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#Our campaigns are always fun but I'm also lowkey at a point where I miss the times before we played
gunpowder-gemini · 3 years
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You ever just feel like
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#so fucking tired today my dudes#i feel bad for my dnd group cause I'm gonna be checked out#granted as much as I love dnd I always have a real hard time focusing on it for more than an hr without feeling suuuuper drained afterwards#which kinda doesn't lend itself to 3-4 hr sessions very well#I want to take a break from dnd after this campaign but everyone's very hyped for the next one so I know there's no way that's happening#I do love dnd it's just EXHAUSTING for me in a way I don't think it is for my friends#and I've never been an 'eat-sleep-breathe' it kinda person like a few of them are#Our campaigns are always fun but I'm also lowkey at a point where I miss the times before we played#when we had conversations about other stuff and did other things and casually hung out#I miss being a friend group and not an rpg party#I've kinda brought that up with them but everyone else wants to just do dnd so I'm outnumbered 🤷‍♀️#I really hope the next campaign isn't long#bc I would just sit it out but it's one friends 1st time dming for us and she'd be really bummed if I didn't play#and I've already done all the character setup and everything#so I can't just not play at this point lol#but hopefully it'll be a few months and not like a year bc I want to take a break from dnd soon#man these tags do make me sound like I'm not having fun lmao I am!#I'm just also very tired and dnd is a very high spoons activity for me#also it's really hard to do anything else together bc of quarantine so what can you do
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yume-x-hanabi · 3 years
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Concubinage Behind the Scenes - intro
I mentioned a while ago on Twitter that I was tempted to write down behind-the-scenes explanations, different pov, etc, for Concubinage, if there was interest for that kind of things. A few people were interested, so I decided to start now.
In this post, I'll talk about how the idea came to me, and give some details about the settings. The next post will be about the characters (canon and OC) who appear in this fic.
How it started
I've always liked the concept of Arranged Marriage AU where the characters have to navigate developing feelings while being already married. It's no secret I'm a fan of period dramas, and Gaius' backstory is a perfect period drama setting. So thinking back, it's not really a surprise my mind eventually started conjuring up scenarios. I was in the middle of other projects then, so it was nothing serious, just me lowkey throwing ideas out there for fun. Hah.
A month later (Feb 2020), I started writing the first chapter on a whim, refined some of the ideas from my first outline, etc. I was still jumping from project to project then, but I eventually finished it a couple of months later, and got a start on the next chapters, so I decided to post it on 25 April. I was honestly not expecting much--my track record for multichapters was abysmal (5 years between ch1 and 2 of Fractured Lives lol), and as it was an entirely self-indulgent idea, I didn't think many people would be interested. I just thought I'd write a few chapters while it kept my attention, then throw it on the hiatus pile like so many other projects. We now know this isn't what happened XD
Settings
The main project I was working on at the time was a pre-game canon compliant series about Gaius and Wingul's backstories, so I had worked out a lot of setting details already, and just had to reuse them. I drew a complete map of Auj Oule and added a bunch of locations, made up a bunch of clans, etc.
Here is a screenshot of the relevant area:
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(unlocalized names because I spent a long time researching potential names that fit with the canon naming theme in the Japanese version)
I named the river that runs through Xian Du the "Xian River" and decided to stick the Long Dau capital (named Xian Yang) on it. Despite the proximity to the Mon Highlands, it's under a different, much milder clime.
Darhan, Gaius' hometown, is in the mountains up north, same kind of clime as the Mon Highlands.
wrt clan territories: the area around Khan Baliq (Kanbalar) and the Mon Highlands belongs to the Sarakhs clan, the clan of King Melard.
The eastern part (starting from the Xian River) is split in two: everything north of Xian Du/Labari is Long Dau clan territory, while the south (down to Hamil and Ilat (Aladhi); the latter is not shown here) is Kitarl Clan territory.
The Nia Khera area is neutral and rarely accessed due to the Kyzyl (Kijara) Seafalls and Xagut Floodmeadows. Then the Rakorum (Lakutam) area belongs to another clan, but I don't think it'll become relevant here.
As you can see, the Long Dau and Kitarl are sharing a border, so there's been a lot of feuding over territories between those two big clans. That said, their territories may be large geographically, but they're made of numerous smaller clans that submitted to them. Those clans often also fight each other, even if they're both on Long Dau territories, for example. So lots of clan fighting lol
Canon Divergence
While this is an AU, it is set in the canon universe--it's just that some events happened differently. It's like a fractured dimension, in a way XD;
The main point of divergence is the Battle of Fezebel.
In canon, following the death of Rashugal's king Milan, Auj Oule's king Melard launched a campaign to conquer Rashugal and rallied all the clans under him to fight. The armies clashed at the Fezebel Outback at the same time as Elympios tested its first Lance of Kresnik prototype, resulting in the outback being swept by a giant tsunami. Both armies suffered tremendous losses (the Outway clan in particular, who lost most of its warriors), and that put a stop to clan squabbles for a while, until Gaius, fed up with the way the large clans toyed with the smaller ones, decided to rebel and conquer Auj Oule.
Here, the battle didn't happen. Melard was too preoccupied with his own internal troubles to worry about Rashugal, so he missed his chance to attack, and business went as usual.
The Elympios stuff and tsunami did happen, though, so the Zenethra is now stuck in Rieze Maxia, and Maxwell created Milla and Muzét as in canon.
However, since there was no one in Fezebel that day, the event went relatively unnoticed, and there was no big tragedy that killed a lot of people and changed many things in Rieze Maxia.
So Arst and Lin... got to have the childhoods they were supposed to have within their respective clans.
Arst is still very much a rebel at heart and doesn't like the way the small clans are treated either, but there wasn't that big event that pushed him to act and rebel for good at 15 like in canon. So he was mostly stewing on his own, showing acts of defiance and insubordination here and there. He also started laying the foundations for the creation of Taurus, but it came much later than in canon, and his plans were interrupted by the marriage.
Meanwhile, Lin grew up as a pampered prince, but the more time passed, the more it became apparent that his personality and values clashed with the clan's ideals. So it wasn't all a smooth ride, even though his life is much more stable than Wingul's was at that time in canon.
On the Rashugal side, things changed a bit too, but some things still played out in similar ways as canon. The Fenn brothers fought for the throne, and Nachtigal emerged victorious, with Rowen at his side. Carrie's still around here (and married to Rowen), so he hasn't turned tyrant (yet?).
The Rashugal-Auj Oule relations are pretty much "we're both too busy with our own problems to fight each other, but you'd better not make any suspicious move toward the border" XD;
Meanwhile, Exodus is doing Exodus things...
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