#chainrambles

[szilverer]

"Of course they'd finish with combat," opines a passer-by. "They want to end with glory. Who'd stand against a tiger?"

so i came back to FL on 07/08, which means dear lil Reisz woke up in the middle of last Estival just in time for A Tournament of The Body. getting diced by tigers and sliced by soldiers of skite was one of the first things they chose to do, and they did it over and over, as much as they could (bc i was grinding for the medal lol), failing countless times in the process.

failing, but learning.

Looking back, jumping straight to that arena when the most dangerous thing you had done was catching a few rats was an obvious sign that there was something wrong with you. But who's freer to take risks than those with nothing to lose?

The Armoured Veteran is all swagger [...] Her eyes burn. Her armour gleams. Her claws flex in anticipation of the fights to come. Few can bear to meet her gaze for long. If nobody can overcome their fear, then she will surely win.

She howled with laughter when Reisz first volunteered. Anyone could tell they weren't a fighter with a single glance. And yet, how come it was this empty-headed nobody that seemed to gaze back at her most intently? Well, maybe she could use them as warm-up. Scare them a little, bite a few holes in their flesh, toss them around a bit. That'll put them in their place.

She did so. Again and again. Alas, they fainted, they woke up, they chugged bottles of something suspicious and kept their flesh together with tight bandages, then politely requested another match also again and again. They were quick on their feet, at least, and that much tolerance to pain was unexpected, but the dagger felt lost in their hands, the grip too unskilled, the difference in their sizes too great. They could never reach her for a counterattack from the distance they kept when dodging her claws.

There was an odd lack of fear in these eyes, but the body was another matter.

"I can tell you want to be an apex predator just like me, little cub. So why aren't you charging like one?"

Reisz eyes widened with the unexpected advice.

"I can easily kill you. The fact you cannot do the same, and yet still don't strike to kill, borders insult"

They hesitated, taken aback, and she roared, promptly knocking them out in retaliation by striking them on their side and sending them flying against a wall.

Consciousness returned to Reisz only after being dragged to a medical tent. Flashes of the previous sparring matches ran through their mind. She was right. Every time they tried an attack, something kept them at bay, their own body held them back as if begging not to do it, begging to get away, to run, just run- it made Reisz circle around her in perpetual avoidance.

Ah. Instinctual fear.

Reisz had to charge right through it.

The Tournament of Body was coming to a close, and soon the Armoured Veteran would start preparing for some actual challenge. They were lucky she gave them any time at all, truly. Reisz had one last shot. Downing some more bottles of Gebrandt's Tincture of Vigour, adrenaline seemingly pumping from anticipation, they walked back to the arena while strapping the dagger firmly to their forearm, and leaving their tattered black shawl on the floor.

No more concerning themself with a loosening grip from the damage in their bitten muscles and no more concerning themself with obscuring their face, as they always felt compelled to do.

No more concerning themself.

The Armoured Veteran gave a single chuff upon seeing Reisz again. She said she had no more time to waste on warm-ups, but she also said she liked their eyes. One last time, then.

This time they would charge right at her.

...it took some tries to trample over their own instincts. The body wanted them to stop, begged them to run away. But finally, Reisz started dodging without subconsciously pulling away. Focused on not insulting her, with barely any time to think, they found themself swinging at her neck.

Next thing they knew they were on the floor after a explosion of pain in their head. It felt as if blood flowed like tiny warm waterfalls from their face to pool down on the ground. They tried to lift themself up, but the world spun as their vision failed. That would be most concerning to the average person, but only two things echoed in their mind:

One, she really had been just playing with them up that point. If they hadn't taken a step back, she could have easily snapped their neck-- Ripped their head out, even. Reisz had... actually startled her into losing control of her strength for a moment there? Even if just for a sliver of a fraction of a second, she had seen them as an actual threat?

Reisz smiled to themself, nearly giggling, and the increasing pain on their lacerated face kept them conscious. Staggering, they stood up, slowly, hearing sand. Curiously, the Armoured Veteran waited for them.

Two, good thing this dress is red.

A deep breath.

You and the Armoured Veteran circle each other, your weapons red with her, her lips red with you. Her stomach growls as she approaches, a noise repeated in her throat. She leaps – surely she has you? – but the shadow passes. There is a blade in her belly: yours. She pulls herself free, limping towards the medical tent. A paw raised: good fight.

...

Reisz returned the gesture as the few onlookers that were watching roared and cheered. The sheer euphoria they were feeling was indescribable. Their body was falling apart at the seams, the pain was starting to make them nauseous and they had never, ever felt happier.

(They had no idea at the time but from then on, Reisz had little choice but to spend the rest of their days trying to chase that high.)

[szilverer]

Reisz used to drink wine. When that wasn't enough, they turned to the heavier stuff. When that wasn't enough, they turned to honey, and other bohemian pleasures. And when that wasn't enough, well, they turned to the thrill of danger, and then all of that at once.

Not sure that can be called "coping" but beating people up in the docks and beating other people's nightmares has been working well so far. The strangest part is probably how they every so often sing to themself in the middle of the violence. Only way they can get to sleep is by either exhausting their body completely or getting knocked tf out.

It's almost impossible to make it out unscathed when it comes to living in the Neath, and not everything can be fixed with just a cuppa and a stint in the Beth (for given value of "fixed" when the Beth is involved). For all the strange things your characters have gone through, what are some strange things they do to cope?

[szilverer]

gotta confess that although i decided to give reisz the amnesia trope beam just bc i wanted to start playing before having to settle on their background, i did have a barebones semi-canon backstory for them all along.

its just that. out of all the canon-compliant manners of messing with memories that i came across so far (mostly mentions of irrigo & bottled oblivion). the One idea that i like the most just had to be the most convoluted possible

it wormed its way on the back of my head from the very first week or so when i was thinking about making a seeking alt and came across random unmarked nemesis ending spoilers in the discord.

the idea is reisz as the returned loved one of a nemesis alt, yeah.

naturally, the whole thing didn't work out that well for the two of them in the end..........

(…whenever i make a new Main oc it's like a curse. it doesn't spawn on its own, no. it comes in twos and they always come with an unsatisfying enmeshed relationship from a shared past. so those nemesis spoilers made me point like the dicaprio meme and BOOM second doomed character materialised in my head instantly. and cuz im a simple cliche bastard, a sucker for foils and mimesis whose autism craves narrative patterns, these two would have had inversely parallel developments.)

nemesis is just about the perfect ambition for a seeking alt bc it seems like the natural next step for a ultimately compassionate person that decided to commit their life to a vengeance that did Not pay off (due to the whole. not remembering thing.) so if i do decide to canonize this idea the matter of her current whereabouts is already answered: NORTH. and now that reisz got their first (and last) weeping scar. well. they match <3

i'd be playing events from years past but going north means she doesn't get to do the railway or any of that other stuff, so it fits nicely in the phantom's timeline.

this also would give me two very good explanations for their memory issues:

somehow rebooted themself on purpose bc they simply Couldn't Deal (same reason the… avenger? scourge? went north. they got to watch the beginning of her self-destruction, of course.)

it's an occasionally reoccurring consequence of whatever the hell got done to bring them back to life (i do not know what it was . i know there's cider involved but idrk what cider is.)

the only reason im wary of canonizing this right away is that aside from vague ending spoilers i Do Not Know what happens in nemesis. i Do Not Know if this idea is viable for a pc or if the circumstances of being brought back this way would contradict what a pc can or cannot do.

am in a weird spot that i Need to know more spoilers to check if everything would fit in a way that makes sense, and bc i want to play the ambition someday i don't want to spoil myself by trying to look it up!!1 flops down on the floor.

alas. i promised myself i'd only make an alt once im way into the endgame with reisz, so this boutta be their Schrodinger's Past for a good while. and if i do get to the end of nemesis a year from now and find out it doesn't actually fit, well . that's a problem for future me

[szilverer]

hewwo

made this blog primarily to dump oc content & maaaybe liveblog a bit! (its my first time engaging in a fandom space like this so im pretty lost, do lemme know if i mess up with tagging or etiquette or smth. more about me here.)

my FL acc is from 2016 but i only really started playing this august! ive finished my ambition now but theres still a lot i dont know about the lore n stuff. IGN is Hreisz, feel free to send a CC or even just random in-character letters & menace help reqs.

im always open to asks/interactions here as well, just keep in mind i might take A While to respond as i am but an hermit with the barest of executive functions

trying to use this hyperfixation to practice digital art so there'll be random experimental doodles here as i try to find out wtf i am doing. everytime i open a canvas its a surprise. youve been warned

tags:

#chaindoodles -> art tag, #chainrambles -> text tag

#the twilight phantom -> the blorbo

#nightmarriage -> my blorbo hoards trash. block this to be spared from witnessing their latest questionable decision

content warning tags:

#light fingers spoilers

#suggestive in case i draw (or write?) smth that can be perceived as saucy, spicy, horn knee, overtly kinky or implied nsfw. there wont be anything Actually explicit here though

i like #blood and injuring my characters both mentally and physically. so uh. that. possibly violence.?

??

#poor edward

So who's this "Twilight Phantom"?

nearly everything about H_______ Reisz is dictated by my actions playing FL, so they're developing in real time. been lots of fun to see this clean slate (and i mean clean - i knew nothing about the setting, the lore, or who they were, so naturally, this guy didn't either) get shaped by the narrative And my mechanical wiki-fueled decisions.

ill make a better, dedicated post eventually but for now have a vague intro + some refs under the cut:

The first thing you notice about them is the cowl lazily draped around their head and shoulders, swaying behind their back like a cape in the colours of sunrise-- or, perhaps most familiarly, the velvety twilight that the newest star every so often provides to London.  The second thing is the deep scars covering one side of their face, and the third thing would probably be the heavy eyebags under their sharp, dark eyes.

A relatively freshly-minted Silverer, H. Reisz spends more time in Parabola than London nowadays. Not that they had been in London for too long anyway, and it's not like anyone knows where they were before that either. The surface, yes, but it's a big world out there, right? They don't actually remember seeing the sun, or the sky, but H cannot deny the soft colours of twilight and sunrise have a special place in their heart. They recognise it without the memory of experiencing it, just like they recognised love in the depths of a certain Labyrinth. Hmm, two Labyrinths, actually. There was that one heiress too... and the Orphanage was inside one hell of a maze too... if they had a coin every time they found themself inside labyrinths, they'd... Uh, where were we? Well, anyway, being a new face, they had nothing to be known for so they simply gave out their surname instead. Or well, what they assumed to be their surname. "H. REISZ" were the letters sewn-in on a diminute corner of the tattered black veil that wrapped their head back when they woke up for the "first" time. They were surrounded by near-empty bottles of dried mouldy honey, absinthe, and who knows what else. Ah, the decadence... they couldn't even remember what honey could do at the time but they could recognise the stench of self-destruction right away, haha.  Alas, if things were so bad they got to that point-- maybe this explains why moving on was so easy. Maybe they had somehow lobotomized themself on purpose. Who knows? They sure don't. It was only now, a year or so after waking up, that an epithet has started to stick around-- specifically by their actions as a Silverer and the services they provided. From nightmare-slaying to fishing out vestigial memories (the irony of an amnesiac doing this is not lost on them) to guiding and safeguarding lost dreamers, their glimmering signature cowl and the way it flowed rather phantasmagorically in Parabola started to leave an impression. To many dreamers, seeing a hint of pastel twilight colors signaled safety. It signaled someone you could trust to get inside your head. :)

[szilverer]

hallowmas aftermath: had to drink my coffee and lose sleep to reach the highest title i could last night, but. success

officially assigned stalker at fool.

legendary unhinged charisma is also happening & considering the way they gained 68 levels of persuasive i can only make sense of this as a dnd CHA (intimidation) bonus kind of thing. all this for a evening on the cart and a few dozen kissus....

worth it tbh. now to think what kinda consequences™ that peckish 10 are gonna leave on them bc THE VOID sounds kinda like a big deal

[szilverer]

My case is a little funny bc my character was almost a fresh POSI and didn't know much about the Neath. (still don't tbh)

They didn't know what was up with the cat X fingerking feud, how deep it ran, or what was at stake, they just knew it existed. They had barely interacted with fingerkings up to that point too, so my PC literally just chose the cats because they had fun with the tigers last Estival and it seemed straightforward enough, as they also had No Clue Whatsoever why the sneks were angry with them. They found out cats had nobility at the exact moment they became one even, it was a trip.

However, if anyone had explained beforehand what would happen to the Sun + what it actually was. Well Reisz would've skinned themself as an apology instead. To them, the whole thing was just a giant misunderstanding and between you and me... they love Parabolan sunlight. Thank goodness it's still there.

(ooc though? i would've picked the shawl, in hindsight. the cat affiliation is great but it directly powercreeps the other ((optional)) affiliation i got from LF and it would've been more efficient to not have two ambition items in the same slot. buuut being addressed as Lyon is cool af so it's not a big deal lol)

Welp, I've arrived to the choice between Cats and Snakes in light fingers without deciding which one I want to pick-

So I want to ask people who've played it or are playing and already know which one they want, what was your in-character reason for picking either one? (i imagine that if I ask about ooc I'm going to get a lot of "I wanted to be a cat" lmao)