#bld

Gửi Người vào đất, lạnh lắm phải không

Hôm ấy mùa hạ nắng gió mênh mông

Thân ảnh vùi lấp, linh hồn cát bụi

Niềm thương nỗi nhớ bỗng hóa hư vô.

...or in other words, the first time I truly speak of this AU in public.

Okay first of all thank you to everybody who's supported me thus far, and to @jekylltreacle for giving me the excuse I needed to infodump about this AU :)

This is going to be a long post so-

Black Lantern Descent is a modern day J&H AU where Carew, Utterson, Lanyon, Jekyll, & Poole are college/med school/law school students in the modern day UK...

...playing Minecraft together.

Alright, Utterson, Lanyon, Poole & Jekyll go to Oxford together because apparently Oxford is both a law school, medical school, and normal college?? (Correct me if I'm wrong!). Also, I think it's canon that they all went to the same school, they're all college buddies.

And that friendship continued into their adulthood. Anywho, Jekyll's at least met Utterson because he has a legal degree of some kind. Weird, I have no idea how that happened, but it did and he's got some legal degree and a medical degree.

...and Lanyon & Jekyll are going to med school.

Poole's also going to Oxford but he's going to Oxford to get a computer science degree. Him and Jekyll are roommates (because Poole was Jekyll's butler in the OG J&H.)

...and they get along pretty well!

Now Carew... Carew, he goes to Cambridge, but he went to Oxford for some political science presentation. And while he was there... he befriended Poole, who then introduced him to Jekyll, Utterson, & Lanyon.

They ended up befriending each other, but due to all their responsibilities and work and chores and such, they all hang out in a shared discord server.

...and Carew is an honorary part of the crew.

And one day, Poole, being the programmer of the group, decides to open up a minecraft server. It then becomes their shared hangout spot, and they end up vibing there when school and work aren't too bad.

Honestly, I don't have their character designs nailed down yet. I was playing around in some picrews but I eventually got bored so...

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Gabriel John Utterson or LawfulCypress (not at all a reference to Cardinal Park Case)

BLD!Utterson is a rational, serious, no-nonsense law school student who rarely, if ever, smiles. He's tenacious and hard-working, and yet... the moment you give him a cup of coffee (a latte, especially) and sit him with his friends...

You can see his face light up. His eyes light up.

He is more likely to help you than to judge you, and he's very good at listening. He holds integrity and justice in very high regard and tries his absolute hardest to live in accordance with those values in his own personal life even when others don't.

He's also very austere with himself (as he was in canon). He loves fancy lattes and cappuccinos, but he instead drinks the bitterest americanos known to man. And he loves parties but hasn't been to one in a while. (Canon!Utterson loved wine but drank gin in private. He also loves plays but hasn't been to one in 20 years.)

(Oliver Cypress reminds me a lot of Utterson, honestly. He's got that same rationality, that same commitment to justice and integrity. Hell, he even has the same austerity! There's a moment in the game when he wants to spin his office chair but resists "the childish urge to do so.")

...BLD!Utterson would 10/10 do something like that. He's definitely got an office chair he never spins.

(Honestly, I want to make a Jekyll & Hyde X Cardinal Park Case crossover where it's just Oliver & Utterson just... vibing. In the same place. And both are related to the law. Oliver's a detective, Utterson's a lawyer.)

Honestly Canon!Utterson is described as "dull and dreary" but Oliver proves you can have a rational character like that and have him NOT be boring!!

So no, BLD!Utterson is not going to be boring!

That being said... if a friend is in trouble... Utterson will go out of his way to help them. And his DMs are always open if a friend needs to vent.

and as for the picrews...

I honestly like his outfit here. The only thing I'd change is the colors, change them all to light browns. I think this is one of the best ones... although the vibe is very off. Prob because there's too much white and not enough brown. But also... I don't think he should be that lanky, maybe a bit more broad-shouldered? anywho...

This was the first one. It nails down his clothes, I genuinely like this fit for Utterson. And its color palette is closer to the version I have in my head. But he looks like a young child here and it does not pass the vibe check.

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Hastie Lanyon, or LogicGateE in minecraft is the most chaotic out of them all. He's the sort of person to be writing papers on organic chem at 3 AM while chugging cans and cans of Red Bull.

He's specializing in surgery (I have a really stupid headcanon that Lanyon is a surgeon. It's kind of historically inaccurate because in Victorian times you learned surgery by becoming a surgeon's apprentice and learning the trade from them.

Also the Victorians didn't respect surgeons as much as they respected physicians (gentlemen doctors that went to medical school- my headcanon was he was apprenticed at some point before he went to medical school and then taught Jekyll what he knew.)

He's loud and hammy and the sort of guy to go headfirst into danger. He's bold, he's courageous, and he has a tendency to bite off more than he can chew.

He's probably active in the Minecraft Hardcore fandom and has likely been in several hardcores before. And he's got a large circle of friends, both online and IRL, as he's a pretty fun guy to hang around.

...but none of them can hold a candle to what he's got with his friends on this Discord server, what he's got with Utterson, Jekyll, Poole, and Carew.

He cares a lot about his friends. He's closest with Jekyll & Utterson. Lanyon & Jekyll see each other on a daily basis, both see each other in each others' classes.

...Lanyon also cracks a lot of jokes. He's the jokester amongst the group, and likes to play pranks on his friends. (All in good fun. Lanyon would not grief somebody's build and call it a prank.). His pranks are more along the lines of...

...placing a bunch of boats in the same place as Jekyll's dock and watching his reaction as they all scatter.

For this reason he's taken it upon himself to learn redstone and he's gotten pretty good at it. He's good at using redstone, so he can make more elaborate pranks. Redstone knowledge is also good for making obscenely complex Rube Goldberg machines in Minecraft.

But yeah he's the fighter/redstoner. And as for his character design...

I was screwing around on a picrew and came across this golden combination:

I am very fond of the idea of Lanyon just wearing a polo shirt and a tie, just flapping around in the wind. I don't know why I made him a redhead, probably because there's a ton of people with brown hair here.

And I wanted variety.

...and Jekyll dyed his hair white tho I'll get to that in a little bit.

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Oliver Poole (not explicit TCPC reference but... all TCPC references are good) is... okay his personality's still a little underbaked. And that's because I didn't really have much to go off of in the OG novella, Poole's basically just Jekyll's butler who just relays to Utterson Jekyll's status. He's pretty chill tho and he clearly cares about his employer.

BLD!Poole is Jekyll's roommate and he's a computer science major who works at a luxury hotel as a butler. He's very patient. He could be internally about to explode but his face is just-

yeah that's Poole. And this is partially a requirement of his job, you need to put up with annoying guests if you don't want to be fired. He's very patient and empathetic. He's the sort of person to pick up on subtle cues and comfort people in subtle ways. Like if somebody's crying... he's the sort of person to give them a pack of cookies from the local vending machine.

He is the admin of the game, the one silently maintaining the server. He's not a petty man, he's in fact very empathetic... he's the one quietly observing Jekyll. You see, Poole... he picks up on a lot of cues. And he can tell...

...something is up with Jekyll. He knew it ever since he met him... something is up with him. Not in the sort of "oh he's a psychopath" way but...

...something's going on.

Honestly he's pretty underbaked so...

He's a computer science major, he knows Java is currently coding a game. In minecraft terms he's the modder/admin, the sort of guy who helps others with their builds. Also he codes crazy minecraft mods in his spare time. And also...

His laptop runs Linux. He's fond of open-source software. He makes an exception for minecraft because... his friends all have minecraft. And he doesn't know Lua but he does know something about Java.

He's also the IT guy of the group, if there's computer problems he gets called in. Most of his advice boils down to "turn it on and off again." But he's really good with the software side of things.

And he's a gamedev currently working on a project of some kind. But he has a lot of fun doing game jams. He's not very good at drawing, unfortunately and much of the art in his games looks like a toddler's. Not that he really cares.

I have no idea what his design should be, or his minecraft handle... maybe...

Praseodymium? Or maybe Jekyll will get that handle...

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Arthur Danvers Carew, or Thranduil in Minecraft, is... okay, same with Poole, he doesn't have a canonical first name unless you call him Danvers Carew and according to google... that's a surname. And it doesn't make sense for him to be knighted, not when he's still in college!

So his first name is Arthur.

...and in the OG novella he was described as having an "old world charm."

In my mind that translated into:

e l f (tolkien elf)

...so my first design of Sir Danvers Carew is basically an elf. As vaguely elven as I can get him without making him seem... well, too on the nose.

(Unfortunately that design has been lost to the sands of time.) Now. That's TTW's design... and honestly, as Arthur's still in college...

yes he's still going to be vaguely elven.

He's a political science major going to Oxford university. Why political science? He was an MP in the OG novella! Arthur Danvers Carew is an idealistic political science major who is actually a nerd. He's kind and quiet. He's not loud... but here's the thing: once you get him talking about something he cares about deeply...

...you can clearly see his passion, hidden beneath a marble exterior.

He's got a creative side to him as well. Carew is very fond of D&D especially, he dragged all his friends into D&D and is the DM of their shared campaign since he knows the most about it. And he's a major Tolkien nerd.

See get him talking about political science, Tolkien, his tales, or his D&D campaign and he will GLADLY talk for hours on end. Utterson and Carew often talk about politics (no I am not leaking their chats that's the last mention of politics you will ever see related to Black Lantern Descent).

So in public he may seem like a quiet, composed, but very kind and gentle man, right? Well with his friends he's a very articulate nerd who will gladly DM his best friends' D&D campaign.

And he's also the lorekeeper. The one who silently catalogues their adventures. And I know that if any member of the gang's going to go to a convention... it's going to be Carew, the Tolkien nerd.

I feel like he'd be the most genre-savvy out of all of them aside from Utterson since he reads tons of mystery novels and tries to figure out what's going on behind the scenes with his friend...

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....I saved Henry Jekyll (also known as LiquidReprieve12) for last intentionally.

That's because I'm worried about revealing too much about him early on. Alright...

BLD!Jekyll... is... soft-spoken, very articulate about his thoughts, polite, and very respectful. Ough his personality's a little underbaked too (I have to read the original again-)

Jekyll is the builder of the group. He makes gorgeous houses, mansions, cathedrals, and other such structures and has helped his friends with their builds before.

Now while Jekyll is very... soft-spoken and polite...

He goes to parties a lot. In fact, that's how he met Lanyon, at a party. Let's just say the two of them are absolutely wild at parties.

However... in spite of the fact Jekyll seems perfect if you only consider his exterior...

He's struggling. A lot.

Let's leave it at that. I'd love to reveal more but honestly... that information could become spoilers. I will say this tho:

BLD!Jekyll = BLD!Hyde. Not in any way a separate entity.

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Honestly, BLD!Hyde is still... cooking.

But I will give you this:

They've been having fun for a while. However, one night...

A mysterious player comes into the server.

Their username is BlackLantern328.

...the server is whitelisted. Only Lanyon, Poole, Jekyll, Utterson, and Carew can come in, and Poole specifically configured it that way.

...BlackLantern328 isn't on the whitelist.

And everybody... is noticeably peturbed.

But then... Utterson begins to realize...

That Jekyll... and BlackLantern328...

...are somehow, in a perverse sense...

Connected.

But how?

...anywho, this leads to several things happening. And honestly...

I'm planning on turning this into something like a comic or a minecraft series. Most likely a comic because I wanna get good at art and a comic sort of forces you to do that.

Which is why...

...I'm revealing so little about Jekyll & Hyde. yes I know you all know the twist that Jekyll = Hyde but...

Still.

Basically Black Lantern Descent is about addiction. I'll leave you with that final nugget. And I may want to keep that in my head for now... or maybe not.

There are still quite a few kinks I have to iron out, and I have to settle on character designs and a plot.

But...