THE tetra poster

The Zonai and Hylians used to live together on the surface in unity, living in neighboring, but allied settlements, with some smaller settlements in between. Hylians exclusively worshiped the goddess Hylia, while the Zonai worshiped Hylia, as well as the water dragon Nourosh, who is the origin of the secret stones (their tears are made of pure magic and solidify into the stones while falling to the ground).

There are other gods though! To worship one god is not to disbelieve in another, it is to simply be loyal to one or a select handful of gods who you feel most align with your wants/needs/morals/etc...

An example of one of these gods is Demise, who despite his name, was a very peaceful god of death, who would guide souls to the afterlife, if they wish to move on. Those who decline to move on becomes Poes.

Demise had a mortal who he grew very attached to. Despite the two never interacting, Demise simply enjoyed watching them live their life to the fullest. He had gone out of his way to prevent their death on multiple occasions.

Witnessing this, Hylia killed the mortal, believing them to be distracting Demise from his duties. Demise grew hateful and bitter towards Hylia, but knew he could not do anything to her at the time.

An unknown amount of time passes, and three Zonai anmed Din, Nayru, and Farore, who were named after the three golden goddesses, all decided to swallow their secret stones together at once. Them going through draconification led to a lot of chaos and destruction, due to how destructive the bursts of magical energy that came off of them were. Demise took this chaos as an opportunity to try and get back at Hylia. If she can murder the person precious to her, then he could murder her people too.

Hylia rose the Hylians into the sky, just like in base SS, but she didn't bring everyone with her, only those who lived in the largest Hylian settlement. Those who were left behind felt betrayed by Hylia and disowned her. The abandoned Hylians, now calling themselves the Sheikah, as well as the Zonai, moved into the depths together to escape the danger of the surface.

The Sheikah and the Zonai developed a close relationship together, with the Zonai teaching the Sheikah about their technology and how it works. The sheikah, in awe of what the Zonai had created, begun to try and create things on their own.

Once things had calmed down on the surface, the Sheikah began to migrate back, and formed new settlements, all of them surrounding entry points into the depths.

yadda yadda skyward sword happens

except things are decently different... at least with Skyloft. Its a lot bigger, and they're essentially socialist. Food, water, housing, basically anything needed to survive is completely free. Money exissttssss... but its kind of more of a suggestion at the moment? its equally just as possible to get things from people from trade, and some may even be willing to give their goods away. Money mostly exists for those who don't want to conduct trade, or who don't have anything to trade.

the only shit in the SS era that happens that reaalllyyyyyyy matters in my AU is stuff related to my OC Happy. Long story short, they get super attached to this random fucking guy who keeps appearing out of nowhere, they fall off of Skyloft, their friend sacrifices themselves to try and save Happys life, they enter a toxic relationship(?), get stabbed in the face, find out they're immortal, gets found by Link after SS and is brought back home but they're permanently changed.

Roughly 40ish years? (i havent figured out a time exactly) after SS, Zonai constructs in the depths begin to go rouge and wipe out pretty much all of Zonai civilization. Happy was there when the event occurred (but survived bc immortal...)

around 60 years after SS, Sonia, Zeldas granddaughter, introduces Zelda to her friend and partner Rauru, a Zonai. This is VERY confusing to Zelda, because the only Zonai that everyone thought was left after the extinction event, Happys mom Loreru, had died a few years back from old age.

Turns out, Mineru, Rauru, and their parents had been living on the surface in isolation, seperate from Zonai civilization, because their parents still worshiped Hylia and felt uncomfortable living in the depths. The twos parents had died, leaving Mineru and Rauru as the only ones left. Their parents told them very little about Zonai civilization, and they had no idea about the extinction event until they were told about it several years later.

Sonia and Rauru founded the kingdom of Hyrule shortly after Raurus introduction to Zelda, founding this kingdom off of the naive hope of peace and unity.

Around 80 years after the events of SS, the first calamity occurs. Wild era Zelda ends up sent back in time to assist in handling this calamity, while Wild era link is stuck in the future, having to deal with the reawakened Calamity Ganon on his own.

Rauru seals Calamity Ganon, Zelda does the light dragon sacrifice, blah blah blah i don't car.

Between the events of the first calamity and the great calamity, at least 3 different wars occur. The most significant of those "wars" is when the Hyrule royal family, afraid of the Sheikahs technology, afraid it could expose their secret to the world, gives the Sheikah two options: Hand over your technology to us, or destroy it all. The Sheikah choose neither, they wish to keep their technology, and the royal family sent soldiers to Sheikah settlements and wiped out many of the Sheikah. Wishing for no more bloodshed, the Sheikah said they would destroy their technology if it meant that the killing would stop. The royal family withdrew their troops at this promise. The Sheikah, instead of destroying their technology, buried it in the depths, and kept all entry points to the depths incredibly well guarded. They couldn't risk anyone finding out.

Meanwhile, in Termina,

The unnamed ancient tribe mentioned in MM lived a very peaceful life, but a small handful of people wanted to try and create a mask of immense power. Most of the tribe disagreed, but in secret, this handful of people went through with their plan anyway. They killed Majora, the eldest daughter of the sky god, and turned her remains into a mask. This mask was embedded with both her consciousness, and her power. They would use the mask rather frequently, with large amounts (to them) of Majoras magical power absorbing into their bodies. The secret was kept long enough for these people to be able to have children.

When the sky god found out what happened to his daughter, he killed a large percentage of Terminas population. The remaining people had grouped together to try and make sharing resources easier. The ancient tribe was at the lead of this group, helping to keep peace between the people and keep things organized and fair. Majoras mask was hidden away, and those who killed Majora were killed, though their family (parents, siblings, and children) were left alive. It is not their fault for the actions of their family.

okay now for oc relevant stuff:

Happy is a Hylian who was born and raised in Skyloft. After becoming immortal and properly processing it, they spent a lot of their new found time trying to plead with the royal family. They recognized the signs of war, they could tell when the royal families actions were going to lead to bloodshed, but they were repeatedly dismissed, and their pleas were even sometimes interpreted as threats. Their breaking point was what happened to the Sheikah. They grew bitter and angry towards mortals, and as thousands of years passed, they began to generalize mortals as inherently cruel creatures (with the exception of children, they have yet to be tainted by the bloodthirsty desires of their parents).

HMS is a Hylian? Terminan? idk! who was born in Clock Town, to VERY shitty and controlling parents. His family is descendant from one of the people who killed Majora, and they fully believe that they exist purely for the sake of atoning for the sins of their ancestors. They believe that no one in their family deserves happiness or proper autonomy, and that everything they do must be dedicated to atonement. To be miserable is to atone. Because of this, HMS was disallowed from self expression, barely let outside without his parents supervision, and repeatedly had it drilled into his head that he doesn't deserve good things, he doesn't deserve happiness, he doesn't deserve anything. The only thing they allowed him to indulge in was music, but that was so he would know how to play the song of healing, if he were to ever encounter anyone who could use it.

One day, he was trying to teach himself magic in secret (the usage of magic was banned in his family), specifically time magic so he could use it to avoid punishment in case he accidentally broke something, and accidentally time traveled. He freaked the fuck out and brought himself back, and decided that for as long as he lives with his family, he won't use magic again.

As soon as he turned 18 he left. He left Clock town, and eventually moved to Hyrule, after realizing his time travel abilities also allowed him to go to other dimensions. He cut his hair for the first time in his life, and began teaching himself how to make masks, one of the few things he knew he loved, and began to sell them to try and earn money for food, as well as new clothes that weren't skirts and dresses. His business was actually decently successful! and He was eventually able to save up enough to buy a building within Hyrule Castle town, which only furthered the success of his business.

When Hyrule castle town was destroyed, HMS decided he no longer wished to live in a timeline that he couldn't guarantee had a future, so he moves to the child timeline and sets up his business there instead, making the peaceful child timeline his permanent home.

yap yap yap blah blah blah anyway

Happy and HMS eventually meet in modern times in the child era, and the two slowly get closer to each other (to HMS's dismay). Happy eventually moves in with him and watches over the shop while HMS goes on his trips. I dont wanna go super in depth into this blarrghhg.

Long story short, the two help each other to overcome their issues. HMS teaches Happy that not all mortals are bad, and helps them kinda become a calmer version of their past self, being a person who was very kind and passionate and loved everyone and everything so much that it hurt sometimes. HMS is very kind and patient with them, and does his best to help them when they break down, which is something they've only begun to do recently because they're finally opening themselves up emotionally, and thus also finally processing everything that happened to them.

Happy teaches HMS that he's allowed to want things, and hes allowed to have joy. I mean hell, his entire business revolves around one of the things he loves and gets joy out of. Hes literally transgender. They also teach him that he's allowed to be selfish, and that he doesn't have to atone for sins that he didn't commit. It's a very slow process with HMS, him only really reaching a lot of these conclusions either because Happy asks him a tooonnn of questions during a serious conversation, or because he fucks up big time. He doesn't truly realize he's valued and cared for as a person until he comes back from a trip seriously injured, and Happy freaks the fuck out and gets really upset with him because hes mortal, and his wounds can kill him. He also realizes that his passively suicidal nature, which would result in him never fighting back when attacked unless his fight or flight instincts kicked in, wasn't gaining him anything. He may not want to live for himself yet, but until he does, maybe he could try living for another in the meantime...

He eventually does grow to want to live for himself! His life and growth doesn't completely revolve around Happy, its just that Happy helps nudge him towards conclusions that he otherwise likely wouldn't have reached without that nudging... yknow...

Anyways! Thanks for listening to my Yap! Theres a lot I didn't touch upon, especially stuff related to HMS and Happy as people. If you wanna read more abt Happy and HMS (or my other blorbos, I didn't even talk about oot Link at all...), or my worldbuilding shit, you can follow the links here:

Happy and HMS's toyhouse pages. Overall comprehensive summaries of them as people, though some aspects of their pages are likely outdated:

https://toyhou.se/11793681.happy

https://toyhou.se/36025111.mask-seller

My Legendkeeper document. Its a very heavy work in progress at the moment, but it has the most accurate character information relating to Happy, HMS, and Link so far. Theres also more worldbuilding details here, the big one i can think of being the functionality of my magic system. sorry if its a bit difficult to navigate...