#aureus

Roman Corbridge Hoard, The British Museum, London

Aureus of the Roman emperor Vespasian (r. 69-79 CE), founder of the Flavian dynasty, minted between 75 and 79. On the obverse, a bust of Vespasian, crowned with a laurel wreath and surrounded by the inscription VESPASIANUS AUG(USTUS) IMP(ERATOR) CAESAR. On the reverse, Fortuna Augusti (the personification of the good fortune of the reigning emperor). She holds a cornucopia in her left hand and a ship's rudder in her right, symbolizing Roman rule over land and sea (terra marique), and stands atop a pedestal decorated with a wreath and rams' heads. The overall iconographic program of the coin emphasizes Vespasian's legitimacy and his sure hand in ruling the empire, major themes of his reign given that he was the first emperor not to be related to Augustus by blood or marriage and had come to the throne after a civil war.

Aureus 🐲 Refsheet commission for Aureus ✨

Herodias aureus commissioned by the radiant glowing immaculate omnipotent @damned-4-all-time i forgot what their return patron adjective is might edit in the morning

I MSO NORMAL ABOUT THEM

and @andrenidae-e because you also wanted to know about them

SO! they were both created by the universe itself as a part of it. both of them are made of flesh and blood and universe matter, which is what allows both of them to have practically limitless shapeshifting (there are size limits of course. they cant be like. house sized.)

my purple. also known as serendipity (henceforth known as sere in this post) in canon. his reincarnation is evensium but evensium only exists in carnage au (and never meets aureus ever) and will unfortunately never exist in canon.

sere is the god of death and demigod of life. he cares for his sister as much as he cares for his own life, if not more. he's always been the more quiet of the two. pre-canon, so pre-Great War, he was also known as the nicer and less aggressive of the two, because he tended to get serenity to cut her shit out when she was cursing people and their bloodlines. he was always good at managing her to get her to calm down and shut the frick up when she needed to.

he loves everything there is and has very strict morals of "i will not kill because everything will come around eventually". he doesn't mind harming stuff, but he tends to stay off from violence and aggression unless he has a really, and i mean really good reason to justify it (which is basically never). the only time he could ever get himself to justify killing someone was when they were seriously threatening an entire village.

he cares for everything living much more than he lets on, which is what has him grieving for, to put it lightly, thousands of years. he blames himself for his sister's death and guilts himself over it time and time again. he keeps thinking "if i had just abandoned my own morals and killed attacked those people" (little does he know that wouldn't have changed anything. he may have been the one who had died but she would have died later. it's written in the stars for her to die). his grief leads him to isolate himself until she's reincarnated (9617 years after her death! because serenity didn't care much about reincarnation and didn't want her reincarnation to share her memories, because maybe they would be a better person than her).

in carnage au, sere is the one who dies which leads to serenity going on. well. a full on carnage. there's a lot more blodoshed. serendipity reincarnates 2 years after his death as evensium due to forcing his own reincarnation with a little bit of sneaky soul magic (because he somehow managed to convince veszel.. well, not really, veszel knew what was going to happen and so did nephrim). so unlike every other reincarnation, his soul is still entirely his own, and not split between serendipity and evensium (we won't get further into the soul and soul magic stuff here).

now... he does have a biological family as evensium. he cares for them greatly. though, during his young adolescence, around 7 years old, serenity ends up killing them by, mostly accident, but she doesn't apologise for it (and never does). seeing his own sister so needlessly kill completely innocent lives and shed their blood everywhere (and also seeing her collect their blood to make into crystals to decorate herself as a trophy....), especially when they were his family... leads to him not trusting her at all after this. that's not the sister he knew. what happened to her?

after that though serenity always keeps him close because she's terrifed of losing him again. she doesn't want to lose him again. she doesn't know (or rather, ignores) that evensium doesn't trust her. this unfortunately ends up in only more and more distrust, and frustration from his side, of all the innocent lives she's killing...... and eventually, they end up arguing about it. and to show just how far serenity's taken it, evensium kills her. he pierces her with his horns. he shatters her soul. she won't reincarnate after this.

now we get to serenity and aureus. how fun!

serenity is the god of life and demigod of death. she cares about her brother more than anything and while she would never admit it, cares aout him so much to the point that she wouldn't be able to live without him. she ultimately sacrifices herself in the Great War (unbeknownst to serendipity that it Was a sacrifice to save him) because she knows she'll be the one who does and always knew so she'd rather have it over with now than later (because if it was later it'd be so much worse).

pre-canon she was aggressive and hotheaded and would be more than willing to curse anyone over minor mistakes when she was much younger. sere helped her control herself and manage herself better over the many, many years (we're talking a span of millions of years! yes, i know how long that timespan is. fortunately åtlaar works on a very long timespan because i keep having ideas of past civilisations and i think itd be so so so so so so so fun to play with always).

anyway... since we don't really see much of her in canon it's aureus' turn now.

a little fun fact, aureus, as a character, has existed FAR longer than serenity AND serendipity because they came from a minecraft roleplay server. they're an enderian cat! åtlaar's world is entirely based on minecraft. aureus, despite being serenity's reincarnation, is an entirely different person. they don't know a damn thing about being a reincarnation.

now... they lived a pretty damn normal life. except for having a manipulative and verbally abusive mother. they also blame themself for their younger brother, cobalt's death. he died due to an accident while they were figuring out their magic and it was honestly not their fault at all. that happens when you don't know how to control your newly discovered magic but still want to show them off to your brother because you think its cool....

their mother, achryme, doesn't let them live this down, ever. she blames them for it constantly and guilts them over it constantly (not to mention her transphobia. aureus is trans. she doesn't care. she misgenders them when they're doing something she doesn't like). she's an awful horrible mom. its ok their dad is actually pretty chill and stands up to her often when he IS around (usually off hunting or conversing with others to gather stuff for them), buuuut unfortunately..... she ends up killing him. she's very violent and definently should've never had a kid OR a partner.

but also she gets killed. L. aureus, out of built up frustration and anger over the many years, ends up knocking her off an end island and into the pitch black abyss of the void. this is also when aureus discovers theyre a starborne because they wholly expected to fall into it with her (because they don't freaking know how to fly)! but instead they float just above it at the same level as the end island with stars gathering under their paws. they'd always wondered why stars would trail after them when they jumped across small void gaps....

anyway dying in the void is probably the worst fate you can have because you just fall endlessly until you starve and your body gives out. Not fun! but a fate that aureus felt was fair for their mom bc of how she treated them AND their dad (who is still unnamed... sorry buddy!)