#thabes au

[starlitcrows]

storyboard of that one field scene from pride and prejudice (2005) but my thabes fire emblem ocs + concept art doodles

[the-priestess-of-dawn]

There's an AU out there where Forneus is plotting to kill baby Grima and instead his late wife's ghost haunts his dreams and threatens him that if he harms that baby and is a terrible dad, she'll never forgive him. Mostly because this is funny to me.

Sometimes I wonder what could have happened if Forneus's wife had lived but he still went through with creating Grima and was just... less out of control about everything because he had his wife there supporting him. Could Grima have had loving parents... Could they have come to view Naga as a mentor instead of an enemy... Could they have perhaps even prevented Duma from destroying Thabes? So many possibilities...

But I like this AU you pose here too, where Forneus's wife is still dead, yes, but that doesn't mean she can't be Grima's mom anyway. Forneus go hug your baby right now. "Dark thoughts," pah, she'll show you some "dark thoughts" if anything bad happens to that poor child.

[felikatze]

Plusquam Chapter 7 director's commentary because i adore being a blabbermouth

hi hi hello. i am going to talk about my fic and nobody can stop me but i don't want to turn the ao3 author's notes into their own 30k novel so yelling on tumblr it is!!

if you are interested in SOME of the machenations of my enigmatic mind, feel free to read. If not. Well i don't care really it's your life. I'm writing this for MY enjoyment.

First of!! I dunno if I talked about them before!! (I have the memory of a goldfish). The silly codenames!!

As I may or may not have mentioned before, the inspiration for this came from the Project Thabes mod for Awakening. In the ferox duel, the mod replaces the generics with inigo, severa, owain, and gerome. The awakening trio get their fates names (a coward's move, but one i understand), but gerome is named michalis, which i just enjoy soooo much???

so when i initially planned out for all the future kids to band together with lucina, i decided they all had to have codenames! otherwise there's really no point in lucina having one....

merric for laurent was the biggest no brainer of all of them, with caeda for severa being a close second. feel free to interpret why. gerome was obviously taken from the thabes mod, and the rest were... a challenge... to come up with!

owain actually gave me a lot of trouble. what WOULD he name himself? i've not finished shadow dragon myself (I only played the prologue so far... haha...), and most i know of the cast comes from mitosis. and scarf's new mystery lunatic reverse run on youtube. and it was that run that reminded me. that kris's confect is an item in the game. meaning that awakening era people know kris exists. except wasn't kris' deal that they like. did not want to be noted down in history.

hence kris being a "heavily debated historical subject". which of COURSE owain would name himself after an unsung but vitally important hero of the shadows.

others i may discuss as they come up? eh, we'll see. not every future kid is gonna be important (god knows that's way too many characters for me to handle), but they will be There. main focus of course being the fp3 squad, with the addition of two others. it is very obvious who it will be, i think.

next up, pairings!

most pairings werent set, outside the ones that are my obvious favorites (panne/lonqu, henlivia, chrobin (duh)). others were up in the air and just happened as i wrote. as i thought about gerome in this, and chatted about the subject with friends, frederick/cherche came to be for this fic! (and for the shrek au, oddly enough. it may have just been on my mind, and i thought chrom missing freddie's wedding was funny.)

it suited my purposes best if gerome had a stronger emotional tie to the blueberry siblings, and a knightly duty to protect them served just that. hence the dialogue of lucina being his liege. he's so utterly disinterested in getting to know the people of the past that i needed that extra bit to keep him coherent. he won't get close to anyone, but he'll do anything to support lucina's aims as though they were his own.

which brings me to the next subject, lucina's PoV! This is the first perspective switch in all of plusquam (not just because I couldn't meet my 4k benchmark with morgan alone this time). Since Morgan and Lucina act separately and won't encounter often, I needed the extra time to establish her character here. To me, there's a clear dissonance between how Morgan views her and how Lucina is. Both of them are unreliable narrators to varying degrees, yet how they differ is where the meat is.

Like, for example, Morgan completely rejecting that Lucina is Robin's child as well, and not just Chrom's, because Grima told them Lucina was different. As compared to the actual Lucina still deeply affected by Robin, and even engaging with grimleal theology on an even field because of him and the other plegian influences in her life.

there's also the matter of her narration style. I waffled back and forth on whether to give her second person narration as well, but ultimately decided on third person limited, with a catch - she exclusively refers to everyone, including herself, by their codenames.

in both their perspectives, i want to create separation between their original names and who they act as. With morgan, this succeeds because the viewpoint has no need to mention their name whatsoever, and with lucina, it succeeds because she's the one creating that distance in her own mind. it's fun to play with!

ah, siblings. so different, yet so similar.

as for the pronouns situation on lucina's pov. well. schrödinger's transgender.

minor thing. i hate adapting canon scenes close to script, hence me just freestyling when lucina and co meet chrom and squad. there's also just... no future portal risen roaming about, which would've made the point moot anyway. that's a very interesting consequence to play with.

having an endless army of generic undead is lame. having to draw on the actual dead of the immediate area - now we're getting spicy!

despite everything, i have grown attached to the risen wyvern and its chittering ways, but it sadly has to go. there's a reason morgan never named it. farewell my sweet prince. aurgh. i mean. this thing has been with morgan through the entire past so far. and it just fell apart more and more over time. crashing into a wall and breaking its neck, having half its throat torn out - poor thing. good thing it can't feel pain anymore.

that is, i think, all i wanted to blabber about? if you're a reader of plusquam, hi, i love you, i hope you have a great day, you may summon me for one turn of battle without expending an action and i will appear as a shimmering blue specter to protect you from harm.

that's all!! see you next time!! as usual, if anyone has questions of their own, or wants to yell at me for hurting their feelings, shoot me an ask, a comment, or anything at all! see ya!! ily!!

[iturbide]

😭 But what the ever-yummy strawberry cheesecake were Alm and Celica even doing down there?!?! They had to go, what was it, like 13 floors underground to even find Grima?? And then he doesn't attack??? So they do??? The poor baby was probably really scared!!! (I mean, Alm and Celica probably were too; Grima does look pretty scary and reading all the stuff on the way down... But still!!! He didn't wanna fight!!!) I want an au where Grima is adopted and loved instead. I just want him to be happy..

This question...I may need to pass on to someone with more Valentia expertise, because I have not actually played through Echoes and don't know the narrative justification for that jaunt through the Thabes Labyrinth -- all I really know is that it's a post-game dungeon. @fayesdiary, can you weigh in on this? Was there a stated reason for Alm and Celica to go to Thabes, or did they just decide a vacation was in order after beating up Duma and decided to top it off by beating up Grima?

(Fun Fact though: I do have a very loose speculative AU idea where Alm and Celica don't attack Grima in Thabes Labyrinth, realize that oh hey this thing is sentient, and end up taking a giant dragon baby back to Valentia after their vacation is over; Grima then proceeds to become bestest buddies with Tiki when Marth brings her over on diplomatic visits and they spend a good millennium just having fun together being besties and causing childish trouble.)

[randomnameless]

I'm on mobile so I can't quote stuff :(

Feh did something interesting for once with Fallen Rhea's FB, spelling that both humans and dragons can fall to despair because they're not so different in the end...

I generally agree with everything you said, however Archanean dragons are, for some reason because their verse sucks, subject to natural degeneration.

Mila'n'Duma's downfall is explained by two reasons : not being able to agree on "people should be lead with both strength and compassion" and their "natural" degeneration.

Duma, on his "sane" state, never wanted to rule or control humans.

Their guidance isn't wrong per se, it's only because said guidance is twisted by their degeneration and their own hearts growing "cold", but bar chilling in their temples with their faithful, they're not, at least seen or depicted, controlling the human leaders of each nation.

Which makes for an excellent AU, in a Valentia where they're not degenerating, would Alm still pull his "Humanity fuck yeah" narrative ?

Now, regarding Thabes...

We are told Duma destroyed it because he grew afraid of humans growing too powerful.

We are also told, in Thabes, before Duma destroyed it, humans were experimenting with zombies creating artificial life using divine dragon blood which ultimately created Grima, aka the eldritch monster who destroyed the world so bad that with both Naga and Tiki dead, the world's only hope is Lucina time travel shenanigans.

Grima is a threat to the world for both humans and dragons... And he was developed/growing in Thabes... Around the time Duma destroyed the city because humans were growing "too powerful"...

Kusakihara always uses the 1+1+1 = 🙃 equation, so we basically don't know if Duma knew, when he decided to destroy Thabes, knew that humans created a world ending being bent on destruction...

And yet, it's a bit too odd to be a coincidence !

The game tells us Duma BaD for destroying Thabes... Even if it bought humans and dragons (including Naga'n'Tiki !) around 2k years of "Peace" before Grima wakes up to destroy the world.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't FE15 state that although god's control is removed, there's still evil in mankind's heart that must be vanquished or something along those lines? It kinda makes the whole "humanity f*ck yeah" shtick feel hypocritical doesn't it?

Yep,

Because FE15 couldn't nuke FE2 from its DNA, by virtue of being a remake.

So we have two, contradictory messages in this game : Duma BaD and Gods BaD and must go because BaD and they "make humans do BaD things"...

and you have the "gods might be bad, but humans are still BaD without their influence" message at the end - when the entire game (and the timeline and supplementary materials!!) has been pushing the first message.

So...

In a sea of "Gods BaD" waters coming from the remake, you still have the lone "evil remains in the hearts of men" raft that is, somehow, pushed to the forefront in Part 6 where both Celica AND Alm call Thabes the result of human folly, and the player knowing that Grima - who was originally the RED CAPSLOCK eldritch monstruosity before FEH retcon'd them in a tits'n'ass character to uwu about by stealing Anankos' backstory - was "man-made".

And yet, given how the "last word" about FE15 - as in last material revealed - was the timeline in the Memorial Book, we close FE15's book by "and Duma was BaD".

I mean, look at all those mentions of Rudy being so brave and strong and uwusome -> Duma's degenaration is directly tied to how awesome Rudy needs to be in this calendar.

Rudy is so brave to stand in front of a degenerating Duma? -> Duma was insane!

Rudy is so thoughtful and sticks to his promise to Duma by sealing Mila -> akshually Duma wasn't completely insane because he told him to seal Mila and not to kill her even if I said the inverse 3 lines earlier...

[aurora-boring-alis]

mullet tobin vibe checked me

[fayesdiary]

Fic Authors self rec

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love!

@iturbide tagged me for this, say hi to them

I don't have many fics to recommend since I just posted 8 of them on my AO3, but there are a few stories I've written that I'm really proud of!

Nuibaba's Risen Journal

(Echoes/Awakening, 3.8k words oneshot)

My favorite fic I wrote (mostly due to how it came to be), it's about Nuibaba travelling to Thabes Labyrinth and discovering the Risen, immediately deciding to experiment on them and their masks and learning more about how they work so she can use the mask to stay young forever.

And yes, she does run into Grima at one point.

Blinding Light

(Awakening, 2.3k words, stuck in Chapter 1 Limbo since November 2021)

Funnily enough a gift fic for Iturbide and heavily inspired by theirs and @banyanas' work, this is a story where Naga and Grima have swapped roles, with Naga having degenerated when killing her daughter, and Ylisse basically being a police state where she outright possesses the current Exalt, which in this case is Chrom's father.

Grima accidentally becomes the protector of Plegia and free humanity while they were trying to defend themselves, since Naga views every dragon as a threat to humanity that must be destroyed, but the war has currently taken an unspoken truce with both gods having lost their physical bodies and their countries reorganizing themselves for future battles.

And since Chapter 1 of this was written for Chrobin Week, yes, those two are going to kiss eventually.

I want to return to this one so badly there are some ideas i have for it i just have to write down but at the same time I still haven't managed to write even a single word of Chapter 2

Socially Distant

(Echoes, almost 6k words, 3/5? chapters WiP)

A Modern AU set during Covid, this was originally a oneshot about the Ram Gang trying to keep in touch with each other while everyone has taken a different path in life, but with the next chapters it turned into "Faye meets Rinea and the two slowly fall in love while being complete bisasters about it".

This is chronologically the second fic on AO3 with the Faye/Rinea tag, and the first one where it's the actual focus and yes I will brag about it

Also it's my multi-chapter fic that's most likely to ever get finished so...

The Barbecue of Belhalla

(Geneaology, 822 words oneshot)

Arvis invites Sigurd's army for a barbecue. No, really. They have a barbecue together.

Tagging @good-beans for this if you want to do it!

[dailyawakening]

Memories

Inspired by @levin-swort’s eldritch!Robin AU, One and the Same

“Over a thousand years ago, a Thabean alchemist and his nephew sought to fill the void left by the gods’ departures. The younger became something un/holy, but the city still crumbled and fell, lost to time and sand. Decades later, a monstrous Fell God — Grima — nurtured the desert village of Plegia into a prosperous city. Naga’s champion, the First Exalt, defeated him and put him into a deep slumber as hatred between the two gods unfurled. Prophecy foretells that Grima will Awaken within the Thabes Labyrinth in 1,000 years to try to bring about the end of the world once again. Now, two halves of a greater whole find each other and stand together at the precipice of divinity and destiny.”

[abrasife]

You know why turned au works out so well in terms of his canon timeline based in medieval fantasy/f.e:ec.hoes? 

It’s because I never pictured him living past the war in general, or for very long after it. He’d never reunite with his father because he probably wouldn’t make it home (hey, he’s coming from an entirely different continent in the case of Thabes Labyrinth and either way, he’d have to cross through the opposing country of Zofia--the country he defected to during the war--so he’d have to be super careful returning back to his homeland of Rigel for outright betraying them). If any Rigelian soldier knew and recognized him, they’d probably kill him on the spot man.

And I can’t imagine him living that far into adulthood if at all in this verse, nor would he ever form/develop an actual relationship [long enough] to have a family of his own (I mean, Rachael would). I just never imagined him coming home once he leaves, or like he’ll send one final letter back and never again, or maybe he’ll show up and just not go in because he doesn’t feel like he can go home after betraying. Also like, his home village is literally on the other side of Rigel--yeah, that denoted village on the map literally called “Rigelian village”, known for harvesting grapes, rocky hills, and having a cool climate-- good luck heading there in one piece! 

oh, here’s a map of the whole area if you need. the top half in the orangey color is Rigel while the bottom half in green is Zofia.

And now that I think about it, it’s depressing as hell. Why can’t I give him a good life? I’m incapable of it.

[jasperlion]

No! for berkut because au

Death in the battlefields [2 / 4] | No longer accepting

It had taken everything in his power to have Lukas and Clive even let him accompany the Vanguard. Ever since his ascension to King— no, even as Emperor, it had been tougher and tougher to ride out with those he considered his family whenever a crisis occurred. He wanted to fight too, he wanted to help his nation and lead it properly. If it was not him leading the charge, why should his people trust him to defend them?

“Try to make it back in one piece.” Berkut had scoffed as he took the reins of his destrier, mounting the saddle. “You’ve a family and all, cousin, and you must be so rusty you’ll look like a clodhopper.”

He sure had laughed then, hadn’t he? “Sure, sure. I still train every day, you know?”

He had, hadn’t he?

It wasn’t enough for this.

The terrors that burst through the earth weren’t normal, natural, the aura about them more eerie than it had ever been before. Some wore masks, masks that sunk his stomach in horror at the sight. 

Terrors from beyond the sea, emerging from the depths. They were here for them, here for him, and something screamed at him from his mind that the eerie feeling when they had left Thabes was perhaps the six-eyed demon’s final order to kill those who had dared to slay it.

“Call for reinforcements!” He had barked to Clair, Falchion flaring to life. “Warn the Queen! We do not know how many have come here!”

It is hard to be impressed at the corpse’s long journey when it had been to come for them, years after the fact. Actions, consequences, but he can’t find it in him to berate himself now.

Gazing upon the glowing eyes of the Terrors and Masks alongside them, he steels himself, grits his teeth, and pushes his horse to charge as his Brotherhood of Knights do the same. There’s an evacuation at the port and all they can do is hold off the invasion until every citizen is safe. May Clair and the rest of the Valentian army return to them to a situation under control, something they can laugh and drink over in the castle’s Great Hall. A story for the children. It’s all he can pray to, he mutters it under his breath for the dead Gods beneath them.

Falchion cleaves foe after foe, Berkut at his heels to deliver finishers to those who survived with clever lancework. They make quite the pair, for those who used to fight on opposite sides, once upon a time. If their foe weren’t so horrific, he might have even laughed in glee — perhaps it was the Rigelian in him.

Yet they cannot last forever, exhaustion in his bones and horse breathing like every inhale would be the last. He leaps to dismount, stabbing a Mask at the center of it’s head and using it as a landing spot as he uses his weight and feet to push it to the ground.

From the thud behind him, his cousin had done the same, as had Mathilda, a little further and nearly past his sight. Alm does not turn back to watch the animals go, the hooves are indication enough.

“We won’t last at this rate.” Is what he hears his cousin say between haggard breaths. Alm doesn’t have the heart to disagree.

“May help arrive soon, then.” He grits his teeth even as he tries to smile. “We can’t retreat.”

The mires of undead crawling from the waves ensured it. If they stopped, they might not even make it to the backlines before their weapons and claws shredded them to pieces.

“… I know.”

Yet his eyes scan the foe even as he fights, and it is then that it suddenly catches his eye: The concentration point of the enemy, where they seemed to amass before spreading to try and take the entire beach in waves. No matter the amount, if they had all traveled single file before surfacing—

Without a word, he breaks formation, dashing to where he was sure was the key beneath the waves.

Even the calls at his back don’t stop him, Falchion blazing, energy collecting at the tip. He has an idea, a plan, and perhaps it’s crazy and not at all thought out—

He skids, pivoting on his right leg to turn and face the onslaught. The enemies who followed him jump, clawing at his side even as he lifts the blade skyward, pillar of light taking shape. And he swings.

Scendscale crashes into the waves, splits the seas and the Terrors beneath them. For a singular moment, the true scale of the enemy is seen, yet so many see decimation before his very eyes.

It feels like eternity.

And then, he’s fallen, and his right side feels like fire. Claws tear, it feels like shards on his face, then it stops stops as there’s a scream of his name.

Fire rains from the skies. The focal point, a pegasus, an it feels like his soul calls to Her.

Vision swims. He’s on his back, Berkut over him and a numb feeling on his side, like something’s pressed there…? What…? “Hold on!” He hears. “Don’t you dare die, you absolute fool!” That’s his worried tone, isn’t it? There’s nothing to worry about, right? He doesn’t feel anything, right?

… He knows what this is.

Alm smiles instead, weakly grasping at his neck. A tug is all it takes, and the pendant of a promise is pressed weakly against the chest of his kin.

“Take care of them—”

“Stop.”

“Please.”

“Alm—!”

Yet his gaze is transfixed on the sky above, the pegasus.

Is this what flying felt like?

[seasaltmemories]

gentleoverdrive replied to your post “4 to 7 with Daydreams and Delights?”

Man, thank you so much for this. While I like the standalones you did, D&D just felt like it made way too much sense. Like I can picture Celica and Alm being like this post-Thabes.

Why thank you ^^ I find Alm and Celica to have the type of dynamic I love testing in countless different alternative AU’s but with D&D I wanted to show what I liked about them from canon and show them as older and wiser but not necessarily having lost the little quirks that make them fun

[starlitcrows]

reference sheet + doodles for my grima redesign

[dornishsphinx]

... Scum Villain AU :D

I tried hard to not make these entirely based on Berkut, but he has been on my mind since we were discussing him, sooo (I also tried to come up with new ones we’ve not come up with yet too!)

1— At the beginning of Alm’s reign, he and Berkut are still not on the same page, despite Alm’s insistence that they’re Cousins and Family and that means they should get along really well because he’s pretty sure that’s how families are supposed to work, right? The moment they actually do kinda start to get along is when one of them complains about how their friend (—crush—) is too subservient to Clive and the other is like I FEEL THAT

2— Berkut and Rinea are not together for a long while following Duma’s defeat, as Berkut is fully aware he would have sacrificed her had Alm and the gang not arrived as early as they did, and therefore mostly avoids her while being too proud to admit why (though he still does extend his protection as current heir to the throne over her when some nobles try to eject her from the court for being a “backwater noble without proper standing”. Lukas and Rinea also get along fairly well due to that last point.)

3— Python’s novel was popular enough that he had just received an advance for a publishing deal which included both “Echoes of the Jasper Lion” and a new work before he died and swapped bodies with Genny. When “Ribald Tales of the Faith War”, a loose adaption of some history she faintly remembers being taught at the priory, comes out, critics note how much the quality of the author’s work had improved and “Python” wins an award for it, even getting to meet the author of the ultra-popular “Dragon of Shadow and the Light Blade”. They seem very interested in where “Python” got the idea for the story. Too interested—and far too invested, especially in the depiction of its main characters and villains. 

4— When Alm and Celica undertake a joint venture to visit the kingdoms of Archanea, (and find Zeke and Tatiana) going via Thabes and on to other different places, Lukas meets a young knight named Roderick at King Marth’s court. He seems interested in Lukas’ life and position, and congratulates him on what he’s made of it. (“He seems to have made a better life for himself than I did in his position.”)

5— When Real World!Forsyth dies—not too long after Python does, even though he hadn’t realised he was dead all this time, just very different—he also ends up in Valentia, in the body of one of Clive’s lackeys. Forsyth had never actually read “Echoes of the Jasper Lion”, having never liked reading and just having bought a copy of the book when it was finally published physically to support his friend. He is extremely lost.

[felikatze]

Sorry I'm a stranger being Not Normal about Grima, which is a reawakened thing in me, and you Understand.

I keep thinking about the Divine Dragon blood Forneus somehow got. And how I can only square with it somehow being Naga's given Grima's power levels and power SET. He's basically opposite-Naga.

I'm going feral over this idea and how no wonder Naga's Like That because eventually she had to realize and tbh I'm surprised she's not sitting there sipping wine to deal with this constantly.

But also the comedic idea of a short AU fic where Naga just scruffs baby Grima after Forneus dies like a feral kitten is funny to me.

AU where Duma still destroys Thabes but he brings back baby grima to placate Dragon King Naga. Tiki just got a really weird sibling.

this is gonna be a specific comparison for my loh besties but this is such a laphlaes situation. mad wizard stole his dna and a couple years later he suddenly has two children. one of them is a chuuni to put owain to shame and the other one is a teen girl in her rebellious phase who hates his guts. this is tiki and grima to naga.

my favorite hc is that grima is Like That because he's made from divine and earth dragons (which is the hc used in out of the labyrinth! yay!). this mixture is Not Good to produce a functional being not prone to dragon madness. FE dragon madness / degeneration is such a fun concept and grima gets the full brunt of it. predispositioned ot fits of madness.

I feel like Naga can deal with a lot of things because she's just peaced out of the physical realm of being. which raises the question of how FP grima managed to kill her, if she has no physical form.

Imo Naga used to be Way Less Chill then she is these days, back when dragons ruled the earth and she was divine god-king. As evident from how she banished duma and mila for destroying thabes after a Dragon War, and gave the two another falchion to kill themselves with, just in case. Can't go insane if you're a ghost, i guess.

NEVER apologize for being insane about grima to me because it measn I get to be insane about grima too. i still have some asks from the last round of people being so normal abt grima in my inbox i ran out of steam to answer, ahahaha....

[iturbide]

Top 5 Grimas? (like, rank the ones in Feh, or any au versions, etc)

now we're just playing dirty

I'm biased and I'll always start with my predominant AU!Grima -- the one that was protector of Plegia, didn't want to be revived by Validar, and genuinely cares for Robin. Cursed Fate is the best example I have on-hand since it has the largest Grima presence.

The original FEH M!Grima. That Level 40 dialogue really added to a character that previously only had implied dimensionality, and honestly defied my expectations going: I was pleasantly surprised with that handling.

The theoretical AU where Grima gets to be best friends with Tiki. I love the idea of them as childhood friends, with Grima getting to experience something like a childhood with a fellow dragon roughly his own age

Echoes' Grima in the Thabes Labyrinth. Not only do we get new backstory, mechanically they end up implying that Grima isn't actually aggro because he does move to attack and you can touch any part of him besides his body and head and not enter combat.

this one

[levin-swort]

some Weird!Robin family snapshots throughout time! 

captions say who’s who and what’s happening!

you can read the Weird!Robin au explanation here!