#stringworlds

In the First Age there was Maleh, the first creature in creation. The Great God. Generally thought to be an embodiment of balance. Eventually due to actions by the other side he became unable to cope with his duties (we’ll talk about that later) and is now enjoying a peaceful retirement with his husband and their gang of adopted hooligans. 

In the Second Age Maleh was joined by three others and together they were known as the Four Immortals.

Samalthea (Sam) - She used to be human, and a pirate, but she found a way to smuggle things magically between worlds and the frequent exposure to Forces Outside Her Comprehension ended up making her immortal. Generally thought to be the embodiment of chaos. She’s been known to appear in mortal worlds as both a woman and as a man, and will sleep with anyone she can seduce. By Maleh, she’s the mother of Klaus and Valkan.

Miss M - Created out of the aether, probably to balance against Sam. Generally considered to be the embodiment of order. The only one of the Old Gods who can’t take a physical form in a mortal world. Despite being a creature of pure magic she’s really fascinated with stage magic and illusions and loves to practice card tricks. She argues incessantly with Sam and the only thing they agree about is that they don’t like Izare.

Izare - Originally a human. After two decades of extremely unstable and toxic friendship-turned-terrible-mutual-pining with Maleh he eventually gives up his life to save Maleh from the demon Kojandariel (more on this later) and Maleh rewards him by making him immortal. This is largely regarded as being a bad move but during the second age he was considered the embodiment of justice and the champion of mortals. When Maleh gave up his godhood, Izare followed him and they settled down in a backwater world.

The Third Age is the realm of the New Gods (though Sam and Miss M are still around).

Arvid - The New Great Goddess. She was originally human. Maleh’s inability to fight against Tiamat (more on this later) sent his two sons seeking for reinforcements, as they were not strong enough to take his place. They found Arivd who, in addition to having strong magic of her own, was capable of channeling both of their powers, making all three stronger. However taking a lot of immortal power into your own body does have strange effects. She was at a crossing point between mortality and immortality and could have chosen to go either way. She chose immortal. Maleh likes Arvid and as she agreed to rule alongside his sons, he left the universe to her capable hands. By Klaus she’s the mother of Lishka, who Maleh is raising.

Klaus - The older of the two twins. He’s sort of flighty and reckless. He has a lot of magic power and he works as Arvid’s enforcer. He gets along with both of his parents, and generally everyone else too. Friendly and dumb. Spends almost all of his time in the mortal world, cleaning up problems.

well I have around 500~ of them so I don’t blame people for not knowing LOL

Mahesha, a venerated immortal being, horrendously betrayed and trapped in a mortal body. He’s extremely grumpy about it, he dislikes people and, ugh, feelings. That’s the worst part. But sometimes, if he’s being honest, he can admit that there’s nothing quite like human music where he’s from and he finds it to be quite beautiful. If the musician is skilled enough he might just feel that being here isn’t such a waste.

-living in a very small, close-minded community

-having an extremely strict and demanding father

-having dyslexia that was labelled as “laziness” and “a difficult temperament” leading to lots of punishments, insults, and bullying

-general self-esteem issues

Sam is not the least bit maternal so she dumped the twins almost immediately.

Along with the other three (Maleh, completely bewildered, Miss M, who is enamored but has literally not the slightest idea about what flesh and blood creatures need, and Izare, who has never been around babies) it is amazing that the twins survived.

Maleh did try his best, really, but his best was not...great. He ended up being more of magic teacher than an actual parent which is something the twins needed but, you know, they also needed a parent.

Luckily the Stringworlds are pretty safe and full of creatures that know a lot more about children so they turned out alright. But Valkan, who is more emotionally needy than Klaus, never really got along with either of his parents.

With Deion and Gala it was easier. For one thing they weren’t trying to save the universe. For another, those two were much older (8 and 5).

Maleh (a child in his current mortal body) managed to escape from Koja basically by luck but then was kind of a dipshit and in the middle of running away fell into a river and got swept away.

Izare (also a child at the time) is the one who found him and dragged him out.

As a young boy Izare was actually pretty gentle and nice. He wanted to a knight and he tried really hard to live up to those ideals. Not the brightest kid ever, but certainly nice. He took Maleh under his wing and for a while things were really good. Maleh didn’t really know how to act and certainly didn’t know how to friendship but they seemed to understand each other well enough.

But Izare’s father Harrick was a bit of a tyrant. He was really strict with Izare, and very sparse with praise and when he found out that Izare wanted to be a knight of all things! Well! Of course Izare couldn’t be a knight. He was too dumb, too clumsy, too inept. He’d never be good for anything except staying put and becoming a city guard like his father, and grandfather, and so on.

So, over time, Izare became bitter. He started getting into trouble, started drinking too much, and got mean. And since Maleh had been in the habit of following him around like a lost puppy, he’s the one that Izare took it out on. And Maleh, not currently in the habit of defending himself, didn’t really do anything about it, which only enabled Izare to act worse.

So this went on for about twenty years in a never-ending spiral of terrible not usually found this side of bad fanfic and was only interrupted when Koja finally managed to catch up to them. Tired of trying in vain to find Maleh and afraid of Tiamat would do to him if Maleh managed to escape his mortal prison, he decided, fuck it, he was just going to take over everything and start killing people until he got what he wanted.

For one thing, Sam and Miss M tried really hard to find Maleh after he went missing and they just couldn’t and some of it is certainly “if I was a little faster”. She resents Izare for doing something that rightfully should have been her job.

For another, Izare is nothing special. He’s sullen and argumentative, wrapped up in his own problems, two steps away from being an alcoholic, and is often needlessly cruel. The fact that he’s been trying to improve doesn’t matter with her because Sam basically has no respect for him to begin with. And she’s supposed to accept that he’s a god now? That he has some responsibility in keeping the worlds running smoothly? No thanks. Fortunately he is good in a fight and has proven that he can take down powerful demons on his own so at least that’s something.

But mostly it comes back to Maleh, of course. Sam knows what Maleh should be: immortal, impervious, untouchable. He’s not a being that should have emotions, not a being that should be weighed down by petty mortal problems. Sam lays the blame for this at Izare’s feet. To her mind, Koja may have put Maleh in a mortal body but Izare is the one who made it stick. Izare is the reason that Maleh actually thinks and feels like a mortal now. (And she might very well be right about that). And the fact that he tries to run away from that is despicable. Somehow he made Maleh love him, and now he has to deal with the consequences.

So yeah. Sam doesn’t like Izare very much.

Yeah, that’s a problem. Neither Maleh nor Izare were the most emotionally healthy to begin with and they had an even worse effect on each other for quite a while

Well what happened was that Sam got really irritated at both of them because there were demons to fight and a universe to save and they kept moping and angsting all over the place and generally not doing their jobs

So she and Miss M got together (for once) and made a spell that essentially equaled decades of therapy in the form of a four month long dream-journey coma and when they woke up Maleh was really pissed about being spelled against his will but still had to agree that it was probably a good idea.

They were still distant with each other for a while but that allowed a real relationship to grow between the two of them, which was much better than what had been happening before.

And Sam still hates Izare but at least if he’s not making Maleh cry she can tolerate him.