#august percival

[dwcmarshalarts]

"I'm in no position to give advice I don't want to be nice And you know that"

Characters, art by DWC Marshal Arts Ft. KLARE/Ellen by Ressii

[dwcmarshalarts]

Hey there!

First off, your artstyle is amazing. The format allowing anything to happen off-screen work so well, and the way you draw is just unique. Among all artists' worlds/FVNs I saw throughout the years, I rarely felt that interested, and I dare to say, emotionally invested.

I've digged into various archives (DeviantArt, Tumblr, etc) with insatiable hunger for more, and got some question concerning the lore.

From my understanding, it seems like Louis deserted the academy way before graduating. What were his reasons? Was it his own way to cope with Howard's death? To escape his Father's influence (although from my understanding Sebastian was more focused on Xev than Louis)? Something else completely? And if he did not take the criminal route right away, how did he ended up trafficking weapons?

2. From my understanding, Ezo (and some characters from Star Treatment too?) isn't your character at the very start, so how did he ended up as an important character in Louis's story? Also, I understand Ezo acts like a mentor, but what's their exact opinion and feelings for eachother ? The way they meet and began to work together feels ambiguous to me.

3. I saw the term "Zander(s)" several times, to designate Louis, as August's family (?) name, etc... So what exactly does "Zander" refers to? Is it related to that one moment where August call Louis "father"?

4. Out of curiosity, how tall would you estimate each character of your world? And is there a specifity related to their animal traits influencing their size?

5. Personnally, I'm having a hard time understanding how long have passed between some scenes, so how old would you say each character is? How old is Xev when he graduates/when he desert the ground forces? How old is Louis when he dies? How old is Sebastian when Xever confronts him? And so on.

6. Can we have an hint on what was Sebastian's secret ? And, I might have a twisted mind, but did Xever killed his father in his quest for revenge?

7. Will we ever see more of the mother? Or do you consider her a secondary character ? What's her feelings about the downfall of the family?

I know that's many question at once, so feel free to give answers to whatever you judge right to explain.

Thanks again for your time and keep it up! :D

Hey!

I've never gotten an ask this long or this loaded, so I'm having to write the answers down in a separate window side-by-side! Thank you for the interest and inquiries regardless. I'm surprised someone's gone in deep to my archives, which reminds me I really need to update/bolster them, it's been too long.

That aside, I'll try to answer as concisely and informatively as I can.

Nothing is monocausal, and with Louis, it was a combination of things. Without revealing too much of the story, Louis's family was always kind of a sore spot for Louis altogether. His relationship with his father wasn't the best, and his relationships with his brothers weren't all too great either. Not to mention, Louis found the academy (Greksil Military Institute) fairly constrictive, and not at all what he expected when he starry-eyed decided to follow family tradition. Add to that the fact he found more self-fulfillment hanging out with the street urchins on the periphery of the GMI, he deserted on a knee-jerk reaction. It's easy to see a future where he comes to his senses, returns, possibly patches things up with some family, but by the time he even entertains this option, he's too far, and he's on survival mode.

How he gets to the illicit arms trade is related to his encounter with Ezo on Cam-Amber.

Aye, so there's a couple parts to it, let's begin with Ezo, and I'll speak on the Star Treatment characters.

There is, at first, the more important out-of-universe angle. I had met the person to which the Ezo character belongs in a groupchat (at this point, more than a couple years ago) where I had been posting some of the early Percivals art. His character, independently, was something of a space pirate, which as I understand, riffed off of prior/then-ongoing interest in online starship combat games. We riffed a little bit about how Ezo, as an in-universe character would behave around Louis, and the seed was planted about how the two would be rivals/frenemies in some kind of black-market situation. I drew a couple things where I played with the idea, but eventually as I got more serious in structuring a more concrete biography for Louis's life, the story went from tongue-in-cheek to a more serious mentor-apprentice dynamic. Of course, I had confirmed that I was cleared to write something more in depth along these lines with Ezo proper.

In-universe, Ezo meets Louis on Cam-Amber, a financial-planet and capital of the Cam-Amber star nation, a member of the I.C.C. Louis is a street urchin, scraping by to survive, and he manages to impress Ezo by some contraption in the Cam-Amber underground. Ezo, chuffed, respects Louis's ability to catch him off guard and says if he passes a couple tests, he'll let him in on his "project." His project, as it turns out, is to start his own arms dealing ring by stealing as much of the arsenal of the Spartansk-Grover weapons manufactory based on-world. Won't spoil too much of that there, but I'll say at the end of the day, Louis is grateful for Ezo's patience, and Ezo respects Louis's pluckiness and resilience.

As for Star Treatment, a number of those characters were added when the scope of the series wasn't anywhere near as large as it is currently. Some folks who contributed characters to the story I had riffed with on the larger outline for specifically Star Treatment, with August as the main character, with the main arc dealing with August's survivor's guilt. Those characters are Hartwig, and KLARE/Ellen Weaver.

The Zanders is the name of the arms dealing group Ezo starts after the heist on Cam-Amber. Now, with Star Treatment being one of the earliest fleshed out (in terms of over-arching narrative) stories in the series, I've gone back and forth on details, and re-written aspects of the naming schemes specifically if the thematic impact demanded it. In the past and for the longest time, August's name was August Zander, specifically referring to him being "the Zander" off of which the arms dealing ring which had been passed down two generations at this point was named. But for now, August is named August Percival at the beginning of Star Treatment, and later changes that to August Zander. How and why? I can maybe illustrate at another time :3

Animal traits influencing size kind of goes back and forth- it's not really a consistent application. Deer tend to be taller, dogs vary wildly in height, bears tend to be larger, etc etc, but I feel like sticking to that everywhere would be limiting to the kinds of stories these characters could tell, and also makes it more grounded if characters varied in height just because that's the card they were dealt by birth.

As for heights, I've fudged the inches in past, but the answers are generally the same.

For at least the main cast, the heights are as follows (assuming we're in the middle of their respective stories):

Louis Percival is 5'7 Xever Percival is 6'1 August is 5'11

Secondary cast characters with stated heights include

Kirk Laklan at 5'6 Tycho Coran at 5'9 Ewan E. Figes at 5'8 Mark Colquitt at 6'3 KLARE/Ellen Weaver at 5'8

These do not count their ears!

Theeeese are a lot of dates so I'm gonna just answer it like this.

Xever was born on March 12, 2329. Louis was born on November 5, 2333 (which is today, Happy Birthday, Louis!)

Xever is a unit commander in the early 2350s, and he's already had extensive experience by 2354, when much of volume 2 takes place. He deserts in 2355.

Louis is just shy of 40 years old when he dies in 2372.

Sebastian doesn't have a set date, but he's certainly getting up there in years when Xever confronts him.

I won't spoil too much, but Sebastian has friends in high places that can rely on to make bad news sound less bad. As for Xever, what Xever does to Sebastian is instrumental to Xever's arc: by killing his father and deserting to follow a vengeance mission, he believes that he's reclaimed agency from people in his life who've held power over him. Of course, he's correctly identified the issue to some extent, but Xever's only made a half-development on his arc, and in some ways, taken a step backward. But it's that event, crucially, that sets him on a path where he does learn that reclaiming agency is more than just doing what you think you want.

I have a couple pieces queued up involving Elmira. She's important, and honestly I haven't given her enuogh screen time! Elmira doesn't have a positive view of her husband by the beginning of Xever's story. She blames herself in part for how Sebastian treated the most senior brother Howard, and even without all the information, knows that Howard likely wouldn't have died if Sebastian hadn't done some of the things he did. Elmira as a result tends to keep to herself, and attempts to be present in her children's lives if not her husbands, but even that is painful for her because in a way she's terrified of the possibility of hurt again. So by Volume 2 (of 7, I'm thinking), she's sleeping by herself in the guest cottage on the Percivals estate grounds that she's partially turned into a greenhouse where she pursues her botanical research.

Hope that was informative!

[dwcmarshalarts]

“You’ll be the brightest star in the Clavius system.”

Adult Swim-style bump for my story Star Treatment, video editing by yours truly. Shout out to Anthro Swim.