So the last few weeks I've ended up going down the most incredible nostalgia trip I've ever had the pleasure of embarking on, which involved reviving a oc I came up with when I was twelve, and continuing a story me and my irl best friend wrote with him and one of her ocs, Max, which we originally wrote about ten years ago. Which essentially puts me in a fandom of two people, but I've been having SUCH a blast, and I finally managed to finish a drawing of Nathaniel (I'll draw Max at some point, probably) and so wanted to share him here!
A little bit about them: Nathaniel is an aroace-spec lone-wolf timejumper who is running from his past, and is much more interested in adventuring around Enderria (my original world) than actually processing his emotions. Enter Max, a gay bartender from a war-torn alternate version of Earth, who is determined to help Nathaniel face his fears, whilst also hiding from problems of his own. Time-travelling and paradoxes abound!
Adding more below the cut, including an alternate version of Nathaniel in his other form. But if you have any questions about him, feel free to ask!!
OKAY SO. To explain this other form involves explaining several things about Nathaniel, which involves explaining things about my original world, so strap in.
Nathaniel is half-human, half-asauri. Actually, technically speaking, he's half-chi'an, half asauri, but chi'ans are basically a type of human, so I'll get into that later. The asauri are a race of creatures that were created in the 2030s/2040s in a country called Fynterra as part of an military experiment to create advanced soldiers. However, the asauri manage to escape the lab and into the neighbouring country, Kanterra, and - because there are quite a few of them - their population ends up growing, so that by the time it gets to 2195, their numbers are pretty sizeable. And in 2195, there's a pandemic, which kills a lot of humans, but the asauri were created to be immune to a lot of diseases, and so it doesn't impact their numbers at all. By the time it gets to the 2280s/2290s - Nathaniel's time - the ratio between the asauri and the human population in a particular city called Laineyn is a bit too close for comfort (for the humans).
Then there's the Chi'ans, who are complicated to explain, but they're basically a group of powered humans who first emerge around 2195 (completely unrelated to the pandemic, instead caused by a scientist experimenting with a naturally occurring resource - Red Laaka - that, historically, has caused genetic changes that give people powers).
Anyway, the TL;DR of ALL of this is that Nathaniel's timejumping powers come from his father (chi'an - he never meets him), and his asauri features obviously come from his mother (asauri, who raised him until the age of seven, after which he was stolen from her), BUT the reason he's able to shapeshift between the two forms is actually because of his chi'an heritage, as Red Laaka is typically associated with biokinetic effects - aka physical changes to the body. Case in point, the two proper shapeshifters I have in my world are BOTH caused by red laaka. ANYWAY!! Nathaniel is actually born in this form (which is more of a mix of human/asauri features) but in his teens he figures out a way to hide his asauri features for a bunch of complicated reasons, and a REALLY KEY part of the story that me and my friend are writing NOW is about Nathaniel actually learning about his asauri heritage and starting to embrace that side of himself more. So here he is! Alas, you can't see it in my artstyle, but his eyes are yellow
ANYWAY I LOVE HIM. SO SO MUCH. DIDN'T EVEN GET INTO HALF OF THE LORE ABOUT HIM BUT!!!!!!
