#cas.oc

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new oc dropped to accompany ben on his ship endeavours

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i simply do not know how to express how beautiful they are to me

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tagged by @opaleyedprince for making ocs with this picrew :] thank you 🫶🏻

Eden (mea) — Iska (bg3) — Silver (bg3)

Basil (sos:awl) — Benjamin Marlin (dredge)

As with most picrews, bipoc and different size options are pretty nonexistent but I wanted to make these characters with this anyway :(

Everyone's skin tones are darker than this, some more than others.

Info and tags under the cut :]

tagging: @shadowcursedballs @dilfbuck @strixhaven and You, dear person reading this

Infos:

Eden: blue butterfly because it makes me think of butterfly effect (thanks LiS), stars and such for obvious reasons, book because of the constant codex infos, sad expression because he's so so sad...his big wet eyes bewitch me

Iska: bloody sword and wings because of her seraph days, same with the blood dripping halo and implied blood in the bottles. oh, the people she's killed. :( angry expression because she's angry all the time

Silver: sad/crying and arrow in his chest for backstory reasons. man living with a broken heart etc. yellow accents because it has some sort of hopefulness about it. sunrise etc. brown because nature. coffins because, well. backstory reasons and being a mercenary. white robe, because no armour option but also it has something...well, sad. white flowers are given when mourning so idk my mind made some connection, same with the white butterfly and petals.

Basil: the happiest/most carefree of the bunch 😭 they're just working on a farm living their best life tbh. that's why everything's green (and because their hair is green) bright accents because the valley is colourful and their life is, too

Ben: the clothes are close enough to the actual outfit i first drew him in! they're not actually a mermaid, that's just flavour for the dredge setting. red eyes looking and the candle and books as sort of artifacts, signifying the strange happenings around the bay and ben potentially looking into it etc. dark beach and fog because, well, it's dredge. dark halo dripping, because...what is ben getting into...!

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silver being the collective polycule dad...ok

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I...I really want to elaborate why I chose the celestial bodies I did for the obscure associations, so I'm doing exactly that. Long post below.

Two of the 3 are some sort of aftermath of a supernova, and the other is going to result in a supernova, which wasn't planned but makes sense for each individually.

I'm sure I'll get some of the physics behind these astronomical bodies wrong but. Let me live.

Rhidian's association is a neutron star

Just to recap what Wikipedia tells us, a neutron star is "the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star" and "Except for black holes, neutron stars are the smallest and densest known class of stellar objects." [x]

The aftermath of a supernova makes sense insofar that Durge in general is someone who's living in the wake of a big cataclysmic event (being sent to amnesia land by Orin). And for Rhidian, things like Alfira's death and their own death and revival count towards that, too. All of these culminate in Rhidian being someone who lives in the aftermath of something profound and irreversible having happened.

And, for me, the density of the neutron star is symbolic for what Rhidian becomes. A celestial body of higher density would be a black hole, swallowing everything around it, even light. A neutron star can collapse into a black hole [sentence right before this linked one]. So the path Rhidian takes could either lead them to be a force that's swallowing everything around it (—someone who continues to worship Bhaal, perhaps, or someone who sinks deep into self-loathing about their past, unable to move on, etc.—) or they could be compressed into something else. And since Rhidian is 'good durge' and also since they do, at some point in their journey, take levels of paladin (oath of the ancients — an oath all about being a (symbolic) light, kindling and protecting the light), they instead are compressed into a force that, well, shines light. And their stubbornness about it all, about being who they are now, being who they want to be, wanting to do and be good, is reflected in the strong density of the neutron star. In a way, they're using all they've got to pull themselves together.

And, of course, it's an incredible balance act between not collapsing into a black hole and not unravelling. (That last one isn't how physics works but.... symbolically. You get it.) Just the right amount of density to not collapse into a black hole (to not fall into despair, back into old habits, into self-loathing and pity about their past deeds and relationships) and just the right amount of density to be a star instead of a nebula for example, to be pulled in by gravitational force instead of scattering.

Iska's association is a red hypergiant

So, first off, the initial idea was a regular red supergiant, but when I read that "the term red hypergiant is sometimes used for the most extended and unstable red supergiants" [x], I thought, "yeah, okay, that fits." Iska is unstable, lol. And also big.

She's in the middle of an identity crisis—betrayed by her god, grappling with the fact that they might've been used for most of their devotion. 60 (ish) years of what? Being his Chosen, enacting "justice" in his name. 60 years of isolation in the name of devotion.

Supergiants are defined not by their luminosity but by their evolution: "those massive stars which start core helium fusion without developing a degenerate helium core and without undergoing a helium flash. They will universally go on to burn heavier elements and undergo core-collapse resulting in a supernova." [x]

Both in Iska and in red supergiants (by extention, hypergiants), a breakdown (a collapse) is imminent. (Idk if I understand this correctly, but maybe the hypergiants being more unstable supergiants also adds to the impending core-collapse?) And it's only a matter of time, an inevitability, for both Iska and the supergiants; there's no getting around it.

Silver's association is a nebula, more specifically a supernova remnant (special type of diffuse nebula) [x]

As the name says, it's a supernova remnant. [x] Once again, we're dealing with the aftermath of a supernova. Only, this time, there was no gravitational pull great enough to form a new star. This time, the remnants are scattered, diffused.

Silver is also living in the wake of a cataclysmic event. One that affected him personally, but did not happen to him personally—more on the lore in a separate lore post (maybe, if I ever make one)—but summed up, his child (in their 20s, not a literal. child child) died. And Silver did not take that well. Still doesn't. He's running away from it, in fact. Which brings us to the next point.

Just as the nebula is diffused and scattered in the wake of that supernova, so is Silver. Metaphorically and literally, in a sense. He's running away from his past, running away from one fateful string of events that happened and is unable to be undone. Running away both physically, in that he's become a traveling mercenary and doesn't visit his home, and mentally by just never dealing with what's behind him. Never letting go, never processing.

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because i can do whatever i want forever, i did it again. tagged by myself ‼️

OCs as obscure associations: Iska (they/she)

Animal: bull, wolf, harpy eagle

Colours: forest green, silver, gold

Month: january

Songs:

destroyer - of monsters and men [you better run, boy, run, but be afraid / cry, boy, cry, don't play the game / gravity holds me down / and it's taking over / i call everywhere, oh, i cry out, / you're my destroyer]

altar - written by wolves [what you've built is just designed to betray and i know / maybe i had thought of running away, and i know / i gotta let go / i can't be part of what you've built here and i know / now i know / i won't kneel at your altar / i'm not your soldier, it's over]

sun bleached flies - ethel cain [god loves you, but not enough to save you / so, babygirl, good luck taking care of yourself / so i said fine, 'cause that's how my daddy raised me / if they strike once, then you just hit 'em twice as hard]

the wolf - phildel [i'll never be more than a wolf at your door for dinner / and if i see you 'round like a ghost in my town, you liar / i'll leave with your head, oh i'll leave you for dead, sire]

Number: 100

Plants: moss, ivy, tree roots

Smells: cold winter air, blood, flower bouquets, forest air

Gemstone: moldavite

Time of Day: high noon

Season: winter

Weather: strong winds, hail, snowstorm

Sky: dark grey, overcast

Places: deep in the woods; resting under a tree; a clearing in the forest; an altar

Food: briám, dolma

Drinks: cinnamon whiskey, ginger tea

Seasonings: pepper, chili, parsley

Element: earth, fire

Astrological Signs: Libra, Aries

Magical Power: smiting

Weapons: greatsword

Social Media: none. whispering to the trees, wind and birds chiming back

Makeup Product: does nail polish count? black nail polish

Candy: jawbreaker

Method of long distance travel: teleportation, flying (by whatever method available)

Art Style: sketchy, lines-only

Fear: failure, letting loved ones down

Mythological Creature: Seraph (lol, a little on the nose), Fenrir

Piece of Stationery: well-used eraser

Three Emojis: 💢🗡🪽

Celestial Body:

specifically "the interloper" from outer wilds (don't google that if you plan on experiencing the game yourself, it's major spoiler territory!)

red hypergiant ("the term red hypergiant is sometimes used for the most extended and unstable red supergiants like VY Canis Majoris and NML Cygni"; [x] all red supergiants will "undergo core-collapse resulting in a supernova" [x] )

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I transed Seraph's gender -- they're now Iska (she/they)

Their dream guardian appears as their sibling, Ophelia (they/them). I also thought about what their mother might look like because she plays a big role in Iska's companion quest (Iska is not actually tadpoled, they're meeting Rhidian in act 3, but I want to have screenshots/gifs and develop her personality some more, so I made her in the game tee hee)