#but I also can’t not feel a little weird about the whole old-immortal / 20-something mortal thing. haha.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Republic of Salt

book two in The Mirror Realm Cycle, historical fantasy set in an alternate Inquisition era Spain

in the human world, Toba and Asmel are on the run, pursued by the Courser and demons

Naftaly, Barsilay, Elena, and the old woman are traveling across the Mazik realm until they reach Zayit - which will soon be under siege by the Cacador due to its trade in salt, which poisons Maziks - and must find a way to save the city and stop the conquest of both worlds

[gretchensinister]

Dark Crystal Vampire AU Part 1: HERE WE GO

I alluded to two different Dark Crystal AUs I probably wouldn’t write, but I figure, I can still talk about them, put them into the hive mind for consideration. It was in conversation with @tejoxys where he brought up the idea of the skeksis being vampires in a “human” AU. I thought that idea was really cool and an opportunity for weird vampires.

So, in this AU, there aren’t any real “regular” vampires; they’re still in folklore and fiction, but if anyone was like “hey I think that guy’s a vampire” everyone else would be like, “stop being a weirdo.”

Therefore, in the grand old tradition of Our Vampires Our Different, here we go:

The UrSkeks: In the 900s there was a small, secretive, mystical/esoteric cult who believed a) they once had been bodiless spirits, fully mature and aware (not like a baby soul waiting to be installed), b) one of their purposes on Earth was to spread the wisdom/knowledge they had due to once being bodiless spirits, and c) the other purpose they had was to become pure immortal spirit again, without dying, and remain ever-living on the Earth.

If I did this I think I’d spell it URSKEK and have it be a relevant acronym for mystic/occult/esoteric terms.

Some problems: a lot of their wisdom and knowledge was like...just utterly wack, or impossible to say if it was or wasn’t true. But some of it was good, and some of it was surprisingly ahead of its time, even when considering the whole world (if I wrote this I would set it somewhere in what is now modern-day Italy). Another problem is that they had a secret 1-7 ranking system for all other people based on how worthy the URSKEKs thought they were to receive URSKEK wisdom.

Anyway, (and here I had to stop myself from going down a rabbit hole of find out what interesting astronomical events were happening in the middle ages) at a certain point all 18 members of the inner circle of the cult have been excommunicated because the cult shit is getting too obvious. (Hmm, wait, there was a solar eclipse visible in some parts of Europe on July 20, 966, maybe that would be a good date for the Big Event. BTW it still troubles me that 2020 ended with what is called a great conjunction on Earth.) Anyway, things are getting hot, even though all the inner circle is pretty wealthy/privileged, there’s talk of heresy trials because WTF are you even talking about. This big astronomical event is going to occur, and the URSKEKs are like, we’re ready, we have everything ready to cast off mortal flesh and become immortal beings of pure spirit.

The aesthetic is very alchemy. (Another significant research hole hindering this project.)

So the URSKEKs prepare this complex ritual to cut their spirits free from their bodies during the eclipse (maybe the thing is that their flesh is “eclipsing” their spirits and as the moon moves away from the sun their radiant spirits can be free).

Now as a writer I’m always up for taking aim at the concept of the body vs. mind/spirit. They’re not really separate! So there’s that issue with the ceremony, along with the fact that the URSKEKs are not as pure and wise as they’d like to believe. Also, most of them are at least a little bit afraid of this ceremony, which, if one has any doubts at all, sounds like an elaborate suicide pact. But they can’t stop now, it needs 18 people to work because 2x3x3 and other math and geometry reasons, and no one else is enlightened enough. So the ceremony starts, and it gets underway, and whoa it seems to actually be working, or at least something’s happening that’s not just bleeding out and dying when you cut your body down the center line with a quartz dagger. But they also feel like they’re losing themselves and they don’t really want to do that (too late).

When totality ends there are now 36 bodies in the ceremony location, with fractured memories and appearances that are now somewhat off from human.

All of them immediately feel that there’s something very wrong about this situation, but it’s hard to think in the confusion.

And then a lower-ranking cult member that they’d arranged to check on them after the ceremony (an honor, to see their new spirit forms and maybe deal with their bodies if they were still there after the transformation) opens the door to the room. And for all of the new skeksis AND urRu, a couple of things become very clear: 1) one of the ways in which they’re different from humans is their fangs, and 2) they need that guy’s blood. Basically a feeding frenzy ensues, and this is when they all learn about paired injuries and paired deaths, and those two pairs whose names I forget die. Exsanguinated by their former cult fellows. Kind of fucked but this is a vampire AU babey.

Now, after this whole shitshow, the 32 remaining vampires are a lot calmer and they’re able to figure out that they’re halves of the URSKEKs. One set of halves (the urRu) is of the opinion that they all represent a horrible failure of the ceremony (they were compelled to tear into that guy like wild animals), while the skeksis halves immediately start insisting that it went right or even better than planned (they’re now above humans and can consume them like any other meat animal). The difference of opinion corresponds to some subtle physical differences between the two as well.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Tell Me Where To Find Shelter -- Weird And Complicated Video Game Crossover AUs Strike Again

Okay, so last week I offered you all an updated rewrite on my old Fallout 4 Sole Survivor!Victor AU, Tell Me Where To Find Shelter. And at the very end of said update, I let you know that I had an idea for fitting Alice into the AU --

Specifically, my Malkavian Alice from Vampire: the Masquerade -- Bloodlines.

Look, the fact of the matter is, Fallout 4 and Bloodlines have been rather closely connected in my head from day one of my purchasing them -- hell, I got them during the same Steam sale! (Along with the BioShock series entire, which is why I had a couple of posts about Tell Me Where to Find Shelter back in 2016, then it dropped off the face of the earth -- I played Bloodlines first, and followed up with that series.) And my “Londerland Bloodlines” playthrough of Bloodlines was done concurrently with my starting up Fallout 4, so -- yeah. Me wanting to figure out how to cross the two over was probably inevitable.

I know what you’re all thinking, of course -- “how the hell do you make this sort of crossover work?” Well, I have had a few ideas:

-->This version of Malkavian Alice and her adventures in 2004 Los Angeles would be much more like the standard fledgling’s, given that the Corpse Bride characters are now born in the future. So the person she saves in the hospital is Heather (who she does manage to send away in time to save her life), and the Giovanni party goes down without dragging an undead version of Lizzie into the mix. Obviously the story and setting would have to be tweaked to fit better into Fallout’s alternate history (though given what the computers in the original game are like, maybe that’s easier than expected). She still goes Independent, and escapes from Los Angeles in the wake of LaCroix’s explosive death, making her way slowly but surely to the East Coast because she has had enough of California and everyone there.

-->She manages to get on with her unlife, watching the growing tensions with China and the Resource Wars with unease, but keeping to herself and doing her best not to let her humanity slip as she gets older. When the bombs fall, she’s sleeping the day away in a basement bunker she set up in Boston -- but the destruction from the explosion ends up collapsing part of the ceiling, burying her in rubble -- with a chunk of timber piercing her heart. She ends up in a staked torpor. . .

-->Until Victor shows up at her location at night to clear out a few raiders who are taking over the place as a base. One of the raiders yanks out the stake to use as a weapon, has three seconds to wonder why it’s got fresh blood on it -- then Alice explodes from her centuries-long hiding place and drinks him dry. Victor is too stunned at first to actually shoot her, and once Alice’s blood thirst has been quest, she immediately puts her hands up and does her best to show she means him no harm. They talk, Alice explains what happened (and goes ahead and admits she’s a vampire when Victor explains about the nuclear apocalypse -- who gives a shit about the Masquerade when the world has ended?), she offers to help with the remaining raiders to prove her good intentions, Victor accepts, and they take down the assholes together.

-->Obviously, Alice isn’t immediately “unlockable” as a companion -- she’s still got her sunlight thing, after all! She and Victor chat about it, and Victor, feeling bad, offers his assistance. Alice accepts -- she misses the sun -- and says that she’ll stay where she is for the moment (after finding a non-partially-collapsed basement to stay in) and keep raiders and monsters out while he searches for information. And so the “Here Comes The Sun” quest begins, with Victor searching for a way to counteract the sunlight curse! I’m thinking this would end up interacting with the Cabot family stuff, because I don’t think it would be hard at all to change the source of their immortality, and the artifact upon Lorenzo’s head, from something alien to something vampiric. Maybe Lorenzo’s partially possessed by the spirit of an Antediluvian, and it’s turned his blood into something close enough to vitae it can make ghouls? At any rate, Jack manages to whip something up after examining some of Alice’s blood (which, naturally, she’s kind of nervous about, but what choice does she have?), and it successfully stops her from burning up in sunlight (though she is weaker in it). A grateful Alice thanks Victor (and Jack) and agrees to travel with him to experience the Commonwealth.

-->As they go on together, they end up getting closer -- Alice likes that Victor is generally a good guy and sympathizes with the story of his lost family; Victor likes Alice’s snarky wit and strong sense of justice. As they share more details of their lives, help out the settlements, and battle monsters together, they realize they’re growing feelings for each other, and eventually get together, facing off against the Institute as a couple and parenting Synth Shaun/Chester together afterwards. (Alice jokes a lot that it took both her dying and the end of the world in general to finally get a domestic happy ending.)

-->Alice’s starting clothes would be a simple blue dress and apron with black buckled boots (the dress would naturally have a big bloody hole right over her heart when she first wakes up; she patches this after you leave her to her own devices for a bit), and she’d have the Tal’Mahe’Ra Blade (her prize from her storming of the Hallowbrook Hotel, taken from Andrei’s lair) as her standard weapon. She has a unique bite attack, being a vampire, and can still use Obfuscate (turning invisible to sneak past/sneak attack enemies) and Dementation (inflict debuffs on enemies so they’re confused and can’t shoot straight, or kill a single enemy from fear alone), though both have a cooldown so Victor can’t rely on her just spamming that to take care of every raider for him! XD Her perk would allow you to drain blood from enemy corpses (which other companions would find less disturbing than outright cannibalism, but still fairly creepy) and/or increase the healing capabilities of blood packs. I’m thinking, once romanced, she’d also have a unique variation of the “Lover’s Embrace” temporary perk, “Love Bite” -- Victor wakes up with HP not fully restored, but the XP boost is greater than “Lover’s Embrace” (+20% vs +15%).

-->Other vampiric elements of the Commonwealth would include:

A) That blood bank you can find? Those bags of blood are warm and fresh because there’s a Tremere there who has built up their power and knows some rituals for preserving the stuff. Unfortunately, they’re also very low humanity by this point, so they end up being a nasty surprise fight.

B) There’s a secret settlement of vampires that is made up of all the various fledglings you could pick from in Bloodlines, having learned to live together after the destruction of vampire society along with human when the bombs fell. The local Tremeres managed some blood sorcery that infused a mutfruit tree with human blood, so plasma fruit, a la The Sims 4, is a thing for them, and allows them to live in relative peace with their human neighbors (though they’ll happily drain anyone who attacks them). They’d probably have a quest revolving around either talking down or killing some vampire hunters who have been eying their base, and they could be persuaded to allow Jack Cabot and family to study them in exchange for vitae to help them stay in their immortal states. Also, the Malkavians openly call Victor the “Sole Survivor” and offer roundabout tips on his quests -- if he can decipher them. XD

C) This is just one that amuses me -- this universe’s Mysterious Stranger is none other than good old Caine! He’s trying to be a little more helpful to mortal and Kindred alike in the post-apocalypse, and has decided this means “showing up randomly to help people out of tight spots before vanishing again.” Alice, upon seeing him, jokes that the cabdriver thing didn’t work out, huh?

D) I’d kind of like to make stimpacks developed from vampire or ghoul blood to explain just how it is they can heal crippled limbs so fast -- the wiki didn’t provide much of an answer there! Which means anyone who uses them is at least slightly a ghoul. . .which might explain a few things about carry weight and why some enemies are so tough. (Legendaries have more vitae in their system, prompting the power-up, maybe?)

So yeah -- that’s how I’d get Bloodlines and Fallout to work together, and thus have my Malkavian!Alice and Sole Survivor!Victor be a couple in the wasteland. Because why make a crossover simple when I could make it way more complicated than it needs to be? XD Look, I just like the mental images I have of them together -- and of Alice taking out a whole army of baddies by hitting them with Voice of Bedlam to throw them into absolute chaos.