ᴴᵁᴺᵀᴱᴿ'ˢ ᵂᴼᴿᴷˢᴴᴼᴾ,

𖤝 literature.

⇢ neil josten, from all for the game. a blue-eyed freak and sports athlete, who is on the run from his father. persuaded into joining palmetto’s foxes by the team coach and former raven, kevin day, he is determined to help his team defeat the ravens in the upcoming season. ⟢ strongly affiliated with heliconiius’ kevin day.

⇢ jem carstairs, from the infernal devices. once a frail young man, beloved for his kindness, he sacrifices his dignified death to protect his loved ones and becomes a shadowy silent brother, a cultist and scholar of death and silver runes, fated to wander aimlessly. ⟢ strongly affiliated with apotheocis’ tessa gray, and veilhouse’s miyagawa kaede.

⇢ lord severin, from the darkest part of the forest. alderking of the mysterious court of horns, a land home to eldritch beasts and the goat-eyed devils. severin can exist across many realms; he is a monstrous hand that reaches out from the dark, not to harm but to help.

𖤝 videogames.

⇢ kassandra of sparta, from assassin’s creed odyssey. a mercenary and private from classical greece, an adventurer without bounds and demigod daughter of zeus; she sails long and far in search of secrets, treasures, and to eradicate the cult of kosmos for good.

⇢ alice liddell, from american mcgee’s alice. a girl trapped in her memories of a burning house. her therapist informs her that in order to be remade, she must forget and erase her memories for good. so much so that she even forgets who she is, but wonderland won’t let her.

⇢ lady maria, from bloodborne. famed hunter from the mysterious castle cainhurst, and a vileblood to boot; how she came into the circle of gehrman’s hunters and the healing church is unknown. only that for her part in a grave sin, she hosts the hunter’s nightmare for eternity.

⇢ clive rosfield, from final fantasy sixteen. son of an archduke, betrayed by his mother to the empire’s service; clive is branded into enslavement, and an assassin for the empire’s wishes. wrecked with guilt over the death of his brother, he discovers he is the avatar of ifrit. ⟢ strongly affiliated with cautionarys’ jill warrick.

⇢ leon kennedy, from resident evil. primarily requiem based, leon is a former special ops turned investigator for the us government and hero of the raccoon city incident. he is beyond haunted by what he has endured, yet aspires to save as many people as he can. ⟢ strongly affiliated with cautionarys’ ada wong.

𖤝 television and comics.

⇢ stefan salvatore, from the vampire diaries. a vampire from the era of medici florence. turned by a cunning vampiress, he is the monstrous ripper of monterey, who attempts to restrain his addiction to blood and resides quietly in the town of mystic falls. ⟢ strongly affiliated with veilhouse’s buffy summers.

⇢ black leg sanji, from one piece netflix. former chef at the baratie and nightmare crew member of the straw hat pirates. sanji’s place as the cook and sailor takes him to the grand line, where he desperately seeks his dream of finding the all blue. ⟢ strongly affiliated with exitvelo’s roronoa zoro.

⇢ galadriel, from lord of the rings. the witch of the woods, princess of noldor, an ancient elf with wisdom unmatched who holds nenya, one of three rings of power given to the elves. she resides in lothlórien as its keeper, a friend to the fellowship and grandmother to arwen.

⇢ jason todd, from under the red hood. the second robin from dc comics and batman’s greatest failure. after being killed by the joker, jason is resurrected by al-ghul and dons the identity of the red hood; a vengeful protector of gotham who makes good use of his guns. ⟢ strongly affiliated with cautionarys’ jesse chambers.

⇢ lucy kushinada, from cyberpunk edgerunners. former prodigy of arasaka corporation, trained as a child to bypass rogue ai in real time. a frightfully skilled netrunner, she escaped the facility and fled to night city, with her heart closed to everything but the moon. ⟢ strongly affiliated with veilhouse’s terry mcginnis.

𖤝 testing muses.

⇢ minthara baenre, from baldur’s gate three. exiled drow and paladin of aristocratic origins, far from home and famed for her brutality. she was trapped by the influence of the absolute and made to serve the whims of her masters at goblin camp, until she is freed at moonrise.

⇢ sephiroth, from final fantasy. inspired by advant children. shinra’s greatest weapon and greatest mistake, born to serve the corporation as their model hero, only to be darkened with madness upon learning the truth of his origins.

⇢ dark sun gwyndolin, from dark souls trilogy. the mysterious goddess and child of sun lord gwyn, whose affinity to the power of the moon sees her sheltered and seen as a stain on their father’s symbol. yet when all gods flee, gwyndolin remains as the last god of anor londo.

⇢ kaneki ken, from tokyo ghoul. repurposed into jjk. boy turned ghoul in the image of the centipede curse, rize. torn from his ordinary life, he becomes subject to the politics of cursed beings and sorcerers while trying to defend his loved ones. classed as a special grade threat.

following the canon of elden ring, shadow of the erdtree dlc, as well as inspirations from romanian folklore. my portrayal primarily takes into account the elden ring lore, but is also mixed with headcanons from my own development and timeline of him. just want to preface and say also that i will not impose my version of timeline events and interpretation on other writers, and am always willing to be flexible to accommodate. messmer is a villain, and while aspects of him will be explored with care and at times sympathy, he won't be watered down.

⟡ statistics.

⇢ name. messmer, the son of marika; the impaler; the serpent. ⇢ age. he is an extremely old demigod. ⇢ height. 20 feet. ⇢ hair. blood-red hair. ⇢ eyes. a single golden eye, that is not quite an eye at all, but rather a                        soreseal gifted to him by his brother to oppress the serpent within.                        his other eye is sealed shut. ⇢ body. he is tall and oddly proportioned, strong of body but lanky, with                        scars over most of his body, broad shoulders and pointed nails. ⇢ weapon. spear of the impaler. it deals incredible damage by blunt force and                        is powered by his own explosive flame. ⇢ sexuality. although he holds little experience or interest in romantic                         inclinations, he generally leans towards dalliances with men. ⇢ family. where marika is his mother, radagon is his father;                        he has many siblings and half siblings.

he and melina were conceived during the first age of the golden order, likely in secret, though knowledge of his parentage was a deeply kept secret. he was notable raised in the impaler’s catacombs in his early life, before being disgraced in a mutually hatched political play by him and his mother to begin his crusade in the shadow realms. obviously, his sister is melina, though whether she remembers this is debatable. his other siblings include godwyn the golden, marika’s second or third child with her first husband, with mohg and morgott coming much later. while his father was married to queen renalla, his younger half-siblings included radahn, ranni, and rykard. when radagon then marries marika, he becomes older brother to miquella and malenia. his constant companions are his two winged serpents, that are attached to his body in odd ways; the abyssal serpent, an malignant and vicious outer god and monster, is housed in his heart.

⟡ verses for plotting.

main. i'm inclined to base before the dlc events, because the chances of being talkative during his self imposed exile in the keep are close to nil unless you're a tarnished or the shard-bearers etc. it would be much more likely that he's able to interact with people while he's in leyndell or new arrival in shadow realm. nevertheless i’m happy to discuss this verse and plot things out where it works!

alternative. messmer will always meet his end at the hands of the tarnished, but in the event he does survive, i'll relate it back to lore: messmer, melina, miquella and malenia all have butterfly symbolism. malenia and miquella both show a propensity for retreating into cocoons, and it's difficult to ascertain if melina had something similar as she is already dead and a spirit. however, i want to say that in the absence of the abyssal serpent, messmer's body retreats into a butterfly cocoon and is engulfed by the now untainted kindling he possesses. this slowly regenerates him over time.

it's also said that fire knight wego believed messmer's flame had the power to bring corpses back to life, and experimented with it successfully; messmer is thus consumed in a contained flame inside the cocoon that slowly morphs him back to life. after this fact, he is able to leave the shadow keep and the seal meant to keep the abyssal serpent out of the lands between no longer applies to him, therefore allowing him to return home.

⟡ appearance and plotting.

messmer is slightly above ten feet tall, muscled but his limbs are longer and look lanky. his two winged serpents, cadu and keus, are a part of him the way limbs are. they go through his body in a way that was considered grotesque. he is extremely pale as well and draws visuals from dracula/vampirism: he has notable fangs and long beast-like nails. there are also scaly textures along his arms and he is mostly blind: one eye is a scarseal which hinders his vision, and the other is permanently closed. messmer's vision is limited to the eyes of his two serpents, as such he is seeing through four pairs of eyes at all times. he is more reliant on scent, much like snakes.

primary strength is in his flames and battle experience. he is an exceptionally agile fighter, ruthless to the core and wields a spear capable of impaling even golems. with his serpents in tow, he has the additional support of their senses and his blindness in fact makes him incredibly reflexive.

his forbidden powers allow him to transform into the abyssal serpent, at the cost of his physical body however.

his lesser known powers are that of necromancy: messmer can use his black-red flames to bring bodies back to life, powered by his fire the same way the furnace golem's are.

his skills include diplomacy and leadership, but he is also trained in medicine, seen by the way he had set up a jar clinic in an effort to tend to their condition.

⟡ lore notes and portrayal points.

⇢ in my interpretation, the abyssal serpent itself is not an outer god, but the manifestation of one unknown to the lands between, attempting to consume messmer from the inside out so he can host the outer god. there is virtually no connection to the god-devouring serpent; they are two different entities, who happen to share similar physical manifestations.

messmer was raised in isolation in what would come to be known as the impaler's catacombs in the weeping peninsula. there, marika would visit him and replace his rotting eye with her scarseal to prevent the abyssal serpent from devouring her young son. from his parents, messmer was gifted two winged serpents, cadu and keus, who would help him endure pain and keep him strong to resist the serpent writhing inside of him. he remained there while the erdtree grew, as there were palpable fears of what his fire could do to the erdtree, and this fear was more poignant because it is discovered during the battle that saw marika seal the fell god's flame.

i want to say that messmer was sheltered as a bastard child of marika and not many in the lands between knew of his connection to marika, but that this connection was revealed only to the shadow realm after messmer's flight and banishment from the erdtree. regardless, messmer was infinitely loyal to leyndell and was reared to the strength and training of a general in preparation for the next war: this would be the unholy crusade against the hornsent. with the golden order reigning in full swing, messmer left leyndell to carry out marika's orders in the shadow realm.

marika initially went with him: i think messer is unique in that he is the sole child of marika who may know her origins. he is given access to her pain and the village where she once grew up an ordinary shaman girl. he refers to marika not just as 'mother' but also by her name, which indicates he's been around long enough to not just be a son to her but a friend. because of this he has intense empathy for his mother, intense and blinding hatred for the hornsent, and will not turn against her, even at his own expense.

messmer's army is larger than leyndell's. this is because it does not possess only leyndell's knights, but leyndell's prisoners and criminals, carian sorcerors and knights, rellanna the twin moon and sister to rennalla herself, crucible fighters, and albinauric warriors. messmer's sheer capacity to inspire and influence people from so many walks of life is both terrifyingly effective and a very strong contrast to miquella's  (his name is literally messmer, which makes me think he has had this effect on people from a very young age).

       ⇢ it is worth noting that rellanna abandoned her own royal status to chase messmer, who she was so compelled by that she follows him into war and stands by him even when his curse is discovered, even though she has virtually no qualm against the hornsent, and he is the son of her sister's former (?) enemy, marika.

his crusade was a direct victory: nobody stood a chance against his flames. the army so eroded from what they had done that some of their souls had rotted bad enough that they transformed into blackened souls and knights.

they seemed sure of their return to the lands between to be redeemed, until marika abandoned them. as the fear and confusion spread, some soldiers discovered the serpentine curse of their general and turned against him. some stayed true and continued to defend him, praying for marika's return and begging her to not forsake her son. messmer, although shattered by this, maintained hope that one day marika would return, and allowed no one to cast blame on her but himself instead.

⇢ exploration.

messmer is known both for his ruthless and his compassion amongst his soldiers. he is a just leader to them, and cares deeply for their well-being. in this regard he holds regret for the way their fates would come to play out, a fact that he is well aware he's playing a hand in but cannot and will not stop.

when his soldiers hound him to maintain the legacy items of the hornsent, he relents and fulfils that promise earnestly. he befriends gaius the albinauric, one of the most oppressed societies in the lands between by the golden order, and two crucible fighters, andres and huw, from another faith the order hates, and makes them all high ranking generals of his army. he even allows some hornsent scholars to remain at the shadow keep to continue their studies. descriptions remark that he saw his fellow soldiers frequently as brothers in arms and seemed an amicable personality amongst them.

that said, messmer is also reviled by the hornsent, and considered more a beast than a living thing. his crusade against the hornsent was so base and revolting that even leyndell would not speak of it in the coming years. he eradicated a majority of the population and brought ruin to any force that stood against him.

the peripheries were turned into the abyssal woods from his darkness and he claimed the shadow keep for his army, which stands in front of the shaman village like a protective shield. messmer is known for creating endless fields of impalements hence his moniker. the furnace golems are messmer's idea of mockery towards the fire giants and the hornsents the golem's now torment. they were initially creations of the fire giants, powered by the fell god of fire, but were overtaken by messmer's flame. this is why the golem's now have faces of fire giants melted into its knees, a degradation of messmer's making.

⇢ re : marika and radagon.

because of his sheltered upbringing and radagon being in liurnia, messmer did not grow up knowing his father much. he has met radagon in battle a couple dozen times but they were not prevalent in eachother's life. he has however met his half-siblings before he went away to the shadow realm, and even hosted his half-brother radahn in the shadow keep to mentor him with gaius. the twin prodigies were too young to really know him, but it seems miquella remembered the ordeal in the shadow realm enough to remember there is access to it.

in short, clive’s story goes like this : he is the first born son of archduke elwin, from the duchy of rosaria in the continent of storm, in the far-west of valisthea. he was meant to be the perfect result of a noble line, both a strong warrior of great acclaim, and the dominant of the phoenix, essentially the vessel of a great element. however, clive’s magical abilities never triggered, and instead they went to his younger brother, joshua. deemed a failure by his mother, clive was instead given the title of the shield ; his brother’s protector and loyal guardian.

when the sanbreque empire grows overly ambitious, rosaria is betrayed by his mother who sells the duchy out in order to gain a better political advantage for her own survival. when joshua transforms into the pheonix after seeing his father’s death, clive is too late to intervene and witnesses the impossible : a second dominant of fire appears, when there can only be one. this is ifrit, a monstrous contrast to the elegant phoenix, who proceeds to murder joshua before vanishing. defeated and destroyed, rosaria falls to the empire— clive is exiled by his mother, sentenced to servitude as a branded outcast, and for years he seeks answers for who murdered his brother.

valisthea : the world of valisthea is basically broken down into two continents, called ash and storm. storm is crowded with a collection of regions, like the duchy of rosaria, the republic of dalmakhia, the empire of sanbreque. ash by contrast, is ruled by a single kingdom called waloed, led by barnabas tharmr. in this world, the mako equivalent is ‘aether’, a kind of magical and revered energy source that certain humans are born being able to innately channel. however in valisthea, magic users are not celebrated nor seen as something normalised. they are detested, shunned, and often controlled for political purposes and all manner of servitude. in certain kingdoms they are outright ‘branded’, given a mark over their cheek that singles them out and removing the mark will kill them. as such when magic awakens in someone, they are often handed over to certain authorities who take them away to labour for their kingdoms — rosaria is an exception in that it does not outright enslave bearers, however they are still treated pretty badly and lesser than. this also applies to the dominants of eikon’s. bearers, branded, and dominants : amongst bearers, there’s a specific type of magic user called the dominant. these individuals are far and few, attaining the power of eight specific elemental ‘eikons’. essentially the respective gods or manifestations of specific elements, that allows them to transform fully or partially into the physical shape of these eikons and hold immense power. these individuals are naturally coveted by all kingdoms as a form of mutually-assured-destruction-esque protection. however, even dominants aren’t assured to be treated well, but rather seen as inhuman monsters. aether and mothercrystals : because magic users are fuelled by ‘aether’, great sources of it are concentrated in ‘mothercrystals’ [legit just great big slabs of mako crystals essentially]. each kingdom covets a mothercrystal, of which there are only five left in the world. rosaria had possession of one once, but has since lost it to its neighbouring rival and enemy, the iron kingdom. the two battle back and forth for it and that is where clive’s story takes place.

because different sections of the story involve different players and different state of mind for clive, i’m going to write clive across three different arcs of his story :

⟡ i. wyvern, from the tiamat unit.

wyvern is the code name given to clive after he is essentially forced into the service of the sanbreque empire after his capture and exile. he is branded with a mark on the cheek that effectively ostracises him from civillian life [these individuals are literally called ‘branded’ too, and only magical users (bearers) can be made into branded]; he is seen as nothing more than an object assassin that can only serve the empire. it’s worth noting that at this point, clive himself is considered a bearer (a magic user) but he knows this is not because he is an innate magical user, but because he was gifted his latent fire abilities by his brothers — why he can still access them at all is still a mystery to him but it was enough to get him exiled and shackled.

wyvern rarely is allowed to deviate from the band of bastards he’s part of, but he is frequently travelling across kingdoms and continents to carry out any manner of assassinations, espionage, ransacking and what not. this is a very jaded time of his life where all he does, and all he can do, is kill or be killed.

at some point, he does betray the tiamat unit and decimates it after running into jill, his childhood friend, who also turns out to be the dominant of ice [shiva]. after fleeing, he ends up at ‘the hideaway’, a hidden sanctuary led by cid telamon, the dominant of lightning [ramuh]. outside of the unit, wyvern poses as a soldier and bodyguard in service to jill warrick as his lady and mistress.

plot points : there’s a lot of variation here. the tiamat unit and its men can be hired for jobs or protection. wyvern is the best fighter amongst them for nobility and purpose. coincidentally this earns him enemies too, so rival assassins and bodyguards are also great dynamics to have. alternatively post-tiamat he is often frolicking across the world as jill’s servant and has more freedom to develop connections with those who can look past the brand.

⟡ ii. cid the sinner, cid the second.

the second arc follows the death of cid. in short, clive discovers that the second dominant of fire exists because he does. he is ifrit, and he killed his brother; despairing and tormented by visions of it, cid persuades clive that mothercrystals are the source of the blight that is spreading, because of over-exposure and reliance on aether. the trio set out to destroy the crystals but encounter obvious resistance from other dominants and kingdoms. when they succeed in destroying their first, the mothercrystal belonging to the sanbreque empire, cid is killed by an eldritch-like entity called ultima.

five years later, clive has taken on the name of ‘cid the outlaw’, a faceless and unseen man capable of destroying the mothercrystals. he continues cid’s mission with jill, in an effort to free branded and battle other dominants who are hunting him down. the dominant of earth [titan], hugo kupka, is also chasing clive/cid because he thinks cid killed his lover benedikta, not realising the real cid is dead. clive is also no longer ‘branded’ himself after the mark was successfully removed by the talented surgeon tarja.

plot points : swashbuckler vibes, he is an outlaw both feared and detested for what he is doing, taking away the crystals so many rely on. this would be a great way to explore rivalries and alliances when his belief that the mother crystals are the source of the trouble is seen as outrageous and insanity. he is also leader of the hideaway now, so that opens up plenty of space to build solid personal connections.

his discovery of ifrit also followed a battle with the dominant of air [garuda], whose dominant was benedikta harmon. she is the intelligence officer for the kingdom of waloed, the sole kingdom of the continent of ash, ruled by barnabas tharmr, the dominant of darkness [odin]. during his fight with her, he discovers that part of ifrit’s abilities allow him to absorb the eikon’s of others. while they can still prime and retain their abilities, they are significantly weakened after clive absorbs them.

⟡ iii. mythos and the son of fire.

[guy explaining plot with a whiteboard gif]. lots of stuff happen, the entity ultima wants clive to absorb the power of every dominant so that he can be made the perfect vessel for ultima to finally manifest in corporeal form and restart the world in his image, which is a world of god and his quiet subjects. ultima’s greatest weapon to bring clive to heel is barnabas tharmr, who shares ultima’s vision and believes in a world without will power, the source of all despair and destruction and wrong-doing. clive’s victory against ultima comes at a great cost, that of many kingdoms falling, his brother’s death, and the loss of magic across all of valisthea.

this arc captures clive both before and after the last battle. before involves him at the height of his capacity and power, with a new hideaway rebuilt and under his protection, alliances across the board and monster-hunting left and right. the aftermath of the final battle sees him contending with a world where there are no longer any dominants or eikons or magic — he is once more a shield of rosaria, in a world learning to live without magic.

plot points : i believe in ‘valisthea gets worse before it gets better’ so, in the aftermath, i imagine the world is in chaos trying to adjust to the sudden absence of all aether ever. kingdoms are in disarray and people blame / revere cid the second. this might be a more difficult arc to write in off the bat but it’s there for established dynamics to navigate in.

⟡ iv. crossovers for ff remake.

farah was born a single child to a family with high ambitions to join the aristocracy in victorian london in order to survive the social climate. because of her meek nature she would often have her parents make decisions about her life for her : what she wore, what she was educated in, and whom she would marry. against her wishes and with the threat of poverty looming, they engaged her to the only man willing to marry her at age twenty three as her reputation in victorian society was plummeting— a man named shelby, a famous archeologist who dabbled in the secret market for enchanted goods. his prize possession was a strange mirror, which he suspected could tamper with time.

soured by this news and heartbroken, farah found comfort in a secret lover, isiah, who charmed her as a roguish vampire — but unable to take a stand, break off the wedding, and express her wishes to be with him to her family, isiah took offence.

a week before farah was due to wed shelby, she was turned by isiah under a cherry-wood tree and left to die. two days later, she returned to her household stricken and bruised, with a hunger threatening to kill her. as it dawned on her what isiah had transformed her into, farah plotted to steal her husband's mirror in a desperate effort to turn back time and rectify her mistakes.

⟡  wedding day feast.

on the day of her wedding, farah thieves her soon to be husband’s mysterious mirror, where a clock's needle can be seen ticking with a faint shadow inside it. she is caught by shelby before she can use it. in an ensuing struggle, shelby is knocked down and accidentally killed via head trauma. death provokes the time mirror, at which point farah's world melts into a blur and she travels back in time. she wakes up and finds that she is three days away from her fateful meeting with isiah, and with the mirror, determines to fix her life.

as the next three days play out :

she recalls her fight with shelby, and that he had been afraid of her. that anyone had been afraid of her for the first time in her life.

realising her plan was in service of her parents who had forgotten how to love in her desperation to financially survive, a husband who wanted her as a possession, and a society that would bleed her dry anyway, she comes to the conclusion that vampirism might allow her to escape from it all together.

when she finally meets with isiah, she meets him willingly, and allows isiah to turn her all over again. the theme of the conversation changes : she expresses her desire to be bitten and be with him.

except this time it is her lying to him, and she uses the mirror to kill him the same way she had killed shelby, only intentionally. farah succumbs to vampirism without a sire, which leaves her both utterly free and also momentarily maddened by hunger-driven insanity.

later that week farah attends her wedding again, though by then she has accumulated enough rage to realise, or suspect, that everyone in her life was content to keep her from her freedom.

the wedding marks her first massacre. shelby attempts to flee only to realise that the time mirror is gone. after he is murdered, and fuelled by new deaths, farah travels into the future to effectively escape the consequences of her actions and the disaster the metropolitan police are unable to solve for decades.

caution ! farah's vendatta sometimes falls into chaotic evil territory. after the massacre and isiah's death, it isn't enough to stop there and she plots the downfall of her entire family in the coming years, determined to rid them all to the point that it inspires a line of vampire hunters through shelby’s surviving descendants, likely his nieces and nephews [in addition to people who happen to be the same families that belittled her and her parents, the sons who degraded her, and the daughters who isolated her]. she is an extremely catty and petty person as a vampire, with trauma of very real and lived experiences that show the brutality of victorian society towards womanhood at its heart.

⟡  default setting.

in the time mirror.

this verse follows farah in the aftermath of the massacre. she has travelled three months forward in time and, by selling her father's fortune, restarts life in the following years under various different aliases. ( "rose-marie, maryam, jannah, little revenant" ). having defeated isiah also garners her a small bit of notoriety amongst the vampire circles, though it is not a known fact that she possesses the time mirror at all. consequently what is most infamous about her is that her name is unknown, her origins unknown, and that she disappears right off the face of the earth before she is ever caught.

at some point, farah comes into conflict with a grave witch whom she believes holds the key to allowing farah to gain back some human proclivities and taste and the ability to walk in sunlight. after a fierce rivalry, farah consumes the witch's heart in despair, but the witch places a curse on the mirror that shatters it to pieces. farah, desperate to save it, embeds the mirror shards along her torso and chest, wearing the mirror clock for the rest of her life. as she becomes the mirror, the curse’s effect is stranger still : though she does not burn in the sun anymore or feel its warmth, she simply turns invisible, like a mirror reflecting light away.

this can also easily blend into any fantasy verses like dragon age, witcher and what not, and does not have to be limited to victorian london. farah is likely to travel all over europe and at some point even enters the americas, where she later acquires the abilities of a witch after befriending and defeating one.

before the time mirror.

this verse follows farah trying to navigate london society that consistently shrinks her to the smallest version of herself. though she has many friends she is unable to find true understanding amongst them, and secretly harbours an admiration for the supernatural. through isiah, her on and off lover, she is well aware of the fact that vampires exist and communicates in their circles.

into the future.

given the blood bath and violent circumstances that led to him being crowned as the next alderking, severin has a rather ruthless reputation and notoriety that sits on par with some of elfhame's worst. he is the former exiled son of the previous alderking who reigned over the court of horns. his father had locked him in a deep sleep curse and placed him inside a glass coffin, that was booted out of faerie and placed within a dense forest in the mortal / human world, hoping he would never be found. when severin is woken by two mortal siblings, benjamin and hazel, he develops a deep affection for them and they held him take back his court.

⟡  statistics.

name. severin.

answers to alderking. his true name is lost to time, and was buried with his father’s death, who had once wielded it to instruct the prince to lay in a glass coffin and inflict self-induced sleep.

age. severin was only twenty years old when his father locked him in the glass coffin. he has been asleep for two hundred years. pronouns. he/him. cis male. sexuality. bisexual.

please note : severin is polyamorous. he is not monogamous by nature as it is pretty standard in faerie to have multiple lovers, even if they adhere to having a single spouse. while his canon love interest is benjamin, both of them enjoy multiple partners freely. when plotting a ship with him, do keep that in mind! while he is not opposed to being monogamous for a partner / spouse, it’d take some heavy plotting to get to that stage.

hair. dark brown, curly like horns. eyes. muddy green. unique traits. severin has two curling ram horns on his head, and although he can show human eyes, these are an illusion; his true eyes are golden and rectangular like a goat’s. height. 5’11. weapon. heartsworn.

severin wields the famous grimsen-made sword, heartsworn, which can cut through anything. famously, it was loaned briefly to jude duarte to kill cardan greenbriar.

beast companion. thomas the dark goat of the thousand long legions of death.

severin’s battle beast, a black goat whose true name is unknown or forbidden lest its horrific eldritch form be released. ben and hazel also call it redacted thomas. unbeknownst to severin, the ancient and worn down carving that spells out thomas’ title contains a misspelling and error ...

⟡  the sighting’s of a sleeping prince of faerie.

wielder of heartsworn, severin is an unseelie fae who hails from the court of horns— this mysterious tribe of fae are notoriously brutish in their ways and possess uncanny forms. they are native in particular to the darkest part of the forest [a location within the court, a sort of nuclei of nocturnal power] where severin was born. it is said that when unseelie fae from across the realm there settled in the forest, it was the forest that gradually changed them over time until they came to possess monstrous forms and eldritch insight. as such, severin can only glamour himself so much; while he shows humans his humanoid form, he does possess a true form, which is far more beastly and mortifying. it was this form that allowed him to win against his father.

this beastly image of severin however could not be further from the truth of his heart : while he possesses the capacity to be brutal and bloody, he has an unmistakable soft spot for humans and is sincerely tender to those whom he loves and cares about. this also extends to any faerie under his service and his lack of cruelty means he runs an extremely well organised and tight ship. they are a small court learning to grow again with the addition of two humans very close to severin: ben and hazel, siblings from the mortal realm who have joined his world.

⟡  a love for mortals, dynamics.

hazel frequently dissuades him from correcting the rumours that float around about him, and she also utilises these rumours to shield their court especially while elfhame's political landscape is unstable. it is ben however who guides severin's decision-making in finding and securing allies, and chiefly was the one who got jude and severin talking. severin is rarely seen without his two confidantes and is known to prefer the company of humans over faeries.

as mentioned before, though severin has and can favour many lovers without qualm / is polyamorous, he is not opposed to monogamy in elfhame's more traditional sense, that's just up for plotting. generally speaking, ben is typically known as severin's lover, though ben is never chained to or restricted to severin at any point.

⟡  the court of horns.

severin's court is a vassal territory under elfhame, their colours are green and silver; their flag standard is a ram’s horn. however, due to the bloody conflicts that have since followed and the traditions set by his father before him, the court of horns mysteriously retains a level of independency and autonomy.

it's seen even during the upheaval in elfhame that he is not quick to jump to elfhame's defence without first serving the security of his own home turf.

but under jude and cardan's leadership, they arrive at last on mutually beneficial terms in contrast to the previous hostility.

while notorious and secretive, the court harbours a lesser known sanctuary for mortals under severin's protection and guidance who are are either unwillingly trapped in the fae realms or wish to escape their territory.

main verse. severin is the alderking of the court of thorns under elfhame, recently supplanting the throne after killing his father. he installs hazel and ben as his right hand knight and seneschal respectively. while sometimes bearing a mortal form, his true form is a more unspeakable horror show.

loose fantasy. the unseelie alderking of a lesser known court shrouded in mystery and fantastical horrors. it is a cesspool of swamp infested beasts and mountains with floating debris from fallen ruins, but also holds the wide beauty of a dense forest said to be constructed by the original alderkings, who were tall as trees and whose horns have now become the spiralling stone bridges that connect the realm to the rest of faerie.

⟡  statistics.

name. jason todd, otherwise known as robin the red hood, or in rare cases, the prince of gotham, the arkham knight. age. by default, 25.

jason died when he was eighteen years old (making his stint as robin three to four years long). he returned to gotham as red hood (utrh) at age twenty one.

pronouns. he/him. sexuality. bisexual. height. 6’5. hair. dark black, with a strip of white hair in the front.

the strip of white hair commonly seen in his comics are a result of the lazarus pit. there are faint traces of white hair on his right eyebrow as well.

eyes. grey, later emerald green (a result of the lazarus pit again.) weapons. a curved sword from the league, two guns, and a crowbar. he also employs several stolen tech from the batman, including batarangs and a visor installed into his red helmet. motorbike is also armed and has artificial intelligence. *fear.

*this is my headcanon, built and inspired by several comics mentioning a relationship between jason’s adrenaline and reflexes. i have used inspirations from arkham knight to shape this : jason’s tolerance and constant state of fear means he absorbs fear toxin willingly to subject himself to adrenaline spikes. the joker toxin, in my interpretation, is a modified agent that borrows from scarecrow’s fear toxin: when inflicted, it’s not merely that you are terrorised by your worst fears but that you quite literally revel in them. on top of thinking he’s an atrophying zombie, jason lives in a near-perpetual state of reflexive adrenaline. his body is so attuned to the symptoms of fear toxin that he cycles through fight, flight and faint when adrenaline spikes happen. larger post about this here.

⟡  because this post is already too long, tldr :

jason grows up in intense poverty. his dad died in a crime-related accident, his mom is a drug addict and gave him up to katherine. jason always knew sheila was his mom and wanted to help her money wise so badly that he tried to steal the batmobile’s wheels. this leads to his stint as the second robin.

sheila is aware of his robin persona unbeknownst to jason. she loves him and is proud of him and eventually gives bruce permission to adopt him, thinking he would be able to care for him better.

joker finds out who robin is by coincidence in typical joker fashion. he stages a testing ground for his refined laughing gas in magdala and kidnaps sheila, a former nurse, to both administer it and to lure robin out.

jason dies in the shed trying to console his mother, who perishes with him. the ward of bruce wayne is dead (data available to the gcpd but not made public news). the al-ghul’s snatch jason’s corpse.

dunked in lazarus and reburied again, he claws his way out and his state of hysteria is gradually tamed over the course of two years where he is trained, interrogated and weaponised by the league of assassin’s under talia or ra’s supervision.

he eventually breaks free and returns to gotham to face batman as the red hood. utrh plays out › jason grapples with his identity as the red hood, his version of crime fighting with a gun, and is on tense ground with the entire batfamily. he also struggles with the delusion that he is an undead, and must complete his quest before time’s up.

at some point, the red hood does kill penguin and takes over his business. this causes even more contention between batman and red hood. using the identity of prince of gotham, he runs penguin’s business with the intention of digging out names of accomplices, black market trade tracks, as well as sniffing out the works of other crimelords and villains, namely pyg and black mask.

⟡  plot points and divergences.

regarding his contentious relationships.

while i do lean on the more harsher and more volatile interpretation of the red hood (on top of arkham knight influences in terms of his personality and vigilantism) and also utrh’s jason, i am open to fleshing out his relationships with the batfam and beyond. however, please note : he is absolutely horrible to tim and damian. brotherhood is a toxic wound he won’t get over easily, so as much as i love my baby bats being cute .... </3 jason’s contempt will make this difficult but i encourage fleshing this out to reach a middle ground, which is difficult but not impossible!

same with batman, while i do agree his rage and betrayal towards bruce is prominent and difficult to overcome, there is no world where he could truly kill bruce. betrayal is merely the confirmation of love.

i don’t include the formation of the outlaws : however, i’ll say he has worked most extensively with roy harper, and briefly teams up with bizz and artemis, before he parts ways with all of them. additionally, i don’t include any romantic interests that may occur in his comics to my portrayal. while i’m open to writing romances with him, he is a notorious flake and will cut people off easily.

your muse will not know jason’s real identity when he is the red hood, unless plotted otherwise. only the batfamily are aware of that and what he even looks like. jason is extremely guarded and even if we discuss a romantic relationship, please don’t assume he would give out his name. there’s a big chance he simply won’t.

jason todd is legally dead. this was news to the gcpd and therefore would be in police archives, though not public knowledge. the prince of gotham is a moniker for a faceless man who has taken over penguin’s business, your muse may know about him and that the red hood is apparently in cahoots with him.

regarding recent reframing of the red hood.

while a very good reframing [!], i do not reflect the recent interpretation of the red hood being a local myth in my portrayal. red hood was always the alias of the joker. jason uses it at first to taunt batman and to keep himself alert by surrounding himself with the face of his pain: it eventually however becomes his own source of success, and what his own neighbourhood / community come to see as a reliable vigilante, even with his violence. it’s something he takes away from the joker the same way the joker took his first hero identity of robin from him — doing red hood better than him, until it becomes a queasy reminder to the joker of the clown’s unimportance.

regarding stereotypes and identity.

jason is often portrayed as white and straight. i choose to write him as bisexual (leans towards women) and as being mixed ethnic, with his mother being half white and half turkish, and his father being mixed arab-asian (mostly likely syrian and uzbekistan), second generation american citizens. he is through and through gothamite, a firm atheist and was deeply involved with his neighbourhood.

while i acknowledge why this ethnic background might appear concerning given his character, i do want to be clear that i don’t agree any mixed ethnic coded character (especially middle eastern) being violent should automatically be paralleled to a racist stereotype or purified by being extremely good. i am using my own experiences having dealt with this to kind of inform my approach but in this particular case, jason is violent regardless of his race and (lack of) faith. vigilantism is violent regardless of jason and where his parents come from. it has nothing to do with anything except gotham.

his anger is socially contextualised too : making him marginalised and impoverished in gotham only gives further moral and social credence to his strong actions against a failing justice system / class disparity / dispossession, when people like him have often been fodder and experiments to gotham’s elite and villains. while i don’t intend to write him as some sort of champion of representation and social critique lol, he is a complex character imo who can challenge assumptions easily, when we know the heart of him has always been love and community.

⟡  childhood arc and summary.

jason comes from the broken home of the todd’s. his father was an ordinary dock worker, who was made redundant, further sending the small family into ruin. he picked up odd jobs here and there to help make due; his wife, sheila todd, developed a drug addition to cope with her declining mental health and postpartum. with barely enough money to feed her infant, both parents turned to desperate means to get by. walis had taken up shifts doing delivery; unbeknownst to him, he was dealing for a local gang and died in an abrupt crossfire. without him, sheila made the decision to give up jason to the care of her friend, katherine.

a note : jason grew up aware of the fact that katherine is not his mother. he maintains contact with sheila and often runs out of home, getting employed in short end jobs despite his baby age, in the hopes he can help his mother pay bills and have food. he refuses the comforts of katherine’s home when his mother is on her own— it’s precisely his companionship with the streets, and a desire to help his mother with cash, that leads to him attempting to rob the batmobile’s wheel.

jason’s smart wit, whip-sharp reflexes, and courage in the face of the dark knight win him batman’s approval. more than that, his pure and unwavering devotion to his mother convinces bruce to take him in. it’s worth noting that sheila is aware of jason’s activities and identity as robin — it’s out of respect to her (and while jason worked through his complicated emotions) that bruce doesn’t jump to adopt jason, knowing the wounds there were still tender. he planned to surprise jason with adoption papers as a birthday gift after getting approval from sheila, but this plan goes awry when the joker kidnaps sheila.

⟡  death in the family.

this is the complicated bit, considering the racist stereotypes that go into ‘qurac’ or whatever. it’s better for me to simplify the plot entirely without involving missiles and god knows what else they were doing. instead :

as per the theme of joker’s unfair luck, he comes into possession of sheila by chance and coincidence : on the search for the perfect ingredients to refine his joker toxin, he kidnaps former nurse sheila who he traced from the man responsible for a failed delivery : walis todd. it’s during her interrogation that she lets loose that her son is robin. because jason did not have any legal connection to bruce at that point in time, joker is unable to discern batman’s true identity.

joker puts together a plan to lure in jason. a letter from sheila is sent to jason letting him know that she’s left gotham for a better place. knowing jason would be devastated enough to go looking for her, joker sets his trap: when robin and batman wind up in the snowy hilltops of magdala, they uncover joker’s plan to test trial a distribution of joker toxin in the local water supply.

batman is forced to stay behind and save the local population while jason races to the shed to save his mother. his death and sheila’s death plays out as per death in the family. it is worth noting that jason never harboured anything but love for his mother who he knew loved him, and gave him up not out of maliciousness but simply because she was scared and harmed.

⟡  under the red hood + lazarus pit.

in short, jason is brought back to life by ra al-ghul via the lazarus pit. he is not immediately resurrected however. i like the horror of him being dipped into the pit, and then promptly reburied; for days there is silence until he at last awakens, and claws out of his burial shroud. in my interpretation, the al-ghul’s did not resurrect jason as a favour to batman but to combat him. jason was revived and subsequently studied, interrogated, and extensively trained for around two years; while not as inhumanely sadistic as the arkham knight verse, the intention to refine him into a world class weapon is mirrored.

talia and jason do not have a mother-son bond.

he does not love her, and only appreciates her so insofar as thanking her for giving him the tools and weapons he needed to not only combat batman, but break out of the league of assassins and bite her hand.

he is not a bodyguard for damian at any point nor is he aware that talia had an affair with bruce (which would infuriate him). talia, who ferociously loves damian and is very aware of jason’s unstable hatred, would never put her son near jason anyway.

i know canonically it’s quite vague who the host actually is and whether it’s just the orphan, but my decision to make her the host was purposeful for the kind of route i want to take with her. we access the hunter’s nightmare by what we can assume is actually maria’s tombstone. the doll mourns it, we find the ‘old bone’ of gehrman’s apprentice there, and we know that maria frequented the old workshop because that is also where we find her hair ornament. i also think it makes sense that her grave invites hunter’s into the nightmare, innocuous looking thing that wrenches you into a punishment, just like a dead thing on a beach that forms a nightmare.

⟡  the host of the nightmare, verse.

A : threads take place during maria’s early timeline, between her transition from the academy to gehrman’s apprentice, including or not, her return to cainhurst during the spread of the scourge of beasts. because this takes place before her death and/or before the recall to byrgenwerth, there’s a lot to play with. she travels plenty, has close ties to the castle, and is also known to hunter’s of several creeds. B :  threads take place in the aftermath of the hunter’s nightmare. people who have an excess of something, whether that is blood-drunk hunger, vices indulged in secret affairs, or a malevolent habit, sabotage and self inflicted cruelty, may find themselves plunged into the hunter’s nightmare by the amygdala that brokers the passage for those not the original recipients to kos’ curse.

⟡  the significance of her weapon, rakuyo.

her “fangs” are her blade rakuyo, it’s two forms as a long blade and a short dagger — it also ironically (and unintentionally)  resembles the two needles on a clock. it was built by a visiting engineer from a distant land who was impressed by watching maria’s pure dexterity combat against her vileblood peers, combining a katana with a germanic court sword.

[Of Rakuyo] A trick sword originated in the same country as the Cainhurst Chikage, only this sword feeds not off blood, but instead demands great dexterity.

maria was besotted with this weapon and used it like an extension of herself, honed it to perfection. it was tailored very purposefully to everything about her by the engineer: her height, the length of her arms, her capacity, everything. the engineer was so dedicated to maria’s wishes that she spent months studying the young hunter to perfect rakuyo in her honour.

it was also matched perfectly to a sheathe that was part of her hunter’s set, which she commissioned personally from the engineer. her request was very specific regarding the presentation of the set and what she wanted out of it: she did not want one tailored for a man or a woman specifically, but rather/if needed, a mesh of both that allowed her specific body the best of its optimisation. in addition, her garbs are infused with stylised elements from cainhurst knights, but also on her request, reflect imagery of lumenflowers — however this is in no way an affiliation to or sympathy with the healing church. the symbolism of lumenflowers and clocktowers are actually tied to her for reasons beyond stylised fashion or outside influences entirely, but rather because of saint adeline.

added note and context around adeline’s influence.

it was during her travels with gehrman that lady maria came across saint adeline in the cathedral ward clocktower, a blood saint and healer from the healing church, and fell in love with her. that was also where maria discovered a love for the lumenflower because they were adeline’s favourite, and the lumenflower pin she wears is a gift from adeline. (this is also why later in the game, in the nightmare astral clocktower, maria’s chair is surrounded by torn lumenflower petals). though they were prevented from being together due to the increasingly strained relationship between vilebloods and the church, maria forfeited the relationship to return to cainhurst.

though she promised adeline that she would return to the clocktower, maria did not realise that they were effectively ‘running out of time’ due to adeline’s eventual decay and her own demise.

⟡  statistics.

name. lady maria, otherwise known as lady maria of cainhurst, or maria karsnova.

lady maria’s title is an honorific. however, it’s worth explaining that this was bestowed to her name by queen annelise as an order of chivalry specifically. this was awarded to her in her young adulthood, after she had completed her studies in cainhurst and returned from the hunter’s workshop, making her immensely successful. in my portrayal and headcanon, her family name is maria karsnova, and her official name is lady maria of cainhurst. in cainhurst, this reason is public knowledge and not confused with other variables for this specific honorific: l. ady maria is not married, nor the daughter of an earl or duke. her father was a viscount and scholar, though her uncle held the role of an earl for defending border territories for cainhurst. she is related to annelise on her mother’s side as well, who was the wet nurse to annelise’ children.

age. i typically write her as twenty-eight by default.

a brief timeline: she was eighteen when she became a prodigy at cainhurst’s university / academy, the same year she left her home to find gehrman and earn her keep at the hunter’s workshop as his apprentice. she was twenty five when she returned to cainhurst for a short time as it became obvious that relations with the healing church were worsening and might pose a risk to her safety. despite these fraught tensions, her friendships with ludwig and laurence were extremely tight. at twenty six, she was recalled to brygenwerth and reunited with her friends, however, they were then dispatched to the fishing hamlet. the atrocities in the hamlet and beyond to the research hall carried on for two years until, at the age of twenty eight, she put down a now beastly laurence and malformed ludwig, before she killed herself.

pronouns. she / her.

*important to note, i am choosing to write her as a trans woman. this obviously has implications in-verse. her connection to the queen and status as an atristocrat somewhat spares maria from any broader societal speculation — it is firstly enough that she is theirs and she is powerful. her parents may have dissuaded her at first, but i truly believe she was encouraged to pursue her excellence and accepted her as the prodigy of their family. whether this acceptance is conditional on her success is something maria grapples with in her youth. it is her uncle who i think may have been disappointed more openly, and believed a woman could not embody strength and skill the way he had in his youth defending cainhurst territories. of course, maria not only exceeds him in accolades but proves him wrong. though in honesty, this becomes less relevant or a concern to her once she departs cainhust for her new training and experiences. it’s easier to pick at her secrets when she’s young and still navigating herself in cainhurst, a lot harder to do that to the most terrifying and seasoned hunter the queen herself personally honours. this also then gives another layer to gehrman’s obsession with her and the making of the doll. i do not think he outright disapproved of a woman hunter amongst their lot, but that his narcissism wished to quell or tame her, despite his philosophical teachings advising her to pursue ideal skill and strength as real hunters did — hypocritically so in denial of the fact that she would never be his wife or whatever devoted thing he wanted her to be, and so he makes his idealised version of maria in the doll, that is a direct violation of her identity as a woman and her agency. it also contrasts sharply with adella’s gentle and non-violent acceptance of her.

origin. vileblood. (or, alternatively, vampire.)

it’s not a stretch to say that cainhurst and the vilebloods (essentially, vampires and blood magicians)  are hard dracula-coded. while maria does not imitate or practice the extravagant use of blood in her skills and combat like other vilebloods do, she still has blood cravings. as she was raised a vileblood, this is a part of her and can’t be tempered. though the ‘modern’ healing church would be aghast to know a vileblood had been that close to them, laurence and ludwig were both ironically aware of it in their heyday. my personal understanding is that for all of logarius’ deference for laurence and the healing church, laurence would have been appalled at what transpired in cainhurst, knowing that was maria’s home.

hair. pale blonde, almost white. eyes. pale blue.