#ismena

[aardciaga]

lineup of some older ocs I dont use much in this au anymore

[fonfan121]

[stardusted-petals]

Hello @waveridden - I wanted to return the favour after the lovely drawing you made of Bryony, so here's some art I made of Ismena! I've also posted this on Art Fight. c:

(Image ID is in the alt text)

[waveridden]

pirate oc(s) of your choice + 81

and if you're gone for good, then i'm okay with that

[ophierian-vp]

[condensedmatters]

[hauntingblue]

Hemón first man in history to ever be called a simp by his father

[randomestfandoms-ocs]

Happy Galentine’s Day!! (2/2)

Adina Lightwood & Elys Herondale ( @ginevrastilinski-ocs ) || Amanda Weston & Grace Kim ( @the-witching-ash ) Carmela De Leon & Andrea Fitzpatrick ( @manyfandomocs ) || Cosette Bellefleur & Ismena Frollo ( @cecexwrites ) Ivy Knight & Amelia Queen ( @darknightfrombeyond ) || Lilibeth Anderson & Mona Addams ( @the-witching-ash )

Tag List: @airwolf92 – want to be added?

[postalvalhalla]

Belief and Gold

"Right now," said the wizard Atarum, "the Grand Duchess Ismena has realized the love ampoule I gave to her is of no use."

"A bold move," said his lizard familiar, "to screw over a duchess."

"Did she offer gold? No, she demanded a gift. She gets what she pays for."

"And should she send her guards?"

"I have ten thousand skeletons buried in my swamp, ready to rise and do my bidding."

"Or so people fear."

"Indeed," said Atarum, "and such belief is more valuable than gold."

[mastrmiscellaneous]

PJO Original Faction: The Guardians of Athens

History and Lore:

2500 years ago, the Romans started to rise and storm Greece. The gods felt themselves splitting and feared the worst; that they would disappear and be replaced with these new Roman personalities. In order to maintain their lineage and protect Greece, the gods proposed a concept, a mortal family that will maintain their legacy and record all they did, so nothing was ever lost.

Athena was the first to find a solid fit for the role, an average farmer and his family on the edge of the City of Athens, Nicodemus. He was a dedicated follower of Athena, but celebrated all the gods as if they were his patrons. He was a veteran of war, a well studied priest, but preferred to stay humble in the farms. He had a large amount of land, enough to hide a Chamber of knowledge. So Athena came down to him and proposed the job, which he accepted with great enthusiasm.

The gods created an underground Chamber beneath Nicodemus' land, with 5 different rooms of never ending hallways representing different aspects of the Mythic world: Gods, Heroes, Titans, Monsters, and the Hall of Memory. The Chambers were hidden behind a cave in a cliff on their land, behind a door in the shape of a owl head. This door holds and provides the coins for the Guardians, reading the personalities, conquests, and futures of the individuals and gives a coin showing which position they would be.

Over the next 2500 years, the Guardians logged the important events in Greek and Olympian history, logging wars, heroes' conquests, rises and falls of monsters, titans, and giants. Finding artefacts of importance to the gods, heroes, and more, logging the histories of the mythical world, and keeping a record of the gods' lives, so they can never forget anything they have done.

Along the years, several positions dropped from existence, and some members separated from the family, wanting to release themselves from the pressure. one of these lines separated in the late 19th Century, but still helped the Guardians in the mortal world, by funding them from the money of their massive business.

During the 2nd World War, the Guardians started to deplete in numbers. The two generations of men were drafted into the war, and none came back, their wives and mothers either dying themselves or leaving the family in grief and despair. This left only two, a Stratiótis named Delia, and her son, Ezio, who earned the Kidemónas title. For years it was just the two of them, until when Ezio was 20, his mother died. for a further 8 years, Ezio was on his own, until he met a woman named Zaida, who eventually became his wife and earned the title of Stratiótis. They had two children, Clio and Ajax, who changed the Guardians forever.

Patron God:

Athena - goddess of Wisdom, Battle Strategy, and Craftsmanship, Patron Goddess of Athens

Rank Structure:

Kidemónas – Guardian – Leader

Kidemónas Logiós – Scholistic Guardian - Leader of the travelling Guardians

Prostátis – Protector – 2nd in Command

Taxidiótis – Traveller – Right hand to Logios

Stratiótis – Support – Soldier

Néa Frourá – New Guard – Guardian in Training (under 18)

Members:

One family chosen by Athena 2500 years ago when the Romans started to rise and attack Greece.

Professor Clio Ismena Ostá - Kidemónas

Ajax Perseus Ostá - Prostátis

Ella Ostá - Stratiótis

Cyanious Ostó - Stratiótis

Clara Atalanta Ostá - Néa Frourá

Colden Ostó - Néa Frourá

Leonidas Luke Ostá - Néa Frourá

Myrinne Penelope Ostá - Néa Frourá

Okeanus Orion Ostá - Néa Frourá

Abilities and Blessings:

The Blessing of Athena - Comes from a birthmark of an Athenian Owl somewhere on their body. Their eyes glow on a scale of colours from bright silver with a blue hue (most powerful) to a dark stormy gray with a blue hue (least powerful), depending on their power. The most powerful also have a full body glow. This increases their agility, strength, speed, durability, and mentality, allowing then to see in slow motion and predict moves before their opponent tries them.

Increased Intellect - quick thinking, enhanced memory, quick learning

Increased Battle Prowess - weapon mastery and battle strategy

Can summon a magical pen and scroll - to write the stories of heroes and gods

Prophetic Vision - the Kidemonas and Logios recieve visions of important events in the mythological world

Equipment:

Athenian Coin - Given to them by The Chambers on their 18th birthday. The metal of the coin shows them what position they have in the order. Pure gold (made of the inchor of the gods) means they are the Kidemonas. Inchor Gold with Stygian Iron is Kidemonas Logios. Celestial Bronze is Prostatis and Stratiotis. Bronze and Stygian Iron is Taxidiotis. The Coin turns into the favoured weapon of the individual at will

A Cloaked Weapon - received when they pass initial training as a child. Mostly disguised as a pendent on a necklace.

Shield - Summoned along with their weapon from the coin. Depicts an Athenian Owl.

Torso Armour and Athenian Helmet - summoned from the coin.

A Magic Pen and Scroll - need to summon. To log the stories of Heroes as they see them.

[7ooo-ru]

Константинов: планом спасения Украины может стать референдум и смена власти

Планом спасения Украины может стать проведение референдума на Украине по смене власти и внесения изменений в конституцию государства.

Подробнее https://7ooo.ru/group/2024/11/16/885-konstantinov-planom-spaseniya-ukrainy-mozhet-stat-referendum-ismena-vlasti-grss-356554963.html

[fonfan121]

[centaurra]

I give you permission to go off on a particular OC that has been PLAGUING your MIND as of late.

None of them PLAGUE me but I’ve been thinking about Ash

Ash the secret-keeper and king of the rumor mill, spider god of Aztec blood, whose wife is a corpse who demands rabbit sacrifices

I was watching an Internet iceberg analysis and came across the idea there’s a dark/deep web even more secret than the one we know, and that pinged something in my brain. If there could be something like that for the legends and gods, more secret and perhaps sinister than anything a mortal could find in their own. And Ash would be a part of it, if not run the whole thing himself. Spiders and their webs and all that.

It would mirror something in one of our tabletop games in which there was a legendary/demigod YouTube, anyone could view it, it was a sort of way to farm belief from mortals but also communicate between other demigods in a IYKYK kinda way

So Ash’s dark(er) web. I imagine if a mortal got onto it they’d get FAFO’d pretty quick, between Ash himself and another demigod called Ismena who is a digital entity in her divinity.

And then all he does is watch and meme the whole time while gossiping with his corpse-wife. Because that’s just how Ash is and we love him for it

[ophierian-vp]

[whotookfran]

Ismena

[jawanaka]

Expanding on this because I wrote the above in a hurry on my phone while half asleep.

One of the first things Ciri does after taking the throne (in my headcannon) is to recall enormous amounts of coinage. Nilfgaard has just fought three long bloody and hideously expensive wars. How do goverments fund wars? Well they either raise taxes, take out loans or get more money some other way. Now in our modern day and age a goverment can simply digitally print more money, even if this risks inflation making it dangerous unless you happen to control the worlds reserve currency (which is why the US goverment debts can balloon to hideous size).

But in a premodern society the value of currency is primarily its inherit value in rare metals (gold or silver). So unless you literally struck gold or silver (which did happen: the spanish conquest of the new world is one example, the silver mines of Laurion who funded the athenian fleet that fought at Salamis another) the only way to print (mint) more money was to recall as much currency as possible and remint it, having diluted its contents with other metals such as tin or bronze (note: for practical purposes coins could never really be pure silver or gold, the metals are too fragile.)

Sidenote: ever wonder why coins have groves in the sides? Its so people can't file off the edges to get at the rare metals inside. In the Suns and Swallows series someone has figured out how to do this:

The coin was heavy, certainly feeling far purer then anything Yennefer had handled in a long time. Its sides were edged with long groves, one side showing the Nilfgaardian sun and the other Ciri's head in profile, scar promptly shown and imperial diadem seemingly leaping off her head.

Now Nilfgaard has during little more then a decade fought three long, bloody expensive wars. As a result, both they and the northern kingdoms have been forced to debase their curencies, leading to that kind of run-off inflation we all know and love. When combined with its existing debts this makes the government float dangerously close to insolvency, especially when the loans needed to finance post-war reconstruction come up for discussion. In The Swallow of Novigrad the viceregal goverment of the north has to put up its infrasture tolls for privatization to afford a loan:

“Infrastructure spending will bring benefits, not just costs.” Said Triss, who was sitting on Morvran’s left side. “Just the reconstruction of the Hindhold bridge together with the new southbound highway will help revitalize Velen and bring more gods to market in Novigrad. Shipping insurance rates have already gone down what with the peace with Skellige and with dredging along the Ismena your factories will be feed with all the mineral bounties of Mahakam. You all have a diverse set of business interests, surely you have taken that into your accounts?”  Master Vivaldi held up a hand “All well and good enchantress. It is not the utility of your projects that worries me, it is us being out with millions of oren and we need a better surety than the uncertain promise of a future economic boom.”  [...] Triss interjected. “A possibility master banker. What if we pledged the road tolls on the Hindhold bridge as surety? Say for a period of five years.”

(This is the bridge they are talking about btw)

So one of the first priorities of Ciri's new goverment is to get ahold of inflation. The way you do this is that you try and recall as much currency as possible, preferably not all of them at the same time, and remint them with a higher content in valuable metal to stabilize the currency. Because people will be suspicious of the old coins you might as well rebrand it, and of course with a new empress on the throne you need to smack her picture on it in a nice profile. Which is when Ciri insisted to show her scared side:

"It’s called a Solidus," Ciri explained. "It will form the basis for a revamp of the entire coinage system, Emhyr and Radovid having devalued the last ones to worthlessness to fund their wars," she shook her head, "took us half a year to agree on a design for that and I had to possibly lean on them to include the scar. 'Monarchs have to seem perfect', the things they tell you."

Since in premodern socoety the main way citizens would know what their monarch looks like is through the coins, this is how the peoples of Nilfgaard found out about her scar, leasing to both rumours based of the very sanitized version fo Ciri's life story Nilfgaards been putting out since been before she took the throne, as well as a short trend of faking scars.

So anyway, this is how it suddenly became a trend among young Nilfgaardian ladies to paint scars on their cheeks!

(I'm always taking worldbuilding questions btw!)

what's your favorite bit of worldbuilding nerdery for your empress ciri stories?

That Ciri distributes coins with the scared part of her face shown in the relief, to show she has nothing to hide and because the Nilfgaardian florin has been debased to oblivion and back and the imperial crown doesn’t actually have any money, having given monopolies and taxation privileges away for loans to fund the war effort. This spark both a rumour that Witchers practice ritual scarification and a short lived trend in very bad taste to paint a scar on your cheeks