#fantasy noire

[halfbakedspuds]

Yet another Character bio for Echoes of Shadows, and as per usual, picrew has been used to compensate for my lacking artistic skill.

The creator of this template asked in its description to be credited, and since I don't want to bother him with a tag, you can find him here. (His tag is also on the image itself)

Maire Aitkin

Full name: Maire Aitkin

Alias/es: Mother wolf

Age: 26

Ethnicity: Petrovan

Nationality: Angeheimish (The Kingdom of Angeheim)

Magic capability: Bioworker, order five.

Languages: Angeheimish, Vosch, learning Riets

Skillset: Knowledge of human anatomy, knowledge of medicine, knowledge of the criminal underworld, healing, weapon handling, scheming.

Background

Maire was born and raised in the Ollania Duchy of Northern Angeheim, and spent most of her early life in a furnace city called Wrenhaven. (Due to Angeheim's extremely cold temperatures and the fact that most of the country is in the Arctic circle, spending half the year under the night sky, many of their cities are built around massive furnaces that pump superheated steam throughout the pipes of these cities just to keep them livable.)

At a young age, she discovered her power over organic matter when she managed to heal a cut she'd received while out and about. However, she elected to keep her newfound power a secret from her family and neighbours due to Angeheim's attitude toward mages.

Similarly to Tuitis, Angeheim follows a puritanical sect of the Bozhist religion that holds the admittedly backwards belief that although magic is a fully natural thing to possess, using it is considered an irredeemable sin. If a mage is caught using their power, the state won't even bother with the fanfare of a public execution, they'll simply send witchhunters after them. This, coupled with other stifling, discriminatory and conservative laws regarding expression and one's role in society, forced Maire to hide much of who she is. She would eventually walk away from religion in it's entirety because of this.

Maire would soon meet a man named Malcolm Fahey: a criminal, thief, and charismatic conman. Similar to her, he actively worked to hide his own magic, however he had begun building a small commune of mages and other societal outcasts and directed most of his less-than-legal activities to their protection and survival.

Maire would end up working for Fahey as his people's healer, and when she began to show promise as an enforcer, that became her job as well.

One day, while she was in a pub celebrating a friend's engagement (with a few drinks behind her already) she overheard another patron boasting about having killed a 'witch' who was hiding out on a nearby farm, and providing a detailed and gory description of how it had been done.

At this point she was intoxicated, filled with burning rage and sans her usual self control. She got up, walked over, dragged him out into the alleyway, then proceeded to beat him to within an inch of his life, all the while railing at him about how she couldn't believe that creatures as weak as him were permitted to butcher their children when she didn't even need her magic to make him beg for mercy.

When morning came, she realised that the person she had hospitalized was none other than Janek Neuschäfer, the Captain-General of the Tuitish foreign division of witchhunters, and that she had revealed herself to be a mage in that brawl. Meaning, in short, that she would soon become the target of a nationwide manhunt.

Coincidentally, the Rietland Republics and Rostov went to war around this time, and the Republics were offering honorary citizenship to any foreign volunteers. So, she did just that, and schemed with Malcolm to stow their little commune onto those ships with refugee status once they reached Ost-Rietland.

She would go on to serve with the 107th volunteer regiment on the Zuurveldt Southern front, earning multiple medals for valor and bravery, and unofficially becoming her platoon's combat medic. This would be where she met Johan and his sister.

However, she could not escape the war unscathed. A stray rifle shot would take out her eye, narrowly missing her brain in the process. Although the surrounding bone and skin could be repaired, her eye was lost in its entirety. Later in the war, she would find herself running through a ruined city in an attempt to retrieve a wounded comrade, and only fifteen meters from safety with her fellow soldier still on her shoulders, an enemy mage severed her leg in an attempt to force more soldiers into the open for a sniper to take out. The Suiderkloof twins were the only people brave or stupid enough to run out to get her.

She would be outfitted with a mechanical leg, given a medal of honour for bravery and sacrifice, as well as the Zuurveldt Zelverkrijs (Silver cross) to denote her service, before being honorably discharged due to her service-related injuries. With her newly earned citizenship, she tracked down Malcolm and the rest of her commune, then moved to Zuidpunkt where she would work as a general healer in the city's hospital.

Physical Appearance

She has a rounded figure, and often jokingly refers to it as her 'body armour'.

Her skin is light and tends to burn much more easily than it tans, meaning that she usually has a slightly red glow to her thanks to the oppressive sun of the Sumeran continent. Her hair is the fiery red that is commonly found in the Northernmost duchies of Angeheim.

Maire's remaining eye is green, although a much more vibrant shade than Johan's. Her eye turns blood red when she uses her magic, which has the added effect of unnerving people more than knowing that she can hear their heartbeats and other bodily functions at work, and that she could silence those sounds forever if she wanted to.

A milky scar runs out to the side of her empty eye socket, showing where the bullet had passed through.

She walks around with a slight gait from the unwieldiness of an already heavy mechanical leg that is ever so slightly too long.

She has several tattoos running up her arm, each denoting something she's done or lived through, with the most prominent one being a sigil denoting the sun half-risen or half-set over the horizon: her mark affiliating her with Malcolm Fahey's gang.

Personality

Maire is often called 'Wulvemadhra' [Mother Wolf] by the other Angeheimish refugees in her commune and by Sasha Devin because of her almost maternally protective nature reminding them of a wolf with cubs who would rather die than let anyone come near them. Although she denies this, claiming that she's doing what anyone would do, if you were to ask anyone who got out of Angeheim because of her they'd tell you directly that none of them would've had the courage to willingly get involved in a foreign war as part of a scheme to get them out of their country.

Maire is a constant source of running commentary and rarely stops to filter her thoughts before they become words, with her commentary intensifying the more annoyed she becomes. Oftentimes, the things she says come across as humourous and the tiniest bit crass (which the people of the Rietland love), however she oftentimes says something without thinking only to realise a few seconds after the fact that she really shouldn't have said anything.

She worked hard for many years to unlearn her homeland's conditioning, to learn to not hide her personality and identity for the sake of others and as a result she lives unapologetically and loudly as herself. She is incredibly proud of how far she's come, and holds a healthy mental image of herself.

She has been described as someone who is more than willing to return a healthy dose in kind to anyone who gives her shit. This is actually her problem: She's hardheaded and doesn't know when to back down from a provocation. This makes her remarkably easy to pick a fight with.

Maire lives fast and freely, flirting with anyone that sparks her interest (Be they man, woman or other), although in reality she craves a deeper relationship that isn't built purely off of attraction and actually entails a close bond with another person.

She has an appreciation for culture, going out of her way to attend Chen, Ostian, and Somaj festivals just to appreciate their music and art. Her apartment is filled with paintings, sculptures and other such paraphernalia, and she has a collection of music records that she's assembled over the years.

Maire is also incredibly sarcastic.

Weapon of choice

Maire has a shotgun that's been purpose-made to be small enough to easily fold up and be hidden within the ankle of her mechanical leg.

However, if she ever runs out of ammo or doesn't have the time to retrieve her shotgun, she still has her magic and can simply force people's hearts to stop beating with some concentration on her part.

Relation to the rest of the team

Johan: Like Johan, she feels that there likely would've been a spark of something more than friendship between the two of them if he had any chance of living that long, and she does feel regret that she'll never get to see it happen. She also regularly scolds him for pushing his body too hard because she's the one who always has to put him back together after the fact.

Sasha: Despite there only being about a ten year difference between Maire and Sasha, many people who only barely know either of them tend to actually think that she's Maire's adopted daughter. This isn't helped by the fact that the bioworker has (at least in part) taken on the role of a maternal figure toward Sasha.

Anastasia: Maire and Anna both have the shared experience of being refugees, of having been forced to run from a regime that wanted them dead. They are both lovers of culture, although Anna lacks Maire's enthusiasm of exotic music, preferring stories. The pair are close friends.

Hans: Maire quickly clicked what Hans' secret past was after meeting him, although she didn't say anything because she felt that it wasn't her place. She did end up encouraging him to 'just go for it' regarding a matter of importance to him, which worked out incredibly well in the end. The pair can be described as best friends.

[anim-ttrpgs]

(Exerpt from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.)

[zakuromancy]

killing time 🔪

[thepenumbrapodcast]

What, indeed, is the honorable choice for the thief to make? "Juno Steel and the Thief's Honor (Part 2)" is now available for $4 Patreon supporters who want to find out! Everyone else will hear the episode on Tuesday.

We really want to see your live reactions to this episode, so if you'd like to make things a bit more interactive, film yourself listening to this episode for the first time, choose a short clip, and post it to any social media and tag us! (Make sure that audio from the episode doesn't bleed through, because we don't want people to get spoiled: mute it or put other music over top, please.) We'll repost our favorite reactions. And just a reminder: this is not the final episode of Juno Steel.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

A Scattering of Jades - art by Guillaume Sorel (2006)

[mythical-redon]

By Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)

"Obsession"

[inumbrapugnabimus-maybe]

A link design!!! For a story that’s solid enough in my head to possibly become a comic ehehe

some notes:

Link has been Heroing for some time now, with minimal success. He’s a bit grumpy.

he also has a bulky brown overcoat, but I haven’t figured out what it looks like yet so i didn’t draw it lol

the gloves are to hide his scar, but also help in the cold. Because this Hyrule is rather cold :)

The overtunics are both pretty new, which is the only reason they aren’t torn to bits. The same person who made them mended his pants and made his hat, which is why the patches match cloth in other parts of his outfit.

the scar on his face is from a lizalfos. I figured, if the Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park gets to spit acid, then shouldn’t a lizalfos get to too? So it’s an acid burn. He’s lucky he dodged most of it!

I’m still figuring out how to accurately depict the scars, so they don’t look quite right yet! With research and practice I’ll get there!

the other scar I will not get into for plot reasons hehe

This is the same story the above Zelda design is for!! I’ve posted her design in varying stages before, here, here and here, but the story in the previous posts has changed a bit since!! There are also some really old doodles of Link if you (hehe) follow the links.

the above is Zelda’s formal dress. I designed it with a girl a little younger than her in mind, because she loses most of her wardrobe when she’s about 12! So I really ought to draw this on her younger self XD

Finally, scrapped Ganondorf and Link designs!!!

don’t look into these too much as I’m only putting them here because I’ll never post them otherwise; they do not fit the story at all lol

Ganondorf is gonna be… really hard to design… I made him a very complex character and his personality is so intertwined with the story there is a lot to be taken into account XD

ummm that’s all for now!!! I doubt many people will read all this but feel free to send asks if you have questions nevertheless :D

[vasiliquemort]

Until that morning and until that dawn I am myself - Myself I am your moonless star.

An endless dome of an elation, a rapture of within - enlightenment and adoration within whole heart, a kiss within all might - such is visage and beauty of the utmost, of @gldnhrtd ones!<зз

[scipunk]

Aeon Flux (2005)

[halfbakedspuds]

Some of my favourite moments in Echoes of Shadows so far:

Anastasia and Johan throwing shade at the owner of a bank like they were Olympic gold medalists in the field.

Hans' panic reaction to a spider demon being to punt the little bastard like a soccerball.

Maire going on a tangent about how if she couldn't see a damn thing, it would still be brighter than the tunnel they were in.

Sasha being the only person in the group who speaks Vosch fluently enough to throw equally creative insults back at Johan after also being the only person who can annoy him enough to start inventing curses.

Malcolm Fahey's speech about dreams being unkillable because I'm proud of how the scene turned out.

The chaos that is an inexperienced crew trying to pull off a heist on possibly the most secure bank in Zuidpunkt.

[zeearts]

sleep cuddles in the early morning

[anim-ttrpgs]

was the snoop design inspired in any way by the cover of the dick mullen book from disco elysium?

More likely, the Dick Mullen book cover was inspired by the same thing that the snoop designs for Eureka were inspired by, which is the 1940s and 1950s caracture of a "shady guy" which intersects with the idea of like crime and espianage. The most common example you'll see today is the "neighborhood watch" sign.

[odettejoyeux]

Charles Boyer and Barbara Stanwyck, Flesh and Fantasy (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1943).

[oldschoolfrp]

The party sets out for adventure -- Ugurcan Yüce cover for The Dark Eye introductory box set, Schmidt Spiele -- Schmidt France version "L'Œil noir;" originally released in German as "Das Schwarze Auge" (DSA). This art has been attributed to a second alternative version of the 1984 1st edition, and to the 1988 2nd edition.

[mythical-redon]

By Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)

"Pegasus and Bellerophon"

[namedvesta]

𝑏𝑦 𝐴𝑟𝑡 𝑇.