Swordtember Prompt 12: Void - Lord Damocles

 

Swordtember Prompt 12: Void

Lord Damocles

Nothing but a tarnished memory.

A long-forgotten hero ripped from his glory and fame far too soon. A rebel turned tyrant.

Swordtember prompt 11: Mythological - Animalculous Vivusobjectus

 

Goddess Alexandria (she/her) of Antiqua transformed from the onset of Soul Putrification caused by the Inversion Event.

Short story below!

Swordtember Prompt 10: Royal - Ekaterini

 

Swordtember Prompt 10: Royal

Arch Ekaterini (She/Her), a sovereign of Erdestra and progenitor of Prince Luther. In this image, she is 150yrs old with a permanent core crumbling, some parts of her blade are covered with protective plates.

Crumbling comes in many different forms depending on a living object's core type. Crumbling is when an object's ichor structure fails to self-repair parts of their core and usually occurs later in life. It's possible, however, for younger living objects to undergo crumbling if they got a major injury or undergo failed revivals. It's a chronic uncurable condition that worsens over time, but there are ways to improve one's quality of life. Patching holes with materials, avoiding activities that may cause injury, and assistive tools for daily life are ways that help those with crumbling.

Bio below!

 

 

Swordtember prompt 4: Crystal

Feat. Gwuenevere (she/her) and General Tristan (they/them) (story under read more)

What strange alchemy is this??

A fine example of Gwuenevere’s crystal attack powers…

General Tristan, a broadsword who serves under the Janthizerain Arch Thermite, is tasked to take his soldiers to capture an Erdestrian mining town near its southern borders. Surrounded by earthen domes and ravines, the mines here are an important source of metals used to construct flying polearms and war-torches for Erdestra’s armies. If this town is destroyed and its resources looted by Sir Tristan, it will weaken Erdestra’s supply chain.

Without warning, Tristan invades the town, giving little time for its citizens to evacuate. Tristan allows their soldiers to ransack the town’s buildings, refineries, and mines. But from over the hills comes the Erdestrian General Doomgreater, Prince Luther, and their army to take it back. As the two armies clash, Tristan has their forces break down the supports in the mines in hopes of causing a cave-in. But as they hack through the mines’ columns, a lone Erdestrian soldier follows them inside.

Tristan heard rumors of a cloak that somehow defeated General Viez during a battle a month ago. It was said this cloak wielded a crystal blade made from her ichor, and its sharp edge cut through steel, no matter its thickness. Tristan thought it was ridiculous gossip about Viez’s sour defeat. What piece of ragged cloth would ever think of fighting?! Yet Gwuenevere stands before them, fighting their soliders with that crystalline blade.

No matter how much they swipe at her with their blades, Tristan and their soldiers quickly find Gwuenevere a formidable opponent. She is quick, focused, and incredibly stubborn for a fragile object. She trained her blade on Tristan, the tip of it scores the surface of their blade from the blade tip to the rainguard of their face. Now hindered by pain, Tristan makes a downward strike to end this tomfoolery.

All that Tristan knew next is the bright blinding light of something erupting out of their face of their rainguard. They hear Gwuenevere’s angered yell and a sudden rush of magic blows them away from the little cloak. Tristan slams into a wall and collapses onto the ground, their blade broken in two. Their upper half of their blade tarnishing and turning to crystal, Tristan looks up with their uninjured eye and sees the cloak charging them with her blade raised for a final strike.

Sometime later, Prince Luther takes a few soldiers to flush out the remaining Janthizerain soldiers from the mines. With General Tristan missing, their soldiers’ morale fallen into complete disorder, and many had fleed. In the mines, Luther found the caverns covered in familiar glowing crystals. In a large room of broken columns and ransacked storage chests, Luther finds Gwuenevere escorting a few young curios who hid in the mines from Tristan’s soldiers. Gwuenevere is all torn up from her fight, but her material enhancements strengthen her fabric body and keep her going.

As Luther and his men help Gwuenevere find the remaining curios in the mines, Luther asks Gwuenevere about General Tristan. Gwuenevere points to a large crystal column that snaked up and down a nearby stone wall. There embedded within it is General Tristan the broadsword, their metal core warped and twisted by glowing crystals while their kernel lies entrapped by its crystalline prison.

Swordtember prompt 1 - Gothic - Lord Reynold

 Completed #swordtember prompt 1: Gothic

Lord Reynold (he/him, 34yrs) of Erdestra's Northern Borders

An esteemed aristocrat and patron of the arts. Especially architectural pursuits for castles, material storage, and refineries.

Hatched from a family of silver knives, he loves funding the largest and most elaborate structures in Erdestra. His favorite architectural element: flying buttresses.

His original form was a silver knife. As a refitted sword, his blade is iron with his silver core embedded within it. His current refit model is a writhen-hilted sword. His grip is made of poplar wood, with a bronze pommel and crossguard. His gloves and crossguard straps are made of hardened plant leather. His cape is made of thin wool fabric, partially ichoridic to have it roll up in a tight ball behind his crossguard while fighting.

He's a kind and exuberant fellow, known to talk about the various projects he funds. Reynold enjoys making friends, a very helpful skill for building allies during troubled times.

Upon his cape are two figures he considers his closest friends, Prince Luther and Lady Gwuenevere. He aided them through thick and thin throughout the battles with the Janthizerains after Arch Ekaterini's death (Prince Luther's progenitor).

Using randomspirits swordtember prompts.

Art by Amari Harkness - @Penwrythe | Not for the purpose of generated AI Art or NFTs

Broken Mirror - Bygone Era

 

Broken Mirror - Bygone Era

Side A Feat. Goddess Nikey

My self-image is just as murky as a reflection in a worn old mirror. Broken and weathered by time's toll. There's a weight upon me. I will carry it eternally, even as the world dies and the ground below me falls away. At this moment, I wish to come to terms with it. My dull reflection carries it, too.

Happy Pride!

 

Grim Redesign!

 

 Decided to explore Grim's CHR design again! I gave them a more naturalistic look with two afro variations. I haven't developed more updated lore on them yet, but I like the idea of them being an immersive daydreamer like myself. They were Plural/System (system origin is unknown) in their old lore, but I don't think I'm equipped with the knowledge to handle such a sensitive topic for a character. Maybe with more research at a later time, I will explore this for them again.

Removing their original monster design changes their old lore a bit. They live in Astoria, a place where stories come from. Characters in this world are in a never-ending search for a story to fit in. Grim is studying to be a protagonist, but they are a glitch character, a character that fits in no genre. Their old design has parts implying they are a combination of different characters. They look human but still had monster traits. They look genderfluid and can be interpreted as either male or female. They mostly see themself as non-binary and consider themself human.

The important theme in their old story was that all characters must find their one true story or else they fade away. To do so, they must be in a strong community, participate in stories with other characters, and keep developing themselves. For Grim, they not only need to do all this for themself but for their headmates as well. They and their headmates must work together to find their story.

Here are the old sketches of them from last year:

Some sketches and thoughts for a character redesign for my old character, Grim.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

If you are Plural or a System, let me know what you think of this character!

Speedpaint below!

 

 

World of Relics World Anvil Wiki Updated!

 

Hello, World!

Check out my wiki for World of Relics

So, I decided to upload some of my world-building articles on World Anvil again. While they are all still WIPs, I still want to share what I have so far! I'm also very open to critique for improving any grammar, spelling, or writing errors.

Biology of Living Objects is a bit of a long read, a consequence of my writing style, so I might later split it up into two sections.

I really like Animalcules. It's a shorter read and it's neat!

Make sure to see the content warning list in Welcome! Read First!

Another Smol writing thingy

Sharing this post from tumblr about my writing:

May, 2, 2022

I think one of the most creatively frustrating things about writing is that I have a really good emotional scene in my head that I want to put down on paper. But to get to that scene, I need to make context (worldbuilding, timeline, character behavior and arcs, etc) around it so that I understand what made that scene so important in my head. And it takes a while to get there and build up to it.

Maybe I should just write the scene down as-is without all the context or put more focus on the characters??

May, 22, 2022

So that little tidbit grew into several drafts that further developed some character and world-building stuff that I was stuck on for the past few months. Really proud of myself! It's still in my ultra super rough draft with 1001 grammar mistakes but I finally got it out of my system hah hah!

Also, note to self, make a map of the Realms now so you're not doing guesswork while writing!

Taken some screenshots of my super rough draft below with some world-building context notes! It's a bit long, lol. Quick CW for discrimination.

From my chapters super rough draft, Trial of the Century:

 Democritus ask Doomgreater what does that entail for her sentence. Death by magical burnout. Gwuenevere will be forced to burn through her own magic until it consumes her, then when she is revived, she will remember the pain and horror of it all. According to her records, she never faced death. It will be her first, a dose of reality to shock her. Gwuenevere speaks up, telling everyone that she had already faced that reality months ago when she tried her first spell. While she did not die, that experience only taught her about her limitations back then. It never convinced her to fear magic, only to respect it and learn more about it. Doomgreater’s punishment will only solidify her convictions. She will not be driven by fear. She knows exactly what she is doing with her powers and she will understand them to the fullest no matter how many times she die. She will not be restrained by fear.

Democritus moves. 

A massive metal fist slams directly in front of Gwuenevere, cracking the marble below. While Luther is taken aback by this, backpedaling away from Democritus, Gwuenevere only made a small flinch at it. Then she looks up at the massive war-torch metaiudex. Democritus ask her if she fears them. She shrugs, of course she does. She spent this entire trial and investigation afraid of how she would be sentenced by them. But she is willing to face it. It’s her trial and they are the judge. Democritus looks at her thoughtfully. She is a foolish object. The laws are there to protect her, yet she still wants to pursue magic? Why? Is her life as a mere altrix enough?

(Gwuenevere is judged by Democritus for practicing magic as a fragile object. Gwuenevere (cloak) uses she/her, Democritus (Metaiudex monolith war-torch) uses they/them, Doomgreater (war wrecking ball) uses he/him/Greater, Luther (broadsword) uses he/him)

For some context in this segment, fragile objects are more vulnerable to damage, both from their environment and from their own magic. Due to this, all fragile objects must wear a magical suppressor to keep their internal magic at low levels. The suppressor must be worn at all times and for the remainder of their lives. However, Gwuenevere found a way to overcome this after experiencing an accident that nearly killed her. This discovery paved the way for her to develop semi-permanent core strengthening techniques. This also later enabled her to practice magic with spells that would have killed her.

In the Mundane Realm, fragiles are by law never to practice magic. If their kingdom allows it, low-level magic may be allowed, but higher levels are not permitted. These restrictions were put in place centuries ago after the Relic Wars, a war between Relickind over who controls the living objects in the Mundane Realm. After the war, objectkind won their independence from Relickind, but suffered the loss of many object groups, including the extinction of living weapons. To ensure the survival of objectkind, all surviving kingdoms after the war must make sure that all objects yield multiple kernels at the end of their lives. Basically, the longer the object lives, the more kernels they yield at the time of their true death. Dying too early will only yield one kernel, but dying at the end of their lives will yield multiple.

Centuries later, the Mundane Realm is populated by a mixture of hardy and fragile objects. All hardy objects are given priority to materials for revival and repairs. This is because most hardy objects would become refits, replacing the extinct living weapons and other rare hardy objects that died out centuries ago. Refitted objects are living objects with modified cores that are stronger and more durable than other non-refitted objects. Both non-refitted and refitted hardy objects has plenty of freedom in their kingdoms. From the multitude of careers and public offices to serving as a war-object, hardy objects are given vast advantages due to their greater durability and prominence in society.

From my chapter super rough draft, Amelia's Draft: 

But, Amelia continues, it’s something they needed, right? Gwuenevere shakes her head. No. She found ways to protect herself from her own magic, so much so that she has no need of a suppressor. She will not be forced to give up. Amelia is shocked by Gwuenevere’s passion. They wish they still have it, but doing so now... They stop. Amelia realized what had happened to them. They were trained to be afraid of their own power. Magic is dangerous to fragile objects, but Gwuenevere’s discoveries would change everything. They need not to be afraid anymore. Amelia gives Gwuenevere their support and promise that they will keep her discoveries a secret.

While these restrictions were once created for good centuries ago, they later fostered negative stereotypes about fragile objects. Many hardy objects see fragiles as physically and mentally weak, requiring brave hardies to defend them from the horrors of wars. Some hardy objects also think that fragiles are not capable of much due to their lack of magical education. Fragiles were seen as “in the way”, weak, feeble, broken (for low durability objects made of soft or brittle wood, stone, or metal), and vapid. They are taught to fear their magical potential by their kingdoms, the hardy objects further reinforce this point of view.

The old restrictions still controlling fragile object lives are the following:

For the entirety of their lives, Fragiles must wear a magical suppressor to keep their magic under control to prevent damage to their cores, while hardy objects don’t need to wear a suppressor to stop their magic from damaging their cores.

Fragiles must work “safe jobs” including recordkeeping, becoming an altrix of an abbey, serving certain low-risk establishments, etc. Any job that is deemed too rough for a fragile is not permitted. This includes any public office, as it is a requirement that a hardy object must have some experience as a war object to participate in politics. Not all safe jobs are the same in each kingdom. One job that is considered safe might be declared unsafe in another kingdom.

Fragiles are permitted for low-level magic for basic needs, but cannot pursue higher feats of magic. Hardy objects have the freedom to move up in their magical education and pursue magical careers.

Fragiles must stay in the villages of their home kingdoms of their hatching unless evacuations are in order. Travel is deemed a hazard for many fragile objects by many kingdoms. Hardy objects have freedom of movement between villages and kingdoms at any time.