Wedding Eve in Hoard Keep Commission
Another comm for @alt-hammer set in their Noblestuck AU, this time featuring Porrim and Bronya visiting the land of the Pyropes before the historically unprecedented wedding of Latula and Mituna, introducing Terezi, Karkat and Kankri, as well as Redglare!
Featuring hyper pregnancy, unbirth, size difference, hyper boob, hyper butt, hyper belly, Redglare being really very large, and Kankri attempting to cause musicals.
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There were many ancient buildings from before the modern age of the noble families, of the like that probably would not be made again for many ages.
They were something from an older age; buildings inherently magical, aetheric essence pulsing through them and their own strange functions and unique enchantments like blood through a living thing. There were factories in the underlands of the Zahhak castles, daily pumping out scores of weaponry, armor and the foundations of architecture under the watchful eyes of mechanists who would be sorely loath to admit they had no idea what they were working with. To look inside those factories was to see… well, nothing. Nothing at all in there but a solid, tangible and black emptiness, staring right back with a presence all its own. No one was quite sure what happened to the material they put in.
And there were the massive and ancient ships of the Amporas and Serkets, enormous war machines that could end entire civilizations with the fearsome weaponry at their disposal; larger than some city districts, flying beneath the ocean itself or skipping on the waves with no apparent means of production; death itself to anything on the water. The means to make more was lost, and many felt this was absolutely for the best.
Every one of the noble families (the Megidos in their halls of the dead, the Captors atop the universities of magic and lore, the Pyropes and their dragons, the Leijons in the distant jungle lands and the Maryams in the oasis secured from the walking corpses of long dead monsters, the Zahhak aristocrats and the sea-faring Serket pirate lords, the Makara priesthood atoning for the sins of their blood, the Peixes and the Amporas of the shorelands, and most recently the Vantases and their human kindred-in-arms) had laid claim to one of these mighty relics.
It might, depending on one’s perspective, be a prerequisite. Each of the families was descended from people who had laid claim to one of these relics or taken it for themselves, worked out how to get it operational, and then used it for all it was worth. They had largely remained in power because they were untouchable, some more literally than others. Even the Vantases, who were only a single generation into being a noble house, had done so when they had been found worthy to use such an artifact.
It wasn’t surprising that war had plagued the continent until only recently.
At the far west of the continent, there was a mighty mountain range, covering much of the entire coastline, all the way to the magocracies of the Captors and their metropolitan libraries, and it was the land of the Pyropes. They were the dragon riders, among the largest and strongest of knights, blessed with insight, and empowered by the mighty blood of their ancestors. In the wars of the dragon riders they had won out, and they had laid claim to one such relic that was greatly prized by anyone who wanted to hold their land, for it was literally untouchable in war.
The Pyrope lands were marked by the trees growing across much of the mountain range. These trees, in their many varieties, were probably magical in nature: there were several thousand species alone across any given direction; needle-leaf conifers growing on the highest reaches, flowering trunks that grew into the supports of tree-cities around the cliff sides, expansive banyan trees near the wetter areas of the Vantas wetlands, and massive greenwood trees that were big enough to be mistaken for mountains themselves closest to the sea, but all the trees had this in common: their leaves flowered bright teal, the same blue-green shade as the blood of the dragons that called the land home.
The dragons, and the trolls who ruled and had long since bonded with those dragons.
Fortresses of various sorts were a hallmark of the continent, especially here with the many various dragon rider lineages having warred against each other for eons, and fortifications had featured heavily in the conflicts. But against the largest mountain in the entire mountain range, there was an especially massive castle, one so large that it wasn’t legally considered a castle at all, but a sprawling city with fortifications.
It was older than any troll bloodline to still be extant. It was older than any modern civilization; it had been there before the humans had come, it may have been there before the trolls had arisen from their swampy origins, and it would likely be there long after all else was dust.
See it clearly; think of a mountainside, soaring high into the heavens, one of the largest mountains in all the world. Now imagine around it, an impossibly large castle assembled around it; perhaps even grown in some fashion, considering the strangely organic pattern in the stone work that wasn’t likely for something that had been assembled.
Imagine its walls clinging tight around the mountain, around terraces and plateaus, over cliff sides and descending along the paths of rivers. Imagine bolt holes and tunnels into the mountain, veins for the castle and the lifesblood that was its people; and within its massive depths, thousands of people living there. Farmers and artisans, clever craftsmen and wise scholars. Writers, sculptors, and dragons. Hundreds of dragons, of many different varieties from the Red Queen famously bound to the Pyrope line itself, to the many different varieties and sizes, all the way to tiny coal-stokers just big enough to fit in a human’s lap. And humans! They dwelled here, freely, without fear, in open defiance that they had once been shackled in other lands not so long ago, and that said something of the character of the trolls who owned this keep now.
The keep had been passed down over the ages, from one owner to another. It had been hotly contested by both warlords and settlers, and why not? It’s powers were not fully known, but anyone knew of its famous ability to generate a massive shield that no sword nor spell could pierce, not even the mountain-breaking superweapons of the Serkets; to hold the keep, and to master its powers, was to be truly untouchable in your own lands.
And the size, and curvaceousness, of its seer-warriors was well known in the modern day. The keep channeled its energies into them, making them far larger than normal, and it’s magic now ran in the blood of the Pyrope line, so that its daughters grew bigger and more bountiful than any other save perhaps the Maryams.
This keep had been kept for eons, from many hands won over another, until its present owners had slain the most vindictive of the old dragon riders, burning their history down so they could start fresh; some, less well disposed to their uncompromising ways, had suggested they started the war to do the same to the whole continent.
But, all the same, the Pyropes sought to protect others. They’d bonded with their dragons, internalizing some of their mentality, and they believed that dragons ought to protect what they cared about most. What they cared about was their people. And thus this great city-castle was the Hoard Keep.
Porrim Maryam, in one of the grand plateaus near the peak, enshrouded in the warm and protecting walls of the Keep, thought it all sounded very nice.
Certainly, she thought, it was very different from the home she’d known. Porrim was a vampire, of the Maryam clan that came from an oasis city considered a center of refinement and culture, and she was familiar only with the desert. She knew well the open sky before her, and the sun beating down. But here? It was colder, and the sky a small sight between the towering walls of stone.
It was… surprisingly cozy.
Personally, she thought the whole thing kind of looked like a big iridescent cake someone had smashed into the side of the mountain.
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