already expected they'd end on a cliffhanger with so many open plot threads, but ending it like this without any closure or even a 'state of things' debrief is lowkey disrespectful after four years of investment into the story
given how things played out, how little impact our choices made, and the PC mostly being a spectator and scapegoat watching things unfold, the whole of 7.0 felt like the gaming version of 'this could've been an email'. this could've been a cutscene. or a short movie. whatever.
from a gameplay perspective, 7.9 was a fun romp. the emotional climax of the mando arc (carried mostly by the VAs) is pretty nice. playing as different characters and seeing skillsets customised for them is pretty great. but overall, it felt like a wound-up punch that landed without any impact because. well. nothing we did mattered in the end
Once OC is satisfied that everyone else is okay/has been treated, they lead the group on. Still riding the adrenaline high, they're not aware they've been injured themselves.
Other character notices they're following a small blood trail that's slowly been forming along the path only to realise it's been dripping from OC's clothes/trailing down their legs the entire time.
For whichever OC you prefer but it's me so obviously there's a Sol bias.
thenk for prompt <3 sol bias hmm???
The doppelganger’s pale visage twitches in agony, its spindly fingers reaching up for the neck impaled on a drow’s dagger. A sneer curls Solistre’s lip, and she seals the creature’s shame with a brutal twist of the blade, forcing its knees to buckle before kicking the corpse away.
It hits a wooden table with a final, almost comical thud, and sends wine bottles crashing to the floor. Taking a slow breath to ground herself, Solistre turns to look over the ruined remains of Cora Highberry’s wine festival. Doppelgangers slain by her group lay strewn across the patio, face-down in pools of wine and blood, surrounded by broken bottles.
How disappointing; she’d expected more from Bhaal’s assassins. Instead, one had fled the instant he was exposed, leaving the rest to mount an impotent assault. In Menzoberranzan, they would’ve been laughed out of the city for being nothing more than upstart toddlers flailing for recognition.
She waves away Shadowheart’s offer of healing, though the cleric frowns and walks in a circle around her anyway, intent on a visual examination. Leaving her to it, Solistre gestures for Karlach and Gale to move – the latter accepting Cora’s profuse thanks and pouch of coins with a gracious bow.
Solistre walks away, reaching into her pouch for the Bhaalist’s note, even as she runs through the list of targets in her mind. Before she steps one foot out of the patio, however, she finds that her fingers can’t secure a proper grip on the folded parchment in her pouch. The city slows around her, with her, and she is dimly aware of Shadowheart calling her name.
Turning her senses inward, she feels the strained, rapid beats of her heart, the leaden quality of her limbs, the slight nausea indicative of the war that her drow-cultivated immunity is waging against a foreign poison.
Poison. Nothing had passed her lips during the fight, not even blood. But she does remember being nicked somewhere on the back of her thigh, shrugging it off as a scratch.
With effort, she looks down, and finds a small pool of blood under her boot, dripping down her leg. She tries to move, and manages a sluggy shift of the heel. Huh. So it is not the world that has slowed, it is her–
Solistre falls forward, only half-stiff thanks to her body’s stubborn refusal to give in. Warm, bulky arms catch her neatly and lay her down. It’s Karlach, and Shadowheart is there in less than a heartbeat, kneeling beside her. The cleric touches her thigh, healing its wound.
“Paralysis,” Solistre forces out of her frozen mouth, and Shadowheart casts its cure without hesitation, hands arching in graceful passes to invoke the spell’s power.
Control over her body restored, Solistre sits up with Shadowheart’s hand on her back, grumbling under her breath, “Ugh. Embarrassing.”
Her scowl is made worse when Karlach ruffles her hair and stands, though Shadowheart’s chuckle and attempt to tame the mess keeps murderous thoughts away.
“Are you quite alright, dear?” Cora has come over, concern plain on her face. Gale steps in smoothly, holding her back with a smile before she can be scared away by the drow’s grumpy disposition.
“She is well, Lady Highberry. We will see her back to the inn and–”
“Oh, nonsense! My house is right here! Come in, and allow me to repay your heroism…”
Beaming, Karlach follows Cora into the house, while Gale shrugs at Solistre in good humour and does the same. Despite the drow’s low growl, Shadowheart helps Solistre to her feet, and keeps an arm around her waist – less to give support, more to relieve her own concern.
“I’m fine.”
“I know. I’m just making sure you won’t hurt anyone in your bad temper.”
“Shut up,” Solistre groans, trying to ignore Shadowheart’s lop-sided smile – and succeeds.
The glint of sunlight from an empty vial on the floor catches her eye. Solistre bends down when they reach it, picking it up for a careful whiff of its once-contents. Sharp, pungent, almost like molten metal. Her nose tingles from the odour, and she lowers the vial, reasonably confident that this was the cause of her paralysis.
“Why are you keeping that?” Shadowheart asks, when she slips the vial into a belt pouch.
“Research,” Solistre says simply.
“You are not ingesting that,” Shadowheart states, voice flat as the stare she levels at Solistre.
“There’s nothing left.”
“I have no doubt that you will recreate it…somehow. At least make sure I’m around when you try to build your immunity.”
Shadowheart’s dry look cracks a sly smile over Solistre’s placid mask. This half-elf knows her all too well, and it makes her drow heart crow in delight.
“We can build immunity together.”
“A sweet offer, but no. Thank you.” Shadowheart squeezes about her waist, half in warning, half in jest. “You can try to kill yourself, by yourself. I will be there to laugh when you do.”
not doomed by the narrative but saved by the narrative. yeah i know you'd rather die than keep suffering but the story doesn't actually care what you want. you have to keep going, even when it hurts. even being erased from existence won't stop you from being salvaged from the wreckage of un-being. get up. keep pushing. keep bleeding. keep living.
replaying kotfe with my JK is so funny in hammering home the fact that, in my fics, lana's taste in people is so detrimental to herself. her bestie is a jedi who is so kindhearted the sun shines out of her ass. ael refuses to do anything lana's way. oh she'll get things done, but not without dragging lana's sith ass through the good karma farm first.
but when lana gets frustrated she can't even turn to her lover, who shares her sith philosophy, cos ves is the gremlin waiting with a shit-eating grin to tell her 'you did this to yourself nyeh nyeh nyeh get commanded to do good things, stupiiiid'
its good to acknoweldge the hollowness of revenge but sometimes you really do just need a story about someone who gets hurt and then kills and kills and kills and kills their enemies. its cathartic, babey.
5. How many words can you write if you sit down and concentrate intensely for an hour?
Assuming I have an outline ready and have spent days hallucinating the scenes in my head, about 1.5k. Littered with typos and grammar crimes and very rough sentences. but wurbs are wurbs
11. Weirdest thing you’ve ever written/thought about writing/etc.?
meh I'm pretty tame by online fandom standards so...my evil au Sol/Lolth dubcon stuff? With spider mommy's multiple legs and arms and webbing and venom and fanged mouth and shapeshifting into Shadowheart sometimes.........🤤 wait where were we
replayed ziost and i will always love that little tantrum lana throws when you choose to help surro like yes girl! have your own beliefs and opinions and the conviction to stand by them! it's the last time you'll ever get to do it!
thenk for ask jelly <3 (gosh your pic brings back st:disc memories)
3. What is your absolute favorite kind of fic to write?
Past me would've said angst, and she'd still be kinda right, but right now my fave is...not even a 'genre'? It's the kind that focuses only on one or two scenes so I can write in a lot of details (actions, motivations, inner monologue, etc) without making a chapter too long. Character analysis? idk what it's called if anyone knows tell me lolll
That's why I switched to writing ficlets instead of longfic. (and also the burnout. mostly the burnout.)
8. Why do you choose to write?
cos i can't do anything else well
15. Your guilty writing pleasure?
Focusing on my OCs, writing them from canon character POVs. I knowww people read fics for the canon blorbos but godDAMMIT if I'm not gonna flesh out my own OCs and detail why those canon blorbos are madly in love with them then WHOMST WILL.
So… about that character not realizing or hiding that they’ve been hurt… prompt for vestra or lana?
(if you still feel like it otherwise completely fine, have a good timezone, mwah byeee)
combining this with @scrollstrash's. thenk for prompts <3
Vestra woke with a choked sputter, triggering a chain of uncontrollable coughs that turned wet in her throat. Wracked with bone-deep pain, her chest spasmed relentlessly, lacing her dust-coated tongue with thick copper.
The torture ended with blood, mucus, and spittle pooling on the floor under her mouth, finally expelling the last speck of dust she had inhaled from this…enclosed pocket of space?
Resting her head in the crook of an arm, she scanned the small space where she lay amid duracrete rubble. Thick grey slabs overhead threatened her death, held back only by a half-broken chrome desk. So that’s what saved her when Zakuulan gunships destroyed this tower around her. Not that it mattered much, if she remained trapped under rubble that held her lower body down.
Vestra wiggled her toes, relieved they could still move. The movement set off some discomfort, but it was hardly noticeable under the constant thrum of pain in her body. She tried to prop herself on both elbows, intending to test the weight atop her, but the effort only made her swoon, and she relaxed before darkness conquered her vision and senses again.
This was not good. She was half numb and half in agony, and she couldn’t pinpoint the source of it. Her best guess was that damned rubble piled on top of her, so she focused on that first. If she had to die, better it be in view of the sky than trapped in this makeshift tomb.
The Force was slow to respond, but she gripped tight every sliver that gathered to her, using pain-stoked anger to crush as much Force as possible into a tiny nexus within her hands. When she’d gathered enough, roiling energy raring to break free, she let it loose.
The explosion rocked the floor she lay on, and she nearly lost consciousness when the debris atop her was ripped away, torso wracked with acute agony. Hands curling into tight fists, with faint ringing in her ears, she heaved to hands and knees, whole body screaming as she staggered to her feet. The world threatened to spin around her, but she forced calm onto her senses and gazed up at the sky.
Judging by the mellow sunlight spilling over her, it should be late afternoon, turning soon into sunset. She closed her eyes for a moment, drawing in a full, clean breath of air, before looking around her.
She stood on the third floor of the tower, in a hollow niche she’d blasted out of a slope of debris. Her crew was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t matter. Opening herself to the bond, she felt Lana’s heart leap on its other end, pulling her towards it. She broke into a wry smirk at her love’s dizzying rush of relief. Trust Lana to worry overmuch.
Pain still clouded her head and slowed the dexterity of her limbs, but Vestra picked her way carefully down the rubble, half-climbing in Lana’s direction. Her attention was wholly consumed by the physical exertion, until a shout in the distance tilted her head up.
There they were, jogging up a street ruined by missiles and blasterfire – her crew. Their pace slowed as they stared at her, as if in disbelief, and she took the chance to look them over. Lana, Khem Val, Ashara, Talos, Andronikos, Xalek. All here. Save for the few kolto patches and bruises, they seemed to have survived Zakuul’s bombing run intact.
She called out to them, a jibe for taking so long to find her – before realising their relief had turned to slow, mounting horror. Their pace quickened, trailing after Lana who led the group at a run. Her gloved hand flew up to the side of her grey robes, clutching it subconsciously.
Curious, Vestra mimicked the motion and–, oh. Blood. A hole. Not a small one.
She looked down and saw that ragged hole torn through her side, giving her a glimpse of bloody innards – but they didn’t yield to gravity and spill out, as if they shared her defiant incredulity at the situation. What in the world did that? Was it part of the rubble? That acute pain she’d felt when the slab flew from her…perhaps there was some extrusion that–
The strain hit her then, cutting short her runaway musing. Her insides hadn’t spilled out because she had been using the Force to hold herself together on instinct, keeping herself up and moving. Darth Avriss snubbing her nose at the mortal limits of her own body, playing at invulnerability through sheer obstinacy.
Oh…they’re going to be insufferable.
Lana reached her first, sprinting forward to catch her when her legs finally gave out. Vestra let herself go limp, surrendering to the inevitable fussing and nagging and–
She cried out when Lana lifted her in sturdy arms, setting off a hundred aches in her bones and flesh. Lana carried her to the street and laid her down on the sidewalk with much more care, and Vestra bit on her tongue to keep from lashing out at her rescuers.
Despite the pain, she released her desperate hold on the Force, relaxing as she handed control to the worried faces hovering over her.
“How do you feel?” Lana asked, the rhetorical question spilling out like a bad habit as she touched Vestra’s stomach, beside that blasted wound.
“I’m fine.”
“Your guts are showing, idiot,” Ashara bit at her, kneeling opposite Lana. “You’re not fine.”
“Says you.” Vestra pulled her lips into a smile when Lana cupped her face. Her love’s heart raced beside her own calm counterpart. Funny, that.
Despite Vestra’s stubbornly casual mien, Lana’s expression didn’t lighten as Ashara called on the Force, weaving it around Vestra in preparation for healing.
“I’m fine,” Vestra repeated in reassurance – because she was.
How could she not be fine with these overbearing fools around her?
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