#convergence asks

i answered wine here!

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Strawberry: Describe a celebration!

OUGH i love celebrations! one of my favorite celebrations i haven't actually gotten to name yet is an ezran festival that takes place once every 10 years--bulra live for a while, so that's not too bad for them.

the big pull of the festival is the tournament, which has multiple different categories of competition. bulra and non-bulra are allowed to compete, but they usually don't let organics in just because they're a lot... squishier. a lot of bulra really had to pull the reins in just to make it fair, which really skewed the whole point of the tournament, and after one too many, er, incidents, they decided to only have mechanical competitors allowed for safety reasons. organics are welcome to watch, though! just watch out for the stray bullets and stay behind the ballistic shielding.

the tournaments has a number of categories you can sign up for. one is a sort of free-for-all, where the last man standing wins. this one allows for only a single victor amongst what could be a hundred or more competitors. it's brutal and can last literal days at a time--competitors have to be careful of fuel management since there are no opportunities to refuel until there are a final ten remaining--but rewards the greatest prizes.

there's also a more bracket-style competition, where fighters compete one-on-one to decide a champion. there is a separate but similar sub-category of this with duos instead. it's a popular competition to enter, since a lot of bulra are extremely proud of their partners and battle prowess is a huge part of partner selection in bulran culture.

the three above are the ones with the best prizes, but there are a number of for-fun rather than for-glory. this includes a martial arts only category, flighted races, shooting competitions, and more.

prizes consist of different pools for each competition, but the same bulra can enter many categories and win from each pool. there are a few bulra in history who have come first in every category to exist, and they're often who younger bulra will boldly claim to be the next of. anyway, there's a large pool of prizes that can be picked from. the first place winner can pick two at first choice. popular choices are monetarily valuable, are specific capes or other artisan crafts that can only be found in royal spaces, commissioned weaponry, a blessing or removal of something from the alpha class (like debt or accumulated jail time), and so on. then second is able to pick, then third, until you get to around fifth, and everyone else gets a little plaque for entering.

if competition isn't your thing, there are a lot of other things to do still. lots of blacksmiths will set up a temporary shop, off-world vendors are invited to sell their wares for high prices (though they really must be careful if they're willing to try and rip off a bulra), and there are a lot of activities to partake in. for example, plays! bulra are shockingly attached to plays. more accurately, many are just fond of drama and romance, which are popular themes to bulran plays.

bulran plays and productions aren't really the sort of spoken-script plays you might expect. in fact, a lot of them have no spoken word at all! they're all done through interpretive movement and often, dance. these are 'fights,' but they're very scripted and are meant to depict the movements of a story with dance-like movements. bulra will use handheld weapons like swords as stage props, and they'll use their lights to help dictate the mood and tone of a scene. they'll often be painted to match a character, so you can always visually tell who someone is playing even if you aren't formally told their name, and they'll have streamers or other fabrics for dramatic effect. sound and music might be used for emphasis, but there aren't really soundtracks or musicals or the like. you're more likely to see various forms of light for practical effects.

popular plays include the creation of Bulra, the first bulra the species is named after, and less specifically, love stories, battle reenactments, and tragedies. audience participation is usually highly encouraged, and it's a great deal of fun, even if you don't really know what's going on.

i realized i should have specified im answering these for convergence LMAO anyway

uhh in the present day story, the most common crime is probably excessive violence in duels between bulra. duels are meant to be a relatively fair way to sort out disagreements, divvy up responsibility, establish a bit of a hierarchy of strength and skill, and so on. there aren't a ton of things in bulran society that, according to them, can't be resolved by a duel. shitty person in charge? challenge them to a duel. someone insulted your partner's honor? challenge them to a duel.

however, bulra can get. a bit excessive. since bulra are a combat-centered society and are by and large the dominant species of astarias, they tend to be contacted a lot by off-planet political bodies looking for aid in their own warfare or squabbles or what have you. bulra have a societal creed to help out where they can due to their species being saved by similar aid being given back on their own home planet of vovex. not every bulra has been shunted off-world, but a non-insubstantial portion have been.

sure!! this answer may be subject to change, but i'll let you know if anything significant needs to be updated. this got long, so i'll put a tl;dr:

her coding became changed to be more like lua's, which lead to her body taking on a rough shape of lua. she didn't have any fused parts at this time; her floating rock bits just looked more like lua. but during the Starfall, when she and lua exploded their crystals in a supernova to burn away the Mortalix, the heat produced in her chambers allowed her body to fuse. as she lay asleep for two million years inside lua, her body continued to change and warp, as she was still partially stuck in the Weave when they both laid to rest. when she awoke, she had a new body to learn to use.

for the longform answer, please see below the cut!

when andromeda of the 502nd generation was a New Light, she initially looked like a mandala stone; a series of floating, smooth, rotund pieces of metal flying in specific and intricate orbits around her crystal, which sat in the middle

YAY MY WEIRD LITTLE HIPPIE BOTS lavinians are a race of mechanical beings known for their prowess and control over light. they started out as little crystal sprites, which developed into inhabiting rock bodies to move about. they developed into robots later, and are now piezoelectric powered robots who use their crystal as a power source! they live to be about a million years old, and they all sort of. are built at the same time. and die at the same time. yes this causes problems.

later down the road, after hardlight was developed, the lavinians had to go on the defensive due to multiple invading forces wanting to take the knowledge for hardlight for themselves. once peaceful, the lavinians developed 12 massive mechs, known as casters, who had a mastery of hardlight previously unseen or heard of. lua is one such beast. they were piloted by artificers, of which andromeda of the 502nd generation was one. they were known as light guardians, and they had... mixed opinions from the public, especially across generations. they violated a lot of long-held traditions--conserve the earth, don't take longer to die than what your crystal allows, don't commit to violence. but they were necessary. the lavinians were under siege multiple times before, and they can't survive something like that again.

time goes on, and it's unfortunate luck that attracts the earth eater, the great indifference, the primordial hunter, to their humble planet. the mortalix: the event horizon which makes its home on the edge of the universe. the light guardians did what they could, but they were nothing compared to this black mass descending from the void. andromeda and lua set their crystals aflame and burned out most of their life's energy to Burn away the mortalix, but not before it tainted the remaining guardians and drove them to uncontrollable pain and rage, leading them to lash out against the lavinians who survived the initial onslaught. the mortalix also greatly damaged the planet. unstable, the lavinians couldn't carry on.