hiya, thank you so much for the ask!!

the Evergreen Duology exists pretty much only as a jumbled mess of ideas, half a character arc and bits of research, but i will tell you what i have so far

Rían and his little sister Maeve grew up on their mum's stories about the fae and the feywild. mostly warnings, but also a couple baffling and hyperspecific tales. the two of them are very close and have stayed close even after their stepmother's transphobic ass kicked Rían out of the house years ago

so, when Rían gets a call from Maeve in the middle of the night about whispers from the woods out back and the plants acting weirdly and then the call cuts off with a scream, you bet he hauls ass back to his hometown. it's too late, his sister is already missing and his stepmother still hates him and his dad is as absent as ever, but he's pretty sure he knows what happened

problem is, he doesn't fully remember his mum's stories. solution is, she had them written down. problem is, that journal is in the house. which he has no access to. so he's gotta figure out a way into the house, get together a group of people who'll believe him (or at least help him) and then go rescue his sister in the feywild. how hard can it be?

and also i wanna know about "void & its creatures" pls 👀

(also how long did it take you to prep that fancyass post 😭😭 i'm very impressed)

heya!!

something piratey from Lost Sea Symphony, ay? well i have a couple totally not relevant facts for you

whether they started out as privateers that then didn't get paid or were pirates from the get-go, it was very unusual to have a big ship, like a galleon. those are merchant ships, and they're big and slow and difficult to maneuver in bays and coastlines, and they require quite a number of people to operate it. those are long travel ships

instead, most commonly pirates operated from (sometimes overcrouwded) sloops. those do come in a variety of sizes, so anything from 20 to 200 crewmembers is fair game. for Lost Sea Symphony, i'm aiming at 60-80 people on the ship, but i'm only naming people with a role

speaking of, my gods were there a lot of roles. you have your captain, sure, but that's not your top authority all the time, only in battle and during chases. the one managing the crew, settling feuds, dividing the bounty and all that is the quarter master. neither of them is necessarily the smartest either, because that should be the navigator and that one is extremely valuable. prime kidnapping target if they're skilled. and all of them need to work with the botswain (who manages cargo and the ship itself) and the master at arms (who trains the crew and takes it on raids). and then you need a medic/surgeon for sure. you want a carpenter to fix the boat. you want a cook. it's so much more complicated than "follow the captain's orders"

also, you know how the military has callsigns? pirates do the exact same shit, with the exact same method. do something embarassing once, have a defining feature, get in trouble for something specific, doesn't matter. if it can be shortened to one or two words, be ready for everyone to forget your name. you are now Slipper

as for the Void and its creatures, i do have interesting stuff

for starters, the Void is well known in both the Other Side and the Veiled Earth, but where in the Other Side people are aware of its legends and myths and dangers it's in the Veiled Earth that it is actually studied

by lore, the Void is both its own (extremely ancient) deity and the place where the elder gods of Order and Chaos were banished for destroying parts of the universe with their fighting. so where the Void was originally purely neutral, it's now a three-point scale on order-chaos-neutral. and no, neutral is not the midpoint of chaos and order, it's a third point. this is very important

within the Void there are mostly three types of creatures. as classified by the Harbingers and then by the Institute of Arcane Research and Defense (the "heir" of the Harbingers), these are: the blights, the walkers and the warped

the blights, known in the Other Side as the Void Gods, are an extremely rare sight. standard procedure if one is identified is to run. they can identify a source of magic within milliseconds, and will consume almost any type of it to make themselves stronger. people have noticed differences and patterns in their forms, but what those mean and what their abilities are is almost entirely unknown, because no one (in recent times) has been stupid enough to try and fight one

the walkers, known in the Other Side as Voidborn, are somewhat humanoid and fully sapient. luckily, they don't tend to operate in large numbers, at most two or three. they way more common than blights, but most Harbingers will not fight them if they don't have the rank and/or specialized training for it. because they are much more common though, they have been studied more, and it's been noted that they fall on a three-point scale: the three corners have been called Hollows, Mayhems and Chains and their appearances have been theorized but never confirmed, because no one has ever seen a pure Hollow, Mayhem or Chain. every walker that's been sighted fell somewhere on a middle ground

and lastly the warped, known in the Other Side as Void Beasts. they are sentient but not sapient, have no rhyme or reason to their form, barely have any commonly repeated traits and work in packs always. and mind you, two warped in the same pack can look wildy different. one may have seven legs and no neck, another may be a legless flying two-headed worm. they don't make sense by conventional biology, they don't breathe, they don't appear to have a digestive, reproductive or immunitary system but they do seem to be able to communicate so. go figure

all three of those are made of magic made solid (???) but of a completely different type from any other magic. aka, what in the Other Side is known as corrupted magic, or just corruption, or magical decay if you wanna be fancy. they look extremely fuzzy, like a cross between bad tv static and a glitch, aka like this:

[note, these are examples of people infected with magical decay, not of any of the Void's creatures]

so that's very fun :D

(also that formatting only took about an hour, but only because i'm used to working with invisible characters i fear ;-; )

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✵ Revolve Taglist ✵ @corinneglass @aalinaaaaaa @write-with-will @mymomsaysbobcipher @writeintrees @firesidefantasy @inspirationallybored @askyaphelion @cat-esper @definitely-not-flynn

hello hello, thank you for your question! (and sorry about the late reply, my ass got dealt a massive migraine)

so, the Ashen Gods, also known as Sili. these are among the eldest of a particular generation of gods, the Livi or Living Gods (or parasite gods if you were to listen to certain extremist groups). this is a generation of gods created by the Great Forces (Magic, Nature, Balance and Fate) through a spark of life given to an already living mortal

the Sili are in fact the second eldest of all the Livi, with the Eldest being The Most Ancient (Tma for short). Tma was created around 150k years ago as sapient creatures came to be, so it could the gods messenger to them, and its spark was created by the four Great Forces together with a lot of effort

the Sili's sparks on the other hand were given to the Great Forces by Vehile, aka Life, aka the goddess who created them. there are 16 total of them and they were created in groups of 4 + 4 + 8 to guard the Cradle of Souls against the Void. because of this, the Sili's dominions (the elements) are innately tied to souls. this is why both people's soul and people's magic is naturally in a state of elemental resonance

both Tma and the Sili predate the exile of Chaos and Order into the Void, the split of the Universe into Realms and the Great Force of Death. all the other Livi come after those events and their sparks of Life were gathered from the blood of Vehile's (dead) physical form. as such there are some key differences between the Sili (+ Tma) and the other Livi

the Sili + Tma are extremely powerful, and hold vast dominions. they also exist outside of the boundaries of death: unless killed, they simply keep aging, if at a much slower rate. in fact, where the other Livi reach adulthood at around the same rate as a human and then age slower until 2k years old, the Sili and Tma take 10 times as long to reach adulthood and then may very well live until their 200ks. as such, they've had a single-digit number of hosts

in fact, the Sili have only had two hosts. the first generation of them died 60k years ago (40k years after the Sili's creation) to protect the Cradle of Souls during the split of the Universe, and they took on a second generation of hosts within the year after. shortly after, the Great Force of Death comes around and there is no need for them to guard the Cradle of Souls anymore, so they start guarding the Lanthorn of Kosmos (aka the center of the universe) instead

then we get to the second big thing about the SIli. about 7k years before Revolve, the War of Arcana takes place. the Livi, including Tma split into two factions (Oadi and Kori), except the Sili. in-universe, no one knows why and what happened beyond effect, which as far as the Sili are concerned is that they disappeared. they are just gone. cannot be found, and people have searched. so there's multiple theories about what happened to them

however as the author i can tell you, the Sili aren't gone. they were sealed away and hidden, and have been so for the past 7k years, unable to use their magic and interact with the Universe. but the seals work differently on them than on any other Livi. on the other Livi, the mortal soul is to weak to survive the sigil. for the Sili, the soul of their host is much stronger; it doesn't die, and instead it gets pierced by the sigil right alongside the Sili. so the two have spent the past near 7k years merging together. but i'm sure this will have no consequence...

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When you're finished with uni, what creative projects are you most looking forward to getting back into? Do you have anything new on the horizon?

hi Jas! i make do, i make do

i have so much stuff i wanna work on when i'm done with exams. i have so many character arts and maps to make. i gotta finish Lukiat and redo Niev with more of his fey traits, and finish the magazine cover with Dajsper. plus, i really wanna finish the world map. currently, it's been stuck at 68 countries, and i still have so much space

also i really really wanna do more creature design and design of the gods. i've just recently started experimenting with horn shapes, and i've had to do a bunch of (human & non) anatomy studies for an unrelated project and i can't wait to get really funky with the shit i learned

in terms of writing i'm not really sure how much i can get back into it. in the last year i've been really busy with the campaign i master, but i'm currently running into a bit of trouble with it. so honestly, me writing depends quite a bunch on what happens there too, whether that is dropping the campaign, slowing it down or a looot of rework

if i do get the time tho, i wanna finish the first draft of Elegy to the Desperate Stars, so then i can rework it with the notes i've jotted down over the year away from it. once i'm done with that, i'm probably not gonna dive right into Unearthly, because the way i wanna weave it is a little bit complicated

🐉Dragon: What is one thing your character would protect at all costs?

ooo, this is such an interesting questionx tysm!

i have some very interesting answers for you from Elegy To The Desperate Stars

Aira and Ele want to protect each other. they are extremely dedicated to this, and it actually puts them at odds with each other on occasion, as they don't always agree on what's dangerous. they also sometimes step over each other's agency, as they go behind each other's back to block the way to danger

Aleji needs to protect Luz. their fiancée is the most important person in their lives, and they would do anything to keep her safe and happy, even if they know full well that Luz is perfectly capable of killing someone in 20 different ways

Beriel wants to protect his heritage and identity. it's already tough as-is being the kid of a Livi's host, but being a rich merchant and a noblewoman's firstborn on top of it? hellish. of course people need to legally know he exists, but Beriel hasn't gone by her actual first name since she was twelve. and also, she shapeshifts very often and very publicly, because that's not a thing shirevis can do so she couldn't possibly be her parents' son

Dani wants to protect his own peace of mind. he has had enough of loving people and getting burnt for it, so he's just stopped. he has his five people and he's fine, thank you very much. trying to care for someone new would simply be setting himself up for pain. (and then Aira and Ele enter the picture)

and then, two more really interesting answers from the two antagonists

Sonia. Sonia wants to protect her sense of self. unfortunately that sense of self has been weaponized by the bbeg, so it requires her to be the smartest, it requires her to be useful, it requires her to the prettiest, it requires her to fit in and be invisible but also to be exceptional. and Sonia really can't do all of that

and then Laura, Aira's mother. she wants to protect her pride. she has this facade of everything working out just fine and of being fully in control of herself and her surroundings. but it's just that. it's a facade, and it's very hollow underneath, and that's all she tries to protect. what's beneath the facade is fully on its own

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i feel like the most interesting characters in this regard are the royal trio of Ideli & Lukiat & Luz , so lemme quickly go through them

Part A: rate your main OC(s) on a scale of 1 - 10 (1 being low and 10 being high) in the following attributes: Capabaility (the power and ability to take action); Relateability (doesn't have to mean likable! Rather do they have reactions, perspectives, or experiences that the reader could relate with); Proactivtity (do they take action to solve problems?) You can explain their scores in each one or not!

Part B: Does your OC(s) move up or down on one of the scales during the course of the story? If so, how? Is this important? If not, why not?

Based on this article

oh oh oh, this is interesting Star. lemme have a go at it for the main cast of Revolve

and a very late answer to you!

okay so, secret facts about Sarie. her connection to death is weird. part of it is because she worships Tahila (Great Force of Death), but a lot of it is because she died when she was quite young and her mother (also a necromancer) brought her back, tying back her life force to the vines that were rapidly growing over her

that particular thing would be because Sarie died by falling badly into a deep creek (partly covered up by newer layers of forest) and onto an old altar in a crumbling temple. dedicated to whom? her family isn't sure, but Sarie's been able to hear that god's voice ever since, if only occasionally

despite her short stature and seemingly weakly constitution, Sarie appears incredibly strong, getting herself a reputation for winning against much more muscular men at arm-wrestling contests and being able to lift several times her weight. she doesn't actually do this on her own, but it's rather the vines that have kept growing on her that work as an extremely flexible exoskeleton

Sarie is not just a necromancer, but also a very well-trained medic and potioneer. she still deals mostly with magical illnesses though, as she tends to work best with soul magic or when reading the magical field. that's actually how Lukiat ended up meeting her, since magic behaves weirdly around him

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