#aedin

[amaranthsynthesis]

In the hanging garden, please don't speak // In the hanging garden, no one sleeps

beware; disguise, deceitful charms; I dreamed of thee. I will not survive you.

It turns out just doing my favorite parts of art without the frustrating bits means I make more art! who'da thunk it. so we are back to ink and hatching and thematic halos, and it turns out I'm better at it than I was (checks) eight years ago!

bonus masc melisande:

[shaedsofdeianeira]

I redrew another piece from 2014! This one was really fun and makes me want to draw ensemble posters more often.

So, these are characters from another story I'm working on, Awakening Myth. I'm not prepared to divulge the entire plot right now, because it's a little complicated, but I'll tell you a bit about the characters!

The guy in the back is someone who's already on this account. His name is T'Arnysh and he's part cat. Here, he's in his thirties. The boy in the front is his son, Aedin, whom he had with Aisehna. The cat girl is his sister Grayse. There's a huge age gap, so she's still a teenager here. Then the girl in the fancy dress is named Levaeda. She's a courtier in a fantasy kingdom that's based on 17th-18th century France and England. So, I have the perfect excuse to draw those amazing dresses.

I've been drawing these guys a lot lately, so you'll be seeing them again soon.

[amaranthsynthesis]

Staring at old wip, it’s you and me now baby

[amaranthsynthesis]

A Fissure Forms in the Vessel // (konstantin, ensemble)

A Fissure Forms in the Vessel || Konstantin/Melisande, Konstantin/Aedin, original male character/ensemble || E || ch 1/1 || 2.2 k words

archive warnings: graphic depictions of violence, rape/non-con, underage sex

Original Character(s), Sexual Violence, Blood and Injury, Pregnancy, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Rape/Non-con Elements, Implied/Referenced Incest, Matricide, Filicide, Implied/Referenced Underage, Body Horror, Self-Harm, Castration, Internalized Homophobia, Misgendering, Unwholesome OC Week 2026

When Konstantin finds her Melisande is at the window-seat of her bower: outside, it is spring. The garden is in bloom, the trees’ boughs so heavy with fruit that they brush the ground and create a hundred small and hidden spaces that might shelter two lovers. Petals drift in through the window, just the same pink blush as his consort’s cheeks—if he caught one in his palm he thinks it would bruise just as easily. This should be his warning: Konstantin feels at peace. — Konstantin knows that he is a violent man just as he knows he is a wicked one. It is his nature; it cannot be gentled, and it will always, eventually, hurt those around him.

Read on AO3!

Day 2 for @unwholesomeocweek: Proxy Sex, Body Horror, Coercion

I was at work and dnd all yesterday so this took longer to wrap up than I hoped. Also, it got so much worse overnight. Please double check the tags and archive warnings.

[amaranthsynthesis]

I don't think I've printed any of my digital work in like. eight years? it's always a trip to see it exist in the physical world but I had some frame scraps I was playing with that suited this illustration, so Melisande and Aedin get to grace my wall now!

[amaranthsynthesis]

Please tell me about Aedin's doctorates thank yoooou

Lmaoooo yes absolutely!!

So to lay out the ground work, Aedin comes from the Tower of the Magerium, which is the center of magic in this setting. It's something like a research college, in that most mages (though not all) were educated there and remain to live and work after! Their education progresses through a few different stages: three levels of apprenticeship fierst in large classes and then under the tutelage of one master (Apprentice rank, levels three through one) followed by several years of independent study with a council of advisors (Magician rank). These are most analogous to high shool and college, and then to graduate school! A major working of some kind in one's specialty is the final requirement for being advanced to the next rank, like a capstone or thesis project. A graduated mage at this rank is called an Adept, and this is as far as most mages choose to progress!

As an Adept, any mage has almost unrestricted access to the tower's libraries and archives. If they're so inclined they can and often do continue researching whatever caught their fancy in their specialization, either to great ends or to quiet experimentation. If their work produces some kind of advancement of significance, whether in knowledge or by invention, they can be advanced by the High Council to the rank of Magus. This is a doctorate, more or less! You aren't... really supposed to do it twice. There's no additional rank, there's not really a ton of circumstances in which it's occurred! But sometimes a guy goes and makes SEVERAL leaps of progress in a field and you can't rightly ignore it.

More under the cut.

Aedin specialized in a few different things in his studies; his own inclination towards Artifice, the construction of magical equipment and instruments, a lesser bend towards Enchantment, and a surprising passion for historical research. Mages don't really have a concept of archeology or anthropology in this setting, it isn't strictly one of the schools that can be specialized in, so it makes him a bit of an odd duck. As an Adept he was free to pursuit it to his hearts content! So his work concerns two things. The first is material found in the Tower, both in the official and maintained libraries, as well as in the dangerous and disused catacombs below. Most of the information in the libraries is post-Fall, with a significant gap of several centuries from the beginning before the world was stabilized. Most of the information in the catacombs, however, predates the Fall, and much of that information is in languages that have been largely lost.

The second part of his work involves exploring structures thst were partially destroyed, buried, or otherwise lost in the Fall. Many of them have been long picked over, but there have been a few recent discoveries with significant artifacts recovered. Some of them bridge a few gaps of lost history, including some changes in language that seem very familiar!

So his first doctorate was establishing a referential dictionary to translate the most common language identified from the catacombs. It's not complete by any means, but it's much more than they had had, and it took him about a decade.

The second 'doctorate' took three more years.

Largely built off of research and work Aedin had already been pursuing while translating, the instrument that he developed was a took that could speak to the memory of a damaged item and reconstruct a version of the lost segment. There's a lot of limitations and calculations that go into it, enough material of the precise correct type or makeup being the most significant hurdle when working with, you know, ancient fragments of pre history. But this is HUGE.... IN A WAY THAT IS OF LIMITED USE OR INTEREST.

The reconstruction does not last for very long, so it cannot be used for ordinary repair, and there are very few other situations in which one might need to see what had been recorded on a half burnt page or the like. Basically, this is of no use to anyone but the Tower itself, and only a fraction of that. But it had to be acknowledged in some way!

So Aedin Starosta claims the extremely unusual title of Magus (rank) Artificer (primary specialization) *Superior* (the mad lad did it again).

Now: anyone at Magus rank may be elected to the High Council of Wizards, guided by the Arch-Wizard. This is the governing body of the Magerium. Theoretically, Aedin is not only eligible but also an EXCELLENT candidate to raise to the post!

He will never be elected.

The High Council has NOT been enjoying some of the work he has reconstructed and translated. Aedin is a cantankerous and often disrespectful man who makes enemies much more easily than friends, and this would not necessarily prevent him from being advanced to Wizard--excepting for how he has no political allows in internal tower politics, no involvement with any field of study or production of impact to the tower's finances or trade, and no great family or homeland to curry favor with. He's useless to them, he's worse than useless.

He knows things thst are actually dangerous to the Magerium, and could put them at great risk not only at home but abroad.

So they banish him :) nicely.

Because a man with such significant intelligence and dedication to his studies cannot possibly cause any problems, out of sight.

[amaranthsynthesis]

by and large my sketch files are basically incomprehensible but I started this last fall before the BG3 brainworms and it would be great to get back to it and actually polish it into something finished

[amaranthsynthesis]

Succeeded in doing some art last night for the first time in a bit, gotta keep that energy up. Pose referenced from @adorkastock