Look At My Birds, Boy

Also really liking the idea of Micheal being involved as a mere 19 year old in Henry VIII's diasterous siege of Bolongue in France. He spent much of it nearly dying from disease, starving, being concussed by canon fire and just generally having a horrible PTSD causing time that shows the reality of warfare. Despite that baggage he wants another war so he can Prove Himself this time and be knighted, even though he still struggles a lot with what happened. Maybe this experience made him immediately marry his secret sweetheart Margery once he got home. He almost died from horrible trench diseases, who cares when their families may say!! (This causes a scandal that does thanks to Joan eventually blow over)

Maybe he ends up trying to stop Calais from being retaken by the French during Mary's reign and this goes just as well as you can imagine.

Joan having fled to Geneva with her reformist family and taking on Calvinist ideas that would put her in grave danger in the religious conflict to ensue*, Micheal staying behind and being dragged into a sick old man's desperate attempt to relive his glory days, leaving them both changed by the last years of Henry VIII's reign. Changes that would haunt them like the debt from that last very stupid war would haunt England afterwards.

Drew @serpentface 's Hibrides again for art fight! I think I improved a lot since last year.

Featherfall Manor

Artfight attack on @chocodile !

Seems The Rising Dawn has found temporary lodgings with the two surviving members of the Ambroses, a long fallen mage nobility turned nouveau riche, and then turned land owning gentry once more! Their manor may be sparse, and half of it rented out to some of the townsfolk, but the two of them believe in the mission of The rising Dawn, and would risk sheltering the group for a time (it helps that Featherfall itself, manor and town, is in the midst of nowhere). The siblings both believe that their parents were killed by the shadow while testing snowmobiles on the tundra in a last minute bid to try and revive the Ambrose car company with a hard pivot into snow vehicles. As much as Joan wants to flee to somewhere warmer, maybe even follow the Rising Dawn to the city of the sun, she and Micheal are tied to Featherfall by obligation. So the two birds try to provide what little help they can to the cause of studying and destroying the shadow.