#five asks

Cause sometimes I want to ask if something or other has a place in the World but asking you , Five , “Is there anything like [x] in Fivesworld” sounds a bit strange kkkk

It does ! It is called Tokwe . :)

Technically that's only the Ezmora word for it but it is by far the most universal word for it .

If I've actually never called it by it's proper name before that's genuinely crazy 💀 but yeah that's what the proper name is :D

What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

How long was the process before the character reached its final version? (or a version that would be clearly recognizable as the character?)

What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?

And reverse, which one of the four things did you struggle with the most?

8. What is the origin of their personality?

:D my girl

1. I liked Saal's origin and place in the world , and wanted to elaborate on his story , so I created a small ecosystem of characters to exist around him . That was the initial kickstarter for Vitra's existence . Nothing super exciting

2. She's lowkey still not in her final version 😭 things are always shifting around slightly as I try to make a story that makes sense . Although I honestly think she's been in the same rough shape since the beginning really .

3 . Name and role in the story simultaneously . I went "saal should have a female friend alongside divus . Her name's vitra ." And it was literally that simple . Even the rest of her personality and backstory came pretty much immediately . She sorta just popped mostly formed into my head . Like a godly vision .

4 . She's the only one of my characters who had fairly different concept art in my head when first imagining her . I pictured her as having brown hair and dark eyes and more tanned skin (and no broken nose) for a while until her current appearance came to me suddenly and took over while imagining animatics (100% true). But her appearance still does give me trouble . Trying to toe the line between "not a pretty looking woman to most people" and "clearly only considered unattractive because of the society she's in and could be conventionally attractive elsewhere" is a difficult fucking job . I keep giving her features that are classically conventionally unattractive (monobrow , a snag tooth , asymmetry , droopy eyes , ill features like red eyes and gauntness) and she still doesn't read as ugly to me 😔 she would be so disappointed

8. When I thought up her backstory the dumb part of my mind wanted her to be more quiet and reserved and whatever . But the correct part of my mind said a few things; Saal already fills the space of reserved character, stories where all the characters are Sad all the time cause of their trauma are boring, and most importantly the character arc/statement I wanted her to represent didn't fit with that . I wanted Vitra to be the elusive female character who starts out "unattractive" and then just . Continues being unattractive . No makeover scene. That's just who she is and it's fine . And her being sad and quiet didn't fit the confident , blasé person I was imagining filling that role . Imagining vitra going on her "I'm ugly and I don't care I want to ROB PEOPLE and BECOME FEARED" monologue while shy and sensitive genuinely makes no fucking sense . She HAS to be loud and obnoxious and make stupid unfunny jokes. She HAS to be overconfident and unself aware . It was the only option that added up

(also I HATE it when you have a band of 3 characters, 2 men 1 woman, and the woman HAS to be the quiet sensible one while the boys get to be silly and dumb and have fun. I HAAAATE that trope.)

(My dnd game has me thinking about gods and afterlife and stuff so it's colliding with your stuff cause i think about it probably more than you would expect)

hehehe yes . hehe . yes

It is very much a rule , for whatever reason , that the Unknowable Gods absolutely cannot interfere with humankind no matter what . They do not allow it . They do not want to be known or discovered , for whatever reason , and interfering would definitely risk their obscurity . However , since the beginning of this particular world , they have had to interfere once despite this .

And it ties into two other existing pieces of lore I've mentioned before ! Its allll connected

I've mentioned many times that the country brin is a large majority magi , that they seem to be genetically predisposed to having the arts , and absolutely no one alive in the world currently knows why .

I also think I've brought up the soul size block once or twice before . Basically the only thing in all of existence a magi cannot increase the size of is a soul , even though all logic dictates it should be possible . When they try , nothing happens at all .

Basically what happened was that a LONG , LONG , LONGLONGLONG LONG time ago , primitive magi people in what is now brin discovered that the size of the soul was what caused magical abilities , and that natural born magi could make people magi by inflating their souls . This , plus they could inflate their souls SO large as to make them the most powerful version of magi possible . And so then all those people were able to make other people top tier magi , and then those people were , and on and on and on again until everyone was . Basically infinite magi glitch .

The unknowable gods hadn't realised this would be possible , so they hadn't put any safeguards in place to stop it . It was a complete oversight . But mass amounts of people were becoming steadily more and more powerful and were getting close to being able to rival the unknowable gods themselves in collective power . So the gods broke their oath , for the one time they have ever done it , and simply put a barrier in place to prevent magi from being able to make more magi . Souls simply could no longer be increased in size . That was the end of that .

Of course the damage was already done to an extent , there was now an ethnic group of people who had massive magical ability as one of their genetic traits , and that was never going to go away . But at least The Unknowable no longer had to worry about potentially being discovered and overthrown .

Aside from reincarnation , no . There's nothing beyond that . To the souls themselves , they could maybe reach a point where they feel like they've entered a heaven of sorts , because they basically spend the rest of their existence in lucid maladaptive daydreams . But it's not real , even if from their pov it feels like it is .

Basically just float around picturing what you want afterlife to be for eternity until you maybe get reincarnated but probably not

HEHEHE YESYES YAY YIPPEE JOYOUS QUESTION

In Izubanism , it is believed that a soul , once parted from its body after death , will wander out into the Aazaq desert and call out to Neiina for judgement . If deemed virtuous (and there are no specific parameters for what counts , it's vibes based) Neiina the sky will pick them up and place them on her body ; so they will become a star in the night sky . It is believed all stars are people who have passed . From the dead people's pov , it is believed they will enter a faraway neverending banquet hall where everyone is dressed in silver and gold and glass (hence them looking like stars from a distance) and they can dine and drink with their loved ones for eternity .

If they are deemed unworthy , it is believed Neiina will crush their soul into a grain of sand , and they will remain there , truly dead , no longer conscious , for the rest of time . It is in turn believed all grains of sand used to be living , evil people .

So in Izubanism it's very much considered that eternal life/consciousness is a reward for being good , and that the wicked shouldn't get to live forever , not even being tortured . That the bad people in this world deserve to die in unceremonious obscurity and become nothing forever .

In Vavaism , they believe people become spirits/angels . Because the soul splitting from the body is a real thing that happens after death , and obviously magi can see that happen , so it's not like a religion that developed in a country of magi could ignore that fact .

They don't really believe that people stay the same after death , though . They tend to believe that the ghosts of dead people become puppets of some higher purpose , to act as Vavahn's workers , and whether they are thought to retain some of their original thoughts/feelings/motivations/memories is up to personal preference .

I don't talk about them often but since I have an excuse to here ; the Kuvkbak-Kur for a long time believed that there were three afterlives; the sun , and the two moons . It was believed that the sun was a golden plain of sand where only the greatest and most impactful people went , the red moon was a torturous blood filled wasteland where the worst possible people were forced to endure brutal punishment , and the white moon was a stone mine where the mundane had to work . It was believed that the white moon was by far the most populated , and very few people went to the others . It was also believed all dead people would stay in the afterlife forever .

Then the Yixans became very involved and intertwined with the Kuvkbak-Kur , and their science and wisdom influenced these beliefs somewhat . The Kuvkbak-Kur still believe all of the above , except for the part where it's eternal ; in the modern day they believe that 100 years after death , a person is freed from their afterlife and reincarnated , to try again , no matter which afterlife they went to .

so there are a few :)

LMAO SORRY I've been keeping it inside me for years I had to let it out . I realised right after like wait fuck pomm loves her what have I done

Thank you for the ask !!

I wanna say upwards of 60, but only 15 of them currently have identities (like a list of the names of the people in them) 😭

In the way that the daycare divisa is funny to me , I also think the disjunction of like 5-6 kids having low-stakes children’s show adventures while robbing people, would be funny .

LMFAO while it's absolutely not supposed to I am sure it has happened somewhere at some point

Yeah I mean a kid being an informant is super unlikely because they have a lot to keep tabs on , but it is definitely theoretically possible . Would have to be a super smart kid (fuckin nerd) but there are plenty of those

I could absolutely see a normal divisa with some old heads and an ordinary amount of young recruits becoming a divisa of only children through unfortunate circumstance, maybe the adults all died at once or got revealed to be traitors and had to be "dealt with" and so now it's literally only the kids left

Everyone else is going through the drama of regular guild life, all the politics and danger and committing actual reprehensible actions, while this divisa of accidentally a bunch of kids is going around pretending to be pirates and stealing sweets in their spare time

The guild master goes through their information to see where everyone's at and they get to this divisa and see that by their calculations they should now have a divisa of only children? But they've been sending in reports of perfectly finishing all their jobs , this couldn't be possible . They had a job to kidnap and interrogate one of the biggest anti-guild players in Ulor and they got the information , how could they have achieved this if they're all 8-12??