#boom writes cr headcanons

[boomerang109]

SOMEONE in the CR/VM fandom writes dyslexic Cass and i cant for the life of me remember who and tumblr search is shit so it won’t tell me

but i just rewatched that scene where pike taught grog how to read (😭) and it was in a compilation so it cut off before the end but im pretty sure if i remember correctly he doesn’t even remember enough to remember the spelling of his own name when the fox’s cunning potion wears off

and ik that eventually he must learn how to read?? that might’ve been covered as something they did in the year off? but ik they let him take twenty minutes to read giant at some point when they really don’t have twenty minutes to spare and like im pretty sure canonically it’s pike who teaches him to read

BUT. this was a long-winded way of getting to. GROG AND CASS BONDING OVER TROUBLE READING!!! and being “behind” in their “age-appropriate” studies. and just. grog who’s a hero of emon and loved and happy despite not having the intelligence that cass is being forced to speed-run as someone who is not only behind in her studies from trauma, but also as a ruler of Whitestone. and maybe she can’t take exactly the same ‘fuck it’ mindset as grog, but maybe he can inspire her a little bit? and maybe she can help him try a little harder to learn things he DOES want to learn, where before his anger would’ve made him say fuck it even if he really did want to learn? cause pike can match him in a lot of things, but at the end of the day she’ll never force him to do things, but cass has that de rolo entitlement that can actually be helpful? and yeah.

CASS AND GROG

[road-rhythm]

Errata, mechanics notes, and miscellany for Hard Mouth

Here are some errata and general notes for Hard Mouth. Likely I'm the only one who cares, but that's good enough for me; I figured I'd be the only who cared about a weird-ass story like HM in the first place. Major spoilers for the entire fic under the cut.

Notes and errata on Dream

Other errata

Other mechanics

Binding

A place for me to dump my own headcanons

I'm relatively new to D&D. When I started watching Critical Role, I'd played one (1) game, and I was hoping listening to CR would help me internalize and remember the rules that were still unwieldy to me. I mainlined Campaign 2 at 3x speed on the podcast and managed to catch up to the live broadcast about three months later, just in time for M9 to lay their trap for the Tombtakers in 2x133.

So: I am a dnd n00b still, I was an even bigger n00b then, and 5e has a lot of spells, subclasses, abilities, effects, monsters, and creatures. Because I am the kind of nerd who fixates on rules, I made an effort to make all the mechanics hold water, but I can't say I cared more about that than I did saying the thing I wanted to say—and also, it was pretty much inevitable I'd miss some stuff.

Which I did.

Notes and errata re: Dream

Hard Mouth exists because I was reading through the wizard spell list, got to Dream, read the description, and went, "Oh. Oh, that could be nasty in the wrong hands." Nobody's nastier than Trent Ikithon, so, boom, a fic about Ikithon waging a Dream siege.

This was well before the party leveled to 15. I'd been sketching stuff out for weeks by the time that happened, so when 2x138 aired and Caleb took Mind Blank, I could've either scrapped the fic or made it AU. I decided to make it AU. It was super-obliging of 2x138 to even offer a handy conceit for explaining the divergence on a Watsonian level with Caleb and Essek sifting through timelines to pull one into being.

Anyway, the first question to ask plot-wise was whether what Trent was attempting could even work. I spent a lot of time thinking about and Googling ways to circumvent or interrupt the Dream spell before I started writing. These were the potential complications I found:

Leomund's Tiny Hut RAW, LTH should block Dream. Yes, really. LTH is bomb for a third-level spell. However, Matt doesn't treat Caleb's dome as a RAW LTH, so I went with how Caleb's dome behaves in Exandria. The description for LTH states that "[s]pells and other magical effects can’t extend through the dome or be cast through it." But C2 has several instances of magical effects extending through Caleb's, in either direction. On Rumblecusp, Caleb still lost memories while sleeping in the dome; Caleb controlled Frumpkin through it, including to watch the conversation the rest of M9 had with the Tombtakers and communicate telepathically with Lucien in 2x122; the Somnovem dreams clearly gave zero fucks; Jester routinely Sent and received replies from inside. So Caleb's dome appears to block localized, directed magical effects and attacks, but not absolutely everything—which, really, makes sense for a third-level abjuration. On a similar note, I've seen some forum posts saying that Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion ought to block Dream, as well. That's inaccurate. Dream works so long as the target is on the same plane as the caster, and MMM is an extra-dimensional dwelling. But you know what probably would have worked? The Happy Fun Ball. Since HM is AU from 2x138 on, I could have stipulated M9 lost the HFB in the Astral Sea or whatever; but the fic was already shaping up to be more than long and complicated enough, and I didn't feel like including a scene or conversational cul-de-sac for no other reason than the mechanics handwave, so I just didn't have it come up. No one's asked about the HFB that I've seen (apologies if somebody did; I do miss comments on previous chapters sometimes), but I wouldn't blame a reader for being annoyed by the omission. I'm at peace with it, though.

Dispel Magic "Shouldn't Dispel Magic at fifth or higher end the Dream spell?" Yes, it would. There is a lot of dispute about how Dispel interacts with various things, but "[o]n a successful check, the spell ends" is pretty clear. Whereupon Trent would cast it again, until he succeeded in inflicting the damage and rest disruption that instantaneously results from the ten-word psychic attack in the event of a failed wisdom save. After God knows how many hours on Reddit and rpgstackexchange and dndbeyond fora and random blogs, the understanding I gleaned—not with any very high degree of confidence—is that Dispel ends ongoing spells and effects, but can't undo the results of an instantaneous event. It can't unring any bells. So what I went with was: if Caleb succeeds on the save, he's good for the remainder of that rest period. If Trent wins in that instant, Caleb takes the psychic damage and loses the benefit of rest for the same eight-hour span. Which actually is giving Caleb a bit of a gift. There's no text in Dream's description that remotely suggests the target is immune for any period if they succeed on their Wisdom save. But Dream is already pretty fucking OP; "one chance per customer" is simpler and seems fair, and it's probably how I'd rule it if I were DMing.

Widogast's Transmogrification The problem with Transmogrification was that for most of the story, they didn't have the components for it. WT requires gem dust and clay. In Aeor, they couldn't lay their hands on either; at Elamrin's, they could have found clay, but not gems. They pick up enough gems in Uthodurn and could have found clay in the Pearlbow; but in-story, at least, that still wasn't their first port of call—not because Caleb "Restore Youth because fuck you" Widogast would have found it too extreme, but because HM sets up from chapter 2 on that elf trance is learned over a period of years. I can't claim I had the foresight to set up that detail to get around WT; frankly, I set it up because I found it appealing at the time. It's there because I liked it. Most things in HM are there because I liked them. Hard Mouth is literally just me throwing out a bunch of iddy stuff and thinking up ways to connect it, and the story is the shape that resulted. Whether someone finds "elf trance is learned" to be fair play or not depends, I guess, on whether they're prepared to consider fanfics setting up their own internal rules fair play or not. Establishing the rules of their fictional worlds is an extremely basic thing all stories must do, so I was fine with doing it wherever it didn't conflict with existing lore. I do think many readers have different standards for fanfic vs o-fic on this score, which is fair. But my only standard for fanfic is, "I do what I want." Possibly I should have had M9 discuss Transmogrification, but as with the Happy Fun Ball, I straight-up didn't feel like writing a scene just to argue mechanics with myself. That's what this post is for.

So those were the mechanical considerations I had at the outset and the conclusions I reached about them. Not finding any magic bullet that would decisively stop Trent from doing what he was attempting in Aeor, I went ahead and started writing.

However, there is one thing that absolutely, decidedly, 100% would have exploded the plot, only I didn't find out about it until I was more than halfway through writing and posting:

Summon Celestial Caduceus and/or Jester casts Summon Celestial and specifies a couatl. The couatl's innate spellcasting ability allows it to cast Greater Restoration (or Dream or Scrying, interestingly enough) once per day. It casts this on Caleb to remove a level of exhaustion.

Boom. Crisis averted.

So, yeah. The other things wouldn't have worked, near as I can tell, but Summon Celestial should. I've seen somebody argue that since Summon Celestial is itself a fifth-level spell, the celestial you summon shouldn't be able to cast fifth-level spells, because that would be free spell slots, ergo the celestial should just be able to fight as an ally and, IDK, hang out; but frankly, I see nothing to support that, and it certainly isn't something I'd do to my players if I were DMing.

Honestly, the only reason I realized the Summon Celestial thing at all was that my home game started playing Tomb of Annihilation. We ran into a couatl NPC, and then I happened to be re-listening to 2x127, where Caduceus summons a couatl while they're at a beach, and went, "Wait a minute." I'm mildly annoyed with myself, but it's not like I had the stat block for couatls memorized when I began, and I wasn't about to start over (I think I was working on chapter 14 or 15 by then).

If I had realized the Summon Celestial option earlier, I still would've written HM, but it would've been a radically different story. Short-circuiting the physical assault early on would have shifted the focus entirely to Trent's psychological warfare. Hard Mouth deals with some of that head-on after Aeor, anyway, with Trent trying to mine Caleb's memory for intel. But the bigger issue was always, "How long does it take to harass someone to death this way?" And removing the physical peril arc would have centered that a lot more.

I think that would have been a much harder story to write, technically and otherwise. The physical exhaustion, and the more tidily defined, understandable crisis it precipitates, actually offloads a lot of the stress of… everything else fucked up in that scenario. It gives Caleb something to focus on so that he can not ask himself questions like, "How much longer can I live with Trent Ikithon having a free pass to my head, with my will and boundaries and separate identity meaning nothing, with custom-made nightmares, with never getting any fucking rest?" Because removing exhaustion isn't the same as resting. That's the weird thing about Greater Restoration. With couatls on tap, Caleb could have just stayed awake indefinitely—physically. But how long could he do that psychologically?

Hard Mouth already skirts those questions: after all, it's not physical exhaustion that makes Caleb seriously consider suicide. But I'm kind of glad I didn't find out about couatls until I was too far in to change anything, because I think it would've been a much bleaker story if I had.

Other errata

In chapter 6, concentration is a mess all over the otyugh fight. First, Essek casts Haste on Caleb to counteract his exhaustion-halved speed. Then Caleb casts it on Beau. But then Caleb casts Wall of Force horizontally over the well M9 are in, using Allura's staff—and that's concentration, too. So Haste should have dropped on Beau there and then, not thirty seconds later in the tunnel. Furthermore, the Dancing Lights cantrip is also concentration, so when Essek cast that in the tunnel, Haste should then have dropped on Caleb. It's not a big deal, as it doesn't change the outcome any; Wall of Force lasts for ten minutes, so six seconds (one round) each for Beau and Caleb to get their breath back before they all crawl into the tunnel wouldn't matter. In fact, there's no reason I couldn't just edit the scene to fix it. But while I care about this inaccuracy enough to be annoyed by it, apparently I don't care enough to override my basic laziness.

Also in chapter 6, the party "finds out what an otyugh is." Just one problem: they fought an otyugh in the Victory Pit! The monster is never named in the episode, and although Matt's description is pretty clear, I never put it together until I happened to check that wiki page for something unrelated just a few weeks ago. Oh, well. My early lack of familiarity with dnd monsters strikes again. At least this error doesn't negate the entire plot.

In chapter 7, Caleb and Essek sit in their respective LTH domes chatting with their heads out. In 2x75, however, Matt specifies that the dome will drop if the caster pokes their head out, which I missed or forgot. On the other hand, in 2x30, the very first time Caleb casts the dome, Liam specifically describes him sticking his head out of it. The reason for 2x75's discussion was because Marisha was trying to figure out if Caleb (whom she was controlling in that ep) could cast while maintaining the dome, and Matt was ruling no, which is very clearly RAI. There's lots of other flavor explanations you can give for that other than "no part of the caster's body may pass through the dome or it drops"—if that were the case, Caleb would surely be hypervigilant about staying away from the wall of it all the time, and he isn't—so I'm not too fussed.

In chapter 13, Caleb doesn't want to ask Jester or Essek to cast Modify Memory on him, so, still with very mixed feelings, he asks Caduceus instead. This is a straight-up goof. Modify Memory isn't a cleric spell, and Jester only has it because of her Trickery domain. I even fucking knew that, but I still fucking forgot, and I've been salty at myself ever since. Whatever. Too late now. Maybe I'll write a timestamp where Jester convinces Artagan to teach Caduceus how to cast it for the lulz.

In chapter 18, I had the changeling Volstrucker direct two of her five Steel Wind Strike attacks against Jester to slay her outright. That was a misreading of the spell: SWS indeed grants up to five attacks, but each one must be against a separate target. However, she would have been able to land in melee range of Jester, as specified by the spell, and then take her second Glyph Chant melee attack the old-fashioned way, which would still have been an auto-crit after the overchanneled force damage. I guess I could go back and edit that, but it would be a more convoluted description for the same end result. Plus, I'm lazy.

In chapter 21, Caleb triggers a Glyph of Warding cast by Jester to contain Essek's Mind Blank. I'm not sure whether most DMs would in fact allow two casters to "collaborate" on a Glyph, but I think Matt "Sure, y'all can do tandem wizardry to break this homebrewed gem and bend reality in a way there's no actual spell for because it's fucking cool" Mercer probably would with an adequate ability check. That's not the error, though; the goof is that GoW specifies that "[w]hen you cast this spell, you inscribe a glyph that harms* other creatures." I straight-up forgot that bit and didn't have occasion to check the spell description until well afterward. Like Modify Memory, this error actually irritates me more than the Summon Celestial short-circuit, because I couldn't have known to ask the question that would have gotten me to Summon Celestial, but goddamnit, I definitely should have known these. Oh, well. *Erratum to the erratum: although the text provided at the above link definitely read "harms" when I wrote this post, as of March 2022, it says what I thought it said when I wrote the chapter: "creates a magical effect." So now I don't know what to think. I live in a world of lies, lies and perfidy.

Other mechanics notes

I made myself a little chart for translating 5e exhaustion levels into practical effects, if that's any use to anybody.

Notes for fan binding

Several people have offhandedly mentioned wanting bound copies of HM, and one person has approached me about it directly. Although I ask that the text is not submitted to any print-on-demand services (due to TOS excluding transformative works and/or granting the service rights to reproducing submissions), I have no objection at all to anybody printing off and/or binding the fic for their own personal use. Even if I did, people should still do it if they want, because noncommercial hobbyist fan binding is neither illegal nor wrong, and AO3 offers download options for a reason.

The only thing to know is that I will probably continue to make ninja-edits to the fic for a couple of weeks forever. After outlining (a lot), writing for me is a process of trying to transcribe scenes and moods out of my head. Sometimes the transcription sucks. Hard Mouth is unbetaed and, other than cursory attempts to proofread when I coded in the HTML, unedited work. I haven't even really read all of it; if I had any plans to produce a second one, I'd call it a first draft. All of which is to say that any time I do open it up on AO3, I find a slew of typos and unnecessary clauses and flat-out cringey prose, and then I fiddle with them. You don't have to care about that, but if you do care about it, well, there it is.

Roadie's headcanon dumping ground

For reasons of flow and focus I ended up not writing it, but at one point I imagined Essek mentioning to Astrid, in their epilogue conversation, that he'd heard that Ikithon tried to teleport right before the Scourgers turned on him, but was counterspelled at ninth. In all the inquests since, no one has been able to determine where that counterspell came from. How interesting, Astrid would have politely replied.

Artagan calls in Beau's agreement to be Polymorphed back into a cockroach at some point at a high-brow, high-stakes diplomatic function at which she is representing the Cobalt Soul.

There were a couple other things that were supposed to go here, but I've already forgotten them. Whatever. I'll shove them in later.

[brightlotusmoon]

Yada yada yada: Gimme prompts. Anything goes, even the weird stuff. Doesn’t have to be Mikey-centric, but Mike does need to be there. 1. I’m cool with tormenting the other turtles, putting them in various situations, and altering their characters to a degree. 2. What-Ifs and AUs! Splinter can be dead in any iteration, or alive, or a Force Ghost. Angel from 2003 can be in 2012. April can have any profession and Casey can have a day job. Don can work remotely with a university science lab and never show his face and be a great multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary  and cross- disciplinary tech engineering scientist.  (Scientists: “I will investigate why you suck.” Engineers: “I don’t care why, but I will quantify, to five decimal places, exactly how much you suck.”)*   Raph and Leo can each mentor abused and bullied kids both human and mutant via online chats eventually meeting privately for martial arts lessons, each in their own style, often blending techniques. Mikey can work unseen in a restaurant that becomes wildly popular after befriending the human owners and workers who keep his secret faithfully. Mikey can work quietly unseen backstage at a large urgent care clinic, covert and concealed, seen only by those who have been saved by the Ninja Turtles and by those who can keep his secret, as he empathically soothes with a shining joyous bedside manner and swift acrobatic stealth tactics that help patients recover with surprised happy ease and that always help the nurses, care workers, medical staff, and support staff feel less stressed, more cheerful, with smaller burdens, because he’s a masterful ninja and consummate gymnast who can perform sleight of hand easily. Kids adore him and they make up stories together. Mikey can write fantasy novels and poetry (he already does this in Mirage), he can make comic books, he can create paintings, and he can have a human friend as his representative to accept accolades until he is able to show himself to the world. Imagine 2003 Angel or IDW Woody, explaining to the public that the artist refuses to been shown due to disability, and the public accepting and embracing the writer who works in the shadows. 2a. Really, Mikey could do many things once he worked psychologically, medically, therapeutically, and interconne  with his executive dysfunction, attention distraction redirection disorder (better wording than deficit, we’re not deficit, we’re overwhelmed and distracted and our attention can’t maintain without disorder and chaos). If he were not a ninja, he would still be an expert martial artist and warrior: he already is a vigorous, outstanding acrobatic athlete and natural gymnast , a performing trickster, a natural entertainer, a fundamental optimist, a dynamic sensitive ambivert, a naive and ingenuous yet sly, coy, crafty, creative artistic sprite who already knows his whole mind and spirit and is able to be pure in his innocence, wisdom, love, and anger - a purity means there is nothing else, nothing to reduce, decrease, muddy, bother, leaving only the one intact and lone. A pure emotion is a single emotion without any other emotion to alter, warp, in a sense corrupt to change the basic universal oneness. Very few people have the capacity for emotional purity…thus a sad Mikey, an angry Mikey, a cunning Mikey, or a purely single-minded Mikey is a Mikey who is a significant force of unstoppable nature until he exhausts himself. His family has realized as a whole that they prefer Michelangelo distracted and laughing, entertaining himself with multiple sources, kept preferably happy and functionally innocent or at least incorruptable. He is absolutely full of scheming and deception, he is a natural methodical actor, calculating, crafty and beguiling, capricious and erratic, cunning, knavish, slippery, sly, underhanded, wily and deliberately unpredictable, acting bratty and unreliable, thus these traits need to be aimed toward positive, admirable, morally good, heroic, good-natured and fun. He is extremely keen and agile when it comes to avoiding burdens of responsibility, unless he must become that kind of strong, stringent, and steadfast that he knows can save the world. Mikey doesn’t want to be malicious or malevolent, but as he is endlessly kind (by his curious fascination with the whole world and his nearly philanthrophic nature, as well as due to his unquenchable exuberance regarding human entertainment, recreation, amusements, delights, and privileges) he can often enter a dissociative or fugue state where he doesn’t remember himself turning vicious and menacing and seeking to harm, hurt, punish, damage, and intimidate, deeply scathing until he causes panic and enough fright to scatter the enemy and fill them with dread. Yet his kindliness and playful sense of wonder are so intrinsic that once he regains awareness and understanding, Mikey will crumble in disbelief and upset, distraught and terrified mainly over his dark side and his lack of awareness. Raphael is the one to help him recover and reconcile with his inner killer, while Leo helps him piece his emotional revitalization and spiritual renewal. Mikey is easy to replenish. I probably just wrote myself a whole oneshot right here. 3. Imagine Klunk and Ice Cream Kitty hanging out with Chompy and with Pete, that bird 1987 Mike had for a while. Let’s add in Pepperoni and Anchovy from IDW. Or any random animal companion. I can see Donatello with a pet monitor lizard that fetches things. Klunk becomes Mikey’s emotional service animal. Chompy becomes a service pet for both Mikey and Raph. Mikey keeps rescuing abandoned cats, reptiles, and birds, and Donnie has to build a whole room for them. Some of them learn to communicate, and to carry things like the TV remote, bags of chips, small tools, nutrition bars to remind Donnie to eat. Headcanon, btw: | Donnie and Mikey are Team Healer, Healer Bros, or Team Boom. Raph and Mikey are Team Chaos or Empath Bros or Chaos Bros. Leo and Mikey are Spiritual Intuition Bros or Team Spiritual.

[siffrinskicks]

Okay the CR season(??) finale is getting closer and I feel like now’s a good time to share one of my personal headcanon/AU (ficlet??) thing. 

So a lot of people, when they write future baby fics, like to have Kiki (with Vax) or Vex get pregnant and later find out they’re having twins.

Don’t get me wrong I love that but hear me out

Vex and Percy aren’t TRYING to have a kid but they get a little lax with whatever magic birth control they have and boom she’s preggers. They talk about it and decide that they want to keep the kid and start prepping and thinking about how to break the news.

Now over in Zephyra Vax & Kiki have been trying to have a kid. They haven’t told anyone cause they don’t wanna get any hope up till they’re sure. After a month they conceive and take a little time to make sure it sticks, another few weeks grace period just to be sure. 

They both send each other a letter at around the same time. Vex is a month or so further along than Keyleth but they each get a letter about the same day saying, essentially, “hey we’re having a baby”

Both couples really want to see each other but have duties that bind them to their towns and so they send letters back and forth and everything is talked over and junk.

Then for some reason a council meeting is called (maybe something to do with those new adventurers 👀👀👀) and all of VM are called to Emon for a lot of political bull while Vex and Kiki are both VERY pregnant (Vex probably already past due and ready to burst and Kiki around the 8 month mark)

Percy tries (once) to convince Vex to stay in whitestone cause of the baby and Vex shushes him and reasons that Pike will be there along with many other healers and clerics so she’ll be perfectly fine and probably a bit better off than in whitestone, he relents cause he knows she really wants to see her family (he does too) and since Kiki is picking them up via transport via plants spell they dont have to worry bout travel time. 

Vax tries a little harder to convince Kiki to stay but she argues that travel really isnt an issue cause she can bamf them there and shes confident in her abilities even while pregnant (he is still doe-eyed whenever she does anything that shows how powerful she is).

So they all meet up with the rest of VM and their friends and its a serious thing but also its a bit of a family reunion.

Halfway into their visit theyre in the middle of a meeting and Vex is getting a lil uncomf so she excuses herself for a mo’ thinking the lil bab was gettin restless so she takes a walk around the hall when she feels a wetness between her legs and theres a second of ‘wtf did i just piss myself’ then the split second realization of ‘oh shit the babys more than restless the baby wants OUT’  

She then, very calmly and quickly walks back to the council room, walks over to where VM is sitting and says to the room “Excuse me dears but may I borrow my family for a moment.” and some rando ass says something dickish abt women/pregnant woman and their ‘weak constitutions’ or w/e and vex just cuts through his life with a sharp threatening smile and says “Oh I’m perfectly fine staying but I assume it would be a little distracting to see me giving birth right here in front of the whole council.” 

The room goes quiet and then theres a burst of energy as the whole of VM starts rushing Vex out and to a cot or sthn where they can help out. They call in a few other healers and they make most of VM wait (wait waitwait) outside or just futher away so they can work an prep an stuff. 

Keyleth is feel v stressed right now so she starts pacing a bit and Vax is trying to calm her down but he’s also freaking out a bit. They wait there for a few hours (birthing is hard man) and Vax can’t really handle hearing his sister scream when the contractions come so he invites Kiki on a walk around the gardens.

They walk ‘n talk for a bit when Kiki starts feelin’ the bab moving around so they sit on a bench for a bit and when they stop the get up and start walking but Vax puts and arm around her waist and notices a damp patch but when he looks is less a damp patch and more her entire ass is p soaked then he looks at the bench and sees a wet ass print then he looks at kiki and she looks at him and they both look at her stomach and then he picks her up princess carry and starts runnin back to Vex’s room.

They burst through the doot and everyone stares as a very frazzled vax carrying a very resigned but still kinda panicky looking kiki rush in. He zooms over to a bed near vex and lays kiki down in it and they explain what happened.

They call in a few more healers and luckily Vex was between contractions at the time so she wasnt shouting over everyone. She was, however, sobbing a bit and when asked why she blubbered out “We’re having our babies at the same time and we all get to be here for it, they’re both gonna be born surrounded by so much love.” which then made Vax start crying and soon p much everyone was a little teary eyed (Except for Tary cause he left the room a little while ago cause he was oogied out by all the blood and stuff, when he was told about it later he also cried)

They both go through the night and luckily their contractions didn’t tend to line up too much and eventually they start crowning and the room is filled with the cries of one quarter elf baby and legit minutes later they are echoed by a little half elven baby, a boy and a girl.

After a grueling 16 hours of childbirth the two moms are tired as shit so they hold their babes for a lil bit then promptly conk out. There is a little scare cause Kiki’s babe is a little preemie but Pike is able to stabilize the lil one and assure the parents that she’ll be fine. 

Everyone is real exhausted at that point, the moms are passed out in their respective beds. Grog fell asleep sitting against the wall at one point and had eyes drawn over his eyelids. Pike stole one of the beds once she was sure the babs were fine. Scanlan went and found kaylee an gave her a big ole hug and they sat an talked for a bit composing songs for the babes together. allura and kima stopped in at one point to congratulate the families and gave each of them a little enchanted dragon toy (metallic not chromatic ofc).  Gilmore popped in and brought a few sets of real cute baby clothes (a little bear onsie for baby deRolo and a little raven onsie for baby of Zephyra (fr srs kiki why dont you have a surname). Kash and Zahra stop in with their own kid whos likely around 10/11 at this point and they bring well wishes and some advice. The new dads end up in big comfy chairs by their wives, each holding their respective baby and cooing half-asleep at them. 

When Vex wakes up everyone is asleep or out of the room except vax an the babes. 

“I sent Whitey to get some food for all of us, it’s almost lunch time y’know, why is a noble lady like you sleeping in so late.” 

Vex aims a half-hearted punch at his arm which he takes and mimics hurt “Ow, my own sister assaulting me on the day of my daughter’s birth, how cruel.” Vex looks over to see her own son lying in a little crib by her and looks back to vax, cradling his daughter in his arms. “What are the odds,” she asks “that we just so happened to have kids on the same day. D’you know what this means brother?” Vax cocks his head at her. “No, what does it mean?” 

She grins up at him, “It means they’re twinnies too.”

[boomerang109]

percy’s tremor and his kids

i’m not actually sure when vesper canonically is born/if that’s something that’s been specified but in the headcanons i’ve seen she’s the one that would definitely see the most of the party’s struggles with mental health and even as a child would understand that shaking isn’t usually a benign thing. so when she’s old enough to understand this, but young enough to have not been explained much of the party/percy’s specific trauma’s she asks “daddy why do you shake so much? are you upset all the time?” and he explains that most people only shake when they’re having strong emotions, it’s not like that for him, he just has a tremor. she nods with all the seriousness a young child can muster and files it under “facts about dad” in her brain without a problem

percy is anticipating having the same conversation with the twins, but they never ask, having just noticed it and filed it away the same as any other trait (although rarer)—some people have glasses, some people have different color hair, daddy shakes sometimes. one day when they’re going into town and vex grabs leona’s hand and he grabs wolfe’s, leona protests. “can i hold daddy’s hand? i like the way it jingles” percy is floored and almost tears up on the spot. (if anyone’s confused by the verb jingle, that’s my interpretation of how a little kid might explain the way it feels like a hand can almost feel like it’s vibrating when it’s shaking a lot)

gwen especially likes that his hugs are unique—you always know it’s dad because of the way he feels shakey

leona hates working alone in the workshop, even just the sound of her dad’s arm as it hits up against things (not enough to hurt it, just rustling clothing or brushing against the table) is enough ambient noise to make the whole experience feel so much better

bonus from @romeoandjulietyouwish ‘s happy ending au because for some reason i feel like i have a greater grasp on your ocs characterization than the actual de rolo kids. when birdie is anxious she channels uncle percy and shakes it out (not shaking in terms of having an anxiety attack, but literally just shaking intentionally, like to release energy) and the first time percy sees her do this, he thinks she’s making fun of him (because although his tremor is pretty much always there, it gets worse with stress) but he knows birdie. he knows she wouldn’t do that. so he signs at her, “what are you doing?” and she says “sometimes being like you helps me be less scared” and percy feels oddly touched by it