#postmasterwip

I'm honestly so excited to share this commission I got of Ida from the talented and effervescent @verkomy

I'm so thrilled with how she turned out! The colours, the textures, the costume design... everything is just A++

⊹ . ݁ ✉︎ ݁ . ⊹ Ida - The Postmaster's Apprentice ⊹ . ݁ ✉︎ ݁ . ⊹

I cannot thank @antiquedeuce enough for their incredible interpretation of my darling Ida!

I have had this ask sat in my inbox for soooo long, waiting for the inspiration to ramble about someone, and today you all get Fannan!

incredible art by @eldritchgh0st

Fannan a Monaru (/Fanan.ə.mɔnəRu/ meaning ‘a Gentle Breeze from the Red Mountain’) is a Muinn from, as his name suggests, the foothills of the Red Mountain, which in turn is part of the White Hind Mountains that run along the border between Luzzelmark, Rotherel, and Munland.

He has two mothers and a birth tree, so three parents in total, and is relatively young in terms of his people. Muinn live to be differing ages depending on the trees they come from. Coming from an aspen (the European Populus tremula kind, rather than the kind you find in North America) Fannan is expected to live to be just over 200 years old, but at the moment is only about 65 years old. He is considered an adult, but a young adult, perhaps in his mid-twenties by Theden standards.

Being an aspen child he has some pretty standard aspen traits; resilience, sociability, and a bright outlook on life, however his foliage is unusual for an aspen in that it isn’t green or yellow like many, it’s the dark russet of dying leaves. Aspen children are naturally more in tune with the veil between worlds, between life and death, but Fannan is even more of a bridge between them than most of his aspen siblings. He has the ability to speak to the dead, and for the dead to speak through him, but it scares him a lot, so instead of embracing this and becoming a spiritualist, Fannan chose to embrace the world of the living instead.

He is friendly and enigmatic, if a little naive, and loves to learn about other cultures and societies. It was a no-brainer for him to choose to go into diplomacy, and when he came of age he moved deeper into the Golden Forest and trained amongst the diplomats there to become an envoy to the Thedenfolk.

He desperately wants to think the best of people, he takes things at face value, and is more likely than not to give someone the benefit of the doubt, which doesn’t lend itself all that well to shrewd diplomacy, but it does endear him to many, and he has found success in his positive outlook. He is generally calm in situations that many would lose their temper over, which is another trait that comes in handy in his line of work.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t get angry or upset or jealous, just that it takes a little more to push him over that precipice. Once over that precipice, though, he has a sharp tongue and his anger is fierce. It doesn’t burn hot, it’s ice cold and uncomfortable to witness, a freezing fury that he wishes he could regret in the aftermath, but rarely does.

Rules: post sentences from your WIP that each start with the letter of the given word!

I was tagged by the lovely @abitscripturient (sorry it took me so long to get around to it!) with the word RIVER. You can read her post here.

I'll leave an open tag with the word NIGHT.

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R

Rather than a table or two beneath a canopy, this was a full wagon, doors on its flank open wide to reveal its wares, all of which were timepieces the like of which Ida had never seen before. There were clocks so small that several could fit on a table at once, each one crafted out of fine metal filigree so one could see the equally as fine mechanisms tick and turn within them. There were some in burnished bronze, some in blackened iron, and others in brilliant verdigris patina, but all were beautifully formed, their glass faces and precise hands all somehow moving as one, as if they were attuned to the same cosmic timepiece.

I

It writhed and spat from its place trapped in Birita's iron grip. The smell was almost as horrendous as the sight of it, like rotting meat sloughing from old bones. Ida wanted to vomit, but couldn't take her eyes from the sight of it, though she could hear the muffled sounds of others succumbing to the violent sight of it behind her.

V

"Vyskavia is more mountainous generally, so the mountain markers are usually maintained by Vyskavian patrols, even on the Gorian side. It is part of an ancient treaty dating back to before Vyskavia was annexed by Goria, and long before it was invaded by the Empire."

E

Every so often he would hear a sound, or smell a change in the wind, and his ears would stiffen, his nose twitching, but what was most disconcerting was the way Bolek mirrored his movements. When Girts paused, so did Bolek, almost in the same heartbeat.

R

"Restless dead, harmless as moths." Aarna said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It's the living you have to worry about here, by the sounds of it."

My first Snippet Sunday of the year! Have a pretty rocky first meeting with our (yet to become) dear Bolek!

~*~

The man was tall and grave, with a shock of dark hair tied back in a long queue, wearing traditional Gorian robes and a fur-lined cape. He stopped just short of them, as though suddenly hesitant.

"You are the group Anatol ferried from Grobstat?" He said in Imperial, his accent heavy and lilting.

No one answered at first, but Aarna stepped forward at last and replied that they were.

"Where is my wife? I was told she was with you."

Neer was the next to speak, eyeing the man with undisguised suspicion. "You are Renia's husband?"

The man replied that he was, and Neer hummed in thought. "What makes you think you have the right to know where she is?"

There was another moment where the man looked uncertain before he steeled himself, looking down his prominent nose at the Favalan. "She is my wife, and she has been missing for nearly two months. I have every right to ask after her health and whereabouts."

"But you did not ask after her health. In fact, you did not ask much at all. You demanded. And without so much as a good day or well met."

This seemed to give the man pause. He bowed, shallow and stiff. "My apologies Master Favalan. I am Bolek, Baron Nedamov."

Neer looked him up and down before returning the bow just as shallowly. "Neer Haak, Master cobbler under the Honourable Guild of the Cobblers of the City of Bradness, at your service."

"Well met, Master Haak. Now may I enquire as to the whereabouts of my wife?"

It was Fannan who introduced himself next, a more imposing figure than Neer had been, and at least as tall as the Baron. His leaves fell dramatically about his face as he swept into a formal bow. "Baron Nedamov, I am Fannan a Monaru of the Golden Forest. I am here on behalf of the Golden Conclave as ambassador and chaperone. As your wife has been under my care, and therefore under the protection of the Golden Conclave, it is my duty to enquire as to your intentions towards our dear Renia."

The Baron seemed once again taken aback. "Those are pretty words, Ambassador. I suppose I ought to thank you for your care in ensuring my wife's safety, however the last I heard from her Aunt and Uncle she had been shipwrecked off the coast of Outer Goria. That hardly seems protected to me."

Fannan's large eyes narrowed. "Perhaps she would not have been on that ship in the first place had she been taken better care of at home."

The Baron bristled. "Listen, Fannan a Monaru, whatever you believe yourself to be for the Golden Conclave of a place a long way from where we are right now, what dispute my wife may have with me is between us two alone."

Tagged by @bloodmoodtrash (thank you thank you) You can read their snippets here

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Book

Stood at the desk were two postal workers in matching livery, the same blue and yellow as Ida, albeit clean and pressed rather than grubby and rumpled from several days' travel. The man on the right looked to be just a little older than Ida, eyes trained on a logbook in front of him, while the girl on the left looked fifteen at most, flitting around her colleague like a finch around a seed-bag.

Look

"I'll admit, it doesn't look good Luus, but we should give them the benefit of the doubt. At least until she and Nol have had a chance to talk to one another about it. It's their relationship, not ours."

"Nol is family, what's his business is my business."

"Are we discussing our erstwhile Gorian companions?" Came a hushed voice from behind them so suddenly it made Ida jump. She turned around to see Fannan giving her a slyly smug look over his mug of wine. "And here I thought you above such gossip, Ida."

Ida felt her cheeks darken with embarrassment. "If you had overheard anything at all you would have heard me saying that we ought not stick our noses where they are not wanted nor needed."

Took

As the last stone was placed atop the cairn there was a whisper, a breath of a breeze that neither Ida nor Aarna had felt since before they first set foot in Zellaburg. With the wind came a voice, as soft and susurrous as the fallen leaves around them.

"What poor creature are you?" It asked.

Ida could barely croak an answer from her broken beak, but as she did the wind picked up and the leaves swirled in a column together until they took the shape of a spectral woman. Woman was, perhaps, generous, as she seemed barely out of girlhood, her face soft and youthful, but stricken.

Shook

Bolek shook his head. "It is a shorthand of sorts. This stroke here indicates which path we must take, then this one warns of danger up the path in the other direction, and the one below it is a mark specifically for rockfall."

Ida looked at the rock, and though she could see the markings on it clearly, she could not make head nor tail of the strange shapes and angles. Aarna, however nodded solemnly and declared it a very sensible manner of communicating such things.

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I am once again blown away by @verkomy's work! She knocked it out of the park with this delightful wee sketch of Renia and Nol.

They sure do! I've probably mentioned them before, but Postmaster has the Vitsir: which are technically two different kinds of undead creature lumped into one category because they look similar and hunt in similar ways.

One is a dead Vitsir, a human who died and whose corpse was desecrated after death. The other is a living Vitsir, a child born of incest who was buried alive.

Both kinds of Vitsir hunt at night, drain their victims of blood, swelling like a tick, and cannot be killed with ordinary weapons.

To kill a dead Vitsir you bind them with rope made of blackthorn, place them back into their coffin and then burn them. To kill a living Vitsir, you must keep it from its coffin until you can expose it to sunlight, which will burn it where other fire cannot.