#dr!merlin

(I’ll reblog this with more additions :D)

(Repost because the tags weren’t working. Again.) 🫠 If this doesn’t work I give up.

First version was getting notes again, and since I’ve tweaked some characters since then, I decided to make a new post!

(You can look through my Artbreeder tag for their original posts, but some of them don’t match their current designs lol.)

Thank you @sergeantsporks for the first note!

And @the-arson-author-gamer, you know me too well.

This is actually going to be a two parter because I went over the image limit. 😂💀

Starting off with the blorbo!!! @draal-the-deadly and @donkeyklone have both called DR!Merlin an oc, so I’d say he counts lol.

Charlie is also an oc now too?

My very first oc, formerly named Eleanora! She’s now just Eleanor.

I made these two while messing around with character designs, but I did come up with a little backstory for them.

The first lady is a blind noblewoman, and the second lady’s her bodyguard. They’re best friends!

Hildred, the first official oc I made in Artbreeder, and a knight of the round table!

Asheworthe, the starter villain of Emerald Embers! His full name is Kennard Osgar Asheworthe.

Egbert, another knight! He tends to be rather scared of magic.

Rachel, a coworker and friend of Barbara’s!

This guy! He’s pretty plot important, so I can’t say his name yet.

A mermaid princess!

Mama and Papa Casperan!

Her mother, the queen!

My first adoptable, Mantis!

Three out of five adoptables I got from @geckoodles! I’ve decided the second troll is going to be Mervin the Monster Dealer.

A third dragon! No name yet :(

This creature called a Grave Tender!

A villain adoptable! I named her Galea!

My first fairy oc!

And last for this one, my first mermaid!

Welcome to the fandom, friend!!!

YOU’VE MADE MY WHOLE WEEK

I got so much euphoria from this ask!

I’ve never had anybody ask what my au is before!!!!!!!

DR stands for Daylight’s Redemption, which is my au series of ToA! It current has two books, Emerald Embers (EE), the main story, and Journey by Daylight (JbD), a prequel of Merlin’s life before EE. They star this man: my version of Merlin! You can scroll through his tag and my DR tag to see more about him/the series, but there are probably ToA spoilers in there!

I have a lot of posts lol, partly because I’m trying to drum up excitement for it, and because it’s easier than writing. But I’m getting there, and it always makes me happy when people say they’re excited for its release!!

And I have some advice. PLEASE DON’T WATCH THE MOVIE. PLEASE. It’s what killed this fandom so please don’t do it unless you want to see how bad it is.

And if you want to ask any more questions about the DR series, feel free!! ;)

That’s hilarious lol 😂

For anyone who doesn’t know, my pfp is my version of ToA Merlin! He’s a very different person from Canon!Merlin, in character and design, so he’s technically-ish an oc? Both @draal-the-deadly and @donkeyklone have called him one, so I’d say it counts!

I suddenly wanted to talk about this, so you get some lore about him! (It’s going to be an important plot point).

First off, here’s two ways how changeling biology is different from Merlin’s!

Changeling biology:

1. While most changelings have two forms, human and troll, their human forms are technically a “fake” form, while their troll forms are their true ones.

2. Changelings don’t feel any pain when changing forms, no matter what size; because while some of them are pretty slender as changelings, and only gain a few inches of height, some have the physique of an average troll. It could be because of Morgana’s magic?

Merlin’s biology:

1. As a cambion, (specifically half-demon, half-human), both his human form and demon form are his true forms. He was born in his human form, and he didn’t start transforming into his human form until puberty, where his non-human side began to show more. As a result, he was already more used to being human. It’s also the form that’s much, much less of a giveaway of being magic. Mortals knowing you’re magic is one thing; looking like magic is another.

2. His transformations are painful. Since he was the first cambion, he was born before the demons creating them figured how to make the transition to a different form painless. He was a test to see if demons and humans could even procreate, besides them wanting to make him the Anti-Christ.

When they happen, he collapses, biting back a scream as his bones started cracking and lengthening. His skin turns red, his facial markings appearing; his teeth becoming fangs. His blue eyes change to red, his pupils becoming slits before his horns, claws, wings, and tail all burst out of his body.

After, he stays where he transformed, panting, waiting for the pain to at least die down enough for him to breathe.

Fortunately, he has a healing factor, which thankfully nullifies the pain pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, if he’s tired, it won’t work nearly as quickly, or at all. (It also doesn’t take away the dread.)

Over his lifetime, he’s never been able to figure out a way to make his transformations less painful, so he tries to limit them to when a fight has made him pretty desperate. But his body has other plans. It wants him to balance his two forms, so if he doesn’t transform in a while, it does it for him.

His body being in pain also makes his magic go insane. It thinks he’s in danger, so it tries to protect him; but it actually makes him have to strain to control it, and force it to not burst out of him.

And at the start of EE, he’ll run himself into the ground before he even thinks of taking a nap, so he’s constantly exhausted.

He knows this won’t bode well for him when his body forces him to transform, but he can’t rest now. There’s too much to do, too many lives to save, too many futures to prevent…

Me: gives him facial scars

They’re dueling scars! After I looked at his other scars again, which are shown here, along with the rest of his design, I thought it was stupid that he somehow didn’t have any. He does only scar from magical wounds, but I still thought it stretched the line of disbelief a little too far lol.

So I went to the Covered In Scars Tv Tropes page to see if I could find any I liked. Then that took me to the general Scar Tropes page, then that took me to the Dueling Scars page! I liked that idea, so I googled it, and I got the Wikipedia page along with a few pictures!

Rules: Make a new post and post your latest line from your WIP and tag as many people as there are words.

If they were [real], they would’ve mocked the fear in his eyes.

Blorbos? Tell me about them if you wish!

YES

Okay. Technically he’s my own creation. But DR!Merlin is definitely my blorbo! I’ve made posts about his redesign (which I need to update) and characterization, so now it’s time for backstory!

Well, some of it. The meme I made definitely still applies, but I can, at the least, now tell you about his birth and his sister! :D

So obviously, Emerald Embers spoilers, but there are a lot of dark subjects ahead.

TW/CW for: rape, mentions of genocide, murder, and child death.

In the year 5,650 B.C., Adhan, a mortal human, is raped by a cambion. Merlin is born nine months later as a result.

It was an attempt to bring the Anti-Christ into the world, and as the first human wizard, Merlin was supposed to be. His magic surfaces as a baby, because a demon’s magic is very powerful.

Being half-demon also gave him exceptional intelligence, and it first shows through his eyes. His eyes are a muddy color when he’s born, but as he gets older, and his blue eyes become clearer, intelligence shines in them.

(At two years old he speaks very eloquently, and he’s already beginning to act like an adult in a child’s body.)

Adhan falls in love and marries his stepfather, also a normal human, about a year after his birth.

Three months later, she gets pregnant.

One day, Adhan and Merlin are sitting in their family home. She’s rocking him, and he’s falling asleep. But then a noise coming from his mother’s stomach startles him awake. She’s very confused by what noise he could be talking about, but they eventually figure out that he was hearing a heartbeat from her unborn baby.

His sister, Ganieda is born, and when he sees her for the first time, he gets a gut feeling that she isn’t like him. He’s confused, because he doesn’t know why she isn’t, and he’s sad, because he thought she would be like him.

But he loves her, and when she grows old enough, she loves her big brother’s magic.

Back then, magic wasn’t feared or hated, and people were amazed by it.

But as he and Ganieda grow up, more wizards start being born, and so do more cambions who wanted to bring the end of the world, because Merlin apparently won’t. (He doesn’t even know the true circumstances of his birth until years later.)

Because of all this, people become afraid. They begin to associate all human magic with demons and evil, and they decide they need to exterminate it.

So… they start capturing wizards and killing then.

Whether the wizards are innocent or not isn’t the point; no matter what, it’s a terrible, brutal act that shouldn’t have happened, but it does, and it keeps happening.

But Merlin and his family are safe, and he has no idea what’s going on. (The mortal humans know he has a high amount of power, even if he hasn’t used it yet, so they want to get the drop on him.)

Ganieda gets married to a mortal man named Rhydderch Hael, and Merlin, who’s just started getting into crafting, makes them both wedding gifts.

She gets a necklace, and Rhydderch gets a knife.

Ganieda gets pregnant pretty soon after the wedding, and everyone is overjoyed. Merlin is very excited to be an uncle because it’s his only sibling, and unbeknownst to them, the baby is a girl.

The fear of magic keeps getting worse. Soon whole mobs dedicated to wiping out at all magic form, and they decide they have enough manpower to kill Merlin.

They arrive to Merlin’s village. A few of them infiltrate it, pretending to be newcomers searching for a home; the rest of them stay in hiding. They begin spying on Merlin, and they learn that he has a sister. And anyone who’s in proximity to magic and knows about it is helping them live, and helping the magic spread, so they need to die.

One day, Merlin and Rhydderch go out to trade metal for silk, leaving Ganieda at home because she’s very far along at that point.

The mob strikes.

They break the door to Merlin, Ganieda, and Rhydderch’s house down, and they stab her in the stomach, killing her and her unborn child.

Then they set a few houses on fire, driving everyone else out. They leave Merlin’s family home alone for him to discover.

Then they take their exit, satisfied that their work is done. They’d ruined the village, killed Merlin’s sister, and Merlin would definitely end himself when he discovered the carnage.

Merlin and Rhydderch arrive home to their village mostly burned down, with no one in sight. They’re confused, horrified, and terrified for their family’s safety.

They race to their house, and find the door broken, hanging off its hinges.

Ganieda is on the floor close to the entrance. She’s lying in a pool of her own blood, and it’s clear that she’s been dead for a while.

They stare at her in horrified silence, shock rendering them completely unable to speak.

Merlin starts to disassociate for the first time.

Rhydderch, who had gone to his sister and picked up her body while he was, calls his name and begs him to do something, snapping him out of it.

He walks toward them with shaking legs and kneels slowly, taking her into his arms.

And he tries to think of something, anything, that will help-

But he knows he can’t do anything, and Rhydderch sees it in his eyes. He starts sobbing, and Merlin starts crying too.

Merlin starts to lose his innocence that day. It would take a lot more centuries, a lot more losses, and a lot more trauma, but it was the first thing that changed him into the man he is now.

The village slowly starts trickling back, and they hold a funeral for Ganieda and the baby.

At the funeral, Rhydderch gives Merlin her necklace, saying that he should have it because he was the one who made it.

He takes it without protesting and puts it on, a thousand yard stare on his face.

A few months later, Merlin and Rhydderch find themselves in a battle with the steadily growing number of anti-magic humans. (Some of them are definitely the ones who murdered Ganieda and her child.)

One of them stabs Rhydderch in the heart, and Merlin sees him go down.

He races over, kneeling so quickly he roughly slams his knees, but he barely notices that.

Maybe this time his magic could do something.

He lights his hands up and slams them down into his brother-in-law’s chest, over and and over again.

It doesn’t do anything.

Rhydderch is already gone. He’s dead, just like his sister. Just like his sister, there are no goodbyes, no promises to see each other again.

He stares down at his brother-in-law’s body, his blood covering his hands.

He snaps. A grieving, agonized scream tears from his throat, and with it comes a wave of uncontrollable magic that blasts everyone away.

He picks his brother-in-law up and cradles his body, just like he’d cradled his sister’s.

The village has another funeral.

Eventually, Adhan and his father die of old age, leaving him with only Charlie.

Speaking of Charlie. I need to insert him in here. 🥹🤦‍♀️

Eh that’s a worry for future me 😎👍