#the abducted alchemist

[aetherialpiplup108]

You know the source material was respected when you get this 100% in-character reaction to Ed being kidnapped:

[meliake]

hes so father guys :,)

[orphetoon]

i read one of the fma light novels yesterday and why is it straight up just a fanfic

[qs63]

I'm reading the Abducted Alchemist novel, which btw is hilarious, and it seems they inadvertently gave Riza an uncle and two cousins!

In the scene where they're accusing Roy of having a son, the team mentions that the General (the other Commander of Eastern command, not named) has a full grown son and two grandkids at home.

This novel predates Grumman's first appearance by a month, so while this unnamed General is technically him, he's also not. I'm guessing the General having a son was later retconned by Grumman's appearance and his relationship to Riza. Still, I find it funny that this novel has unintentionally given Riza a bigger family.

Now, I want to write/read something with Riza meeting her uncle and (apparently much younger) cousins.

[monstersandmaw]

Male orc (Rhuarc) x female character - Part One (sfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Thank you to the two people who explicitly expressed interest in this story via my inbox. This one's for you. Here's Rhuarc the single dad orc and his girl, and how they met. I've even got some visuals in this one too!

Content: kidnapping, attempted human sacrifice, violence, some light gore, implied age gap, older male character, single father orc x small human female

Wordcount: 4344

Rhuarc tried not to resent the fact that the Jarl of Markarth’s crusty old steward had looked him up and down as he’d stood in front of the so-called Mournful Throne, and decided that the orc was either entirely expendable or utterly stupid enough to take on an entire Forsworn camp. By himself.

Apparently it was the latter though, because with his two adopted girls waiting for his return in Whiterun, Rhuarc was most certainly not expendable these days. Perhaps twenty years ago, he might have hurled himself at the nearest frothing lunatic disrupting trade routes and abducting travellers off the roads without much care for the damage he took — the fact that he’d lost the sight in his right eye before he’d turned nineteen was testament to that — but these days, his contracts required thought and planning.

Kill the leader of Hag’s End, an old Nordic tomb complex nestled away in the frozen mountains to the northeast of Markarth.

Easy.

By himself.

Less easy.

The place was huge, and crawling with more Forsworn than termites in a mound, and there was every chance he would encounter a hagraven there too. Fuck, he hated those things. Whatever unnatural magic was used to create those half-bird, half-women, he didn’t want any part of it.

His own magic was fairly rudimentary by the standards of the average mage: a few fireballs here, a few healing spells there, and he could make a pretty decent lance out of ice if he had to. After all, orcs were known primarily for how ferociously they could bludgeon something into Oblivion, but magicka did coil its way through some of them too, and his mother had been both an alchemist and a mage.

Now though, as Rhuarc crept up behind the Briarheart warrior who led this bunch of rabid lunatics, and slipped his arm around the man’s throat to hold him still while he ripped the strange replacement heart out of the half-undead creature’s chest, he wondered exactly what kind of magic these people used that let them replace an otherwise healthy man’s beating heart with the poisoned seed of a Briarheart tree. And what special kind of lunacy allowed someone to undergo it willingly. Perhaps it wasn’t willing though? What did he know about these people?

As the orc’s fingers curled around the prickly seed that was about the size of an apple, the magic of it felt at once too cold and too hot; the way white hot metal feels in that moment of pure shock if you touch it by accident before the pain kicks in. He released the disgusting ‘heart’ and it fell with a splatter of gore onto the snowy carpet covering the cosy little platform, from where the man ruled over his clan of Forsworn. Rhuarc would have to find a scrap of cloth to wrap it in so that it didn’t leak everywhere between there and the city of Markarth, but he was looking forward to depositing it directly into the stuffy old steward’s lap as proof of the kill and the contract fulfilled.

The Briarheart warrior went instantly limp in his arms and Rhuarc laid him down silently on the frozen ground, already starting to plan his next move. A shout went up a second later from somewhere to his right — his blind side — and an arrow pinged off the bastion wall beside him. With a curse, he rolled and ducked behind the hide wall of the leader’s large tent, breathing hard. Of course he’d missed one of them, and if she alerted anyone else, or that lurking hagraven, Rhuarc was fucked. He was tired. And cold. His joints weren’t quite what they had once been, and his muscles were seizing with the cold and from crouching in dark doorways and corners on the long and winding way up to reach this part of the secret redoubt.

With a careful peek around the support structure of the leader’s tent, he realised that this new Forsworn hadn’t actually spotted him properly yet, and he hefted the haft of his war axe in his hand. Throwing a weapon away was never a great idea, but he didn’t have a bow on him, and if he called magicka to his hands, a hagraven would certainly sense it. Not a chance he wanted to take, and given that the place was called Hag’s End, he thought it pretty fucking likely that there was one of the bird-legged, psychotic matriarchs of the Forsworn roosting up at the top of the complex on that balcony almost directly above him.

So, he drew back his arm and sent the blade of his war axe whirling away to bite into the breastbone of the Forsworn before she could spot him or cry out again. She fell with the clatter and rattle of bone and fur armour, her silly antlered headdress skittering away behind her, and he was off running immediately to release the weapon from her corpse and seek a new hiding place in case the commotion had drawn others.

As it was, Rhuarc crouched for a long few minutes behind the gruesomely-displayed corpse of an elk that had been partly taxidermied by the cold and stuck on a stake, with his breath billowing all around him, and the stillness of snow in the air. Had he got them all? He was spattered all up one side of his body with blood and even had a red streak in his otherwise white hair that he’d shaved close to his skull above his ears and left long enough to tie back into a ponytail on top. What a mess. Still, it would be worth the groaning bag of coin he was going to get for clearing the whole bloody encampment and making The Reach a little bit safer for travellers.

Just as he’d begun to relax, half thinking of getting the girls each a new dress with his earnings, a scream like nothing he’d ever heard before tore the silence in two and his blood went cold.

It had come from the balcony above him where a spar of stonework jutted out into the winter sky like the bowsprit of a ship, and it hadn’t been the harsh shriek of a hagraven. The scream had come from a woman in blind, abject terror, and the sound of it shocked him back to his feet before he’d even realised it.

Rhuarc thundered up the stone stairs behind him and shouldered open the carved doors of the inner sanctum of the tomb, plunging into the relative darkness without stopping to think.

Not thinking was a sure way to get himself killed, and by some miracle of the fates, he skidded to a halt just in time to avoid a pressure plate in the floor that would no doubt have unleashed some kind of magical or poisoned trap on him. Whoever lived here clearly didn’t let just anyone inside, and blundering around like a panicked mammoth wasn’t going to help anyone.

“Think, you thick-skulled orc,” he growled at himself, chest heaving and heart pounding in his ears like a war-drum. He was only a few heartbeats away from slipping into that infamous, orcish berserker rage, and he never ever wanted to find himself on the far end of a state of mind like that again. Caked in blood and viscera and surrounded by an array of corpses with no memory of how they had been felled… He shuddered and forced himself to steady his breathing before moving on.

What he confronted as he wound his way carefully and methodically through the dark, blood-stained hallways of the upper Nordic tomb proved to be as great a test of his prowess with blade and his magic as any he’d ever faced in his forty-six years.

Savage witches clad in long, magicka-laced, black robes hurled spells and curses at him that he only just dodged or warded in time to sink his axe into their skulls, but what made his skin crawl the most was the hagraven who seemed to be taunting him, letting him get one or two shots in before a swirl of purple and black magic enveloped her and she vanished to somewhere else in the complex.

Was she an illusion? Had he lost his mind or, worse, accidentally imbibed some poison from one of his victims that was making him hallucinate? He’d spotted enough deadly mushrooms growing in the dank corners of the dungeon that the suspicion remained, even as he ploughed on through the coven of crazed witches towards the woman who had let out that heart-rending scream.

Just as he sensed he was gaining the top of the tower, the hagraven disappeared amid a final storm of eerie, flickering magicka, leaving him alone in an echoing chamber at the top of a staircase lined with mortuary shelves.

Over to his left, an arcane enchanting table crackled with residual magicka from a recent use, the blueish runes on its onyx surface glowing in the dim light, and on his right, an ancient monument reared up like a tombstone, carved with a script he couldn’t read. He had no time for any of that, and paused just long enough with his hand on the last door to gather his breath and the last ragged remains of his strength, before shoving all his weight into swinging them open and stepping out onto the snowy balcony beyond.

A blast of freezing air hit him full in the face, but it wasn’t the cold that stole his breath and his senses.

There on a low, wide, stone altar, a Nord woman had been bound hand and foot, stretched out and completely naked, and she was thrashing weakly despite the wounds at her wrists and ankles from the ropes. Tears tracked pale lines through the dirt on her face and her bare chest heaved with broken, choking sobs as she arched her back in futile protest.

Over her prone figure loomed the emaciated figure of a hagraven with a glinting, black dagger raised in her taloned hands.

Rhuarc didn’t think.

He hurled a bolt of ice at the creature, and might have been surprised to find that it had actually struck her right in the stomach if he hadn’t already been concentrating on drawing the ambient moisture into his hand to freeze into another shard of ice as thick as a tree limb. The hagraven let out a shriek that should have made his ears bleed, and hurled a fireball at him for the indignity of him getting a hit in first.

Searing flames exploded all around him and he smelled singeing, though he wasn’t sure if it was his fur armour or his own skin, and he didn’t care. He leapt forwards, diving into a roll in the snow to douse any lingering flames, and as he came up he launched a second spike of ice directly at the hagraven’s weathered, distorted face. Her black, beady eyes narrowed and she bared rotten teeth with a snarl as she clenched her clawed hand and prepared to fling a second fireball at him.

Rhuarc had closed the distance between them in a few powerful strides though, and before she’d finished the spell, he grabbed her by her flimsy arm and felt the snap of it breaking in his grip as he yanked her away from the altar. Before she could even muster a screech, he lopped her head off with his axe. He didn’t stop to watch her abandoned carcass slide over the edge of the parapet, down into the void of snow and cooling corpses below, and turned instead to the woman laid out on the table.

The dagger had fallen from the hagraven’s claws to land beside her right hand and she was reaching frostbitten fingers for it.

“Easy,” Rhuarc said, holstering his messy axe at the loop on his belt and realising he probably looked as frightening as the hagraven had. Six foot six and broad as a barn door at the shoulder, Rhuarc now had blood all up his face from one of the witches, a nasty burn on his shoulder that was only just now making itself known, and a long cut on his abdomen that was oozing blood down his solid paunch. As he’d got older, he’d lost the iron definition he’d had in his youth, but he was probably the strongest now that he’d ever been in his life.

No wonder the woman was staring wild-eyed at him like he was some animal barbarian, but his heart physically hurt in his chest when he saw the welts and bruises standing out starkly on her pale, Nordic complexion. Her long, midnight black hair was loose and lank and greasy, her lip was split and swollen, and there was a vibrant, purple bruise all around her left eye socket. Those dark brown eyes glared up at him with fierce defiance though, and her fingers found the hilt of the knife.

He smiled. “I know I look a sight,” he said in a low, quiet rumble, holding both hands up, bloody palms towards her. “I’m gonna help you though. Let’s get you healed up and out of here. I’m not sure what you can wear though…”

“My… My clothes are in… were in… a chest… in there,” she croaked, twitching her head slightly towards the chamber he’d just left. The swelling in her lip clearly made talking painful, and she sounded like she hadn’t had any water for days. That, or the thick, raw, red line around her throat was responsible, flanked by distinct, finger-sized bruises the colour of a ripe plum. It made his orc blood boil to see marks like that on a person’s body, but he made himself focus on the more immediate task of helping her.

“Alright. I’ll untie you — may I use that dagger?”

She nodded and reluctantly let her fingers go loose again. With the rope lashed so tightly around her wrist, she didn’t have enough purchase to lift her hand free of the hilt, so Rhuarc carefully slid his bloody fingers underneath hers and he eased the blade out.

Concentrating, he sawed steadily through the thick rope, and she hissed as she flexed her fingers when the rope finally sheared and one arm came free. The raw chafing showed him just how hard she’d fought her captors, and he found the warmth of pride glowing in the pit of his stomach for this stranger and her resilience. Methodically, Rhuarc moved his way around the table to free her ankles next before finally cutting the ropes binding her left arm to the cold table, and all the while keeping his eyes off her naked body as best he could.

“We need to get you somewhere sheltered. Can you sit up?”

She tried valiantly when he asked, but her strength failed her in a rush and she slumped back down with a gasp.

Rhuarc dropped the knife to the stone at his feet and stuck his right hand under her head just in time to stop her cracking her skull on the stone platform of the altar, and he cradled her lolling head in the palm of his hand. His already-bruised knuckles clunked against the altar under the full weight of her head as she surrendered at last, spent.  

“Easy,” he said. “I’ve got some magic. I’m going to heal you, alright? Keep steady, then we’ll find you some clothes and get you out of here.”

Her dark eyes rolled as the golden light of healing magic washed around her, and she slumped at last into unconsciousness.

Rhuarc picked her up with detached efficiency and carried her out of the biting wind and back into the tower that formed the top part of the tomb’s inner sanctum, marvelling at the Nord’s resilience to the cold. He knew that her people were tougher than most humans in these conditions, but still, with everything she’d been through, she probably should be dead.

Her small body was soft where many Nords were made of hard muscle, and he suspected that she had not been raised to be a fighter. That the Forsworn would snatch her away from whatever battle-free life she’d led before and defile her like this made his blood sing all over again and his hands itched to sink his axe into a nice, crunchy, Forsworn skull. He let the thought go with a growl around his thick tusks and shouldered the doors open.

With her pressed against his bare chest, he felt the tingle of magic in her blood too, and he recalled the way her body had drunk his own restoration magic down like water poured onto dry sand. Perhaps the fact that she was probably a mage had been why the hagraven had been about to sacrifice her in that unholy ritual.

Inside the echoing, stone room with the enchanting table, Rhuarc found the chest she’d mentioned, and he crouched down awkwardly in front of it with her half-draped across his lap, her naked body propped up by his right arm. He really didn’t want to have to use one of the beds in the tower that the witches had clearly slept in, but if the woman needed to rest, then he would stay with her and see that she was safe.

Just as he was fiddling one-handed with the catch of the chest, which luckily wasn’t locked, she drew in a deeper breath and came-to with a mewling sob of discomfort. Her bare legs were touching the floor and the room wasn’t much warmer than the air outside because of a huge hole in the ceiling, but at least they were out of the wind.

“I know,” he said without looking at her. “I’m going to find you something to wear. Just give me a second.”

“Thank you,” she rasped, and the sound became a sob as she squirmed in his arms, trying to curl inwards on herself. Whether that was to cover her naked body better or simply because she was hurting in every way humanly possible, he wasn’t sure. “Thank you. I thought that was it, when… when she… she —”

“Shh,” he said, briefly tightening his hold around her shoulders with a slight curl of his right arm, worried that if she grew too distressed, he might drop her. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”

“Thank you,” she said again, and then added with a little sniffle, “My name is Syl, by the way.”

“Rhuarc,” he grunted, finally lifting the lid of the chest. “This your stuff?”

She peered forward and nodded. An undyed linen shirt and brown trousers had been roughly stuffed into the wooden chest, along with a pair of softly-worn, fur-lined boots, a thick, fur-lined jacket, and a small alchemist’s pouch that fitted on a belt around the hips. He had something similar himself for the road, choosing to forgo the usual traveller’s pack with a bedroll and cooking pot. He hunted or foraged for what he needed and cooked it over an open fire and slept under the stars when he absolutely had to, but mostly, he actually planned his journeys to halt at an inn for the night these days, because he was too damned old now to be sleeping out of doors in the grass like a bloody wild boar. He also thought he glimpsed some linen underwear and wrappings in the chest too, but he didn’t let his gaze linger.

“You… need a hand?” he asked quietly, but she shook her head.

“I can just kneel here for a moment. I’ll be alright,” she said in a steady, if rough voice. “Thank you.”

He nodded once. “I’ll be over there,” he said, gesturing vaguely with his thumb over his left shoulder.

He helped her slide off his lap where he’d crouched beside the chest, and steadied her briefly with a hand at the small of her spine to stop her tipping backwards. Her flesh was still cold from lying out there on the table, but she couldn’t have been out there for too long before he’d found her, or she’d have died of exposure. Even a Nord couldn’t survive naked in the snow for very long.

Only then, with his rough palm pressed against the pale softness of her skin, did it strike him that it had actually been a very long time since he’d seen another naked body, and the feel of her skin beneath the calluses of his palm distantly stirred the cold embers of desire in him that had lain dormant and out of mind for longer than he cared to remember. Even for an orc, he wasn’t exactly short of people showing interest, but it just… hadn’t been something he’d wanted. Then of course, he’d found himself the adoptive father of a pair of ten and eleven year old girls, and all thoughts of romance and the so-called ‘Dibellan arts’ had evaporated completely from his life like autumn mist.

With a sigh, he banished the faint and inappropriate sensation and levered himself stiffly to his feet. As he did, he felt the cut in his lower belly pull with a sharp prick of pain and when he looked down at it, he found it already suppurating. His thick, naturally green, orcish skin had turned a nasty, angry red around the slash and something was oozing out of it that wasn’t blood. Poison. Fuck.

Glancing around the room, he wondered if there were any ingredients stashed way that the witches would have used, but he was in the wrong part of their stronghold for that and anyway, who knows what they might have been brewing in there? Thinking about what limited stocks he kept in the emergency pouch on his belt, he drew out two carefully-sealed glass bottles and tipped their contents into the cupped palm of his left hand. It was hardly ideal, but it would do for now, and he smeared it onto the open wound.

The flash of pain made him grunt, but with a soft fizzing, the powders got to work and nullified the festering poison before it could spread.

“Rhuarc?”

When he turned around at the sound of her voice, he found Syl looking at him from where she was still kneeling in front of the wooden chest.

“Are you alright?” she asked with a frown.

Her alto was still hoarse and rasping, and he wondered if she was still in pain. “I’m fine. Are you? Did I heal you enough?”

At his question, she smiled, and something in his chest slipped sideways when he saw it.

How could a woman who’d just been through the torment she had experienced still find the grace to smile like that? And at an orc of all creatures.

“Yes,” she said, and, now that she was dressed, she stood slowly; cautiously.

She wasn’t very tall for a human, perhaps five foot five at most, and her body seemed somehow even smaller in her loose-fitting, practical clothes. He could clearly see the swell of her hips though, and the definite curve of her breasts, and her dark eyes looked very large as she regarded him. In an attempt to tidy herself up, she had tied her lank, black hair back off her face in a low ponytail, but she still looked like she’d taken one hell of a battering, despite the healing magic.

And yet, there she was on her own two feet, and her resilience was suddenly as devastatingly attractive to him as were her natural good looks. Rhuarc swallowed thickly, utterly floored by what he was feeling for the first time in decades.

“You’re hurt,” she said, eyeing the wound in his stomach.

He felt her open herself up to start channelling magicka, and his own mismatching eyes went wide. “No, don’t!” he gasped, taking an involuntary step towards her and holding out both hands in a kind of warding gesture. “Please, you need to conserve your energy. I’ll heal myself in a moment. I was just waiting for the poison to work its way out first.” No point sealing up the cut with all the vileness still inside, after all.

Syl walked slowly towards him, moving like a black cat along a wall, with her gaze focused on his bare paunch.

Rhuarc’s breath caught and he froze. He couldn’t have moved so much as a muscle then, even if an army of hagravens had descended on him.

When Syl came to a halt in front of him, she brought her fingertips up to touch the fevered flesh around the wound. Very carefully, she let a tiny thread of golden magic seep into him, and he honestly did not mean to let out the noise that left his lips. He hadn’t even known he was still capable of making a sound like that.

Pleasure curled deep and visceral in his gut, both from the whisper-light contact of her fingertips against the trail of hair on his stomach, and from the way her magic coiled and twisted inside him, stitching him up from the inside out and cleansing the last of the poison’s putrefaction in the same deft stroke. She wasn’t just some hedge witch with a little magic: Syl had to be a master of the school of restoration with a healing that skilled.

“There,” she breathed. “Just looks a bit of a mess now,” she added, eyeing the blood that still covered him in a series of spatters and smears.

He couldn’t catch his breath for a moment, but he cleared his throat and stepped back. “Not much different from usual then,” he said a beat too late and painfully aware that his gruff bass sounded far more winded than when he had fought his way through the entire complex to reach her. “Thank you.”

With a long inhale, she let her hand fall back against her side and turned her big, dark eyes up to regard him. “So… what happens now?”

I hope you enjoyed this one? I'm fairly certain most people aren't going to read down to this point, so if you did, please consider reblogging it to help it find more of an audience, and give Rhuarc and Syl some love?

And if you want to learn more about how they fall in love on their journey away from Hag's End, be sure to leave me an ask or a comment! Otherwise I'll assume there's no interest and won't keep sharing it. :)

Masterlist | Ko-fi (tip jar)

[dailyadventureprompts]

Villain: The Cult of the Wyrm Eternal

Any adventurer, alchemist, or awestruck child can tell you that there is power in the body of a dragon, and like all sources of power it's only a mater of time before someone comes along to try to capitalize on it.

Enter the Cult of the Wyrm Eternal, which emerges from long buried vaults to dissect the bodies of dragonkind like flesh eating beetles. The cult originated from a time beyond remembering following the teachings of a profane text known as the Har'Khon Libram, which survives into the modern day as a sort of how-to manual for those seeking forbidden knowledge allowing them to revive the cult's practices and discover its caches of lost power.

It's in this manner that the cult has survived millennia and numerous purges at the hands of heroes, holy orders, and oligarchs: With each iteration caching away knowledge and resources for acolytes they will never meet.

Hooks:

A prominent dragonborn hero and ally of the party disappears, leaving behind few clues and a mystery to solve. Lacking a true dragon to carve up for ingredients the cult abducted the dragonborn and plans on sacrificing them after a gauntlet of strange rituals intended to suffuse their flesh with power.  Its a race against the clock for the party to find their friend before there’s nothing left of them but a grisly scattering of magical items bound for the cult’s armoury. 

The local warlord has a new pet, a young dragon provided to him by the cult in exchange for his protection and material support. Tales of him riding out to wreak destruction from its back send shivers of terror through the populace. What a surprise then when the party encounter it in the wild, rampaging aimlessly after  slipping her bonds.  Brainwashed by cult doctrine the parry find themselves  negotiating with a creature with the drives of a caged tiger, the volatility of an abused teenager,  and the destructive potential of an artillery battery.  Talking her down will be as difficult as diffusing a bomb, but they might just come away with important information or even a new ally should they help her evade recapture.

Using knowledge purloined from the mysteries of the mother hydra herself a cell of the Wyrm Eternal has been working on a ritual to create a true dragon, experimenting with drakes, basilisks and other reptilian monsters, filling the wilderness with bounty worthy monsters that will inevitably bring the party crashing into their lair.

Background: The knowledge contained within the Har'Khon Libram is cursed, part of a scheme by the book's original author in an attempt to evade both death and those who hunt unlawful immortality. Reading the book not only imparts the authors knowledge upon the prospective cultist, but also a vestige of their cosiouness, which steers them towards the same course of action that has kept the cult alive for so long: constructing more vaults, hoarding draconic power, and propogating the Libram's knowledge so that the infection can spread through time.

Hidden in the depths of each vault are tablets of further tainted lore, which causes the seed of malign presence within the Wyrm cultist's mind to blossom, opening their mind to the space between life and death and allowing their patron's thoughts to swirl into their own. In this way the party can end up fighting the same villain through many proxies, the unseen master of the Wyrm eternal studying them as they cut down vessel after vessel before formulating a counteroffence.

Dungeon Dressing:

Wyrm Eternal vaults vary by the culture that originally constructed them, but are always in remote, sheltered areas that could endure largescale devastation. Their entrances are hidden and warded against intrusion, protected by magical cyphers that can usually only be broken with aid from the Har'Khon Libram. Vaults can also contain these doors within, locking away the greatest treasures until the acolytes have further tainted their thoughts with the Libram's curse.

Undead are ubiquitous within dungeons claimed by the Wyrm Eternal, ranging from simple servitors to looming guardians to dragonbone infused war machines just waiting to be unleashed on the cult's enemies all with green corpsefire flickering in their heads. Access to these undead armouries and the arsenal of magical items that come with them are one of the primary drivers for individuals to become cultists in the first place.

Each vault will likewise contain preserved pieces of dragongore, ranging from single skulls placed on altars to whole cellars filled with blood magically preserved in clay or glass vessels. If a cult cell reached full operation, it's likely to have atleast one mummified corpse preserved in an onsite tomb, it's vital organs ( and perhaps a few spares) preserved in canopic jars waiting nearby.

Art 1 Art 2

[nalyra-dreaming]

In your (excellent) fic about Lestat telling Louis about Magnus, did you invent the idea that Lestat could show Louis these specific memories in the blood? I haven't read the books so I don't know what they say about memory sharing, and sometimes it's hard to keep track of what is in the books/show and what is just in fic. If someone else wrote a fic where Lestat shows Louis memories by sharing blood, would that feel like they were copying you, or would it feel like they were making valid use of general iwtv lore?

(Glad you like the fic, thank you for telling me!! 💕)

That's general lore (so have at it^^). Vampires can conjure illusions and visions in mortals, can read them, too, not just in the blood and can see the mental images people experience when they drain them.

For example Lestat sees memories/dreams of the woman he kills at the beginning of TtotBT, and is shown Magnus stealing the blood when Magnus bites him:

"Damn you, damn you, damn you! " I was roaring and bellowing. And he drew closer and the teeth went through my flesh. Not this time, I was raging, not this time. I will not feel it. I will resist. I will fight for my soul this time. But it was happening again. The sweetness and the softness and the world far away, and even he in his ugliness was curiously outside of me, like an insect pressed against a glass who causes no loathing in us because he cannot touch us, and the sound of the gong, and the exquisite pleasure, and then I was altogether lost. I was incorporeal and the pleasure was incorporeal. I was nothing but pleasure. And I slipped into a web of radiant dreams. A catacomb I saw, a rank place. And a white vampire creature waking in a shallow grave. Bound in heavy chains he was, the vampire; and over him bent this monster who had abducted me, and I knew that his name was Magnus, and that he was mortal still in this dream, a great and powerful alchemist. And he had unearthed and bound this slumbering vampire right before the crucial hour of dusk. And now as the light died out of the heavens, Magnus drank from his helpless immortal prisoner the magical and accursed blood that would make him one of the living dead. Treachery it was, the theft of immortality. A dark Prometheus stealing a luminescent fire. Laughter in the darkness. Laughter echoing in the catacomb. Echoing as if down the centuries. And the stench of the grave. And the ecstasy, absolutely fathomless, and irresistible, and then drawing to a finish. I was crying.

So, definitely general lore. Armand often shows visions, too, for example.

Have fun writing!!! If you like, shoot me the link per DM when you're done?

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Ep3 Musings - Armand & Lesmand & Nickistat (Spoilers)

We got the Armand backstory! 😭 The first half of this ep had me screaming at my screen, cuz Armand's a effing LIAR; I was rolling! 🤣

We were already told 1000 times by Assad & Sam that Armand's trying to make himself seem as sympathetic as possible. That is SUPER important, cuz although he's my favorite book character, Armand is a effing MENACE in IWTV, TVL, QotD, and TVA.

Ok, they've clarified my confusion about the weird 1556 date, cuz it implied that Armand MET Lestat in 1556, which is entirely wrong.

So I'm glad my suspicion/hope was correct, that the date was out of context. 1556+239=1795, which tracks with what Les said in S1.

So Lestat met Armand ONE year after becoming a vampire. (No wonder AMC!Armand dish-ragged him, LOL!)

No duh, if you've only been a vamp for a EFFING YEAR. (I looooove the Time-stopping Gift! So happy to see it used again--the horses are especially impressive.)

This seems like Armand's taking Marius' place as Lestat's mentor (Armand WISHES, lol). And it's kinda smacking of narcissist!Lestat using him then dumping him once he'd learned what he wanted, like Daniel & Louis implied later in the ep. (He even grabs Armand's hand & drinks w/out asking; mighty bold! Ok sure, he kissed it first, but still!?) But their dynamic is SO different in the books.

I have a looooot of issues with AMC!Magnus.

Excuse you!? Language! 😤

Armand wanna be called "Daddy" so bad. 😂

BULL.

EFFING.

CRAP.

AMC/Armand officially butchered how awesome Magnus was--he was never a Child of Satan/Darkness, or in a coven--he was a human alchemist who STOLE the Dark Gift from Rhosh's fledgling Benedict!

That means nothing, if you don't explain that Lestat is Rhoshamandes' great-grandson, and that Magnus was a WIZARD. 😒 And Armand said Les' turning was "MAYBE" a horror show? 🤨 How does he not know, if they were so close? 🙄 And how would he have even known Magnus was his Maker?

Oh no. "Come to me" was ARMAND'S theme the whole time!? 😱 Thanks, I hate it. 😭😂

LESTAT SAID KISS MY ARSE!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I mean, I would, too-the CoD/S lived like bums! The reason Magnus was so friggin rich and had all that money he gave to Lestat was strictly cuz he WASN'T a penniless bum like the other coven vampires--he hid himself away in his TOWER. (If we don't get the Lesmand tower scene Imma be so mad.) He had no Maitre/Master.

NGL, I expected the Children of Darkness/Satan to be WAY filthier. :P

So Armand really IS Indian then? As in Roma/Ukranian/Russian?

Sadly, they didn't speak on Lestat's Harlequin mask being Blackface. But woah. "Dervish" as in Muslim ascetics & mystic dancers? So was 1700s!Armand Catholic or Muslim? Is that what he thought of Lestat back then? Or what 2022!Armand thinks of him now? If the latter, Armand converted to Islam....WHEN???

Armand glossed over EVERYTHING that went down with Nicki. He seems to imply that Les got with Nicki AFTER they met, which is beyond untrue. (And not a word about Gabrielle being there for all of this mess--MIGHTY SUS.)

We know Lestat loves his gay panicking needy alcoholic bottoms.

THE FRENCH GIRLS ARE FIGHTING.

Oh lovely. More racists--I'm not even surprised; I never liked Nicki in the book anyway; bye Felicia. 🙄

Iiiinteresting way AMC/Armand gave Nicki's abduction. (Again, no Gabrielle--MIGHTY SUS!)

And LAWWWWD, lemme find out Armand was telling the truth abt him & Les knocking boots in their theatre box on some exhibitionist kink while vamp!Nicki mean-mugged from the orchestra. 😭

So Armand's still to blame for Nicki's death, but not cuz of the darkness of "self-loathing," but jealousy cuz Lesmand were an item? BISH PLEASE! 🤣

(TBF, Loumand still blames Lestat, saying he "abandoned" Armand & Nicki & the coven. Which...is not entirely true. Lestat gave Nicki the Theatre, but didn't want to be part of it or Armand's coven, so he left with Gabrielle, but still kept tabs on everyone via Eleni. So whatchu mean??????)

LOUIS SUICIDE WATCH, stop playing with me, AMC! I want to see these vamps greet the sun and "taste the fire"! (And they had the NERVE to put the commercial break there; I see you, AMC.)

They were SHOWING OFF Armand's Fire Gift in this episode--oh yeah, Louis DEFINITELY got it from him; I'm convinced now. (I'm still waiting to see if Santiago has it, too; I hope to god not though.)

Lestat was a MENACE! XD "It's a fallen tree." What a brat!

The Lesmand eye-f**kery was INTENSE--Samothy was serving~!

Don't you DARE tease me like that, AMC! YES! I want 2022!Lestat in that Dubai penthouse by the end of this season, PLEASE. 🙏🙏🙏

What does all that say? Looks Latin or French? And WTF is Armand doing biting himself? (Reminds me of Louis with Jonah.)

This is why I'm convinced that the whole "Rashid" ruse in S1 was strictly for Armand & Dan's benefit, cuz in QotD Armand specifically said Daniel was the only mortal who knew his name & lived.

Chile, this episode was A LOT, and that was just the first 20 frikkin minutes, wtf.

[lovelynim]

TickleTober2023/Day 07 - Playtime

Genshin Impact - Aether x Albedo

Aether supported his head with his hand as he leaned over the table, staring into nothing as he lazily spun a pencil between his fingers with his free hand. He was starting to understand why Klee liked to see things go “boom” after times like this.

Letting out an unamused sigh, the traveler looked to his side with the corner of his eyes, noticing how abducted by his sketch Albedo was. Sitting like an actual prince, with good posture and legs crossed with one knee over the other, the chief alchemist continued to gently brush the pencil over the paper sheet, one line after the other, making his drawing look more and more realistic.

“Is something wrong, traveler?”

The blonde snapped back to his senses as Albedo’s words reached him. Blinking rapidly a few times, Aether was met with the confused, but gentle gaze of his partn- ahm, friend.

“A-aha, sorry, I just got… a little distracted.”

“I see,” Albedo continued, placing down his sketch and smiling at the other guy next to him. “This might not be as entertaining to you as I imagined, I apologize.”

“W-what? No, pfft,” Aether scoffed, already feeling guilty for making Albedo think about something like that. “It’s just… that I had something else in time when you invited me over to ‘help you study’, you know?”

The alchemist tilted his head, feigning confusion when he knew the intention behind those words. “And what would it be?”

Aether felt the heat reaching his face, faking a cough while he promptly averted his gaze. “Y-you know, why don’t we have a break?”

“Hmm, that could be of some use. I… no, we have been studying for quite a while, so there shouldn’t be any harm in having some playtime.”

“Good,” Aether said, eagerly placing his empty paper sheet away and snatching Albedo’s sketch from his hands seconds later, “because I’m really needing it.” He grinned.

Barely having time to process what was happening, the last thing Albedo remembered was the traveler tackling him down in his seat, taking both of them down, and a pair of hands latching onto his sides. Truth to be told, he should’ve seen something like that coming.

“A-Aehehether! Wait! Ahah, y-yohou’re gohohoing to mahahake us fahah- ahAHah!” Albedo chuckled, battling the urge to press his arms against his torso to protect himself from the tickling just to keep holding the traveler, trying to make sure none of them would fall off his seat. “Stohohop it!”

“What? No way, Albedo ~” Aether teased, pinching right over his ribs and making the alchemist scrunch up his shoulders as he giggled. “You said it yourself that we could use some playtime, so don’t take it from me now!”

“AhAHAH, n-nohoho!” He laughed, managing to look up to see the traveler grinning down at him while making him cackle like a maniac. Was that his concept of “playing”? 

Regardless, Albedo didn’t try to make it stop. If getting tickled was the price he needed to pay in order to see the traveler smiling, then he was willing to pay for it.

A/N: Aaaand, with this one, we finish our first week! I'm so excited for the upcoming days and I hope you guys are too, heheh ~

[weeb-polls-with-pip]

Autistic Anime Girls Group 1 Match 23

SUBMISSION PROPAGANDA:

Hikaru -

"She loves constellations and space. (that one’s straight from the opening) She loves sci-fi and aliens so much that her classmates genuinely thought that she just WOULDN’T NOTICE being abducted by aliens."

Winry -

"she loves mechanics and prosthetics and making automail and attacking Ed with a wrench <3"

[theygotlost]

Post-canon thots:

In my heart, Pete and Billy get married for the tax benefits, and to make Billy's mom happy, and for personal reasons neither of them are ready to examine.

Hank is allowed full freedom (within a very restrictive budget) to plan the wedding, which involves many shenanigans and Hank having a full bridezilla moment. Despite his best efforts to squirm out of it, Rusty is the best man, and must enlist the aid of every married/divorced man he knows to write a reasonably inoffensive toast for the reception (Al the Alchemist provides the best advice). Brock takes over bachelor party duties out of pure pity.

Pete nearly gets cold feet twenty minutes before he's due to walk down the aisle; he overhears Dean, the ring bearer, musing outloud to Helper and RoboBo (fellow groomsmen) about gender roles and finding happiness that's "outside the box," even if it's scares you. Pete realizes he wants this marriage, and the wedding vows are exchanged.

Just as the priest says, "you may now kiss the groom," St. Cloud interrupts with a giant robot. "I OBJECT," he whines, and everyone points out that he already missed that part. Undaunted, he abducts Billy, and the gang comes together to celebrate love and kick robot ass.

✌️

this is so exquisite and so real. its like im there...... thank you for sharing ❤

[qs63]

Fullmetal Alchemist: The abducted alchemist

Time for another FMA novel review!

This one much like the previous novel, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Land of Sand, happens in early canon. That means the brothers are still searching for the stone, however this particular novel focuses on a Military case and is very Roy centric — which admittedly is what I'm here for.

Spoilers ahead!

The story follows mostly Ed and Roy as they investigate a series of seemingly random bombing on the railways by a group of terrorists. The plot is quite simple, there aren't any big surprises or particularly memorable side characters. What this has is a lot of comedy and banter, which in my opinion is its saving grace.

There are a lot of funny moments: Roy being a shameless flirt, team Mustang interrogating him about a supposed "son", Havoc terrorizing Breda and Al with a car, Ed going ballistic about his height, Ed pretending to be Roy's son. The paternal Roy-Ed angle is played A LOT throughout the novel, so if you like this you'll have plenty to enjoy. I'm personally not a fan of it, but as it's mainly played for comedic relief it didn't bother me as much as I would've expected.

The best part of this story, for me, were the small Royai moments. You have Riza bringing Roy tea, the two of them discussing strategy alone, obligatory questioning of their past and guilt, and the two of them trying to save each from the same target. It really made me smile.

The worst part of this was Roy and Ed teaming up. It's very obvious the author ran into the same issue Arakawa did while writing the Promised Day arc. Roy is too dang OP so if you leave him alone he'll steal all the thunder from Ed. No, unlike Arakawa's own elegant solution (to blind him for the final fight) the author just inexplicably powered down Roy's abilities and alchemy.

There's a whole paragraph explaining how Roy can't hit the big bad because he's carrying a gun and ammunition on his back, saying that his skills aren't good enough not to hit him without setting off the ammunition. This novel was of course written before we had seen the whole might of Roy's flame alchemy, but that explanation rings so wrong and hollow after seeing Roy burn Envy's tongue and eyes with such accuracy that it was scary…

I wish the authors had found a less bullshit way to have Ed be the one to save the day with his automail blade.

The lack of understanding of Roy's past and abilities is also very noticeable in his final punchline to the terrorist leader, where he said something that almost made me put down the book entirely: "You know the difference between us? We don't use kids and money to try to win people's hearts. We kill, but we don't hate."

Considering all the evil the military did in Ishval and later, and how Roy himself burned innocent children, women, elderly during the war, that phrase left a terrible taste in my mouth.

In conclusion, the Abducted Alchemist is a funny story, worth reading if you want some mindless banter between the brothers and team Mustang. That being said, the plot is quite weak,and the lack of understanding of the characters — especially of Roy — did put a damper on my enjoyment of the story. For all this, it gets a 6.5/10 from me.

[hexblooddruid]

name: Bryn Acevedo

nickname: Doc (Karlach), Faithwarden (Wyll, affectionate), Faithwarden (Astarion, derogatory).

gender: cis woman (she/her)

star sign: Bryn was born under The Centaur! Summer baby.

height: 4'5"

orientation: Bi and poly

race: Gold Dwarf

romancing: My first playthrough with her she romanced Wyll (and was able to romance Gale for most of the game until they fixed that glitch). I did a second one where she and Astarion ended up falling for each other when she got locked out of Wyll's romance at the Tiefling Party. It's too early on in this playthrough to have committed to someone but she's definitely got a huge crush on on Wyll and has feelings for Astarion (though she is very much in denial about that).

fave fruit: Pears and blackberries

fave season: She will say that she doesn't play favorites, that all parts of the cycle are important for the nature of rebirth but it's spring and autumn for sure (the transitional seasons).

fave flower: Sunflowers, apple blossoms

fave scent: Pine, salty sea spray, mossy dirt

coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: Tea, definitely. She's an alchemist and druid. Collecting, drying, and brewing tea is her specialty.

average sleep hours: She attempts 8 but usually just get six.

dogs or cats: As a future cleric of Mielikki, she's a friend of all small creatures but she has a soft spot for cats. As a Land Druid, she doesn't use her Wild Shape in battle often so at camp it's Kitty Bryn time.

dream trip: Ahh this is so hard, Bryn wants to see so much. She was on her way to stowaway on a ship to the Moonshae Isles when she got abducted by the mind flayer ship. In this playthrough she just read the note about the Sussur and passed the nature check to know it's found in the Underdark, so she's really excited to go there.

amount of blankets: One at the most. Bryn runs hot, especially in the summer (having a magic tattoo attuned to the seasons will do that to ya).

random fact(s):

She was originally initiated into the Circle of the Forgotten Vale, a fairly insular circle who's main responsibilities is warning travelers away from the Forgotten Forest. She was Sage of her Circle, responsible for collecting, archiving, and managing their collection of Druidic Lore. This caused her to take lots of trips to Baldur's Gate to explore the libraries there. She ran away once she was named successor to the ArchDruid.

She's 50 years old, the youngest of young adults for a dwarf.

Has deep bone shattering fear of Timeless Body. Would rather die than live another 1000 plus years as a half tree person.

Doesn't imbibe often BUT definitely lights up some fantasy weed before bed while stargazing.

I thought initially I got locked out of Wyll's romance for sleeping with Astarion but I found it was that plus flirting with Gale and Karlach during their romance scenes that triggered before the party. To prevent that from happening in this playthrough I've created a spreadsheet and timeline to track Bryn's romantic feelings toward her companions. She will not get locked out of a romance with the person she's actually interested in for being a relentless flirt again.

Thank you @thedragonagelesbian (muah) for tagging me! If anyone sees this and wants to do it, consider yourself tagged. It was a lot of fun and I want to see other tavs/durges/ocs what have you.

[last-hourglass]

*fuses my current hyperfixation with a past hyperfixation to create THE ULTIMATE HYPERFIXATION AU*

Here they are! The turtle boys all done up Hollow Knight style! I would’ve had this out like four days ago but then I decided I wanted to make them all glowy and give them a fun menu character selection screen

Basic rundown of the AU (so far at least):

The Alchemist King, ruler of Hallownest (no points for guessing who that is in the AU), for reasons unknown to all but those closest to him, begins experiments to create mighty Void warriors from the humble bugs of his kingdom

Alchemist King’s initial experiments prove to be unsuccessful, resorts to abducting infant bugs from across the realm to try a different approach in harnessing Void energy

Out of countless test subjects, four prove viable, and two are successfully bonded to the stark white Void Vessel masks

Before the other two can be turned into fully realized Vessels, an attack on the White Palace by cult followers of an ancient and nearly forgotten enemy causes considerable chaos, and in the process all four of the young Vessels are believed to perish

On an entirely unrelated note, it seems the reigning champion of the Coliseum of Fools has decided he would rather not fight anymore, and in retaliation, the Grand Mistress of the Coliseum has thrown him down the cliffs of Kingdom’s edge, all the way down into the forlorn expanse of the Ancient Basin… where he soon stumbles upon four tiny bug children who definitely should not be down there all alone

Shenanigans ensue and lead to a woefully unprepared ex-champion taking four strange bug boys under his wing <3

Oh what havoc will they wreak upon Hallownest? What’s the deal with all this strange fuchsia goop nonsense that’s starting to spread through the Kingdom - and what is slumbering behind the sealed doors of the Black Egg Sanctum, awaiting an opportunity to rise again and take back the lands that once were his?