#tmr flammin

[penwrythe]

The Blazing Champion - Flammagentius

With her Beloved, Queen Nike

I had so much fun working on this design back in June! Now that Altostratus is complete, here they are, the Blazing Champion!

Now the notes on this text under the read more:

Flammin (she/they, paintbrush, 10 years before refitting) 

- before the relic wars, they were a master muralist 

- 40 years old when her home was destroyed by Apollyon and was later found by Queen Nike 

- although the trauma of their past gravely hunts them, they still find purpose within the Jazeran havens as a tunnels scout, using their skills to make maps on the walls of Nike's hidden haven. When Queen Nike recruited aid among the survivors of Apollyon's rampage, Flammin volunteered as a representative of objectkind.

Flammagentius the Blazing Champion

Throughout the pain of refitting, Flammin was cared for by Nike, who provided the future champion with quicksilver to calm her sore ichor and some needed company in her isolated construction scaffolding that supported her massive frame. With Nike as their mentor, Flammagentius became a proficient fighter trained in flight, combat, and flame. While objectkind looks up to their savior with brimming hope, Flammagentius feels burdened by her role in the relic wars. Yet, with each of Apollyon's relics destroyed and the fallen cities he conquered restored to their former glory, Flammagentius' hope for a future grows ever brighter.

[penwrythe]

Altostratus cover update!

To be unreachable...

Queen Nike's wings are a combination of linen cloth and ichor threading rooting from her ichor structure. Flammagentius' wings are all ichor, with the only non-ichor material supporting them being her bronze metal fingers.

Ichormancy is the practice of developing and improving a living object's ichor structure, increasing its strength, flexibility, durability, tension tolerance, and damage tolerance. Most objects hatched with the instinctual ability to do basic ichormancy (moving limbs and shifting them for better balance or tolerating pressure). This level of ichormancy demonstrated by Flammagentius takes years, along with refitting, to master. Don't want to drop straight out of the sky should it fail.

As a living object grows more powerful, their ichor limbs gain colorful gradients...

[penwrythe]

Flammagenitus Sketches!

Spent some time developing her over the past week for Altostratus' cover. I might need to rework some parts of her description in the story to match this design but yeah.

For more info about Flammagentius: see here!

So, I developed Flammagenitus' massive head from the Greek Corinthian helmet. I wanted something that showed Queen Nike's Antiquan influence on Flammagenitus's refitted design. Initially, I felt the design was a bit odd with the large jaw and jaw joint combined with the helmet, so I looked into Dunkleosteus, an extinct Late Devonian fish, for an example of a head shape that works with the helmet.

Absolutely terrifying fish!

So, this helped make a more memorable and iconic design for Flammagenitus's design. Not final, but it's what I'm looking for.

Here's the rest of her pending design!

[penwrythe]

I am Fire

I am Death

[penwrythe]

Another Flammagenitus Flammin Sketch

Also, here's what Flammagenitus looked like as Flammin before she is later refitted into a war-torch monolith. There is also a sketch of her as a human, a dreamform Queen Nike helped create for her.

Flammin was an elderly living paintbrush. As shown here, the surface of her wooden core is rough from permanent wear and tear. Their bristles are short and straggly from past use. Flammin was a senior muralist back before their kingdom, Jazera, was destroyed by enemy relics. The holes in her ichor limbs and the permanent scar on her face were from her escape when her kingdom burned.

One day, she will return that hateful flame to those who wronged her.

Flammin as Flammagenitus

More on Flammagenitus

[penwrythe]

Altostratus cover update

Fixed Flammin's wing anatomy! Trying to do my best to show her rising from the clouds...I think I got it? Might change her crest to match the flow.

Painting the clouds is going to be interesting...

[penwrythe]

Finally caved in and updated their heights.

I-I just like the idea of kaiju monster battles in my story, lol!

Anyway, Flammagentius (the largest monolithic warobject to ever be refitted) is updated from 68ft to 120-150ft range.

Nike is at the maximum height of a THA-era refitted relic, 100ft. In her unrefitted form, she was originally around 9ft-15ft as a goddess and 12ft-13ft as a living trident after the Inversion Event (AFR era).

Sizes are updated mostly because whenever I imagine a battle between Flammin and another large relic, I imagine them very very terrifyingly large.

[penwrythe]

Late night WIP

Base Colors and Textures

Color scheme theme is based on ancient Greece red-figure pottery. Next shading!

[penwrythe]

This a short blurb from a TMR story I scrapped some time ago

This blurb is from a story that, honestly, needed a bit more time for the rest of The Mundane Realm to develop. I was not ready to write it. By that, I mean that the worldbuilding, history, and the broader concept of the lore of World of Relics need some fleshing out before writing this story. So for now, it will be on the back burner for a very long time.

However, I want to share this blurb because I still like it. I had written it during a rough time earlier this year (cough-prev post-cough). It was the first time I tried narratively writing my objectocs in this manner. It still needs more development and some major corrections on grammar, but it's still alright. Enjoy!

// major spoilers for RFR and TMR , feat. Nikey and Flammagenitus

~

~

The sky is a deep blue, weighted by heavy black clouds that block the sky. The lands below her are shrouded in a deep shadow, rolling hills under the billowing clouds. She never saw the sunrise but heard about it from the altrix who raised her. A great star, the sun was once driven by a being of fire before the rise of objectkind, now it roams the skies since the Event thousands of years ago. That fire being, along with many others like it, later became the progenitors of the relics that live today.

One of which flies by her. A trident with large red wings so long and slender, it still surprised her that they could support the weight of their owner’s long core that was far larger than her own. The trident’s name escapes her, they only met a few times in the past. She remembers the first meeting with her and how she towered over her. She is one the first and last of her generation of the First Relics.

“Keep your wings steady,” the trident said, ”You’re doing great! That new tail weight of yours is helping with your balance.”

Following the trident’s direction, she steadies her metal wings. How long did it take her to get here? Months of training her ichor and eating excessive amounts of material to strengthen her core. Then the long refitting process took another year. She just started flying and her leaders wanted her to be ready to fight in the war in a few months. So much change to become a monolithic flying torch. A future weapon to best any rouge relic.

Sudden turbulence disrupts her flight and she makes an attempt to correct herself. But she overdoes it and begins to spin out of control. She panics and flaps her wings uselessly. She screamed as both the sky and the ground became one ever-spinning black-and-gray gradient.

“Nike!,” she yelled. That's the trident's name.

Golden aura wraps around her wooden and metal frame and slows her descent. "It's alright, Flammin! I got you!"

Flammin turns to face Nike above her. Radiant the trident was, covered in gold and silver plating attached upon a dark walnut wooden pole. Red cloth wings stretched wide, which are attached to her chest with a decorative cloth knot. Just above it, supported by a bronze neck, is her head blade, cast in rusted bronze with the edges of her prongs shining gold.

Nike. The Queen of Relickind.

Effortlessly pulling her back up, Nike draws her aura close. With a gentle twist of her aura, she rights Flammin in the correct flight position.

“I’m about to release you. Be ready.”

Flammin opens her wings and tilts them slightly, expecting a sudden influx of air to take her again. But as the aura ebbs away and the gray sky becomes open to her once again, Flammin is able to hold herself steady. She hears Nike giggle a bit at her.

“What?” Flammin asked.

“You’re smiling!”

“Oh-!” Flammin shies away, allowing herself to lag behind. She wonders for a moment if Nike caught her blush upon her mahogany wooden face.

“Flammin, don’t be shy!” Nike laughs, “Want to see what’s above the clouds?”

She looks towards Nike, smiling, “Will the sun be there? Won’t we get in trouble?”

“Marathon is still on our side. They still guard the sun,” Nike said, mentioning another relic Flammin does not know, “And the insurgent relics are foolish to attack me. You are safe by my side.”

Nike flies higher and Flammin follows close behind her. They go through the dark clouds, using the faint light of the sun beyond to guide them through. They weave together in and out of the cloudscape. At one point, Flammin hears Nike laughing. And she joins her. After a short time, they break through the cloud top and beheld a sight before their eyes.

The sun shines brightly, bathing the cloudscape in its golden rays, and the sky surrounding it is a neverending blue. The clouds below shine a pearlescent white with occasional breaks in their formation showing the shadowed lands under them. Flammin looks at Nike and sees her shine more brightly under the rays of the sun. They fly side by side as the winds in this space gently push them forward.

Flammin sighs.

“Nikey?”

“Hm?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“You, too.”

[penwrythe]

...I think I figured it out.

So, it might be best before introducing a character's pronoun shift (if they have multiple pronouns), to denote that change right away in whatever paragraph/scene/chapter it's needed. I decided to introduce the pronoun shift using Flammagenitus' backstory in the following:

Falling silent, Flammin focuses on her flight. Like the long crest of bristles flowing in the wind upon her head, Flammin’s thoughts wander into a memory. She remembers her old home in northern Jazera —considering who she was back then— they once lived in many years ago. It was the first of its kind, a small kingdom with relics and objects living together...

From there, I used they/them sparingly throughout the remaining two paragraphs. I only switch to a descriptor for Flammin or use another word aside "they or them" if describing a group in the same sentence.

Flammin was a master muralist when it happened and was working on a commission for the royals, the names of whom the former artist had long forgotten... ~~~ Flammin and a few other living objects were lucky that the exit was nearby and together the panicked group ran out into the burning chaos. Flammin was lucky for a wooden paintbrush back then; those flames burned through most of the fragilekind like themself, leaving behind an uncountable number of kernels to the mercy of the Great Spear Apollyon, Nike’s greatest rival...

Then at the end of the backstory, I return to Flammin's current pronouns. Quick note: Flammin still use she/they in the present setting of the story. It's just in Altostratus, Flammin goes by "she".

Even now, Flammin’s core aches deeply, her mind hunted by the knowledge that the lost kernels of the deceased will be revived as prisoners in a burning world under Apollyon’s rule.

I think I'll go with this! The rest of the short story needs a bit of editing for grammar again.

Altostratus story update!

Currently working on Draft 5 finally. I spent most of my time yesterday cleaning up each paragraph, adding a few extra details here and there, and improving a bit of the grammar in the story. Today, I combined the edited paragraphs together to read the new draft as a complete story. It reads better, especially for the small worldbuilding details describing living object anatomy.

But I'm currently stuck at pronoun usage. So Queen Nike uses she/her and Flammin/Flammagentius uses she/they, both are nonbinary. Both characters are living objects, with Nike as a living trident and Flammin as a wartorch. I wanted to try shifting Flammin's pronouns within the narrative of the story, so either per paragraph or so. The result of this became very clunky very quickly, either that I confuse Flammin with Nike, or Flammin with something that's a pair or group.

To illustrate this here's an example of pronoun shifting:

Excitedly flapping her long wings, Nike quickly glides over Flammin to her other side. Flammin turns her head to follow the trident, mildly jealous of Nike’s greater agility in flight. When they started their flying lessons a month ago, Nike flew circles around them. Those lessons were rough in the beginning due to Flammin still needed time to adapt to her new size, but Nike encouraged them to keep going. “Ah, at this point,” Nike said as she settles in her new position, “You’ll be a skilled flier in no time.” “And to think for the past three years, I was stuck in those damned scaffolds,” Flammin said through her closed heavy jaw, shuddering a little at the memory. She had to endure a decades-long refitting to become the form they are now.

So, I tried looking for advice and found this interesting, and frustrating, thread about interchangeable pronouns for non-binary characters. CW // mild transphobia, mostly from a few users who don't understand nonbinary people and alternative pronoun usage

Anyway, from the suggestions in the thread, it seems to be better to use either she/her, they/them, a neopronoun set, or use interchangeably between chapters or scenes.

So, comparing what I have above, here's what I'm thinking of writing about instead:

As She/Her

Excitedly flapping her long wings, Nike quickly glides over Flammin to the other side of the wartorch’s wide frame. Flammin turns her head to follow the trident, mildly jealous of Nike’s greater agility in flight. When Flammin started her flying lessons a month ago, Nike flew circles around her. Those lessons were rough in the beginning due to Flammin still needed time to adapt to her new size, but Nike encouraged her to keep going. “Ah, at this point,” Nike says as she settles in her new position, “You’ll be a skilled flier in no time.” “And to think for the past three years, I was stuck in those damned scaffolds,” Flammin says through her closed heavy jaw, shuddering a little at the memory. She had to endure a decades-long refitting to become the form she is now.

As They/Them

Excitedly flapping her long wings, Nike quickly glides over Flammin to the other side of the wartorch’s wide frame. Flammin turns their head to follow the trident, mildly jealous of Nike’s greater agility in flight. When Flammin started their flying lessons a month ago, Nike flew circles around them. Those lessons were rough in the beginning due to Flammin still needed time to adapt to their new size, but Nike encouraged them to keep going. “Ah, at this point,” Nike says as she settles in her new position, “You’ll be a skilled flier in no time.” “And to think for the past three years, I was stuck in those damned scaffolds,” Flammin says through their closed heavy jaw, shuddering a little at the memory. They had to endure a decades-long refitting to become the form they are now.

Also, there's a possible confusion between singular they and plural they.

Flammin remembers the first year of their refitting they spent training their ichor and consuming excessive amounts of material to strengthen their core in preparation for their role. Then the toolsmiths have begun their construction. The pain of Flammin’s core being drilled, wielded, and cut, and their ichor structure stretched by the toolsmiths bothered them so much that they drank tankers full of quicksilver to soothe their deepest aches. And the scaffolds. Flammin’s core itched as the damned scaffolds kept them off the ground while the toolsmiths installed new gears in their legs. This became easier to live with as the construction neared its completion, especially with a small refillable quicksilver pump installed inside them. Flammin breathes some steam, glad that it’s over, even with the occasional dull aches still lingering within their core’s new structure.

Anyway, I'll keep looking. I'll also look up books and stories by nonbinary and trans writers for a solution for this as well. Anyone with any advice is welcome to reblog or comment on this post. Thank you!

[penwrythe]

Might start on Blacktober next week

Time-related issues are still a bit finicky right now, but it's not bad, so...I might be good this month, idk??

Anyway, here's a list of Black characters I want to draw for Blacktober this year. It needs some narrowing down, but so far, I'm thinking about:

My own characters:

Nikey (RFR), Nicodemus (RFR), Medusa (TMR), Flammin as human (TMR), Beatrix from Iohnovia (old project).

Other media:

Books

Damaya/Essun/Syenite or Alabaster from The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Tau, Jabari, or Zuri from The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter

Bree Matthews, Vera, or Valec from Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn

Zeilie, Amari, -as much as I hate don't like him- Inan from Children of Blood and Bone

Films, Series, Webcomic and Podcast

Prince Ezran (with Azymondias), Aditi, Janai from the Dragon Prince series

Hobe, Miles, Jessica from Into the Spider-Verse

Qebrus and Crjth from Rising Sand by Ty Dunitz and Jenn Lee

Juno Steel from Juno Steel series | The Penumbra podcast

Depending on how this month goes, I might either do a mix of full body or portraits, or just portraits. Some of these characters I might need a refresher on, so that means some reading or watching some of their source material again.

I'll return to this list tomorrow to shorten it a bit because it's a lot...........