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bendingwind · 1 year ago

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My Dragon Age Characters

I've been writing Dragon Age fic for a week straight despite DA:I being like a decade old and the DA:DW situation looking preeeetty dire, but I need a break from Secret Love Child AU and I was re-reading my Dragon Age babyfic and I wanted to write little blurbs about all six of my Wardens, my two Hawkes, and all eight of my Inquisitors (... yes I know)! Will anyone read this? Who knows! But I will enjoy writing it! Because I am a NERD, many years ago I a) made a flowchart of what leads to each of them becoming the PC and b) wrote an algorithm to calculate the odds of that happening for each character. They're in order of most to least likely to fill the PC role. Also you should know I have minimal respect for the canon of this universe and disregard it at will. TW for rape, drug use, suicide, late-term miscarriage mentions in the backgrounds of certain characters. Anyway here, have almost 4k words regarding my Dragon Age PC backgrounds~

Natia Brosca

Natia is born to a casteless mother, Kalah, who tried to climb out of Dust Town by giving birth to a noble's son, but instead had Natia's sister Rica (in dwarven society, daughters inherit the caste of their mother, and sons inherit the caste of their father, thus rendering Natia casteless as well). When the noble moved on, uninterested in his casteless daughter, she took up with a carta thug who intended to marry her, and together they had Natia. However, when he decided to leave for the surface, Kalah refused to go with him and remained in Dust Town with her two casteless daughters and no remaining means of support.

Natia worked as a street-sweeper as a child before moving on to gathering rare mushrooms in the Deep Roads, which she sold to keep them fed. When she was sixteen she was sought out by Beraht and recruited to the carta for her skill at staying alive and her ties to her father. She worked as a smuggler and Beraht had her sister trained to go fishing for nobles and bear a nobleman's son, as her mother had tried to do before her. She is sent to the Proving which she wins, only to be exposed as a casteless imposter. In some canons she dies in the cover-up attempt, but almost half the time she survives to be rescued by Duncan when he stops in Orzammar to recruit. She is his favorite, so even if he recruits others before going to Ostagar, she's the one Duncan sends with Alistair to the tower and thus the most likely to become the Warden. Anyone recruited alongside her fights on the field and dies there. She makes Behlen king and romances Zevran and they are disaster bisexual assassins together. The dark ritual is a 'no shit' option for her--obviously if they can all live, she's gonna ensure that they all live.

Solona Amell

Solona is the second child of Ravka Amell and her husband in Kirkwall. In most canons she winds up in the Gallows, but in her canon she's sent to Kinloch Hold where she is Hallowed the same day as but before Noirin Surana. If Natia died and was not recruited, she's potentially among those sent to the tower with Alistair. If she's the only recruit she becomes the Warden; otherwise they bicker and all die and the blight destroys Ferelden. I've never actually played her, just created her for writing purposes, so I don't have a lot of her story hashed out.

Noirin Surana

Noirin Surana is born in the Denerim Alienage to a washerwoman and an unknown, probably already married father. She was a burden on her mother and was immediately given to the templars when she manifested magic at the age of five, and was raised in the Circle at Kinloch Hold. She shows early promise as an apprentice, and likely would have been Harrowed early, only she caught the eye of a particularly nasty templar who began systematically raping her when she was a teenager. He takes measures to prevent Noirin from taking matters to Gregoire or Irving and her studies begin to suffer severely due to trauma and fear. After eight years of this abuse, the templar is finally transferred, and Noirin tells her mentor what has been happening to her. The matter is taken to Irving, and her Harrowing is delayed several years to give her time to recover, making her one of the oldest to be Harrowed in Kinloch Hold history at 25. She refuses the offer to become tranquil.

If Solona Amell is at Kinloch Hold, Solona is Harrowed first on the same day, and attracts a rage demon, resulting in Noirin encountering a fear demon that she is unable to overcome. She fails her Harrowing and is killed. In her canon, she is the one who encounters the rage demon, who she defeats and goes on to be recruited by Duncan. If she is the only recruit taken to Ostagar she becomes Warden; otherwise she dies with the others at the tower or on the field, depending on who all was recruited. She is my only Warden to make Anora queen and leave Alistair a Warden, and she romances Morrigan. Realizing Morrigan is going to leave after the dark ritual, Noirin pulls a serious trick and insists on a threesome, and bends the magic so that she is the one to become pregnant with the Old God Baby. When Morrigan realizes what has happened, she seeks out Noirin, and the two go into hiding. Awakening never happens in this universe.

She appears in one scene as the Warden in all my possessions for a moment of time.

Elemere Cousland

Elemere Cousland was born the result of a brief affair between Elenor Cousland and a Rivaini sea captain (this is purely and 100% because she was my first Warden and I made her Very Obviously Not White only to discover her Very White Family). After Elemere's birth, her mother's husband Bryce chooses to acknowledge her as his daughter and she is raised at Highever with her half-brother Fergus. Because of the obvious lack of resemblance between her and the rest of her family, her marriage prospects are regarded as dim, and she's raised a warrior. Bryce favors her even over his biological son and the two are very close, as is her relationship with her mother, though her mother spends much of her early life away tutoring Cailan and Anora at the behest of Loghain. She becomes Warden only if she's the only recruit brought to Ostagar; otherwise she dies in the tower or on the field with the others. She chooses the dark ritual. She romances Alistair and together they become King and Queen of Ferelden.

She is the subject of my second-person POV story Hero.

Eilis Tabris

Eilis Tabris is the daughter of Cyrion Tabris, and lives in the Alienage with her family. She had was to be in an arranged marriage with an elf from the Highever alienage, and the two had fallen in love via correspondence. However, he is kidnapped by Vaughn on their wedding day and she kills Vaughn rescuing him. If Duncan has a recruit by the time he leaves Highever he does not come to Denerim and instead travels straight to Ostagar; in those universes she is hanged for killing Vaughn. If Duncan comes to Denerim he recruits her, but she never overcomes her depression. She does not romance anyone and is the only Warden who commits the Ultimate Sacrifice.

Sereda Aeducan

Sereda Aeducan is just the canon Aeducan background, nothing special about her--I've never played her, she's just there for flavor if I ever want an Aeducan Warden in the background of something. She almost always dies in the Deep Roads before Duncan can reach her, but if he rescues her and recruits her, she either survives as the only Warden recruit or dies in the tower or on the field with the others. She isn't about to risk her life any more than she has to, and chooses the Dark Ritual.

Lyna Mahariel

Lyna Mahariel is a hunter of the Dalish Mahariel clan. She's also a default that I keep around for placeholders. She is only recruited if Duncan recruits no one else and makes it all the way to the Brecilian forest; so she's the least likely candidate. She romances Leliana if she becomes the Warden and absolutely chooses the Dark Ritual. I think she probably also makes Anora queen out of sheer dislike for Alistair? I haven't played her either idk.

Marian Hawke

My mage Marian Hawke is just a generic red mage Hawke with a rivalry with Varric. She romances Fenris and Isabela, for reasons. OT3 OT3. If Carver is a templar, she sides with the templars for his sake; otherwise she sides with the mages. She frees Anders and believes he did the right thing, much to Fenris and Isabela's dismay.

My non-mage Marian Hawke is my fav and substantially more interesting imo. When she's fifteen, Bethany begins to show signs of magic, and her parents send Marian to the Chantry in Gwaren to train as a templar in order to deflect attention from the family. After all, how could a family who sent a child to the templars harbor a mage? She quickly comes to decide that the templar life isn't for her, but they won't release her from her vows. So begins a series of small rebellions in an attempt to get kicked out, with no success. Finally she conceives a plan where she seduces a number of Initiate Sisters belonging to Redcliffe’s chantry, and makes sure the rumors of a Templar recruit making the rounds become known. To her dismay, the Initiates prove very loyal and do not name her when they are questioned. A guard is assigned from among the recruits to guard the Initiates’ chastity--and of course, they choose the only female recruit, Marian. Desperate, she arranges both a tryst and a surprise inspection so that she will be caught. The plan is at last successful, and Marian is dismissed from the Order.

Marian returns home to find her sister, Bethany, desperately doing what she can for their father who is ill. Shortly after her return, she falls ill herself--her father, having witnessed the sickness before, is able to determine that it is lyrium withdrawal. He says that the young templar recruits’ food was laced with it, in preparation for the consumption of their first draught of lyrium during their initiation and so that they could perform minor versions of Templar abilities during training. He insists that Bethany focus her relatively unskilled healing abilities on preventing her sister from descending into lyrium madness, with the result that he continues to sicken and eventually dies. After a long recovery, hindered by her grief over her father, Hawke finally gets back on her feet. She spends a year attempting to help around the farm before giving it up as a lost cause, and leaving to join the Ferelden army. She initially struggles to get a position, but is finally introduced to Ser Cauthrien by a mutual friend, who finds her a small command in Ferelden’s army.

When the Blight begins, Marian is dispatched to Ostagar along with the rest of the army. She stumbles across her brother, a new recruit, while there, and is appalled to discover he has left their mother and Bethany behind on the farm in pursuit of his own career as a soldier. When the royal standard goes down, she immediately abandons her post and goes looking for him. She is one of the ones who slaps him silly and drags him out of Ostagar, before they go to get their mother and Bethany and flee Ferelden.

Templar!Hawke doesn't romance anyone, but she does fuck every single one of her companions, including Varric. She kills Anders. If Bethany survives and is in the Circle, she sides with the mages; otherwise, her mother's fate fresh in her mind, she sides with the templars.

Mayan Adaar

Mayan Adaar’s mother was a tamassran who fled the Qun to protect a twelve-year-old charge who had been sentenced to qamek. She joined the Aqun-Vashoth and took the name Tamashok. She was assigned the role of tamassran among the Aqun-Vashoth, and she raised the boy, who took the name Dathras and became a farmer, and married a man named Kata-aban from an old Aqun-Vashoth family. Mayan Adaar was born to Tamashok and Kata-aban Adaar several years after their marriage, once Dathras had left home to pursue his role in the Aqun-Vashoth.

Mayan was slated to become a tamassran like her mother from an early age, and began an unofficial apprenticeship at the age of six. She took to the role eagerly and was thrilled when her tamassran approved her to follow in her mother’s footsteps. When she was fourteen and about to formally enter apprenticeship to become a tamassran, her magic manifested. As a mage, she was only permitted to pursue the path of a Saareva, or mercenary recruit gifted with magic. She requested permission to become a healer, but there were already sufficient healers in the ranks, and so she was only given the choice to become a battle mage (Saareiss). At the age of eighteen, she completed her training and was assigned to the Sata-kas, where she excelled as a battle mage but was extremely unhappy. She was sent to the Tamassrans regularly, and was granted a year-long cycle with the Asalaa who guarded the settlement despite her young age.

At the age of twenty-five, the Sata-kas got a new commander, who decided to put Mayan in charge of a squad and see how she would do. To everyone’s surprise, she flourished in a command role, finally able to step back some from fighting directly. Within a year, she was promoted to his second-in-command. When the commander of the Valo-kas retired, Shokrakar promoted thirty-year-old Mayan to the position. Mayan worried that her new second-in-command, Hikram Aqun, would feel that the position should have been his, and so she went out of her way to befriend him. The two quickly fell in love. Two years later, they petitioned Shokrakar and their tamassrans for permission to marry, which they were granted. Mayan quickly became pregnant, hoping to retire from the mercenary companies and take an opening among the Saarkatoh that was about to be available.

In her canon, they set out to return to Aqun'ante-koslun (home of the Aqun-Vashoth, somewhere southwest of Wildervale) but are attacked by rogue mages in the wake of the Gallows' collapse. Hikram is killed and Mayan loses her unborn baby. She remains with the Valo-kas until they attend the Conclave as guards for some Chantry sisters, and when she goes to collect her pay she stumbles on Corypheus and becomes the Inquisitor. She romances the Iron Bull and sides with the templars, as she doesn't really understand the situation in the Circles and how it differs from the handling of mages among her people. They feature in my story half a dozen, at least. In other canons she and Hikram are not attacked by mages, and settle in Aqun'ante-koslun to raise their daughter.

Ynés Lavellan

Ynés Lavellan is born to the Lavellan clan but makes one mage too many, so she is traded in marriage to another clan. She is raised there, falls in love, marries, and has three daughters. When she is pregnant with her fourth child, the clan is attacked and all but slaughtered. One of only a few survivors and near to giving birth, she seeks out her birth clan, but Clan Lavellan still has too many mages. They let her stay until she gives birth to a son, and offer to raise him, but tell her she must go. She takes her son with her and finds work as a guide for humans, leading looters, university scholars, and curious nobles to significant Elvhen ruins for a fee, her son strapped to her back.

She is very bitter towards both Clan Lavellan and the humans she works for, but eventually she is invited back to the clan after the death of two of their mages, and becomes their First while her son Mihail becomes a clan hunter. Whether or not she attends the Conclave depends on whether she trades in Wycome shortly before it is announced or not; if she does, she's quarantined with an illness, but if not, she's the one chosen to go and she has a good chance of becoming Inquisitor if Mayan is not present. She and Blackwall have a tumultuous romance but work it out in the end, much to Mihail's dismay, because due to his childhood he dislikes humans even more than she does. She naturally sides with the mages. She features in my story sing me a lullaby, which I don't thiiiink is canon for her?

Emira Adaar

Emira is Mayan's younger second cousin. She is a third-generation Vashoth born and raised in Aqun'ante-koslun. When she didn't show any talents in particular, she chose to train as a warrior like her parents before her, and joined the Sata-kas when she came of age. She enjoyed being a mercenary, though she proved not to be a good fit for the Sata-kas and transferred to the Taam-Kas within a year. Though she very much wants to be in a relationship, she discovers that her mercenary lifestyle is not well-suited to long-term relationships, and so she has a series of unsatisfying affairs, primarily with young human noblewomen whose families hire her, plus the occasionally human woman from mercenary bands they team up with.

She is given command of a squad and performs admirably, with rumors that she will be given the position of second-in-command in the Valo-Kas under her cousin-in-law Hikram once her cousin Mayan gives birth. In canons where Mayan loses her family and becomes Inquisitor, Emira remains a part of the Taam-kas and continues her mercenary work--however, if Mayan retires she becomes second-in-command of the Valo-Kas and is collecting their way when she interrupts Corypheus' ritual, and becomes the Inquisitor. She flirts a lot with Josephine but acknowledges that it's unlikely to work between them. She initially dislikes Sera but they are pushed together when an injury to Varric leaves her without an archer and she takes Sera with her to Sahrnia. The two make peace, and eventually become friends and then lovers. She sides with the mages mostly because she's more aware of their political situation than her cousin Mayan.

She is the background Inquisitor in And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare, in which (unmentioned) she and Dorian are platonic soulmates.

Malandra Cadash

Malandra is a surface dwarf and a multi-generational member of the Carta. She and her cousin Aric are caught smuggling in the Deep Roads in their early twenties. If the Warden made Behlen King in Orzammar they are branded casteless and released; if Harrowmont is king, they are executed as lyrium smugglers. She is selling lyrium at the Conclave when it blows; depending on circumstances, she may or may not be in the right place to become Inquisitor. She romances Lace Harding and sides with the mages.

Aric Cadash

Aric Cadash is a trans man, which is relevant to his story primarily in that he was heir to a small trading empire in Orzammar before his parents understood they had a son and not a daughter. They chose to let his son be who he was, at the cost of being forced to relocate to the surface and leave the trading in Orzammar to his mother's sister. There they joined the Carta to make ends meet, and Aric became friends with his fourth cousin, Malandra. The two worked together often, and were caught together smuggling lyrium out of Orzammar in their twenties. If the Warden made Behlen King in Orzammar they are branded casteless and released; if Harrowmont is king, they are executed as lyrium smugglers. He is attending the Conclave as a representative of the lyrium trade when the Temple of Sacred Ashes explodes; depending on circumstances, he may or may not be in the right place at the right time to become the Inquisitor. If one of the Cadashes becomes Inquisitor, the other hands around and helps out. Otherwise they both die in the explosion. Aric romances Cassandra and makes an absolute hash of Halamshiral. He sides with the mages mostly because it seems to be what Cassandra wants.

Mihail Lavellan

Mihail attends the Conclave only if his mother Ynés, is quarantined for illness when Clan Lavellan gets the word. They share a background, and he is particularly bitter towards humans, who he feels have repeatedly ruined his life. He and Dorian initially do not get along, but eventually reach an understanding and ultimately fall in love. He sides with the mages. He drives Cassandra to alcoholism tho so he is... not my fav.

Eilona "Trev" Trevelyan

The Trevelyans practice the theory of "one for the land, one for the templars, one for the chantry" and consistently produce three children. However, when their third child Cateline is revealed to be a mage and sent to the Circle, they decide to have another child who can become a Chantry sister or brother, and so Trev is born. Almost from the beginning she is a disappointment, loud and rambunctious and disobedient. As a preteen she starts tagging along after her older cousin Arina, and eventually the two travel the Free Marches with Arina's friends, where Trev falls into several bad habits including the use of a lyrium-based drug called "blue ruin", which is deeply dangerous and very addictive.

In most canons she dies of an overdose at eighteen--in her canon she survives only to be disowned along with Arina. The two and their friends turn to highway robbery to run their habits, until eventually Trev's family fetches her and sends her to a Chantry to safely withdraw from the drug and then recover. Eventually she leaves, only to quickly fall into her habits once again. This time after her recovery, her family isolates her on their estate until they finally send her to the Conclave with her aunt who is a Chantry sister, hoping to convince her to become a Sister as they've always wanted. Instead she becomes the Inquisitor. She has a rocky romance with Cullen, who strongly disapproves of her and her history until she gradually changes his mind by trying her hardest and doing a damned good job of it. She sides with the mages, feeling guilty about her mage sister's death at the Ostwick Circle. Secret Love Child AU is an AU of her canon where she and Cullen meet during the time they're both in Kirkwall, in about 9:33 Dragon.

Cateline Trevelyan

The least likely Inquisitor with a 1% chance. She is revealed to have magic when she is six, and the Trevelyans dutifully dispatch her to the Circle in Ostwick, where she lives happily enough until the Ostwick Circle falls. In several canons she dies there; in others she dies in an explosion of the Conclave. The only way she becomes Inquisitor is if she survives the fall of the Circle, very badly scarred on her face, and Trev survives her overdose and they both end up at the Conclave. She catches sight of Trev and tries to get to her, only to stumble on the Ritual and become the Inquisitor. She romances Josephine and they live happily ever after~ She also sides with the mages for obvious reasons.

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the-faramir · 10 months ago

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Midori nodded in understanding. "Ohhhh, yeah, so you have like a Comprehend Language spell. I could learn that, but there's only so much room in my noggin," she rapped her fist lightly against her head for emphasis, "an' I've learned all I can till I get more experienced. So with our spell, you cast it with low power to understand, higher power to speak the language as well, an' even higher power to include more people in the effect. Sounds like you have magic like us. Cool!

"An' this fruit is delicious. Oh!" An idea dawned on Midori, causing her ears to wiggle and her tails to dart back and forth. "So you musta heard o' the food shortage in town. It's related to The Welt, that blighted, swampy land outside o' town," she gestured vaguely to the southwest, "which is prob'ly related to the aeon stones failin'.

"Oh, local history, sorry. So the god Aroden pulled up these Starstone Isles from the sea floor for people to live on over four thousand years ago, but they were all rocky an' slimy. The isles, not the people. Not good for farmin'. So Aroden went underground to grab these magic stones—aeon stones—an' bring 'em topside. He built these towers across the Isles an' set the aeon stones to orbitin' their tops. Their magic gave life to the Isles an' let food grow.

"Then these demons started messin' with the aeon stones, an' things started DYING across the Isles. So this is where the Circus of Wayward Wonders came in! We've been goin' around fixin' the aeon stones! The Isle of Erran is all set. We fixed three aeon stones in the west. We just gotta fix up the rest of this island now.

"But I digress.

"What I'm thinkin', an' it's just a thought, is that you an' yer friend, since you're comin' to town to do trade anyway, could bring in shipments of fruit or vegetables or meat or whatever from your planet and sell it for a lot of coin! Or maybe straight-up trade it for whatever materials you're lookin' to buy.

"Just a thought.

"If yer the entrepreneurial type.

"Oh, an' takin' the whole circus to another planet? Huh." Midori removed her green top hat, ran her hand through her red hair, then returned the hat to her head. "I can't imagine the logistics required for that. You got a sorceror or someone who can poof us all over there at once? Ah, but we can't leave the island just yet. We need to put an end to all of this aeon stone sabotage an' send all those demons and xulgaths packin' first.

"But imagine!" Midori's eyes glowed green in the sunlight, and it seemed as if whisps of green energy flickered around her. "The Circus of Wayward Wonders would be the only circus on Golarion to perform ON ANOTHER PLANET! We would be huge! We would be FAMOUS!" She appeared to float up into the air slightly. "WE WOULD BE THE GREATEST CIRCUS ON GOLARION AND...." She shook her head quickly and settled down, returning to her previous demeanor. "Oh, sorry, I kinda zoned out there. I was gonna say somethin' about your planet.

"But, yeah, I'd love to go! I appreciate the generous offer, my new friend! Maybe when we get this business on the island sorted out, we can come. Would that be okay?"

@llixulia

Today seemed like any other day in the town square of Willowside. Townspeople milled about the shops, buying whatever foodstuffs and supplies the merchants had to sell.

Suddenly, calliope music started playing from one of the side streets. People turning to look saw a parade approaching the town square. At the forefront marched Midori, a kitsune woman with a red fox fur pattern and red hair, dressed in a green circus ringmaster's outfit complete with a green top hat. She carried a short staff resembling a stick of multicolored candy with a head resembling a snake's which she shifted up and down with the beat of the music, keeping the constituents of her parade in step.

Once the ringmaster stepped into the center of the town square, she gestured dismissively with her free hand and the entire parade faded into a green mist, leaving only Midori standing there as the calliope music continued.

She spoke with a magically amplified, booming voice, reaching all in that part of town as if she were standing next to them.

"ANNNNNNND NOW, because we sailed all the way from Kerrick and we aim to entertain, we proudly announce tonight's performance of the only island-hoppin', xulgath-defeatin', carnivorous-plant-mulchin', demon-slayin', dinosaur-extinctin', ghost-bustin', aeon-stone-repairin', extinction-curse-liftin' circus in the Inner Sea, including THEEE VERRRY HEROESSS who brought Mistress Dusklight of the Celestial Menagerie to justice and freed those under her control: the CIRCUS OF WAYWARD WONNNNNNNDERRRRRS!"

Midori began to twirl her staff faster and faster in front of herself, finally tossing it high into the air and catching it deftly in her hands before it could hit the ground. She thrust the base of the staff into the ground, magically transforming it into a candy-striped ball python that started dancing to the music which began building dramatically as Midori prepared to sing.

🎵🎵🎵

Step right up, don't be shy, take a chance, Join the Circus of Wayward Wonders, be part of the dance. The ringmaster calls, with a voice so bold, "Buy your tickets now, let the marvels unfold!"

Come one, come all, to the grandest show in town, Where wonders await and smiles replace every frown. A spectacle of colors, where magic and reality blend, Axel's birds take flight, with sweets they descend.

The Dwarven Throwers, stout and brave, They soar through the air, the audience they crave. Elizia's serpents, a dance so divine, With Mr. Tickles, they twist and entwine.

Hear the music, feel the beat, in your heart, Magical Myrrie plays her part, a symphony to start. The Mystic Artists, with strokes so fine, Your dreams on canvas, in colors that shine.

In the center ring, the lights shine bright, Every act, a story, every performer a knight. The circus is more than a mere delight, It's a world of wonder, taking flight.

So gather 'round, the show's about to begin, The Circus of Wayward Wonders, where dreams spin. The ringmaster's song, a call to all who hear, "Come join the wonder, come join the cheer!"

🎵🎵🎵

Once the music had stopped, a few people in the square clapped politely. Midori took an over-exaggerated bow, picked up her snake, changed it back into a staff, and then meandered through the town square to sell tickets.

Surveying the crowds for potential buyers, Midori's attention caught on the brightly colored tail of...well, Midori wasn't quite sure. She—Midori initially thought the being was a "she," but rethought "perhaps 'they,' because it's better not to assume with an unknown being"—they certainly did not appear to be a local. Definitely, a sentient person of some sort as their eyes—all four—had a look of intelligence about them as they glanced about the town. They wore a humanoid-style top on their humanoid torso but had a snake-like tail similar to a nagaji's or lamia's. They also had horns, which were not unknown in the various forms of nagaji found across Golarion.

Midori sauntered over to the being to strike up a conversation. "Why hello, my good being! Not to be rude, not to make assumptions about you, but you appear to be from out of town. May I ask from where do you haii?" Midori's eyes widened as a grin crossed her face. "Are you in town for the circus? Have you heard about us in your homeland?"

@llixulia

#ic #oc rp #pathfinder #pf2e #extinction curse #kitsune #nis'ien

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ask-blight-blog · 8 years ago

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#oc #this is the theme song for Virgil #which is the town where Blight is gonna live!#its pretty good right?#the original is #Melty Blood Actress Again #Sakura-Koi-Uta #totally check it out #but this is hella Virgil just saying #also #blight's concerto #blights concerto #concerto

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wellthebardsdead · 3 years ago

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I have a lot of ideas boggling around in my head for stories involving original characters that I just haven’t bothered writing because nobody really cares about oc content unless it’s character x reader in which they can insert their oc.

But I’m just gonna dump this idea here to get it out of my head, its a bit witcher inspired in the sense that magical creatures are know but theyre at odds with the world of man due to the belief they cause blight and dismay, and it’s based in real world folklore and events too. My working title for it is Tumeric & the Weaver Hound and it’s a romance between a knight and a blind half elf named hound.

Hound was the result of an affair between a silk Weavers wife and a starlight elf who’re more closely related to a djinn than the faerie like elves.

His mother wasn’t a bad person, at least not at first, but she wasn’t a good one either. She married for money but it soon became apparent her husband was more focused on his trade and earning coin than he was with serving her every beck and call, and his frugal nature certainly didn’t sit right with her want for luxuries. And it was safe to say their marital bed saw little action beyond the frequent tossing and turning she’d do in an attempt to sleep through his snoring.

She’d soon start lamenting and complaining rather loudly to her friends in the market place about how miserable she was, how she was longing for a better man to just come and take her away even for a night to show her what she was missing out on, all the while blissfully unaware of an elf disguised as a man, all too eager to grant her her wish.

A wish that soon after leaves her pregnant. She tries to hide it at first, but soon lies to her husband that it was the result of one of their few nights of short lived relief. A lie she manages to keep up until hound is born that is. Pale, opal like ethereal skin, silver hair, pointy ears. Very much not human.

Her husband is obviously furious, but rather than admit wrong doing she doubles down saying that hound isn’t hers and is instead a changeling child, the arguing continues and with the threat of being divorced and left to fend for herself she grabs hound and holds him close to the fireplace to ‘scare’ the changelings true form out of him. (yes this is sadly a very real thing people used to do) And hound being only a baby is so fragile he’s left burned and blind.

A scuffle ensues, hounds father manages to get him free from her grasp without further hurting him and throws her out to the street calling the town guards on her while he’s at it.

He takes pity on the baby and decides to raise him as his own figuring he’d be of some use to him when he’s older, but being a magical creature he’d have to take care to keep him somewhat hidden. He names him hound because while he can’t see he developed a knack for sniffing out his bottle whenever it’d come close to feeding time, a skill that’d do him good in the future too.

As he got older his father tried teaching him how read and write to no success hoping he’d at least be able to do the books for his silk business. But he soon found his nimble fingers were very good for spinning thread, and he could tell which colours were which by the smells of the dye used for each silk. It wasn’t long before his father got the idea to try teaching him how to weave on a loom, he was skeptical at first but with his nose to guide where each thread was and maybe a bit of hidden magic, he soon learned how to make intricately designed cloths his father would sell as is or tailor to a customers wants.

Their two main customer bases of course being Nobles, and most importantly for our story, Knights. One of which has a tunic of whites, golds and yellows.

I haven’t got a name for him yet but I do know he’s the champion and personal bodyguard to the king, undefeated in the joust and contest between other knights of his court, and often the one sent out to do his bidding, usually collecting ‘taxes’ from problematic merchants or houses, but most importantly, investing possible sightings of magic folk when illness, plague, or blight rears its head.

Long story short, he ends up going to the silk weavers home on rumours that a magical creature hiding there had laid illness on the city, but upon searching the place despite his protests he finds hound hidden away in a small room weaving.

Hound immediately smells the tumeric used to colour the silk his clothes are comprised of and thinks he’s here to get fitted for his order like he’s done so many times before so not knowing he’s literally standing right in front of him he fumbles around looking for the fabric he made only to fall right into the knights arms and then fly into a panic and end up hurting himself because he had no clue there was another person in the room.

Anyway, might not make anything from this. Literally just an idea that won’t shut up in my brain that I thought y’all might like, honestly the idea came up because I harvested and processed my turmeric on Friday and my hands are still yellow ~Bambi

#not Overwatch related

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hey-hamlet · 4 years ago

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*slides in on socks* hey can we hear more abt that bnha cult au, the one where bc mido is quirkless and the cult town thinks hes better for it

So I’m probably going to be too lazy to actually write that as a full fic, so lemme go find my brainstorming and yeet it here for you all! Under a read more bc this is long and messy.

The whole fic takes place over either 1 or 1.5 months

Quirks = route of evil, those without powers are closest to the divine's intentions and anything subverting them from that should be expunged. Closer to normal you look = purer you are. Izuku is considered near gold standard excluding his green hair

2000 people in the town - 82 are quirkless (marked with a band - where? Wrist, neck or?)

Global quirkless pop = 20% but japan is 5%, much much lower in Izuku's generation, movement has been around since the dawn of quirks - infanticide

100 people statistically would make sense but rate of quirkless births vs quirkless people is very different as many die due to poor patient care

Some members of the town are the grieving parents of people who's quirkless children were killed as doctors didn't listen to them - some of the first people izuku meet

"Hizashi's family" Invite izuku over - they aren't related, it's part of a plot where they look at quirk records to invite the quirkless to join. Those who do not are disposed of in the woods.

The quirkless are treated like royalty, free food + other stuff

Anyone not on board is killed - settlement is new but buildings are old - the prior town was chased out/killed to make room for the cult. They used to meet in normal churches but quirkless supporting cults were cracked down on so they relocated into the woods by taking over a town

Start the fic w izuku getting off the train, Town is called Rishi, based the town off Nanmoku

Mum: Miyatani Haiyu Dad: Miyatani Juzou Daughter: Miyatani Kei

Need a very secretive, insular vibe - the place has no wifi, a church radio station and a townhall

Timeline

Arival Bakugo and Izuku take the train, Bakugo is there bc his mother told him to go: Inko was worried about sending Izuku off alone so she offered up bakugo to play guard dog. Bakugo is pissed.

Bakugo will have a blow up about being there pretty early, izuku will try and soothe him which will only make him angrier. Is shinsou there?

Shinsou is coming as well, but later > originally going to meet up w izuku for the first time (shitty foster parents) but wants to shield him from bakugo. Izuku just wants to sleep.

Golden band for the quirkless (ribbon?) “in our town we value good fashioned hard work so we like to give back to the quirkless, this little band lets everyone know the folks we should give a little more to”

Look around town, Izuku alone (shinsou there tomorrow >> all three staying at an inn)

Meet the family, bakugo pissed right off and they talk some smack about him while izuku flounders. “bet he’s got some flashy quirk, huh? Seems like the type. Makes me sick, thinkin they're better just cause they’re -”

Bakugo goes straight to his room to be a piss baby, izuku looks around. They are setting up for a festival. A group of kids teases another with a visible mutation, she cries, izuku tells the kids off and they scatter, she says some concerning stuff izuku is concerned.

Izuku eats dinner w the family, they talk about how they think he’s gonna like it there, the little kid is cute.

Shinsou rolls into town, they go for a hike, its pretty chill - they have a picnic n shit they have dinner w the family

Back to room (share one), izuku fiddling w the radio to find mic’s show, find the town’s own radio, they listen: something about someone being brought into the fold, visitors in town to be treated kindly, a reminder of a church service that week “Hold fast to your faith, the world may slip a little further each day but we shall fight together to bring our faith outwards and bring purity back to the world”

“Wow that was weird” “Wanna do some research?” “Fuck, sure.”

They run into bakugo at breakfast, izuku mentions the show and bakugo kinda nods, “you heard it too?” “yeah. Fuckin weird” “We were gonna do some digging -” “Fuck off, I don’t need you two messing with my shit, I’ll look into myself.” “That was almost polite for Bakugo, huh?”

Maybe timeskip to end of week?

With the family, doing arts craft with the daughter. Shinso is sleeping off a migraine. They mention church vaguely in the background and Izuku tries to look like he's not listening in.

The daughter brings it up to izuku and the family chuckle and say he’s free to come if he wants but there is no need to rush him.

They eat lunch, the family kinda advertise the town to him, talk about the nice quirkless girl down the street his age, how rare it is for quirkless people to be born in this generation. Izuku vaguely thinks about how nice it would be to live there

Church that night, izuku looks in on shinsou to see he's still sleeping in the dark, goes to bakugo “look i know i’m sorry but they’re having church tonight and i know you were a little interested and i was gonna go anyway -” “I’m coming with because otherwise you’ll be useless.” They decide to sneak around to listen “I was kinda -” “yeah, sure” “wait but -” “oh fuck off, it rubbed me the wrong way too. The weirdos might talk different if they know we’re there.”

Bakugo throws a darker jacket at Izuku, he slips on a beanie and they head out into the woods, walking through to reach the back of the church. They wait 20 minutes after it was supposed to start and creep out, they listen in.

“We will purge the impure our streets, we will stop this blight and, we will enact god's wrath and spare the pure, letting relieve the purity of the past. We will strike them down in his name, let them know we are his wolves let loose upon the blinded sheep.”

Bakugo grabs izuku’s arm, they are both pale. They go to run, and a metal sheet falls down. The preacher goes quiet and someone a few people stand and the two of them book it as fast as they can.

They get back to the inn and have a minor freak out, they wake up shinso and they are like “oh shit, oh fuck.” they decide they need proof bc the pros will never listen to them, they become baby detectives

Bakugo going off at izuku and having the shit scared out of him by a local, izuku steps in and the local backs down instantly, all smiles

One part of the story involves them running through the festival, changing clothes and masks as much as the can to escape the people chasing them.

The cult have a gas that is toxic to anyone with the quirk factor and intend to release it all across japan, starting with their own town. The climax of the story see’s Izuku going it alone through the facility, dead and dying bodies around him, looking out for any quirkless members that will stop him as he tries to find the locations of the canisters containing the gas.

Aizawa and Nighteye are in the town as well, Bakugo and Shinsou run to them crying ab how Izuku is all alone and they think he’s going to die and oh god they can’t even help him -

The dumb comedy throughline in this AU is Aizawa and Nighteye have to fake having crushes on each other to explain why they are hanging out so much in secluded areas. They both hate this very much.

Izuku, who recognized the two heroes On Sight, is having a minor crisis about them both being here and apparently getting handsy behind a 7/11.

#i also have the first half of chap one written #i might post it just bc later #its very old and not very good but why not #purity au #bnha au #bnha #asks

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memecucker · 4 years ago

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Tell me more of this Ice Cream Man comic. Comics have always seemed like a difficult medium for horror. So much of it relies on visuals, so a single weakness in the art can being down the whole story. Especially in modern comics where things may be handled by 2-4 people who don't always communicate with each other.

So I’ve only read four of the volumes currently out but if you want a stupidly simplified summary of the premise- The Ice Cream Man is a horror anthology series with mostly self-contained stories (youre still supposed to read in order and there are plenty of connections between stories but each issue is its own full narrative) wherein the eponymous Ice Cream Man (also known as Rick, because he’s also an actual ice cream truck driver) is a malevolent entity with near godlike powers who torments the inhabitants of a mid-sized town relentlessly. His overt participation in the stories varies greatly in that sometimes he seems to trap souls in a special version of Hell where they endure an endless loop of their most traumatic moments and sometimes he whispers to someone enough they become a murderer and sometimes he just outright kills someone.

But what makes the comic special imo (and I’m not gonna pretend to be an expert on horror comics) compared to lots of horror media I’ve seen recently is how the Ice Cream Man relishes in a very specific type of despair, he doesnt inflict terror on people rather he wants to see them crumble from the inside. So in the issue where he whispers to a girl and drives her to become a serial killer, the goal isnt to feed on the fear of her victims or something like that, rather the object was the emotions of her father and his simultaneous (and somewhat contradictory depending on how you view it) feelings of having lived a wasted life while also having boundless love for his daughter and to see how those pillars of the father’s psyche respond to the revelation of his daughter’s actions.

And I dont wanna spoil too many things but Issue #4 is one that seems to stay with a lot of people (so maybe think about checking it out if you want fresh eyes) and in that the first half of the narrative is a very human drama where you have this protag guy who goes to the funeral of his friend that had suddenly died of a disease and while at the funeral runs into his friend’s deadbeat dad (who had kept his distance during the actual ceremony out of guilt) and unwittingly ends up getting some drinks with the aforementioned deadbeat dad at the latter’s insistence. While having drinks protag guy (who is married with a pregnant wife) starts to loosen up about his feelings and asks the dad guy how he was able to leave his family while quickly mentioning that the question was not own of judgement but of understanding because protag guy has been feeling that between his boring job and his marriage and upcoming family life that his own life has been taken away from him and he’s just feeling incredibly empty and keeps thinking about how the dad abandoned his friend’s family many years ago and fantasizing about doing it himself. The dad then gives a recounting of what he did after he left and a pretty touching rebuttal to the friend entertaining similar ideas because they have a heart to heart where the dad talks more about how he basically had very similar feelings and that he thought leaving his family would bring him to a new world of possibilities when in fact the world is full of locked doors and abandoning his wife and child he hadn’t opened possibilities but shut off the most important one which was a relationship with his child. And like its all very sweet and touching and the protag has a change of heart and stuff but Rick the Ice Cream Man had yet to make his appearance yet and when he does its by revealing that he has captured the soul of the deceased friend and despite him being a perfectly innocent person subjects him to an eternity in hell cycling through various tortures before finally settling on one that was most ideal- to make him a little kid again and have to spend the rest of eternity reliving the singular moment his father had walked out of the family home for the last time over and over again with the feelings of trauma never lessening. Right after the living deadbeat dad had such a touching sequence of how deep his guilt is and how he wants to stop others from making the same mistake.

And if youre reading anything metaphorical about infliction of trauma in a general sense thats intended because something I really enjoy about the comic is the amount of symbolism that gradually unfolds. Like I wont be giving multiple examples of this but one quick one that doesnt involve much spoilers is how the Ice Cream Man is an ice cream man in the first place. Because what do people say to little kids that only want to eat ice cream? That its gonna rot their teeth. And Rick the Ice Cream Man wants to see people rot, whether the rot is from something “good” or “bad” doesnt matter because it can be jealousy or it can be compassion as long as they break and become covered with insects (which visually feature very heavily as well like this is not a comic for “maybe the curtain’s are just blue” types).

So yeah, I recommend it. Not every single story I’ve read is like what I described above. Like some stories have fantastical or historical settings and also some are “horror” in a very loose sense like Tale’s From the Crypt comics (which btw I’m certain Ice Cream Man is heavily inspired by also if you haven’t check out the original EC Comic’s Tales from the Crypt stories like you’ll be surprised how good the writing is considering its from the early 50s but those were pre-CCA and the CCA was an utter blight on creativity oh yeah this is supposed to be a parenthetical remark) in that its more “weird stuff happening” than something actually “horrifying” and some that I’d say are really more existential and maybe tragic than “horror” per se but yeah whatever memecucker reccomendation

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deepstalkers-are-cute · 3 years ago

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my brain is going bzzrrrrtt about the casteless dwarves

in the origins epilogue if bhelen is made king it is said the casteless get a chance to move up to the warrior caste if they start fighting darkspawn in the deep roads, which is, yea, something but still, if you can't fight you're fucked. it's fucking shitty anyway that you have to earn human (dwarf?) rights by possibly dying a horrible death. and cos most of the non-carta dusttowners are sick and disabled what chance do they have?

anddd in awakening in kal'hirol it is revealed that the casteless after being left to death during blight were given "choice" to either die doing nothing or die fighting the darkspawn and doing so earn some honor. there's a piece of conversation that can be heard where a ghost of one casteless dwarf says something like 'i'm gonna do something worthwhile for once in my life'. like?? you were born with no rights and no way of moving up in the society and you still think it's your own fault you can do nothing?? uhhgggg and it's treated like some heroism and honorable way to "earn" recognition. they are just being forced to die in the front lines to protect the 'worthier' lives

and. the casteless are not told that leaving is even an option, they think going up to the surface is a certain death and it's better to stay in dust town living a hopeless life as worthless trash. it's fucking horrible and the way origins frames the ending where brosca's sister has a baby with the king and gets to live in the palace and brosca gets upgraded to the warrior caste a good thing and a happy end just makes me angry uuuhhggg tez doesn't give a fuck about the castes and refuses any affiliation to them, he'd rather be leading a revolution against the shitty system and making sure all the nobles would lose their heads

#i fucking detest the army brainwashing that dying for your coutry is honorable and a worthy goal #people actually think that by going to fight in a war they will get a better life #and not a generational trauma that will pass to their grandchildren #yeah dragon age is full of war propaganda and sometimes it just #is too much

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e350tb · 3 years ago

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The Owl House: A Blight on Gravesfield (Chapter Five)

Five

The sun rises over Gravesfield.

...so the first essay topic will be up online this afternoon. Now back to weird local myths!

In 1660, King Charles II was restored to the English throne, and the whole Civil War period came to a close. Sort of. There was still a lot of political and religious controversy in both the British Isles and in the colonies; but that’s mostly a topic for another course. We are going to be following the continuing adventures of the Wittebanes.

John died in 1672 of pneumonia, but before he did, he had a family house constructed on his estate; that house, the Historic Wittebane Home, is still, and access is free to all Gravesfield residents, so if you have some time it’s well worth a visit. Although it looks small and uncomfortable now, in the 1660s it was the height of colonial luxury.

John left his estate to his son, the confusingly named John Philip Wittebane. We’ll call him John Philip to avoid too much confusion. Before John Philip took over the estate, he had sailed both as a merchant and as a buccaneer in the Caribbean; we believe he sailed with Henry Morgan in the raid on Maracaibo in 1668-69. While there, he purchased investments in a number of industries, and while he divested from them when he returned to Connecticut to collect his inheritance, they had made him a very wealthy man.

He immediately put his wealth to use by buying up most of the small farmers around Gravesfield, and by 1690, it was reckoned that most people in Gravesfield were employed by him. It became effectively a Wittebane company town, with John Philip even serving as the city’s mayor several times.

This is where our next myth comes to play; that in 1687, John Philip Wittebane had a woman put to death for witchcraft, and that consequently, her ghost haunts the Historic Wittebane Home.

Now, I’m a historian, I can’t tell you ghosts are real. That’s a job for ghostbusters. But was a woman really hanged in Gravesfield for witchcraft, nearly twenty years after the end of the Connecticut Witch Trials?

The local newspaper tell us that on June 13th, 1687 - a Friday - a ‘vagrant, suspected by some of heresy and witchraft, was duly hanged by the magistrate on account of the cruel and vicious murder of Henry Finch, who had been struck down while attending the ‘pigges’ on the Wittebane estate.’ So we have a clear cause for the hanging, and a ‘suspicion of witchcraft,’ but we don’t have a connection.

Frustratingly, this newspaper doesn’t tell us how poor Henry Finch died. Was he cruelly hexed? Well, if we go digging about in the archives, we might find a different story…

----

A brisk and foggy dawn was breaking over Gravesfield.

Ben Frakes was not a man of means by any stretch of the imagination, and as he stepped out into the cold air, he wished he could afford a car. (Well, he could, but it was hard to justify the expense.) It had been an uncomfortable night. Life in his one-room apartment had its charms - chief among them proximity to the college - but on cold nights it could be miserable, especially when his radiator was still broken.

Still, he was in fairly good spirits. His course on Gravesfield’s myths, and the truths behind them, was going very well, and the students seemed engaged. And it was a very good time of year to be in the history business; the annual Gravesfield History Fair was coming up, something he always looked forward to. It was always a riot; apart from a small county fair, there would be historical talks and tours of the old battlefield and the Historical Wittebane Home, and even the yearly battle reenactment; one which Ben had taken part in every year for his whole time in Gravesfield.

He was always on the Redcoat side and therefore always lost, but having fun was the main thing. Even if it was a bit of historical revisionism on the part of the townsfolk.

He was just starting off down the sidewalk to the college grounds when he spied a rustling in the nearby bushes. For a moment, he was prepared to dismiss it as a rabbit or a bird, but then, to his astonishment, a little white head poked out.

“Is that a cat?” he asked himself.

Slowly and gently, he crept forward, leaning down behind the bush. The cat emerged, gently headbutting his outstretched hand.

“Hmm… too much grooming to be a feral,” mused Ben. “Have you gotten out of someone’s yard?”

Carefully, he picked up the cat.

“Am I gonna have to print out a wanted poster for you?” he asked, chuckling. “I’ve got some milk in my fridge, maybe… what the?”

His gaze turned to the cat’s paws. Just under one of the back paws, he could see a peculiar mark, almost like a lock. He frowned.

“That doesn’t look healthy,” he mused. “Okay, pre-class prep can wait, I think you need a vet.”

He started off in the direction of the vet. He wasn’t concerned about making it to his class; that was still hours away, and he’d been planning on spending the morning doing some marking. But that mark… cats did not have marks like that.

At least, not in his world.

----

Camila was not an oblivious woman, especially when it came to her daughter.

She had had some suspicions the night before; most people wouldn’t jump through a portal into the unknown to get their friend to help, after all. But things were messy and upsetting, and people did irrational things under stress, so she’d shelved that thought.

When she walked into her living room the next morning and found them sound asleep in each other’s arms - well, suffice it to say, her suspicions grew a bit.

When Luz eventually blinked open her eyes, she found her mother sitting on the couch with a cup of tea in her hand, smiling wryly down at her.

“Good friends, are you?” she asked.

Luz blinked, and then glanced over to Amity.

She yelped and pulled herself out of her friend’s arms, which in turn woke her up with a start. Both sat up, Luz turning bright red.

“What’s going on?” demanded Amity. “Are we being attacked?”

Camila took a sip of her tea.

“Don’t worry,” she replied. “If we are, I’m sure Luz is very well protected.”

“Mooo-oooom,” groaned Luz, burying her head in her hands as Amity turned red too.

“Uh, Ms. Noceda, it’s… I’m…” Amity scratched the back of her head. “Please don’t get mad, Luz…”

“Mad?” Camila tilted her head. “Why would I be mad?”

“I… um… I…” Amity stammered.

“I need to take a shower!” exclaimed Luz. “Far away from here! Goodbye!”

She darted off the inflatable mattress and out the door.

Amity buried her head in the blanket, moaning softly. Camila frowned, moving a little closer to her.

“Amity,” she asked. “Is everything alright?”

“Sure,” sighed Amity. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Camila reached down and put a hand on her shoulder. She was surprised to see Amity jolt away from her; her frown deepened.

“If you ever need to talk,” she said. “Just remember that I’m here.”

“Thanks,” replied Amity, looking away, “But I don’t think I will.”

She got up and walked away.

----

Luz spat her toothpaste out into the sink (she was surprised at how much better-tasting human toothpaste was than the stuff they used on the Isles, although it probably didn’t provide the same magical plaque protection) and washed her hands, whistling to herself. She didn’t know why - it wasn’t as though she was calm or cheerful - but perhaps music calmed the soul.

“Okay,” she said to herself. “Gotta go back to the historical society. Maybe there’s a lead to getting Amity home on that creepy curator guy’s conspiracy board… also wanna see if the bookstore’s still there. I think Amity would like it.”

She turned to the door and immediately froze.

Camila was leaning against the closed door, arms crossed.

“I think it’s time we talked, mija.”

Luz pursed her lips.

“...do we have to do it in the bathroom?”

#the owl house #luz noceda #amity blight #camila noceda #vee #lumity #a blight on gravesfield #writing

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rohad93 · 4 years ago

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Moonlit Masquerade: Fall Showers

Part 8 of the Moonlit Masquerade Series

She hears about it at the market on Monday after school.

Amity has to go home straight after school, so Luz teleports herself to the market, in no rush today to head straight home. She's browsing a stand, looking over an assortment of magical trinkets curiously when she happens to overhear two people standing nearby talking.

"So are you taking her to the 'fall shower' tomorrow night?" One asks.

"She'd never let me hear the end of it if I don't. It's the 'most romantic thing a couple can do together'," the other quotes, rolling his eyes.

Luz pays closer attention to those words.

"Girls are so sappy…," the first chuckles and they walk off.

Luz hums to herself and finishes her browsing before hurrying home to ask Eda about this 'fall shower'.

Her pseudo mom is strewn haphazardly across the couch with a magazine laying open over her face when she gets home.

"Hey, Eda!" she calls when she bursts through the door.

"What?" she grumbles, but otherwise doesn't move from the couch.

"What's the 'fall shower'?" she asks as she sets her bag on the floor by the door.

She reached up and pulled the magazine down to her nose to regard Luz with tired, dual-colored eyes.

"Where'd you hear about that?" she asks, voice muffled by the magazine still sitting halfway on her face.

"In town, some guys were talking about it being some big romantic thing," she says. Eda grunts, head lolling to the side to better look at her.

"Yeah, it's a couple… thing." She waved a hand, before pulling the magazine back up over her eyes.

"That didn't tell me anything…" Luz frowned at her.

"Go ask Lily." is the muffled reply.

"Ask me what?" Lilith chose that moment to walk into the living room, some books held under her arm.

"What's the ‘fall shower’?" Luz turns to her.

"Ahh, you heard about that." Lilith smiles, walking over to the couch and using the books to sweep Eda's feet out of the seat on the end to sit.

Eda grumbles, shooting her sister a dirty look as she sits up.

"The Fall Shower is a meteor shower that takes place around this time each year," Lilith explained as she arranged herself on the couch.

"So, what makes it so romantic?"

"The legend behind it is that long ago two lovers, kept apart by circumstance would meet under cover of night, only once a year to be together, and after many years of this, and watching it, the Titan was so moved by their dedication and love, that it made the very sky weep," she gladly explained while Eda rolled her eyes.

"It's a bunch of sappy gobble de gook," Eda gruffed but frowned when she saw Luz was looking at Lilith with wide, starry eyes.

"That sounds awesome!"

"It's a widely watched event by lovers all across the Isles. Specifically from the Eastern forest where the lovers were said to meet," Lilith finishes happily. Luz is always willing to listen and learn from her, which does do something for her ego and the teacher in her.

"You and Amity gonna go?" Eda asks, cocking her head curiously.

"Oh… I dunno…" luz hesitates.

"Why not?”

"We're together but we're not… ya know…," she says, waving a hand, cheeks pink. She finds it hard to say that word. Eda gives her a wicked grin.

"You love each other dont'cha?" She cocked her head, smirking "You're lovers." It took everything the owl lady had to keep a straight face as she said this, but it broke the second Luz began to turn crimson.

"That's not what the word…. 'lovers' implies, and you know it!" Luz squeaks, red-faced as she finally gets the word out. Eda threw her head back and laughed maniacally.

Sometimes she forgot that Luz was still pretty innocent by most counts.

"It's an event many couples go to, regardless of their… um, stage of relationship" Lilith tries to supply helpfully. "It's quite beautiful, I would recommend it."

"You've been?" Luz and Eda both ask, surprised.

Luz watches in fascination as the former coven leader's face tints pink.

"I have," she says.

"With who?" Eda is looking at her, grinning.

"Never you mind!" Lilith growls. "The point is, regardless of the state of your relationship, it's something worth seeing."

"I'll ask her tomorrow." Luz nods.

She picks up her bag and heads upstairs, listening to Eda prod at her sister.

"Come on, who was it?"

"I'm not telling you!"

"Was it that snot nose boy from the bard track you had the hots for?"

"Edalyn!"

Luz just laughs to herself.

Tuesday, she's sitting next to Amity in class and the teacher has stepped out to see to something, so Luz takes the opportunity to slide a note across the table to her.

Amity looks at the folded slip of paper with a cocked brow before looking up at her, but Luz is carefully not looking at her.

'You busy tonight?'

Her eyebrow arches higher at that.

'No, why?' she slides it back.

'Wanna go somewhere with me?' it reads when she's passed it back.

'Where?'

She can practically hear her girlfriend's wary tone in the written words and grins.

'The eastern forest.' she's being intentionally vague and Amity knows it.

"Why?" She finally just whispers and Luz shakes her head making a 'shhhing' motion and Amity makes an annoyed sound and simply pushes the paper back to her. Luz can sense she's quickly reaching the end of her girlfriend's patience for her game and jots down a reply before sliding it back.

'Want to go watch the 'fall shower' with me?'

Amity's head whips up to look at her with wide eyes the second she finishes processing the words on the paper, looking at Luz, who is looking back at her, both brows raised in silent question.

"The…" she starts but manages to stop herself, remembering where they are and starts scribbling furiously on the paper before shoving it back.

'The fall shower? How do you even know what that is?'

'Heard some guys at the market talking about it. So, mi amor, up for a romantic night under the stars?'

Amity pursed her lips, glancing at Luz out of the corner of her eye and she feels herself smile when she sees Luz looking at her in that adoring way that is much too telling of a way for school.

She hesitates a moment before putting something down and pushing it back.

'It's a school night.' is her weak argument.

'so?'

She shoots Luz a look but she only grins back.

'Okay'

"Passing notes in my class, Miss. Noceda?" The professor returned while they weren't looking, his abomination looming over their table. "On principle, all notes are read aloud in my class." He holds his tiny hand out for the paper.

Luz glances at Amity, who's gone pale as a ghost, gold eyes filled with panic and fear at the declaration.

Knowing the nature of their relationship is written plainly on the paper for all to potentially hear, Luz makes a desperate decision and shoves it into her mouth.

The teacher and the whole class look at her with wide eyes and hanging mouths, including Amity as she chews it, wincing at the sharp edges. It's the longest hand full of seconds ever as the whole class watches her eat a piece of paper.

But Luz is nothing if not committed and swallows, eyes watering.

"No, sir," she rasps. "No notes here."

"Well then… on with the lesson…," he says numbly at what he'd just witnessed and returns to the front of the class.

Amity is still looking at her with wide, unbelieving eyes.

Let it never be said that Luz Noceda wouldn't do whatever it took to protect her girlfriend, whether it be eating a punch or a piece of paper.

She grins, though it looks queasy, and Amity slaps her palm against her forehead.

"You ate it?" Gus says disbelieving at lunch but then turns thoughtful. "Do humans usually eat paper?" he asks curiously.

"No, no, they do not…" Luz makes a face and smacks her lips. She can still taste it, paper on the Isles tastes different. Willow has her head in her hand and is shaking it.

"I'm torn between calling you an idiot and finding it endearing that you ate it, so it wouldn't be read out loud," Amity mumbles.

"Yo también te quiero." Luz winks and Amity grins back at her. The way they're looking at each other makes Willow sigh.

"You two have been kind of bold lately. You've got to be more careful at school," she mumbles. "Unless you like eating paper…" She looks at Luz, exasperated. Her friends are too much sometimes, on a good day, much less when they're being all… coupley. They're sitting in the back corner of the cafeteria, Luz and Amity sitting against the wall so no one can see them holding hands under the table

"She's right," Amity says quietly, and Luz sighs.

"I know." She mopes. "There's just not enough time in the day…," Luz laments and Amity squeezes her hand under the table.

Gus and Willow share a look. They feel for their friends, they really do, the two just want to be so sickeningly in love whenever they're together. Even though they don't want to be subjected to it all the time, they also wish their friends could just be a couple in public.

"Well, fall break is coming up, that's a whole week off coming up soon." Gus piped up helpfully.

"That's true, we'll have to all hang out together during the break," Willow suggests and the couple was quick to agree as they discussed possible plans for the coming break.

It's well and dark when Luz pulls on her new Hexside hoodie. An apology offering from the twins after she'd bled all over the other one, and steps out the door with Owlbert on her shoulder and the staff in hand.

"Be careful, and have fun," Eda calls.

"I will. love you!" she calls, closing the door.

"Ready, buddy?" She smiles and the palisman hoots happily before hopping atop the staff and fusing back with the wood, wings spread, and she hopped on before flying away from the owl house toward Blight Manor.

It's colder and colder with each passing day as they move into true fall. Leaves have fallen everywhere across the Isles, starting to give it an even more barren look in some places then it usually had, though in others the forest is awash with color of every shade and hue Luz can imagine.

The moon is full and the sky is clear. It couldn't be a more perfect evening for watching a meteor shower.

Blight Manor comes into view after a few minutes and Luz makes sure to hover down in the woods, well outside the wrought iron gates, just in the tree line.

Luckily most of the trees outside Blight Manor are of the coniferous variety and their branches are still full of green needles, shielding her from view.

She pulls out her scroll and sends a message.

'I’m outside, flash your light.'

She slipped it back in her hoodie pocket and glanced over the windows, most of the lights were on, then suddenly a light on the far side of the house began to flicker. Luz grinned and spurred the staff into motion toward the side of the house and over the fence to hover outside the second-story window.

She could see Amity inside, sitting on her bed and tapping her foot anxiously. She was wearing the white and purple hoodie she'd borrowed from Luz three weeks ago, which the human had completely forgotten about till now.

She definitely liked that hoodie on Amity.

Luz grinned as she flew in close and tapped the glass quietly. Amity jerked, gold eyes wide as she looked up to see her girlfriend hovering out the window, waving.

She smiled brightly and jumped up, opening the window.

"Buenas Noches, mi amor. Your chariot awaits." Luz grinned and hoped it came out as dashing as it did in her head.

"You certainly know how to make a girl feel special, querida," Amity giggled at her behind a hand and climbed onto the window sill. Luz held out her hand, taking Amity's to help steady her as she slipped out the window and onto the staff, hands wrapping around Luz's waist.

Just as she's about to close the window the bedroom door opens and before Amity's heart can come out of her throat, Edric sticks his head in and looks around a second before spotting them, hovering, outside the window, looking back at him with wide eyes.

They stare back at each other before Ed's face morphs into a wicked grin as he steps into the room, closing the door behind him.

"I never knew you had it in you, Mittens." He smirked, crossing his arms.

"Ed!" Amity hissed at the only Blight son as he walked over to the window and set his elbows on the sill, setting his head in his hands.

"Where are you two off too?" he asked, looking between the two with glee.

"We're gonna go watch the fall shower," Luz said with a grin before Amity could tell him to buzz off.

"Oooh…, and if mom or dad should happen to pop their heads into your room and see you're gone?" He cocked a brow. Amity frowned at that, suddenly doubting the brilliance of this plan.

Edric saw it and smiled, he twirled his finger and in a pale blue flash, a duplicate Amity appeared in her bed, appearing to be sleeping.

"I got ya covered." He winked, and Amity smiled at him. "Don't stay out too late, you two" He grins, wagging a finger.

"Thanks, Ed!" Luz grinned before they pulled away from the window and flew off into the dark.

Amity clung tightly to Luz's back as they flew over the island, she was downright hot in comparison to the cold air that whipped past their faces.

"Where are we going exactly?" She leaned forward, lips pressed against Luz's ear so she could hear her over the wind.

Luz shivered at the hot breath in her ear.

"Lilith told me about a spot on a cliff at the edge of the forest that was perfect when she went," she answered back, as she steered them.

"Lilith's been?" Luz can hear the surprise in her voice.

"I know, crazy right? She wouldn't say who with, Eda bugged her all night about it." Luz shrugged.

When they’re flying over the forest they can see the faint glowing of lights dotting the area.

"I don't think we're going to be the only ones here…," Amity mumbles and Luz nods, bringing them down away from any of the other couples that appear to be in the woods tonight.

They hop off and Luz leans the staff against her shoulder and pulls up her hood.

"We don't wanna be recognized if anyone we know is here. It'd be hard to explain why we're here together," she reasoned when Amity looked at her curiously.

"Right," she said, pulling up her own hood. "Nothing you can eat would fix that." She smirked as Luz pulled out a light glyph and lit up the area around them.

"I thought we agreed that that was endearing!" Luz yelped at the teasing. Amity just chuckled as she walked through the forest, Luz hot on her heels.

"A true labor of love," Amity agreed, though the way she was giggling told a different story.

"That's the last time I get a paper cut on my tongue for you," Luz huffed, grabbing Amity's hand. The witch's fingers laced between her automatically even as she rolled her eyes.

"What do you want me to do, kiss it better?"

"Maybe…," Luz grumbled, and they both turned bright red beneath their hoods.

"Come on, you dork," Amity mumbled, glad most of her face was hidden by the purple hood.

They walked quickly through the woods, hand in hand as they searched for a relatively private spot from which to watch the sky.

"It should be just over this way…," Luz said quietly as they walked, their breaths coming out in little clouds.

"Did Lilith say exactly where it was?" Amity glanced around at all the trees, their feet crunching in the leaves.

"No, but she said around here, and that we'd know it when we saw it. There should be a bunch of rocks with initials carved into them," she said, holding her hand up, the light out in front of her.

A few more yards and she stopped, jerking Amity tp a stop as well.

"What-," she started.

"Shhh," Luz hushed her and tapped the staff to the ground, snuffing the light out, casting them in darkness before pulling Amity against her and pressing her back flush against a wide tree trunk. It took a few moments before their eyes adjusted to the dark, the light of the moon filtering through the trees cast a faint, but low, glow over everything.

They stayed perfectly still and quiet. All Amity could hear was her own heartbeat in her ears.

Then, the crunching of leaves approaching, followed by voices growing steadily louder. A moment later they could see the light bobbing between the trees a few yards away.

"How many more of these losers do you think we can catch on camera?" A voice cackled.

'Boscha' was the thought going through both girls' heads. Amity's grip on Luz tightened and her heartbeat sped up. Luz pulled her closer, as though trying to sink into the bark of the tree and make themselves disappear.

"There were a bunch down by the river." Skara's voice answered.

"Perfect, my penstagram followers could use a laugh," she snorted.

They were walking past them, through the trees, and both girls held their breath as they walked by.

Their voices and the light growing steadily more distant along with their footsteps in the crunching leaves. Eventually, the sounds faded entirely, replaced with the ambient sounds of the forest and Amity sighed in relief, her head sagging against Luz's shoulder.

"That was close…," the witch mumbled once she was sure they were far enough away.

"She just came out here to make fun of people…" Luz frowned, and Amity pulled back to look at her girlfriend's face.

"That's certainly something she would do…" Amity agreed.

"She's such a…" Luz chewed on her words, face screwed up with anger.

"A bitch," Amity supplied and Luz looked at her with wide eyes before a grin broke out across her face and she snorted, slapping a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughing and Amity grinned at her.

"My, my, what strong language, Miss Blight." Luz grinned once she got her giggling under control.

"You were thinking it," she argued, still grinning.

"I would never." Luz held a hand to her chest, but her own grin betrayed her.

"Come on," she laughed, tugging Luz away from the tree and spelling a light orb into existence as they continued on in the same direction as before.

They pushed through some bushes and in front of them were an outcropping of rocks.

"I wonder if this is it…," Luz hummed as they pushed through and rounded one of the large rocks only to smack directly into someone.

"Ahh!" Four yells echoed through the woods.

Luz holds the staff out in front of them defensively before she realizes who it is they’ve run into.

"Amity!?"

"Emira!?

The sisters stared at each other.

"What are you doing here?" they both asked.

Amity blinked, then noticed the other person standing at her sister's side.

"Viney?" Luz cocked her head, looking between the two older teens.

"Sup?" She smiled, not looking at all bothered by the events going on around them. Amity looked back and forth between her sister and the other multi-track student.

The older Blight's face turned panicked.

"I can explain!" Emira practically shouts at them. Her sister's mouth is hanging open as the scene in front of them begins to sink in.

"I knew it!" Luz points, grinning wildly at the other two girls. Amity blinks at that, head whipping to look at her girlfriend.

"What do you mean you knew it!?" she yelps and Luz chuckles, scratching the back of her head.

"Well, yeah, after Viney fixed my face and was so weird about how she knew Em, I kinda started paying more attention, and saw Em head into beast keeping one day after school when I had to go back because I forgot my bag, so I just figured." She shrugged. The older teens stand there, red-faced at being so easily figured out.

"Them, you figured out in two weeks, but you didn't know I liked you till I said it to your face after almost two months…" Amity frowns, crossing her arms. Luz turned red at that and grinned sheepishly, shrugging.

"Lo Siento, mi amor."

Viney snorted at that, drawing the two girls’ gaze.

"That sounds like, Luz," she agreed, and Amity sighed.

"Are you guys here to watch the fall shower?" Luz grins.

"Of course," Viney smiles back, hand on her hip.

The sisters are still looking at each other. Emira looks embarrassed and Amity can't help but feel betrayal sinking in her gut like a stone.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me about this…," she finally managed to mutter and the betrayal she feels must be clear on her face because Emira blinks at her and grimaces, rubbing one of her arms.

Luz and Viney share a glance.

"I can't believe you!" Amity frowns and Emira jerks but then glares.

"It's not like you told me about, Luz!" she bites back defensively.

"You already knew!" she argued.

"Anyone with one eye and half a brain could tell how bad you had it for her!" she barked.

"Hey!" Luz jumps in, offended by the implication.

"Babe..." Viney rested a hand on Emira's shoulder and she relaxed, sighing.

"Look, Amity, it wasn't anything personal… it was just that the fewer people that knew the better. I shouldn't have to tell you that." Her eyes darted to Luz before focusing on her sister.

Amity continues to frown and Luz nudges her with her hip. She glanced at the human, smiling at her in that way, egging her on. Amity sighs, looking back at Emira.

"You're right… I understand."

"I should have told you though… there just hasn't been a good time lately," Emira admitted.

"I don't understand…," Luz said, drawing everyone's gaze. "I know why your parents wouldn't like me… being all human and everything, but what's wrong with Viney, why keep it a secret?" She held her hand out at the other upperclassman.

"Besides being a multi-track student, formerly of the detention track, and bottom of the barrel social class-wise?" Viney chuckled, seemingly not at all bothered by this characterization of herself.

"Our parents are very… traditional," Amity hedges.

"Anyone who falls outside the norm, someone studying multiple tracks, like you," Emira pointed at her. " Or aren't of the right social class, they are not going to be fond of." Emira frowns, resting a fist on her hip.

"Wow, I think that's the first time I've checked every box on a list…, and not the list I wanted too..." Luz frowned, crossing her arms.

"I still love you." Amity nudged her, making her smile.

Emira cleared her throat and they both turned red as they focussed on the two grinning teens in front of them.

"So yeah," Emira said with a grin at her sister's bright red face. "That's why."

"Blight's just have the hots for trouble makers." Viney winked and Luz laughed as they high fived, making the sisters roll their eyes, but both their faces are pink.

"I'm surprised though, never thought you'd have the guts to sneak out, Mittens." Emira looked at her sister appraisingly. "Then again, you do a lot of surprising things these days…" she smiled, glancing between the two younger girls.

Amity stood a little taller, chin jutted out.

"How'd you guys get here?" Luz asks.

"Puddles" Viney grinned, pointing her thumb over her shoulder at the young griffin laying curled up in the grass.

"I want a griffin…" Luz pouted, making her fellow multi-tracker chuckle.

“You do not need a griffin…,” Amity mumbled.

"You guys better find a spot to watch from, the shower should be starting soon," Viney reminded.

"And this is our spot," Emira said.

"Oh, right. Come on, Amity." Luz grabbed her hand and tugged.

Amity sent a last glance at her sister who seemed to read the look.

"Later," she promised. Amity nodded and let Luz drag her away.

"Stay close and we'll warn you if anyone's coming our way!" Viney called to the two's retreating backs. Luz waved over her shoulder.

"We can still find a good spot." Luz smiled at her as they walked. Amity nodded. The cool night air had made her nose and the tips of her ears red, Luz looked much the same.

They followed the edge of the cliff till they pushed through some bushes as tall as them and stopped.

In front of them was a small clearing of grass surrounded by large stones on one side and the edge of the cliff, hanging out over the ocean on the other, providing perfect shelter from any onlookers and a clear view of the night sky and moon above them.

"This is perfect." Luz smiled and Amity nodded in agreement.

They glanced around and Luz perked up. "Hey check it out!" She trotted over to the rocks and the light spell lit up the rocks, casting long shadows against their jagged shapes and the many initials carved across their faces. "This is it!" Luz grinned.

"Lilith was right, this spot is perfect," Amity admitted, looking around. The moonlight reflecting off the ocean amidst the starry sky was beautiful.

Luz glanced around before her eyes lighted upon a sharp rock and picked it up, resting the staff against the rocks and immediately going to work on a free space on the rocks face, tongue poking out between her lips in concentration

All the scratching and chipping noise brought Amity's eyes back to her, hunched over one of the large rocks.

"What are you doing?" She tried to peek around her, but Luz covered her work with her arms.

"Hold on, I'm not done!"

Amity can practically hear the grin in her voice, and stood back, waiting. After a few minutes, Luz leaned back, eyeing her work critically before smiling and standing up to move aside.

"Ta~da" She held out her arms at the rock.

There, chiseled forever into the rock's surface, deep enough to never fade is: 'L+A' Inside a slightly misshapen heart.

Amity's face warms, and heat blooms in her chest in a way that only Luz is capable of eliciting. She can't stop the smile tugging at her lips even if she wanted too; and she doesn't.

"You're a dork," she says, but the adoring tone can't be mistaken for anything else.

"But I'm your dork, mi amor." She grins wagging her eyes brows and Amity snorts into her hand.

"Yeah, my dork," she agrees, grabbing the sides of Luz's hood and pulling her in for a kiss.

Luz laughs against her lips and she pulls back, shaking her head.

"Come on…," she mumbles, still smiling as she tugs Luz over to the grass. Luz dropped her hand to plop down on the ground, flopping onto her back in the grass, one arm outstretched in invitation. Amity sat down beside her laid back in the grass atop Luz's arm, letting her tug her in close. Her warmth immediately soaks into her, and Amity shuffles closer, throwing an arm across Luz's waist, humming contently and Luz is happy to oblige any and all snuggling, her free hand reaching across to entangle her fingers with Amity's. Their cold and Luz just squeezed tighter, trying to warm the digits in hers and Amity smiles against her.

It's quiet, the sounds of the ocean crashing against the shore and the slight breeze in the trees are the only sounds for a few minutes, but Luz and quiet never did mix for long.

"So, when is it supposed to start?" Luz mumbles against a pointed ear, hot breath making it twitch. Amity half shrugs.

"Anytime now," she hums.

Honestly, she doesn't even care if it ever starts, though she's sure Luz would be disappointed if it didn't. She's happy to just be right here, her girlfriend holding her close, alone in the calm quiet of the night. It's only ever here, wrapped up in the unending warmth and affection the other girl exudes, that Amity is ever truly at peace, unworried by everything else going on in her life, whether it be school, her parents, or anything in between. Here, above all else, is where she's happiest.

She lets her eyes slip closed for a moment, and the warm earthy smell she would know anywhere fills her senses, so much stronger then on the hoodie she's been wearing to bed for two weeks. She doesn't pretend to understand what Luz is thinking half the time, but her thoughts must be of a similar vein because she feels her nose bury in her hair.

It's probably only a minute before she hears Luz gasp.

"It's starting!" Is the excited whisper against the shell of her ear, and her eyes pop open.

First, it's just one, then two, then three more, and before she knows it, stars are streaking across the sky leaving bright trails of light in their wake as they flash and vanish almost as quickly as they appear, but are quickly replaced by more.

"Wow…," Luz breathes as she watches with wide eyes. It reminds her of rain on a window, or tears falling, like in the story.

Amity watches silently, but no less entranced by the spectacle.

"Totally worth it," Luz says and Amity can see the cloud it makes before it evaporates against the sky above them. She hums in agreement.

The stars continue to flash across the sky in bright flecks of whizzing light, slowly fading out against the inky blacks and deep blues and purples of the nebulas above. Amity’s thumb runs over the back of Luz’s knuckles slowly.

The sky is alive with the bright streaks for a long while before they begin to slow, and as they do she can feel her eyes droop, the quiet, and Luz's warmth slowly lulling her to sleep.

After a while, Luz notices the constant rubbing of Amity's thumb over her knuckles has stopped and she glances down to see her eyes closed and breathing soft and even as she sleeps, curled against her. Happiness, hot and searing, fills her whole being; beyond words to describe it.

She smiles to herself, and buries her nose in mint hair, letting her eyes slip closed, just for a second, listening to the calming sound of Amity's breathing and feeling the gentle rise and fall of her chest against her.

Then she's asleep.

The next thing they know, they're being shaken awake.

"Huh, Wha-" Luz blinks drowsily.

"You two gotta get up, and Mittens has to come home with me," Emira chuckles as she and Viney stand over the two, smiling, Puddles standing behind them.

Luz grumbles, clutching her girlfriend closer.

"No…," she mumbles thickly. She feels the hot puffs of air against her neck as Amity sleepily laughs at her.

"We have to go…," she says thickly, pressing a drowsy kiss to Luz's neck without thinking, unaware of the jolt it sends through Luz’s system, before extracting herself from her. Luz just whines and makes needy, grabby motions with her hands; she’s colder now.

Amity chuckles and holds out her hand.

"Come on, you dork." She smiles down at her.

Luz takes her hand and lets herself be hauled to her feet. She walked over to the rocks and picked up the staff. The wings spread and she hops on, hovering off the ground and looking at Amity expectantly.

“I better go with Em,” she says sadly, and Luz pouts. Amity smiles and takes a step forward and kisses her goodnight, and it if lasts longer than it really needs to, the other two teens don’t say anything, just wait for Amity to extract herself from Luz.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she promises quietly, and Luz hums in agreement. “Goodnight, querida,” she mumbles.

“Goodnight, mi amor,” she says quietly, and then is flying off over the trees and disappearing from sight.

Viney jumps on Puddles back and Emira climbs on behind her, wrapping her arms around her waist.

“Let’s go, Mittens,” her sister calls. “We have school tomorrow.”

“When did you suddenly become the voice of reason?” Viney chuckles.

“Cuz, she’s too head over heels in love with Luz, someone has to do it,” her sister teases, and Amity huffs, climbing on the griffin’s back behind her sister.

“Shut up,” she grumbles as they take off back toward Blight Manor.

“I’m curious…,” Emira starts after a few minutes, looking over her shoulder at Amity. “What’s ‘mi amor’? I’ve heard her say that before,” she asks, and Amity’s cheeks pink.

“It’s Spanish…,” she grumbles.

“Yeah, but what does it mean?” she stresses, almost knowingly. Maybe she doesn’t know exactly, but she knows a term of endearment when she hears one, especially the way Luz says those words to her; soft and meaningfully.

She mumbles something.

“What?” she asks and Amity sighs to herself.

“It means ‘my love’,” she finally says, and predictably, Emira coos at her.

“Aww… so ‘querida’ is like…,” she trails off and Amity scowls at her, of course, she heard that.

“Dear or darling,” she grumbles.

“You two are too cute.” She grins.

“Like you don’t call me ‘honey’,” Viney pipes up, and it’s Emira’s turn to blush and grumble something under her breath. Amity snorts, grinning. She likes Viney more and more by the minute.

They land in the woods, just beyond the house and dismount, there's no way to get the griffin as close and quietly to their windows as Luz could get on a staff.

Amity turns away as Viney and her sister say their own goodbye’s, and then the multi-tracker is flying off into the night and the sisters make their way to the door. It’s late and all the lights are out, their parents are definitely asleep by now.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Emira says after a minute. “About Viney,” she clarifies, glancing at her sister.

Amity shrugs.

“I get it… I’m... terrified, about mom and dad finding out about Luz, and never being able to see her again,” she says quietly. Emira wraps an arm around her shoulders and squeezes.

“Ed and I have your back.”

Amity smiles to herself and nods before it turns into a grin.

“And I’m sure if Luz starts inviting Viney to things it will be just a coincidence,” she teases, and Emira scoffs, shoving her away, but her flushed face says it all and Amity laughs.

“Whatever…,” she gripes, but she’s grinning. It would definitely be less conspicuous if the four of them hung out together. They love hanging out with Gus and Willow, but she’s sure their friends get tired of them being all lovey when they're together.

They silently open the door and walk in.

The kitchen light is on and they share a look before tiptoeing down the entryway and peek their heads around the corner, the fridge door is open and someone is scavenging through it. They stay perfectly still.

Then, Edric steps back, fork hanging out of his mouth and a piece of cake in hand, and closes the door.

“Ed,” they hiss, and he jumps, nearly dropping the plate.

“Shit! Don’t do that!” he huffs as they walk into the kitchen. “Wait, where were you?” he points at his twin.

“We were both at the Fall Shower,” Amity says and Emira pinks as her twin looks at her with narrowed eyes.

“With who?” he asks.

“Her girlfriend?” Amity says obviously, and Edric’s eyes widen.

“You have a girlfriend?” he hisses, and Amity blinks, looking from one twin to the other.

“You didn’t tell Ed?” She blinks. Amity had always assumed that the twins told each other everything.

“Who’s your girlfriend?!” He leans forward and Emira turns red.

“Viney…”

“Your multi-track friend?” He blinks and she nods. “Huh… I shoulda pegged her as your type,” he hums before taking a bite of his cake. “So, how was it?” he asks, mouthful. The sisters glance at each other.

“Perfect,” they say, and Edric just nods sagely before he stops, looking thoughtful.

"So… wait… I'm the only one without a girlfriend!?" Edric yelled, throwing up his free hand.

Amity snorted, and Emira just shrugged.

"Sorry, Bro." She smirked, not looking sorry at all.

"Whatever, I don't want one anyway. I have this cake," he huffs, sticking his nose in the air and walking back upstairs with his treat.

The sisters share a look before they start laughing.

Luz hops off the staff and pushes open the front door of the owl house, careful not to wake Hooty as she steps inside.

“Hey, Kid,” Eda greets her when she steps inside. The sisters are sitting on the couch when she walks in, and she smiles at them. Eda doesn’t even need to ask how it went by the dopey smile Luz can’t seem to rid herself of. “You’re home late for a school night,” she scolds but is given away by her grin.

“How was the shower?” Lilith asks her, smiling, she too can see the giddy aura that surrounds her sister’s apprentice like a fog.

Luz clutches the staff tightly in her hands, well aware of how dopey she must look.

“Magical” she sighs and Eda chuckles.

#Moonlit Masquerade #lumity #Luz Noceda #Amity Blight #Emira Blight #Edric Blight #Eda Clawthorne #Lilith clawthorne #Gus Porter #Willow Park #fic #the owl house #toh

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k7l4d4 · 3 years ago

Text

Midnight Striga: Fairy Tail/Owl House Cross Fic Episode 6 Part 2

Hello, and once again, welcome back to midnight Striga! Thanks for reading!

With a shout, Eda gripped the arm, slamming the attached body onto the ground. Looming over the hooded figure now gasping on the ground, Eda growled. “Now listen here you sneaky bastard, I don’t know who you are but you caaaaaaannnnnnn!?” She trailed off from her threat, shock rising as the hood fell back.

“Oh, hello, Edalyn!” The old woman cheered, flipping herself up and onto her feet. In a blink, she rushed in, pulling a frozen-stiff Eda into a bearhug. “I have so much news to tell you about!”

Luz blinked, eyes flicking between the two, before the features clicked. Eyes widening, she shot Eda a look. “So… this is your mom?” She asked, pointing at the woman.

Shaking herself back into the present, Eda groaned, lightly shoving the woman away. “Yes, unfortunately.” Giving a deep sigh, Eda turned to Luz, gesturing to the woman next to her. “Luz, meet my mother, Gwendolyn Clawthorne, and one of the single most recurring pains in my butt. Speaking of which,” She turned to Gwen, scowling, “What do you want, mom?”

Gwen gave a beaming grin, tilting her head in apparent thought. “Is it really such a shock that a mother would want to see her daughter?” She asked, neither aware of the way Luz tensed at her question. Both Gwen and Luz reeled back at the response she got, however.

“Yes.” Eda bit out, intense bitterness coating her voice. Standing firm, she put both hands on her hips, head tilted up in anger. “Everytime… EVERYTIME!! You’ve visited me since I’ve been living on my own, it’s been to try some cockamayme cure for my curse. And they. Never. Work!! So yeah, I’d say it’s reasonable to be a little skeptical.” She finished, panting slightly at the exertion of her outburst, lightly covering part of her wrist, and the feathers underneath.

Luz desperately held in the urge to shout at Eda for talking about the woman before her like that, but she could grudgingly admit to seeing where she was coming from. However, neither of them were fully prepared for Gwen’s reaction. Gwen gave a tired sigh, a sad smile forming across her features. “I do suppose I deserved that.” She chuckled, reaching up to Eda’s face, tracing a hand across her jaw, much to her daughter’s discomfort. “I promise, Edalyn, I just want to talk. That’s all. Please?”

Eda bit her lip, conflicted. On the one hand, she was sick and tired of being burned by her mother’s antics… and on the other hand, she was sick of her family being in pain, and was honestly wanting to have genuine quality time with her mother for once. Deciding to take the risk and just bite the bullet, Eda sighed, relenting. “Okay, fine! We can talk.” She said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. Turning a raised eyebrow to Luz, Eda asked, “You want in on this, kid?”

Seeing the two witches giving her matching looks of inquisitiveness, Luz blinked, before rapidly shaking her head. “Oh no!” Pointing to Eda, she continued, “You need this a lot more than I do at the moment, and, if that brief back and forth was any indicator, the two of you have enough issues to work through WITHOUT me being thrown in.” She stated, stepping back, arms raised. Shooting Eda a brave smirk, “Don’t worry, I’ll just make a day of it in town. I mean,” she shrugged, “I’ve kinda got to get used to people being suspicious of me in public all over again, why not start now?”

Coming to an agreement (“If you die, I’m selling all your stuff!” “Love ya too, Eda!), the group headed their separate ways, promising to catch up later. Gwen giddily dragged Eda along, who was personally torn between annoyance at the manhandling, and amusement at her mother’s amusement. “Yeesh, calm down, Gwen! You’re gonna rip my arm off!” Eda half-joked. Gwen’s yanks actually did have a real chance of removing her arms, but it’s not like that was a problem with her condition, really.

“Oh, I’m sorry dear, I’m just so excited!” Gwen squealed, a sheepish grin filling her face. “I just…” Her smile turned sad, “I just really wanted to see you.”

Eda gave her own sad laugh. “Don’t worry, I can understand the feeling.” Her mind flashed back to how she was after she and Raine split up, all the nights she wished they were back, wanting to see them. A thought came to her. “Hey, I just noticed… where’s Hawksley?” She asked.

Gwen gave her a mischievous wink. “Oh, he’s just looking after our other guest.”

Eda shot her a look of bafflement. “Other guest!? What are- oh no.” She groaned, as realization set in. Turning her gaze, she was in no way surprised to see Lilith, glumly slumped over a table before them, Hawksley perched on top of her head. What did shock Eda, however, was the bottle of Appleblood Lilith was chugging. Turning accusing eyes towards an unrepentant Gwen, Eda shouted. “SERIOUSLY!?”

Cheerfully whistling to herself, Luz strolled along, using the noise of her whistling to tune out the whispers and muttering all around her. It was honestly a neat trick, but she was well aware it wouldn’t work forever, especially if she ended somewhere more crowded. Scanning the area, Luz was disappointed, if unsurprised, by the sight of parents tucking their kids behind them as she moved past. It hurt. It was understandable, but it still hurt.

Sighing, Luz slipped into the shadows, rolling her eyes when the sounds of the main streetside picked up in volume at her ‘departure.’ Still, the sheer amount of gossip was entertaining, if only for the wild speculations and rantings of the more… colorful members of the local communities. Seriously, her? A shapeshifting giraffe seeking to supplant the Emperor through a false army of Abominations wrapped in Illusions? Pfft! She was gonna have to tell Eda that one, preferably when she was trying to drink something!

Laughing internally at the thought of an Owl Lady Spit Take, Luz tightened her movements against the wall. Her ears pricked at the sounds up ahead; it didn’t sound like the usual rampant paranoia. And if she focused enough, she was almost certain…

“Look, I know things are… really crazy right now.” Amity’s voice sounded out, confirming Luz’s suspicions. “But I honestly think this’ll be good for all of us. The Moonlight Conjuring is an important aspect of our culture, and is a funtime all around. If you all show up while it’s still daylight, nothing should go wrong.” Moonlight Conjuring? Hmm… something to talk with Eda about.

“B-But what if those Oroboros creeps attack again!? I can’t put my parents through that!” An unfamiliar voice questioned, concerned murmurs of agreement sounding in response.

Amity’s voice sighed. “I… I know it’s scary. The things I saw at the Covention, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget, not entirely.” Her voice took a melancholy note, before firming. “But in a way, that’s why we have to do this!” At the sounds of confusion, she continued. “That attack was supposed to make us afraid, to make us all panic. Something that it’s managed in spades all across the Isles. But for all that Oroboros is powerful, it’s an organization with a finite amount of resources. They can’t be everywhere at once, and no organization would commit precious resources to attack a party for school youths!” The nervousness died down, replaced with cautious contemplation. Luz gave a little smirk; Miss Blight apparently had a way with words, and some serious charisma if they were already changing their tune.

“I’ll go.” A familiar voice said. It took Luz a moment to place it; it was the voice of that girl who Boscha had burned! Her voice spoke up again. “If you can find someone to protect us, just in case, I’ll go.”

“W-Well, that’s fantastic!” Amity said, faux-excitedly. If Luz had to guess, her friend speaking up had caught her flat-footed, and she was trying to get things under control. “And I know just the person to do so! If you all show up before sundown, I promise, on the Blight name, you’ll all have an amazing time!” At that, all potential opposition crumbled, a chorus of agreements and cheers going up. As sounds of footsteps headed off, Luz peaked around the corner. She saw Amity, jerkily waving goodbye to her… friends? Acquaintances? Her face stretched into a plastic smile.

Suddenly, Amity rammed her head against the wall, knocking her forehead against the stone repeatedly, frustrated grumbles coming forth. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid! Oh, I’ll find someone to guard us, everyone! Leave everything to Amity, everyone! I swear it on my family name!” She slapped her hand against her face. “Titan, what was I thinking!?”

“I don’t think you were.” Luz dryly noted, walking out from her pseudo-hiding place. Amity leapt back, startled. Luz noted how quickly she shifted into a ready position, one arm pulled back to cast, the other slightly pressed forward to defend herself, legs prepped to spring to either side and out of the way. She was honestly impressed, the girl had some athletic experience.

“Oh! It’s you!” Amity exclaimed, relaxing slightly, if not fully. “Luz, correct?” She said, more than asked, extending a hand for a shake. Smirking, Luz complied, giving the girl a firm grip, Amity’s eyes widening at the painless pressure. Schooling her features into a cordial smile, she grinned. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“Really?” Luz asked, blinking rapidly. She had honestly not been expecting that. She cocked her head. “I kind of expected you to be some level of scared of me.”

“Oh, don’t worry, what you represent terrifies me.” Amity said frankly, the sheer honesty in her voice drawing a surprised snort out of Luz. “However,” Amity continued, her eyes focusing on Luz. “I gained a look into your measure during the Covention. You are wild, independant, and freely and liberally resort to violence even faster than Witches and Demons do. But you’re also loyal, caring, compassionate, and understanding, with a strong sense of duty. While I find you puzzling, your traits are those that I find commendable.”

“HA! Glad to hear.” Luz smirked. Her face shifted into a serious frown, contemplative. “You know, I overheard your little problem. So,” She grinned cheekily, “You need to find a bodyguard, eh?”

“Ugh! Please don’t use that phrase!” Amity near-pleaded, hiding her face in her hands. “My family has been going nuts over my safety. I am honestly lucky that they let me go into town without an armed guard of Abominations!”

Luz snorted, blinking at the mental image of Abominations skulking around Bonesburough, scanning for threats and hovering over an annoyed Amity. “Wow, over-protective, much?”

Amity exhaustedly nodded. “Yeah. My parents… aren’t the best, but they do care about me. Even if they care about our image more.” She said, muttering the last part spitefully. Shaking her head, she refocused on the original topic. “But yes, I need someone who’s willing to stand guard for me and those I plan on inviting to my Conjuring.”

“What about me?”

Amity blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“What about having me be your guard?” Luz elaborated, shrugging. “I’ve got combat experience, free time, and you won’t have to pay me!”

“That’s-!” Amity started, before pausing. She brought her fingers to her chin, eyes narrowed in thought. “That could actually work.”

“Really?” Luz asked, cocking her head. “The offer was serious, but I wasn’t actually expecting you to agree.”

Amity gave a grave smile, nodding. “Indeed, I’m willing to agree to this. If you don’t have any requirements?” She asked, eyebrows raised.

Luz paused, thinking. “If you could invite Willow and Gus, I’d really appreciate it.” She finally said.

“Done.” Amity said decisively, typing up the messages on her scroll. “That honestly works out rather well; ever since their actions at the Covention, their popularity has sky-rocketed and my friends have been wondering about meeting with them so this is an excellent opportunity. If that’s all, I will see you at my home before sunset; you can ask Willow and Augustus for directions.” WIth that said, she turned on her heel, marching off. Luz shook her head at Amity’s antics, before turning to leave herself. Neither noticed the group of individuals perched on a nearby building, the apparent leader’s eyes tracking Luz’s every movement.

“Of course,” Eda muttered, staring in resignation at the sight of her sister, chugging away on the table in front of her. Shooting an accusing stare towards Gwen, Eda moodily stomped over, plopping herself down from across her sister, glaring at her.

“EeeeDalyn?” Lilith blearily asked, words slurring slightly. She hiccuped, bottle awkwardly cradled in her hand, the other bracing her against the table. “Since when are you purple?” She muttered.

“Purple?” Eda said incredulously. She turned to Gwen, concerned. “Is it me, or is she…?”

“Absolutely wasted? No, it isn’t you, she really is.” Gwen noted dryly, casually yanking the bottle of Appleblood out of Lilith’s hands, ignoring her weak protests. “I dragged her out of her barracks, kicking and screaming. I believe a few of the Coven Guards who tried to stop me may be in need of Healing. Now, we are going to take the time to stop, think, and figure things out. As a family.” She said firmly, arms crossed.

The bitter snort came from Lilith, of all people, much to Eda and Gwen’s shock. “A-A family.” She chuckled, swaying lightly. “Is that what we are?” She laughed again, slapping the table. “And here I thought we were a bunch of strangers, pretending we CaReD about each other!!”

Gwen and Eda shared unsettled looks. Gwen hesitantly spoke up. “Now, Little Flea, I know I’ve been… distant, but-”

“DO NOT CALL ME THAT!!” Lilith shrieked, eyes wild, before calming down. “I-I haven’t been ‘Little Flea,’” She muttered derisively, “Since you abandoned me!” She accused, fist pounding against the table.

“Abandon!?” Eda exclaimed, confused and alarmed at her estranged sister’s behavior. “Sis, I don’t know what’s been going on with you, but how has Gwen abandoned you?”

Eda reeled back at the bitter anger in Lilith’s face. “She never came to my induction into the Coven, did you know that?” She said, “She never showed up for any of my promotions, any of my awards, anything!! She just, up and left!” Lilith laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. “And here, I learned that she’s been visiting you for Years!! Trying to cure you!”

Gwen’s eyes grew misty. “I have made mistakes, and I apologize for that, Lilybug.” She said, reaching out towards Lilith, unconcerned when she slapped her hand away. “You were always so strong, so independent. I never meant to ignore you. I’m sorry if I hurt you because of it. But that’s why I dragged you both here!” She pleaded, glancing at the two of them. She wrung her hands in nervousness. “I just didn’t want to fail the two of you again. I know I can’t fix the pain between the two of you, and I don’t expect to. I just wanted to get you two together to hash out some ground rules, if that’s okay?” She explained, a hesitant note at the end

Eda and Lilith shared a glance, a moment of grudging understanding passing between them.

Eda turned to her mother first. “Okay, I guess we can do that. But if you’re serious about being in my life for real, I don’t want you coming around with crazy cures anymore.” Her voice took on a tender note. “If you’re gonna come over, I just want it to be so we can spend some time together, okay?”

“And I’d prefer you to visit me AT ALL!” Lilith shouted, some of the slurring fading from her voice. Eda was honestly surprised at how quickly she was recovering; a glance at her neck, and the Healing Glyph tagged onto it explained much; it was forcibly purging the Appleblood from her body, getting her back to normal. Eda winced; Lilith was going to feel like HELL when that thing wore off. “I want you to visit me, ask me about my day, take an interest in my Life!!” Tears pricked at Lilith’s eyes. “I want my mother back!” She pleaded.

Gwen turned a watery smile towards the two of them. “I think I can manage those requests.” She said, a pleased smile on her face. She grew serious. “Now then, If we are going to act like a family, as a whole that is, I am going to be doing my motherly duties, and establishing some rules for the two of you.” She stated, nodding even as her daughters groaned. She continued, ignoring their annoyance. “The rules are simple; Eda, you are to no-longer deliberately antagonize Lilith. If the two of you run into one another, you are to keep a civil attitude and in no way try to anger or upset her. Lilith, you are to cease your attitude in attempting to bring Edalyn in under the guise of being cured. If Edalyn is brought in, it is to be because she is a criminal and flouting the law, not out of an inane desire to cure her. Besides, I strongly doubt Belos would do so in the first place.” She finished, feeling a smug satisfaction at her daughters’ matching look of dumbfounded shock.

“B-But! He promised me!” Lilith said, whined really. “He gave me his word!!”

Eda groaned, even as Gwen raised an eyebrow. “Lilith, Belos’ regime is built on his Coven System, something Eda’s very existence stands in challenge to,” She said gently, “There are no circumstances in which he will EVER cure her. If you bring her in, he will have her thrown into the Conformatorium, and nothing more. He has all the leverage, and all the authority, and you have nothing that could compel him into curing her at your behest.”

Lilith shakily pulled herself to her feet, staggering off, a mumbled excuse echoing as she rapidly walked off, tears in her eyes. Gwen sighed. That had gone about as well as she’d been expecting.

Eda turned an impressed look towards Gwen. “Well dang, Mom! Didn’t know you were such a rebel!”

Gwen shot her daughter an unimpressed look. “I’m not.” She said primly.

Eda had a look of disbelief. “Really? Because you didn’t have a problem calling out Bonehead on his crap.” She said snarkily.

“That is because I am under no delusions as to his nature.” She said, “Belos’ rise to power and initial rule was tyrannical and cold, utterly without mercy. I, and many others, chose to join his burgeoning power because it was literally either him or complete chaos and anarchy. Not everyone can survive it as well as you, Edalyn.” She said archly, almost daring her to protest.

Eda opened her mouth to do just that, but paused, considering. Ultimately, she sighed, pushing herself away from the table. “Yeah, that’s true. I still hate him, and I always will, but I can get why people shacked up with him, even if I disagree with him on principle.” She grudgingly, painfully admitted. Giving her mother a level look. “This, as short, weird, and awkward as it’s been, was nice. I really hope you keep in touch for real, okay?” She said softly, before walking away.

Gwen just smiled, tears of relief and sadness filling her eyes. It wasn’t much… but it was a start.

#the owl house #fairy tail #owl house au #fairy tail au #owl house crossover #fairy tail crossover #luz noceda #eda clawthorne #lilith clawthorne #gwendolyn clawthorne #amity blight #magic

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braincoins · 4 years ago

Text

for DA Shallura

I’ve been doing a series of posts about basic Dragon Age canon for my DA fic series, Dragon Age: Schism. HOWEVER, my Dragon Age AU for Shallura has slightly different background (it takes place before DA:O, and thus before any of DA:S) and I include headcanons and whatnot for DA:S in those info posts.

So I thought I’d make One post with all the info that @tybalt-tisk or anyone else could need to make sense of what’s going on in that fic specifically. Some of this will be copy-pasted from what I’ve already done for DA:S because c’mon why write it twice? But everything here should give the necessary bgd for that fic. If you want/need to ask me other questions, feel free!

With credit, as always, to @yslanam who started this by first suggesting a DA AU for Shallura. And if you make it to the end, there’s pretty Mitz art! (Or you could skip to it, I know, but... be good, hm?)

Our story takes place in the country of Ferelden on the continent Thedas. Ferelden is basically Fantasy England (though not an island and not shaped that way), and is about the same size and climate (though it’s south of the equator, not north of it).

Shiro was born Takashi Shirogane in a small village where everyone knew everyone else and he liked it there. Loved it there, really. He signed on to be in his bann’s (the noble who ruled the land and its village) army, as did another young man from his town (whose name Shiro rarely speaks now). They served honorably and well and fell in love.

And then they were called to battle. Shiro survived: plus a scar and some new white hair, but minus his right arm, which was too badly injured and had to be amputated. Shiro’s lover didn’t make it, though. Shiro was discharged with pay and a small bonus, but that money would run out eventually. He’s not sure what to do with himself, and he overhears people talking about what a shame it is, such a young man now destined to just wither away because, well, he’s basically worthless now. Can’t work a farm, can’t fight in wars. It hits him hard. He wants to prove himself worthy of... of something, anything, just to prove them wrong.

That’s what brings him to the Grey Wardens.

Allura is a city elf. Elves are second-class citizens - at best - amongst humans, and the city elves live in ghettos called “alienages.” Her father was the Elder of the Highever (a city in Ferelden) Alienage: the man in charge, basically. That didn’t mean Allura behaved though; even as a child, she would rant about how elves were people just like humans and they deserved better treatment. This didn’t win her a lot of friends; most city elves learn quick that yelling about the truth just draws a whole lot of unwelcome - and often armed - attention.

But then it was discovered that Allura had magic, and she was taken off to the Tower of the Circle of Magi to be trained... and supervised. If there’s anything worse than being an elf in Ferelden, it’s being a mage. Mages, if they aren’t careful, can basically be possessed by demons and then they kill a bunch of people and it’s a bad scene. Therefore most people fear mages, and the Chantry - the main religious organization on the continent and damn near the only one in Ferelden - has created Templars to watch over the mages of the Circle.

The Templars are also known as “mage-hunters” because that’s one of their main duties: running down mages who try to flee their gilded cage. They also kill any mage suspected of being demon-possessed. And they’re posted all throughout the Tower, watching... always watching...

Allura liked learning magic but hated that this is how it’s done. She’s just been moved from one cage to another, and she wasn’t silent about that either. Things came to a head after she became an official mage; she saw a Templar about to force himself on a fellow mage, who was terrified of the man. She got angry and killed the man, straight out. She should have been killed, made Tranquil (basically magical lobotomy) or sent to Aeonar, the mage prison, but Duncan, the Warden-Commander, was there visiting and recruited her away, instead.

That’s what brings her to the Grey Wardens.

And that’s where she meets Shiro.

So, really now, what is a Grey Warden? Well, that depends on who you ask. To most people outside the order, the Grey Wardens are a glorious order of noble heroes! And why is that? Well, they’re immune to the darkspawn taint (which usually kills people) and so they can safely slay darkspawn! They’re also the only ones who can stop Blights!! …though this last bit of information is often forgotten, given that Blights happen once every few centuries.

If you ask me, the Grey Wardens are the biggest dick move in Thedas, which is actually part of why I love them. Here’s all the downsides to joining this “glorious order”:

First of all, the Right of Conscription. Ferelden has it; not sure if other nations in Thedas do? Anyway, it means that Grey Wardens can recruit anyone at any time. In practice, they have to be careful how they wield this tool (especially in Ferelden), but the RoC has been used to save people from hangings or other deadly fates… on the condition that they become a Warden Recruit. So… didn’t want to be Warden Recruit? TOO BAD, YOU ARE NOW. And no, you don’t get a say in the RoC. (Allura was RoC’d, to keep the commander of the Templars from killing her.)

Second of all, there’s the Joining. It turns out that, in order to become a Grey Warden, you have to drink darkspawn blood. And a bunch of other stuff in there, but really now, DRINKING DARKSPAWN BLOOD. You might recognize this as a stupidly dangerous thing to do, given that darkspawn blood KILLS THINGS. But your options are drink it or die, because the Grey Wardens present at the Joining will kill you if you try to back out after learning about this. If you drink from the Joining chalice, you also might die, but your name will be remembered as a Grey Warden at least? Even though you’re dead. And hey, if you live, you… become “immune” to the darkspawn taint, which is to say you’re already fucking tainted so it’s not like it can get worse. Want to know why the Grey Wardens don’t tell people they’re gonna make them drink darkspawn blood? Well, if they did that, people wouldn’t want to join, and we need Grey Wardens.

Supposing you survive the Joining, there’s the shortened lifespan (10-30 years depending on your sources) and the nightmares (that maybe you can learn to tune out). Again, they don’t tell you this until afterwards. Why? Because then people might not want to become Grey Wardens… yadda yadda. (Shiro might not speak Adam’s name anymore but he sure does yell it some nights, jolting out of a night terror and back to reality.)

Oh, and forget about having kids! It’s very difficult if not impossible to have children as a Grey Warden! (Not like they let mages have kids in the Circle. And Shiro’d been in love with a man, so he was okay with not having biological children anyway.)

At some point, even if you were able to tune the nightmares out, they’ll come back and there’ll be nothing you can do about it. That’s the first sign of The Calling. Because it turns out that the Joining is really just turning you into a ghoul, except very, very slowly. You’re getting close to Ghoul-dom now. Most Grey Wardens choose to die in battle against the darkspawn rather than waiting to be turned. It’s tradition.

And if there’s a Blight going on? Oh, well, it turns out that the only way to kill an Archdemon is to sacrifice a Grey Warden. Why didn’t they tell you? DO YOU EVEN HAVE TO ASK NOW?!

The motto of the Grey Wardens is “In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice.”

So what I’m saying is that Grey Wardens are SUPER TRAGIC BADASSES. They also wind up pretty cut off from their former lives, so the Wardens become their family. So, basically, SUPER TRAGIC BADASS FOUND FAMILY.

Shiro and Allura get close because it turns out they work well together as a fighting pair: he as a warrior, she as a mage. Even with only one arm, Shiro can at least protect Allura as she takes shit out. They’re quickly a unit, just the two of them, always sent out together. It’s no wonder it starts to blossom into love.

But Allura sees that Shiro wants to do more than just protect and shield bash, so she starts trying to figure out how to make him a prosthetic: one worthy of a Grey Warden. One... worthy of him.

There are different schools of magic: Creation is the healing branch, and it seems natural to try to work with that some, but in the end, Allura has to also dip into a forbidden school: Blood Magic. Blood Magic has the reputation of being evil because you’re using people’s blood - people’s life forces - to power your spells. After growing up in the Tower, she’s understandably nervous about using it.

But she talks about it with Shiro, and although he might otherwise be scared of Blood Magic, she tells him she doesn’t need a lot of it, it won’t kill him, and... well, it’s her. He trusts her. And she works hard to be worthy of that trust, she goes over this spell she’s created several times. It should work to attach the arm - made of silverite, a very powerful and durable metal - to him so he can use it.

She just forgot about the darkspawn taint coursing through him. His blood is not normal. And there are some... side effects from messing with it.

I do recommend reading this post (it’s kinda 1/2 meta, 1/2 fic) but if you don’t want to, the short version is that Shiro has trouble controlling his arm at first and so he pushes Allura away because he’s afraid of hurting her. She takes that as a well-deserved rebuke because she did this to him.

Eventually they scream it all out at each other: he loves her, he was afraid for her, she feels guilty and is so afraid he’ll leave her, etc. They settle down and start working together on figuring out how Shiro can better control this thing. At the beginning of this fic, he’s gotten the hang of it now.

I’ll put up pictures of their uniforms when I can, and other than that, you should be good to go! I know this was long, sorry. Here, have some pretty @mitzoco art:

#DA Shallura #Dragon Age 101 for Shallura fans

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plantwalkingamongstmeremortals · 4 years ago

Note

Hi :) for the ask challenge : 1, 4, 7, 11, 15, 21

Obviously you don't have to answer all of them unless you want to :)

1. How long do you hc the travel time between Divinity’s Reach and Lion’s Arch?

I am VERY BAD at time and distances to be honest, something like a couple weeks by foot sounds like a decent distance between two major cities (esp considering how much of kryta is western europe and that doesnt seem completely incompatible with real life western europe) but i have a lot of trouble picturing how much that is, and tbh i'd need to add hundreds of villages and quite a few minor towns in between anyway to get something that feels like RealityTM.

Funny answer is the game is 100% of the reality of tyria. You CAN do the one-hour walk between LA and DR. the whole world is smaller than france. Not what i believe but really funny to think about.

4. How much smarter than everyone else are Asura actually? Is it all just hubris and in the end they just have a better education system?

YES IT'S JUST HUBRIS. The "some species just are Better at x" fantasy trope definitely is rooted in real life racism and i hate it so i really believe that all differences are cultural (because the implications otherwise feel kinda gross). And considering how high and mighty they are about it, them not sharing the education and science cuz "nah you humans/sylvari/charr/norn definitely are too stupid to understand" makes sense, but hopefully with everything that's been happening, asura seeing others make super cool tech and stuff, they'll realize that everyone will profit if they share their knowledge on a deeper level >:3

7. How does an average Sylvari’s average day look like?

im bad at average help. more seriously they don't feel like they have a structured work day like we do (and i assume most other races do too bc that's the vibe they give. gotta work in the fields or make tech or idk what). Maybe the Socialist Utopia where they come give a hand at the Necessary Jobs for a bit (just thinking about how the dream might mean everyone Knows how most of those work?) and then just chill out doing the hobby they feel called to. Overall i think they have a lot of ~empathy~ and respect of other individuals' liberties so theres not much being forced on others and people can just vibe however they want without having to stress about paying rent or shit like that.

11. Are magic abilities learned or are people born with them? A combination of both?

Mostly learned i think! There might be some biological stuff that might help somehow, like how some people learn how to draw way faster than others, and some others struggle A LOT but if the world has magic, i'd let anyone learn to channel it! And I think the way gw1 works might support it, with all the profession trainers who teach us skills..... The captured elites might be some form of "i saw magic used this way, so i am learning from seeing my magic used against me"? I really feel like i'm making shit up on the spot im sorry but also what did u expect from this idiot /lh

15. A headcanon about a minor race, like Quaggan or Dredge.

theyre all perfect. thats it. (more seriously i don't have that many thoughts about any of them i just think we should Learn More). Oh and considering the prev question: yes a necromancer quaggan is a posibility. Baby quaggan walk, followed by corpses, i love ♥

21. Mallyck. Other Trees. Mordremoth’s blighting trees… Are the Sylvari not unique?

hhhh so i was a bit no when i saw the question at first but ive been Thinking so. LETS RECAP THE DATA WE HAVE.

Apparently a dev confirmed malyck did Not Come from a blighting tree during a live or on reddit or whatever i can't check ever gw2wiki source okay, which confirms that whatever the most complicated answer to the question i come up with is most likely true.

The wiki says the seed for the pale tree was a blighting tree seed stolen by Ronan but the source seems to be an artbook i don't have so idk if it's the wiki people extrapolating because i can't check. so first let's assume it's the case: NOTHING is stopping anyone else from having stolen a seed too and planted a tree and theyre all kind of cousins (sylvari/mordrem/other tree ppl) which is very cute and that feels like the most canon-compliant explanation of malyck bUT it's not fucked up enough to my taste so i'm gonna say (for the sake of argument at least idk which option is alex-canon yet) the pale tree came from just something else. Ronan and Ventari planted a lil gay tree and some sleeping mordremoth magic made it Alive (because we need plant dragon connection anyway (we couuld fuck that up but that sounds like too much work for now)) but there were too many good gay vibes so the tree ended up making overall nice and very gay plants. WHICH MEANS. there's nothing preventing sleeping mordremoth power to just vibe with trees that are supposed to be significant in other ways and awaken them to make lil plant beings.

Downside to all this is why haven't we seen them in HoT, BUT maybe they were too far away. Maybe a chaotic neutral quaggan planted a cactus in elona and mordremoth made choya because of that. Idk man.

#gw2 #long post #ask meme

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foxtophat · 5 years ago

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HEYYYYYY BUDDY!!! guess what? it’s 6:30 and i haven’t had a chance to get onto my animal crossing fishing tourney yet so i’m gonna keep this short!

today’s chapter is about nick and john (as usual), and their trip out to the river to check some animal traps. i know, it sounds exciting, but trust me it gets better. you’ll just have to read to find out how!!!

i really appreciate all of you guys reading and reblogging and liking and commenting and kudosing and just being fantastic people all around! it’s so wonderful seeing people enjoying my work and i know i say it every time, but i MEAN IT every time! i really really appreciate you guys!

below the cut is the chapter text for all those non-ao3 people (or people who are lazy and have xkit like me). if you enjoy what i’m doing and haven’t already hit me up, i love hearing what you guys think! you know the rest of this part probably: likes, reblogs, comments, kudos, etc etc are all super cool and i would appreciate them, but i also know we live in hectic times so don’t worry yourself. you do you okay!!!

now off i go to catch some fish!!! enjoy nick and john being full dumbasses for 4,000 words!

Nick knows that Carmina's runny nose, itchy eyes, and sore throat are from allergies. He's sure Kim knows it, too. But Carmina has only had one other allergy attack in her life, and today's heavy pollen has left her a miserable, bedridden wreck. It particularly sucks that it had to be this morning, because Nick and she were going to check the traps, which means she was already half out of bed before the real misery began. She hasn't been truly sick since she was four, and Nick is hoping that they can keep that streak going for the foreseeable future, so of course he isn't going to push her to come — it's just too bad, is all.

Of course, with Carmina bed-bound and Kim in anxiety mode over it, Nick doesn't have a lot of choices when it comes to checking the traps. Either he leaves them out there for some predator to take advantage of, or he trusts John to have his back out in the woods. Considering everything that's happened, Nick is fairly confident that John isn't a threat, but that doesn't mean he can't have some lingering reservations. After all, John has been a decent person for less than a year. He might be getting the hang of it now, but that doesn't mean it won't be easy to backslide into bad habits if he's given the chance.

John killing him is a toss-up, but there's no doubt Kim will murder him if he heads off on his own. So, once Carmina is bemoaning her fate in bed and Kim has her under control, Nick meets John downstairs.

"Lucky you," he says, interrupting John mid-breakfast. "Looks like you and I are going on a trip."

Although John looks at him as though he expects it to be a short trip out behind a barn, he manages to respond with a balanced amount of sarcasm. "I thought I wasn't supposed to leave," he says, accidentally pulling off a great impression of Carmina in the middle of an argument.

"Well, you already broke that rule, what's one more time gonna hurt? C'mon, Kim will kill me if I go by myself, and I'm pretty sure she might kill you if you hang around and stress her out more."

It's the first time since bringing John home that he's left the property, not that it's a particularly exciting first trip out. They aren't going very far — there are three traps set up along the river, easy enough to find if you follow the embankment — but John still keeps close, as if they're moseying down some foreign avenue and he doesn't want to get lost. Nick knows the route pretty well by now, but he's willing to take it slow so that John might memorize some of it himself.

"Strange how little things have changed out here," John says after a while. "I was expecting a blighted hell-scape, but all of this seems... normal."

"From what I've heard, the greenery took some time coming back, so we missed most of the actual apocalypse. I guess nature had a pretty big leg up without all the people around."

John hums neutrally in response. Nick glances his way, expecting him to be lost in some dark thoughts like he usually seems to be, but John is only observing the tall, thin trees and their patched canopies. Either he's getting better at handling his inner turmoil, or he's gotten better at hiding when he's spiraling.

"I guess you didn't get to see much lying in that ditch I found you in, huh?" Nick asks. Despite himself, he's not trying to be a dick about it. He's just curious, is all — John doesn't talk about his bunker or the circumstances that brought him topside where Nick could find him. For all Nick knows, John was up and running around for days or even weeks before he got sick.

"Not really," John admits. "Although from what it looks like, not much has changed."

"Yeah. You'd have to go into town to really see the difference."

At the mention of town, John's neutral silence turns noticeably uncomfortable. "I suppose I would," he says, hedging awkwardly around the topic. It's the same routine he pulls out every time Nick or Kim mention going to public spaces, especially this past month or so. Nick understands his reservations — hell, you couldn't pay Nick to go somewhere where he would be as unwanted as John would be in town — but Nick also doesn't want John to hide for the rest of his life. He doesn't think he can keep a secret that long.

John surprises Nick by taking it one step further. "They have enough to worry about without my inglorious resurrection making things worse," he admits, offering his first genuine reason not to go beyond not wanting to be killed by a mob.

Nick chuckles. "That's awfully considerate of you," he teases. He's managed to find a balance between antagonizing and friendly ribbing, although the difference is probably lost on John. "At this rate, you might convince people you're a whole other person."

Almost immediately, Nick regrets the suggestion. It would be relatively easy to fade into anonymous obscurity if John wanted — not that he thinks John would want to. Nick just doesn't want to be the guy giving him bad ideas.

"It's simpler to stay here," John replies, sounding as though he'd dismissed that option a while back already. "Safer. If Jacob taught me anything, it was that I wouldn't make it one week by myself in the wilderness."

It's another first to have John mention his family outside of verbally disowning them for other people's comfort. Nick wants to pry up those floorboards in particular, because the brotherly relationship between the youngest and oldest Seed had to be a bizarre one, but John's pensive enough about it without him digging further. These are the baby steps that Kim's always talking about — he has to let them be small, and let John take them when he's ready.

They eventually reach the clearing, where scraggly trees give way to what used to be the river's embankment. With the river having moved some ten yards, the land has been left open to grow thick with weeds and vines. The traps they set out here tend to have the best luck; even Carmina's earliest snares managed to catch squirrels and rabbits all the time. Since it's been a couple of days since they last had meat beyond old jerky, Nick is especially hopeful that they're going to get lucky again today. The more traps that they fill, the more food they have, and the more food they have, the more they can trade and give away. Nick isn't sure if paying Grace's trust back with rabbits is going to work, but damned if he isn't going to try.

Unfortunately, it looks like something else got to the trap before them. Nick examines the fibrous old rope that had kept the trap anchored to the tree, which must have frayed enough for some predator to drag the cage down to the bottom of the incline. It's an old animal control trap from before the bombs, so it's unlikely to have broken, but Nick is not looking forward to making it down the embankment and getting mud up to his knees. Especially not while wearing his last pair of mostly-intact jeans.

"What are you doing?" John asks incredulously as Nick starts to gently pick his way through the brush down the slope. "That's a terrible idea."

"Suddenly you know so much about everything," Nick grouses. "We need that trap. I've got this, just stay there and —"

Nick hopes he never has to admit it again, but John is apparently right to warn him. The dirt under the thick foliage is loose and wet from the earlier rains, which Nick only realizes as he sinks his boot right into the root system of the vines holding the erosion at bay. He pitches down the hill, managing to bring up his arm a fraction of a second too late to save himself from going headfirst into the ground. His elbow takes most of the damage, followed immediately by his temple, ringing his bell so thoroughly that he misses the rest of his full-on tumble down the slope. He's face-first in the dirt one second, and face-up to the canopy the next, the world still spinning even when Nick is pretty sure he's hit the bottom.

Somewhere nearby he can hear the river, and all around him are deep green leaves and bright pink flowers. Sunlight shines in through the trees, and for a moment the amber light turns the world around him into an alien landscape. The plants rustle in the breeze; somewhere on the incline above, he can hear roots tearing through the dirt. They're miles away, on the contour just above him, and Nick struggles to focus on them.

Somebody is calling his name. How long has he been lying here? Dazed and aching as he is, Nick can't tell if it's been seconds, minutes or longer since he fell face-first down the hill. He doesn't want to move — his entire body aches, his ankle throbs, and there's a painful blooming knot behind his ear that tells Nick he definitely hit his head somewhere on the way down.

The sunlight shining down on him is blotted out as John Seed looms into view as he reaches the bottom of the embankment. Nick has trouble making heads or tails of what he's seeing at first, but as John approaches, he starts to make more visual sense. He's looking around the dirt, sliding his foot through the brush before every step. Nick doesn't know what he's looking for, but as soon as Nick catches sight of the rifle lying in the weeds nearby, he starts to get an idea.

He must see it at the same time as John does. As John reaches down to pick it up, Nick tries to come up with something more intelligible than a painful groan, failing miserably. John weighs the rifle in his hands, staring at it, largely ignoring Nick's struggling to move. Nick barely manages to push himself to his elbows by the time John sighs with noticeable relief, pulling the strap over his shoulder so that the rifle can hang harmlessly off his back.

He crouches down next to Nick, who's still struggling, even after the danger has passed. "Quit it," John tells him, reaching out to steady him before he goes falling back into the dirt. The relief he'd felt holding the rifle must've been short-lived, because he only looks concerned and mildly upset now. Nick can't help but think he's upset because Nick thought he was gonna shoot him. He should apologize for that, probably.

"Nick," John repeats.

"Ugh," Nick groans. "I think I smacked a rock on my way down." He reaches up to feel the back of his head, and it's only John's grip on his shoulder that keeps him from falling back again.

"Stop squirming," John sighs. "Just — stop ."

Nick hates to listen to John's orders, but he's the one who didn't go ass-over-teakettle down the hill, so he's sort of the de-facto leader for now. It's a hard sell, but it's not like Nick's got any options right now, so he has to let John feel out the back of his head and reserves his complaints to pained hissing every time John prods the throbbing spot on his skull.

He feels momentarily faint when John pulls his hand away and reveals his bloody fingertips, but John doesn't seem phased in the least. "Lucky for all of us, you didn't crack your skull open," he says, somehow managing to sound both irritated and relieved at the same time.

He looks around them, which reminds Nick for the first time that they're at the bottom of a steep incline that goes on for a good mile in either direction. They're gonna have to go up the hill, which means Nick is going to need to keep it together at least long enough to get up to the top.

"I can make it," he tells John, who tries to mask his concern under schooled irritation as he looks back to Nick. "C'mon, I just need a hand up."

"I don't think it's going to be as easy as you seem to believe," John replies.

Nick groans, trying to push himself up. He doesn't admit how relieved he is when John grudgingly comes to help. He pulls Nick up by both shoulders, easily enough that it unnerves the crap out of Nick, but what's he gonna do? Complain that John is strong enough to help him?

As soon as he tries to put pressure on his left ankle, Nick knows he's screwed. He bites his tongue for the first second or two, but the sharp glass twinge every time he tries to rest his weight on it is too much to bear. "Ah, fuck ," he hisses, ready to sink to the ground again, "Yeah, that's not good."

John grabs Nick before he can drop back down to the ground, taking the weight that Nick's leg can't handle. "Damn it," John grunts. "You couldn't have listened to me just once?"

Nick laughs like it's supposed to be a joke, but John only looks offended in response. He yanks Nick's arm over his shoulder and asks briskly, "Which way?"

Nick is still thinking of climbing back up right here, but with his leg like it is that's probably not a great option. "Uh, that way," Nick chooses almost at random, his only hunch that the northern bend might ease more than the southern one.

John doesn't say much while they walk. Nick doesn't either, mostly focused on keeping his weight off his foot and trying not to give in to the urge to lie down and nap for a decade or two. Every wrong step on his bad leg makes his vision gray around the edges, but John walks slowly enough that those become few and far between.

Nick can't believe that John has ever had this amount of patience within him, much less that he's using it now as Nick grunts and tries to maintain his balance. All of his weird television ads had made him seem intense and caring, and all of the Peggies seemed to find him comforting, but Nick had realized pretty quickly that it was all an act. Or, he'd thought it was, until now, finding himself being partially carried through the forest without even the pettiest of complaining.

The incline begins to ease. Nick has no idea how long they've been walking — it's either been minutes or hours, and it's not his job to keep track of that kind of thing right now. All he's supposed to do is keep calm and coherent. Mostly coherent. Awake, anyway.

"We'll go up here," John decides at one point. "Do you need to rest?"

"What?" Nick asks, blindsided by the question. "No. What?"

"Oh, good," John sighs, "I was wondering when the brain damage would show."

He seems offended again. Nick keeps accidentally offending him, which sucks. When Nick had wanted to offend him, he never managed to, but now he doesn't even have to try. He should probably apologize, but that would set a bad precedent, wouldn't it?

"Man, I don't know, just get me home already!"

John heaves an extremely frustrated sigh, accompanied by a heavy eye-roll, and then he and Nick start the long trek up the hill. It's slow, slow going; even without Nick's sprained ankle, the dirt is loose under the brush and every step could lead to either of them rolling back down to the bottom. Even so, John keeps a firm grip on Nick's arm, digging his boots into the hillside before helping Nick drag himself up. Not once does Nick think he's going to fall.

They stop to rest at the top of the incline. Nick flops down, almost lying back before remembering that he should probably keep awake. That's what you're supposed to do with a concussion. He hasn't had one since he was a teen, but it's sort of like riding a bike. Right?

After taking a minute to catch their breath, John pulls Nick back to his feet, taking noticeable care not to force more strain than necessary on his bad leg. It's not a long walk of shame from here, but Nick's making it difficult to go at any speed other than a crawl. Even though he's taking forever, and he has to stop every few feet, John remains oddly patient. Well, it's not really odd - most decent people would cut a guy with a busted ankle and a concussion some slack. It's just - well, John isn't most decent people. He isn't even any decent people. But he waits for Nick to catch his breath when he seems winded and doesn't comment on how easy it would be to throw him to the wolves like this. Nick's made plenty of jokes and off-color comments about that kind of thing, but now with the tables turned, John isn't giving as good as he gets, and the guilt is starting to gnaw irritatingly in his gut. He probably should apologize.

He doesn't, but that's mostly due to his struggle to keep conscious. The longer they walk, the weirder the world around him feels — fuzzy and distant, sort of unreal. He's more watching the situation unfold than experiencing it. He needs to sit down and rest. He needs to take a goddamn nap and try not to use his brain any more than he usually does.

John waits until they reach the airstrip to reveal his fraying nerves. "Kim!" he shouts, repeating her name one more time for good measure before muttering mostly to himself, "She is going to kill me."

"Welcome to my life," Nick replies, because John just wasn't quiet enough.

Kim rushes from the house before they've cleared the hangar, catching herself a few feet from colliding with them. She looks ready to fight, or run, or both , but instead, she hovers there anxiously. "What the hell happened?" she exclaims, trying not to raise her voice as Carmina watches them from the porch.

"I'm fine," Nick groans, waving Kim's concern away before it starts freaking him out. "Slipped down the hill is all."

John doesn't sound so blase about it as he tells Kim grimly, "I think he may have a concussion."

"I definitely have a concussion," Nick agrees, having forgotten about that part. "Sprained my ankle, too. I don't think it's broken, anyway..."

Kim sighs, relieved and exasperated in equal measures. "Come on, let's get him inside," she says, and to Nick's never-ending surprise, she willingly lets John continue supporting him. She lets them go by as she stops by Carmina, who looks sniffly but otherwise healthy. "Everything's fine," she tells her as John helps Nick into the house. "Your dad just slipped."

"I thought John wasn't supposed to have guns?" Carmina asks.

"Let me worry about that. Go ahead and read without me, I'll be back down in a minute."

When Kim catches up, John shrugs out from under Nick's arm, letting her take over supporting him as he goes to disarm himself. Every movement he takes is slow and deliberate, leaving no surprises as he carefully pulls the rifle from his shoulder.

"Just put it over there," Kim tells him, and to Nick's surprise, she doesn't give him a backward glance as she helps Nick up the stairs. She doesn't even indicate where "over there" is, she's so unconcerned with John having a firearm!

He manages to share a bewildered look with John before craning his neck becomes too much, Kim dragging him upstairs to the comfort of their room. "What are you doing," he hisses at her as she shoulders their way through the door. "You left him alone with the gun and Carmina ?"

Kim sighs wearily in response. "What did you do?" she asks as she maneuvers him to the bed.

He sits with a groan, immediately thinking of how nice a nap sounds right now, but Kim's hand on his shoulder keeps him upright. He can take a nap once they make sure he didn't do more than ring his bell. "One of the traps was down a hill, and... I guess I followed it. Really, Kim, it's no big deal."

"You should have been more careful," Kim scolds, although her worry is keeping her from chewing him out properly. "What if John hadn't been there?"

Nick waves a hand, probably too dismissively. "C'mon, you would've found me eventually."

Kim scowls at him until he almost apologizes, distracted only when she hears John coming up the stairs. "Okay," she says, "You need to rest. Don't move. I'll get you some water and we'll clean you up."

She leaves the room before Nick can argue any of the points. He huffs at her retreat, but at least she doesn't lock him in like she would whenever he got the flu. Probably because the lock doesn't work so well anymore, but Nick can pretend it's her trusting him not to get out of bed.

Through the crack in the door, he can hear Kim as she meets John out on the landing. It's only then that Nick realizes how dangerous all of this could be — but the actual threat doesn't feel as present as it used to with John. He's gone rotten-soft, apparently, but at least John isn't likely to take advantage of it. Not without some convincing, anyway.

"I tried to stop him," John says. "He wouldn't listen."

"Welcome to the club," Kim replies, which might be true, but ow . "Thanks for bringing him back."

John doesn't say anything to that. Nick closes his eyes, only to be surprised when John continues the conversation. "I know where the trap is," he says, "It'll only take an hour or two for me to go get it."

Kim clicks her tongue. "No way."

"It can't just sit there. And there are still other traps to check." There's a beat before John continues in frustration, "What? You can't possibly think I'm trying to escape ."

"That's not what I'm worried about," Kim says. "It's a family rule. Nobody goes out by themselves if they can help it. Don't worry about the trap, okay? We can get it later."

Nick doesn't hear John's response. He's not even sure there is one. After a quiet moment, Kim speaks again. "You can go in, if you want. I'll be back up in a minute."

"Yeah," John replies. His voice sounds really rough, enough so that he clears his throat and repeats, "Yes."

Even then, Nick doesn't quite expect it when John eventually enters the room. "You can come in, I'm not dying ," Nick groans when John hesitates at the door. It's enough to earn him a nasty look, which is better than the weird sickbed sympathy, and John shuts the door behind him with a lot of false bravado to make up for his discomfort.

Nick opens his mouth to make a joke about John using this chance to kill him, but the words don't come. It must be the concussion making him feel guilty even thinking about it. His brain is addled and he's thinking more about how hard John's been working now rather than how about how awful John was before. Still — it would be a low blow, and Nick is trying to be better than that.

"You... uh..." Nick clears his throat, the words rattling around in his head out of order until he shakes them into place. "You... really came through for me back there."

"What?" John asks, startled.

Nick is startled, too, because as soon as the words come out of his mouth, the months-long ball of guilt that's grown in his stomach eases somewhat. "Yeah," he admits. "It's probably the concussion talking, but, uh. Thanks."

You'd think Nick had tried to punch him with how John reacts. "You're welcome," he rasps, looking like he needs to sit down.

"Don't think this lets you off the hook or anything," Nick adds. "You're still a miserable bastard, and I still really dislike you, but at least I know I can trust you not to leave me for dead."

The word trust seems somehow worse than Nick's thanks. "You don't mean that," he says, like he can demand Nick change his emotions.

But Nick does mean it, and being told otherwise is frankly sort of irritating. "Of course I do. You think I would have taken you with me today if I thought you were gonna betray me?"

"I... hadn't thought about it," John admits.

"And would I have let you carry a firearm into the house if I thought you would use it on us?"

"You didn't have a choice in the matter."

Nick groans. "Jesus, John."

"Sorry," John snaps, not apologetic in the least as he points out, "It's not like I'm used to this."

"What, people trusting you?"

John doesn't have the chance to respond; before he can do more than look moderately offended, the door opens. Kim comes in with Carmina in tow, checking their expressions for just a second before letting Carmina follow her into the room.

"Everything good in here?" she asks, just in case.

"I could use a nap," Nick tells her, as if he hasn't been having a heart-to-heart with John Seed just seconds ago. When Carmina comes forward, she's got a stiff upper lip and an extremely worried pair of eyes, so he makes sure to smile big for her. "What's the matter, sweetheart? I just rolled my ankle."

She reaches over to hold his hand on the bed, which just makes him feel like an old grandpa about to give away his farm. "I'm sorry I didn't want to go," she sniffs, heavy with self-guilt. "It's just allergies, and I'm good at climbing. I would have been able to help."

Nick wraps both hands over hers, pulling her until she climbs onto the mattress with a little laugh. "It's okay," he tells her. "John handled it alright."

From the way John is standing, leaning towards the door, he probably doesn't want to stick around much longer, but he tries not to look like he's trying to escape when Carmina turns her big eyes on him. She's expecting him to say something to reassure her, but when all he does is stand like a deer in headlights, she loses interest.

"Okay," Kim says, with a damp piece of fabric in hand. "Let me clean you up so you can get some rest."

Nick obliges, mostly because he can't resist, and lets Kim lean him forward so that she can get a clear shot at the gash behind his ear. Carmina lays beside him, fingers wound in his shirt as she watches her mom work. For his part, John lingers close to the door, not running yet even though he has a clear escape route. He watches Nick hiss through Kim's care, going through a lot of effort to keep himself removed. It makes sense. John isn't part of the family, and even if he were, family seems to be close to a four-letter word when it comes to the Seeds. Still — they're edging around the six-month mark and even Nick has to admit, John's pulled enough weight around here to warrant a little more opening up on his part. After all, the bastard did just drag him home.

"Hey," he calls out, drawing John's uncertain attention. "Tomorrow, you and me will go finish the run."

Kim tuts at him like he's a five-year-old. "You don't even know if you're going to be on your feet tomorrow."

"I'm gonna be fine ," he grouses.

"Why don't we wait until you're feeling up to it, and then we can all go together?" Kim asks, as diplomatic as ever. "It's been a while since we could go somewhere as a family."

"Really?" Carmina asks, perking up. "Can we go swimming? Should we bring the fishing poles?"

Kim laughs gently. "We'll make a day out of it, sure."

" Finally ," Carmina sighs, laying her head on Nick's chest.

Nick isn't sure if John knows he's being included in the plans Kim is making or not, but he doesn't try to question it or run from it. He stands there, willingly letting the Ryes make plans around him, and watches with a complicated expression. Even in the face of familial love, though, John doesn't bolt. Nick can give him credit for that.

"Alright, I think that's it," Kim declares at last, once she's cleaned up Nicks cuts and double-checked his ankle to make sure it's only been sprained. "There's nothing left but for you to get some rest." Nick begins to ask a question, but Kim cuts him off with a smile. "You're coherent enough that sleep isn't out of the question. I'll keep an eye on you."

"Thank God. I feel like I just got dragged a mile up-hill."

With a fond shake of her head, Kim pushes herself off the bed, moderately surprised to see John still standing near the door. "I'm sure we can find something for you to do," she tells him.

John nods in response, but he doesn't move until Kim approaches, ushering him out the door. She turns at the doorway and addresses Carmina, who seems to be pretending to be asleep for the moment. "Don't keep him up too long, sweetheart," she says. "He needs to rest."

"Okay, mom," Carmina mumbles, just like a sleeping girl might if she weren't lying. Kim rolls her eyes, leaving the door cracked as she heads out into the hall.

Nick and Carmina lie in bed for a few minutes without talking. Nick starts to drift almost immediately, although he suspects Carmina is about to start talking any time now. Sure enough, after the comfortable silence passes between them, Carmina tugs gently on his shirt to get his attention.

"Does this mean I can talk to John without you getting mad, now?" she asks.

Nick groans quietly, wrapping an arm around her. "He might not like that," he points out, because it's more diplomatic than saying "no" outright.

"Dad..."

He heaves a sigh. "It means... I don't know what it means." He runs his hand through her hair, closing his eyes. "I don't trust him with you, sweetheart," he admits at last. "But you're getting old enough to start trusting your own gut on this kind of thing. Just... listen to the voice that tells you if something's a bad idea. If John does something that raises that voice, you come tell me or your mom."

Carmina breathes quietly for a moment. "Mom said he hurt you," she mumbles.

"Yeah," he replies. "Yeah, he definitely hurt me." He drops his free hand over his chest, right across the raised scar near his heart. "It was a long time ago, though. And I don't think he's gonna do it again."

"But you don't know?"

"Nope." Checking her expression, Nick can't help but chuckle when he sees her frustration plain as day. "Some things are unknowable, Carmina — especially the future. All you can do is trust your instincts. Your mom and I never knew how bad things were gonna get, but when my gut told me to stock the bunker, I listened to it. And when your mom's instincts told her it was time for us to go topside, we listened. So far, so good."

Carmina's irritated frown softens as he talks, but Nick still worries that he's gonna say the wrong thing. He's always worried about it with her. Carmina is smart, but kids see everything in black and white, and he doesn't want to accidentally turn his kid into someone like Hurk. Then again, Hurk is still alive and comfortably set up with weapons and alcohol, so maybe he isn't such a bad guy for Carmina to emulate.

Oh, he definitely needs to take a nap if he's starting to consider Hurk a decent role model. "Daddy's gonna close his eyes for a bit," he says, well after his eyes have already drifted shut.

"Me too," Carmina mumbles. Nick isn't about to push her away, and so thankfully, he gets to fall asleep to the sound of his daughter's gentle breathing, her small fingertips resting against the scar tissue that he's been trying to hide.

#far cry 5 #fc5 #fcnd #new dawn #john seed #nick rye #kim rye #far cry fanfic #my fic

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qm-vox · 6 years ago

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The Far Realms vs. Obyriths: Cosmic Horror in D&D

Shout-out, once again, to Afroakuma, from whom I learned most of the material I’m about to explain and with whom I’ve had many fascinating discussions about this topic.

It’s ya boi Vox, back at it to complain about RPG shit in an educational fashion again. Remember when I did a whole article about (evil) gods in D&D, arguing that they have more potential than to be used like supervillains? We’re gonna do that again, but this time with incorporating cosmic horror elements into your D&D campaign. Some of this advice may also be useful for games similar to D&D but for the sake of my own sanity I’m gonna confine myself to the one system or I’m gonna be here until my kids are in college.

This article will be broken down into three parts: an overview of cosmic horror’s origin and original thesis (in which we travel my favorite magical land, Full And Complete Context), a breakdown of the Far Realms in D&D (including older takes from late 2e & 3.5, how those changed in 4e, and their ambiguous state in 5e) & how you might use them for a cosmic horror campaign, and a breakdown of Obyriths in D&D and how you might use them in your campaign.

No discussion of cosmic horror is complete without some Content Warnings. Right up front: cosmic horror has its roots in extremely racist fiction, and I’m going to be talking about that straight-up. Also included in this article will be body horror, descriptions of mind control and mental corruption, supernaturally-induced madness, violence, and medical horror, among other things. This is a genre that hit the ‘fuck shit up’ button with its face on fuckin’ Zero Day and does that but again every time we successfully write something in it. Additionally, spoilers for some of Lovecraft’s work will be in here, with absolutely no tags and no warnings before they happen. You have been warned; do as thou wilt.

HP Does A Racism - Origins Of Cosmic Horror

Yeah, I’m about to be like that about it.

In the beginning there was Howard Phillips Lovecraft, an absolute garbage fire of a human being whose personal issues are such a knotted mess that I’m half-sure that the concept of the Ouroboros is just the echo of his bullshit reaching backwards through time. Like many authors of his time, Howie Love here was born into significant wealth, and while his education would be cut short (he had some manner of health problem in high school that ended his attempts at schooling) it was pretty high-quality, as it tends to be when you’re rich and white in the late 1800s. When he began writing his most famous body of work, Lovecraft had three attributes which would shape it: EXTREME racism, an incredible love for the works of Edgar Allen Poe, and every fucking phobia ever turned loose on God’s green Earth.

If you want to know more about that first point, try looking up what he named his cat; Lovecraft was so racist that even other racists thought he was too racist. Mother fucker was so racist that he wrote about the dangers of contaminating one’s bloodline with French-Canadians. His racism made it into all of his works in some way, shape, or form; many had themes of miscegenation, plenty included people of color only as deranged cultists of terrible powers, and as we’ll get into later in this segment the very racism that caused him to do these things also made him write the...let’s say ‘villains’ for lack of a better term, of his ongoing body of work as thinly-veiled stand-ins for white people.

No, really.

Lovecraft’s early work included a few short stories in the American Gothic style, the most famous of which is The Rats in the Walls. It’s a fairly classic story as far as those go, but Howie Love would soon abandon American Gothic for the genre he founded and defined: cosmic horror. Keep the racism and phobias in mind going forward, they’re about to become real important.

Howie Love Clowns On Himself - Themes And Thesis Of Cosmic Horror

While Dagon is generally accepted as the ‘first’ cosmic horror story, I prefer The Colour Out Of Space as the definitive example of the original thesis of cosmic horror at its most clean and clear (it’s also the work of Lovecraft’s that has aged the best; I highly suggest it if you haven’t read it yet!). In it, an alien presence - arguably but not necessarily an entity - crash-lands outside the fictional town of Arkham. Our narrator, a surveyor, coldly investigates the horrors that occur after and learns the sorry tale of a family destroyed by this alien presence as it blights their land, corrupts their bodies, and drives them to madness. The presence leaves, but not wholly; a fragment of itself remains behind, alongside the chilling possibility of a repeat performance.

The Colour Out Of Space, and indeed most of Howie Love’s work, was written at a time in the United States and the United Kingdom where human exceptionalism was the norm. Humans were not merely important, but special, chosen, exalted in nature and placed in a universe whose sole purpose was to be the stage for our domination. The Colour Out Of Space proposed a different idea: that we ain’t shit. Not only is humanity not exalted, but humanity is insignificant, existing at the mercy of fate, able to be casually annihilated at any time by forces we do not understand. It was a shocking proposal when it was published, and though the zeitgeist that gave it power has faded (most people realize we ain’t shit these days, can’t imagine how that fucking happened) it still resonates with many people.

The later works that defined the Cthulu Mythos would build on this theme, introducing powerful beings which claim dominion of Earth or of all reality. You’ve probably heard of most of them - Cthulu is the big one, of course, but there’s also Yog-Sothoth (The Dunwich Horror), Azazoth, Catboi Slim (Nyarthalotep), and many more, not all of which were written by Lovecraft himself. These beings are gods, or else so far above humanity that the difference is academic, and this brings us to the second defining theme of cosmic horror that Lovecraft would lay out, that of forbidden knowledge.

Protagonists in Howie Love’s stories have a tendency to lose their minds. Later authors would chalk this up to the idea that witnessing these gods or their works is so inherently horrifying that the mind simply snaps in their presence, or even that these gods are bound up in the concept of madness (this second one is a rather incompetent reading, not that I’m thinking of any PAIZO in particular that just ran with it in their RPG setting), but Howard’s own work doesn’t always bear that out. The protagonist of Call of Cthulu is not driven mad by that being - he is driven towards the brink by the realization that the Cult is still out there (and coming for his life), and that Cthulu will only rise again. Our viewpoint character in At The Mountains Of Madness realizes he has committed unspeakable atrocities on living beings much like himself by mistake, and that if further explorers come to disturb their slumber they will only repeat the same errors and lead to mankind’s annihilation. It’s not just that these ancient powers are terrifying or even that they are alien, but that to comprehend them is to understand that humans are so far beneath them that their attitude towards us cannot be thought of as ‘benevolent or ‘malevolent’, because we are beneath their notice, lesser in comparison than even a bacterium. In such a context, all humans do is consume resources better used by our superiors, and thus our existence is a profanity upon the divine. The only moral action, the stories argue, is self-annihilation; only ignorance permits us to justify our own existence to ourselves.

Sound familiar? Almost like this is the exact argument chucklefuck racists make about the existence of people of color, Jews, and anyone else they happen to not like? Yeah. This is the part where Lovecraft accidentally made himself the villain of his own work. Congratulations Howie, you played yourself. And since his audience was largely fellow white men also hard up on that whole racism thing, this idea of human profanity tapped a deep well of anxiety. I’m not about to argue that racism is over (it isn’t) and that’s why this vision of cosmic horror is less popular; indeed, it’s retained a pretty solid cult (heh) following, in part because the idea of such beings is inherently kinda terrifying. But I’d be remiss not to bring up the fact that this terror has its roots in racism, so...there you have it.

Other authors also built on the Cthulu Mythos, with Lovecraft’s enthusiastic blessing. These days their works tend to be mistakenly attributed to Howie Love himself, but that’s not actually his fault; they were published on their own, under their own authors’ names, and as far as we can tell Howard never tried to take the credit. These other authors had a tendency to substitute the indifferent divinity and corrupted humans of Lovecraft’s work with direct malice; their vision of these god-like beings was one in which they noticed humanity and did harm to it, creating a movement away from Howie Love’s original thesis (”human insignificance will lead to the unimportant and unmarked event of our destruction” & “seeking knowledge can only lead to self-annihilation”) during his life which only picked up momentum after his death. Indeed, most modern attempts at Lovecraftian horror mimic this overt malevolence, often without even lip service to the original thesis. It’s not necessarily an unworkable angle of horror, and it definitely has bones in with its origins; “God is real and He hates you personally” is a terrifying idea! But this movement away from the cold indifference of stories like The Colour Out Of Space definitely contributed to the current climate of...sloppy adaptations, let’s say.

Not that I’m thinking of any Paizo in particular.

So Should I Use Mythos Content Directly In My D&D Game Or What?

No, because I will cry and tell everyone that you punched my children and kidnapped my girlfriends.

More helpfully, probably not. The presence of other divinities, but especially evil divinities like Erythnul (Greyhawk) or Malar (Forgotten Realms) makes the thematics of cosmic horror pretty fucking weird. If you really wanted to, your best bet is to not use the published system of divinity at all (see the previously-linked article, up at the top of this one) and instead make Lovecraft’s gods the setting’s only gods. That means asking yourself some hard questions about clerics in your game world and possibly divine magic in general - that’s a separate article though - and even then you’re in for a rough row to hoe. D&D’s characters tend to be competent, dynamic, empowered - a far cry from the educated but otherwise fairly helpless protagonists on which cosmic horror tends to trade. Themes of futility in the face of incomprehensible beings don’t really make for good D&D most of the time, not when so much of the system (any edition, it doesn’t matter) is set up to create and reward cunning and heroic struggle. Classic cosmic horror, in the original proposed form, is not a good fit.

Thankfully, we have two solutions to give you what you crave in-house. Let’s start with the one that is somehow both the closer fit and the further fit.

You Have Fucked Up - The Far Realm Overview

Originally introduced in late AD&D 2e, the Far Realm as an idea hit its stride during 3.0/3.5 before getting a major rework as part of 4e’s cosmology, where it became the source of most/all aberrations. We’re gonna go ahead and pretend 4e didn’t happen, not because 4e is bad (and for the love of fuck please don’t start an edition war on my cosmic horror post) but because 4e’s cosmology just doesn’t really fit in with any of the rest. 1e <-> 3.5 is more or less coherent and you can beat 5e into line with a wrench and some harsh language, but 4e...well, anyway.

The Far Realms is outside reality. No, not in another dimension, we know what those are - those are the Planes. It’s outside reality; it is Somewhere Else. “It” is probably even the wrong term, since by definition any place (”place”) that isn’t the multiverse as D&D knows it is the Far Realm. To paraphrase Afroakuma, if the Great Wheel is a Lego brick, the Far Realm is a giant squid; if the Great Wheel is a bowl of Fruit Loops, the Far Realm is the theory that intelligences from Pluto rig the results of major sporting events. The contexts are not compatible. These two things do not go together in any way. Combining the two can only end in sorrow and woe.

So mortals try to combine the two all the time, because we’re dipshits like that.

Every now and again, some truly, monumentally stupid person - usually but not always someone inside reality - breaches the skin that contains reality inside itself, and lets in the essence of Outside. This is a phenomenally bad idea; the immediate result is corruption in both directions as the essence of each form of reality bleeds into the other. Both attempt to ‘scab’ the breach, translating the foreign substances and beings into something more like the reality they have moved to. If a breach happens, there is one of three outcomes. If you are very, very lucky, no being on the other side notices the breach, and you’ve ‘merely’ blighted and corrupted a vast stretch of land, tainting it with something sort of like, but not enough like, Chaos and Evil for millennia to come - maybe even forever. If you’re not lucky, a being on the other side notices the breach and acts to seal it, the ripple of which causes you to not have a nation or continent any more as said corruption absolutely consumes the lands in which you live. And if you are phenomenally unlucky, the being on the other side is just as stupid as you are, and it comes through. The last time that happened the original Gnomish pantheon got murdered. Their homeworld doesn’t exist any more.

There is no ‘good’ outcome. This is the repeated and absolute theme of the Far Realms; whatever your reasons for getting involved with them, whatever you wanted, whatever you were seeking, you don’t get it. Mortals fuck with the Far Realms because our inability to comprehend them leads us to think of them like things we can experience. The scabbed-over beings we meet that are from there (Psuedonatural creatures; see the Alienist prestige class in Tome & Blood and Complete Arcane, as well as the bigger version in the Epic Level Handbook) are Chaotic Evil because that is how reality translates them. They aren’t Chaos, they’re another reality, and their unwilling and unwitting corruption of all around them gets redefined as Chaotic Evil in order to reduce their damage to all of existence to a manageable fucking level. Were you seeking the Far Realms in order to harness power for great change? Get fucked, you can’t control what happens. Were you seeking magical power? Get fucked; the reason people go mad when exposed to the Far Realms isn’t just that the knowledge they gain makes no sense, it’s that the complete lack of context means all of the stuff you killed and stole and lied and cheated for is more or less completely goddamn useless. Trying to escape existence for some reason? One, death is faster, but two, hope you enjoy suffering the entire time you die - and that’s if the breach stays open long enough for you to be able to enjoy death as a concept before you get sealed away in a place where mortality doesn’t meaningfully exist.

You don’t get what you want. This was a bad idea. You fucked up.

5e, the most recent edition of D&D, mainly continues this trend. It has suggestions of the lazier interpretation of Lovecraft’s work tied to the Far Realms, which I heartily suggest you ignore, but some of the other ideas are phenomenal. The Great Old Ones Pact for Warlock has one in particular that I like quite a bit, which suggests that the Warlock-to-be created an unintended connection to a Far Realms intelligence and gained power against both of their wills and possibly without the intelligence in question even noticing. You don’t need to change a lot in 5e’s run to bring out the extant themes of the Far Realms - though admittedly this is greatly assisted by the fact that 5e barely has any Far Realms content to begin with, so there’s not a lot to edit. That also means there’s not a lot to use, so if you want to use Far Realms stuff in 5e you’re gonna have to get ready to spend a lot of time making your own. Which brings us to...

Who The Fuck Funded This Research?!? - Using The Far Realms In Your Game

Considering that all-important theme - “this was a bad idea” - the Far Realms are likely to be antagonistic in nature in your game, even if ‘antagonistic’ isn’t the right term. Published adventures have used Far Realms content as a sort of backdrop (Firestorm Peak comes to mind here) before, and you can easily make Far Realms creatures a more direct problem for your PCs by centering the campaign around a cult or research team attempting to cause a new breach. This could be a great time to engage with player-side themes such as the ethics of magic use, the cost of power, and the burden of responsibility for said power, assuming your group is down for it. Even if they’re not, horrifying monstrosities that by definition have no place in this universe are great to kick in the head(s).

What motivates people to cause a breach? Mainly stupidity, but the special kind of stupidity you only get when someone is highly educated and deeply intelligent. For awhile, in the real world, there was a burst of designers making D20 heartbreakers - successors to D&D 3.5 meant to fix its many catastrophic flaws. Each person thought they had it, the secret to make the system they both loved and hated finally function, and they were all wrong. Causing a breach into the Far Realms is like that. Every sign points to it being a bad idea. Reading the research and spells of the last people who tried it reveals that it’s a bad idea. All of the diaries and primary sources of those who did it and those who stopped them say it’s a bad idea, but that’s okay because I, Wizardhat von Dipshit, am not like those fools. I will be more careful, and the power to reshape the Planes will be mine!

The easiest way to make Far Realms creatures for use in your campaign is to start with an existing monster and fuck it up; rearrange its abilities (adding or emphasizing mental attacks and psychic damage, if you can), alter its physical form, and generally just make that shit wrong and fill its blood with spiders. If you want to get more alien from there or make something original, the best guideline I can offer for you is that aboleths were the result of Far Realms taint in the beginning of this reality (it’s telling that the closest thing reality could translate their progenitor into was a Greater Deity).

No one wants power for its own sake, of course, but what your antagonist actually wants is more or less irrelevant because the important bit is that they had every chance to know better and they’re about to make this bad decision on purpose anyway. This is how the Far Realms brings out cosmic horror themes in a heroic context; power that is beyond both mortal comprehension and control, which has no place in this reality and recoils from us as violently as we recoil from it. Like Lovecraft, whose stories revealed a deep cynicism about knowledge and science, your antagonists will be erudite individuals whose ruinous plans are only possible because of what they have learned and, in turn, chosen to ignore. If nothing is done, unstoppable catastrophe will be unleashed, and with it will come madness and desolation. If only some heroes were on hand, eh?

The disconnect the Far Realms has from classic cosmic horror is also the source of why they fit; they don’t belong here. In Lovecraft’s work, it’s humanity that doesn’t belong - we are a blight upon the rightful property of higher beings. The Far Realms are instead an intrusion, something from Elsewhere which doesn’t want to be here as much as we don’t want it here. That helps those classic cosmic horror themes work much better in this context, but maybe you’re looking for something else, something from here. Do the Planes have cosmic horror from within the shell of Reality?

Yes. Oh yes, they do.

Ancient Evil Survives - Obyrith Overview

In the beginning, there was war.

The primordial War of Law and Chaos is the greatest conflict to have ever rocked the Planes. It was so destructive, so all-encompassing, that it consumed entire Material Plane worlds, reshaped the nature of the Planes themselves, and is still happening, even now. It began in the early days of the Great Wheel and was prosecuted by Chaos, led by the self-styled Queen of Chaos, over a single question: should reality be real? Should effects follow causes, should gravity exist, should fire burn and light reveal, should things age and die, should...

The forces of Law said yes to these questions and fought to establish and maintain an order and logic to reality. Chaos fought for an unbound reality, one in which each individual would be completely free to express their own true essence as tangible changes in the existence around them. The War was never truly won or lost, but the imprisonment of Miska the Wolf-Spider broke the backs of the Chaotic coalition and brought the War to a stalemate of sorts, in a reality which, if not dominated by Law, is definitely Law-leaning. Mortals are familiar with the terrible demons used as footsoldiers by the Abyss, the Tanar’ri, who reign yet in that terrible place. But it was not the Tanar’ri in command of Chaos, and not the Tanar’ri who prosecuted that terrible War. Indeed, the beings we now recognize as demons rose up against their creators, the Obyriths, after the imprisonment of Miska. They overthrew the Obyriths in a great slaughter and replaced them as the dominant exemplars of Chaotic Evil.

The Obyriths are not dead. They plan, and they wait, and they wage war and slaughter upon their wayward slaves in the Abyss. Every last one of them burns to reignite the War and achieve their vision of unbound reality, free of the wretched Law and all too weak to survive without it.

Prisoners Of The Flesh - Obyrith Nature

So what are Obyriths? The easiest answer is that they’re demons - the first demons, in fact, which preceded the more famous Tanar’ri (when you think of demons in D&D chances are you’re thinking of a Tanar’ri), and while this answer is entirely correct it is not the whole story. Tanar’ri are famously Chaotic Evil; they revel in corruption and destruction and are driven to maliciously annihilate or taint all they come across. A demon army marching across the land will stop to personally kick every puppy between point A and point B and they will absolutely mutiny against you if you try to stop them from doing so. What is good and pure must be soiled; what exists must be made to not exist, its foundations shattered, its virtues turned against themselves, its values abandoned. Tanar’ri respect only raw might, and only as long as they think they can’t defeat it.

But Obyriths, their progenitors, are Evil Chaos.

Let’s have some examples. This little guy is a draudnu, a kind of Obyrith made from the bones of chaotic celestials which post-dates the ‘end’ of the War by a pretty significant amount of time. They’re on the weaker side for Obyriths.

(You’ll find this boi in Monster Manual V for 3.5 incidentally.)

Take a nice long look. Really take it in - because that’s not the draudnu. That’s the prison of flesh, the scab, that reality has forced on the draudnu, that the terrible Law has locked it within. The actual draudnu looks like it’s inside me God it’s inside me I can feel it growing and twisting it HURTS get it out, it’s seeping into my blood it’s inside me it’s INSIDE ME -

Let’s have another example. This is a sibriex, recently re-published in Mordenkeinan’s Tome of Foes for 5e with no mention of Obyriths, which is a damn shame. They were instrumental in defining the forms of the common breeds of Tanar’ri.

Fun, right? But again, that’s not a sibriex; the actual form of a sibriex is perfection. Absolute beauty and grace. I am nothing compared to this perfection. I am no one in the face of this perfection. My existence can only profane this perfection. I must serve the Perfect One. I must let it remake me and reshape me, I must appease it, I must make amends for the crime that is my trespass upon the reality made for the Perfect One.

Those two are ‘common’ Obyriths, examples of that race of demons which have peers who are much like themselves, but the Obyriths still have extant Demon Princes. The Queen of Chaos is still alive and nursing her ancient hate. Pale Night’s true form is so profane that reality cannot stand its existence; when she reveals it to you, the multiverse destroys your soul so that knowledge of her truth does not exist. Obox-Ob, murdered by the Queen of Chaos, yet exists as an Aspect of himself - and the Planes live in fear of the rise of the Prince of Vermin, whose truth is agony, rot, and corruption, such that even if you magically remove memory of it from your mind you continue to die from the soul outward.

And Dagon plots within the depths of his palace, sponsoring and advising Demogorgon - the Prince of Demons - and contemplating unimaginable lore of evil. The Demon Prince of Depths looks like this.

This is the form carved on blasphemous altars in the depths of the oceans, where sunlight has never reached. This is the form worshiped by mortals who delight in corruption, destruction, and fear, who dream of a sea where vision is a distant memory and predators hunt by the scent of blood. It is the form sought by those who lust for ancient lore, kept in places far from mortal sight and utilized by an evil older than many gods and mortal races, a form whose mere touch can taint a body of water, mutating & mutilating all within and unleashing their fury, their terror, their slaughter, for ages to come. And it is not Dagon. Dagon’s true form, imprisoned within that flesh, is I’m drowning in the cold dark, I can feel my bones breaking, my eyes are bursting, I’m blind and I’m drowning and I can’t die, my lungs are gone, the water is seeping into my blood I’m drowning and I just want to die make it stop I’m DROWNING.

It’s telling that witnessing Dagon’s true form, his Form of Madness, can give even creatures that breathe water, or which do not breathe at all, crippling hydrophobia.

The true forms of Obyriths are not flesh or matter; they are not, by nature, Material beings the way other Outsiders and mortal things are. Their true forms are that you, personally, are going mad. You, personally, are being assaulted, violated, and infected; you, personally, are being victimized, corrupted, consumed, and betrayed. Imagine if the act of pouring flesh-eating beetles into someone’s eyes had a personality, will, and desires - not the person doing it, the act itself - and that’s an Obyrith. They are evil because what they are is evil, much in the way Erythnul is evil. Unlike their creations, the Tanar’ri, Obyriths aren’t in it to kick every puppy that has ever existed. They want to throw off the yoke of the Law and release their unbound forms. They want an existence of darkness and isolation in which all beings are free to express their true essence to the limit of their might and their will.

They just wanna be themselves.

No matter who has to die.

The Foes Of All Reason - Using Obyriths In Your Campaign

Do you enjoy life’s little conveniences, such as cause-and-effect, linear time, predictable & observable physical laws, not having your body boil away beneath the agonizing will of some random asshole, and the capacity to recognize patterns in nature? Then Obyriths are your enemies. As demons, Obyriths can be summoned and are thus easy to use in the sort of ‘guest star’ role that Tanar’ri are often used in, even if it takes a moon-sized pair of brass balls to decide you can contain one. However, this use - while valid - is not a good way to bring out their cosmic horror themes, and since you decided to read an article about cosmic horror in D&D this far down I’m going to go ahead and assume you’d like to do that.

As one of the Planes’ most ancient and active evils - arguably the most ancient one that hasn’t died or otherwise fucked off - Obyriths are absolutely prime for campaigns that deal with ancient lore, primordial conflict, and unreality. If you like the idea of long-burn plots by masterminds with the patience of aeons, Obyriths are definitely for you. For an example of one such story, check out The Tale of the Whale, written by Afroakuma. The downside to using Obyriths in this way is that if you want to do so in canon settings, you need to be prepared to do some absolute fucking deep dives on the lore, which may require access to books or PDFs as far back as 1e & 2e. If you’re using your own setting this problem is lessened, though at that point you do have to manage to sell the ancient nature of such beings in a way that makes them feel suitably eldritch.

For more...let’s go ahead and say modern for lack of a better word, takes, keep in mind that Obyriths are not Tanar’ri. They do not scheme to overthrow the government of a nation; your pale, fleshly shadow of the Law is nothing to them. The plots of Obyriths upend the Laws which underpin reality itself. Could the great contract that details the alliance between the tribes of Men and Cats be found and perverted, turning each against the other in all reality? Could the insects of this realm be infected with the essence of Obox-Ob so that the Demon Prince of Vermin can feast on mortal souls and effect his own return to power? Could a bridge linking the Deep Ethereal to the Abyss be constructed, permitting the sibriexes and their master, the Prince of the Chrysalis, to shape new slaves from the very essence of raw Potential? Obyriths pervert what is and should be, not just because it suits their end goal of chaos unbound, but because corruption and violation is their very nature. It’s how they think, how they move, what they believe in, love, and value.

Obyriths have a lot to suggest for them when it comes to cosmic horror stories in D&D’s context. They bring out direct themes of madness, terrible truth, malign alien intelligence, and reality-unreality. You can comprehend their motives and even their nature, sort of, but their end goal is completely alien to mortal beings; the reality they want would be completely unrecognizable to the denizens of the current one. They are evil as mortals understand the concept, but not in a way that matches or even relates to their peers, which means they act in surprising and unpredictable ways.

All of this of course damages their ability to fulfill the classic cosmic horror thesis, but there’s something to be said about the idea that an alien intelligence, to be horrifying, needs something humans can attempt to relate to. It certainly makes writing for them easier.

If you’re using Obyriths in 3.5, you’re set to go; look for them in the various Monster Manuals, as well as Fiendish Codex. If you’re attempting to use them in Pathfinder, good decision but you’re gonna have some stat block converting to do. Trying to use them in 5e is gonna be the absolute bitch of a job, and I’m not sure where to even start on those suggestions except to note that the signature trait of Obyriths - the thing that makes them them, mechanically - is a Form of Madness ability, where they reveal their truth to their victims. Forms of Madness are mind-affecting abilities which hit all non-demons near the Obyrith, tainting them in some way. You can see some example ideas above, and the ones from 3.5 in the published books I just mentioned, but here’s hoping I can find an expert on 5th Edition’s mechanics kind enough to lend me a hand here.

I hope this article proved helpful to you! As with all of my work, questions and critique are welcome. Thanks for reading!

#D&D #planescape #far realms #demons #obyrith #cosmic horror #body horror #advice #I'm Not Sure How To Use Tags #reblogs welcome #critique welcome

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lokiofnone · 5 years ago

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The people of Broxton, Oklahoma were not unlike the Northmen of the Viking Age - as unlikely as the comparison seemed. Certainly the location and climate were different, as well as the culture and the language, but for gods of Asgard, everything is a repeating pattern. And Loki had become rather adept at seeing those patterns.

Sitting atop one of Bilskirnir’s many ledges, the god of mischief swung their legs idly back and forth. It was a long way down - Bilskirnir is very tall - but what did they have to fear from something as simple as gravity? They sipped at a milkshake while surveying the blighted lands below. The homes and businesses of Broxton, once a small but bustling town and now only a series of blasted out buildings and enormous sinkholes. Lit by the Bifrost and the eternal branches of Yggdrasil, it reminded them of the ruins of old Asgard, deep in space. The main difference being that here, there was still life.

Indeed, dotted among the desolate streets were a few buildings - newly built or newly repaired - that showed signs of recovery. And why shouldn’t there be? It had been years, after all, and these people were not the type to simply flee elsewhere. Though for the most part they still gathered near the base of Bilskirnir. It was easier to stay close to each other, they supposed.

Of course, that wasn’t all they could see. Sprinkled throughout the landscape on streets both dead and alive, there was the glowing red light of ROXXON.

Lost in thought, Loki nearly missed the sound of a window opening above their shoulder. Nearly, but not quite.

“Ma says it’s dangerous to sit on the edge.”

Loki turned to see a small girl with wild hair and a smear of freckles across her nose. “Well, do me a favor and don’t tell her I’m here.”

The girl wrinkled her nose and eyed them up and down. “You an Asgardian?”

“Kind of.”

“Why are you drinking a milkshake in the snow?”

“I don’t get cold very easily.”

“Because you’re an Asgardian?”

“...kind of.”

She seemed pleased with that answer and disappeared from the window, returning moments later with a large sweater and a hat.

“Do you live here?” Loki asked.

“Yep!” The girl crossed her arms over the window sill. “Me and my ma and pa and a whole bunch of other people. Pa says we got to, since we don’t got houses no more. But it’s okay cuz this castle is sooooo big and has tons of weird stuff in it. Me and my friends go exploring but we haven’t even found half the stuff yet, I bet.”

“I imagine not. You know, this used to be my brother’s castle.”

She frowned, eyebrows drawing together in thought. “But somebody told me this was Thor’s castle.”

“The very same,” Loki answered with a nod.

Realization dawned across her face, “Oh! Thor’s your brother? That’s so cool! My friend Dorothy has a brother, but she says he’s annoying and steals her stuff.”

“Thor is my older brother, but not the oldest. We have six other brothers and sisters, if you can believe it.”

“That’s...too many. But um,” The girl tapped her fingers, seeming to be deciding how to ask something. “How come Thor gave us his castle?”

Loki looked back out over the scene below. “Do you know what happened here?”

“Ma says I was too little to understand.”

“Well, little one, I’ll tell you. But only if you promise not to get scared.”

“I’m not little.” She said while wiping her nose with her sleeve. “And why would I get scared?”

“You know how Thor is called the god of thunder because he can make lightning and storms?” Loki waited for her to nod before gesturing to themself, “Well, I am called the god of stories. When I tell a story, it comes to life in more than just your imagination. But don’t worry - I promise it won’t hurt you.”

“Now this I’ve gotta see.” She wiped at her nose again.

Loki smiled widely. “That’s the right attitude. Let’s begin at the beginning.”

The air around them suddenly began to dim, as if night were falling, followed by the winking of stars and nebulae and distant planets - and in the middle, superimposed over the latest iteration of Asgardia floating on the far side of town, was Asgard of old.

“A long time ago, Asgard floated not above Earth, but through space. It was a golden city among the stars, tethered only by the singular rainbow bridge, but connected to all realms on the world ash. It was filled with all manner of gods great and small, and it flourished. A shining beacon of magic in the starry sky.” Loki looked over to find their audience enraptured by the swirling imagery. “But nothing can stay the same forever. People grow up. They come and go. And the gods must change, also.”

Slowly, the image of old Asgard began to darken. The buildings crumbled and smoke curled up into the sky. “Exactly what happened isn’t important to this tale, but I will tell you that it wasn’t supposed to be the end. Not the real end. Through some other machinations, Asgard was laid low for good. We gods were scattered across the cosmos, and ceased to be.” The images swirled, faded, and settled onto the ground, showing the town as it once was. “At least, until Thor came here. He created a new Asgard out of the very soil, and collected us from where we were hiding. And for a time, Asgard and Broxton were one.”

The Bifrost spread from the visage of Asgard to the flourishing town below, looking for all the world like Loki remembered it. Then the scene darkened again. Loki stood from the ledge and walked out into the thin air, giving their young audience a start.

“Enter a man named Dario Agger.”

Agger faded in from the blackness, sitting at the head of a long table. Loki took a few meandering steps around him.

“Agger is the head of a company called ROXXON. He plies a trade in oil, mainly, as well as a great deal of other evil things. His company poisons the Earth, and he becomes rich.” The image of Agger tossed a stack of bills into the air, which fluttered around them before disappearing. “Now, Thor...he didn’t care much for that.”

The boardroom swirled into clouds, with Thor at the center, hammer raised.

“Thor loves the Earth. Well and truly. And he loves all the humans on it. He always has, and always will, and it will always be his downfall.” The image of Thor swung his hammer, lightning arcing off of it. Suddenly the clouds began to pour rain on Loki’s head, but they continued as if this were perfectly normal. “Thor did the only thing that he knew how to do: he attacked. He destroyed several ROXXON facilities, ending the stream of foul pollutants from their mouths, and costing the company an impossible amount of money. He believed that this was the first step on the road to saving the Earth from people like Agger, who would destroy it for their own profit. Shortly after this, he left on a trip with the Avengers. Unfortunately, this was all terribly short-sighted of him.”

The apparition of Thor swung his hammer and took off into the sky before the clouds parted, revealing the image of the once intact Broxton once more. No sooner did the rain stop than Loki was suddenly dry again. They took a few slow steps, leaving shimmering green bootprints in the air behind them.

“Thor is indeed mighty, but not all things can be solved with brute force. In the other realms, perhaps, but things work differently here. Humans are more civilized. If you hit a human, he might have you arrested. If you harass a human, he can sue you. And if you destroy a billionaire’s factories, he may take vengeance in ways only he knows how.”

A thick smog wafted in from the south, curling into the shapes of looming buildings and smoke stacks belching their toxic fumes into the air. “Agger received permission from your government to park his remaining factories here. Floating islands - a grim mockery to the nearby Asgard. While Thor was away, he polluted your air and water, bought your land, and demolished your buildings to put up his own. My brother returned to find people destitute with no work and an atmosphere so toxic that the sick and elderly were forced to go elsewhere. Even this was not enough to sate Agger’s greed. For he knew well that Thor loved Broxton, and he intended to make Thor suffer. He cared not for the thousands of lives that he used to accomplish this, only that it was done. He used the human magic called a restraining order. Thor was not to come near any property or employee of ROXXON, including Broxton. Then he hired trolls to dig under the town, creating these holes.” The ground fell away from Loki’s illusion, revealing the enormous sinkholes.

Loki disappeared, only to reappear back in their original spot on the ledge. In the distance, Asgard shone ever brighter through the smog. “And what did the other gods do? Did they rush to aid their mortal neighbors, who had done so for them whenever and however they could? Of course not. One and all, they sat in their towers, and watched it happen. How cruel. How absolutely humiliating, that a handful of humans, each with barely more than they needed, should show such hospitality, should give as much as they were able to help we the immortals of Asgard, and that none should lift a finger in their defense save for Thor himself.”

“What did you do?” Piped in the small voice from the window.

Loki pursed their lips. “I was elsewhere. A truth that I sorely regret, but I did not hear about any of this until after the fact.”

They waved a hand, and the illusion disappeared.

“Finally, Thor had enough. There was a battle that destroyed whatever remained, and Asgard decided that very day to return to the stars. They stayed only long enough to pick up the rubble. And now they find themselves laid low once again and crawl to this doorstep, only to be greeted with open arms. We gods could learn some things from you people of Broxton.”

“Wow…” The girl at the window stared outward, still deciding what to think of all this. “You weren’t pulling my leg about that story stuff. Thanks! I’m gonna go see if dinner’s ready. Do you wanna come in and eat? I bet ma will make a plate for you!”

Loki smiled. “Perhaps another time. I have some business to attend.”

“Okay! See you later!” And with that, the window snapped shut.

There was a long silence as Loki drained the remainder of their milkshake. Then, after moments of contemplation, they summoned a small notepad. They flipped a few pages before reaching the latest one, bearing a list of names and other assorted information.

To be specific, it was a list of the ROXXON board of directors. Name, location, salient details, and of course: weaknesses.

Loki had spent a few long days learning about these men and how best to manipulate them. It wasn’t often they put this much effort into a plot, but this was no ordinary mark. Thor had failed because he blundered into everything with little thought, while this matter required a gentler hand and a great deal of subtlety.

After the War of the Realms came to New York, Dario Agger had spent some time imprisoned in the Raft. But like all men with money, he would not remain so for long, and had by now regained his status with little loss. That simply would not do.

Agger began all this to get revenge on Thor. He hadn’t considered what other enemies he may have made in the process, which was perhaps his largest oversight. He may have fared well against Thor, but he would soon learn not to underestimate the god of mischief.

#prose tag #this came out way longer than i planned as fucking usual #me out here explaining comic plots for people who dont read thor comics

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