For every 🔖 I received in my inbox, I’ll write a sentence in my WIP!
Working on some Lady of Ashes today!
It had been a long while since Winnie had been in a proper chantry as herself. She’d always kept her head down, her face covered, if she came in at all. Wick had done all the talking the night before, with his charming smile and human eyes. I told them who you are, he insisted, reassuring her constantly. She wasn’t sure where his confidence came from. Standing two heads above her, long fingers lacing through hers as he insisted that the Chanteuse was one of the first to not just hear about the new Saint, but to believe in her, too.
You must look the part, Wick had said. You must be magnificent.
She still missed her blue coat. Wondered if Agnes might have kept it still.
honestly, I’m still debating about the inclusion of telegrams and graphs in Lady of Ashes, because the slow movement-speed of information is somewhat necessary to the plot at times. I’m wondering if it’d be better perhaps to have it be a relatively new invention, one that’s more of a novelty rather than a useful tool at this time, but since the plot itself spans two years, it can develop and become more useful as time goes on
Thank you for the message! Here’s a couple OCs you might like to hear about:
From Coriander:
Coriander makes flower crowns and sings to herself. She likes to make beautiful things, especially in fields, where the flowers and the sky go on forever. She’s a quiet person, but she doesn’t like to be alone when she does this either.
Jasper mostly makes up stories and practices theatrics. He’s constantly on the move, and never quite had the chance to pick up hobbies, especially not after he left the city in which he grew up, but he loves to perform and make people laugh all the same.
Solomon tends to his garden and his sheep flocks, and experiments with cross breeding his flowers and fruit trees. Despite his massive size and claws, he can be incredibly precise and has a pair of cutters that had been passed down to him from an older firedrake many years ago.
From Lady of Ashes
Winnie makes lace and embroidery for fun. She works in a hatshop, so her “hobby” is directly contributing to work, but she genuinely loves to work with her hands to create something tiny but intricate to go on the hats as well.
Agnes, her best friend, reads and writes poetry and gossips, as well as cares for her niece and nephew. It’s hard to have time for too many hobbies, but she always finds the time to read before bed.
Duva meanwhile reads up on the latest horoscopes, practises stage makeup and runs lines, and goes window shopping. She can’t buy everything she wants -- and she wants a lot -- but she likes to go looking at things all the same.
From The Hoarfrost Crown
Bette spends most of her time socializing, working, or messing around with her sisters and best friend. Roughhousing and making jokes are some of her most common pass times. But there’s always something to be done -- housework, mending torn clothing, setting bells, and so on.
Naza, her sister, spins elaborate tales and tries to turn them into songs, but they’re never quite good enough to share with anyone but her closest friends. While bette mends, Naza usually cooks or works on the house itself, if any of the wooden slats or glass panes need to be looked at.
And finally, Tamber, who is twelve, is currently in a phase where she thinks she’s more of an adult than she is. She fantasizes about herself and the boy she has a crush on, chases after the cat, and spends endless hours braiding her sisters’ hair. Bette’s especially is ideal for elaborate braids, and Tamber is always coming up with something new.
i don’t know your characters too well, so let’s go with your least favourite character
world building wednesday // Accepting!
hell yeah hell yeah
Least favorite oh man. Uhhhhh. I really don’t write characters I hate, though I do write plenty whose morals or choices I would never approve of morally. Let’s go with Rafe, from Lady of Ashes though since he does the most assholish betrayals in the story and needs some development.
B A S I C S
full name: Rafe Alberich
gender: Cis man
sexuality: Grayromantic, graysexual.
pronouns: He/him/his
O T H E R S
family: All deceased. A mother, a father, and a younger sister Celia, who was nine years younger than he is, and ten years old when she died.
birthplace: A tiny, nearly-forgotten and now-destroyed village named Luire
job: Originally, Plague doctor’s apprentice. Then, footman for a low-ranking nobleman’s estate. Now, exile and apostate.
phobias: Fire, the dark, heights, and fabrichats. All cats, really, but those ones are deadly.
guilty pleasures: Chocolate, especially bitter chocolate. He also really likes fine shoes, having never had a pair growing up, and is particularly skilled at making perfumes from his past as a doctor’s apprentice, where the tradition of filling the masks with good scents is still followed, even if germs and bacteria have been discovered by now.
M O R A L S
morality alignment?: True Neutral bordering on Lawful Evil. He started out as lawful/neutral good but the years serving La Maitresse (the big bad) has warped his viewpoint and morals so that he does just about anything he cares to do so long as it doesn’t go against anything LM has ordered.
sins - greed, envy, wrath
virtues - diligence, justice, humility.
T H I S - O R - T H A T
introvert/extrovert: Introvert
organized/disorganized: Disorganized
close minded/open-minded: Middling.
calm/anxious: Anxious, even if it doesn’t appear it.
disagreeable/agreeable: Agreeable/aloof.
cautious/reckless: Behaviorally cautious and doesn’t like to take risks with short term decisions, but reckless in making long-term decisions, and usually goes with how he’s feeling rather than what logically makes sense.
patient/impatient: Depends on the situation, leaning towards patient
outspoken/reserved: Reserved
leader/follower: Follower all the way
empathetic/unemphatic: Empathetic, whether he likes it or not
optimistic/pessimistic: Pessimistic/neutral
traditional/modern: Traditional
hard-working/lazy: Very hard-working
R E L A T I O N S H I P S
otp: Rafe x getting some sense in his goddamn brain.
ot3: Rafe x getting some sense in his brain x getting closure
brotp: Rafe x Wick is a lot of fun to think about, but I Haven’t written their interactions enough to know exactly what’ll happen
notp: Rafe x Winnie. They both have latent feelings for each other that they confuse for romantic instead of nostalgia and familial. It’s not healthy and fortunately nothing ever comes of it. But if we’re going with absolute squick, Rafe x Rat who is 14 and gay and doesn’t deserve someone like him.
the trouble with Lady of Ashes is that there’s eventually going to be this one character Ivan who I really think will end up getting taken out of the story/merged with another character because he doesn’t narratively add much but he 100% fulfills one of my favorite tropes of this gentle person being forced to kill and fight and finally meeting someone who treats them kindly and falls in love with that person but only pines from afar because they can’t comprehend the idea of such feelings ever being returned
I have such a love for Winnie, the main character of Her Lady of Ashes so that’s who we’re going to gush about. Shy and sweet, and loves her found family to bits. Her best friend Agnes Aureus is raising her late sister’s kids, and Winnie all but took them on as her own as well. She loves being silly with them and making people laugh, if only her social anxiety and inability to say what she’s thinking around people who aren’t part of the Areus family didn’t get in the way. She dislikes taking up emotional real estate, and her love language is acts of service and quality time especially. She cares deeply for her friends, and definitely takes up the role of caretaker more than she needs to.
One unrelated fact is that Winnie really loves sweets. She doesn’t like indulging too much, especially with how expensive deserts are, but there’s little she loves more than chocolate cake, and chocolate-covered strawberries.
Unrelated, but I also just had an idea for a neighbor to the Aureus Millinery -- someone who makes bespoke wheelchairs and Possibly prosthetics? They live in one of the finer parts of Mervueax, and cater to an upper-middle to middle class clientele usually -- though Winnie and Agnes absolutely make less expensive hats as well -- but I’m imagining a team of people who hand-carve wooden seat backs and embroiders plush cushions, and possibly a mix of functional and ceremonial prosthetics that are highly artistic and fitting the fashion trends at the time. I.E. A more fashionable prosthetic might be carved to look like it’s made of lace or have stained glass embedded into part of it, or can be even more outlandish like made of glass and act as a mini greenhouse, though that one might be more form-over-function.
so in lady of ashes, the demons come from another realm called the Crossing, and originally it resembled something that can be loosely described the End in minecraft -- floating islands of stone, with light coming from an unknown source that leaves things without shadow, and a black void surrounding it, without air current. There’s a few plants here and there that are actually stationary carnivores that lure people in with “fruits” that keep them from leaving, and demons “live” in termite-like mounds and towers. There’s more to it than that but it’s a basic description.
But now I’m thinking, maybe it might be something more -- overly alive. Forests and leaves and everything is just slightly too-brightly colored, Too alive, with the same unusual stillness of the air around it. So it looks Almost Normal, and could seem almost recognisable at times, but it’s still so obviously Wrong as soon as you take a closer look
Trying to decide which would be more unsettling. Gonna do a writeup of both aestheics honestly I’m very excited. I’ll probably post them too if there’s any interest in it
tagged by @soruawrites
Rules: Pick a character from your WIP and have them answer these fifteen questions, then tag fifteen people.
The character chosen is Winnie Ashley, the main character of Her Lady of Ashes, as she appears at the start of the story, rather than any time after the end of act one.
1. What is your full name?
"Marquise Winifred Florine Therese Ashley-Raffine. I only sign my name as Winifred Therese Ashley nowadays.” The title, especially, is something she doesn’t like to advertise, especially now that she’s living comfortably in a large apartment above her best friend’s hat shop, only dipping into her family’s money when necessary. It’s is a courtesy title, rather than denoting any standing, given to her grandfather for all the donations he sent to Moriel’s university and to public works.
2. What does your full name mean?
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I was named after my grandmother. Maman wanted to name me something Davenish even though she was marrying a Noquesier man, and the rest of the names were picked from her favorite poems.”
Winifred has a few different meanings -- friend of peace being the most accepted one. White, fair, blessed, and holy, are other common names. Florine is the French feminine form of Florinus, meaning flower. Therese, the French form of Theresa meaning either summer, or to harvest.
Ashley means an ash tree clearing, and Raffine means refined.
3. What are your nicknames/other names?
“Most everyone calls me Winnie, or Winn for short.” She shrugs again, hands fidgeting in her lap, attempting to be as polite as possible. “Rafe still calls me Young Miss sometimes, and Rhoan calls me Lady Ash. Everyone else usually calls me Winnie or Miss Winnie.”
4. What’s your gender?
“I’m a girl,” she says, simply, and a little confused. Winnie doesn’t totally understand gender, truth told, but she also accepts whatever anyone says they are without question. She herself is a cis woman.
5. What’s your sexuality?
Winnie looks down again. “I think I tend to prefer men, but I...really don’t know. I have all these ideas of romance and the like, but when it comes to actual ...” She coughs. “Well, wifely duties, I get a bit squeamish. There isn’t much there I’ve really liked the idea of just yet.”
She’s panromantic, leaning towards men and masculine presenting people, and demisexual, not that there’s a word for it in their world quite yet.
6. Where are you from?
“I was born in the Noques countryside, but I like to think I belong to Merveaux, the capital city. It feels more welcoming than the estate ever did, or ever will again.” Her smile may seem a bit strained, but it remains, polite and shy as always.
7. How old are you?
“Nineteen. I’ll be twenty this September.” And no doubt Agnes is planning something big.
8. What is your magic form/what species are you?
"Well, I’m pretty sure I’m a human,” she answers, with a confused chuckle. “But I don’t have any magic. I can mend just about any kind of clothing, though -- even lace, and Agnes says it’s practically magic. But she’s just being nice.” Having spent a good portion of her youth in a university that specializes in educating and training fabricants, which make up about 10-15% of the entire Noques population.
9. What does your human form look like?
“I’d like to think I’m passably acceptable. Nothing out of place, and everything is about the right size. And I’d like to think I’m a bit nicer than plain, but that’s about where it ends. I’ve always been too pale, and I stay indoors far too much for it to improve. I think I like my eyes. They’re a nice blue, and about the right size. But really the only thing I like about myself is my hair -- long and brown and curly. I know it’s not obvious -- I always braid it back anyway, but it’s still the best part of me, I think.”
10. What’s your aesthetic?
“My...aesthetic?” It’s a difficult question for someone who tries to ignore her physical appearance as much as possible. She’d always been dressed by her governess as a child, then had a uniform while at Moriel’s, and she liked not having to choose for herself. “I like blue. And practicality. I don’t really need anything too fancy, though I do like a bit of lace. Agnes is usually the one who does the shopping for me.”
It’s a very soft, effeminate aesthetic. Lace blouses, soft blues, and freshly made tea in a porcelain cup. Sitting at her workbench, with light filtering in through the window, sewing decor onto a hat while she hums softly. It’s about the most Winnie aesthetic one can think of.
11. Who’s your best friend?
This question is much easier, and she offers a much quicker, more confident answer. “Agnes, of course. I met her in school. She was one of the few people who would actually talk to me there. I’d do anything for her.”
12. Would you ever get a piercing/tattoo?
"I don’t think I could. I get nervous around anything that might be painful or messy, and I get dizzy when I see even a bit of blood.”
13. When are you happiest?
"I like when everyone is home. The children are back from school and we’re sitting in the living area with an informal dinner. The best days are when Duva doesn’t have rehearsal. She and Agnes never have enough time together.” Her expression grows distant, thinking back to her youth. “It’s nice, having a full home of people who laugh so much.”
14. What’s your biggest secret?
She shakes her head. “I don’t do well with secrets, and Agnes is too good at sniffing anything out. I’ve known her so long that I don’t like keeping anything from her, nor her from me. Although -- I don’t like sharing my history, really. The Ashley-Raffine estate is still in my name, but I don’t think I could stomach ever going back there again. Is that very terrible of me?”
15. What was your first impression of Rafe?
There’s no small amount of guilt as she admits, “I didn’t notice him at first. He arrived when I was about six, just another footman in my parent’s estate. I was a spoiled little girl, and I read and embroidered more than I would talk to anyone, but eventually I began to properly notice him and the other servants.” Her smile flickers despite her best efforts. “He was very kind to me, and very patient, and I don’t think I’d have survived without him. I loved him dearly, and I miss him too much for words.”
