#brenin

**spoilers**

OMG the reveal/easter egg that Brenin is a clone of William 😭 nO MY BOY!

😭😭

I near fell out of my goddamn chair

it's also mentioned that he dies young,

does that also apply in a timeline when MC from changeling romances him??

i saw “brandon” in a later chapter and i just 😭😭

I'm sure I'll find out more with the other routes but

(he’s not even my favorite but i love literally all the ROs and he’s so sweet and doesn’t deserve any of the pain!!)

mY BOY

(tldr i wanted you to know i was so bamboozled and felt many things bc i love your characters, i am in pain but i love it)

So originally the William thing was just meant as a Easter Egg. No deep meaning but then everyone panicked and I had to explain. 🤣

Changeling-verse and GS-verse are two completely different universes. What is canon for GS-verse William is not canon for Changeling-verse William because they are two separate individuals that exist in alternate universes.

So in short, no. Changeling-verse William does not lead a short, tragic life. He and his magic-using friends all live happily ever after. GS-verse William...different story, sadly.

When I threw that in, I didn't expect it to get such a reaction. LoL It was meant to be just a little nod but...um. Yeah. It became a much bigger pain point for players who are familiar with Changeling. 🤣

I always find it really funny that GS players who have not played Changeling have zero reaction to that reveal but Changeling players completely freak out. 😂

I was trying to sketch prototype designs of Brenin and Pax to at least show that I actually am developing them, but my energy to draw has been minimal all week. So I’ll post them later…eventually.  As that implies, I have developed Nate and Hugh’s children (Brenin and Pax) some. But all of the other B2W2 kids (which is mainly just Curtis/Rosa’s son), not as much.

For Brenin, I flip-flop on multiple ideas for him, which is the main reason I haven’t posted anything about him yet. His prototype character was similar to Lack-Two from Pokespe, a bit of a homage to him.  He was a self-proclaimed ladies-man/huge flirt who wanted to get into spy/detective work, since he greatly admired his father’s work in Interpol. I ultimately scrapped this idea just because I wasn’t feeling it (plus Lack-Two’s character is a bit ridiculous once I gave it any thought). He would have had Nate’s brown hair and Hugh’s red eyes.

At this point, the idea I’m leaning towards for Brenin is that he is Hugh and Nate’s foster/adopted son (in his prototype version, he was their biological son). He’s actually very similar to Sorrel personality-wise (or rather, I ended up giving Sorrel a lot of traits I was going to give to Brenin), so I’m a bit hung up on whether to continue with the direction I was going with his character. But I suppose two somewhat similar characters isn’t always a bad thing.  Plus, their backgrounds are completely different, it’s more their personality and propensity of being violently overprotective of their younger sister that makes them similar.

Essentially, Brenin comes from a bad home life. His biological parents are mainly neglectful, but physical abuse isn’t unheard of either. He avoids going home as long as possible after school ends each day, which is how he ends up meeting Pax and Nate. Brenin is stalling going home by waiting in the park Nate usually brings Pax to. Pax, being overly friendly, approaches the older boy to see if he wants to play. Brenin tries to ignore Pax at first, but ends up playing along since he figures he has nothing better to do while avoiding returning home. He returns to the park the next day after school, since the day before was pleasant enough. Pax and Nate are already there and upon recognizing him, Pax runs up to him, wanting to play again. This continues for a couple weeks.  

Nate ends up paying extra attention to the boy that keeps coming by the park to play with Pax.  The minor bumps and bruises can be explained away, but it’s when Brenin shows up with a nasty black eye that Nate starts asking questions. Stuff happens and once it becomes clear Brenin’s family is to blame, Nate brings Brenin home with him before contacting the appropriate authorities. Hugh is working as a local cop at this point, and is basically like “Nate, you can’t essentially kidnap a child just because he has shitty parents, we need to go through the proper steps” but still supports Nate’s decision (since it’s what he feels is the right thing to do in his heart. Also this is Pokemon and is vigilante work not praised in that setting) and does what he can to protect Brenin. Drama happens since there’s not enough evidence to take Brenin out of the household and Nate and Hugh end up confronting the parents directly.  More drama happens, but at the end of it all, Nate and Hugh do end up taking in Brenin. Initially, the reasoning is since he already knows them, it’s better someone familiar look after him than have him be put into foster care and looked after by a random family.  They end up growing attached and do formally adopt him after about 2 year of him living with them.

Pax is like, 4 when all of this start going down, so most of the above doesn’t factor into her character much. Pax is the only trans fankid I have at this point, Paxton being her birth name (although I suppose Piper would count as well, even if that’s not how I tend to label them). Biologically, Pax was born a male alpha, but identifies as a female omega. I’ve always thought being trans in an omegaverse setting could be interesting to explore (even if it’s not the part of omegaverse that interests me) so figured I should try it out with a couple characters. Since there are two aspects of gender someone could be trans in in an omegaverse setting. Plus the way heats/ruts would play into all of this.

And if you still answer asks, could you tell us how do Veli and Brenin perceive psi? Also, how do knights normally teleport if not by folding space? Thank you!

Awww thank you so much! I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed Gilded Shadows!

To answer your questions:

I never specifically decided on ways that Veli and Brenin perceive psi but initially I had the idea that not all queen ranks even *see* it necessarily. I had the idea that some perceive it as sounds or even smells.

I feel like there are a lot of different ways it could work. Even visually, it could work quite different from how it works for Morgan (such as actually seeing some sort of wave form or other pattern instead of her coloured light/smoke). And since Veli had such a hard time teaching Morgan, I imagine it's something quite different from her visual representation.

As far as knights - in my head, I always imagined that a lot of other knights essentially do a much weaker and more limited version of what Ari does. Ari can fold space in such an extreme way that he connects point A to point B and then essentially "steps" across that fold almost instantaneously. And he can do it over extreme distances - so extreme he doesn't even know his upper range, honestly.

Many other knights can bend or distort space similarly to that, but to a much lesser degree or with very heavy limitations. So instead of completely connecting point A to point B like a wormhole, they simply bend space and shorten the distance, then travel quickly along the curve. They may not even travel that fast - but if they create a time contraction for themselves by bending space, maybe it just seems like they did it super fast to any observers. 🤔

I can come up with a lot of different variations honestly - but some of them would never make logical sense if you wanted a 'sciencey' explanation. One really early idea I had was that the same way Morgan can see psychometric threads, some knights could essentially see 'psionic threads' leading to people they had met (like their comrades, friends, etc). And could then 'pull' themselves along those threads to essentially 'teleport' to where they were.

How does that actually work though? I guess it seems like some sort of space distortion ability. But the specifics are a bit...wibbly. 🤔

I also had the idea that some knights are probably doing much more complicated things like distorting reality or even doing some kind of molecular construction/deconstruction - like Star Trek transporters. But that because these are very complex processes, they probably are limited in scope and range. So someone might only be able to teleport line of sight with that ability, etc.

Nope on all counts! He was never meant to be a fully explained or in-depth character.

There are multiple possibilities. If you come up with one that seems feasible, then maybe that was the reason why.

I know the reason I would give if I were to ever make a continuation of the story - but I don't intend to ever define a canon reason for this so players are allowed to come up with their own reasons!

Or maybe I'll write out my reasoning for it in the lore book one day. I'm not sure. OwO 💪

That chapter when we find out more about Brenin was like getting strapped into a roller coaster where you keep getting smacked by metal signs before and after every drop... Still not recovered from that yet😬

Yes! Jack is much softer than I think a lot of people expected him to be considering he's such a flirty boy. But he really is a sweetie.

I always felt the romantic development in that route had such odd pacing compared to other routes because the situation itself allows Morgan to get comfortable with him a little faster. But it was fun to explore a lower tension romance and I feel like it fits Jack's easy-going nature. OWO