#valke

Ha, not going to be a big rant about that bastard or anything - at least not this time. And granted a lot of you guys may not know much about him at all. But anyway, this is more just a small physical thing about him that I’ve been thinking about lately...

Aaaaanyway, so, in Valke’s original drawings, he had one glowing blue biomechanical eye. I always saw him with something funny going on with the right eye - indeed in the very first time I saw him, I thought that the eye was missing and that he in fact wore a kind of leather eye-patch - but when it came to later drawings, I saw him with this vivid blue eye with metal around it, and, in the fashion of Krovens at the time having more odd and complex metallic parts, interpreted this as a glowing biomech eye.

Granted it looked cool, indeed I still think it DOES look cool - but in light of more recent understandings of Kroven metallic parts, it didn’t quite seem feasible anymore.

However, with some slight tweaking when I thought on it more, I came upon an explanation for his eye that makes complete sense and actually fits far better than before.

Rather than having a biomech eye, Valke exhibits the marble-eye gene (which can have variable penetrance) in his right eye, and also happens to be odd-eyed with the right eye being blue. So THIS odd-eyed colouration in combination with the marble-eye gene gives him the bright yellow-green left eye with the piercing, pupilless-looking bright blue right eye - which doesn’t glow anymore, haha, but sometimes looks a bit as if it does due to the reflective appearance and intense light blue colour. (the marble-eye mutation results in the cornea having a reflective protein that works something like a one-way mirror where the individual can see just fine, but those looking at the eye see the reflective surface as having no pupil).

This also makes a hell of a lot more sense too, because - REIKER is both odd-eyed AND exhibits marble-eye (albeit in both eyes), plus Valke’s father Azariel had the marble-eye gene (and Azariel’s brother, Adler, has it - which manifests partially in him in the form of reflective pale rims around each the edge of each iris). I thought before it was a bit odd if Valke didn’t exhibit the gene (not entirely sure of the inheritance pattern yet, whether recessive or dominant - or something else weird and unique to Krovens) but his father and his son did - so now that fits. Also fits even more with how Reiker’s blue right eye reminded Diira of his father... O.o

As for the rest, Krovens typically have symmetrical metallic parts but not always, so it’s perfectly possible for him to have scale-like metallic plates and deposits around his eyelid and socket region, but integrated with the skin and connective tissue rather than being biomech as before.

In Her hall of bone and moonlight, Hollowed Yualis rests before the dais, awaiting the return of Her blood which She summoned long ago, as the shadow of unbecoming fell upon Her.

This was The Incarnadine’s sacrifice, ritual aimed true: a blade to her throat and the hollow bones of a fallen starling cradled in her lap as she beseeched a fading god at the end of the world to spare at least her.  Hollowed Yualis, summoning back Her blessing of blood from the earth in an effort to stall Her fading, heard a single mortal’s prayer and reached out with no hand to touch that pain they shared.  This was the Coalescence, and all else followed, as birds to the moon.

FIN

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