#lizrich

🧸 - Childhood friends

Now there's someone who must not have thought much about childhood friends in decades... I don't think many of Noor's childhood friends are still around, to be honest. Not just in their life, but life in general. But as a scrappy little thing, they were pretty popular. They've always been smart, driven, and good at winning people over- as a kid that meant always having fun ideas for games to play, ways to get out of working, and petty little ways to get one over on the kids someone didn't like or that nasty teen who thinks he can push everyone around just because he's with one of the gangs now. I think they must have had a lot of friends at a point. And those friends followed them as they got older and the games escalated to theft and the petty rivalries turned into knife fights and turf wars, and one day they were the teens pushing the kids around. Always scrappy sorts, good at surviving a hopeless upbringing where the boot of the Imperium was constantly pressing down to crush them. The raids by guardsmen, the violence from the gangs, the starvation when rations were choked off as punishment from above or just for the sake of efficiency, the overwork and industrial accidents that had claimed more than one life in every family, the constant threat of disease... they were hard kids, and the ones who made it that far grew into hard adults. But as hard as they were, none managed to make it quite as far as Noor. The last friend they had from back then had stuck with them for years and years, coming up through the ranks until they were living pretty comfortably and enjoying all those good things in life they never got as kids. The work still got them about two decades ago- a shootout in one of the clubs run by the organization they were in, started by a patron over trouble with his girl. It was just a stray bullet, but there was no coming back from it. Since then Noor has felt quite alone. The friends you make after you've had a little power are never the same as the ones you used to play ball with down at the end of the street.

Thank you for asking about Teacher Nonsense <3

Huan Meng has no idea if he’s ever had any kind of formal education and has absolutely zero qualifications to be a teacher besides “has been slightly more places in the functional part of his memory than most people in town, probably” and “knows how to read and write.” There’s an honest to god real lawyer in Willowshore with formal schooling who came from a real city- he avoids her like the plague. He acquired his position as a teacher when he offered to teach some basic writing skills to the children of some local farmers when originally traveling through the area, something which attracted the attention of other local families. Realizing that the townsfolk were happy to support him in a modest living for this service, he changed his plans and decided to settle down in the village for a period of time as he continued cultivating to start his way back up the long, long path to a second ascension. Since then he’s slowly built a more elaborate “curriculum” of things he thinks teachers are supposed to teach and students are supposed to learn out of an eclectic range of calligraphy, literature, simple arithmetic, history, law, religion and folklore, philosophy, art, and whatever else he’s felt confident that he could pass himself off as knowing something about. Student attendance is somewhat irregular- students attend during the times when their families can spare the hands and stop going to school when it feels like there’s not much more to learn. It has demonstrably improved the literacy rate of Willowshore, but anyone exposed to a more rigorous standard of education would probably be a little confounded by this country classroom.

Thank you Nix!! I think some unintentional parallels(?) slipped into two of these...

[prompt list]

🚬 for a headcanon about a bad habit

Balthazar If something is in the morning, Balthazar will be late to it. This is an immutable law of the universe. He’s not a morning person, he never will be, and even when he’s really, truly trying to make the accursed before noon hours adhere to shape and structure, somehow things will still slip little by little and he’ll be five minutes late. And there is some personal frustration he feels with this- it’s the lack of control he seems to have even when it counts. It’s one thing to indulge in the slow start and let it draw out at his leisure while everyone else has to adapt, but it’s another to be unable to rally when he wants to be seen as perfectly, precisely put together. Because of this, he avoids scheduling important meetings in the morning- the best way to claw back that control is to just keep the situations where he needs it far away from when he knows he won’t have it.

Kas God, we already did the leading people on one recently, didn’t we… Well, here’s a different one. Kasander is an intensely earnest idealist while also being a natural born (and very defensive) liar, and a worrying number of their choices are made on split second impulse guided by a vague sense of what people “deserve” to hear. They are honest to active detriment and dishonest to self-destruction- a rare talent for splitting the difference between painful earnesty and chronic lying. And that of course means an array of rare talents for openly confessing to murders, unsustainable fabrications, telling people the worst news they’ve ever heard, concealing personal misery, and just generally escalating delicate situations. It can and does wrap back around to things working out Fine, but playing Kasander Morality Roulette can be pretty fucking stressful for everyone else in a situation.

⛄ for a season-themed headcanon

Carmen Carmen dislikes fall. She doesn’t have any real issue with the weather or the natural motion of the season, but as a girl she always disliked the amount of work that went into getting ready for winter. The final harvests are a pain. Organizing stores is a pain. Preserving things is a pain, even if it’s not like the task has changed from how it was the whole rest of the year. All the wrapping up and tying off loose ends and anticipating the dim, inactive season never sat well with Carmen as a restless lass. Her habits and lifestyle have changed to the point of being nearly unrecognizable over the years, but that old frustration is burned deep into her. Her mood is always just a little bit worse during the season.

Thank you for the ask, and the patience!!! :')

[prompt list]

🐞 (ladybug) - What does a perfect day look like for your oc? What do they do? Who do they see?

For Carmen, a perfect day is, above all, quiet. Often she imagines it would be a day where she could be home, but one where she still had space to herself and privacy she didn't growing up. She'd take June and ride out past the fields and up the hill trail, through all the places she used to love to wander when she was a girl. She'd take her time returning, greeting neighbors she hasn't seen in years, stopping by gaggles of sheep and goats, petting dogs and cats and helping scatter feed for the chickens and ducks. She's not one to imagine herself entirely idle though- she'd like to spend time doing mundane favors and helping with everyday chores. Helping mend fences, running messages out to the fields, soothing the ewe who's not so sure about the shears yet.... This would all make her happy. And at the end she'd make her way back home and eat her aunt's cooking and catch up with her cousins and hear her father and her uncle talk through work while her grandmother shares gossip and her mother and her aunt bicker over what it means. Maybe there's a rosiness to that familial chaos in her memory, but she yearns for it. Her home was a safe, isolated place where it felt like nothing that mattered ever happened. It's been a long time since she let herself exist in a place like that. Maybe after the crusades are all over, she tells herself. When the work is all done she'll rest.

Oh man. Big night for women with issues!!!! I went through a full spectrum of emotions answering these, thank you

[prompt]

🌈 - Do you associate any colors with them?

Oh for sure. On both counts, haha. I feel like this is a thing for most of my OCs- at least, it’s a major point of trying to like. Visualize a design for them when drawing. At any rate.

Carmen has always been strongly associated with red to me. It’s a very vibrant, strong color, and it’s also a very heroic and regal one. Maybe it’s just the kinds of books I read as a kid, but when I think of kings and knights, I think of crimson and scarlet and all that jazz. She’s proud, principled, and aspires to be a paragon of what she considers virtue. I’ve also always portrayed her with a rose as an emblem- a romantic symbol. Of course, the obvious flip side of that is that there’s a lot of negative association with red as well- fire and blood are the obvious ones here. She’s not fiery in the sense of raging passion or blistering anger per se, but more like… a destructive flame that would burn everything to ashes, maybe. Someone with burning ideals and zealotry so hot that it’s searing her too. Of course, the less fanciful aspect of the red is that it’s a color that was also associated with the chivalric order she was a part of in tabletop (also an anchor point of the rose). Carmen’s kind of a funny character for color though. She’s been around in some form or other for ten years or more at this point, and she’s always had the red association. It’s something that’s kind of transformed over time.

Ismene is an easy purple. And one day I swear to fucking god I will manage to color some of my art of her. Although I guess it wouldn’t be posted here so uhh maybe it doesn’t matter. Anyway. Purple. Regal and mystical. That’s the kind of vibe that I always want her to give off as a first impression, so purple is an obvious choice. I think there’s also something to purple being a kind of cool, somber color- she’s become a more mischievous character than originally planned, but I think it’s right for her to have a certain self-serious gravitas. This is a bit of an open and shut one I don’t have much more to say ^^;;

🌍 - What are this oc’s religious views?

Oh good god.

Carmen’s religious views are Very Different in Wrath from her original tabletop iteration (where her schtick is generally kind of inverted from part of Wrath), so I’m going to preface this by saying I’m answering for the Wrath iteration of the character. Carmen is a dogmatic atheist. You know the goofy edgelord atheist dialogue in this game? Honestly totally on point for her. She doesn’t believe that people should rely on the gods, and she believes that gods are ultimately all self-serving and tend to use mortals as proxies for their conflicts and the most extreme expressions of existence. The affairs of mortals should belong entirely to mortals. She’s not a person who sees the good gods as fundamentally better than the evil. In the end, they’re still imposing the same manipulative systems on their followers. They still inspire violent, irrational conflict. And they don’t “inspire” their followers. They breed helplessness. They make people reliant, cause them to wait and pray for salvation instead of searching for it themselves. The gods are cowards and parasites. And one day, it would be nice to see them torn down from their thrones.

I had to look up/double check FR lore for this one, which was half the time spent on this whole thing if I’m being real with you. Anyway. Ismene’s upbringing obviously meant a lot of exposure to gods of knowledge, and she tends to regard these deities with a reasonable level of respect. Knowledge, to her, is the highest power; those who reign over it are the highest Powers. She identified particularly strongly with Savras, Alaundo’s patron, from a precocious age- one of a number of ways she has taken aspects of the life of the one true prophet for herself. This seemed like a bit of childish fancy when she was young, but the release of Savras during the Time of Troubles gave it more gravity- another uncanny bit of foresight from the girl. For her, it seemed a sign in and of itself- thought not a person of deep devotion, she quietly claimed the returned god as her patron, developing a personal belief that her prophetic abilities had been an omen of his return and deepening her sense that she was personally connected to Alaundo. In the years between the Time of Troubles and the revelation of her Bhaalspawn heritage Ismene developed a conviction that she had a destiny to take up Alaundo’s mantle as a true prophet of Savras in the new age. Her personal dedication to the god is partially responsible for her aversion to outright lying- to speak untruth is anathema to the All-Seeing, though she never quite internalized his dedication to wholly avoiding misdirection and deceit. The revelation of her divine blood shook her faith deeply- in some form or other, her abilities originate in truth from Bhaal. Of course, with pride and precocious self-importance as the origins of her devotion to the Lord of Divination, she’s certainly able to adapt to the idea of being a demigod given time. I don’t want to say more when I have yet to y’know. Finish the original Bhaalspawn Saga. But I certainly have an idea of the trajectory of a hubristic young wizard who gets to live with the smug satisfaction that she can outfox a god.

🐉 - Very serious question… are they more like a dragon, or a unicorn?

Carmen is an easy dragon. It’s the fire thing. And the knight thing. What’s the opposite of a noble knight? That’s right, a dragon. And also being very cool despite objectively killing a lot of people, which isn’t so awesome.

Thanks for the ask :) I feel like Ismene is slowly becoming the most medieval sounding medieval fantasy lady

[prompt]

texture: Does your OC favor any specific kinds of cloth or textures? Is there anything they can't wear or don't like? What sort of fabrics do they prefer?

Ismene has a strong preference for smooth, silky textures. She’s never had an actual silk garment (although she would dearly love one), but Gorion did his best to get a gown of fine linen for her for one of her birthdays which has a texture she likes. One thing she really can’t stand is anything scratchy. Coarse fabrics are off the table against skin, and she barely tolerates wearing coarse wool cloaks. Wool in general is disliked for how stuffy and unappealing it is, no matter how well woven it is. And she generally prefers to avoid tight fitting clothing and pants in general. Too constrictive!

Her favorite fabrics are silks and fine cottons. Subtly patterned silk brocades win particular fondness- she often saw their like in illuminated texts as a child and has envied them from afar for a long time. She also appreciates things which have a lightness to them, like chiffon or gossamer. The textile markets and tailors of the big cities of the Sword Coast are a wonder to her.

wardrobe: How big is your character's wardrobe? Do they wear things threadbare, or can they afford new clothes often? Are they any good at mending and repairing their own clothing?

Despite a certain princess-like air, Ismene’s wardrobe has always been relatively modest in size. Gorion may not have expected her to live with the austerity of a monk, but Candlekeep is hardly a manor and has no great market nearby to feed a taste for excess. She’s always had her undergarments and usually maybe two gowns- her clothes were never worn through and could be replaced as growth or condition required, but it wasn’t exactly a wardrobe meant for fashion. In Ismene’s late teens, Gorion suddenly went away to the city for several days and returned with a set of clothing for traveling for her- until the day of her departure, this lay untouched in her chest.

Thanks for the ask- this is a really fun question! I am all about the gap between internal and external perception. Heart.

[prompt list]

17. What do they notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice looking at them?

Balthazar

Other people do a lot of looking when it comes to Balthazar- it seems natural to start with their gaze. What tends to stand out most obviously is how damn pale he is- practically colorless, with ghostly skin and white hair and light eyes. It’s striking. More than that, it’s eerie. It gives an unnatural edge to natural beauty. The only thing that might catch attention faster than that is his sense of style- it’s flamboyant, foppish, and generally out of place in the Stolen Lands (and the River Kingdoms at large). His personal style was distinct in Absalom, but the further north he’s come the more eccentric it’s come to seem relative to his surroundings. His halo would outmatch both of these, but he tends to keep it suppressed as much as possible. He dislikes the attention it gets.

Now, there’s something that probably seems to be missing on this list- the wings didn’t appear until not long after the Womb of Lamashtu. After that, everything else is out. There’s nothing that people see but the wings.

And when it comes to Balthazar, he tends to see the same things. A deathly, washed-out face that has never borne even the faintest resemblance to his father’s. Clothing and jewelry that he’s fretted over endlessly, carefully crafting the image the mirror now shows him: bold, unapologetic, extravagant, and impossible to forget.

After the wings he struggles to see anything except an ugly mess of feathers he’ll never be able to hide.

Carmen

When Carmen looks in the mirror, what she sees about herself first is her hair- she sees when it’s tangled and will be a knotted mess to get in order later, and she sees when it’s starting to come loose from where it’s pulled back or pinned and at risk of becoming a hazard in a fight. Sometimes she looks at it with the thought that she ought to chop it all off again, return to something properly practical and manageable, but she can’t help but feel guilty when she thinks about that. Her mother always made such a fuss over what pretty hair she had when she was a girl, and even if she’d gone with it short for a while, once she’d slipped on trimming it and it started to get away from her she couldn’t think about cropping it back that far again without think about her mother. She hasn’t visited her parents in a long time. These days, she hasn’t sent a letter in a while either. There’s never time. So she leaves her hair long, and pulls it out of its tie to brush it down again and re-tie it and redo the pins, and that’s that.