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oops-all-concrete · 4 months

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I'm doing another BG3 companions headcanons dump, since I enjoyed the last one a lot! So please enjoy;

BG3 COMPANIONS REACT TO; TAV IS SCARED!

(For further context, companions reacting to Tav having to be around something they don't like, eg; water, small spaces, fire, undead etc, or they're just jumpy in general. Also, romance is not established, but implied!)

Wall of fluff below, enjoy

Lae'zel -

It depends on the fear. If it's something like a cave that's barely holding up or the group is sneaking past a hoard, she'll agree the situation is critical, but encourage focus. "I'd also like for this to be over. But it won't be if we hesitate and dally" but if it's something like heights or rivers, she doesn't understand...but she will become a githyanki barrier between Tav and whatever is causing them stress.

Shadowheart -

She's pretty understanding of most fears. She freezes at the mere howl of a distant wolf, so if Tav flinches at the crackle of fire or the smell of blood, so be it. She keeps an eye out and tries to find work arounds if the group is about to enter somewhere Tav is going to hate. If it's unavoidable, she's as gentle as possible. "We've got this. It'll be over before you know it, I promise you. Then we'll never have to do this again."

Wyll -

He'll make it as tolerable as possible, but will encourage Tav to face their fears head on. "I'm not scared. I have no reason to be and neither do you, because I won't let anything happen to you" he'll promise. Won't push, won't complain. Just keeps Tav in arms reach and stays calm. He's proudly Tavs dedicated rock. And sheild. And blade. He sasses anybody has anything to say about it.

Karlach -

"Don't worry. Mama K is the best teifling sheild around, from here to Avernus! Stick close" She smiles, confident as ever. Even if she is scared too, she'll pretty much forget about that while Tav is scared. Tav is her main priority, and she let's them know proudly. Anyone else says anything? She's reaching for the greataxe.

Gale -

Doesn't want you to be embarrassed, so he tells you about a silly fear he has. Has a knack for rambling Tav into distraction, so he takes advantage as best he can of their attention. Of course in a moment of panic he'll drop the 'I did something stupid' fake laughter and immediately stop everything. "We can go, right now. I'm sure we can find another way to do this, we always do. I don't care if it takes longer, it's got to be better than watching you shake like that"

Astarion -

He pretends not to notice. Not because he doesn't care, but comfort has never been his strong suit. He worries he's going to make it all worse if he addresses Tav about it. Instead he occupies himself with laughing about whatever situation they're in. If he knows anything, its how to be disarming, and laughter works like a charm...but if it doesn't and nobody else steps in to comfort Tav, he'll do it- granted the words are coming out before he can think too hard; "Look at me. You have survived a goblin camp of cultists, an entire githyanki creche- we met after crashing from a nautaloid ship with illithid worms in our heads. This is nothing. You're stronger than this."

Bonus! (the elders)

Halsin -

He can tell they're nervous before Tav can. He checks in regularly and asks repeatedly if there's anything else he can do to make it all easier. Once it gets to be too much, he calls it for Tav. "I understand if you'd rather myself and a few others handle this. While I'm proud of you for staying, I can promise you no disappointment if you wish to leave. Your wellbeing isn't worth sacrificing for this"

Jaheira -

Similar to Halsin, she's very quick to pick up on when something upsets Tav even if they don't say anything. She subtly keeps an ear out for how well they're holding up, and will make excuses for Tav to take breaks and get further away from the thing they're scared of. "Apologies, but this old druid needs to rest her old lady hips. Tav, it would be safer if we both went to that safe spot there, come on." Jaheira won't bring it up, but its easy to figure out what she's doing.

Minsc -

He doesn't notice for a while, even if its obvious, but once it occurs to him, he draws an obnoxious amount of attention to it. Granted he's also asking people to get between you and the source of discomfort and will tell anyone who so much as sighs to politely shut the fuck up. If he thinks it will help, he will put Boo on Tavs shoulder. "Boo is a war criminal! Everything fears Boo. He'll protect you from all the nasties, won't you Boo?"

Hope you enjoyed! Let me know if you guys have any prompt ideas, I'd LOVE to write more ^^

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12pt-times-new-roman · 8 months

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c3e72

We land on the northeastern shore of the island, and learn that FCG does not, in fact, know how compasses work.

Before using the compass to call the ghost pirates (?), FCG casts speak with dead on the bodies in the portable hole, and Imogen disguises herself as her mother to get them to talk. First, the druid:

[You failed your mission. Where is Thull?] "She remains at the key." [How many have come over?] "I don't know. I saw a hundred or more." [Did you ever speak to Ludinus?] "No. Just watched him." [How much time until we strike?] "I don't know." [What is the greatest threat to our organization?] "They've mentioned unity. Keep them scattered."

Next, General Ratanish: [Congratulations, you fell to a group of weaklings. Luckily, our master is forgiving. We can bring you back if you prove yourself. Tell me how we communicate.] "The old-fashioned way. The solstice has scrambled us." [Tell me how we protected our entrances to the key.] "The soldiers have been moved as you requested, and the Moonfolk have kept eyes as well." [You were in charge of keeping rebellions down, yes?] "Partially." [As you can see, I've been separated from our forces. Tell me about our entrances into the key.] "You have many tricks up your sleeve. The main pit entrance is easy. Otherwise... they were closed behind us as a precaution." [What happened to the two, the wizard and the monk?] "Probably dead."

In the throes of that massive success, they turn back to summoning a ship full of ghost pirates. From where the compass hits the water, mist billows and encloses the landscape, the temperature drops dramatically, and Orym hears nothing except for the waves and the wind. Noiselessly, a shadowed shape breaches the distant fog bank — the bow of a massive ship, chains hanging from the sides, an overgrown moss clustered up the hull, three masts with tattered sails.

It pulls up alongside the beach, and shadowed figures leap from the deck to meet them. They're mostly skeletal, wearing torn leather, wielding cutlasses — ten of them marching up the shore, splashing through the water. A handful stay on the ship, and a raspy voice echoes from it: "Take it from them. Leave them bleeding. Whatever they have is ours." Initiative!

wait are the Bells Hells finally going to get a ship if they defeat these guys??

Laudna knocks out most of the skeletons with a fireball and calls out in Shadowcant. "You sure you don't want to chat." "Hah. A chat it is. Kill the rest." The captain holds his action for the next couple of rounds.

Fearne legitimately considering not healing FCG when they're down and making death saves purely because their turn undead hit Laudna (even though it really shouldn't have bc she isn't undead) is certainly A Choice

Laudna reaches the captain, and puts his hand to her chest. "You're like me. Cursed. Rau'shan, Ka'mort, Delilah — we can end it. Together." He withdraws. "I chose this curse. The Strife Emperor granted me new life. So what else do you offer, besides returning what is mine?" She offers the compass and Chetney's cursed sword. "It's cursed, it talks to him — I figure it fits your aesthetic... it imbues him with the strength of a hundred holy men. It can grant you radiant abilities, the same ones that caused your men to flee." "Show me this blade."

Ashton rage build update: It seems like the 10th level improvement for the space rage build allows Ashton to teleport up to 60 feet on their turn. It's not clear whether this is a bonus action, a free action, or part of their movement.

Chetney approaches the captain with Graz'tchar unsheathed. "If you want your compass back, we beg but a simple journey across the seas."

Laudna's turn. "So, you're asking for passage? In trade, you all live, and you give me my compass and this fine weapon." "The compass first; the blade upon completion... you can't expect me to trust a bunch of pirates." "Collateral doesn't sound right to me. The blade now, the compass after."

Chetney hands over the blade, the captain accepts, and combat ends.

Travis went from having to be forcibly separated from the cursed sword, to willingly giving up the cursed sword after 72 episodes of buildup, to giving it away within a half dozen episodes of acquisition! that's what I call character growth!

"You have a thing here, in this realm, called guilt, and I've never really felt it before but I feel it really strongly here for some reason and it sucks—" fearne

"We didn't really do any research, we just heard about you from another woman and thought that sounded great" That is literally the Bells Hells' motto. Like. pirate captains, gods, what's the difference? they don't know shit about either!

They ask about the captain and his ship. They used to be well-known in these parts (unclear whether "these parts" refers to the Shattered Teeth or Domunas), but gained a lot of enemies; eventually, the enemies became part of the crew. They had almost gathered all of the things they were searching for when the curse befell them, and now they're searching for the rest — "things that are personal to me. Items, keepsakes, trophies, and my navigation tools."

And they, on semantics, give him his compass back. This surely will have no negative consequences in the future.

The boat is called "the Crimson Abyss." They're crossing over the Vermillion Reef. I mean, come on—

The captain has made multiple allusions to how his word is his bond, and how promises bind him, and how all the stories about him reflect this. Is he some kind of fey entity, somehow?

Ashton asks the captain about what's happening globally, and he says that he knows basically nothing.

I feel like the Bells Hells not knowing that Bane is a Betrayer God says more about the quality of the Exandrian public education system than anything—

Bane is the god of tyranny and conquest; they are lawful evil, and they believe in structure through domination, that those who are in power are there because they deserve or have earned it. In essence, if the Cerberus Assembly had to worship a god, they'd worship Bane. But for the captain, it's less about revery and worship, and more about praying to someone you agree with when you feel the occasional need to pray.

I do genuinely hope that Laudna giving up Chetney's blade for him without consulting him will become a point of conflict, I'd love to see more of their dynamic play out.

Time to identify magic items! They got boots of speed (which are much different and marginally less powerful than the boots of haste). With a round of Rollies, Ashton gets them, and trades them to Chetney for the Ring of Temporal Salvation.

Ashton goes to talk to the navigator, and they're the only one who picks up on the fact that she can't see the fog. Ashton mentions how they think that the Bells Hells can do something, or refuse to do something, about what the gods are facing; and on the mention of the red moon, she says that she hasn't seen it in weeks, and that worries her. They play into the navigator's anger (she's the skeleton of a fire genasi, he notices, and she's angry; he knows anger), plays on her doubts, to get the information they need. Like they did with Percy, it's unclear whether Ashton actually believes that the gods deserve to die, or if they're playing up that sentiment to appeal to the person they're trying to get information from.

The rest of them head below decks, and find that it's freezing cold, too cold to sleep. Somewhere, there's a violin playing.

#critical role #note watches c3 #critical role spoilers #critical role campaign 3 #critical role c3 #critical role liveblog

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kikiofthevast · 1 year

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Pirates Time

So the other day I posted that concept right. The pirate one. That one. I don’t really have any ideas but it’s very Dead Man’s Chest inspired.

The Desert Scourge - A ship captained by the undead pirate Scar Goodtimes, cursed to roam the seas eternally for his duplicitous nature and shifting allegiances. Anyone who stays on the ship for too long ends up cursed to stay as well, and the only way to break the curse is to kill Scar.

Scar: Scar Goodtimes, known for being a tricky bastard and captain of the Desert Scourge. Was originally a merchant that scammed a few too many pirates and one particularly notable witch. He was cursed to run his own ship, perpetually unbound by the land to the point where if he sets foot on it, he dies.

Grian: Grian Dreamslayer, quartermaster of the Desert Scourge. When Scar was cursed, Grian went with him, dragging some others along so that Scar didn’t end up drifting along with no crew.

Jimmy: Jimmy Solidarity, the main member of the crew that can go ashore. He’s been on board for the shortest amount of time and hasn’t changed in the ways the other crew members have. There may be a reason for that…

Scott: Scott Major has an undefined role on the ship, but he spends a lot of time in the cells below deck when not spending his time with Jimmy. He also may or may not have previously held a high ranking Navy position before Jimmy dragged him on board a pirate ship.

Joel: Joel Smallbeans, the ship’s bosun. He’s always where you least expect him and he thought the idea of immortality was pretty cool. When he’s not doing his job he’s usually bothering Grian or Jimmy, or looking over the railing for something…

Cleo: Cleo Z., the enigmatic helmsperson of the Desert Scourge. She’s the most obviously undead, and she’s very clear that it happened before she boarded. They mostly enjoy not being alone forever. When not steering, they hang out belowdecks with Scott.

Pearl: Pearl Moonstone, the stowaway. Nobody can get rid of her, and she’s always around. She mostly hides in the crow’s nest but will come out if you bribe her with stories and friendship offerings. She’s very resourceful.

BigB: Just called B., he manages the crew’s cannons and weaponry. He individually keeps inventory of their gunpowder and also knows which barrels he’s stashed his food in instead. Despite his job, he’s reluctant to hurt anyone, and he doesn’t enjoy the violence that comes with the ship, but he can defend himself very well.

~~~

The Scarlet Buccaneers - An oddly named merchant ship. Captained by Ren Doggman, the ship sells all sorts of oddities and information at any price. The ship filled one of the holes The Desert Scourge had left when it was no longer able to go ashore, and a lot of people needed resources that the ship had provided.

Ren: Ren Doggman, captain of the Scarlet Buccaneers and trader of goods, services, and information. He stays close to the coast and if something needs investigating, he sends Martyn, his hand.

Martyn: Martyn Littlewood, a thief of goods, services, and information. Occasionally people, but he’s not really in that business anymore. Ren is one of his closest friends and he trusts him. His latest assignment is to gather intel on the Navy’s movements, but he got picked up by the Desert Scourge during a storm.

Bdubs and Impulse: B.W. and I.S.V. are both Ren’s agents and they usually go inland to gather information. They’re often the most up to date on the state of kingdoms.

Etho: Etho is a man on a raft in the ocean. Nobody knows anything else about him.

Lizzie: Jimmy’s enigmatic sister. He speaks of her fondly, but none of the crew have truly met her.

Gem: Gemini Tay, the witch that cursed Scar. She refuses to undo the curse without good reason.

Oli: Oli Sound, a travelling bard. Hoid Cosmere energy. He shows up wherever and whenever he pleases and he can also fly. Grian swats at him with brooms when he flies by.

Pixl: Pix Rift, keeper of the Cursed Trove. People try to steal cursed shit all the time. Pix kicks them out for trying. Scar makes regular trips there at Grian’s insistence to appraise anything that might be cursed.

I KNOW THAT I HAVE NOT PUT SOME PEOPLE HERE SUCH AS SKIZZ AND TANGO. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADD ONTO THIS POST I NEED IDEAS SO BAD

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talesofsorrowandofruin · 1 year

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for the Get to Know the WIP game - whichever WIP you choose, or all! 🤫, 🥀, 👀

Thanks! :D I'll do this for all my main WIPs:

The Power and the Glory:

🤫 - A big spoiler/piece of lore out of context: Abi is a phoenix immortal, and phoenixes can destroy evil by touching it.

🥀 - Do any characters (even minor) die?: Yep! Counting all the zombie-related deaths, TPATG has the highest body-count of all my WIPs so far and Abi personally has killed/caused the deaths of more people than the average historical warlord. By accident.

👀 - A piece of lore you’ve been waiting for an excuse to share: Lian is undead and sometimes his body starts to fall apart. He can fix this by drinking blood. So he's basically a combination of a zombie, a vampire and a lich. (Because being just one of those wasn't enough for him!)

Totentanz:

🤫 - A big spoiler/piece of lore out of context: Killing the person who created a magic realm will destroy the realm and kill anyone in it.

🥀 - Do any characters (even minor) die?: Yep! The book is basically nothing but the "protagonists" finding new and exciting ways to die.

👀 - A piece of lore you’ve been waiting for an excuse to share: Despite what Diarnlan and Karandren think, the time-loop has nothing to do with the monsters. It's caused by their own magic trying to keep them alive. So they're really the cause of all their own problems, and if they stopped trying to kill each other they could have gotten out of the loop ages ago.

Like Snow on Hungry Graves:

🤫 - A big spoiler/piece of lore out of context: Rusudan suffered a severe injury that left her partially blind and with limited use of one hand. She does her best to keep this a secret, so when people discover it they think they've found out her biggest secret. Actually there's another one: that severe injury was fatal.

🥀 - Do any characters (even minor) die?: Yep! Rusudan died looong before the book starts (trying to figure out how this works when she and Konstantine were childhood friends, and I have two possibilities: time travel, or forget the childhood friends bit and rework their backstories).

👀 - A piece of lore you’ve been waiting for an excuse to share: Hariye is a shapeshifter. In addition to becoming an ordinary merman, he can turn into a sea monster when he really wants to be left alone.

The Unfortunate Moth:

🤫 - A big spoiler/piece of lore out of context: The murderer has no personal connection to the victim at all. He's a hired assassin who has already killed one person this month and is on his way to kill another.

🥀 - Do any characters (even minor) die?: Yep! Phil accidentally killed a guy before the book starts, and Rachael's murder kicks off the main plot.

👀 - A piece of lore you’ve been waiting for an excuse to share: Not exactly lore, but I've found an excuse to throw in historical references and in-jokes.

The ship the characters are travelling on is called the Kaiserin Elisabeth, named after Elisabeth of Austria (whose life inspired my favourite musical).

The murderer has just come from Georgia, where he was hired to kill another murderer called Ioseb Jugashvili — who was a real person (he changed his name, so you might know him better as Josef Stalin), but unfortunately was not assassinated in real life.

And, a fun fact or two:

Seo Yo-han is named after two of my favourite Kdrama characters: Seo Moon-jo (Strangers From Hell) and Kang Yo-han (The Devil Judge).

Máté Király's first name is a reference to Hungarian actor Máté Kamarás.

Octavia (who probably won't actually appear but is still a pretty important character) is named after Miss Pole from Cranford.

#ask #sarahlizziewrites #writing #my writing #my WIPs #WIP: necromancer #WIP: totentanz #WIP: snow #WIP: moth

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hexedsouls · 1 year

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Disclaimer:

I am not in any way associated to the creators of any existing series on this blog.

I expect it to be understood that the actions and views of my muses are not reflective of my own values, they are reflective of the character in their environment. Mun ≠ muse.

About the Blog

Many of my muses are divergent. Fanon and word of god especially hold no sway here.

This blog is 21+ If your blog does not say that you are 21+ ( doesn’t need to be specific ), I will not follow / write with you. I will block minors that follow me. My blog will contain content not suitable for those under 18.

I don’t format. I don’t mind if my partners do. My use of icons is sporadic at best.

I don’t like posts, I’ll reply instead. I am the maniac that actually utilizes likes for organization- and I cannot stand ‘ghost likes’. Generally instead of hitting the like button, I’ll drop an emoji or short comment using the reply box.

Interaction

PLEASE DO NOT REBLOG DOSSIERS, HEADCANONS, VERSES, OR META. You are free to ‘like’ whatever you wish!

Following:

I do not follow for follow. Most interactions are mutuals only. I follow blogs that I want to interact with. I may unfollow if the interest is not reciprocated, or we aren’t super close & haven’t interacted in a while. There are no hard feelings! We can always reconnect later!

I do look at all blogs that follow me, though it may take me a week or two do do so & follow back if I am going to.

I will unfollow / softblock for — Abundant real-life politics / news — Callouts, bullying, ship/character/actor/etc bashing, ship wars, etc — Any other discourse / drama

I will only interact with OCs that I approach first. Meaning if I follow your OC without prompting, we’re gucci, but please don’t ask to to RP with your OC if I haven’t followed you first / followed back. It’s not because I think OCs are trash, it’s because I have trouble interacting with characters I don’t have at least a baseline familiarity with.

Activity & Partners:

With very few exceptions, I do not do mains/exclusives. I am however here pretty much purely at the behest of @holmesdepot, as a resident purse bunny.

My blog is very low-activity, and I don’t seek out many new partners. Please don’t be offended by this. I’m a busy self-employed artist with low spoons. Mainly, I meet RP partners because they are friends-of-friends.

Inbox & Starter Calls: HC Memes/General Questions ⯎ Open to all Interaction Memes ⯎ Mutuals only Starter Calls ⯎ Mutuals only Anon/Inbox Interactions ⯎ TENTATIVELY open to all (I make no promises about replying to inbox interactions, but these were fun back in the day! Just keep it light!)

)

NOTICE: If you need fast replies / daily communication, I am not the blog for you. I am slow. I have limited energy. I am a busy. Just because I don’t send messages every day does not mean I love my friends & partners any less.

Triggers & Adult Content

Potentially triggering & adult content will be present on this blog. I tag any triggers I can think of using ‘trigger cw’. If you need something tagged, you are free to ask and I will do my best to accommodate.

Do NOT under any circumstances attempt to police my writing. I will not ever fight over the moral high ground. I expect my partners to be aware of the warning labels and curate their own content, rather than restricting mine. If there is questionable content happening in a thread, you can bet it’s been thoroughly discussed with my partner, & we are both aware of its nature.

I will not actively write the following topics. Those marked with a #, I would greatly appreciate being tagged so that I can block. Those marked with a * may appear in backstories, be mentioned off-screen, or in headcanon, but will not actively be written about.

— #Animal violence / death / injury — *Acts of sexual violence — #Zombie Apocalypse Scenarios ( zombie-like & undead characters are fine- it’s the whole apocalypse/hoards of endless infected thing for me ) — Racism & Transphobia

Please be aware that, because I write queer characters in historical settings, mild homophobia may be a relevant topic to some muses. This will always be tagged, and you are more than welcome to tell me to avoid it even in passing in our threads if we interact.

Shipping & NSFW

All muns and muses must be adults to ship.

⯎ Feel free to tell me if you ship our muses, ask about OTPs/NoTPs/OT3s/etc, and send fluffy memes to test the waters ⯎ Please do NOT assume a ship without discussion, assume canon ships are acknowledged/automatically okay, or send unsolicited NSFW interaction memes if we are not already shipping.

I will not auto-ship. This means that whether or not I ship the thing OOC, I may not automatically ship the thing with your interpretation.

I will never pressure someone into shipping. Chemistry that is agreed upon by both partners is a must.

I will typically utilize fade-to-black rather than writing smut. I do write sexual themes, and will participate in Sinday through memes, drabbles, and suggestive starters. All suggestive text will be tagged ‘ mind the citrus ’.

NSFW imagery may be present on my blog. This includes but is not limited to NSFW fanart and image/gifsets, however all suggestive imagery will be tagged ‘ NSFT ’ (Not Safe For Tumblr). I am looking into the idea of implimenting citrus scale in tagging as well.

#guidelines

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madame-mongoose · 2 years

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- Barry is the librarian? May i ask what library?

- Whats Zekira's story? I am enjoying this blorbo

- Is barry like, shunned by the other stars?

- whats the main plot you have going down for your ocs?

- is The pirate killer (the one u drew with the cool dark and saturated pink lighting) one do they have any interactions w/ barry? I know u said they killed zek (?)

- if the above is true is zekira undead in some fashion?

- how did zekira lose their horn?

OOOOH SO MANY GOOD QUESTIONS DUDE THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

- He is The Librarian!! That's actually his "name". Stars don't have names, only titles. Barry is a nickname given to him by Zeki bc she hated saying "The Librarian". Also to push his buttons. As for the library, it's a pocket dimension that orbits Earth!! The Library hosts all kinds of records of Earth. Most notably the lives of every living creature. When a living being dies, their book is ended and is sent to the library for sorting. It also holds details of Earth's history and creation along with some universal knowledge, but that's all tucked deeeep within the Library. Very difficult to find

- Zekira is actually the main character!! She starts out first mate on her adoptive father's pirate ship!! Her and her father are killed by Cassia and their ship abandoned. But, instead of being consumed by the nothingness of death, she awakes in a strange... Library? It's here she learns that the Librarian, in his desperation to escape, grabbed her book as it fell to his desk and rewrote her fate to bring her there. He promises her immortality if she agrees to help him, and she does! She's a fun loving, snarky, gremlin of a woman. Is very neutral to evil leaning moral wise. She gets worse tho!!! She gets so so much worse, like irredeemable territory worse. I explain a teensy more why a few questions later 😁

- They don't really even know he exists lmao. The Library doesn't get many guests so no chance of meeting one there. And the only notable thing he ever did was throw that meteor, but others only remember the aftermath not the idiot that caused it.

- So!! We start the narrative off with Zekira as first mate of a pirate ship she’s lived on all her life. I want there to be some pirate adventures to get a feel of her character and introduce some world building concepts, most importantly the religion and magic system. Along with side characters and the captain, her adoptive father. Their ship gets raided at some point and the captain is murdered. Zeki is cornered and killed as well. But instead of dying she wakes up in this weird… Library, The Librarian has been stuck in the Library for a few million years now. Sorting book after book. Each one detailing the entire life of every living creature on earth. He hates it. Being Librarian was his punishment for sending the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. One day, he gets the idea to try and change the texts on one of the books. Maybe summon someone who can help free him from his prison. By sheer luck, if that’s what you wanna call it, he pulls Zekira’s book. They make a deal that Zekira is granted immortality and in return she will find the pieces of the key to open the library doors and free him. What Zekira doesn’t know is that the magic that revives her every time she dies is incompatible with her biology. See there are two types of creatures. Celestial and Terrestrial. These magics CANNOT mix. They’re like polar opposites and can create horrible paradoxes if forced together. Every time she dies, the celestial magic keeping her body together gets more and more overpowering, altering her down to her very core…

- CASSIA!! MY BELOVED!!! She doesn't!! The only two characters so far that actually interact with him are Zeki and Halley. She doesn't have the ability to travel there like they do.

- She is!! As I explained above

- Make your best guess!!

#i know i havent gotten into much about after zeki and barry make that deal #but thats mainly bc i... havent thought of much yet 😅#i just have the beginning and ending of the story down #ty for the questions!!!#oc stuff #the librarian #zekira #monnie answers

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phazius · 1 year

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Outlaws of Alkenstar - Book 2 session ???

Ya I don’t really keep track of what session it is in like any of my games lol. Also this post is late, this game is Wednesday afternoons but I was super tired so here we are lol.

So we’re somewhere around the middle of book 2. This session was mostly wrap up of the a dungeon locale, getting back to the city, debriefing, and doing some shopping before their next mission. The party had gone through, well a whole fucking lot on an air ship to try and fast track it to a site out in the Spellscar Desert, a heretical temple of Brigh called the Cradle of Quartz. The ship sustained damage from being attacked several times and some really poor weather conditions so they landed and had to walk the last little be to the site. Once they got there though the situation didn't get any better... they first found the Clockwork Sphinx the man they were pursuing fled the city on in the main chamber of the temple. In a secret room at the back they found a journal of the being that founded the heretical sect that was staying here, they were a Shrine Sklem who was converting pilgrims of Brigh who would come to visit the site to Yog-Sothoth. Yup Cthulu Mythos Outer Gods shenanigans. Not long after they found this journal they encountered the creature that killed everyone here, a Hound of Tindalos anyone local would refer to as the Claws of Time. It would stalk them through the temple as they explored. Any of the priests that were once here had been slain by the Claws and had risen as undead of various types from the trauma and having their faith betrayed. The party would eventually find the Cradle of Quartz that gives the location its name, a perfect hollow sphere of quartz crystal. This is where they eventually confronted the Claws of Time (cause it would have murdered them anywhere else in a straight fight as a lvl 10 creature vs a lvl 6 party, being next to the sphere weakens it significantly) and inside the sphere they found the man they were searching for. This man had fled the city after gangers raided his workshop looking for the alchemical formula for Pyronite (Its basically Dynamite) that he had accidently reverse engineered under Outer God influence. For being rescued he told the party what had happened when his workshop was attacked and where he overheard they were going to test the formula first.

#Outlaws of Alkenstar #dnd #ttrpg #pathfinder #pathfinder2e #pf2e #actual play #paizo

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tekpiner · 2 years

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Deadly nightmare cardfight

#DEADLY NIGHTMARE CARDFIGHT HOW TO#

#DEADLY NIGHTMARE CARDFIGHT FULL#

#DEADLY NIGHTMARE CARDFIGHT PLUS#

For some decks that rely on “Break Ride, Legion, swing for the fences,” you can skip on the Limit Break enabler, due to the fact that you can’t really do your big trick until late in the game anyway due to the costs involved. Stormride Ghost Ship is theoretically a possibility, because Negrobolt’s bringing stuff back from the dead releases its restraint, and bringing it back from the dead undoes its own restraint, but I think there’s too much potential for something to go wrong here.įor our grade 1s, we obviously want the four Gust Jinns, because like I said earlier, with the kind of power you’re going to see swinging with Legions and Strides, Quintet Walls are too unreliable. If you don’t like running an 8k but Ruin Shade is not an option, there’s always Commodore Blueblood for base 10k power or Three Star Chef, Pietro for unflipping. But the reason I think that’s better with Cocytus Reverse is because that gives the things it calls +3k, so its lower base power is less of an issue. After all, you can pull this guy out of the drop, intercept with it for 10k shield, and then bring it back turn after turn. Another option, which I will admit is more useful in a Cocytus Reverse deck, is Skeleton Swordsman. Keep in mind with King Serpent, though, that it only lets you unflip and soul charge when you call it from drop. For the other one, your budget and/or preferences will determine if you use three copies of Ruin Shade for another thing that can attack without a booster and more self-milling to get revive targets into the drop, or three copies of King Serpent to help offset the counterblast use. To that end, I am thinking four copies of Dragon Corrode, Corrupt Dragon, due to the fact that you don’t really need a booster with it, so you can revive it with Negrobolt and it can still hit things. So we’re going to want stuff that keys off of that. It looks like the main trick the deck does, at least in ideal situations, would be to break ride, swing with the powered up rearguards, and then attack with a Legioned Negrobolt to eat one of your doomed rearguards and call a fresh one.

#DEADLY NIGHTMARE CARDFIGHT FULL#

I’m not going to do the full list, but I will say we’re not running Pirate Belle, Pinot Blanc because when you Legion, it should ideally be because you just nailed your Break Ride and already called two things from the drop, so you wouldn’t really have anywhere to put them, and if you aren’t using their “on Legion, bring back from drop” thing, they kind of suck. So we’ve got our 3s picked, and four of our 2s picked, and one of our 1s picked (my sympathy to your wallet if you’re using this as a shopping list). Plus, I think to really leverage a Quintet Wall in Granblue, you’d want both Legions, so you can send back the triggers and reanimate the rest, but since that’s not what I was asked, there you go. They’re unreliable, and with the kind of numbers that vanguards can throw around these days, you want to be absolutely sur that the attack is getting shut down. Granblue aren’t as completely boned if they have to run Reef Banshee, because they can reanimate anything good, but Quintet Walls do not hold up in this era of Legions and Strides. As of this writing, low price on TCG Player is 12.99, median is 19.19. I certainly hope you’ve already got four Gust Jinns already, because Granblue is one of the clans left out in the cold on their Perfect Guards that hasn’t gotten a new one in a dog’s age.

#DEADLY NIGHTMARE CARDFIGHT PLUS#

So we’re obviously going to need four each of Lord of the Seven Seas, Nightmist and Witch Doctor of the Dead Sea, Negrobolt, plus its Legion Mate, Dragon Undead, Ghoul Dragon. Sometimes the deck is boned if it misses it, sometimes it isn’t, and this one I think isn’t. Decks that do a break ride into a legion, at least in my opinion, are going for a titanic push in one turn. Apologies if you’re on mobile, but yell at Tumblr for breaking everything. I will tuck the answer behind a Read More because I am wordy as hell.

#DEADLY NIGHTMARE CARDFIGHT HOW TO#

I’d do a mention, but I write these things in HTML in Notepad and then paste it, and I don’t know how to do that in HTML, so I didn’t. I got an ask from silverskygazer, and I will answer that post and link to this one because holy shit am I not going to try and dump one of my articles into the answer box, about a Granblue deck based on the Nightmist break ride and Negrobolt legion.

#Deadly nightmare cardfight

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animecentralinfo · 2 years

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Overlord Light Novel Complete List Review

Overlord light novel is an excellent story that satisfies both the desire to feel 'good' through the main character, which is a bit malicious, rational, and sometimes 'good'. Since 2010, the light novel written by Maruyama and illustrated by Sobin has been serialized on the novel publishing site Arcadia. As August 10, 2022, there are 16 volumes published on Japan and 14 volumes published in English version.

Little fact about Overlord Light Novel: - Overlord light novel was uploaded to the publishing website Shousetsuka Ni Naoru in 2012, before it was acquired by Enterbrain. - The Volume 1 released on July 30, 2012 by Enterbrain. - Yen Press announced the licensing of the series for North America in October 2015 and began publishing the novel in English, with the first volume released on May 24, 2016. And here are the complete list of Overlord Light Novel review and direct link to buy the products!

Volume 1 - The Undead King

Buy Now This novel was in excellent condition when I received it! There were no dents or scratches and the packaging was in a box that looked like cardboard wrap (sorry). There's a small drawer art page with the main characters on it, and on the back you can see all the different underground levels of the Great Tomb of Nazarick! Cool! There are several pages with illustrations throughout the book, and at the end there are several pages with character profiles showing what they are wearing. It was the price that got me interested in this seller. The quality of the product and the fast shipping of the seller are the reasons I keep coming back! This series is addictive! I love anime! It's a good story and definitely a good read for us gamers. thank you very much! I love this book!

Volume 2 - The Dark Warrior

Buy Now I really enjoy the series. The story Kugane Maruyama set for this second volume is. Ainz embarks on a journey to obtain information and knowledge about the suddenly teleported New World, and infiltrates as a mysterious Black Knight. He also assigns roles to most of his Guardians on the floor while he is away. And let's just say it's great. Ainz isn't as omnipotent as the Floor Guardians think, but he must maintain his omnipotence for the sake of the guild while battling his inner struggles of loneliness and confusion.

Volume 3 - The Bloody Valkyrie

Buy Now I am a fan of the series. I picked up the light novel for several reasons. For example, I am an older reader and he played some online RPG called Dragon Nest (retire) and Genshin Impact (still playing). So growing up, I had a huge impression of dungeons, dragons, etc. This series is nostalgic to me for a variety of reasons. Seeing a character go from the real world to another world and take on his character, I think we all want that when we watch a hero...but I watch anime more than read light novels is much more immersive and first person. I know they aren't top notch reading or anything like that. But like playing your favorite game over and over, there's something comforting and soothing about reading this particular series... like a warm blanket, your favorite drink. Like a child in an endless story reading a book and becoming part of the story. Something along those lines I guess. Anyway, it's worth your time. And it's always good to support these types of venues by buying rather than piracy.

Volume 4 - The Lizard Man Heroes

Buy Now The story of Overlord follows Satoru Suzuki, who was transferred into the body of Momonga, a former video game character. But the thing about this volume is... well, that's a bit away from Momonga. He quickly changed his name to Ainz Ooal Gown. However, this volume focuses on one of his henchmen, Cocytus, an insect-like warrior. All in all, it's a good read, although the Lizardmen arc drags on a bit in some places, but the readings up to that point and after are very nice and attention-grabbing.

Volume 5 - The Men of the Kingdom (Part 1)

Buy Now If you're looking for more Ainz sausages in this book, you won't see it. This volume instead concentrates on the development of several minor characters in the Overlord universe. And more information about lesser characters, which many writers fail to include in their stories, turned out to be very interesting. He's very good at fleshing out second- or third-order characters in a way that gives them a gritty feel - a rare talent for most writers. This only increases how much I can recommend this series to others. Not to mention, I love the fact that this series is published in hardcover format, which looks beautiful sitting on my bookshelf. My only complaint is how lagging the series is for English readers, especially since Volume 16 has just been released in Japan. At least Yen Press wants it to come out sooner, although it releases an English version fairly regularly, about one every four months.

Volume 6 - The Men of the Kingdom (Part 2)

Buy Now I was amazed when I got this book. The printing quality is high, especially the color illustrations. I am very happy because I am a big fan of Soubin. If you're watching this Vol 6, you already know something about Overlord. All I can say about this volume is that it is not only the volume with the most pages (up to vol 6, vol1 3 will have the most pages overall), but it is also the most interesting volume ever. This volume pretty much shows the first play of Nazarick dealing with the mainstays of the New World. Most of the kingdom setup is done. The battle of the inhabitants of the new world becomes fierce. So if you like the Overlord series, this is definitely worth reading. And the story only gets more interesting later, so read on.

Volume 7 - The Invaders of the Large Tomb

Buy Now Reading this volume makes me wonder if Ainz has always been the main character of the series, or if villains like him were pulling the strings. Like Volume 4, Volume 7 basically portrays the main character as the main villain, but the development is even more brutal and gruesome. If you read it from the perspective of characters other than Nazarick, you'll see that Ainz is getting worse and worse. His minions and his NPCs are acting exactly like him because he allowed them to do unspeakably horrible things to these characters. If anything, throughout volume 7, I've come to reevaluate Ainz in a way that's different from the average protagonist of other Isekai series.

Volume 8 - The Two Leaders

Buy Now This is a very nice series. Publishers should make this one of their major releases to focus their resources. The Overlord series stands out among the many cookie cutter anime, money, and novels. I love how the author doesn't go to great lengths about the fact that the Tomb Dwellers of Nazarick are evil (hehe). They're not bad guys, but they're definitely evil, LOL. And Momonga as Ainz doesn't even realize how evil he's become as she grows into her role as Ruler. So many series trying to break into their niche have helped after Overlord came out, but Overlord has a lot to live up to. Anyway, pick this series up if you haven't already. If you're thinking of dropping it, don't! There's some fun excitement in store for the next volume.

Volume 9 - The Magic Caster of Destroy

Buy Now The battle was a one-sided battle, or something spectacular. He also mentions that Ainz recognizes that he is Lexington by "being human". He no longer feels almost nothing towards humans. Ainz has a character that is pretty true to what he is. He's not trying to be a hero. His goals are selfish, driven by loneliness and his desire to protect Nazarick. And he's not afraid to get his hands dirty to do it. The story keeps getting better and better and I can't wait for more.

Volume 10 - The Ruler of Conspiracy

Buy Now I love anime and picked it up as soon as I heard the release. This volume begins almost immediately after the events of Season 3 and continues from there. Excellent writing that gives a good idea of the thoughts and motivations of the characters. There are some down areas, such as the secondary characters introduced, which are of little use in a few chapters, but beyond that, the book cannot be put down, effectively allowing the book to run in one sitting. I devoured the whole thing. Recommended for those who enjoyed the previous work and anime. The anime season 4 is on airing in Summer 2022, but it still be a great anime merchandise collection for you!

Volume 11 - The Craftsman of Dwarf

Buy Now I love this book and the story. I'm so into it. As someone who doesn't read much, I was hooked. There is a typo in Chapter 5 Feeling instead of Feeling, but it does a very minor drawback. I didn't want to bring it up in my review, but I didn't know where else to send feedback. Just Ainz's Mugen God Mode makes me feel like other players don't want to show up

Volume 12 - The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom (Part 1)

Buy Now I pre-ordered this book as soon as it came out and got it today! I've already read the first chapter...it's so gut-wrenching! I don't even know if an anime can even show this! Overlord is by far the best light novel. I can't wait to finish this book and can't wait for the next one! After I read the entire series. I have to admit that the first chapter was probably the best. Obviously, readers will have to wait for part 2 as it is part 1 as the title suggests. It wasn't bad, it was still good, but I don't think it was as well done as his two previous novels. but I can't wait for the next one

Volume 13 - The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom (Part 2)

Buy Now Overall a great read and a great continuation of the Sacred Kingdom arc. It gives the world so much depth and the people who live in it. On the minor downside, I still think the translation feels a bit forced, especially for some key terms that appear frequently. Now that the term "magic king" is used even in anime, it feels offensive to always read it as "king of darkness". Phrases like "weakness is evil" feel wrong to native English speakers. The "weakness is a sin" alternative found on fan wikis feels much more natural. Still, for fans of the series (what else are you reading about volume 13?), this is a must-read.

Volume 14 - The Witch of the Falling Kingdom

Buy Now I became addicted to reading thanks to this light novel series. I started reading about Ainz (Momonga) conquering the world. Like all light novels in the series, this light novel brings with it some very funny moments and interactions between Ainz and the main characters. I'm getting deep into it. A lot of times in this light novel I had to take a step back and sympathize with Ainz's thinking and logic, but he's still the Lord of Darkness and the enemy of all living things, unless you swear absolute loyalty to him. Overlord fans who have read all the previous light novels will be pleasantly and horribly surprised by the contents of Volume 14. Read the full article

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smolfailure · 3 years

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FUCK IT, DREAM SMP HOMESTUCK AU

but it's only half shitposts and there are actual Thoughts in there.

You don't need to have read the comic to understand because I tried not to spoil anything major, but it'd help if you knew basic stuff about classpects, SBURB and the hemospectrum.

disclaimer: i'm not a good pixel artist and this is my first actual sprites ever so please be kind to my weird pixels

The Kids:

Tommy

Fundy

Techno

Tubbo

tommy, tubbo and fundy one of the kids because they're the kids in dream smp canon (with fundy being son of wilbur)

techno's there because i want to make a dave strider reference (haha get it because techno's name is also da-- *gets shot) and also because they are both coolguys except instead of using irony, techno has adhd

The Trolls:

Wilbur Soohte (fuschia)

?????? Ehrret (violet)

J????? Shlatt (purple)

Nihacu Niikki (indigo)

Skeppy Diamon (cerulean)

Quacki Tthiey (teal)

Philza Myncra (jade)

Dreame Wastkn (lime disguising as olive)

George Notfou (gold)

Sapphe Nahfpe (bronze)

Badboy Haelow (burgundy)

don't come at me saying only females are allowed to be jades and fuschias; gender is fake and this is an au

more of the AU and the talksprites are under the cut:

Tommy

Lunar sway: Derse. Types in: Red

chaotic. the first person to be introduced.

when he gets introduced instead of the “Zoosmell Pooplord” bit, Tommy is initially going to be the name inputted but then backspaced it and decided that Tommyinnit was better and he was fuming until he’s named Tommy.

Gives me big Blood/Hope vibes. Blood because a lot of the conflict of the dream smp connected to someone breaking his trust or harming the things he cares about, Hope because a lot of the plot of the dream smp stems from Tommy starting shit based on his ideals and what he thinks is right.

the first to instigate fighting against the trolls

bbh contacts him once and tommy keeps cursing until he disconnects from frustration rip

wields Gunkind and his only strife weapon at the beginning is the Vlog gun. He has Gunkind as his strife specibus mainly because he looked up at schlatt and he imitates him.

Fundy

Lunar sway: Prospit. Types in: Orange

it was his idea to play SBURB but only through Dream.

he talks to dream the most among the other trolls fwt stans getcha juice this is the rosemary of the session

dream’s the one giving him exposition about the game so that’s how he knows how to play SBURB.

wilbur trolls fundy once and instantly adopts him.

“You’re my son.” “How does that even work??” “I was one of the people who created your universe. It’s basically the same thing.”

Fundy relents anyway.

Techno

Lunar sway: Derse. Types in: Pink

dave strider but dead-inside voice + rose lalonde english major vibes

he slices the text box when you try to name him "Dave " like in

techno gives me time player vibes (contantly on the move. his skyblock series, his “stays in the pit” monologue,) but also rage vibes (anarchy, the “theseus” monologue, political alignment is Chaos) alas i am not sure what class

uses Tridentkind and claims "it came from god"

it was dream, he accidentally transportalized one of wilbur’s weapon while he testing the transportalizer.

Tubbo

Lunar sway: Prospit. Types in: Green

the jade harley of this session. the only thing keeping them from going apeshit. where would they be without him.

but also jade harley in a sense that he seems nice and wholesome but also don’t fuck with them they can mess you up

Heart/Life vibes??? someone good at classpecting help

i put them in prospit bc of the "tubbo third eye" instead of tubbo having a sixth sense or smth, they see the future from the clouds of skaia when they sleep

wields Stress-relieverKind at some point

bonus: everyone’s actual hair colors

Ideas about the Trolls

no i haven’t done their sprites yet bc it would take so much time and i’m not even sure if people wanna see more of this au skjdkdsakdfkl,, but i have Design Ideas.

events of the dsmp revolution are just a FLARP session drawing parallels to how the homestuck trolls had a FLARP session that spoiler alert: destroyed friendships. dtrio, eret, will are involved. eret betrays will's faction and wilbur's still Bitter over that.

on the context of alternia (highbloods and lowbloods) lmanburg and dreamsmp have their roles SWAPPED. the emancipation theme thing is completely gone since highbloods are in more power than the lowbloods (the dream team) .

wilbur made a faction called l’manburg because he wants a place where he and his fellow highbloods could make drugs vibe.they take a piece of land that was owned by the dream team. in normal circumstances, they shouldve stood down because lowbloods aren't supposed to start shit with highbloods (especially a group of highbloods that has the alternian heir among them) but dream turned it into an activism thing about lowblood rights. the story plays as close as possible without tommy or tubbo in it (which is pretty hard ik but this is the best can do).

like in the dreamsmp revolution, dream kinda let wilbur do what he wants but this time he has more reason to because he’s in a lower caste. dream really only fought back when wilbur announced that he’d be building lmanburg on their land and calling it theirs.

eret betrays wilbur by supporting the lowbloods and wilbur and co. technically won but only because he finally called the drones in, as a reference to how lmanburg absolutely got crushed by the dream team in the smp but technically won. l’manburg keeps the piece of land and the dream team scatter away to find a new home.

wilbur soot's a fuschia because a) he's in a position that has a lot of power, b) yknow how he wrote a song about squids and his thing with sally… yeah.

eret's a violet because nobility!! dream looks down on him because he's ambivalent on fighting for lowblood rights when he's in a power to do so "you just sit there, and you look pretty that's it"

also like eridan he has a minor aesthetic mutation (herobrine eyes) that won't classify him as a mutant.

jschlatt is purple because it makes sense thematically because of the gamzee parallels (a. substance abuse b. if you know what happens in act 6, you know this already but spoiler alert, he ruins the main protagonists' lives) also he's a funnyman he deserves the clown caste

quackity's a teal because he’s a law student. moving on--

ok but for real it also makes sense thematically because he's the one who wrote the thing that tricked schlatt into agreeing also he gets manipulated by schlatt which also draws parallels to certain events in the comic

skeppy and bbh are BEST FRIENDS despite being highblood and lowblood respectively. initially, skeppy just wanted to bother bbh but they grew to be good friends in time. y’know like how they actually becane friends :D

philza minecraft is a jade because dad friend. also works thematically, because spoiler alert he gets to murder a seadweller for going batshit crazy.

he also god tiers early. he dies fighting his quick undead denizen (haha baby zombie) but the consorts of his land carry him to his quest bed because he’s treated them all so well.

dream was initially going to be another caste but then i realized that means i have to make his hoodie something other than green which is unacceptable so its a good thing the fact that he's a lime works out

dream was the one who thought of playing sgrub in the first place- initially only planned to have gogy, sap, and bbh in the session but then realized that they four won't be enough so he invited more into his session

he’s also the first to go godtier ez clap blind speedrun not sure what classpect tho

the only reason why dream avoided being culled at birth for being a limeblood is because his rng is That Good. he quickly picked up the fact that he’s not supposed to exist and masqueraded as an oliveblood and kept mostly to himself to avoid suspicion.

george is still colorblind but he has lazer eyes along with it instead. dream lives with him in the same hive since being a mutant means dream doesn’t get a lusus of his own (dnf fans getcha juice “and they were roommates”)

despite living in the same hive, he never really figures out that dream is a limeblood. possibly because a) he’s colorblind and when he sees dream bleeding he just sees yellow b) he’s just that fucking oblivious and it’s so valid of him.

sapnap’s a bronzeblood mainly because i know he’s the instigator of the pet war with tommy also because i associate him with the color orang in my mind so bronze it is

that’s the end of this long-ass post!! if you have other ideas PLEASE i want to hear them. i don’t know the other streamers i mentioned in here very well so if you have ideas that would be fitting to them like with classpect or lunar sway that would be GREAT.

the only thing i’m confident about in here are the kids’ lunar sways. i’m not an expert in classpects and homestuck lore so there’s that too!! i just wanted to make this post because adhd means that the idea wouldn’t shut up until i finished it. This initially started as a single shitpost edit of tommyinnit talksprite but then the hiveswap 2 trailer came out and that means i have to combine my two hyperfixations.

also i have ideas about potential quadrants but idk how much of that is breaking some streamers’ boundaries about shipping (even the non romantic quads such as kismesistude, morallegiance and auspisticism) so i decided not to include it.

edit: apparently people want more so i made a discord server as a place to brainstorm!! please pm me to join!

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accursedkaleeshi · 2 years

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write the firewalls fic you Horde-playing coward /lh --Solstice

First of all, I played Forsaken so I don’t know how Horde representative they are anymore since I heard about that incident m’lady had with the tree. Unapologetic undead sympathizer, here.

Second of all I would never maintain enough focus to write a full fic like that, so I figured I could bang out a plot outline I got attached to while brainstorming for other people to write or enjoy.

Synopsis: In a moment of lucidity, Grievous takes stock of what technical systems he has access to & some things he does not. Knowing me, there would be like 5 pages right out the gate waxing poetic about his relationship with technology.

· Grievous noclips through the very particular firewalls put on his tracking systems specifically to keep him out of them because he was being nosy.

· The goths are alerted. There are consequences for his actions.

· Made to attend a Separatist HR meeting about it where they talk about him like he’s a new car & not even there. Wat Tambor is being weird. Grievous can’t tell if it is usual Wat Weird or not bc he has had some drugs forced upon him in Dooku & Poggle’s attempt to make him forget that he found the tracking signals.

o Sorry. Just. Imagined the Separatist council bitching in a conference room & Grievous is just standing behind Dooku with dilated pupils wishing he was dead. Wat Tambor keeps making eye contact that he is not registering as weird.

· Grievous was kind of used to being in altered states by then & he remembers much more than the Separatists even know about. Except for Dooku, they said all kinds of shit around him bc they thought of him as a droid. Wat Tambor dropped the name of the new encryption tech they were going to use.

· The general continues doing general things, playing dumb when it suits him. He is an Olympic gold medalist at playing dumb, maneuvering around xenophobes & the like that think he is far beneath them.

You could kind of do anything you wanted with the plot from here. A couple that would be fun were “GG succeeds in actually receiving all of the information from R2D2 in that one episode but decides to sit on some of the info for himself” or “GG decides to let witches turn Dooku into soup & strikes a deal with Ventress for Separatist Deserter shenanigans”. Most of my various trains of thought all contained Anakin being the only accessible code breaker. So here was my plot for that if you’re bored.

· The main characters manage to be nice enough to the gungans that they agree to help them make a Sombra Ult EMP bomb with their very limited & precious booma plasma. (I hate star wars bc I spent minutes of my life on the wiki looking for what the bombs were called just for them to be called boomas).

· I don’t remember exactly how the TCW Gungan vs Grievous episode happened bc we try not to think about it but that could actually be a great point of entry. Alternative episode timeline, things would occur wherein they have a hard time keeping Grievous locked down

o Bonus: Grievous would immediately pick up on Anakin & Padme & keep calling her his wife. Maybe if she gets a second alone w/ captive Grievous, Padme would lowkey chew him out about professionalism & he actually stops bc she’s obviously the smart one lol.

o Bonus bonus: I would get to write the gungans. Grievous deadpan threatens to fry Boss Nass with citrus & scallops.

· Anakin has a big brain comms jammer that reroutes all military comms in the are to one predetermined channel & is very proud of himself until he notices there is still a signal coming from Grievous & he’s like “Hey, wtf man, turn that off”

· Grievous is like “BOY do I look-?? I can’t. Turn it off yourself if you are so clever.”

· They try to be lowkey about shoving General goddamn Grievous in their ship but they can only circle awkwardly until the signal is cut. Because Dooku was definitely coming to pick up his dog.

· Grievous debated on whether he would rather deal with Dooku given at least two more levels of sheer hatred towards him freshly added or deal with, ugh, Jedi. Has a yolo-synapse misfire & tells Anakin about the firewall.

· Anakin is a huge nerd about it. He knows what it is & has been keeping up with whatever bits of public development he could find about this same encryption.

· Kenobi calls & is like “What is happening, why did I get a call from Jar Jar that was just wailing in terror??” in the middle of Anakin hacking the world on this old fucking monitor bc he wasn’t about to hook Grievous up directly to their ship.

· “Master! I don’t know why this smart-refrigerator gave you such a hard time. I caught him the first time out, with the gungan’s help! They gave us the blue bomb for getting rid of him.” Kenobi dies a little inside.

· “But uh, the Count is coming with back up & I am trying to turn off the good general’s parental lock before he gets to us. You gotta meet us somewhere. Everything is under control but holy kriff make sure you guys have something to contain this thing- GOT IT okay bye!”

· After much Scooby-doo level cat & mouse they finally manage to get Grievous more or less contained in the depths of some ancient temple structure with a lot of industrial grade cable & a lot of jedi. His faceplate is off whether via violence or for some other reason empathetic jedi reason that I want his faceplate to be off. for DRAMA

· The cool kids of the Jedi Council (& maybe Ki-adi Mundi just so I can roast him for no reason) make it a point to gather in the room with the pissed off cyborg. Very scared clone troopers keep having to control his limbs. (Except Cody, who has been waiting for this moment his whole life)

· Its hard for them to stay in the room bc he is just radiating anguished rage into the force like a sun. He’s feral & fucked up looking from previous shenanigans. He’s pissed off beyond words like a cornered animal.

· They’re all just kind of standing there trying to look hard when Yoda steps forward. Grievous wrenches forward with all the psi his pistons have & snatches the little bastard off the floor in both/all hands.

· They hit him with the EMP from hell. All the lights died & were replaced with half a dozen lightsabers pointed at Grievous, still clutching Yoda with a death grip, as he convulsed, froze, & then jolted again. His eyes lost some edge somewhere in that full body reset protocol

· Yoda wrapped his little gremlin hands around the edges of the back of his faceplate & is like “Super fucked up, you are. Tired, you are.” Grievous goes down.

· Kenobi, whom is very perturbed by this entire situation, is like “How did you do that? You think we haven’t tried that? He never even flinched before. We couldn’t pierce the anger with such suggestions.”

· Yoda troll shrug. “Disrupted perhaps, a mechanism was?”

· Anakin is helpful, “He said the tracking chip was in his head case. If we can destroy it, the Separatist’s goons can’t get the tracker back online. Honestly… shouldn’t we just put him out of his misery?”

· Half of the jedi are like “He do be fuckt up tho”. The rest are like “He has to have a trial or we forfeit our values”. But they all agreed he must have hella information. Anakin is suddenly urgent about it, realizing that if the Sith can wirelessly back access systems in Grievous they could potentially corrupt or wipe him.

· What if he self-destructs? Is that a thing, holy shit?? We did not think this through. As usual. We have to remove his wireless access point (das a wap omg). Anakin is the best mechanic on this little planet with only a few other flight crew clones that had supplied the industrial cables. He is not a doctor.

· The clones had meanwhile started taking limbs off of Grievous. They didn’t ask but none of the Jedi generals looked particularly happy but they were not in a hurry to stop them.

· Kenobi agreed to help Anakin, if not just to supervise. He’d frowned at the clones tossing limbs to the side. He couldn’t blame them, of course, Grievous could & would snuff out the life of countless clones even without the use of lightsabers. He supposed they weren’t exactly in a position to save any of the general’s dignity.

· “Alright, boys, my life is in your hands & hopefully not…his hands,” Anakin had said to the troopers. They had sort of rested Grievous at an angle where they figured he would be the least trouble & at which Anakin could stand & access the back of his head.

[To be continued if I keep on thinking about it]

#gently bullied into making content as all things should be #solstice ask #long post #sw fic #accursed!grievous

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shnowbilicat · 3 years

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Human Abathur and Human Anub'Arak

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While playing Heroes of the Storm I got the idea of drawing my main Heroes as humans! Cuz apparently I only play monsterns and creatures and aliens X'D

I decided to start with Abathur, cuz he has been on mind about this since I got the idea aaaand I love myself sum hoods and dark characters :'3

You guys have no idea how much time I spend on Abathur's and Anub'Arak's Wiki pages just reading through ther bios and what not X'D

Down below is more information if ya wanna check it out but tl;dr I adore these two and I lowkey ship them too huehuehue~ ewe

So to keep it short and simple, Abathur is the 'Evolution Master' of the Zerg's, aka he's the guy you go to for upgrades in game ... and that's basically his whole character!

Abathur is pretty much obsessed with evolving his race into more efficient deadlier creatures, even going so far as intentionally trying to wage war against the other races in Starcraft and going against the wishes of the new queen Zerg. He knows perfection is impossible, but he can at least try to get very close to it.

This also reflects in his mannerisms and speech; he speaks just using the most important words, everything else is a waste of time. He even explicitly says he dislikes using pronouns X'D

He's not a fighter, in HOTS he's a support character that specializes in enhancing his teammates to the max, while he sits somewhere hidden.

He's a calm and collected guy, but thanks to the Blizzard charme some of his in game actions and voicelines to reveal a silly side of the character ... which I intend on using 100% ewe

As a human, Abathur still has his rather calm and collected personality, but spiced up with a straight forward approach to others and a little bit of snark as well! He likes to kidnap his teammates into his lab to do experiments on and try to improve them.

Speaking of his lab, instead of the fleshy, boney style the Zerg have going on, in this AU Zerg's have something called 'BioTech', a technology that runs on Zerg essence to function, being alive to an extend too. Fluids, pods and pipes everywhere, dark and black colors and harsh metal machines that are spiky and everything is about in the same style like Abathur's stingers (See reference picture above thxx)

Abathur is basically the crazy scientist in this Human AU and Zagara (The current Zerg queen), Dehaka, Artanis and Anub'Arak have to put up with his antics while spending time with each other cuz idk the Nexus either forced them to or the Zerg's rescued Artanis and Anub'Arak from their death and they owe the Zergs something idk X'D

Anub'Arak is a character from Warcraft and if I read it correctly Anub was once I proud King of a land called Narub. After daring to stand against the Lich King he sadly died, but got resurrected as an undead by said Lich King to serve as an unstopable force of nature.

As far as I understood it Anub did die at least once more and yet again brought back to life, now serving another Lich King. He even killed his own people while serving the Lich King, against his own will of course.

I personally only got to play Warcraft 3 as a small child and always went with Anub as my Hero character cuz ... giant beetle go brrr ewe

And's what he is in game too! A tanky power machine and poops out bbys now and again pfft X'D

Even with his brainwash, Anub is a proud and strong character personality vise. He's a proud Nerubian and King and even though I sadly haven't seen a lot about his personality on wikis, his voice lines are funny and quirky and URGH luv him <33

While thinking of a Human Abathur design and already imagining funny situations Anub has to go through while living with the Zerg's I started to brainstorm Anub's design ... which was difficult af :'3

Anub is a giant beetle monster and pharaoh inspired. Love the concept to death, but making it into a more modern-ish aestheticly pleasing design that doesn't go overboard, easy to draw and still looks coolio was tough ...

I spend some time googling pharaoh costumes and even looked up what modern egyptians would probably wear and it gave me the confidence to try some things out! I decided to go with what comes to my mind first and it worked out well! Though I had difficulty deciding on the color shades as Anub has surprisingly a lot of details and colors, but I'm happy with what I decided for now.

Espacially his hair and skin. I wanted him to have deep purple hair and darker skin, cuz he's basically an egyptian mummy and I wanted to try myself on darker skinned characters ... he's so handsome I'm literally having a crush on him qwq

Anub in this AU is picking up on his personality in game; proud, strong, calm, a good sense of humor and a small dislike for Abathur; in a voice line when Anub'Arak would kill an Abathur he says 'I eat worms like you for breakfast' sooo I like taking that as a nice relationship starter for the two ewe

Of course Abathur is intrigued by Anub's undead-ness and always bugs the Nerubian for experiments and samples of his blood and what not.

In battle Anub mostly either uses scythes or gloves that resemble his ingame claws. He of course can also summon small beetles to aid him in battle and even creat two pairs of beetle wings under his cape and his skirt for better mobility and flight. He can also use his bandages to wrap people up in place (Compared to his nets and cocoons in game) and under his bandages he bares his scars for his fight against the Lich King.

I really adore him, both because I kinda grew up with him and his design, he and Abathur are now my bbys and I adore and love them so so much qWq

I do plan on creating Dehaka, Zagara and Artanis in the future hopefully, but I just wanted to upload my two favs cuz I love them already and mmmmgh they so gud :'33

#heroes of the storm #starcraft #warcraft #abathur #anub'arak #reference sheet #art

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duhragonball · 3 years

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Hellsing Liveblog Afterward

So, this is just a place for me to toss in some other Hellsing stuff I wanted to talk about outside the reading of Hellsing itself.

Okay so first off, I wanted to document this cool trivia I noticed about Rip van Winkle, the werewolf(?) with the musket that fires magic bullets. Her weapon is based on the 19th Century German opera Der Freischütz. The opera is based on a story published by Johann August Apel in 1811, and this writing was based on German folklore. The legend involves a marksman who makes a contract with the devil and receives seven magic bullets. Six will hit whatever the marksman wants, but the seventh is at the sole discretion of the devil himself. In Hellsing, the Major speaks to Rip about her own musket and reminds her that the opera ends with Zamiel, the devil, coming to claim his due. This is intended to foreshadow Alucard counterattack on the H.M.S. Eagle, where he plows through Rip’s defenses and kills her in gruesome fashion.

So I went back and counted all the times Rip van Winkle shoots her musket, just to see if there was any special significant to it. The first was when the old Nazi officers complain to the Major, and Rip shoots the Colonel’s cane before he can strike the Major with it. At least, I’m pretty sure that was the idea here. The cane breaks and everyone looks around and Zorin points to the lady with the gun to indicate who just did that. So that’s one bullet.

After assuming control of the H.M.S. Eagle, Rip van Winkle meets with the Eagle’s first officer, who betrayed the crew to Millennium in exchange for vampire powers. She then betrays him and his fellow traitors, killing them all with a single shot from her musket. This is where we first find out what her ability is. So that’s two.

The British Navy tries to take back the ship by sending a helicopter full of SEALs, but Rip destroys the entire team with another shot from her musket. So that’s three shots fired.

While Hellsing prepares their own response, the Navy tries again, this time sending a fighter plane to sink the Eagle with missiles, but Rip shoots down the missiles and the plane with one bullet. Four.

This is where I started to wonder if there was a particular pattern to Rip’s use of the musket. I’m pretty sure she just uses one bullet and can fire it as many times as she pleases, but she was literally singing songs from the opera and it seemed kind of superfluous to have her foil two separate attack by the Navy. The first one showed us that conventional forces wouldn’t get the job done, so the second one only makes sense if Kouta Hirano was just trying to add to the count.

Then Alucard arrives aboard a modified SR-71 Blackbird. At 85,000 ft in the air, he’s out of range, but then he nosedives onto the deck of the ship. Rip fires again to destroy the Blackbird before it crashes into them. Five.

Alucard survives the crash and wipes out all of Rip’s soldiers while she has a panic attack. Cornered, she finally gathers her wits and attacks Alucard. Her bullet hurts him, but he eventually catches it in his teeth, neutralizing her weapon and leaving her at his mercy. That’s shot number six.

I was hoping this shot would be the seventh, since the seventh bullet in Der Freischütz belongs to the devil, and Alucard caught this one in his teeth, but no. Then I remembered that the musket gets fired one last time...

... in London, when Alucard releases the familiars of all the victims he’s consumed over the centuries, including Rip Van Winkle. She fires the musket once more, but this time it’s Alucard directing the shot into the helicopters of the Ninth Crusade. Shot number seven is at the discretion of the devil himself, and “Dracula” is a diminutive of “Dracul”, a Romanian word for “devil”. Neat stuff.

Okay, so now let’s talk about Seras, because that’s kind of my jam. What’s the deal with this line? “Her existence is somewhat of a marvel. You could say it’s somewhat of a joke. Perhaps she herself has not even noticed yet!!”

That’s the Major discussing Sir Integra and Seras in Volume 5. He stresses that neither is to be underestimates, and I think he makes a good case for Integra, but with Seras he never actually comes to the point. So what’s up with that?

Of course, there’s the truth we saw in the final battle. Once she finally drank blood of her own volition, Seras became a full-on vampire and one of the most powerful warriors on the field. She destroyed the Captain quite handily, and he was the strongest guy Millennium had. But this seems a tad obvious? Why not just spell it out for Zorin. “Hey, our intel says she’s weaker than expected because she won’t drink blood, but that could change at a moment’s notice, and she’s still strong enough to take down a lot of our soldiers, so proceed with caution.”

I’m not saying the Major is wrong. He told Zorin not to engage, and he made the right call. I’m just wondering what the “joke” is exactly.

I think it might be one of two things. By the end of Hellsing, Seras demonstrates a similar level of ability to Alucard. Sunlight appears to have no effect on her, she can summon familiars like Alucard, and regenerate her wounds with great alacrity. I’m pretty sure she’d be about as hard to kill as Alucard himself, which Integra said was a product of Hellsing “enhancements”, rather than natural vampire power. Except Seras was never “enhanced”, she seems to have just inherited these “super-vampire” powers from Alucard when he turned her. The Major and Doctor may have anticipated this, and the “joke” was that Seras could completely upset the balance of their plans, except she’s too squeamish to drink the blood that would make this possible.

Or, the joke might be that Alucard turned Seras at all. He just sort of did this out of nowhere, and I’m pretty sure no one saw that coming. Millennium and Walter had been keeping tabs on Hellsing for decades, and not much changed until Alucard decided to add Seras to the group. The vampires in Millennium’s Last Battalion were all produced through the Doctor’s artificial vampire research, which was based upon intense study of Mina Harker, the last person Alucard turned into a vampire before he met Seras.

So from that standpoint, Seras represents a superior version of Mina, who represents the ideal that the Doctor was trying to achieve. At best, his finest artificial vampires could only be as strong as Mina Harker, and Seras got that way in one night by a twist of fate.

I guess there’s no way to be sure what the Major meant. I checked the OVA subs and dubs and they basically repeat the same line, so there’s nothing for me to triangulate there. And maybe it only refers to Seras being a joke in the sense that she was mostly comic relief up to that point. Even that badass moment she had against Jan Valentine’s ghouls probably didn’t impress anyone at the Millennium office.

Finally, I checked out Hellsing: The Dawn, and it really wasn’t worth the trouble. I couldn’t find any official English release, so I sort of gave up on it, but I finally ran across it last week and decided to check it out.

Basically, it’s only six chapters, and very little actually gets done in those six chapters. I’m not sure if Kouta Hirano is just running super late on the thing, of if he abandoned it completely, but my guess is he got this far in and decided there really wasn’t any point in continuing.

Let me break it down for you.

Chapter 1: Walter is sent to the Major’s facility in Warsaw, to destroy the vampire research. He jumps out of a plane with Alucard’s coffin.

Chapter 2: The Doctor reports on his progress to the Major, and they briefly discuss “She” aka Mina Harker. From what I gather, Mina is still alive/undead in 1944. Then Walter crashes into their facility and declares his intentions to kill them all.

Chapter 3: The Major is impressed with Walter’s power and offers him a place in his command. Walter refuses and the Major leaves him to die at the hands of the Captain.

Chapter 4: Walter fights the Captain, and Alucard finally emerges from his coffin in Girlycard form.

Chapter 5: Walter and Alucard fight the Captain, who now stands revealed as a werewolf. The Major somehow recognizes Alucard on sight and takes an interest in observing the battle.

Chapter 6: Alucard leaves to go hunt down the Captain’s superiors, leaving Walter to fight alone. Alucard then encounters Rip van Winkle and defeats her with ease. He seems like he’s about to kill her when some menacing figures approach from the shadows...

In other words, not a whole lot actually happens that we couldn’t have guessed from the original Hellsing manga. At the rate he was going, it would have taken Hirano maybe 30 or 40 chapters to actually get to anything truly juicy, and I’m not sure the audience would have wanted to wait around for that. The main problem is that we already know how this ends. None of the good guys or bad guys die, because they all show up in Hellsing 55 years later. The Major will lose badly enough that he has to evacuate the whole operation to Brazil, and that interests me because somehow he has to lose this battle, but not so badly that he can’t escape.

What disappoints me is that there’s really only three things of interest about this part of the Hellsing mythos: Walter’s decision to betray England, Alucard’s relationship with Walter, and the Major’s relocation from Euope to South America. The Dawn appears to gloss over all of these. The Major asks Walter to switch sides in their very first encounter. Walter refuses, but we know he’ll say yes later, so there doesn’t feel like there’s any conflict to this. So far, Walter comes off like a little shithead, so if he changes his mind at the end of this story it’ll seem completely capricious. I’d like to think the Major could say something persuasive to convince him, or Alucard could piss Walter off enough to push him into the Major’s arms, but none of that seems to be happening.

The Girlycard form is taken completely for granted. Al shows up and Walter immediately takes offense. He knows Alucard doesn’t normally look like this and he sees no reason for this new look. Al just says the same thing he says about it in 1999, that form and appearance mean nothing to him. Well if it doesn’t mean anything to Alucard or Walter, what’s the point?

The way I always imagined it, the Girlycard form had a lot of emotional baggage for Walter. I figured he met Alucard in this form, and they spent some time together hunting down the Major. Walter fell in love with Girlycard, even though he should have known better, and when Alucard finally abandoned the form, he knew that there was no way his feelings would ever be returned. And this would build resentment within Walter, making him more interested in joining the Major.

Instead, none of that seems to be happening. This is just one big long fight in one building. Hirano already threw his biggest gun at Walter, so there’s no buildup to the Captain. Alucard won’t fight the Captain, but it’s unclear what else he’s supposed to do instead. There might be a good story in all of this, but these first six chapters don’t encourage me. Also, they keep jumping over to check in on Arthur Hellsing in London. I don’t think this guy is Integra’s father, but maybe her grandfather had the same first name? He looks cool, but he has nothing to do. He’s like thousands of miles removed from the action, so anything he says or does just comes back to him talking about how tough and cool Walter is. So yeah, I think The Dawn is a huge waste of time, and maybe Kouta Hirano reached the same conclusion.

And... yeah, that’s all I’ve got. In May, I’ll be liveblogging another comic. Will it be as successful? Only time will tell...

#2021hellsingliveblog #hellsing #hellsing: the dawn #alucard #rip van winkle #seras victoria #walter c dornez

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blue-bower · 3 years

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Lotor Rewrite

I’ve given my thoughts on how horrendously Prince Lotor’s character arc was handled. I’ve reblogged a couple posts that sum up my thoughts on the matter. https://blue-bower.tumblr.com/post/185061129226 https://blue-bower.tumblr.com/post/185061352401 https://blue-bower.tumblr.com/post/182574536376 So, this is going to be my personal re-write of the end of season 6, and the events following in seasons 7 and 8. This is not going to be a rewrite of the entire last 2 seasons; I'm just focusing on Lotor (and Allura later on). There's just so many forced/rushed plot points and distasteful choices on the writers' part that it would take an entire essay to break everything down. But ultimately I feel like Lotor - and at the very end of the series, Allura - were given the worst treatment of any character. Also, keep in mind that it’s been four years since I’ve watched the series in full, so I may not be remembering things 100% accurately. But frankly I do not feel like returning to season 6-8 again just to flesh out a headcanon. This also isn’t a fully set-in-stone fanfic or script, just a general gist of ideas. I have several ideas for potential rewrites with various branching paths.

There are two main ways that I believe the end of season 6 could be revamped.

In the first rewrite, the plot twist with the dead Alteans in the lab never happens. A lot of people saw it as a very ham-fisted way of adding conflict for the hell of it. There could (and imo, should ) still be an Altean colony founded by Lotor, and Romelle would still be a character that is introduced to the Paladins at some point. But I feel like the only thing she would really contribute - at least in season 6 - is siding with Allura in trying to warn Lotor about the dangers of messing with quintessence. If she had a bigger part in the last couple seasons, I personally would have liked to see more of her learning magic and fighting from Allura.

In my opinion, there was already a plot element in place that could have just as easily led to a conflict and possible falling-out between Lotor and the Paladins: Giving the Galrans access to unlimited quintessence. It baffles me that no-one at any point even questioned this, or tried to warn Lotor of the possible ramifications of handing over this kind of power to a power-hungry empire. They just went along with it. So I think they should have steadily built up the unease with going through with this plan, ultimately leading to a battle over whether the gate should be destroyed. It could still be revealed that Lotor did have the ulterior motive of starting his own empire, using quintessence for his own gain. But it would still paint Lotor as a sympathetic antagonist, who truly believed he was doing the right thing.

If the twist with the Altean colony & lab has to happen, then at the very least, it should have been given more time to be resolved. The audience should have been given more answers.

So in this rewrite, the confrontation with Lotor and Romelle still happens. She explains what she and Keith saw, she explains her brother's death and sees Lotor attempting to cover up his death. Lotor still looks like a deer in headlights, but also seems to look guilty. He doesn't deny the facility existing, however. Cue his ass still getting knocked out by Allura.

Whether the facility happens or not, season 6 still leads to Voltron and Lotor confronting each other at the rift gate. In the first scenario, Lotor tries to reason with them; he claims that under his new leadership, the Galrans will not be using the rift for evil purposes. In the second scenario, Lotor pleads with Allura to let him explain himself; that he never intended to kill Alteans. Allura and the Paladins are conflicted on what to do, and whether to believe him. Most importantly, though,

Allura does not compare him to his shitty abusive father.

If anything, I think she may point out that he's actually a lot more like Honerva than he's willing to admit. It still stings, but doesn't send him into a violent frenzy or a cringeworthy monologue fitting of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. Allura tries to compromise with him; she says she'll come with him to the Altean colony if he destroys the gate. He refuses.

I can see either of these rewrites branching into two potential scenarios: A solo battle between Lotor and Voltron like we saw at the end of season 6, or an interruption to their confrontation: A fleet of Galran ships appearing in an attempt to claim both the phase gate and Voltron. Lotor and the Paladins are forced to cooperate, and get into a battle with the Galrans. Lotor realizes the only way to get them to back off is to destroy the gate, but he also tells the paladins that his ship can phase into the Quintessence field at will - which prompts Voltron to do the same. He convinces them to phase there with him after they destroy the gate.

In either of these conflicts, Lotor starts to lose control of himself in the Quintessence due to his stress and heightened emotions. In a rage, he starts phasing in and out of the quintessence field in order to attack the Galran fleet outside, despite his own advice on staying hidden. The Quintessence starts messing with his mind, making him start to go power-mad (because let's face it, this scene is still hot).

The Paladins try to get through to him, and Lotor fights off the darkness that corrupted his father. But it isn't enough. Voltron is forced to fight him, and blasts him into unconsciousness.

And instead of leaving him to fucking rot in the quintessence field, they manage to save him in time.

Mortally wounded, they place him in a stasis pod. It's going to take him a while to recover, but it's clear that the quintessence is healing him - and quite possibly making him undead like his parents.

In the meantime, Allura wants Romelle to take her to the colony (or the research facility if that plot point stays), but Romelle keeps refusing, saying it's too hard for her to go back - not to mention the fact that travelling there is extremely dangerous and has the effect of warping time - plus it's imperative that Voltron focuses on undoing the damage done by Lotor creating a rift in spacetime.

I see most of season 7 playing out as normal, since it mainly focused on the Paladins fighting for Earth. I feel like we should have gotten a season 9, because there was just too much going on in season 8 and not enough time to tie up loose ends. The main plot point I would change is Lance’s confession. He does still confess his love to her, but acknowledges that she may not reciprocate it. And she doesn’t. She tells him that she’s just not in a place to move on yet, or pursue another relationship. And he respects her decision.

After Lotor recovers, he isn't quite the same. He seemingly hasn't been corrupted the way his parents were, but his Altean marks are now permanently glowing bright purple, and his eyes are glowing light yellow, mirroring the vision that Honerva had of him.

The others reveal that everyone's actions in the Quintessence had altered time, and two years have passed. He feels remorseful for his actions, but also angry that the Paladins didn’t listen to him. They nearly get into a fight with him because he is still somewhat unstable, and very clearly carrying a massive amount of power within him due to the quintessence, putting him on par with Honerva’s abilities. Allura demands him to take her to the colony, against Romelle's wishes. Lotor’s powerful magic enables them to transport the castle/ship directly to the colony; something they weren’t able to do before because of the massive amount of spacial distortion coming from that region. And again, depending on whether the facility is kept, it can go one of two ways.

They arrive at the colony, and it’s clear that the Alteans don’t worship the ground he walks on the way they did before. Not only do his glowing eyes remind them of Zarkon, but Romelle has been sowing the seeds of distrust in some of the Alteans since the beginning. I know a lot of people were expecting Romelle to be outed as a traitor, but personally, I don’t really see her as the type to try and frame him. I just believe she genuinely disrusts him because of what Galrans did to Alteans in the first place, and she doesn’t feel comfortable with him declaring himself as their new ruler. But hey, maybe there could be a twist that Romelle lied about the facility all along? Some food for thought. But the combination of genuine unease about the half-Galran, and the testimony of what happened between him and Voltron, makes it clear to Lotor that he no longer has their complete trust. If the facility stays: When they arrive at the colony, there is almost immediate distrust and maybe even hostility toward Lotor. As it turns out, before Romelle returned to the Paladins, she told other Alteans what she saw that night her brother died. He tries to talk them down, explain that what he was doing, he did for the sake of Alteans and their future. Some of the Alteans don’t believe Romelle to begin with; others want to banish Lotor. Since he can’t persuade the masses to believe him, he tells Allura to come with him. When they arrive, Allura sees the chambers that Romelle described. When asked about Romelle's brother again, Lotor explains that he tried to save him, and that he never intended to kill the Alteans. He only wanted to harvest a partial amount of quintessence, because it would be the key to locating Oriande. This would make sense as to why he specifically needed quintessence from Chosen Alteans. But somewhere along the lines, something went wrong with the process. Lotor attempted to cover up the deaths, partially out of shame, but also because he knew Romelle already didn't trust him and didn't want more reason for her to lead a revolt against him. Though he feels remorse, Allura calls him out on his bullshit: Covering up the tragedy was a cowardly move. The consequences of Lotor always being the type to leave unfavorable outcomes in the past and keep moving forward have finally caught up to him, and now it’s his responsibility to face his mistakes. At the very least, he gives the Alteans’ bodies a proper burial. The arc ends on a somber note. Lotor is not a hero, nor a villain. He is the culmination of the tragic life that he had been forced to live; for better and for worse.

After this point, it's up in the air as to how the last season (or two) could be rewritten. I can still see a plot with Honerva trying to recruit Alteans to her side in the time span that Lotor was gone, manipulating them into believing that Lotor would have wanted them to continue Honerva’s experiments, and to fight Voltron in revenge for what they did to him. But ultimately, Lotor would confront them and force them to surrender. All I know for sure is that, before the final endgame battle, Lotor would sacrifice himself for Voltron and to protect the universe. Likely in a very intense, emotional battle against his mother. I know that the most ideal outcome would be for him to stay alive, marry Allura, and rule the new Altean colony together. But this series has never been a stranger to death and the theme of sacrifice. If done well, I think a heroic sacrifice - especially from a character that was previously a villain - can have an extremely positive impact on a story. Maybe, in a scene mirroring his first encounter with the White Lion on Oriande (maybe Honerva has taken possession of the White Lion instead of just destroying it?), he would realize that fighting won’t do any good anymore. He’s forced to surrender. And in doing so, frees the white lion, the massive amount of quintessence within him, and all of Oriande. Honerva no longer holds power over the Alteans. And in a tragic sense, it means that she can no longer be accepted by Alteans either.

I’ve been very back and forth on whether or not Allura would still die in the end. I completely understand the fanbase’s frustration with the decision to kill her off. It felt very gross for PoC fans to see a main PoC character die in such an unceremonious manner. It felt like a cheap way for them to pay homage to the fact that Allura dies in the original series. But like I said, if done well, the theme of heroic sacrifice will leave a positive lasting impact on a series. On top of that, Allura has been shown since the beginning of the series to be an extremely self-sacrificing character. She was willing to put her life on the line on many occasions; and I almost feel like the scene with her surrendering to the white lion was foreshadowing her ultimate fate. If Allura does stay alive, then I feel like she would become queen of the new Altean colony, but would still leave on diplomatic missions across the universe. Altea IS NOT RECOVERED after all the space-time bullshit. The universe doesn’t just magically overlook complete time paradoxes to bring back dead planets. Allura and the Alteans have long come to terms with the fact that they will never get their original home back, but they can start anew. But, if Allura does die, then it damn well be a goddamn Iron Man from End Game moment. No cheap off-screen Deus Ex Machina, no half-assed goodbyes. Her sacrifice would leave a lasting impact through the universe/multiverse. We’d need a solid full episode of the Paladins (AND CORAN BECAUSE HOW THE FUCK DID THEY LEAVE HIM OUT OF REACTING TO HER DEATH) mourning her passing. Truthfully, the ultimate reason I believe they both might die is because I’d want to keep the final image of the series (before all the epilogue stuff). It’s such a profoundly beautiful image that perfectly encapsulates the sacrifices that Allura and Lotor made in order to bring peace to the universe.

And that’s obviously meant to be Lotor right next to her. The figure is purple. You can see his hair, boots, even the outline of his skirt thing. Why would they put this in if Lotor was always intended to end up as a villain? The fact that they kept that silhouette after treating his character arc so poorly makes it clear to me that he was meant to have more of an overall impact on the story, but was ultimately thrown to the wayside just so the writers could go “WhAt A tWiSt!!!”

And that about wraps it up. Like I said, there isn’t one set storyline that I have in mind, because I have a few different ideas. IMO literally any path the story could’ve taken would be better than what we were given. If anyone has any suggestions or feedback, feel free to comment/reblog and add your thoughts. Again, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve watched the series in full, so there may be some key moments I’m forgetting. What would you change?

#voltron #voltron: legendary defender #lotor #prince lotor #vld #headcanon #allura #princess allura

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enkelimagnus · 3 years

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A Castle in the Forest

Percy x Vex’ahlia, Chapter 13, 3200 words,

A Modern AU, in which Vex is a park ranger taking over the Alabaster Sierras post, and finds much more than she bargained for.

Read on AO3

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Vex steps out of the temple, Vax by her side, and the light of the day feels wrong. It feels like decades have passed while they discussed what to do about Percival de Rolo, not merely a few hours.

Maybe it’s because the inside of the Lady’s Chamber is as barren as the Zenith is desolate. She gets the minimalist aesthetic that comes with the Lawbearer but she wishes there were some colorful tapestries to at least brighten up the room.

It’s midday, which is the only reason it’s this bright out. It’s Duscar 2nd, the shortest day of the year, and it means especially a lot so far North. There will only be a couple hours more of daylight and whatever work Vex had leftover for the day will have to wait until tomorrow.

Keeper Yennen is the only one of the group that stayed behind. Father Reynal is already halfway through the square, walking towards his temple and the cemetery. The rest of them gather a few feet from the door, looking at each other with the awkwardness of recently-introduced coworkers.

They form quite the motley crew. A cleric of an all-but-forgotten goddess, a barbarian, two half-elf twins, and the only remaining alive and safe member of the ruling family of the city. She’s barely counting in the two aging priests that provide mostly support and won’t be let anywhere near the fiend.

This feels doomed to fail. A small part of Vex tells her regularly that she should run away and leave these people to their own devices, that this doesn’t concern her. They should all be lucky her professional consciousness is stronger than that little survivalist voice.

“Vex?” Pike’s voice resounds, soft and light and Vex looks down at the other woman.

“Yes?”

Pike looks at her with an apologetic smile. “I wanted to apologize. I didn’t know at the time what was happening. I should probably have warned you once I was made aware of the situation…”

Vex shakes her head. “It’s okay, Pike, it wasn’t your responsibility. You have nothing to do with it.”

It was the priests’ responsibility. It should have been them who warned Vex of what the fiend was. But they’d covered it up. They potentially had lost precious time, because they hadn’t let her do her job.

Pike smiles at her. “I wasn’t lying about the… being sent by my goddess thing,” she points out. “I don’t think I would have left Westrunn if that wasn’t for her.”

Vex raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“I have family there. My great-grandpa. And I’m trying to bring some sort of Sarenrae worship back, build a new temple. It’s not super easy, even with this guy,” she points at Grog. Grog smiles at Vex, a smile that would have been scary if Vex hadn’t already seen how soft he was around Pike. “Sarenrae was forgotten a long time ago.”

Vex doesn’t know much about Sarenrae, mostly only what Pike has told her. She nods. “I see. Well I hope either way that it will go well for you. It seems like a good goddess to have a congregation of.”

Pike chuckles. “Yeah, she’s no Betrayer,” she nods. “Alright then. I think Grog and I will go get lunch. Have a good day, and see you at the next meeting.”

Vex bids them goodbye before turning back to her brother, who seems in the middle of a conversation with Cassandra.

“It’s Barren Eve,” Vax is saying when Vex settles next to him. “Are you going to light candles for your family?”

Cassandra seems a little taken aback by that. “Probably,” she replies after a small moment. “What happened here wasn’t really a war, but it’s close enough.”

Vex crosses her arms. “I understand you don’t want to relive what happened, but I’d really appreciate knowing the background of this entire story. It might give us some idea of where to start looking for the fiend your brother has elected to make a deal with.”

Cassandra observes her for a moment, eyes heavy with horrors Vex can’t even imagine. She feels a little guilty for bringing this up over and over again but she needs to know. She can’t go out of her way to save a De Rolo without knowing why he’s in this situation in the first place.

“I can tell you the story,” Cassandra nods. “However I’d like… some privacy?” She gestures at the open square around them. “And it will be more comfortable somewhere where we can all sit. I can bring you to my home if you’d like.”

That’s a sign of goodwill if Vex has ever seen any. Vax is already acquiescing before Vex opens her mouth to accept. He seems to like her. Maybe it’s that sibling thing. Cassandra isn’t a twin, but she’s a sister.

They quickly start making their way to Cassandra’s home. They are mostly silent while on the road. They don’t have a lot of things to talk about. There’s a lot of heaviness between them. Vex doesn’t really feel like dissipating it just yet, if she’s being honest with herself. It’s petty, but it feels good.

To Vex’s surprise, Cassandra guides them off into an alleyway and behind the Alcove, the shop Vex visited on her very first visit into town. She remembers meeting Keyleth there, with those strange clockwork machines that she now knows to be the work of Percival himself.

Cassandra opens a door at the back of the Alcove’s building. Behind it is a narrow stairwell. Vax closes the door behind himself as they walk up into Cassandra’s home.

It’s an apartment, Vex can only see the first room she steps in, all other doors are closed. It’s tidy, but lived in. There are many books lining shelves against the walls, a lot that looks like textbooks.

There’s a small clockwork machine on one of the shelves. There’s a picture framed on the wall, a family portrait. Vex counts two adults and seven children of various sizes. There are twins in there.

“You had a big family,” Vex points out.

Cassandra nods sadly. “It’s been strange to be alone,” she replies.

Vex feels like an asshole again.

They settle around the light wooden table in the middle of the room. Cassandra serves them some coffee and they let the silence settle around them, heavy and thick. Vex doesn’t know exactly how to start this, how to ask again, so she just sort of waits.

“So… my family,” Cassandra starts, shifting a little. She seems to be getting comfortable for a long tale. “The De Rolos founded Whitestone in the early seventh century. We came from Wildemount, wrecked our ship on the Shearing Channels. The Sun Tree was already there, glowing in the winter, and we settled around it. As time passed, we discovered the whitestone of the Alabaster Sierras had a few properties of interest to spellcasters. It allowed us to develop trade with the home continent.”

Vex didn’t expect the story to start this far back in the past. She expected a retelling of the last few years, perhaps, but this is much closer to a history lesson.

Cassandra pauses and takes a sip of coffee before continuing.

“Wildemount is not like Tal’Dorei or Issylra. Arcane magic is much more developed and studied there than it is here. They have very important arcane societies. One of those societies is called the Cerberus Assembly,” she explains. “They’re a group of mages, maybe the most influential political power on Wildemount. And they had great use for whitestone. That’s how my family eventually came in contact with Archmage Delilah Briarwood, one of the eight archmages of the Cerberus Assembly.”

She swallows hard, her eyes staring at the table. Vex already knows from this look that Delilah Briarwood is going to become one of the main players of this story. She thinks she’s heard the Briarwood name before… or maybe it was Cerberus Assembly. Perhaps her father has met with some of the members of that assembly before, or they’ve come to Syngorn. The elven society is filled with scholars of the arcane.

Cassandra starts talking again, with a voice sounding almost detached from the story.

“They had mostly business relations with her. She was deeply interested in Whitestone’s history, in the Sun Tree and the Alabaster Sierras’ tale of creation during the Calamity. They weren’t great friends, but they knew each other well enough. So when Lord Sylas and Lady Delilah Briarwood came knocking at the doors of the castle, looking for a place to stay as they had been unjustly driven out of the Assembly, my parents believed them.”

Her voice is clouded with bitterness. So that was probably a lie then. Vex swallows. She can feel the tension in the memories building, can feel the dread wrapping around those words. The longer Cassandra talks, the more she fears the climax of it.

“I don’t know what they said that made my parents believe all their stories. I was about 14 at the time, and I wasn’t allowed in the office when those conversations were held,” she swallows. “But the Briarwoods settled in our home with their personal doctor, Anna Ripley, and then their friends trickled into the city. The doctor took great interest in Percival’s studies, growing close to his tutor, Professor Anders. Unbeknownst to all of us, they were plotting to take over.”

Her hand around the cup tightens, the knuckles white with the tension.

“We held a feast for the anniversary of their arrival, exactly one year after they’d found us. They’d become part of the family. We toasted to them. And then, they started murdering us. Sylas Briarwood was actually not a man but an undead creature, and his strength and seeming taste for blood was the end of my mother and father. And then they hunted the rest of the family, as well as the staff. For some reason, they’d decided to keep the youngest of us alive. Percival, the twins, Ludwig and I. I’m guessing the doctor’s fondness for Percy was his saving grace.”

Cassandra has a soft, bitter chuckle. Vex almost mirrors it. It is strange to think of saving graces when she has seen what Percival has become.

“The details are fuzzy, but somehow I managed to get Percy and I out. We ran through the secret tunnel, the one you probably were in, to freedom. Well… he did,” she looks down again. “They had archers on the wall and they caught me. Percy ran away as I was hit with arrows and… that’s the last time I saw him un-possessed. I think I died there, from being shot through with arrows. Yet, I awakened later on in my very own bed in the castle. They’d cleared out the bodies and styled themselves Lord and Lady of Whitestone, and took me in for… the Gods only know why…”

Pain is now obvious over her face. She’s struggled to keep it in the entire time, but the coldness and detachment she affected before are gone.

“For three years, I was theirs. Eventually, I stopped thinking myself a de Rolo, but rather a Briarwood. They called me their daughter,” she whispers. “The city tried fighting back, but I was playing a game with the rebellion, spying on them for information. I still don’t know if I was doing it of my own volition. But because of me, many of my people died… All their attempts at gaining freedom failed.”

There are tears in her eyes now, her voice is shaking and so are her hands. Vex doesn’t know what to do. She wishes she could comfort her but… She honestly doesn’t believe there is anything she can say that will make any of this better. Cassandra was used and abused by these Briarwoods.

“One day, Percy showed up, with a weapon of his own making, a demon riding his soul and he murdered them all. He murdered the Briarwoods, he murdered Ripley, that he’d loved so much. He murdered his teacher, and the Briarwoods’ friends, and then he turned his gun on me.”

Her breath itches and a sob wracks its way out of her throat.

“His eyes were black, there was this smoke around him, and he wasn’t my brother anymore,” Cassandra sobs. “But he still… he told me to run. He managed to fight the demon and tell me to run and I did. He tried to take a shot at me but missed.”

Run. Please. The man’s voice and his eyes are still carved in Vex’s memory. She can’t imagine what Cassandra must have felt when Vex told her what happened to her, how he let her go but still shot her.

“That’s the last time I saw him,” she leans back against the chair, a bit calmer, as if emptied out of the sorrow for a moment. “Keyleth is the only one who ever gets to go see him. And she can’t tell him where I am. Or he’ll come for me.”

It’s fucking tragic.

Vex’s mind seems to run empty for a long moment. No wonder no one will talk about the massacre. Or the massacres, plural, as it is. There are so many questions that suddenly press to the forefront. Lord Briarwood had been undead with a taste for blood? That’s… almost something out of scary stories for children.

“How long has it been?” Vax asks next to her. He seems to be managing this much better than Vex is.

“About two years?” Cassandra replies. “Something like that. I admit weeks and months seem to blend into each other lately.”

That makes sense. Vex can pretty much say the same about the months of her recovery before she moved to Whitestone. Trying to move on from traumatic events feels like trying to run through jelly. Days repeat themselves until it’s suddenly six months later and you feel just slightly better.

Vex herself isn’t completely out of it. Some days, she barely recognizes herself. She has Vax, and Trinket. What does Cassandra have? A memory, a shadow of the brother she can’t seem to help.

“He taught me all I know about constellations, you know? We’d sneak out onto the high balconies at night and he’d tell me all he’d learned about them in books, before I could read.” She smiles then, bitterness filling her eyes. “I’m never getting him back, am I?”

Vex feels a knot in her throat forming, and this time she can’t stay quiet. Even if the words that come up don’t feel like they fit. She can’t think of any other ones. But she has to say something right? Maybe nothing will ever exactly fit, and it’s either this… almost meaningless platitude or silence.

“We will do our best.” It rings empty, falling flat as Cassandra laughs. “I can’t promise him back, but… we will do what we can.”

“I suppose that has to be enough. If only I had…” She trails off, and it isn’t hard to see where her thoughts have gone.

“Staying wouldn’t have changed anything. You would simply be dead.” Vex doesn’t want to hurt the girl with her bluntness, but she sees her flinch regardless. “It wasn’t your fault. He wasn’t your brother anymore when he came back.”

She looks over at Vax for a half a second, his quiet sad smile that never really reaches his eyes, the comfort he’s so obviously trying to exude, draping his body in the least threatening way, open palms on the table, knowing how to exist in a way that won’t make someone like Cassandra or Vex run away.

He heard what Cassandra said about being trapped. And maybe even more than Vex, he recognized what it meant.

What would she be feeling if Vax had made a deal with a demon to help her get rid of Saundor?

She can’t quite imagine that black smoke around Vax’s golden skin instead of Percy’s much paler one. She can’t imagine it living inside of him. Forcing herself to imagine it makes feel a little nauseous.

“I… know what it’s like for your loved ones to get hurt when they come to save you,” Vex adds after a moment.

The bramble-like arrow shot by Fenthras going through Vax’s shoulder, his face growing paler from the pain of it. He had to get too close to Saundor to stab him but it made him vulnerable. He took the risk anyway. He always took the risks for her.

“If you looked through the file you had on me, then you know a lot about my past. You know I was involved with an Archfey,” Vex whispers. “And you know some of the story of how it ended. But…” She looks down for a second. “Vax had to come and get me. I wouldn’t have made it out by myself. I couldn’t even really think of escaping at the time.”

Vex looks up to meet Cassandra’s eyes. Hopefully she gets why Vex is telling that story. The parallel, if slightly distorted, between Percy and Vax in this situation are easy to see.

“I guess us big brothers tend to be a little reckless when it comes to our younger sisters,” Vax points out with a humorless chuckle.

Vex rolls her eyes. “I’m three minutes younger than you.”

Cassandra’s face cracks in a smile at that.

“Either way,” Vax shrugs. “We really are going to do what we can to make sure this has a happy ending for the both of you. As happy as possible.”

Cassandra takes a sip of her coffee. It’s probably cold now, but Vex understands the need to give oneself countenance. She straightens up a little. “I hope so,” she mutters. “I really do. I don’t want to be the sole heir to Whitestone.”

Vex thinks she can read between those lines. I don’t want to be alone. She gets it. She really does. The past few days have made sure the only person she has is Vax. She wouldn’t want to lose him either.

“If I bump into him again,” Vex starts slowly. “Do you want me to tell him something from you?”

Cassandra’s eyes widen. Vex understands that Percy’s not supposed to know where Cassandra is, but a simple message without location won’t do much harm. It might just help him fight the demon.

For as much as she empathizes with Cassandra and her loneliness, she can’t help but think of Percy too. Two years of nothing but a demon for company. Two years of knowing you might just kill everyone you love.

“Please… If you see him,” Cassandra whispers after a moment. “Tell him I still love him.”

“I can do that,” Vex nods.

Afterwards, it’s hard to find words to end that conversation but they somehow manage. They exchange numbers and Vex makes sure Cassandra’s calls will ring loud and clear no matter what happens or if her phone is on silent. They say goodbye and the twins start their way back to the car.

Vex extends her hand in between them and Vax doesn’t waste a second to take it.

#perc'ahlia #percy de rolo #vex'ahlia #vax'ildan #pike trickfoot #cassandra de rolo #vox machina #critical role #fic #mine

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