Take some of the feelings that I’m having with one my Arcana apprentices and their LI
(Ye be warned, there will be spoilers for Muriel’s route in here)
Aldafa + Muriel
FIRST OFF, my absolute favorite thing is that Aldafa is the same height as Muriel. They’re both 6′10 giants and I adore them
Aldafa has absolutely taught Muriel how to defend himself without hurting the other person because like. She knows that he doesn’t like hurting people and honestly that’s alright with her, she’s basically a combat medic tbh so seeing people hurt just means more work for her.
But also if anybody tries to hurt Muriel hoo boy look out cause she will not hesitate to drag the person into the shadows and scare the ever-loving fuck out of them (and if they manage to make him bleed? Good fucking luck, you just brought out a side of Aldafa that is not afraid to leave you bleeding. Outside of Muriel’s view, of course.)
Aldafa blushing when Muriel gives her forehead kisses. She’s so tall that she’s not used to anyone being able to reach that high on her for kisses
The two of them going hunting/foraging for food together and kind of splitting up, but staying within shouting distance of each other just in case
Aldafa has canonly made Muriel squeak a total of one (1) time, and it was because she accidentally snuck up on him and he was exhaling just enough to make him make a surprisingly high pitched noise
(Hearing Aldafa laugh like that made him blush but when she started going red just from laughing it made him laugh as well. Queue the laughter paradox, neither of them could stop for quite a few minutes)
They’ll sometimes go full days without actually like... talking, just because they don’t really need to. They just know each other’s rhythms and habits by now, so if they do talk it’s mostly just a “careful” or “come eat” murmured to each other
They don’t always sleep in the same bed, Aldafa is extremely sensitive when it comes to things touching her in her sleep so if Muriel ends up rolling over or something she’s almost immediately Wide Awake. She’s always sure to stay close enough to him to hear if he starts having a nightmare, though.
Blessed be the image of Inanna rolling around with Aldafa’s wolf-dog familiar, Svelto. The two of them would be inseparable and equally teasing about their magic users.
So like, Muriel and Aldafa knew each other before the plague. They were almost A Thing, but then people started getting sick and Aldafa felt that it was her duty as someone who practiced medicine to go and try to help find a cure.
Asra probably brought her back because honestly seeing Muriel go from distant and hurt from the arena to absolutely heartbroken in his own quiet way over Aldafa’s loss was just... it hurt him, a lot, but he knew that Muriel would never be as crazy as Asra to bring Aldafa back.
Respectfully, fuck the game I make my own lore (as you do). Aldafa probably reconnected with Muriel almost as soon as she was strong enough to wander into the forest alone. She’s definitely changed (her hair is longer now, she talks more, it’s so easy to make her smile) but like, the moment she sees Muriel it’s an almost instant recognition of “oh, I know this person” even if she doesn’t have any actual memories of him in particular. She doesn’t even recognize his face or anything about him, it’s just a vague feeling of familiarity.
Imagine her feet just kind of taking her to Muriel’s hut the first time she’s properly alone in the forest. It’s just so natural to her, and she knows that Asra told her that she lost her memories and all but she’s not sure with how familiar this feels.
She shows up when he happens to be gone and she knows it’s kinda rude but she just kind of walks into the hut and. Oh, that pile of furs seems very comfortable and this excursion has taken more out of her than she thought
Muriel comes back to find her asleep, and he’s confused and hurt and concerned to see her there, doubly so when she’s not already waking up like she used to when he walked in.
But it’s like starting over, but not... her habits with Muriel are still ingrained into her mind, her body and hands moving on their own while they move around the hut and honestly, she can’t remember being this relaxed, like ever
Imagine her forgetting him, five or six times as she wanders into the forest again and again. Until Muriel finally gives her one of his little memory myrrh pouches, figuring that there’s no reason to hide from her. She might have changed some, but she’s still Aldafa.
Imagine Muriel helping Aldafa regain the strength that she lost to the plague. Helping her with exercises, joining her when she gets frustrated because she instinctively knows that she’s supposed to be stronger than this but she’s not and it’s wrong.
(Imagine Muriel holding her when something finally breaks and she starts crying because since she woke up with her memories gone everything has felt kind of wrong. It’s so hard not to tell her everything, but he’s heard Asra’s warnings with her memories, and he refuses to hurt her)
And, just imagine the way Aldafa’s face lights up when Muriel returns her cloak and her bow and her daggers and her other personal things to her. She’s missed them without even knowing they were hers. Her aim has gotten a bit rusty, but she’s so excited to have her things back, to start feeling more whole again, that she absolutely doesn’t mind going out right now (”yes, like right now”) to train herself back up to what she once was.
But at the beginning of Muriel’s route... Aldafa comes back to the shop after a long day at the palace, ten kinds of emotionally drained, and sees blood. By this time she’s recovered completely, finally back to the state that she was before, and so when she sees Inanna pacing around inside, also covered in blood? She turns around and is instantly sprinting through the city to get to Muriel.
When Lucio threatens them, Muriel himself is kind of startled when Aldafa snarls at the ghost, looking like she’s about to murder. (The only thing that’s stopping her is Muriel’s current state. If she didn’t need to get him safe and healed, she would be hunting a goat ghost through the forest, not the other way around)
..... anyways I’m going to stop here because hhhh this has gotten much longer than I wanted it to, rip. But yeah I love,,,, Aldafa and Muriel a lot. They’re sweet beans and I adore them.
Okay I've rewritten this like three times because I want this to be a good and fun post for everyone and maybe try to not completely overwhelm this ask with the many... Many conflicting character thoughts I've been thinking about recently which spans across like 8/9 characters and like three universes because I'm a goddamn mESS.
So instead of all that I'm going to assign the class some reading which you can find here and here about my team KRML, which I'm always ready and interested in talking about, and tell you some about my fan apprentices for The Arcana.
Starting us off is the apprentice that I initially used for both Julian and Asra's routes, Verun Levvie. Before I started playing the Arcana I honestly didn't really have much for her - she was just a neat little self insert cameo in a couple of my stories.
Originally she ran a magic shop with the main intent to help people with their dreams. Her magic would basically snatch the memories of dreams out of their minds and she would craft dream catchers from threads that she basically infused with their dreams. Nightmares, good dreams, and anything else. If they had a recurring nightmare they wanted to get rid of, or if they wanted to keep the dream catcher and be able to re-live that memory... Yknow.
She's also a mess and she can't help but copy the tendencies of people around her. So if she's around a certain boisterous, flirty beanpole man? Oops now she's flirting back and where the hell did she get all this confidence?? Or if she's around her favorite magician boyfriend she'll end up following along with his shenanigans and getting into some sort of trouble with him. But on her own, she's just generally very quiet and very very introverted. Like, vampire hissing as the curtains are drawn back, don't touch me don't look at me unless you're one of my boys. Also yes, she's in a polyamorous relationship with Julian and Asra and I have custom background stories for the three of them that I will spare you from... Unless you really wanna hear about it.
5'7" of Verun to love her boys with... Also she has like. Honey-amber eyes is how I describe it in my writing? If I can pinpoint the exact color I'll show it when I can. But I'm infatuated with the color. Also I stole an hairstyle/hair color from my sister for her hair, so just think of like, red-orange-white fire-ish lookin hair. I don't know how to describe it without sharing photos of my sis but its cool and I'm absolutely too fuckin powerful in a universe where people can have purple-pinkish hair and red eyes.
Akaira is my second fan apprentice, and uh. Okay just an fyi but my fan apprentices all exist in their own universes so there's no messy storylines crossing.
Because Akaira ends up fucking all of the main male LI's except for Muriel, because the big forest man reminds her entirely too much of her sister and that would just be WEIRD. (He also probably hates Akaira so. There's that.) And that's all before the game actually starts. She's like, the barely-has-morals thot. A classic chaotic neutral rogue multiclassing as a ranger, if you know D&D. She has Looks™ and knows how to use them to get what she wants. And if someone isn't tempted or swayed by her flirting and beauty, she's handy with both knife and bow and has no qualms about spilling blood.
It should be no surprise to anyone that her main LI is Lucio, because honestly... She's kind of a gold digger and Lucio is also a barely-has-morals thot.
But! She does actually have backstory filled out, since I've had her character for years and years now. Her first memories are uh. Well, being shot with an arrow to the neck, which left her with her first scar. The man that shot her, thinking the rustling on the bushes of the forest to be an animal, took her to his home out in the middle of fuckin nowhere and added a new daughter to his household. So Akaira was given a name and she acquired two loving parents and a sister. Everything was fine for a while, but then her mother got sick and barely managed to hold onto life for years, until she passed away and everything turned to shit. Her father turned into an abusive asshole, driven mad with grief, and her sister became distant and harsh and just didn't really care about anything. Her and her sister had been taught from a young age how to fight in self defense, but at some point they started... "sparring". Sparring, but like, with just a little bit of blood. So from about the age of sixteen Akaira started gathering scars from her sister mostly, though her father left his fair share as well. (Akaira is always rather sensitive about being called a bitch...) But eventually, Akaira decided to forsake her father and the last name he had given her, so she left her home and got herself into some mercenary work, or whatever would sustain her, traveling around until she got to Vesuvia. Along the way she discovered her talent at manipulation and pickpocketing, which ended up with a lot of "free dinners" for herself 😉
She's also quietly self conscious about her scars, though outwardly she has no issue with flaunting them. The only times that you'll see her actually flinch when people talk about her scars is when she's already having a really, really bad day. Akaira is also like... Weirdly masochistic when it comes to continuing to spar with her sister. Even now she'll go adventure and meet up with her sister and ask to spar even when she knows she'll end up bleeding (sometimes a dangerous amount).
I'm pretty sure that she's also like. My most attractive character, at least out of my girls. Like, 5'4" of blonde loveliness. Long, gently curly hair, light blue eyes, thighs thick enough to kill a man. Makeup game is Stronk. She herself is able to throw her sister, and her sister is a 6'10 monster of a person, and she has the muscle mass to prove it.
Buuuut anyway, onto Aldafa Hylene. Who, surprise, is Akaira's sister! Ahahahaha. I swear she isn't as bad as she seems based on Akaira's side of the story. Like she is, but she isn't. She took her mother's loss really hard, as a child cut off from society would. And since, at that age, she was trained and able to take care of herself alone in the forest... She did. She would spend days or weeks alone in the wilderness, venting her anger and sadness to the things of the forest in whispers and twangs of her bowstring and angry howls back at the wolf packs. She found solace in the primal forces of nature, of fighting for her life with every action when she was alone, and when it came to Akaira welcoming chances to fight those wild instincts just... Continued on into it. So she'd leave cuts and bruises on her sister and then wrap her wounds with bandages and salves and other healing things. She'd also make sure her father left Akaira alone for the time she had to heal, though sometimes when she wasn't there he would aggravate Akaira into lashing out at him. (And if she knew the terribly grievous wounds that he left with his own blades by sight, Akaira didn't need to know. She could deny for a little longer.) No matter what she did, her father never lashed out at Aldafa, so she just kind of refused to believe that he was as horrible as Akaira seemed to believe. (Her sister's blood was on her own hands only, not his. She was responsible for it, she was so sorry for it.)
But eventually, she followed Akaira out of their home and found her own way to Vesuvia. She met Asra and yknow, she didn't mind him. Maybe a bit louder and more energetic than what she preferred, but she knew her tolerance for people was pretty unique. It probably took her like ten or twenty times of her meeting Muriel in the forest for him to decide that this new friend of Asra's was okay, so he gave her one of his little charms for her to remember him with... And after that she would go to him when she needed a break from the city. They're both very quiet, neither of them like people, and honestly having that sort of mutual thinking is perfect. And then it turned into Aldafa spending days with him... And then weeks. And then they just unofficially started living together.
Best thing? Aldafa is just as tall as Muriel, and while she's kind of a beanpole herself (yknow, 6'10 hooman) she's got some serious muscle to her, just like Akaira. Also she has no idea what a haircut is, she'll just take a couple inches off of her own hair with her hunting knife so her hair is short and patchy af but she gives exactly zero shits.
ANYWAY ITS GETTING ONTO 3AM BECAUSE I'M A DUMBASS BUT THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK AND LETTING ME RANT ABOUT THESE THREE I GOTTA GO BED NOW
