out of curiosity, what was the inspiration for the heart swap between nari and the lamb? I saw some cool art for it while trawling through the tag and got curious :)
*rubs grimy little hands together* TROD AU spoilers below
So back in 2023 I was floating the idea of how those two would share the Red Crown, both in a logical stand-point and how exactly the characters would come to that state because lets face it, there's no possible way Narinder OR Lamb would be willing to give up the entity of the Red Crown's power given the context of the situation, and that neither one of them had communicate to each other's intentions in the AU (mainly Narinder cause godly pride and he's got the social skills of a doorknob)
But I got to thinking, keep in mind this is before any of the updates for relics came out. What is the one thing you rip out from bishops when you kill all of them? The Heart.
Who is the One antagonist in the game, the main secret antagonist, and god, who's heart you DON'T rip out when you defeat/kill them?
The One Who Waits. Narinder. He's the only one who's heart you don't rip out when you kill him
SO. What if this pattern continued. What if, for some reason, his heart did get ripped out?
That got me brainstorming as to the 'how and why' and eventually spiraled into the whole Somehow and someway, Narinder's heart was ripped out during the final battle, 'given' to the Lamb, and survived through (detail I cannot reveal yet) and now the Red Crown is shared between the two of them because of this horrible, horrible decision.
(For spoiler reasons I cannot tell you how exactly it got to that point in the final battle. The Lamb and Narinder have amnesia for a reason.)
I really, really started falling in love with the idea that this transplant happened, not only because of the symbolism and romantic theme of it and all, but it gave me like a pretty solid explanation as to how the crown is shared.
Gonna use this as an excuse to post old doodles. I started a comic with the Red Crown starting dialogue around it a bit a year or so but I don't know if I ever posted it, I ended up getting distracted and dropping it before I got to anything decent-
OLD ART WARNING. It's so old it was made in Paint Tool Sai, apologies
TLDR I got the idea because TOWW is the one antagonist/God who's heart we don't rip out during the final battle, and I imagined 'what if it was. What if somethings happened and what are the consequences of that'