#the oracle of caeres tag
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Hi. It’s been 3 months. I am still alive, I have just been busy with… stuff… and things… haha… a…
This is not The Thing that i have been busy with, but it is A Thing that i have been using as a siesta from The Thing. You are getting my no-effort warhamster art, because everything else is firing on all cylinders right now. And boy am i more of a no-cylinders kind of gal.
This is Frey and the Oracle of Caeres. They are very messy and also in nemeses with each other. I should probably stop making up gay people who are in nemeses with each other, because the messaging and social commentary about the Empire is suffering. But here we are.
Long image descriptions and essays about made-up gay people under the cut. Read on below or at m0r1bund.com ▶︎
[Image: A sketch page of Frey and the Oracle of Caeres. The Oracle is a rather distinguished-looking individual with a sharp profile, perpetually lidded eyes, and a knowing smile. His lips are painted red, with a single streak running from his lower lip to his chin. Her hair falls past her shoulders in loose curls, while her embroidered galero casts deep shadows over her face that are only vaguely sinister. He wears circle-rimmed glasses that hide his eyes when the light catches them right, and a long, loose cloak that obscures his silhouette. Under it, her double-breasted overcoat is tailored to her svelte frame and broad shoulders. She has no business being as tall as she is, and carries herself completely secure in the knowledge that everyone around her knows this.
Frey is a severe-looking mechanic who is rough around the edges, and really is quite full of edges in general. She has strong features and a tall nose, and her hair is styled in a messy undercut, with her bangs bleached white. They fall over her eyes in such a way that she looks chronically pissed. She wears her old mechanic’s jacket with its sleeves cut off, the ragged edges framing her strong shoulders and lean, muscled arms. She’s on the smaller side overall, though. The rest of her uniform has seen better days, and in many places has been defaced so that the Imperial cog symbol is broken or obscured. She totes around a revolver with a shiv taped to it, because of course she does.
The two are drawn butting heads over this or that. In one scene, Frey holds up the Oracle at gunpoint, just after executing the poor sap who was sitting at his desk. The blood spray doesn’t faze the Oracle, and neither does the revolver. She seems inconvenienced at best by the thought of getting this all cleaned up later.
In another vignette, Frey is locked behind bars in a dingy little cell (perhaps for sending that man into an early retirement.) Her arms and legs are bound, though she tries to gnaw the ropes off her wrists. Suddenly, a ring of keys comes soaring through the bars and into her lap. She jumps, and looks up. The Oracle gazes down at her through lidded eyes, her expression unreadable. She walks away before Frey realizes that the keys don’t exactly help her current “no hands” predicament, though.
Another scene shows Frey and the Oracle sitting across from one another. The Oracle holds Frey’s wrist in his hand, so that he can daub perfume on it.
He says “It has notes of jasmine and bergamot. I think you’ll find it too delicate for your tastes, though.”
Frey is distraught. She came here to kill him, and this is not how she imagined it would go. She’s probably revisiting the thought in another doodle, where the Oracle leans over her shoulder and gets uncomfortably close to whisper something in her ear.
Finally, there’s a teeny scribble of an even teenier Frey climbing through the Oracle’s arched window with a shiv in hand. She is furious and singular of purpose, even if she does not seem to know what that purpose is. The labels above her head read “Mistaking attraction for rage” and “mistaking rage for attraction,” with arrows pointing to her. The Oracle just sits in the foreground and reads, smiling placidly, apparently oblivious. The label next to her reads “ambiently infatuated,” with an arrow pointing to her.]
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Content Warning: Blood, injury, death, messy relationships, abuses of power, typical Empire fuckery.
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The Caeres, Kairos, The Oracle of Caeres, The Sacer Vates, the Oracle, the Seer, whatever. Our mans is all titles and no names that the living can remember.
Mercurial and mysterious, the Caeres creates no “Great Works” of his own, as far as anyone can tell. She commands no armies and governs no territories, and no one alive today remembers who she is, where she came from, or how long she’s been with the Archive. Most people don’t even know what office she occupies, because—like most Archivists—she hardly ever works.
Unlike most Archivists, the Caeres doesn’t spend his free time quibbling with his peers for power. The running joke in the Archive is that “the one person we see less than the God-King Himself is the Oracle of Caeres.” He only makes an appearance when he is needed, though these interventions typically don’t make sense until after the fact.
She is someone who holds many cards but plays very few. When she does, she would rather give others the glory of making history by ‘massaging fate’-- passing on a secret message, a forgotten relic, a key piece of intel, and so on. The annals of the Imperial Archive all have her touch on them somewhere. When Kairos can’t be found, one can only imagine that they are out there, somewhere, watching and waiting while their delicate machinations unfold.
The other Archivists recognize her power, and often consult with her behind one another’s backs on matters of politics, military strategy, and petty blackmail. But the Seer gives no innocent answers– if he gives them at all. Most people come away from their meetings with a poem or a proverb, and no meaningful directions for where to go next.
When he does offer more than pretty words, one can’t help but feel like they’re being used as pawns in a much larger game. The Seer does not lie; he gives counsel that is sound on paper and in practice. He has made kings, moved mountains, and brought empires to their knees. And yet she has ways of turning the sweetest success to ash in the victor’s mouth. Some chase headlong after their ambitions, only to become locked in bitter wars of attrition, while others win pyrrhic victories and lose it all. Others yet will live their whole lives owing their good fortune to the Oracle of Caeres, and only years after their death will anyone realize the significance of his involvement. Most are just left wondering what, exactly, the Oracle has in mind for them…
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Frey is the unwilling martyr (can any martyr be said to be willing?) of an industrial hellscape manufactory world. She used to be a mechanic, a forgettable cog in the manufactory’s labor machine. She wasn’t singled out because she was particularly disobedient, nor was she distinguished among her peers as gifted, respectable, or charismatic; she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Dissent brewed in the manufactory, as it always does, in places where the straw boss can’t see. But by the time the manufactory’s Foreman caught wind of the rebellion, it was too late. He sought out the Oracle of Caeres for advice, desperate to get his colony back under control before the Powers That Be took notice and got him under control.
The Oracle was not interested in resolving petty administrative disputes. She blew him off with a nonsense prophecy: the Foreman could crush the rebellion, but only if he could find its head and cut it off. “You’ll know the false idol by her mark: yea high, dark hair, brown eyes, work-related injury scar on her right shoulder,“ or something like that. He made up a description of a rebel leader that was so specific and yet so statistically average that it should have been impossible to find… Or so he thought.
It came as something of a surprise to Frey, then, when the orderlies dragged her out of the ironworks and brought her before the Foreman. She had every mark the Oracle said she would–everything but the scar. Delirious with fear and frustrated out of his mind, the Foreman decided that if he could not find his figurehead, then he would have to create her.
Frey gained a scar that day, and lost everything. The awful spectacle was like a spark to a powder keg. The works went up in flames, as the factory floor descended on the Foreman.
Frey was not thinking about anything but her own survival when she crawled out of the wreckage, days later. She disappeared. Ironically, the rebellion was crushed, in the end–it lost its figurehead–but perhaps not in the way that the Foreman had imagined.
For her part, Frey isn’t interested in being made into something that she’s not. She left home bitter, lost, and angry with the hand that she was dealt. The Foreman might have been taken care of, but, it seems, there’s still another who hasn’t answered for what they did to her...
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#listen to me. listen to Me. i do not control the rate at which i complete tasks that I am under an NDA with myself on#nor do i control the rate at which i make new awful people that live rent free in my brain#chief and the r.a. tag#The Oracle of Caeres tag#Frey tag#content warning: death#content warning: blood#content warning: injury#content warning: abuse of power#content warning: messy. MESSY.
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the curse is that i posted all that frey/oracle stuff and i want to talk about them more but its all like hrhndnbrfhbnn pppppp. women
#the oracle of caeres and her botched martyr have got me acting Unwise#the oracle of caeres tag#frey tag
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A First-Time Love
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2APuv7J
by 241L0RM3RCUR1
El amor es una completa caída, pero con él, nunca estas seguro de si terminaras por caer o te extenderá la mano en ayuda.
Words: 1794, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Español
Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Robin: Son of Batman (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: F/M, M/M, Multi
Characters: Richard John Grayson, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Koriand'r (DCU), Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Timothy Drake, Jason Todd, Alfred Pennyworth, Robin, Red Robin - Character, Red Hood, Nightwing, Starfire, Oracle, Beast Boy, Raven
Relationships: Dick/Dami - Relationship, Dick & Dami, DickDami - Relationship, DickxDami, Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Dick Grayson/Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson & Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson & Koriand´r, Nightwing/Robin, Nightwing & Robin, Tim Drake/Jason Todd, Jason Todd/Tim Drake, Jason Todd & Tim Drake, Tim Draka & Jason Todd, JayTim, JayxTim, Jay/Tim, Jay & Tim, Red Hood/Red Robin, Red Hood & Red Robin
Additional Tags: Oneshot, Male-Female Friendship, Male Homosexuality, Romance, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Relacionesprimerizas, Damiannosabeloqueesunbeso, InsinuacionesdeJayTim, Dicknoseconcentraensutrabajo, Noespecificacióndeedad, Jasondandoconsejos, RelacionesHomosexualesHeterosexuales, Yaoi, ChicoxChico, Romancelento, Enespañol
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2APuv7J
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A First-Time Love
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2vhavW5
by 241L0RM3RCUR1
El amor es una completa caída, pero con él, nunca estas seguro de si terminaras por caer o te extenderá la mano en ayuda.
Words: 1794, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Español
Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Robin: Son of Batman (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: F/M, M/M, Multi
Characters: Richard John Grayson, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Koriand'r (DCU), Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Timothy Drake, Jason Todd, Alfred Pennyworth, Robin, Red Robin - Character, Red Hood, Nightwing, Starfire, Oracle, Beast Boy, Raven
Relationships: Dick/Dami - Relationship, Dick & Dami, DickDami - Relationship, DickxDami, Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Dick Grayson/Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson & Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson & Koriand´r, Nightwing/Robin, Nightwing & Robin, Tim Drake/Jason Todd, Jason Todd/Tim Drake, Jason Todd & Tim Drake, Tim Draka & Jason Todd, JayTim, JayxTim, Jay/Tim, Jay & Tim, Red Hood/Red Robin, Red Hood & Red Robin
Additional Tags: Oneshot, Male-Female Friendship, Male Homosexuality, Romance, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Relacionesprimerizas, Damiannosabeloqueesunbeso, InsinuacionesdeJayTim, Dicknoseconcentraensutrabajo, Noespecificacióndeedad, Jasondandoconsejos, RelacionesHomosexualesHeterosexuales, Yaoi, ChicoxChico, Romancelento, Enespañol
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2vhavW5
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another mile-long sketchpost, huh, lore. image captions and essays about the walking existential nightmare are under the cut. Read on below or at m0r1bund.com ▶︎
[Images: Many many sketches of Frey and the Oracle of Caeres.
The first few doodles show a very different Oracle than we’re used to. Row 1 depicts the Oracle in digital ink washes. She’s a black silhouette, hanging from the ceiling by a great mass of wires and threads. They fan out from her head like hair, chaining her to her surroundings. She’s posed differently in each vignette: hanging upright, bound with her hands behind her back, and reversed, like the ‘hanged man’ tarot card.
The next drawings show an Oracle who has seen better days. He looks more like a shambling wraith than his typical well-groomed self, with singed robes, cracked glasses, and a grisly gash across the chest that exposes his ribcage. His face is gaunt, cheeks hollowed out like a mechanical mask. Most striking is his hair, which fans out in all directions like a maze of red arteries, reaching beyond the borders of the page.
The Oracle is a little more put-together in the next doodle, although her hair is still an unruly web of threads and wires. Frey charges bravely into the mess, brandishing a brush. Kairos looks uncharacteristically concerned about this as her hair envelopes her.
Following shortly is a drawing of Frey with a fistful of the Oracle’s hair, which she diligently brushes. The Oracle buries his face in a pillow, looking nervous. He says “You’re taking out the entire CIN-38 annex… My surveillance arrays will take weeks to recalibrate…”
A nearby sketch shows Frey with a flathead screwdriver, negotiating with some exposed machinery in the Oracle’s stomach. The Oracle glances away and fingercombs her hair tersely.
The last bit of tomfoolery shows a more typical Oracle of Caeres, who is cracking an amused smile at Frey. Frey seems to have weaseled her way out of prison, but not the binds on her wrists. The Oracle comments “My, my, all tied up by the strings of fate.” Without warning, Frey whips around and tries to headbutt the Oracle. He steps out of the way, unfazed.
Finally, there are some sharp, graphical drawings of Frey and the Oracle. They’re rendered in black and white, with splashes of red and yellow.
The first drawing shows Frey breaking free of a birdcage, while the scar over her eye is still fresh and bleeding. She’s composed so that she fits neatly into the negative space of the broken cage. Behind her, yellow canary wings are drawn on tangents with her outstretched arms, and two geometric feathers lie under the cage.
The second drawing shows the Oracle, hovering in the center of the page. She is a black silhouette with no expression behind her circular glasses lenses. Her hair fans out around her in blood red, neatly snaking around the contorted silhouettes of several Archivists. They’re in agony, limbs locked at unnatural angles as they cry out. Each one is speared through the chest by a single, red hair. ]
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Was playing around with the idea of the Oracle being a secutor in disguise, but then I went back and forth on it for a while, because it ruins the fun of her being unknowable. But also it's whatever, it literally does not matter and I’m having fun thinking about it. Maybe the Oracle of Caeres should submit to the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known. Maybe that would fix her.
I’m not 100% sold on who he is or where he came from. I think it would be funny if he was some warlord’s court wizard advisor who failed upwards by making the most outlandish predictions that somehow came true, and now everyone expects him to know things, but his deep dark secret is that he has zero predicative power and is just making shit up as he goes. Orrrr maybe even he can’t explain why this gift came to him, or how he got here.
Either way, the Empire eventually became unhappy with the idea that their puppet might someday die, or retire, or try to run away. So they did back-alley surgery on him and entombed him in an estate-sized prison-computer for 4763654837573 years.
To improve her intuition, she was hooked up to the most sophisticated surveillance array known to man, i.e. the red strings of fate, i.e. bad cable management, i.e. her ‘hair.’ Each thread is an individual sampling instrument so sensitive she can feel a pin drop on the other side of the known universe. Thousands of them are trained in every direction, on just about everything worth knowing. With these, she collects the massive amounts of data needed to run her complicated models and make predictions.
The threads are also tools of manipulation. They can slip unnoticed through skin and bone, and join with nerve tissue to send false signals or intercept neural impulses. This augments her foresight with an uncanny sense for what’s going on inside the heads of those around her. That said, it’s tricky to take readings without alerting the victim that something is wrong. Incoming signals can rarely be parsed in detail, beyond flickering images or vague emotional impressions. This kind of surveillance is often unnecessary, anyway, when the Oracle’s methods of indirect sampling are more accurate and reliable.
It’s also much easier to “read” someone's biomechanical augmentations than their nervous system. Convenient that these modifications are so popular in the Archive, because the Oracle needs to watch his back around other Archivists the most. On the flip side, this means that unmodified individuals are like black boxes to him—not worth the trouble of such invasive sampling.
Outgoing signals are even less precise. The Oracle’s power of suggestion is real, but it’s not accomplished by pulling strings. It is very difficult to mask these signals as normal impulses, and on the whole it feels Very bad and Very wrong to be puppeted around by them. Really, the most he does with them is change his appearance (a honed skill; virtually nobody notices that anything is different) or make people go away (no need to practice, because the discomfort is the point.)
Incidentally, there’s nobody left who remembers what she did before she dabbled in soothsaying. What happened to them? Don’t worry about it.
…She’s kind of subsuming the ghost at this rate LOL
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Have also been rotating Frey in my brain. She’s a little weird because, like Reyes, she’s one of the few Imperials with no biomechanical augmentations. Initially I was like “well, that’s a fun coincidence.” But then I extrapolated, because of course I did.
Normally you accumulate modifications over time, in her line of work. The ceaseless, grinding machines inevitably claim bits and pieces of the engineers who work on them, what with the famously ethical labor practices of the Empire. Even without some kind of grisly workplace accident, it’s desirable to get rid of your squishy bits, because it makes you more useful.
For this reason, I think Frey started out as a proverbial canary in the coal mine. Without any biomechanics to protect her, she would have served as an early warning system for gas leaks, radiation, and other environmental hazards.
It’s morbid work, but there’s tradeoffs that make it appealing to some. For one, it was in everyone’s best interest that she didn’t die. She also received better healthcare than probably everyone on the factory floor, and the chop docs were even discouraged from doing any ‘experimental operations’ when nobody was looking. On the flip side, the foreman won’t wait for you just because you don’t have the PPE your peers do. Frey would have to do 10x the work, 10x faster, 10x riskier just to keep up.
How does she feel about all that?
… Eh.
#chief and the r.a. tag#the oracle of caeres tag#frey tag#content warning: injury#content warning: blood#content warning: mind control#content warning: manipulation#content warning: by god you are the surveillance state nightmare#content warning: empire-typical fuckery lbr
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only thing better than having new guys to rotate in your brain is throwing them at all of your other guys like enrichment in the tiger enclosure. I think that everyone thought Markus Severinus and the Oracle of Caeres were besties, but they were merely tolerating each other. Markus respects a fellow king who has some kind of gender that's too powerful for the archive to excommunicate. But he never believed in a deterministic universe and he's not about to start. Did the oracle know what was coming for markle? did he try to warn him ? did their relationship suffer because mark perceived his warnings as manipulative and dangerous . don't worry about it.
Reyes generally likes Frey and believes her beliefs, but she Does think that she has dogshit taste in women, which she doesn't respect.
#i think that they should start a band#chief and the r.a. tag#frey tag#the oracle of caeres tag#markos tag#maila reyes tag
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rotating frey and the oracle of caeres in my brain. i dont have anything to say about them that's new, im just thinking so hard about them.
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the real question is whether markOS instinctively loathes the oracle for reasons he cannot explain or not
#my man is all ^^; until he locks eyes with kairos and walks backwards into hell#markOS tag#the oracle of caeres tag
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markOS is absolutely not one to believe this and markus doesn't learn about the Empire's attempt to recreate the god-king until it's too late, so this doesn't make sense, but it is very funny. anyway you think the oracle of caeres and markus severinus are both 100% convinced that they're the missing piece that the Empire failed to assimilate into the Col, and that's why that project failed, and definitely not because That Other Guy 😒🙄 is still at large
#and they are both right. and they are both wrong#i think their stupid distrust of each other is very funny. besties please there's no need to fight#markOS tag#markus severinus tag#the oracle of caeres tag
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