#you managed to catch me at a good brainrotting time usually i have S O much difficulty talking abt my ocs themselves lmao

[phantomdecibel]

OKAY

@teamfortresstwo​ come get ur lore pspspspspsps @ghosty-crow​ you’ll probably be interested in this too so hAh get tagged too-

Over 2100 words of lore for my ocs here, it’s. it’s kinda long haha XD

Edit: that’s a lotta words so I’m sticking in a continue reading thing lol

All of this is still subject to change – I don’t have any of these specific story elements nailed down just yet, same with some of the worldbuilding shit mentioned (specifically the relationship between mortal and immortal), so be warned, it’s all a bit messy. I know most of the details, but I don’t normally put them down into words like this, so hopefully it’s cohesive enough? Either way, here we go!

First lore scribble – the sticky note with the red pen! The character there is named Alouette, kinda surprised I haven’t mentioned her before? I’ve got some fun things planned w her >:3

What’s important about her is that she’s got an Incredibly Powerful patron! When Alouette was pretty young, current idea is about 12/13, she… stumbled across one of the oldest gods in the universe; the primordial embodiment of Time (mostly through a combination of youthful curiosity and teenage rebellion). I know most of the characters I’ve talked abt are divine in nature – but gods aren’t actually commonly come by, so this was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime kinda thing, even if you’re twelve (though they’re less rare than they are in the future, where the main plot takes place). So, this curious, bubbly preteen starts talking with the Thing she’s found out in the woods, and Time is… endeared, in a way. It has recently been… guiding some others, both mortal and not, and is feeling slightly soft, so sue it, and offers Alouette the chance to work for it, as it’s prophet, since that previous guiding-people was a lot of work for something barely even corporeal (child labor laws who?). Alouette, not really understanding the weight of this + Time doesn’t exactly explain well, agrees. But when she goes home, it’s obvious she’s been touched by Something Else, and these are not modern times. The people of her small town are afraid, and, fearing she’s been killed and the child before them is actually just something wearing her skin (which does actually happen on occasion), sentence her to death. But being Time’s prophet, even if she’s new at it, does come with some advantages, and she manages to escape with her life – though still heavily injured. Time takes her to meet Salix, who helps her recover before parting ways again, and Alouette spends a lot of time with Time, learning about just what, exactly, she’s signed herself up for.

With Time as her patron, Alouette doesn’t age, and can slip into the ‘stream’ of time and all the possible futures – though this incredibly dangerous and easy to get lost in and is a skill that has to be trained – among other things (like the occasional vision of the most likely future). A N D she gets a ‘crystal ball’, which she used to much more safely view the most likely futures.

Which is one of the doodles! The crystal ball she wears as a sort of necklace is actually one of Time’s many eyes, which it plucked out of the closest thing it has for a head and gave to her! (the paws in red in floating around her are like,, her connection to her patron and are invisible to most others. They’re the hands that weave the tapestry of Time, and sift through the veils of the branching futures, she can control them to a certain extent, like extra (non-corporeal) limbs).

Sometimes she has trouble knowing whether she’s living in the present or in one of the many, many futures she can see, and is a pretty anxious lil bean, always trying her best to guide people towards their best futures. The… slight problem with that, though, is that she can’t see death in the futures, so she’s often afraid to act on what she sees, in case it’s leading a person to a demise she doesn’t know about. She’s often overlooked and underestimated because even a million years later, she still looks like a twelve year old. With that in mind, she’s a pretty important character in the main storyline!

Most of the other doodles are non-specific scribbles of Willow and Sam (doin a lil bit of character design for Willow still), and one of Kip (kid Constellation ends up adopting) and Arceli (the cheetah-esque cat w the spots)

so I’ve mentioned a couple of my god characters before aka Salix (Integra) and Constellation, and I’ve mentioned Arceli before, and I’ve mentioned (albeit incredibly less so) Willow and Sam before, and I’ve talked a liiiiiittle bit about their relationship w eachother (emphasis on little), and I’ve mentioned Constellation’s imprisonment, etc. etc., but what I haven’t mentioned bc its Story Spoilers territory, is that Salix and Constellation are Willow and Sam!

Whaaaaaaat??

Yup! Basically; Salix is kidnapped and forced to work for the power-hungry Phoenix King, because her thing is that she can. Hmm not quiiiite sure how to explain properly so stay with me for a moment. Salix can sculpt like hollow shells, people made of mud and bark and stone, that move and talk and even think, under the right circumstances. But they’re puppets. They’re, as I said, hollow shells of people that cant feel pain and can be controlled by a single person, like a marionette on a string – the perfect soldiers. It’s not long before the resistance against the king, led by Delta and Ibis, take notice and come to the conclusion that she needs to be removed from the equation (by whatever means necessary-). Enter: Constellation, a godling who was raised by one of the king’s allies and up until recently, worked as an assassin/bodyguard/whatever the Empress needed from her. I say up until recently – because Constellation, though incredibly isolated asides from the empress (who’s name is Ash btw), did have a couple friends. And both of them defected to the resistance.

Delta was first, and she went with a bang that shook the foundation of Constellation’s faith. But what brought everything tumbling down was when Ash killed (well, nearly killed, but stella doesn’t know that just yet), a mortal resistance member by the name of Foxglove – who also happens to be stella’s other friend. So Constellation runs, and ends up meeting Arceli (who’s still mortal at this point), and the two of them travel together for a while, and then they find Delta again – or rather, Delta finds them. Constellation and Arceli join the plan to do something about the whole Salix situation and end up freeing her, and the three of them become friends yada yada. None of them are very happy with the state of the world right now, and some Things happen that lead to them (mostly stella and salix, celi isn’t as much of a fighter) helping Delta and Ibis hunt down and kill certain gods.

Now, it’s a secret held pretty close to the chests of those within the divine community that gods can die. For as much as they love to posture themselves as all-powerful and immortal, they’re just full of hubris and much closer to the mortals they tend to scorn than they want to believe. And the secret of how is kept even quieter.

The trio – Arceli helps with this part – start coming up with ways for the more mortal of the population to defend themselves against gods, to get rid of them. Even the playing field, so to speak.

This, obviously, is not a welcome change by the people who now can’t just go around doing whatever they want. Constellation chooses to take the blame for this, and is ‘banished’ (trapped via ritual) to the Void, the End Of All Things, the Graveyard of Gods. Arceli and Salix are on a race against time to free her – though with their lifespan than race can span a couple thousand years haha. Stay with me – we’re getting there.

Okay so remember those ‘puppets’ Salix can make? She hides her real body and lives in those instead, so that she doesn’t have to worry as much about being forced into the same situation that Arceli and Stella rescued her from. Arceli and Salix, upon studying the ritual used to trap Constellation,  quickly realize that the only way to free their friend is to ‘deactivate’ each part of the spell. Now, each part is being fueled by a different god, so they’ll either have to convince those gods to stop fueling the spell, or… remove them (more murder, yay!) from the situation. They manage to strike off a good chunk of their targets before Salix’s puppet is destroyed, and Arceli is left on her own. The main storyline starts somewhere in here, and some more characters become relevant, but I’m not gonna get into that rn XD

Arceli ends up settling down where she’s pretty sure her next target is – and so does Salix’s next puppet, who’s going by the name *drumroll please-* Willow!

In between making a new puppet and tracking down her friend and their target, Salix manages to get into contact with Constellation, who’s got some news about Ash bc somehow she’s still alive and kicking, and biding her time for Evil Plots, and Salix and Stella come up with a Plan, a Plan that involves Salix posing as a civilian in the same town (city?) Arceli is searching for their target in.

Now, because these bastards are feral and extra, they decide to drop Salix’s newest puppet off on the steps of some poor unsuspecting family’s house as a child and ‘growing up’ as a definitely totally completely 100% mortal-aligned person, instead of having her garner allies as an adult. They want to get Arceli involved in this scam – but unfortunately they have no clue where she is (where she is is Pissed Off bc she wants her friends back, thank you very much!)

And now we’re at the second lore doodle – the last image in the collection/the cat with the scarred leg!

Salix – or rather, Willow – realizes pretty quickly that both Arceli and one of the people responsible for trying to kill Constellation are running around nearby, and starts trying to track them both down. She finds Arceli during a confrontation with The Target, and steps in to help.

But this form is fragile and, even if it can’t feel pain, easily breakable, so Salix has to be careful. Even still, she gets knocked around a bit, and almost fall to her ‘death’. Arceli saves her though, grabs her arm and pulls her to safety, at the expense of their target getting away.

Backtracking a bit – when Arceli first started travelling with Constellation and Salix, she was mortal. But because of leaving the Deadzone (which I don’t really know how to explain it’s deal in the universe other than Slightly Radioactive), gets very, very sick and nearly dies. Ibis, who’s domain is over Rebirth (he’s got this whole phoenix-and-fire thing going on, and has a personal grudge against the so-called Phoenix King and Ash for giving people w phoenix and fire schticks going on a bad name /j) steps in to save her life, resulting in Arceli getting to have fire powers too, which is a large part of her fighting style, when she does fight (and she’s Pissed Off rn. Just because she doesn’t like to fight doesn’t mean she cant be a powerful opponent). So – she’s using her Fancy Shmancy Fire Powers in the previously mentioned fight.

When Arceli grabs ‘Willow’, she’s still Slightly on Fire, so Willow gets burnt. It’s not a bad burn, necessarily, especially since Willow is essentially just a puppet – and its not like Arceli wanted to hurt Willow so she… extinguished? herself? pretty quickly – but it still scars. And, for Magic Reasons I haven’t fully figured out yet (maybe bc the fire isn’t Normal fire or smthn?), this actually hurts Salix (and will carry over to all her forms!). She ends up passing out from the pain, since its been a reeeaally long time since she’s, well, been able to feel pain lmao, and then for reasons I, again, haven’t quite figured out yet, Salix and Stella decide they can’t tell Celi anything just yet. So, Arceli and Willow end up meeting again – much calmer thing time haha – and Salix doesn’t tell her anything just yet. Arceli wants to apologize for the arm, which is fine, Salix isn’t holding a grudge, and ask why Willow got involved in the fight at all. So Willow tells her instead that Constellation is her patron, and she wants to help free her, and the two strike up an allyship while Stella and Salix try to figure out how they’re supposed to break the news to their friend

With a bit of recovery, physical therapy, and magic, Salix’s limb there is functional again after not too long, though she still often has to use a brace when it acts up. Eventually, over the course of a couple thousand years it’ll clear up and she’ll just have the scars to show for the incident, but she’s not too beat up over it either way :)

Yeah! So those’re the lore doodles!

I feel like I should mention that Constellation is in them too as ‘Sam’; Willow grants her a puppet to possess or whatever so she can kinda sorta leave the Void in a way, so she’s around too during all this lol

The uncontrollable urge to just turn my characters back into cats strikes again