Aster Lore Collection
Over on twitter, I made a post letting people exchange likes for lore facts - and got over 30!
Twitter is no archive though, and also character limits suck, so in this post I will compile, rewrite, and reorganize all the lore that was earned. (Note: Aster "Яeverse" will get her own post, and so will be omitted from this post. You will get bonus lore instead.)
Note that this is a companion piece to a my lore video, as both help explain each other.
Quick Facts:
Full name: Aster Gardenia
Birthday: March 29th
Age: 28
Height: 5'3" (160 cm)
Representative flowers: aster, gardenia, forget-me-not, lilly of the valley, meadowsweet, bird of paradise
Representative tarot arcana: Strength
Aster is left handed (which, fun fact, makes learning the sword twice as complicated. :'D )
Aster was originally going to have a much more formal speaking style, but it quickly became limiting (both for expression and tweet character limit). My first few tweets had the weirdest vibes.. I would not have survived a stream like that.
The Garden and the Modern Era:
While Aster fell into her magical sleep "once upon a time", she awoke in @wildflowersthebunny's magical garden in September of 2014! This means Aster has lived in the 21st century for just over 9 years.
Aster's gratitude towards Wildflowers is also why she is "of the garden"; the garden protected her slumber, and Wildflowers cared for her when she awoke, so Aster now serves them in place of her former masters.
The hundreds of years of sleep also resulted in considerable muscular atrophy, and Wildflowers literally helped get her moving again. (As in, she rigged my model!) It was during this time of not being able to get up from her sleep casket, getting physical therapy from Wildflowers and hearing about the world she woke up in, that Aster also got to watch Wildflowers start her streaming career, and was inspired to do so herself.
Despite serving a magic garden and waking up from a magical sleep, Aster herself is not magical at all. She is a completely mundane human knight. She also doesn't know all that much about plants, despite being named after them. (At least she doesn't have a pollen allergy?)
Aster's weapon of choice is the hand-and-a-half sword, otherwise known as the bastard sword. She usually wields it two handed, but occasionally makes use of a buckler on her off hand. She recently joined a local HEMA group practicing German long sword, but she's lost a lot of arm strength since her long sleep. Train hard, Aster!
Aster likes retro games despite waking up in 2014 because when she was figuring out the whole technology thing, she saw the playstations and assumed you had to start at 1. She never really got to that third one. There's a lot of good PS2 games. (Nintendo 64 was very confusing.)
Aster has a degree in computer science! Why?? Well, similar to last fact - computers seemed pretty important in this time period, so she thought she had to study them to figure out living here. (It doesn't work like that.) (But swords are expensive so it all works out.)
Pierre (my lovely cat) did not come from Viatorum, he was adopted 4 years ago and has lived his entire life in the 21st century. He loves swords anyway because he has good taste.
Before the Magical Sleep:
Aster was originally from the small kingdom of Viatorum, where she served the royal family, who she refers to as her sovereign. Aster's sovereign consisted of the king, queen, queen-mother, princess, and the young prince. Aster interacted with all of them, but primarily spent time with the prince and princess (since they were similar ages), and was working towards being the prince's personal knight. Their names, and their history, were all erased when Viatorum was conquered.
Aster's sovereign were Viatorum's final ruling family, all of whom were executed when the kingdom was conquered during the war. Viatorum was merely a stepping stone on that larger, more militant kingdom's conquest, but even its name has been lost to the centuries...
There are still a few distant descendants of Viatorum who still remember its holidays, and Aster gets together to celebrate and remember with them whenever she can. The most prominent of these is January 27th, Viatorum's Founding Day.
Aster's duties as a knight mainly consisted of standing guard around the castle and accompanying the royal family - meaning she was not setting out on any grand adventures or military conquests, slaying monsters or defeating dangerous foes. Viatorum was a peaceful place before the war, and her sovereign did not allow Aster to actually fight in that war. (In other words: despite her love of swords, Aster isn't actually especially powerful, and her kill count is zero. Not edgy.)
Aster has not always been the loud, goofy, friendship-filled knight she is today. Aster had very few friends in childhood, and became a knight because she was lonely, and she figured that people would value someone who was strong, reliable, and able to be of service to them. Even among the knights, she was known as a cold, unfeeling person, and most saw her more as a drill sergeant to be wary of than a potential friend. She only knew how to market herself as an effective tool, hoping for someone to see her as "of use" to them, but despite her continuous efforts, she remained alone, because that's not how friends work.
Aster nearly joined the guard not as a knight, but as part of the military band. She plays trumpet! Joining the military band still involved doing drills, and also wouldn't let her have a sword, so she decided to work harder for the more prestigious position instead.
Aster's Sovereign:
The Young Prince: The young prince had a poor constitution, and thus disliked most martial activities, preferring the arts. He was always picking up new crafts; leather-working, sewing, puppetry, painting. He was never satisfied with his results, but Aster found them very impressive.
The young prince had periods where he was proud, brilliant, and ambitious, and others where he was timid and depressed, usually depending on his health. Aster saw his pride as his truest self, and wanted to encourage and cheer him on always. (Now, she will do that for you.)
An anecdote: Once, the young prince fell ill while he was in a different kingdom on a diplomatic trip, and Aster was so frustrated not being there to care for him that she became jealous of the nurses at the other kingdom.
The Princess: The princess was just a year older than Aster, and aimed to take on the martial activities her brother could not, practicing diligently in combat and equestrian arts. She insisted Aster practice fencing with her, and the two often went riding together or walked the gardens and talked for hours. The princess was the first peer Aster felt treated her as a true friend.
An anecdote: The princess was stronger than Aster, even before the muscular atrophy. Aster made her promise not to tell her parents how often she lost their sparring matches, fearing that her right to guard them would be called into question. Aster redoubled her training efforts so she could properly protect the princess and her family. (Now, she does so for the garden and all of her friends.)
The Queen: The queen was incredibly well spoken and well liked, and often held magnificent parties. Viatorum's long peace was often attributed to her talent at earning people's trust, and her writing was said to have built many friendships.
An anecdote: Wanting her attitude to reflect the hospitality of the house she served, Aster forced herself to to try to connect with others at the Queen's parties, even though she had in many ways given up on her ability to do so. While Aster is still not much of a party person, she was surprised to find success, and actually enjoyed getting to know the Queen's many friends. (Now she is able to put herself out on the internet and meet and encourage so many wonderful people she may have never met otherwise! People are nice, actually.)
The King: The king was a strict, sometimes angry man, but he was fair and cared deeply for his people. Aster often worried that displeasing him would cost her her position on the palace guard, but it was he who proved that she was valued for who she was, not her achievements.
The King's passion was for economics, and combined with the relationships the Queen forged with neighboring kingdoms, he was credited for making Viatorum a flourishing center of trade.
An anecdote: At first, Aster always arrived early to escort the queen-mother to tea, often making her feel the need to rush, which was dangerous for someone her age. The king scolded Aster fiercely after his mother-in-law almost slipped coming to the door one day, but was the one to explain that her mistakes didn't automatically make him dislike her. It was the first time she thought of relationships as other than a cost-benefit analysis, and it's a lesson she keeps reminding herself to this day, and hopes to teach her viewers too.
The Queen-Mother: The queen-mother was fiercely loved by the king and queen, and for good reason. Every conversation Aster had with her led to her learning something about people, life, or herself. It was no wonder the queen had such a way with people.
The queen-mother faced many challenges in her old age, but she knew life was worth enduring them, and that was her strength. She'd struggled through many hardships, and found many treasures at the other side.
An anecdote: Waking up in a foreign time period, hardly able to move, it was the queen-mother's memory that inspired Aster to search for a way forward, even before she could see it. It was there. It always is. Now, she hopes she can help others believe that too.