Oh Budder, Budding Buddies

A little place to tell the horror story of the beginnings of a now precious character.

[ohbudder]

AealZX: Harlow Santil

Hehehehe |D Got Falin already, so may as well do Harlow too. My drama baby. (Like I have a shortage of those =u=;a)

1. Origin

So Harlow was made at about the same time that Falin was, but he was kind of an accident baby. We have those right? |D I’d made Falin, and at the same time I was playing the MMORPG Aion, and I made a character in there to play with a friend (Dante-Aran) and he ended up forcefully turning himself into a character. I didn’t really have a place to put him, but Falin was an angel and the AIon game everyone has wings, and I was currently focusing on Falin so I made Harlow Falin’s mentor. The Aion character was a priest, because that’s all I ever play 8′D, but I obviously changed stuff up when converting him into an actual character. Falin used swords and had racial magic etc so Harlow had the same stuff but was better at it. Simple enough.

2. His Name

The name “Harlow Santil” was just something I had stuck in my head at the time I made the Aion character. I really liked the name, so I put it to use. He got a second name, his ‘true name’ of sorts again to mimic Falin, who also had a second name that was his first name that he kept hidden. Originally it was a racial/cultural trait where all the Angels had two names, one that was their first name and then an alias that they chose to keep their real name hidden. That kiiiinda carried over, but less strict.

Yeulen just popped into my head while I was thinking about him, and it actually came to me faster than Falin’s ‘real name’ |D. It wasn’t until I was looking up meanings for names that I had to figure out what Harlow’s meant. ‘Harlow’ means ‘Army’ but the other two don’t have strict meanings that I know of/ could find. So I broke each name up into parts and looked up meanings for those parts. “Santil” is a combination of “sandpiper bird” and “strength in battle”, and “Yeulen” is “beloved light/only love”.

3. His Appearance

The basics of his appearance were from the Aion character, but there were some major changes made 8′D

This is what the Aion character looked like:

And this was his first version: (look at that disgusting fail at proportions |D )

Pulled back blonde hair with braids, green clothes, armor around the waist, tight sleeves. Then a bunch of personal customization from there. I never designed his angel form until I actually needed it for TE plot stuff, so this version doesn’t have that one.

Then, after figuring out more about him, there’s this version:

Fussed with the sword design, and actually got the designs for the little trinkets he wears in his hair |D

Angel form: (big pain in the butt complicated thing)

References that were used for this were Titania from Fire Emblem, some random henna design on someone’s back, and this snowflake generator based on names. And even though I had those refs the details on the armor was mostly designed based on trial and error scribbling until I found something I was happy with. |D The drapery was designed based on my personal like for that style of a front panel in robes, and then having a split in the back so there was a seam to allow for the outfit to be taken off. That halo took 5ish hours to design. BI And yes I used Aragorn’s king crown thing as a reference.

That sword went through a bunch of different versions because I kept going back and changing it over the weeks that I had before official release of the TE flash that had him in it. |D

First one was “Yey let’s try to incorporate ‘wings’ into the deign,” and then Harlow complained that it was too bulky, so I tried to ‘slim it down’, and then the complaint that it was too ostentatious and I had to simplify it a little more. Then there was just a bit more fussing on the small details on the guard before I posted the ‘final’ version online.

4. Personality

Harlow was aaaaalways supposed to be the obnoxious, crazy, weirdo mentor with that hella scary powerhouse side type character. |D And he wasn’t supposed to have this dramatic backstory, other than the average warrior issues, but then TE happened. |D Even at the start of TE he wasn’t supposed to be all that major of a character, but stuff started to just spill in. It wasn’t until I was in an RP and Nagini asked the question “Is that why all his smiles are fake?” that I started to really get the details. 8I It was a case of “What? His smiles aren’t faaaake- awwww dammit BI They are aren’t they.” And from that there were more details on his past with Falin, and then more from before then, and yey drama background. =,= Oops. Oh well.

5. Extras

i. I didn’t initially think about his Aura being just like honey until I got through each of the details, went back and looked at them, and realized it was just like honey.

ii. I ‘found’ his voice sample (Dandelion - Ivan Torrent) when I was watching Sarim LS and it came on. |D I spazzed pretty hard, it was funny in a way. Both the choir and the non choir parts are what he sounds like, it just depends on if he has that trinket on that unlayers his voice.

iii. Thoughts on women: this is mostly because of Aesa and Anima being women, him having a protective nature, and women (usually) being the ones who birth children and fuss over them. He just finds them so precious. >u<

[ohbudder]

AealZX: Falin Ceras

Okay now that it’s officially out what Falin is I can finally do this without worrying about spoilers.

Falin was originally created a while before TE, but for a pretty big different setting.

He was always an Angel, and always worked at a healers place, finding people who healed others to be precious and having a complex about being a protector of them blah blah. He was a drama queen that was hella fussy about his looks. It took me forever to draw him the first time.

1. His Name

His name is a pun |D I’m sorry, but it is. “Fallen Angel” -> “Falin”. Derp. I’m lame. Then Ceras just popped up. And that name was always an alias. It was only after I converted him to TE that I actually looked up if that name meant anything and what I found was adorable and completely unintended. “Falin”, in that spelling, means “to forgive” in Albanian, and “fortune” in Azerbaijani (according to google translate). Which made me squee like an idiot because Harlow blames himself for Falin dying before so it was like Falin subconsciously picked that name because he forgives Harlow for everything that Harlow thinks he did. And then “cera” is “cherry” in... French I think it was. A French name, not word. So I just put an S on it and made it “cherries”, and made that name come from his foster parents.

His Angel name has always been Iamaleik, which came into my mind when I was on the train ride home from school. I have to admit it came to my mind, spelling and sound, and I had to think about it for awhile and kept asking “Really? Reaaally?” because it doesn’t sound like it’s spelled. 8′D The K is silent and there’s an invisible soft H at the beginning. So it’s “hee-aam-ah-ley”. Yeah, it’s weird. |D Don’t tell him that, he likes that name and gets offended easily when people make fun of it. Part of the reason is because Angel names are special. He doesn’t use that name, or tell it to people often, because he doesn’t want people to make fun of it or twist it into an insult. Harlow was the one to give Falin that name after finding him again, following a hella dead tradition that Servants would get a new name from other Servants once they became a Servant. It doesn’t always happen anymore, but Harlow still did it so that Falin would have a name that someone gave him instead of one that he picked for himself.

2.His Appearance

The first thing I knew about Falin’s appearance was his eyes, specifically the marks around his eyes. They were always a mark of being an Angel, and that carried over to the Servant race that was based off of what Falin and Harlow originally were. But I didn’t want people to be forced to have those marks if they ever wanted to make an Aitheras Angel, so I made them optional.

This was the first picture I drew of Falin, back before TE, and it was a pain because past Falin was a diva and had to have everything looking perfect.

And then I wanted to do a blushy picture and he ended up being my victim so this was the second picture:

The ‘visage’ thing was always there too, with the same quirk that it showed evil people what they most feared, so this is the first draft of his Angel form:

...It doesn’t look like that anymore |D. Still white and gold, but different clothes and halo design. The halo is still not patterned around the entire ring though ‘cause he’s still a baby.

All of those were drawn before TE, and then this was the first full view that was for TE:

That was done Jun 2014, and I haven’t gotten his update completely drawn yet, but he got a new haircut:

That’s his current look (As of May 2015)

3. Personality

His original personality was just a little drama king ish. One of those very minor ladies man but too focused on something else to actually pay attention to romantic interests. That was in part because he knew he would out live pretty much anyone that was interested in him.

Then I threw in the fact that he died before and was resurrected as an Aitheras Angel with no memories and that aloofness was completely switched out into uncertainty and feeling disconnected from everything. He’s still quiet, and has a protective nature towards healers and other people who are gentle and caring, but he’s waaay less dramatic about it. And then he got a girlfriend thrown at him and I found out he’s also a ridiculously shy dork. So he pretty much went from being a cold quiet person to a soft fluffball quiet person. I like the present him much better |D

4. His Phobia

For the record I did not go an snoop through phobias and pick one and go “I’m gonna give a character that phobia. 8D” As I was RPing him with Nagini (his girlfriend) Falin kept almost passing out anytime they kissed. First we just thought it was because he was shy, but I was curious as to what exactly could cause that. Found out that fainting could be caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure, which could be caused by panic attacks, which can happen because of extreme phobias. And because he kept fainting because of physical romance things I wondered if there was some sort of phobia about that and found out about genophobia.

And that’s how I found out a name for why Falin is unable to do anything passed cuddling when it comes to physical romance without freaking out 8′D

5. His Past Buddies

Most of Falin’s past as Haylen just popped into my head more as images that I had to figure out explanations for. The biggest, most clear one was the place that he lived at with 4 other people. This little herbalist looking house in the middle of a clearing in a forest that was one of those otherworldly fairy looking greenery places. The other was the image that was one of Falin’s only residual memories: a group of people having fun at an inn table of sorts. A tall black haired girl, Harlow, a cheeky spiky haired blonde, a guy that always smelled like honey suckle, and another girl.

From those bits of information came Serena, a Raven Elf, which is a sub race I created to explain her black hair and blue eyes. Toki, the cheeky blonde youngin troublemaker of the group that always needed a babysitter. June, a male dryad who became their herbal healer of the group. And then Hayleigh, June’s half dryad neice.

Toki was the first to die, ‘cause he’s a reckless idiot and Harlow couldn’t get there in time to save him. Then Juna died, then Hayleigh, then Serena and Haylen/Falin was last.

6. Extras

i. Harlow gave him those swords, he had them custom made.

ii. He wears partial armor like that because a full suit is too awkward and annoying to deal with, but having none isn’t safe.

iii. His favorite meat is pheasant, and his favorite dessert is caramel mousse

iv. His Aura was made to have that unattainable perfection attribute back before TE because it was supposed to be something that made him feel more disconnected from everything. It just carried over from that, I’m not sure what the significance of it is now, but I couldn’t get rid of it.

[ohbudder]

AealZX: Azre Shelar

Aaaand time for my other drow baby. This one is really a baby compared to his grandaddy 8'D

Like Maher, Azre was made at relatively the same time Specter was in 2012, just a little after the organization and Maher.

The revived group, or the one that would actually be made in present time of the RP needed to have leaders. Since I didn't want to be the official leader of the group, or have Emi be in yet another position of influence, we (Neo and I) ended up making a pair of new characters to fill that role. Her character was to be the main leader and mine the assistant. Because I wanted her to be the leader since she seemed to know more about this stuff then I did, and because I like being an assistant more than a leader. 8'D

1. Relation to Rashad

We needed characters that were close to each other/ had been together for a while since they needed to be able to work well together. Neo made Rashad, one of Maher's grandkids, so I ended up making a grandchild too. Familial relations are an obvious reason for a close relationship and I wanted to have a drow that I could actually RP with. At the time I didn't know that Neo and I would end up RPing with Maher and Aleks.

At first Rashad and Azre were cousins, because it was a family relation that I wasn't familiar with working with. But as we RPed it ended up being Uncle and Nephew, which I like much better.

We needed the two to have a good reason for being able to work well with each other, so that the other characters would have a sound 'foundation' to draw from and have people that could train them to be better at what they do instead of having a bunch of newbies mucking around and getting themselves hurt. So it became that Azre was staying with his uncle for some reason. At first I had it that he was just staying there for further education type things. Uncle was skilled in the area that Azre and his family wanted him to train in so he was sent to live with Rashad. That changed later. |D

2. His Name

Azre's name was actually pretty simple, it's just a butchering of the word azure, which has no relation to him at all. I just really liked that word at the time and when I modified the word to Azre he liked it so we went with that.

By the way the name is pronounced "az-ray," just in case you were wondering. |D

3. His appearance

Azre's look was influenced by both Maher and Rashad. The middle east clothing came fully from Rashad's design, and his height was also based on how tall Rashad was. 

Azre's more delicate and feminine appearance was a playback to Maher's own feminine attributes. Which is also where part of Azre's pride came; looking really close to their famous grandad. Maher doesn't think looking girly is anything to be proud of, but Azre never had a problem with it. XD

This was the first drawing of him, and so far is the design I've stuck with so he doesn't have anything different yet.

4. Personality

This started with a few basic parameters that were influenced by various things. Looking like grandad, and being a child predege (which was an attribute based on the fact he needed to have a personal trainer and was fit to be in Specter at a young age) gave him a bit of a prideful strain. But that pride had to be tempered in order for him to be good at his job of being in Specter as well as being able to pass off as a simple butler. The snarky attitude also came from being prideful and the teasing came partly because of Neo saying things about Rashad and Azre pulling pranks on the newbies as part of training.

A big chunk of his personality came later as one piece of his backstory that I didn't know about when I created him just fell into place. And that was his mother. 8'D

5. Dear ole mommy and the family

When I created Azre I had no idea what his immediate family was like. I debated on him being an only child or having a lot of siblings etc. I always knew that both his parents were still alive and kicking because orphan boy living with uncle was too cliche. But I didn't know anything about them.

Then as I RPed I realized the time in the Moon Prison was being brought up a lot, and I began to wonder about what it was really like in there. A couple vague ideas came, but one of them was the classic idea about the weakest link the the chain and suddenly bam there was Azre's mom, Andara, saying something about that to him. From there a bunch of things snowballed from there. This was the picture inspired by that comment of her's.

His dad, Falven, was Rashad's brother, so I didn't want him to be a jerk too because that might have resulted in Rashad and him not keeping in contact which would mean Rashad would never have taken Azre in. So he ended up being extremely passive. I didn't want them to be complete failures as parents either, because I'm a softy and don't want my characters to be like that, so I gave them another son, Derris, that was older than Azre. Seventeen years older, because he needed to be old enough to be accountable for his actions for not helping Azre.

I didn't want them to be deliberately abusive either, so it became that they simply just didn't know how to cater to his needs. Because of that they became almost completely opposite to him: weapons experts instead of magic users, very proper and stiff instead of 'ruffians', etc.

And then some other things popped up from there and stuff because of Neo and I inspiring each other and more RPs and such. |D Yey~

6. Extras

i. In an RP with Darky I found out that Andara's weapon of expertise is a thin blade, hollow ground longsword, which is what she tried to teach Azre to use, and he failed miserably at. Consequently he has come to hate that style of blade, but he also feels uneasy around them because he wonders if things would have gone differently if he'd just managed to be able to use one.

ii. Because of the idea of Azre not being able to show much emotion when he lived with his parents he became an emotional idiot who's unable to understand what he's feeling. I compounded on this and focused on explaining it more because of a relapse incident during an RP with Green, and also drew another picture just recently to further explain that part of his character/backstory.

iii. It was unintentional at first, but Azre did end up having a slight strain of Maher's Devil's Luck. It first popped in RP up when Azre got the scars on his arms; Rashad's shadows piercing all the way through but missing the major arteries. Since then I've noticed that there are other instances where Azre has been pretty lucky to avoid. The luck isn't as intense as it was for Maher, but it does explain a few things. 8'D

[ohbudder]

Awa303: Sabrina Will'O Wisp

Ok, the first thing I should mention about any of my characters is they don't have a very kind creator. That being said, most of them survive relatively sane... mostly.  ^^'a

Sabrina was created simply to fill in one of the vacant roles of house staff in a specific rp, and not given much thought at first. Which means that I don't have concepts of her from a time before being used on rps, since she was specifically created for the sake of ONE rp. She started out as a young girl around 10-11 years old who worked as a kitchen assistant at a lady called Nagini's house, and Sabrina wasn't particularly important nor did have any background set yet except for the fact she had an older brother (Atropos) who also worked as the house's nocurnal gatekeeper.

About her appearence, I stabilished few guidelines to follow: she had black hair, red eyes, and wasn't utterly pale like my prior OCs. Just that. At first I wanted to give her dark skin, but I rarely if ever had colored dark skin before and any tries looked really crappy, so she ended getting a skin tone that is neither fair nor tan.

At the time my most used characters were of a extremely bleached palette of white, silver and ultra pale tones. Why? Because then I could mostly skip coloring anything and go straight to just shading the pictures, way to finish them a lot faster. Lazy, yeah. So I decided to start changing that and get out of my zone of comfort, at least starting with the minor charas I wouldn't draw often. Thus, Sabrina's design was formed.

This was the oldest picture I found of her, and about her first 'oficial' design. By then, she had appeared in a couple doodles before if at all. Soon after I finished this picture, there was her "yelling in my head" about how she'd rather die than walk around with that hat - so the hat is gone forever. She's picky regarding her clothes since she was young.

The basics for her personality were defined since the start (even before the design) for the sake of rp - a smart, analytical girl who's a bit of an oddball compared to other kids - but heavens know how much her speech patterns changed from when she first showed up till the point I really got the knack of rping her. She became more snarky and prone to get miffed while also crying a lot less.

Her background also developed. She has no memory prior when she was 8; not as in 'animu franchise amnesia', but the full more-than-awkward mind-wiped version where she had to relearn how to walk, talk, eat etc. like a baby all over again. Her brother seemed to know what happened before that, but he never told her, seemingly for her and his own good. Even her name is not her birth name, just the one chosen because they had to call her -something- and on those first days she was all scared and pampered like a little princess - there came "Sabrina", which means "princess". Overall though, that's her background but not a defining feature. She feels empty regarding what she doesn't remember, but generally doesn't care about it. She's not despairedly trying to remember her past. And she's not having any painful dramatic flashbacks either.

Another point of change was, within the RP, she kept appearing more times than I had expected; that made me understand more about her and notice how many selfsteem issues she had, deepened her interactions with people around and, as consequence, she made friends. Alien friends - I mean literal alien friends since they came from another world - and one of them was the first kid around her age whom she got along with, while another was just as messed up and broken and quietly trying to fill the little holes in his chest as she was. And she developed a kind of protective behavior towards them all due to that, even though she was a kid besides being way weaker and smaller than the whole group (except Mauris, which made her twice more protective of him).

And then there was a timeskip. A huge timeskip, due to the birth of TE.

And this happened:

She cleans up nicely, no?

Little Bina grew into a nice lady... who had been randomly thrown away from her world and everything she knew, and did not have news of her friends nor family for over a full century. And she still didn't shatter - but leveled up in snarky sass. Sweet. 

She also can look rather forceful to get things done her way sometimes, but that was the best way she could live on with what fate forced her into. And I could ramble a ton more about her, her origins, her family and blablablah but the further ranting will be kept for another time. Have a look at her most recent app instead:

[ohbudder]

AealZX: Maher Shelar

Ehehehee, well now that I have that Specter breakdown up I can get one of its founders up too 8D Yeeeey for one of my drow babies~ <33

So, Maher Shelar was created the same time Specter was because an organization needs a founder to feel more solid right? 

1. The Starts

Like what was explained in the Specter file the organization was made up of misfits who couldn't manage to obey orders from their higher-ups because they could see better ways to accomplish tasks than to just charge in head on with a giant mass of people. These people were also a little bit crazy because they were willing to run behind enemy lines, alone, with no backup, and wreck havoc. This was among other crazy things, like playing with explosions, shooting themselves into the air with a catapult, etc. So that was what I had to work with along with the idea that these people were like ghosts, being so quick and secretive that they were rarely seen let alone any further information gotten out about them.

With this data I doodled this first image of Maher:

It's all stretched because it was actually a header for a secret Livestream I had called SIlverSilence where I would stream things for my partner in crime to watch. 8'D

As you can see he already had the black hair despite being a drow. I decided to have him a drow simply because I'm shallow and I liked the ebony skin 8'D I had very little knowledge about drow at that time other than the fact they have black skin and white hair. I think I went with black hair because the white stood out too much in that picture and threw everything off. 8'D But let's just go with it being him in my subconscious telling me his hair is really black /shot

The outfit was based off of the one Emiris wears in that one mission that I drew before I even had any idea about Specter at all. 8'D 

2. His name

Maher didn't actually have a solid name when he was first made, the one he has now was kind of a joke from me. 8'D It was taken from the phrase "maher-shalal-hash-baz" which, in a vague way, means "destruction is imminent." And me being the cheesy dork was like "Hey that's a good name for the leader of a group of people that shatters moral 8D" At first I didn't want to go with it because no one has a name like that and just happens to grow up to fit the name, but it stuck. And I ended up figuring out a reason why he had that name later.

3. First app image

If you didn't know already Maher was a character for an RP group on DA (Souls of Chaos) so naturally he had an application.

This was the first image for that and as of yet is the only app image I've done for him so far:

Lookit that art he looks like a wee baby 8I

Most of his design was actually influenced by my partner. 8'D I was focused on developing the other aspects of Specter before working on his appearance, and while I was working on that stuff she started doodling these little chibi images of Maher and Aleks (the other founder) doing really stupid things. At first it was hooded Maher, but gradually it became a ponytail and sleeveless, high necked shirt and arm sleeve thingies. So I took that and splatted it onto his official design since I liked it so much |D

I think the tight pants were because I was thinking I needed to draw something other than what I always draw, and that's what I got. The boots were a similar reason, yey buckles that take forever to draw.

The scythe was stolen from that one picture of Emi 8'D so that I could appear clever and make it look like Emi was using Maher's old mask and weapon. 8'D I'm lame, I know.

4. The earring/altered appearance

Okay I didn't normally put earrings on guys before, but again I was trying to break out of my norm for him and slapped some on him. Nice long pretty ears, may as well decorate them right? 8'D The earring actually ended up having a purpose quickly on as I realized he needed to alter his appearance to look like an average drow. Originally this was just because I was playing off of the secretive group needs secret identity thingy. But, I found out from Neo about the whole taboo stigma that drow culture has about hair that's too dark and eyes that are too light being a bad omen or whatever and they would actually kill any children who were like that. At first I wanted to make it so the black hair was the altered version because I didn't want him to be cliche and all rare in a bad way etc.... but he wouldn't let me change it |D So the earring was made to make him look like he had white hair and purple eyes via an opal and amethyst gemstone.

The gemstones are the colors that the altered state will end up in, and the location of the object doing the altering needs to be where it makes sense/close to the attribute it's altering. The ear is close to both his hair and eyes, so that works. There's a similar magic accessory that Emi has on his wings to change his colors. It's a purple/black opal though so all it does it darken all of his colors. Azre was the one who made them, so it's just shadow magic and not the same kind of magic that Maher had.

5. Devil's Luck

I'm not sure exactly where this skill came from, and I was a bit hesitant at first to keep it because I was afraid it would be seen as OP, but I kept it anyway. |D It made sense for a lot of things, and just didn't feel right to edit it out when it was a part of the character.

Things it explained were:

i. Maher not only having the darkest hair possible but also the lightest eyes possible. What are the odds of getting that. |D

ii. How Maher was able to survive being killed as a baby. Got to have good fortune to have that happen.

iii. How he's able to do all of those crazy ridiculous things on the battle field and didn't have a premature death

iv. How he was able to earn money for the earring and other things without much trouble and has never had to worry about money even though he isn't a noble.

The luck is a blessing and a curse, because he gets good things as well as bad. Luckily (haha, I'm lame) his luck makes it so he never had anything unlucky kill him.

6. Extras

A lot of stuff ended up being developed later, but I figured I'd add them here regardless.

i. Aleksandr Armyanski was the first person other than Maher's foster father who Maher didn't kill after the found out about his natural hair and eye color. Aleks is also the only person who was able to repeatedly beat Maher in games that relied on chance. This was because Aleks used math instead of luck.

ii. In his app it states that Maher will "almost religiously will buy a single white lily every day," but what happens to that flower is unknown. Actually, he sends that flower to his birth mother ever since he found out who she was and where she lived. It was his way of saying thank you for saving him, and also letting her know that he was still alive. Sometimes he missed days, but while it worried her there was always relief when they came again. Usually it was a bouquet to make up for the missed days. No one could figure out who was sending her the flowers either, because it was always a different delivery person and they were never told who it was from. This is all because I'm hella cheesy. |D

iii. This is something I only recently decided, but the name Maher's mother would have given him was Malik Saman. His foster father (who I have yet to figure anything out about) was only given the initials M.S. and therefore gave him the name Maher Shelar as a bit of a joke considering what had brought Maher to him.

iv. His hair is such a mess because he usually just hacks away at it enough that it's at a general length that he likes and he doesn't pay much attention to it looking nice. This is because he hates his hair, specifically the color and the fact that he has to hide it. When he met Aleks and was taken to a nobleman's home he started to attempt to make it look nicer, but Aleks mentioned that the haggard hair was something that was just part of his characteristics. Ever since then Maher stopped trying to make it look nice, but he also had his hatred for it stilled slightly.

[ohbudder]

AealZX: S.P.E.C.T.E.R.

Okaaay Specter isn't a character but it's creation was at the same time as two other characters so I felt the need to explain it |D

This post says Aeal's name because she's the one typing it. The group was created by her and MissyNeo (much love >u< )

---------------------------

S.P.E.C.T.E.R. was created sometime in April ish of 2012 and stands for “Specialized Professionals Engaging in Consortion Through Espionage and Reconnaissance”... which is one hell of a mouthful. |D

We usually just call it Specter because it's easier to type, and it's actually the name that came first, not that big long thing. 8'D that long thing was hard to come up with to get it to sound like something that made sense for the mini group and fit with the small word's letters.

1. starting point 8'D

Specter was started because of several things:

i.There was another little mini FBI-esque group in the Caelian faction and I was... something about it. |D Jealous, miffed, considered it to be a challenge, something like that. 8'D They were making a lot of people feel left out so I guess I wanted to show people that they could make their own groups as well and we could all have this mass of different teams that had little rivalry RPs, collab drawings for the missions where our mother factions were fighting against each other, things like that. That Caelian group fell apart soon after Specter was made though, so none of that happened. Ah well.

ii. I noticed that there were people, Neo specifically, who's characters did a lot of behind the enemy lines, secret, sabotage things and thought it would be fun to gather them together and give them a reason to collab together often.

iii. I was on an Assassin's Creed kick and liked the idea of an organization that influenced things behind the scenes. 8 | *shameful copycat* /shot Neo likes AssCreed too |D So we hit it off pretty well 'cause she saw the connection really fast.

Everything was drawn from the idea of a secret organization withing the Arean Army that always worked on fighting through behind the scenes actions, and... somehow we decided that it would be made up of people that didn't follow orders from the general head on infantry people very well. It might have been because of character personalities, and how it didn't make sense to have people from different... platoons? do things like this because they might run into each other and cause a mess. So there needed to be a separate group that ran themselves to avoid those issues.

And all of this became the canon back story for the group too. I set it for before the Eclipse Seal in order to give it a long standing prestige and be more solid in the canon world than something that was randomly thrown together by characters that didn't really know each other. 

2. The Name

Specter was something that I knew I wanted for the name since the beginning. A ghost/spirit creature is a type of being that isn't seen very often, showing up to create havoc and scare people, and disappearing without much of a trace. 'Ghost' didn't sound all that cool to me, and 'Spirit' sounded fluffy. I also wanted it to be only one word, so went with Specter.

3. The Uniform

The mask and clothing style came from another picture I did. Which... actually looking back at the description probably had influence on the name and other general ideas as well. |D Though when I drew that picture I didn't even have the starts of an idea for Specter in mind. It was just a random idea that I slapped together for the mission. 8'D

But yes, that picture is where the mask design came from, and then the uniforms were just anything they wanted to wear but that only had the colors that were on the mask. Mostly I did the uniforms that was because I was too lazy to design a permanent one, and because I knew it would be hard to design one that everyone liked. And it was fun to see what everyone would come up with 8'D

4. The Emblem

Since the subgroup was designed to be fully devoted to Ares and it's God, aka closely integrated into Ares, the emblem became the symbol of both Specter and Ares merged together to show that Specter would never break away from Ares.

5. The Execution

After Neo and I got everything sorted out on the basic workings of the mini group we decided to do a fancier invitation than just sending the new members a note saying something like "Woooo new mini group, you're invited, yay 8D". So we made something to set the mood for the group in a way and made a letter that their character would get 'in the mail'

First one looked like this:

Which was just a quick split about the organization, their devotion to Ares, and directions on what to do if they accepted.

The second letter was hella long 8'D and came along with the mask for their character.

This one had details on what the organization's job was and what the characters would be given access to, why they were chosen, and that they were required to get their own uniform made. Throughout the letter there were spelling errors that were there on purpose because it spelled out a phrase for them to figure out and use as a code to prove they were able to do things like that. The phrase was: "Silent as feathers, we are S.P.E.C.T.E.R."

And then this was the third letter:

Short and sweet, it just had a fake address and the time for the group RP that was over Skype so they wouldn't know who they were with until they fully agreed to be in the group.

Then there was the grand reveal of everyone, they got to see all the members and explore the headquarters. Which is next. |D

6. The Headquarters

I think the only thing people saw of the first HQ was this picture:

Which is just the front foyer |D Where there's a big black marble statue of the founder of Specter in uniform. The black marble was because the uniform was mostly black, and also because black marble is less common then white 8'D

But we actually had a whole floor plan for the mansion. 8'D Neo drew one up and then I modeled it in SketchUp

First floor bottom left, second floor top left, and secret basement bottom right. There were a lot of bedrooms and studies, and the basement was for the training room, meeting room, infirmary, storage etc. Otherwise it was just a big normal mansion. Totally okay with showing this because that HQ got destroyed when Necropolis did. |D

[ohbudder]

AealZX: Emiris Stormhael

Before I get into all the other Guardian Angel characters of mine I'll have to do Emiris first. 8'D Because he was the first one and everyone else was pretty much developed around him.

Not like people will complain about learning stuff about Emi anyway |D

First of all let me just say that I should probably give my sister some credit for me even going anywhere with Emiris |D As people know he was for the DA RP group Souls of Chaos and while I'm not saying anything about Emiris' design not being my own, my sister was the nudge that got me into that group in the first place.

See I was already RPing with my babe Awa abotu stuff from my first ever DA RP group (Telian Chronicles) and I wasn't really looking into joining another group since I was shy and quite content to just RP with Awa. But then my sister was all "I wanna join SoC 8D" which is really weird because she doesn't usually do the whole online RP group thing much anymore (ever since the dark days of RPing on Gaia online) so I was like "Sweet. 8D I get to RP with my sis again and we can be stupid together."

Okay so I get interested in SoC, and my sis went Ares so I did too, which made my life easier because I'm a terrible decision maker. But I had the problem where I'm really bad at making anti heros, evil people, general assholes etc. I really like the angelic, holy, pretty healy stuff, so if it weren't for my sister I probably would have gone Caelius if I'd joined at all. Which meant that I took a character that could have fit in Caelius, made them from Earthra to get neutrality, and gave them a backstory to shove them over into Ares so I could be with my sister.

Yay, here's Emi and his lovely first ever drawing of him that was done Nov 2, 2011 ~ (I had actually started dating my sketches at this time. 8'D, but this is the color version of the doodle)

Lovely first photo isn't it. 8'D Wasn't even fully shaded |D Now lessee, guess I'll start with his name.

1. The name

Really simple for this one, I just used a name that popped into my head, and it doesn't mean anything. |D The last name is a jumble of 'Hailstorm', with 'heal' smashed into it because yey I like clerics, and switched letters to make it still sound ish like 'hail'

2. Guardian Angels

Where the heck did I get the idea for the Guardian Angel race? Well... from the idea of a guardian angel. |D I love angels, and I loved the idea of each person having their own special guardian angel that watched over them and only them. (I heard that somewhere, didn't make it up.) So I decided to throw that into a race. Plus part of the motivation was that my friend Solie and I had made a bunch of character sets where her character was a protector type and mine was always the one being protected so me being a derp child was all "I wanna be the protector this time! 8D" Granted this was before Solie and I had decided to do a character set for SoC. |D I originally thought I was going to be tag teaming with my sister.

But yeah, tangent aside, Guardian Angels came about as a race that was built around the idea of each person having an angel who's role in life was to protect just one person and make sure they stay well and happy.

3. Red wings

If you're hoping for something profound you came to the wrong place, I just wanted red wings. 8 |

.

.

Okay, joking that's only part of the reason for the red wings. XD Yes I was on a kick at the time about angels with red wings, but I also made them red because it tied into the idea of a symbol for a figurative blood pact. Guardians' wings are blood red to symbolize the bond to their charge through blood. 

4. Fallen Guardian / the marks

Okay, the Fallen Guardian Angel status came from the simple cliche that an Angel that goes from Heaven (Caelius) to Hell (Ares) is called Fallen. And usually that's a big taboo no-no don't do it shun the foul creature. So that all came into play. And because it wasn't fully Emiris' choice to go to Hell (Ares) the marks were slapped on him and were made to resemble chains to symbolize him being bound unwillingly to his fate as an Arean Guardian.

As you can see the first rendition of is marks was pretty pathetic |D

There's another chunk of information about the marks in this tumblr post over here.

5. The hair, horns, and eyes

Really funny thing, 8'D those who are familiar with Guardians know that they're originally completely white aside from their wings, and when they bond to someone they adopt DNA from their charge's blood and get different attributes from that DNA. So the Guardian's bonded appearance is supposed to be based off of their charge.

...For Emi it was backwards |D Kel's design was actually partially based off of the elements that Emiris had. Because I really wanted double horns and yellow orange eyes and red hair. |D I was on a red hair kick too, and I dunno whenever I thought of him I just got the double horns image in my head.

6. The cloaking

His first full image that was for the app was this pair, but only the cloaked version was ever used.

The cloaking is pretty straight forward. It's a symbol of being ashamed for their appearance, and naturally since he had marks all over him showing that he was a Fallen Guardian, and he didn't even know who he was bonded to, Emi was pretty ashamed to go walking around showing the marks and other attributes off. Plus he also didn't want to get caught and forced to go back home before he'd found the one Evah found important enough to bond him to.

That second image was his original outfit that he was going to get after the cloak was taken off, but it never got used because I didn't like my art back then by the time it happened. |D Which was lame because it went though a bazillion color combos |D

Even though it's old that cloak is still one of my favorite clothing designs 8'D At least for the patterns on the fabric.

Extra:

When I was thinking about his backstory and the whole part about Evah getting killed and saving Kel and Emi and blah blah I found the song Hurricane by 30 Seconds to Mars and listening to that the pieces of that backstory just clicked into place and were so vivid as I listened to that song on repeat while typing that part up. To this day I still get chills from that song and can't think of anything else but that part of Emiris' life while listening. |D

[ohbudder]

Dragoonwys: Ira of Aran Tribe

And now we get to Ira, the big daddy hunk of walking metal BD

Can't have Mavis with out Ira, they come in a set LOL

--------------------------------------------

Ira came around with Mavis at the same time, 2011 Nov. But back then he was nothing more than some extra add on and not an actual character. It was only after a while of RPing him along side Mavis so much that he morphed into his own character.

So that's the first sketch of Ira when I decided he'll be a talking sword and not just a normal sword. It's very simple, just took the sword Mavis already has in her hands when I made her and slapped rune symbols on it.

1.The truth about the dark place this initial OC idea came from

Well back in the day, I found out that that Mavis would need someone with her to guide her during her berzerk trances, but I didn't want a full grown human next to her like Berzerker with Ilya from Fate/Stay Night. I went to watch Shakugan no Shana and then saw Alastor who was talking though an amulet, that's where the idea for the talking sword came in, 'a spirit in a sword that's great!' I thought.

2. His appearance

After a while I started to think about what was 'Ira'. Was he a demon or a spirit in a sword, was he even male or female to be honest since I never locked that down when I first wrote about him back then.

Then this first sketch happened.

Then this sketch lead to another sketch which was a group of entities which could have been called Ira, I was thinking Ira was the embodiment of a few spirits at one point.

Though nahhhh I liked the big man at the back, so I went with him and just messed around a bit. Though one difference was I drew Ira as a rather grumpy serious man back then, but now he's not like that at all, all the grumpyness got moved on to Mavis.

And then I realized, I can't just give him a real breathing living human form after him being a sword, it's too much BS. So I kept his human face for when he was living and thought about another body for him. I remember the word 'Knight' just pop up in my head the first time around, it made sense, I mean a metal sword turning into a metal suit of armor sounds legit. And due to the fact I was watching Fate/Zero back then, Berzerker from there came into mind, his design was just super cool to me, and the pun I can get from it at the time was that Mavis was based off F/SN Berzerker so Ira can be based off F/Z Berzerker LOL.

I got inspiration from him and slapped on Ira's iconic cape, and there I got it, Ira's final design and the one that everybody remembers.

3. His name

Since he was just a sword that lead Mavis' berserk trance back then I gave him a straight forward name. I translated anger/rage into Latin, a very unsubtle nod to going berserk and bingo, Ira came out. It was sometime later though that I actually went to check if it was a legit name, and apparently it was it meant 'Watchful' in Hebrew, so now that's the meaning I go with.

4.His Race

Oh boy...Ira's race, started off as nothing but a human soul in a sword to Contractor, one of the most complicated races I have. A race consisting of different species of people that are linked to the the Contract Records. Since all Contractors are linked to the records they are indirectly linked to each other as well. They get this link after performing a ritual that involves being resurrected shortly after dying. At least that's the short version of it.

I never expected this development, it happened because I decided to give Mavis Mana molding, which obviously Ira knew too, cause we all know he is the one teaching her. That eventually sparked an idea that maybe there was a group of people that knew that skill too, I made a few of them and thought 'You know what, I'll just make an entire race out of them for gosh sake.' B'D And so the entire race, lore and all the bad guys that came with it happened.

Extra:

I never intended for the existence of the Contractor Race to be built off Guilds or Guild Masters, so Ira was never thought to be a guild master in the first place. But as the plot progresses, I thought that it be appropriate for some sort of organization for them to fit into, but why a guild system of all things you ask? Cause I am too much of a fangirl and Fairy Tail is one of my fave manga/anime, and because of that, guilds sounds awsome and more family like to me, which is what I think Contractors are at their core.

And poor Ira didn't get any updates after I designed his metal armor form, he looks the same but old art of him is old. |'D

[ohbudder]

Dragoonwys: Mavis Knaak

Well this party started, I guess I wouldn't wanna be super late for the beginning yeah? BD

Anyway, gonna go with Mavis first cause she is the first official baby I ever had.

-----------------------------

So I made Mavis way back in 2011 Nov, right after I found out about the existence of RP after reading a journal regarding SoC's group opening.

I was such an excited teenager back then, you had no idea.

|D yeah back then I drew on paper and scanned it to line and color with a mouse cause I have no tablet, whooo dark times. But yep this is the first drawing of Mavis ever, also a little different from the 'first ver' most people know off cause I did change stuff by the time that 'first ver' was done.

1.The truth about the dark place this initial OC idea came from

|D I will not lie, I am a huge anime fan and am very influenced by them even till this day even if it's not that in-your-face anymore.

Back then, I wanted a BA sword wielding girl like Saber from Fate/Stay night, but with Berzerker's class. But I felt a little weird cause Berzerker classes needed someone to lead them, so then I remembered like in Shakugan no Shana they had these cool talking spirit guide objects that followed them around. Just like that, I tossed in a talking sword, Ira, and then reversed the servant master system from the Fate series into Mavis the living being the 'Servant' and Ira tje spirit as the 'Master'. Yush, so now you know where Mavis's initial core idea crawled out from, I have no regrets. |D

2. Her Name

Mavis's name was chosen quite randomly to be honest. I had a book about birds next to me at the time, so I picked the name off one bird and gave it to her. Little that I know her name also meant Purple which is coincidentally the main color I gave her, what were the odds of that happening. XDD

3. Her Race.

Most people now should already know that Mavis is a Contractor and at the same time a Rijibarian. Back then well meh, I didn't plan any of those thought out. She was simply known as Human-Demon Hybrid that technically didn't have any major difference from humans, because why not |D

I will not talk about Contractors here since Ira's entry would have a big chunk about them. Now, her Rijibarian race as a whole did go though quite some development, currently they are a type of 'vegetarian' demon that has their own culture and massive mana storage from eating a lot. They could live way longer than humans if they ate properly. They also cannot eat human flesh cause that makes them go cray cray.

In between this and what generic thing it was back then, they went though a number of rewrites.

|D there was one version back then where true Rijibarians and not hybrids had pointy ears and claws and Mavis didn't get any of that cause she was a hybrid. Of course all that is null now cause technically all Rijibarians are 'hybrids'.

Could be worst though, they could have been full out tiger bear demons in human disguise LOL.

4.Her Hair

Just as a little trivia for you, Mavis wasn't originally supposed to have pink hair and become the BA pink midget everyone knows off. To be honest, I had a very noobish disliking to pink haired characters back in the day. She was supposed to have light blue hair, but a lucky accident with the hue scroller made it pink, it looked decent so I stuck with it.

But just to show you a little taste of what would have happened if I never had that accident LOL

Extra:

Mavis started out as a berzerker character when I had no experience in RPing. But then after a while, she started to lag behind a lot of other people's characters who can use spells and different skills and I noticed that just being a main character that repeatedly mindlessly went 'SMASH,SMASH,SMASH' wasn't as fun to type anymore as typing more complex movement as I learned more about Rping. So I ended up with the random fact that Ira taught Mavis mana molding because he thought she was ready for it. Who knew the implications of me doing that, it started the base for my Contractor plots, all the good accidents happening with Mavis.

To end this, here have a link to a compilation on her first official appearance to her current one

[ohbudder]

AealZX : Trance Airius Clemins

Whew, em okay 8'D guess I'll grab first post |D Not even sure if this'll go anywhere but may as well try right? |D

Sooo, the first baby I figured I'd go with was Trance, because he's older than Emi, but still one that I remember a lot of stuff about.

This turned out hella long, so 'read more' break |D The other people who post don't have to be this long, I just like to talk about my babies. |DDD

Thiiiis is the very first drawing I did of him waaay back in...2011 I think? April ish, maybe March. The drawing isn't dated, but his application for the TC group he was for was in March, 2011 so somewhere around there. |D

Look at iiit 8'D that was back when I did traditional art first and scanned it in to ink and color. (Because I was stupid and didn't force proportions on my tablet settings and the circles I was drawing turned into ovals. |D derp)

So you can see there wasn't much to start, but there's still a lot of differences there.

1. His name

He didn't have a middle name. 8'D That's right, when I first made him he actually wasn't a Prince. Just whatever the son of an Archduke is. 'Cause his daddy was always an Archduke, but I never decided that his mommy was a princess until later when I had already RPed a bit. I thought about making him a prince, but thought that something like that was way to over done and cliche so I tried to force myself not to do it. ...That worked well didn't it? |D Then I had to think of reasons why he would hide that aspect and a bunch of other things popped up because of that. Yeey. His name was always based off of the idea of "Trans era", the concept of something surviving past a single era of time. But Trans is a stupid name so it became Trance 8'D

2. His hair

Omg I'm almost too embarrassed to talk about this part because it was a really bad hairstyle X'DD You can't see it very well in the first drawing but he actually had a little stub of a ponytail. 8'D That's not that bad you say, but the thing was it wasn't a regular ponytail, more like some Japanese samurai rip off or something. I dunno but it was bad. X'D This is what it looked like:

Had to draw this just before writing all of this to show what it was like. |D But it's sooo baaad. It's ridiculous. Ugh. I'm sorry if some other character or person had this hairstyle and likes it, but I don't like it for him. |D Just no. I'm not even sure if he had the two tone hair in this version. I think he did, but not 100% sure.

3. His eyes

Not too much of a difference here, just a minor shape change to a sharper angle and round irises. Here's a comparison of the first drawing vs. the latest app image version.

4. The collar

The collar design didn't change, it was always a butterfly koi. Which was actually for a really lame reason. |D It didn't have anything to do with the Duke he was serving under, I just was on a kick about those fish and Trance has a 'fish' form so I slapped a butterfly koi on his collar. And he had a collar because it was cute and I made up a reason for it later. |'D

Close up of the collar:

As you can see the sketch is old and the graphite got smudged really bad. |D

5. The chains

Probably one of the attributes that a lot of people are curious about. (I got asked a lot of questions through the years, so I'm not just guessing) But serious, what's up with the chains?

Well the chains are actually, I'm pretty sure, the very first aspect I figured out for him. Even before his face and everything else. 8'D The origin of it was that I had recently gotten into 07 Ghost, and there's a couple episodes/chapters/sections/blah in the beginning where Teito is stuck with chains on his arms and legs for awhile and has to deal with working around that. I saw that, thought "I wonder what it would be like for a character to have to deal with having their hands chained like that for several years?" Wala~ There's Trance. |D

Extra:

The magic he had was just because I love cleric/healer classes, but I didn't want him to be helpless so I gave him ice magic too. And then everything else developed to explain and smooth together (smooth like gravel rocks slapped together with superglue) the different pieces I had. 8'D

This was the very first 'complete' draft of him (tehee, he used to be chubby because of my drawing style back then |'D)

And this is the most recent profile of him