This blog is mostly for my own creative endeavours and gift art, and some occasional exceptions. I usually reblog only to my main blog: count-nicula
I do fanworks, OCs, and personal projects; multifandom, but currently deep in the W40K: Rogue Trader sauce.
Expect some OC x canon and OC x OC, as well as potentially some NSFW art, which will be tagged:
suggestive/explicit or nudity
Carrd | Ko-Fi | Toyhouse | Ao3
Main Tags:
Lore Tag | Art Tag | Writing Tag | OC Tag
Lord Captain Questionnaire
OC Questionnaire
Character Playlists ♥
Ask box is open and anon is on.
Please do not repost my art without permission or edit it in any way.
Do not use my art for AI.
Lucien von Valancius - Lord Captain
Crime Lord - Glorious - Apex of Brilliance - Shadows of Tomernt
♥ Abelard | Kibellah | Yrliet | Marazhai
+ formerly Slomorne and further misc.
Éliane von Valancius - von Valanicus Retinue
Sanctioned Psyker - Dogmatic - Illustrious Glory - Grim Portents
♥ Heinrix
Vhestryn Synna - von Valancius Retinue
Crime Lord - Iconoclast - Illustrious Glory - Grim Portents
♥ Jae | Kibellah
+ formerly Theodora von Valancius
Introducing: The 2026 Rogue Trader Kinktober Event!
What is Kinktober?
Kinktober is a fandom event where writers and artists come together to create brand new works based on a pre-selected list of kinks. Fear not, you can do as many prompts as you want, ignore the ones you don't like, or challenge yourself to try something new!
What are the Rules?
You must be 18 years or older to participate, this is non-negotiable and by choosing to participate you are confirming that you are of legal age and that you are mature enough to take part in an event centered around potentially triggering topics or darker subject material.
No one is obligated to interact with topics they do not wish to, however there is a zero tolerance policy for bullying, harassment, or attempts at censorship of any kind. Failure to follow this rule will result in you being blocked from the event.
Tag your art, fics, or other creations with #RTKinktober so that they can be easily found! Aside from this, please ensure you're tagging potential triggers (ex: rape, incest, gore, etc) appropriately with the format #Trigger TW (ex: #Rape TW).
If uploading to Ao3, please ensure you post each prompt as a separate fic to ensure they're seen! You can group them into a series for organization purposes.
GenAI is banned from this event, your creations must be yours, not the work of a machine.
Don't be an asshole, if you don't like a kink, scroll!
Prompts below the cut, venture ahead at your own risk Rogue Trader.
The Prompts
Necrophilia
Breeding/Pregnancy
Dacryphillia (Crying)
Body Swap
Somnophilia
Non-Con
Warp Madness (Sex Pollen/Aphrodisiacs)
Blackmail
Mind Control
Non-Romanceable NPC
OC x OC
Chaos Corruption Kink
Intoxication
Cockwarming
Inappropriate Use of Psyker Sorcery
Size Kink
Dry Humping/Thigh Riding
Erectile Dysfunction/Pre-Ejaculation
Kidnapping
Ritualistic/Religious Sex
Orgasm Control/Denial
Vox Tape (Sex Tapes)
Hate Fucking
Double Penetration
Face Sitting/Throat Fucking
Pet Play
Roleplay
BDSM Dynamic of your choice.
Blood Play
Anonymous Sex or Exhibitionism
The Rogue Trader's Kink of Choice
Have Questions? Send me an ask.
(Anon is disabled but I'm always happy to answer as long as you're kind.)
i've been thinking a lot about lucien's childhood lately - not enough to turn it into a story proper, but enough for some random scenes and fragments
fair warning for dead spiders and some casual mentions of gore
__
He watched the black shape slowly move alongside the shadows cast by the open crates. Its long, spindly legs seemed way too thin to support this plump lower body, even though it had far more than eight of them. If he counted them correctly. A taut black oval, covered in coarse hairs. The dim light caught in them whenever it moved, turning its black hide silver at the edges. It was big enough that he could not fully close his palms around it, he wagered, although he would not reach out to try.
Every step it took seemed deliberate somehow. Calculated. It made the slowness of its movement seem elegant, rather than sluggish. At least to him.
Every now and then he would shift slightly, to alleviate the feeling of numbness that began creeping into his kneeling legs - and the spider would turn towards him, its frontmost legs raising themselves into a clear warning, angled as if they were fangs ready to strike. And Lucien held very still - until the spider turned from him, and resumed its slow pacing.
It raised them at the exact same angle every time, and Lucien could count his breaths to predict when it would lower them again by now.
They were exceedingly venomous, he had read, and their bite was said to ache for days. He was not eager to find out for himself, although he enjoyed watching the creature. He only hoped it would start spinning a web soon. For a spider of this size, it would be akin to defying gravity. He had seen smaller specimens succeed at this feat many times before, but noctarachs, he had read, had become a rare sight. On the brink of extinction, the old dataslate had called them, and he had to look at the collection of words and their meanings that Chiamora had called a dictionary to understand what that meant.
He understood it to mean that he should be very excited to be seeing one himself, right now. But he was always excited to see spiders anyway - they were one of the few animals you got to see in the underhive. Aside from the rats, although he liked watching those too.
"What in the sump's arse end are you doing, voidfreak," Tiber suddenly piped up. He could see his shadow climb the wall as he moved up closer behind him, and the spider raised its threatening fangs in the direction of its source. "You're meant to be counting shells."
He was only a few years older than him. Old enough that his voice had started changing into an awkward squeak whenever he tried to raise it, seemingly breaking away at random vowels under their strain. A phenomenon accompanied by an unseemly bulge bobbing up and down his too gangly throat, which had not yet been there a few years prior. Although all of him was gangly, and thin, and fragile looking - it was hard to imagine that he was to look like Varn or Harlan or Aedric one day, with their square jaws, and broad shoulders, and booming voices.
Naturally, Lucien often thought the same thing about himself. Most times, his presence felt even more negligible than that of Tiber.
"I have been counting them," he countered.
"What are you staring into that corner for -" Tiber came to a halt behind him, and although Lucien did not turn around, he could well imagine the face he must be making based on the way his voice raised in pitch. Dim-witted and entirely too flat, as if he had run into a wall one too many times, it would be scrunching itself up into an even more homely mug by now. "What is that fucking thing. It's huge -"
"It's a noctarach. I've been reading about them."
Tiber scoffed unkindly. "Groxshite. You can't read."
"I can," he insisted glumly.
Chiamora had been teaching him, in fact. But he would not be telling that to Tiber, nor any of the others. Vhess was his friend, which meant he had more of a right to her mothers kindness and her lessons than any of them did. And if they realized what kind of things she had been teaching him, they'd want lessons too. Chiamora would not have time to teach him anything if she was too busy being hounded by a gaggle of orphans, and Lucien would not risk that. They should all just go find adults of their own.
"Your kind's too daft to learn too, I bet," Tiber continued, in that voice he used when he wanted to get a rise out of someone. "Air's way too thin, that deep into a voidship. I bet it shrank your voidfreak brain down to the size of a - a - "
He began making confused noises as the conclusion to the metaphor continued to elude him, and Lucien cast an unimpressed glance at him over his shoulders.
"Well - who fucking cares. Something small, like your brain. Get back to work."
Ever since Varn had praised him once, a year or so ago, Tiber had started thinking of himself as an authority. As if he were better than the others, and had a right to order them around as Varn's mouthpiece. He often bragged that Varn had started seeing his potential, but Lucien knew this wasn't true. They had never even given him a real gun yet - and someone of his age should've been trusted with a gun by now. Even Lucien had been allowed to shoot one, a few times by now, and they had called his steady aim promising. Tiber, on the other hand, was still made to count up smuggled shells and sort out the obvious defects, although he should be way too old for that by now. He did not even notice what that meant for him - he insisted he was put here to oversee them all, because he was the only one whom Varn trusted with the task. Varn had not spared him any glance, for at least a year.
"You've never even seen a voidship," Lucien stated, trying to conceal his annoyance.
"And you -," Tiber snapped pointedly, stepping closer to the noctarach, "- are not going to get all of us into trouble -," the spider raised its legs even higher, emitting an ominous hiss that Lucien had not been aware spiders could make, and he caught himself distinctly marvelling at how it could possibly produce such a sound, "- for not meeting our quota because you have been staring at a fucking spider."
His boot came down at the poor thing in a stomach-turning squelch, and neither hiss nor fangs could protect it against the weight of a much bigger being. Lucien could see its spindly legs, sticking out from underneath the shoe in frantic twitches for just a moment, before they lifelessly curled in on themselves. Tiber, meanwhile, began twisting his sole, the way one might try to stub out a particularly stubborn Lho.
"I would've had them counted up in time," he protested rather lamely, although it made no difference at this point. The damage had already been done, and when the boot had lifted once more, all that was left was a red stain smudged across the floor, and a scatter of decidedly too many curled-up legs.
"Get back to work, " Tiber squeaked at him, and stormed off in a huff that Lucien was certain Tiber intended to be imposing.
But he was still preoccupied thoughtfully regarding the stain on the floor, unsure of what would be the proper way to feel about it.
He figured he should be shocked, or perhaps sad, but he wasn't sure he felt either of these things. What he did think he felt was a mild sense of disappointment. And that alone was already more than he had felt when Khriss had stepped on that mine, that one time, and had rained back down on them in viscous chunks. He had not felt much then either, although he had always liked Khriss - she had been sweet, most of the time. Or when Inquis' head exploded, because he had not ducked quickly enough from the Floodplain's sharpshooters. Back then, one of his eyes had dangled out from the fleshy mess, held up only by the pinkish string of nerves, and they had sent Lucien to fetch it for the retinal scanners - because he was nimble, and he knew how to duck from the rifle's sight.
It is called the optic nerve, or second cranial nerve, he had read once and remembered, because he enjoyed reading as much as he could whenever he could, now that he knew how.
And Factor-Physician Provost Lazarec - who always insisted on being adressed by his full title, although Lucien strongly suspected it to be a bad joke, after he had looked up what those words meant in the dictionary - had many old dataslates and even bound books on anatomy, that Lucien could sneak peaks at whenever he was sent for to aid him in his work. Lazarec sent for him often, because unlike Tiber and most of the others, his hands never shook at the sight of blood, and he had never once needed to retch at the smell of entrails either.
"Steady hands, a curious mind, and a strong stomach," Lazarec had once said to him, "mean you might make a fine and proper Chirurgeon yet." And then he had laughed a cackling old man laugh, although Lucien had not been entirely sure why. He figured it was another bad joke he did not fully understand. He had hoped it was meant as a compliment, but he had suspected it to be a mock. Either way, he still hoped Lazarec would petition for him to become his apprentice proper yet, one day soon - because unlike Tiber, Lucien showed promise. Unlike Tiber, he was good for more than mindlessly counting shells all day.
And human anatomy was about as fascinating as that of a spider.
Lives were meaninglessly snuffed out all the time, usually at the random whim of something bigger. He already knew that much. He did wish he could've watched the noctarach a little longer regardless.
my beautiful son full of contradictions and red flags ♥
this isn't a tag game (yet) but I am going to pass it on to @fourraccoonsinacoat @sisterdomina @ravelsquadespresso @totem-sloth @calcazars @maererme if you want to get in on this
I've been considering potential backgrounds for Chiamora (Vhess' mother) lately
The obvious one would be to say she was born into the underhive gangs, just like Vhess and her late husband/Vhess' father
However, the other option I have been considering that maybe she was born into some sort of lower midhive port worker/dock hand family, and in her teens her whole district was struck by some sort of disaster (some reactor failure or some such), leaving most of the "not so important people", including her family, to continuously move further down the hive and the social ladder via refugee camps etc, until eventually reaching the underhive, where yielding to the gangs became the most feasible option for safety
I guess it could potentially be the more interesting option for a character background, and a clear example of how easily you can fall to downwards mobility in the hives
It would also give an excuse for her to have certain skills and levels of education she could pass on (like how she is the reason both Vhess and Lucien have basic numeracy and literacy, because she's the one who taught them), as well as opening up the possibility of her having some experience with occasional voidship travel, but I am not entirely sure about the concept yet
i've been thinking a lot about lucien's childhood lately - not enough to turn it into a story proper, but enough for some random scenes and fragments
fair warning for dead spiders and some casual mentions of gore
__
He watched the black shape slowly move alongside the shadows cast by the open crates. Its long, spindly legs seemed way too thin to support this plump lower body, even though it had far more than eight of them. If he counted them correctly. A taut black oval, covered in coarse hairs. The dim light caught in them whenever it moved, turning its black hide silver at the edges. It was big enough that he could not fully close his palms around it, he wagered, although he would not reach out to try.
Every step it took seemed deliberate somehow. Calculated. It made the slowness of its movement seem elegant, rather than sluggish. At least to him.
Every now and then he would shift slightly, to alleviate the feeling of numbness that began creeping into his kneeling legs - and the spider would turn towards him, its frontmost legs raising themselves into a clear warning, angled as if they were fangs ready to strike. And Lucien held very still - until the spider turned from him, and resumed its slow pacing.
It raised them at the exact same angle every time, and Lucien could count his breaths to predict when it would lower them again by now.
They were exceedingly venomous, he had read, and their bite was said to ache for days. He was not eager to find out for himself, although he enjoyed watching the creature. He only hoped it would start spinning a web soon. For a spider of this size, it would be akin to defying gravity. He had seen smaller specimens succeed at this feat many times before, but noctarachs, he had read, had become a rare sight. On the brink of extinction, the old dataslate had called them, and he had to look at the collection of words and their meanings that Chiamora had called a dictionary to understand what that meant.
He understood it to mean that he should be very excited to be seeing one himself, right now. But he was always excited to see spiders anyway - they were one of the few animals you got to see in the underhive. Aside from the rats, although he liked watching those too.
"What in the sump's arse end are you doing, voidfreak," Tiber suddenly piped up. He could see his shadow climb the wall as he moved up closer behind him, and the spider raised its threatening fangs in the direction of its source. "You're meant to be counting shells."
He was only a few years older than him. Old enough that his voice had started changing into an awkward squeak whenever he tried to raise it, seemingly breaking away at random vowels under their strain. A phenomenon accompanied by an unseemly bulge bobbing up and down his too gangly throat, which had not yet been there a few years prior. Although all of him was gangly, and thin, and fragile looking - it was hard to imagine that he was to look like Varn or Harlan or Aedric one day, with their square jaws, and broad shoulders, and booming voices.
Naturally, Lucien often thought the same thing about himself. Most times, his presence felt even more negligible than that of Tiber.
"I have been counting them," he countered.
"What are you staring into that corner for -" Tiber came to a halt behind him, and although Lucien did not turn around, he could well imagine the face he must be making based on the way his voice raised in pitch. Dim-witted and entirely too flat, as if he had run into a wall one too many times, it would be scrunching itself up into an even more homely mug by now. "What is that fucking thing. It's huge -"
"It's a noctarach. I've been reading about them."
Tiber scoffed unkindly. "Groxshite. You can't read."
"I can," he insisted glumly.
Chiamora had been teaching him, in fact. But he would not be telling that to Tiber, nor any of the others. Vhess was his friend, which meant he had more of a right to her mothers kindness and her lessons than any of them did. And if they realized what kind of things she had been teaching him, they'd want lessons too. Chiamora would not have time to teach him anything if she was too busy being hounded by a gaggle of orphans, and Lucien would not risk that. They should all just go find adults of their own.
"Your kind's too daft to learn too, I bet," Tiber continued, in that voice he used when he wanted to get a rise out of someone. "Air's way too thin, that deep into a voidship. I bet it shrank your voidfreak brain down to the size of a - a - "
He began making confused noises as the conclusion to the metaphor continued to elude him, and Lucien cast an unimpressed glance at him over his shoulders.
"Well - who fucking cares. Something small, like your brain. Get back to work."
Ever since Varn had praised him once, a year or so ago, Tiber had started thinking of himself as an authority. As if he were better than the others, and had a right to order them around as Varn's mouthpiece. He often bragged that Varn had started seeing his potential, but Lucien knew this wasn't true. They had never even given him a real gun yet - and someone of his age should've been trusted with a gun by now. Even Lucien had been allowed to shoot one, a few times by now, and they had called his steady aim promising. Tiber, on the other hand, was still made to count up smuggled shells and sort out the obvious defects, although he should be way too old for that by now. He did not even notice what that meant for him - he insisted he was put here to oversee them all, because he was the only one whom Varn trusted with the task. Varn had not spared him any glance, for at least a year.
"You've never even seen a voidship," Lucien stated, trying to conceal his annoyance.
"And you -," Tiber snapped pointedly, stepping closer to the noctarach, "- are not going to get all of us into trouble -," the spider raised its legs even higher, emitting an ominous hiss that Lucien had not been aware spiders could make, and he caught himself distinctly marvelling at how it could possibly produce such a sound, "- for not meeting our quota because you have been staring at a fucking spider."
His boot came down at the poor thing in a stomach-turning squelch, and neither hiss nor fangs could protect it against the weight of a much bigger being. Lucien could see its spindly legs, sticking out from underneath the shoe in frantic twitches for just a moment, before they lifelessly curled in on themselves. Tiber, meanwhile, began twisting his sole, the way one might try to stub out a particularly stubborn Lho.
"I would've had them counted up in time," he protested rather lamely, although it made no difference at this point. The damage had already been done, and when the boot had lifted once more, all that was left was a red stain smudged across the floor, and a scatter of decidedly too many curled-up legs.
"Get back to work, " Tiber squeaked at him, and stormed off in a huff that Lucien was certain Tiber intended to be imposing.
But he was still preoccupied thoughtfully regarding the stain on the floor, unsure of what would be the proper way to feel about it.
He figured he should be shocked, or perhaps sad, but he wasn't sure he felt either of these things. What he did think he felt was a mild sense of disappointment. And that alone was already more than he had felt when Khriss had stepped on that mine, that one time, and had rained back down on them in viscous chunks. He had not felt much then either, although he had always liked Khriss - she had been sweet, most of the time. Or when Inquis' head exploded, because he had not ducked quickly enough from the Floodplain's sharpshooters. Back then, one of his eyes had dangled out from the fleshy mess, held up only by the pinkish string of nerves, and they had sent Lucien to fetch it for the retinal scanners - because he was nimble, and he knew how to duck from the rifle's sight.
It is called the optic nerve, or second cranial nerve, he had read once and remembered, because he enjoyed reading as much as he could whenever he could, now that he knew how.
And Factor-Physician Provost Lazarec - who always insisted on being adressed by his full title, although Lucien strongly suspected it to be a bad joke, after he had looked up what those words meant in the dictionary - had many old dataslates and even bound books on anatomy, that Lucien could sneak peaks at whenever he was sent for to aid him in his work. Lazarec sent for him often, because unlike Tiber and most of the others, his hands never shook at the sight of blood, and he had never once needed to retch at the smell of entrails either.
"Steady hands, a curious mind, and a strong stomach," Lazarec had once said to him, "mean you might make a fine and proper Chirurgeon yet." And then he had laughed a cackling old man laugh, although Lucien had not been entirely sure why. He figured it was another bad joke he did not fully understand. He had hoped it was meant as a compliment, but he had suspected it to be a mock. Either way, he still hoped Lazarec would petition for him to become his apprentice proper yet, one day soon - because unlike Tiber, Lucien showed promise. Unlike Tiber, he was good for more than mindlessly counting shells all day.
And human anatomy was about as fascinating as that of a spider.
Lives were meaninglessly snuffed out all the time, usually at the random whim of something bigger. He already knew that much. He did wish he could've watched the noctarach a little longer regardless.
i've been thinking a lot about lucien's childhood lately - not enough to turn it into a story proper, but enough for some random scenes and fragments
fair warning for dead spiders and some casual mentions of gore
__
He watched the black shape slowly move alongside the shadows cast by the open crates. Its long, spindly legs seemed way too thin to support this plump lower body, even though it had far more than eight of them. If he counted them correctly. A taut black oval, covered in coarse hairs. The dim light caught in them whenever it moved, turning its black hide silver at the edges. It was big enough that he could not fully close his palms around it, he wagered, although he would not reach out to try.
Every step it took seemed deliberate somehow. Calculated. It made the slowness of its movement seem elegant, rather than sluggish. At least to him.
Every now and then he would shift slightly, to alleviate the feeling of numbness that began creeping into his kneeling legs - and the spider would turn towards him, its frontmost legs raising themselves into a clear warning, angled as if they were fangs ready to strike. And Lucien held very still - until the spider turned from him, and resumed its slow pacing.
It raised them at the exact same angle every time, and Lucien could count his breaths to predict when it would lower them again by now.
They were exceedingly venomous, he had read, and their bite was said to ache for days. He was not eager to find out for himself, although he enjoyed watching the creature. He only hoped it would start spinning a web soon. For a spider of this size, it would be akin to defying gravity. He had seen smaller specimens succeed at this feat many times before, but noctarachs, he had read, had become a rare sight. On the brink of extinction, the old dataslate had called them, and he had to look at the collection of words and their meanings that Chiamora had called a dictionary to understand what that meant.
He understood it to mean that he should be very excited to be seeing one himself, right now. But he was always excited to see spiders anyway - they were one of the few animals you got to see in the underhive. Aside from the rats, although he liked watching those too.
"What in the sump's arse end are you doing, voidfreak," Tiber suddenly piped up. He could see his shadow climb the wall as he moved up closer behind him, and the spider raised its threatening fangs in the direction of its source. "You're meant to be counting shells."
He was only a few years older than him. Old enough that his voice had started changing into an awkward squeak whenever he tried to raise it, seemingly breaking away at random vowels under their strain. A phenomenon accompanied by an unseemly bulge bobbing up and down his too gangly throat, which had not yet been there a few years prior. Although all of him was gangly, and thin, and fragile looking - it was hard to imagine that he was to look like Varn or Harlan or Aedric one day, with their square jaws, and broad shoulders, and booming voices.
Naturally, Lucien often thought the same thing about himself. Most times, his presence felt even more negligible than that of Tiber.
"I have been counting them," he countered.
"What are you staring into that corner for -" Tiber came to a halt behind him, and although Lucien did not turn around, he could well imagine the face he must be making based on the way his voice raised in pitch. Dim-witted and entirely too flat, as if he had run into a wall one too many times, it would be scrunching itself up into an even more homely mug by now. "What is that fucking thing. It's huge -"
"It's a noctarach. I've been reading about them."
Tiber scoffed unkindly. "Groxshite. You can't read."
"I can," he insisted glumly.
Chiamora had been teaching him, in fact. But he would not be telling that to Tiber, nor any of the others. Vhess was his friend, which meant he had more of a right to her mothers kindness and her lessons than any of them did. And if they realized what kind of things she had been teaching him, they'd want lessons too. Chiamora would not have time to teach him anything if she was too busy being hounded by a gaggle of orphans, and Lucien would not risk that. They should all just go find adults of their own.
"Your kind's too daft to learn too, I bet," Tiber continued, in that voice he used when he wanted to get a rise out of someone. "Air's way too thin, that deep into a voidship. I bet it shrank your voidfreak brain down to the size of a - a - "
He began making confused noises as the conclusion to the metaphor continued to elude him, and Lucien cast an unimpressed glance at him over his shoulders.
"Well - who fucking cares. Something small, like your brain. Get back to work."
Ever since Varn had praised him once, a year or so ago, Tiber had started thinking of himself as an authority. As if he were better than the others, and had a right to order them around as Varn's mouthpiece. He often bragged that Varn had started seeing his potential, but Lucien knew this wasn't true. They had never even given him a real gun yet - and someone of his age should've been trusted with a gun by now. Even Lucien had been allowed to shoot one, a few times by now, and they had called his steady aim promising. Tiber, on the other hand, was still made to count up smuggled shells and sort out the obvious defects, although he should be way too old for that by now. He did not even notice what that meant for him - he insisted he was put here to oversee them all, because he was the only one whom Varn trusted with the task. Varn had not spared him any glance, for at least a year.
"You've never even seen a voidship," Lucien stated, trying to conceal his annoyance.
"And you -," Tiber snapped pointedly, stepping closer to the noctarach, "- are not going to get all of us into trouble -," the spider raised its legs even higher, emitting an ominous hiss that Lucien had not been aware spiders could make, and he caught himself distinctly marvelling at how it could possibly produce such a sound, "- for not meeting our quota because you have been staring at a fucking spider."
His boot came down at the poor thing in a stomach-turning squelch, and neither hiss nor fangs could protect it against the weight of a much bigger being. Lucien could see its spindly legs, sticking out from underneath the shoe in frantic twitches for just a moment, before they lifelessly curled in on themselves. Tiber, meanwhile, began twisting his sole, the way one might try to stub out a particularly stubborn Lho.
"I would've had them counted up in time," he protested rather lamely, although it made no difference at this point. The damage had already been done, and when the boot had lifted once more, all that was left was a red stain smudged across the floor, and a scatter of decidedly too many curled-up legs.
"Get back to work, " Tiber squeaked at him, and stormed off in a huff that Lucien was certain Tiber intended to be imposing.
But he was still preoccupied thoughtfully regarding the stain on the floor, unsure of what would be the proper way to feel about it.
He figured he should be shocked, or perhaps sad, but he wasn't sure he felt either of these things. What he did think he felt was a mild sense of disappointment. And that alone was already more than he had felt when Khriss had stepped on that mine, that one time, and had rained back down on them in viscous chunks. He had not felt much then either, although he had always liked Khriss - she had been sweet, most of the time. Or when Inquis' head exploded, because he had not ducked quickly enough from the Floodplain's sharpshooters. Back then, one of his eyes had dangled out from the fleshy mess, held up only by the pinkish string of nerves, and they had sent Lucien to fetch it for the retinal scanners - because he was nimble, and he knew how to duck from the rifle's sight.
It is called the optic nerve, or second cranial nerve, he had read once and remembered, because he enjoyed reading as much as he could whenever he could, now that he knew how.
And Factor-Physician Provost Lazarec - who always insisted on being adressed by his full title, although Lucien strongly suspected it to be a bad joke, after he had looked up what those words meant in the dictionary - had many old dataslates and even bound books on anatomy, that Lucien could sneak peaks at whenever he was sent for to aid him in his work. Lazarec sent for him often, because unlike Tiber and most of the others, his hands never shook at the sight of blood, and he had never once needed to retch at the smell of entrails either.
"Steady hands, a curious mind, and a strong stomach," Lazarec had once said to him, "mean you might make a fine and proper Chirurgeon yet." And then he had laughed a cackling old man laugh, although Lucien had not been entirely sure why. He figured it was another bad joke he did not fully understand. He had hoped it was meant as a compliment, but he had suspected it to be a mock. Either way, he still hoped Lazarec would petition for him to become his apprentice proper yet, one day soon - because unlike Tiber, Lucien showed promise. Unlike Tiber, he was good for more than mindlessly counting shells all day.
And human anatomy was about as fascinating as that of a spider.
Lives were meaninglessly snuffed out all the time, usually at the random whim of something bigger. He already knew that much. He did wish he could've watched the noctarach a little longer regardless.
short snippet that may or may not make it into Midnight Toll one day - who knows, we'll see
__
He woke, embraced by an all-encompassing, pleasant warmth.
It settled on the back of his neck in the rhythmic pattern of steady breath, radiating from the solid shape pressed up against his back, and the strong arms that had wrapped around him. The slightest shift of his had been enough for their hold to tighten, pulling him back against the contented sigh of the man behind him. Like a child might cling to a beloved stuffed doll, although he knew their owner was still fast asleep.
He shouldn't ascribe too much meaning to it. The movement was entirely involuntary, probably driven by a vivid dream, or the muscle memory gained throughout a century of marriage. He just happened to be the closest thing to clutch.
Still, he could not lie to himself - it was comforting to wake up like this again. To wake up from a night of calm sleep, blissfully devoid of nightmares, in an embrace that nearly sold the lie of security. Deceitful and fragile.
Careful not to disturb him, Lucien lithely turned himself around in his grasp.
He could hardly see his face in the gloom of the bedroom. The low light of his ocular augmetic - dimly flickering on standby as he slept - was the only thing to softly illuminate his features in a red tint. It seemed to darken the ridges of the lines that traced his skin, and yet Abelard still looked decades younger like this. Perfectly serene, without the furrow of his brow or the stern line of pressed lips. Perfectly vulnerable, sinking into the soft down of a pillow, his usually austerely controlled hair sticking up in all possible directions. It seemed that even the propriety of the most well-kept man in the Imperium could not protect against the soft tousle of bedheaded strands - although Lucien had seen him in far more improper states by now.
With a soft sigh, he reached out to touch him - the lightest touch he could muster, his index tracing the gorgeous pattern of his crow's feet upward, into the shorter gray strands at his temple. He wasn't naive enough to lie to himself about this. He knew that he managed to well and utterly fuck this up.
It shouldn't have been this hard to maintain distance. He wasn't a lovesick fool, incapable of separating heart from flesh. So why in the void would he allow himself to end up here? For every layer of defense to be stripped away by a man whose loyalty to him would end at the same point as the last letter of his surname?
Lucien nearly flinched when Abelard's arm suddenly lifted. He did not manage to pull his hand away in time - Abelard's had already firmly settled on top of it, big enough to cover it entirely. Keeping him under his grip, he turned his head to press a painfully tender kiss into Lucien's palm.
"You stayed," Abelard observed in a soft mumble.
Lucien could feel an unbidden heat creep into his cheeks, his sudden embarrassment only overshadowed by his annoyance at himself for blushing like a child. He should've left. He would've left, had he not fallen to the comfort of his arms, lulling him to sleep despite himself.
Abelard's eye lazily opened, and a dim glow turned into a soft red light. "Did you sleep well, then?"
And Lucien sat up, pulling his hand free from underneath his grasp. "I'm sorry."
short snippet that may or may not make it into Midnight Toll one day - who knows, we'll see
__
He woke, embraced by an all-encompassing, pleasant warmth.
It settled on the back of his neck in the rhythmic pattern of steady breath, radiating from the solid shape pressed up against his back, and the strong arms that had wrapped around him. The slightest shift of his had been enough for their hold to tighten, pulling him back against the contented sigh of the man behind him. Like a child might cling to a beloved stuffed doll, although he knew their owner was still fast asleep.
He shouldn't ascribe too much meaning to it. The movement was entirely involuntary, probably driven by a vivid dream, or the muscle memory gained throughout a century of marriage. He just happened to be the closest thing to clutch.
Still, he could not lie to himself - it was comforting to wake up like this again. To wake up from a night of calm sleep, blissfully devoid of nightmares, in an embrace that nearly sold the lie of security. Deceitful and fragile.
Careful not to disturb him, Lucien lithely turned himself around in his grasp.
He could hardly see his face in the gloom of the bedroom. The low light of his ocular augmetic - dimly flickering on standby as he slept - was the only thing to softly illuminate his features in a red tint. It seemed to darken the ridges of the lines that traced his skin, and yet Abelard still looked decades younger like this. Perfectly serene, without the furrow of his brow or the stern line of pressed lips. Perfectly vulnerable, sinking into the soft down of a pillow, his usually austerely controlled hair sticking up in all possible directions. It seemed that even the propriety of the most well-kept man in the Imperium could not protect against the soft tousle of bedheaded strands - although Lucien had seen him in far more improper states by now.
With a soft sigh, he reached out to touch him - the lightest touch he could muster, his index tracing the gorgeous pattern of his crow's feet upward, into the shorter gray strands at his temple. He wasn't naive enough to lie to himself about this. He knew that he managed to well and utterly fuck this up.
It shouldn't have been this hard to maintain distance. He wasn't a lovesick fool, incapable of separating heart from flesh. So why in the void would he allow himself to end up here? For every layer of defense to be stripped away by a man whose loyalty to him would end at the same point as the last letter of his surname?
Lucien nearly flinched when Abelard's arm suddenly lifted. He did not manage to pull his hand away in time - Abelard's had already firmly settled on top of it, big enough to cover it entirely. Keeping him under his grip, he turned his head to press a painfully tender kiss into Lucien's palm.
"You stayed," Abelard observed in a soft mumble.
Lucien could feel an unbidden heat creep into his cheeks, his sudden embarrassment only overshadowed by his annoyance at himself for blushing like a child. He should've left. He would've left, had he not fallen to the comfort of his arms, lulling him to sleep despite himself.
Abelard's eye lazily opened, and a dim glow turned into a soft red light. "Did you sleep well, then?"
And Lucien sat up, pulling his hand free from underneath his grasp. "I'm sorry."
Boring answer lol but for Lucien's name, I just looked for kinda gothy sounding first names? And since I settled on french-ish with the first name, I tried to just frankenstein a french sounding surname together that sounds kinda fancy, so I settled on Solaine
I wanted to go with a very refined criminal archtype for him at first, and I didn't know the game would just assign you the surname Stubbs (which I chose to ignore [:)
For Éliane, since I designed her after him, I tried matching his names vibes and the theme, since both of their names are very light/sun themed in a way, so I was just looking through some female french baby names with a similar meaning
14 - If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?
For Lucien, one of them is definitely all the ways his augmetics impacts him negatively, and the things related to physical disability - there's a reason I compiled it all in a table lol because there's so many small things to keep track of
The other one, I guess is that he is a fairly unreliable narrator and when writing him, it's a bit tough to balance the ways in which he is genuinely observant and strategically getting fairly accurate reads on a lot of things with the ways in which he interprets other things as way more hostile than they probably are
For Éliane, her entire logic and worldview is both prideful and faith driven, so all of her hypocrisies have to line up in a way where she will never doubt herself being in the right for even one second, she just has to do some insane mental gymnastics to justify it all away as ideologically righteous
Secondly, she will always try to put forth a very saintly and humble persona
19 - What is your favorite fact about your OC?
Éliane's pyromancy flames have a very subtle purple aura-like tint due to warp corruption from her Grim Portents darkest hour
Lucien is a bit difficult to pick a favorite, I guess his background is augmetic repossession is pretty high up there? though that one is also a p known fact by now lol so maybe a more obscure funfact: he gave his entire drum set pieces individual themed names (and claims is satirical, because it's all liturgical terms)
how about quatharina as a dynastic historian/chronicler who mainly maintains the dynasty's archival records and acts as head of the family on dargonus but occasionally travels with theodora on the flagship for particularly interesting ventures for first hand records 🤔
Summary:
After the celebrations of his Magnae Accessio, the Lord Captain summons Abelard at last - to share a night of dance, unspoken things, and an intimate new discovery.
And to forget their worries, if only for one night.
