#ancestry report

[activatingaggro]

Tell us some more of the motifs and connections between the dysseu and cuckoo lines! You've talked a bit about the people, but what sort of archetypes did you aim for when making them? What sort of connections did you plan out and which ones didn't work and which ones would you rework?

So, the Dysseu and Cuckoo lines are actually the same one! The Cuckoo line only exists from Medeia onwards: she was born in a helming facility as Auriga Dysseu, and when the rebellion rescued her from it, they changed her name to Medeia Cuckoo as part of the fake identity she used to infiltrate the university where Daedal worked.

The main motifs for the bloodline are:

JOURNEYS: the Dysseu’s get their name from the Odysseus! All of them face a journey of some sort during their life that defines them. Of the known members of the bloodline, we have:

MEDEIA: journey from working for others (being enslaved, and then serving the revolution) to, after her murder of Daedal, only working for self-motivated survival (psychically murdering any and all of her descendants that make it to space, and stealing their bodies).

THETIS: journey from only serving herself, when she was a gladiator and then the captain of Sayyid’s guard, to dedicating herself to the service of the unknown violet - and subsequently, fucking losing her life to it.

RMEROS’S JOURNEY is towards accepting that keeping his agency will require the loss of anothers, in the form of Pheres.

PHERES’S JOURNEY is accepting that he needs to keep his own agency, and he can’t just live life as a tool of others. 

WATER: they’re a bloodline of cusps, and this means they have a fucked up water theme. Thetis was raised on the coastline, and loses her life to water - indirectly, through sacrificing herself for her violet. This parallels Rmeros, who was raised on the coastline and is drowned by Sipara. Pheres is endlessly drawn to the saline ocean of Alternia, which represents life to him - Medeia is endlessly drawn to the emptiness of space, in which the lack of water represents death.

ARCHETYPES:

Pheres’s entire archetype is, ultimately, that he’s someone that was raised specifically to be used, and he initially intensely feared moving past that. If someone wasn’t actively putting him to work, then he’d deal with that by putting himself to work, no matter how much he resented it. His overall character arc has always been “how can he move past this?”, and as of right now, “what can he replace this motivation with, and can he avoid falling back into it?”

Thetis’s archetype is basically just an examination of how people fall back into the habits they are used to, over and over and over again! She was raised as a servant to highbloods, and she risks her life repeatedly to escape from that lifestyle through the gladiator ring. But as soon as she earns her freedom, she doesn’t know what to do - so she begins falling back into losing it. Serving as Sayyid’s head of guard was the first step, but her choosing to cover up Sayyid’s matesprits rebellion - and dying for it - is a tragedy because Thetis doesn’t do it for love: she does it because, when push comes to shove, she was raised to serve highbloods, and when a violet asked her to put her neck on the line, she did it.

Rmeros’s archetype is functionally - at what point does self-preservation become immoral? Rmeros is someone who intentionally targets, abuses and isolates a child in order to murder them for his own gain. But if he doesn’t, he’s going to be stuck in a torturous existence that he does not deserve and cannot escape for the rest of his life, and he’s sixteen or seventeen when Birds & Lions occurs. It’s fucked up for him to kill Pheres - but he’s an adolescent given a loaded gun and one way to save himself, and the fact he chooses the absolutely most horrific option of all is supposed to highlight the tragedy of Alternia as a whole.

Medeia’s archetype is a follow-up on Rmeros’s! She’s the footsteps that he falls into, throughout the story, and the metaphorical voice in his ear that encourages him to keep moving forward. Her entire arc is meant to be an examination of the slippery slope fallacy. Is it okay that she murdered trolls escaping from the helming fallacy? Is it okay that she became quadrants with Daedal specifically to gain informtation, when Daedal only viewed her as a fling? Is it okay that she murdered Daedal, if it’s after she was turned in? Is it fine if she kills her descendants, when they’re doomed to die young regardless? When your choices are to commit increasingly horrible crimes or to die, when does it become immoral to lay down and give in?

TL;DR: Cuckoos and Dysseu’s main themes are self-preservation and agency as a whole! Divided up every possible fucking way.

CONNECTIONS:

The Dysseu/Cuckoo line don’t really have connections, tbh, nor many planned! Ancestors are hard for me and rarely interest me long-term, unless I can spin a story out of them. |D

But they’re always open to some!

[activatingaggro]

ANCESTORS

So, these are my guys ancestors!

Pheres’s ancestor: Thetis Dysseu, Deadeyes, and the founder of the Dyssue/Cuckoo line. She was bought to serve the gladiator rings shortly after leaving the caverns, where she worked for the majority of her adult life, even after she paid off her bag. She was only enticed away from the business when a blueblood aristocrat hired her to serve as her matesprit, the Courtier Vavavoom,’s personal guardian, and the captain of a guard - a proposition that ultimately ended in tragedy, as Thetis fell pale for her charge, and when her charge began to dabble in rebellion against the Empire, felt obliged to help cover her tracks. Thetis’s intervention was discovered, and she was publicly executed.

Rmeros’s ancestor: Medeia Cuckoo, the direct descendant of Thetis. She was plucked from the caverns to serve as a part of a helmsfleet at a young age, which is where she grew up: coddled and educated, with broken fingers and injured legs to ensure that she could entertain her buyer, but couldn’t actually escape. In her adolescence, the fleet facility was raided by a faction of the Summoner’s rebellion, and whereas the rest of the helms fled to freedom, she chose to join with them instead, using her training and her accumulated knowledge to infiltrate a major spaceport and research station as the head of bioengineering’s personal assistant. When her deception was discovered, Daedal set a trap for Medeia that backfired: Medeia used her body-jumping ability to escape, stealing Daedal’s and sacrificing her own, and her current whereabouts are unknown.

Sipara’s ancestor: Daedal Nzinga, one of history’s greatest bioengineers despite her caste. She cut off her own arm as a teenager and incorporated biowire directly into it, creating an ability to hook directly into the brains of helmsmen through it, and setting the first stages of simply forcibly rewriting the brains of helmsmen instead of bothering with traditional conditioning. By the time she was in her sixties, she was one of the leading researchers on the planet, and was the head of her own facility and space-port during the Summoner’s Rebellion. When Medeia joined the facility as her personal assistant, the two of them quickly became matesprits - but that fact didn’t stop Daedal, as soon as she realised Medeia had rebellious tendencies, from setting up an imperial sting and attempting to lead Medeia into it. It failed. Medeia stole her body, killing her mind in the process.

Liyiji’s ancestor: Sayyid Jiahuu, the Luckless.  She spent her early childhood in Mentra’s country, fleeing when it fell to the Empire into the Kirog Leth, where she became the brief squire of Neirin Orpheo: when he betrayed his queen and the country fell, she barely managed to escape with her life, setting what would quickly become the theme of the rest of it. To deal with her anxiety, she leaned into drinking and aggression, which led her to dominating most of the coastline at the time with her fleet of pirates, hassling the newly formed Tyrian Empire as well as any states foolish enough to hold out. During one brief arrest, she met Aioane Tasend, helped her escape from their scheduled executions - and found herself actually lingering afterwards, soothed by her presence into a moirallegience she couldn’t quite bring herself to address. When Aioane fled from the coastline to join Sayyid’s fleet and drowned before reaching her, Sayyid reacted badly, and retreated further into her alcoholism. She died on sea.

Riccin’s ancestor: the Boneseer. They were a powerful psionic who lived in the countryside of Kirog Leth, where their lusus brought them when they were very, very young. Lowbloods were rare enough in the area that they were captured in their youth and placed into one of the Kirog Leth travelling side-shows as a novelty until they managed to escape: subsequently, they were incredibly leery of strangers, utterly convinced their own powers were witchcraft, and tended to identify as “it”, as, given they were one of a scarce handful of lowbloods in the region, they were clearly a product of the divine, and no troll at all. Capricious and prone to aggressive fronting, but averse to actual conflict: more keen to hide away from strangers, until their curiousity got the best of them. They befriended Neirin Orpheo and his apprentice, Sayyid Jiaahu, prior to his death and the fall of his kingdom, and after it, stayed hidden in the forests for the rest of their life.

[activatingaggro]

OH AND 9

Friendly note: all of these dudes are up for plotting, if anyone has a hole in their ancestor’s story that they want filled, or if they just want to make a connection! Can and will totally slide the timelines around to accomodate.

Daedal Nzinga's a lady who was in her mid sixties during the Summoner's revolution, and one of the big bioengineers that helped spear-head the transition to spaceship mass-production / everyone living in space. She's Sipara's direct ancestor, and was

Pheres's semi-ancestor/functional signmate is Medeia Cuckoo, who was a body-swapper, a revolutionary and Daedal's secretary/bit-on-the-side. She eventually stole Daedal's body out of self-defense and is probably up in space as a ghost story now. His full, 100% ancestor is Thetis Dysseu, who was a crotchety battle grandma and, when she hit her sixties, the captain of Liyiji's guard/city watch who ended up in an accidental moirallegience with the seadweller she was assigned to protect.

Liyiji's ancestor was the reigning pirate queen / war lord of a kingdom of ship people, probably during the many highblood kingdoms period! Whenever she was around, she was a contemporary of Thetis, who was her seadweller matesprit's unofficial moirail-slash-bodyguard. I basically know nothing about her other than that she dealt with her hideous anxiety by staying constantly tipsy, though. ("You go in and tell the Duke of Pei that I'm a drinker from Gaoyang, not a scholar!" ref! 8D)

Myrrha’s ancestor helped make the first cross-continental railway for Alternia, and was a cheerful jade engineer who was exempt from cavern duty only because he was a dude. He was still eventually hauled underground to produce the intra-cavern rail system that served as the foundation for the one used today, though.

Marduk Lector's ancestor is a jade matron who's still alive in the caverns! Her blood hue is just a smidge lower in hue due to a change in classification between the time that she and Marduk were hatched, and since she was *also* raised in a time when cavern participation was mandatory, it meant that she initially got slotted into the role of penpusher and admin that she resents to this day. She's been working her way up through the ranks, though! She's basically a less twee Umbridge.

[activatingaggro]

How is seadweller Daedal different from her canon self? Would Sipara view her more or less favorably?

I answered this to a certain extent before in terms of personality differences, but I guess the key difference is: violet Daedal is actually still alive in the bloodswap-verse, as regardless of Medeia's caste, she wouldn't have been able to get past the violet immunity to body-swap. So Daedal doesn't die in her sixties. Instead, she's the seadweller equilivalent of a relatively spry, plump old lady in her seventies by the time that Sipara hatches.

But she is still as endeared and delighted by Sipara's existence as she is, canonly, by Sipara's theoretical existence.

Unfortunately, Sipara's equally unimpressed regardless of the AU! Violet!Sipara thinks Daedal is ultimately lazy as hell, and she very deeply suspects that most of Daedal's inventions and discoveries aren't actually her own. She admires her, very, very grudgingly for becoming famous, but it's a belligerent respect. Sipara works for her strength, and her technology, and her abilities! Daedal just *steals.*

And worse yet, Daedal thinks Sipara is endearing and adorable and, if given access to the right resources, perfectly capable of getting even farther than Daedal and doing their bloodline proud. She doesn't want to let Sipara do things. She wants to *give them to her,* starting with Daedal's strife-modus (which goes into the trash) and her journal (which goes into a safe), and she doesn't see the point in letting Sipara handle things herself.

Why should she have to? Why would she want to?

[activatingaggro]

Talk to us about violet Daedal! Did she have the same job/interests? Did she still get together with and/or betray Medeia?

Skipping the Medeia part, because I have no idea what blood colour Pheres is in bloodswap!verse. Indigo? Jade? Still a maroonblood?

Violet Daedal was much more laidback than canon!Daedal: when she’s brown and has her own death looming over her at all times, she’s frantic and ambitious and determined to do absolutely anything to make sure that her name goes down in history. She’s motivated by the fact she’s just one candle in a million in the dark, and she knows that she won’t be remembered, but she has to try anyway.

Violet Daedal doesn’t have that. When she’s violet, she’s hatched knowing that she’ll have centuries to make her name, and that seadwellers are rare enough she’ll never have to worry about being forgotten. Just by existing, she leaves an undeniable mark in history. So why should she ever rush? She’s relaxed and lackadaisical and perfectly content to play the lazy professor over her gaggle of graduate students. When they produce work, she takes the credit: when they don’t, she culls them and replaces them with better, more desperate trolls, who look at her long list of research and the fact her name carries weight in the field and decide that it’s worth putting up with her.

She still has the same job! She’s a helmstechnician, but more prestigious than the bronze version: where-as bronze!Daedal was essentially one of a handful of head researchers in the field, violet!Daedal is one of five or so experts, just as a result of having been in the job for centuries, and having lived through every major technical breakthrough. Her own personal project is still hooking up to psionics and forcibly reprogramming them, but she’s never desperat enough to experiment on herself, like she is in canon. She has a rig and hook-ups and a detachable machine to do all of that for her.

[refiningspacetime]

For Ancestor day: Thetis, look through the magical portal that shows you all of Pheres' life and judge this dumb baby's life choices and/or quads.

oh, for fucks sake,

what exactly did i do to get this kind of steaming hoofbeast shit heaped on my slurry, did i offend the wrong gods, flatter up the right ones all accidental like, because if thats the case, id like to offer my sincere apologies on behalf of my entire line, is there someone down there in the water peering up at me all doe-eyed and pail-addled, thinking that this cohort of fuckups the best way to get a girl all riled up, because let me just say,

what, oh, shit,

sorry ma’am, language, right,

like i was saying, all of these little cakesniffers are a disappointment and a disgrace, but out of all of them, eh, pheres, hes not the worst, i mean, look at the little snootnoodle, he might have more horns than hes got sense, and speaking of which, what little doorthumping hoofed farmbeast petting pupa doesnt trim that junk down, theyre like handlebars, thats just not safe,

but, anyway, he might not have much sense, but leastways hes got some, iffin youre built like a stick, no point in roughing it up on the frontlines, you want to survive to get grays like me, you best be useful sharpening quills and hiding behind your generals skirts, or in em, not my place to judge what keeps some chucklehead living, and on his quads, HAH,

just, hah,

a proper liege would sort that out for him, and if i ever seen a bloke that needs a liege, its this little cloudtop, given that hes clearly got a few too many bubbles in his froth, no account of the, you know, murders and all, sweet sea, just pay some nice squarebinder to find him some diamond that aint hazardous, a pitchmate that aint deviant, and, well,

i know things seem a little hard up out there, especially with all these city folks, and all of these little blightweasels touching fronds all up in each others hivestems in perpuity, skipping quads, and slighting ancestors, and probably doing all sorts of unseemly manner of things where folks cant even see em, but,

surely they could find him a sprite that aint fucking dead,

[activatingaggro]

Getting ancestor night started early: if Riccin/ID/any other of the Fleetbound kids DID have ancestors, any ideas on what those would be like?

Of the ones that have definite ancestors:

Myrrha’s line is very, very old, and her ancestor’s fro mthe warring kingdoms time period. He was a cartographer and an engineer who helped set the first railroad lines across Alternia, and is semi-famous for people who really, really like trains. He started off as a cavern worker who set up an underground subway between his large kingdom's brooding caverns to make slurry distribution easier, and then was plucked out of them by his region's queen to create the railroad system.He was very focused on his trains, to the detriment of everything else! Friendly enough, never fired a gun in his life but occasionally clocked people aside the head with a wrench (or ran them over).

Obviously had quadrants for Myrrha to be around, but left no records of them: he had at least a dozen journals, but they were all about trains, and engineering, and his own excited blueprints for how he could make the rail system EVEN BETTER. Myrrha gets incredibly disgusted at the mere mention of his name, and refuses to acknowledge that she's his (really obvious, going by portraits) direct descendent / clone. She argues that the hanged man is a very common sign for jade-teal cusps, and that is the ONLY THING linking them.

Liyiji’s line is also pretty old, but younger than hers! His ancestor was a pirate war lord in the archipleago down where CC lives. She was very externally confident, very bad-ass, an excellent diplomat and leader, and dealt with her raging anxiety issues by always being a little drunk. Liyiji thinks she is intensely admirable in every way! He defends the detrimental alcoholism that eventually killed her as a lie that her enemies came up with, but he snubs drinking anyway. Just in case.

He actually lives in one of the house-boats from her original fleet! It’s been repaired and modernised so often that there’s very little of the original wood left, but  the design has changed the same, and the fancy embellished carving of his symbol that sits in the captain’s cabin used to be the insignia on the hull of every ship.

Marduk’s ancestor is your perfectly standard jade dolorosa, who is still alive and serving in one of the caverns. She is just barely green enough to be considered jade by her birth cavern’s standards, and old enough to have been around before that sort of thing was formalised across the planet. She scraped into the caste by the skin of her teeth, but the imperial registry still lists her as an olive, which is why Marduk hasn’t been able to turn her up. (The cavern that Marduk hatched out of is much, much more forgiving in caste divisions, which is why she’s jade. That, and her blood is a few shades cooler: she and Myrrha aren’t exact descendents the way Liyiji is, they just have 90% or so of their progenitor’s genes.)

Ancestor Lector is mousier than Marduk, ultimately more passive, and agoraphobic enough that she hasn’t seen the surface in the past three hundred years. Semi-well ranking in her cavern, but not enough to be really noteworthy, partially because she aggressively clings to the status quoe. And partially because legally speaking, she’s olive, and as people are fond of reminding her, she’s lucky to even be there. If she had more ambition, she’d be Umbridge! As is, she’s just a very meek, salty pencil-pusher.

ID’s ancestor would probably have been some kind of dance instructor in the early Empire who was culled when his dance studio became too big, and started challenging some blueblood’s studio. Riccin’s is likely to be the personal scribe and beloved matesprit of some indigo subjuggulator during the Signless rebellion, who may or may not have found religion at the worst time.

[activatingaggro]

And good end ancestors, idea shamelessly stolen from Mirk!

Thetis Dysseu is still hatched into servitude. She still enlists to work for a navy warlord. But when her moirail comes to her with stories of the rebellion, and when her moirail is arrested, Thetis doesn’t hesitate.

When they flee, they succeed. They head to the coasts, where the war has left the farms empty and the fields salted, and they set about learning to fix broken things.

The rebels are killed, but the rebellion survives. Their hive becomes a waypoint for travelers, and a place for trolls to hide. Thetis dies of old age, peacefully, painlessly, her moirail lives - and generations later, when a new set of Dysseu hatch from the caverns, she’s there to share their predecessors story.

There are always wars, and rebellions, and people fighting for change. Auriga Dysseu hatches in the south. She changes her name, becomes Medeia, and joins the rebellion - but when she falls for Daedal Nzinga, her affection is guarded. Daedal never discovers her secret, and she never betrays Medeia in turn.

When Daedal dies, her name in history secured, Medeia befriends her matesprit. When she leaves Alternia behind in the exodus, it’s not in terror and flight. There is no journal. She knows her ancestor and she knows her legacy, and when she faces death, she doesn’t try to escape it.