#avem

Alrighty so first off, the oldest art I have of Avem:

He was a sort-of vampire bat inspired character (ft. The hairstyle I gave literally all of my OCs back then *stares at Gabe* the only survivor...) who lived in a living house in some forest. Celestine back then was just a butterfly-inspired robot girl and that's quite literally all I remember of her, I never drew her before today lolol. I made these characters for a choose-your-own-adventure story I never really worked on/finished but I really liked Avem so I tried to redo him a few times (more recent art):

(I actually really like the first one lol maybe that's his hairstyle at some point)

But! It never really stuck, so I thought: what better way to fix it than redo his (and Celestine's) entire story! The general idea is below.

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There is said to be a house, a single house deep, deep within the wood surrounding [town]. For millenia, it has been a source of rumor, speculation, and scary bedtime stories told to children so that they may stay out of the forest.

The woods are infested with faeries and creatures of myth and myst. One wrong step, word, or move, and you will be bound, bound to the forest and to the creatures within.

Avem--long, long ago, he was a young adult, who, in his pride, got lost in the woods while trying to prove a point to- who? He can’t remember, not anymore. A chance encounter with a powerful faerie—the overseer of a large section of the wood—gone wrong led to him being cursed, cursed to live how he truly was, a cruel, selfish monster, for the rest of their days (they must have unexplained beef lol). For decades after decades, he roamed the woods, growing more and more monstrous as time went on and his anger, his rage, his regret, grew. Many, many people were lost to the woods during this time, since as he grew more monstrous, he also grew hungrier. (I haven't thought out his monster design yet, it's a mix between vampire bat and characteristics of mammals)

One day, one fateful day, he comes across a house in a secluded part of the woods. Not thinking much of it given his condition, he tried to move on but to no avail—any direction he wandered led him back to the house. As the days passed, he grew hungrier and hungrier, weaker and weaker, until he couldn’t go on. As a last effort, not even beknowest to him at that point, he laid down at the bottom of the steps leading up to the house (to die, he thought. So dramatic, I know).

But then, he wakse up inside the house, more humanoid than he’s ever been in decades, surrounded by four walls that, despite seeming just like normal walls, felt like they were staring back at him. Without any memories of who he was before, and sparse memories of his time as a creature of the woods, this seems to be a fresh start for him. But the faerie that cursed him is always in the back of his mind, so, at the start, he is extremely mistrustful of both the house and…

Celestine--An automaton built long ago, Celestine has been taking care of the house in her creator’s absence. It’s been decades since her creator went away, leaving the home and Celestine to fend for themselves in the wood. Both Celestine and the house draw magical energy from the forest air to live, Celestine through the Celestine crystals (lol) that make up her core (obscured by her dress, in the center of her chest) and the house through solar panel-esque things on its walls and roof also made of celestine crystal.

She and the house sense when someone enters the area around the house—only Celestine knows the path through the woods that can bring you past the mysterious forcefield that surrounds the house (neither she nor the house have any idea where it came from, but over the years Celestine learned a consistent path through, to get to [town] when needed).

She practices practical magic, because while she is imbued with pure magic to exist in the first place, that doesn’t mean she knows how to access the magic in the crystals for any other use.

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Yaaay that's it for now! I really do like this story (especially now that I could FINALLY build in some Panna a Netvor and Beauty and the Beast elements through Avem >:3 I really enjoy those tropes and films), but I can already see it going back on my back burner because of my main guys (Lutanatar and Corrak ofc <3)