances, hm?”

He sinks back into his chair, twisting one of his curls idly around a finger as he resumes his former relaxed posture. A playful smile dances on his lips as he watches you, drinking in your reaction.

“Honestly, I can’t imagine what has that on your mind. If we’re not playing a game, then you’ve chosen a rather morbid subject. Or a philosophical one, and this-” he gestures broadly to the tavern, bursting with the merrymaking of the early evening- “it hardly seems the right atmosphere, does it? This can’t have been what you wanted.”

His eyes fall on the mug in front of you and he clucks his tongue. “You’ve hardly touched your drink this whole time- no wonder you’re so high strung. Not fond of it? We should get you something else.”

Before you can protest, he’s already waved down a passing server. “I was wondering- this hasn’t worked out for my friend, could you perhaps bring out something else for them? Something… stronger, perhaps.” Before you can protest, he reassures, “On me, of course!”

The exchange is over too quickly to interject. Noticing your discomfort, his expression softens.

“Come on now. Don’t give me that drowned look. We’re here to drink, aren’t we? Let me take care of you.” His hand settles over yours, squeezing gently.

“Hm? The question? Oh, if we must…” He sighs, pulling away. “Mm, I suppose at this rate I’m going to wind up dead in some wretched dungeon or wilderness hellhole.” His lip curls. “This barbaric backwater never seems to settle right.

“I suppose it’s at least better than being sold for parts.”

[5/10, not his favorite. But hey, it really is better than being butchered.]

EDIT: Rediscovered an ask with a similar theme from last year- linking for reference.

[archive-highcourthq]

May we please have a crumb of name suggestions?

check below the cut for some ideas !!!

aislinn

abraxas

acacia

acantha

adira

aeron

aeliana

afton

aldous

amaris

amarillys

anemone

anakin

ascella

ashe

asteria

aster

astro

aurelius

azalea

aliara

bronwen

bara

balthazar

briallen

briony

briar

braith

caelan

caradoc

celandine

calanthe

calix

celeste

cecile

cato

cerella

claudius

cove

corbin

corinda

darius

dominic

daedalus

dimitri

eleri

elestren

edgar

emrys

evander

eirian

elia

elric

fiorello

fleur

flora

florent

florian

florin

forizel

gawain

garance

gardener

griffin

gloriana

gwenllian

gulliver

horatio

horatio

idris

icarus

io

iona

indigo

iris

imogen

isodore

joliette

juno

kito

laertes

lilac

linnea

lupin

laith

leander

lysander

lavinia

lorcan

lucienne

liora

mattaeus

melisande

mirian

myrcella

nico

nox

niamh

nimue

oleander

oberon

owain

oswin

olwyn

percival

pansy

posy

primrose

peregrine

petunia

poppy

rhian

ren

rhodes

rose

roisin

romy

rue

rosen

river

sage

sorcha

tamora

tarian

tristan

twyla

tansy

viviana

vivia

yvaine

willow

zella

[kuroimarzipan]

birthday art for @outeremissary!! im getting into hatching lately and using the textured pen brush

[outeremissary]

Small Balthazar from last night. This outfit brought to you by "idk I don't want to decide which one he already has to draw." Just make a slightly different one it's fine

[outeremissary]

This was a originally for a daily prompt list where the prompt was "trust issues," but I feel like I lost the plot a little on the vibe of that list overall. But god I love drawing those weird plants

(version from the original post before I changed my mind about what looked more Decent lmao)

[scribblesscribblings]

This was supposed to be anatomy studies, but it just turned into a buncha fellas posing dramatically

[outeremissary]

A dance.

This was an oddly long project in some ways- the designs were from last June, when I wanted very badly to draw something wedding-like thanks to the inspiration of the incredible @eurekq and this lovely Trisjuli wedding drawing, and then the sketch for this was put together in February for Valentine's Day. Well, I did not have time in February, so it's all finished now!!

This definitely took a lot of inspiration from both Emma (as mentioned) and @mountainashfae - the Sarenite sun motifs are of course borrowed from Rowan's beautiful designs.

(sketches and version without the bg color under the cut. as is my wont.)

And birds alone because. I like to draw them.

[scribblesscribblings]

They are enjoying a caydenite style hangout

@outeremissary @mountainashfae

[outeremissary]

What is the worst thing your OC does in their story?

Is there a canon character that your OC needs to ask forgiveness towards?

Is there a canon character your OC needs to forgive?

for Carmen or Balthazar maybe??

This got really out of hand- originally I just intended to do one or the other, but I got a little lost in the sauce trying to decide and uh. Both, I guess? I've changed the order of questions in order to put aeon spoilers under a cut for anyone that matters to; I think the rest is reasonably spoiler free for both games.

[prompt list]

Is there a canon character that your OC needs to ask forgiveness towards?

Well, both of them are awful people who often treat others poorly, so in my eyes yes.

But narrowing in more on actual Plots and Arcs, two come to mind for Balthazar. First of all, there’s Tristian, who Balthazar treats dismissively at best and cruelly at worst early on in knowing each other. He’s been willing to drive in the knife on Tristian’s failures in ways that he couldn’t really appreciate the real impact of, and while it’s never really asked there’s definitely a degree to which forgiveness and regret are a necessary part of them becoming closer. He tries to make it up, in his own way. There’s also [redacted] later with Tristian but we’re not getting into All That here. The other character(s) who leap to mind are Regongar and Octavia in a much more mundane way. Balthazar did have a relationship with Regongar early on where he strung Reg along and took advantage of Regongar’s Actual Feelings to manipulate Regongar into imposing his whims onto other people without having to get his hands dirty or be the bad guy in a situation. He also tried to drive a wedge between Regongar and Octavia so that he could be the one with the real influence over Regongar. But ultimately, he throws this all away and breaks Regongar’s heart abandoning him because after suffering his own personal low he finds Regongar far too high maintenance to put up with and he’s at his end with all the gross feelings. Regongar doesn’t take it well. Octavia also doesn’t take it well, because unlike Balthazar, she cares about Regongar. And ultimately it is something that he eventually tries to bridge with them and to ask forgiveness for- first from Octavia, who he hasn’t been able to escape in the interim, and then from Regongar. Character growth: local asshole has discovered the value of friendship and feels something resembling remorse. It’s not really forgiveness that’s easily or immediately given, but it’s a start.

Carmen… this is a thing where I think that she would need to ask forgiveness from certain people if her character arc was going a certain way. Like, Legend and Gold Dragon had both been endgame considerations for her at one point and would have realized a redemption arc that I once intended for her in the tabletop campaign she came from. A big part of taking that path would be recognizing that she has caused other people enormous and often undeserved suffering and that she needs to reevaluate some of her values. She’s an LE character (Wrath may disagree but I’m firm on this), but she’s not evil out of a sense of personal sadism or cruelty. She’s evil because she has let her desire to protect others be filtered through a worldview of such violence and black and white extremes that there’s no room in her eyes for anything except for villains and victims. There’s no nuance and no confusion allowed. Allowing herself to sit with the very, very clear evidence that the need for moral purity is a barrier to actually helping others the way she really, truly wants would push her down a different path, as resistant as she would be to it at first. And I think that a part of committing to that would be that she would want to seek forgiveness from Ember and would need to seek it from Arueshalae. With Ember it’s the matter of always having doubted her, rejecting the message of Exactly This that the girl has tried to impart to her and trying to force her own harsh ideals in turn. And Arueshalae is perhaps one of the greatest victims in Wrath of Carmen’s behavior- and certainly the one who has survived the longest. She would have to find some way to accept that she had been wrong and do something about it- I don’t think her conscience could rest otherwise. And aside from these big names there are all of the many, many other people who she imprisoned, conscripted, or otherwise brutalized in her time commanding the crusade on her quest to fix it. I think she’d spend the rest of her life trying to atone. Kind of an Infinity Train vibe now that I think about it.

Unfortunately for everyone, Carmen is nothing if not a master of digging her heels in and not letting herself linger on anything that could make her a Bad Person, and the Aeon Experience has been allowing her to sink deeper and deeper into a spiral of self validating extremism. So I guess she’ll never need to because she’ll never care enough to think she’s done anything wrong. Sad!

Is there a canon character your OC needs to forgive?

At various points for various spoiler reasons I will thus not answer for, Balthazar needs to forgive Tristian, and does forgive unconditionally. I’m struggling to come up with a Balthazar answer for this that isn’t spoilery past where I am given to understand you’ve gotten to, sorry. ^^;; I guess what I would say is that to me a big part of his growth across time isn’t tied to “needing” to forgive anyone, but reaching a place where he forgives certain people genuinely despite that. I think the “need” to forgive is something that’s been tied up in falling in line with what others want to survive in the past: you let things go (at least for a time) and make up because that gets you through when you’re too vulnerable to stand up for what actually want or feel. And for him the result is being extremely spiteful- given the ability to not forgive or to take revenge, he will always choose that because it affirms to him that he has the freedom to do so (also he really wants t0). Reaching a place where what he really wants is to let go of a wrong done to him accept someone back is not a small thing. While certainly not the only catalyst, a lot of this is reflected in extremely visible ways in his relationship with Tristian and the ways that he works to understand and support Tristian.

Carmen also has a lot of overlap with the above, I guess? If she was going to grow as a person she’d need to come to terms with other people making decisions she doesn’t like but they had valid reasons for and forgive them. Struggling to find a very good specific example here though. At the moment aeon puts her in a weird position where she always seems to sidestep any situation that might ask that kind of Big Difficult Feeling from her- she gets to force her will on others a lot and get them to decide it’s better, and the ability to bend reality so far in some instances it completely wipes away a person’s complex and difficult history for something she finds more palatable is. Well, it’s not conducive to changing one’s ways. At any rate, I think it’s kind of… difficult to imagine a lot of points where she was genuinely wronged in a way that would “need” to be forgiven. Maybe that’s just coming out of my personal feelings on what qualifies a thing as requiring forgiveness though. I guess one interesting place where she does extend a kind of forgiveness is with Nurah- last moment of empathy before aeon brain truly sets in. She doesn’t really blame Nurah for what she does and she sees her actions as reflecting an evil within the crusade rather than a demonic evil. And critically, she lets Nurah go. Flash forward one act and the next time she’s in a position to judge a person she considers innocent and reacting to evil within the crusade, she doesn’t stay her blade.

(In case the cut doesn't work: the aeon spoilers start below.)

What is the worst thing your OC does in their story?

Originally I was going to stick to Balthazar because I’ve actually never completed Carmen’s Wrath run (partly a tech issue in act 4 that persisted a long while, partly just losing a lot of interest in the game in 21-22), but I wound up answering for Balthazar here. So! Carmen it is.

And in terms of what got the most visceral reaction from me, that’s easy!!! That would be the Wintersun mass mindbreak incident!!!! I think it was not particularly Good, the Wintersun mass mindbreak incident. But it’s really representative of who she is and why she’s such a chilling aeon. She’s very, very willing to cut the Gordian knot, consequences be damned, and the powers of the aeon give her the ability to cleave through all those messy issues in reality to impose what she thinks is the correct state of the world. So given this problem (nonlethal but isolating demonic enchantment on people of Wintersun) and offered a non-ideal solution that would mitigate suffering to release them (compromise with a demon) she doesn’t even give Jerribeth the chance to finish making her offer before mass dispelling the enchantment herself. She hears “imagine if this enchantment ended now, wouldn’t it fuck everyone up” and the immediate reaction is "I don't have to imagine." It’s not a threat to her. She has absolutely no remorse about what she does either. Did the air fill with a symphony of screams when she did it? Yeah, but they’ll get over it- so what if they were plunged from peaceful lives into a waking nightmare? This is the truth. They’ll thank her later. Everyone will always thank her later- she knows what they need better than they ever could.

Although the vibes are also pretty rancid on her repeated attempts to murder poor Arueshalae (thwarted only by Ember) and habit of keeping companions she dislikes close so that she’ll be present to kill them at their first slip-up. I suspect that next time I open the game I’m going to have to kill Woljif. Ladies, gentlemen, esteemed colleagues: she's the worst!

[outeremissary]

Bringing out a funny question for the asks that I know already exists in some form. What is the worst thing Balthazar does in their story?

God. What a question when he’s done So Much Shit that the one big list I have isn’t even comprehensive. I think in terms of scale of impact it might be blowing off Jamandi’s summons for the sake of personal relationship drama. That’s not a very interesting or funny answer but also HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE DIED. And it truly does come from such a lack of concern for the lives of others- he’s not particularly fond of Jamandi and feels she demands more than she returns, so in his eyes her life and the lives of every other person on that plain just don’t matter very much. In a petty way, he’d like for her to suffer crippling losses and get off his back. The faceless masses of Rostland who absorb the brunt of that are just numbers to him. And more importantly, how could Jamandi and the threat that is currently firmly a Her Problem be considered in the same breath as Tristian at all?

In terms of smaller scale things… being pretty willing to help Jaethal do Basically Anything isn’t really great when that culminates in super murdering Nortellara, and also having endorsed her holding that unlucky Nortellara look alike against her will all fucking game prior. That’s not awesome. That doesn’t speak well of someone. I know that on my romance run there was a feeble last minute “wait maybe we shouldn’t murder your daughter for…. reasons” that she rejected (still a funny move of hers) but that’s not canon to me. The canon of my heart is very much Balthazar having been All In on killing Nortellara and being upset that Jaethal might be willing to consider backing down because he was at the time trying very hard not to think about if maybe he had an important relationship of his own to mend. Murder your daughter so I don’t have to think about the consequences of my own actions Jaethal :/

But of course there's also this so really who can say

[prompt list]

[scribblesscribblings]

Just a collection of doodles cause I love my friends’ characters <3

[outeremissary]

Many, many months late, I finally finished Day 7 of OC Kiss Week, which was lined and mostly colored back in February when time ran out- a soft kiss for Vio and Balthazar.

This was supposed to have a companion piece which is also still unfinished- I'm hoping to get back to it in coming months! I'm glad that at least these two are finally out there. Thank you again to @mountainashfae for letting me borrow Vio and for being so, so patient with the time I put this aside.