Tried this once here and none of that is strictly wrong, but I just wrote a killer blurb so we’re going again.
How would you fare if you became omnipotent on your fourteenth birthday? I imagine you might be able to figure something out given some time to get a handle on your newfound powers, but Hera Elizabeth Rider’s deicidal brother accidentally transporting her out of the universe while trying to turn her into a weapon is not giving her that luxury. It takes her a deal with the devil, unwitting service to a vampire hunter, the creation of several gods, and one eccentric genius before she’s able to do anything with her powers on purpose, and by then it’s really not clear what the right thing to do even is.
Relevant tags (searchable on my blog)
Forever project: all tag games, short stories, random thoughts, and if I ever do them character intros for this work are tagged with this tag. It’s the one to block if you are mainly here for Twilight content.
Elise Godslayer: This is the tag for the MC, Hera Elizabeth Rider. She goes by Elise because there’s too many Hera’s in her family (in her world Mary goes by her syncretized Greek name, and so most European historical figures that in our world are named Mary are named Hera there) and Elizabeth is too long for her tastes. The godslayer part is arguably a spoiler, but it happens in chapter three so I’m not too worried. Elise is a fairly normal fourteen-year old, outside of her godlike powers. She likes music (she can play violin and fiddle), was just starting to figure out she might like some girls as more than friends, is wary of responsibility, and has a crushing need to be liked.
Davriel Godslayer: This is Elise’s twin brother, though he was born human. Because he was human, he wasn’t seen as a threat like Elise was, and so while his sister was sent to live among humans with her powers locked away, Davriel was raised by their godly parents and named himself David after the king when he realized he was trans. Mount Olympus is not a great place to raise a kid, and rants by his uncle Ares left him with a certainty that he could do better. Hence his plans to kill all of the gods and become ruler. This is not to say that he wouldn’t make a terrifyingly competent and entirely benevolent god-king, it is simply that his understanding of what he’s working with (the world) is a scoche incomplete. As for why I and his tag call him Davriel and not David, well that is a smidge more of a spoiler, though I’m sure it’s decipherable from my writings in his tag.
Eric Melior: This is the blurb’s vampire hunter! What the blurb does not mention is that he is also a vampire (and a wraith) and was born in 1892. Since making the tag I’ve Polanized his name to Eryk, though future me and his pro-Tzarist parents might have something to say about that. He is a very dutiful son, which means odd things for a Nihil whose mother has been drawn into a cult promising protection from (read extinction of) the vampires that are beginning to spread through the Russian Empire.
Sorceress: Here we have our eccentric genius. The only person (selkie, dragon, centaur or siren) to discover how to use magic on a sentient creature! She used this power to give herself a pair of legs and a sealskin, having been born a siren but being too curious about the world to confine herself to the water. Even though Elise created her world, Sorceress is likely its most consequential figure.
Mlle Nefara: The most recent character to get a tag, Mlle Nefara is just trying to get rich. Unfortunately, honest means are not particularly available to her as a black woman in 1890s Europe, and so she has chosen the slightly easier route of lying to a bunch of rich people, telling them all about the supernatural threats only she can teach them how to defend themselves against. Her charisma and talent are serving her well in this endeavor until 1897, when a plague of monsters begins to creep through the land. They’re similar enough to the ones she’d made up for her sect to become increasingly popular, but she can’t be so lucky that the techniques she made up would actually defeat them.
Siren’s meet nada: Nada is the word for city among the most magically reckless group of humans on Globe, Sorceress’s world. They call the city that has built up around Sorceress’s first home on land Siren’s Meet, not because they really ever meet Sorceress (and very few know she was ever a siren regardless), but because the estuary has collected extremists and eccentrics from human and siren communities. While it was Sorceress’s presence (and her geologic engineering) that drew the first few citizens to the place, it continued to thrive long after she went to Nadalitas. I use this tag mainly for short stories and worldbuilding facts that take place in the city.
Nihil hunters: A nihil is the most dangerous of the monsters that have begun to infect Eryk and Mlle Nefara’s world. They are at once vampire and wraith, and so lose many of the vulnerabilities of both. The tag is nihil hunters for their whole world, because vampire hunters, what they call themselves, is simply too generic.
Southern dragons: These are mostly a world building project, as their interaction with the magic system and spatial/temporal laws I’ve built for this project is generally quite illustrative. While they originated in the southern continent of Sorceress’s world, hence their name, they have since spread to other worlds, moving through space and reality with a degree of mysterious ease I think is suitable for dragons.
Spacewhaling: It may not be correct to include this tag with this project; in fact, it started as an independent concept. If it does intersect with Elise’s story, it would only be in the third or maybe even fourth book.
eric seems very interesting !! how exactly does a vampire become a vampire hunter
The key is that he’s not just a vampire; he’s a Nihil, which is a hybrid between a vampire and a wraith. He is in fact one of the handful of patient zeros for both epidemics. Instead of being turned, he was directly infected pre birth by the Phantoms that are the gods’ (of darkness and faith respectively) attempts to escape their joint prison. A wraith is the god of darkness’s attempt and has a deficit of faith and surplus of darkness. A vampire is the opposite. As a result, being both balances out into an ability to pass for human.
As for how he became a vampire hunter, the reason his mother was so near the gods’ prison is because she has a strong interest in the occult. When her husband dies (of vampirism) she is relatively easily drawn in by Mlle Nefara, an occult grifter who did not quite realize how real the stories she was making up were. She’d called the unexplained deaths of various heirs’s and heiress’s the work of vampires. Her existing order of vampire hunters, with their complex rituals and catty infighting are certainly unprepared.
GUYS! GAYS! GHOULS! GILGAMESH! I THINK I'VE GOT THE PLOT!
These characters started in my mind after the resolution of book 1, so the notion that they would all be pitted against each other to begin with had not previously occurred to me. From now on book 1 will be a free-for-all between people of varying significance on three different worlds entirely, all of whom are vying for a control of a sentient weapon, from the perspective of that weapon. The man for whom the blade was made, the woman who was made to learn to wield it, and the boy who put his hand on the hilt because he wants nothing more than to do the right thing.
@winterandwords left an open tag, so I am using this quote generator for Elise and Eric.
Eric: Your Honor, I hereby submit the following to the court:
Eric: Elise, what the actual FUCK?
I imagine this is at least what he's thinking when The Book is presented. From his perspective the entire thing, which will end up being maybe 80 000 words was manufactured and ensorcelled in about two minutes.
Eric: Well Elise, I have to say, I'm really disappointed.
Elise: Well, you didn't HAVE to say it. You could've just thought it.
Even if he had just thought it she would have heard, so saying it aloud is solely for the benefit of anyone listening.
Rules: Use this headcanon generator to generate some headcanons for your OCs! How accurate are they?
No-Pressure Tags: @macabremoons, @squarebracket-trickster, @steh-lar-uh-nuhs, and an open tag!
Elise
Elise needs a nightlight to sleep: 8.5/10, she probably needs something comforting to sleep, and at a certain point she starts needing external magical help so she doesn't warp the world too much with her dreams. If the nightlight is a spellform to help with this that would probably count, so I'll bump up from my original 6.
Elise uses the word "like" like a comma: 10/10, she loves emphasizing her "temporal accent" and uses as many 2010s colloquialisms as possible.
Elise can hug you, but won't: 3/10, she is physically capable of hugging, and doesn't tend to initiate hugs, but that's mostly due to fear or rejection. If you want a hug she will hug you, and gives hugs freely to her brothers.
Eric
Eric is not good with social cues: 7/10, I am autistic so most of my characters are too. However, I have some conflicting characterization of him as sort of oblivious (read, sheltered aristocrat knows too little of the world) early in the story, and an excellent group dynamics man later. As such, I'm going to say he's not great at social cues but over time learns to observe them with stunning ability given his lack of natural talent, from which he is then able to manage interpersonal conflict very well.
Eric cannot drive: 4/10, well, given he was born several decades before the invention of the car, and then gained the ability to teleport he probably hasn't driven much, but I'm not going to go so far as to say he can't, especially since Elise has taken pains to make sure she can drive (She was only ONE YEAR out from driver's school when she got kidnapped by the universe. Not fair at all)
Eric's favourite colour is pink: 2/10, seems unlikely, somehow, only because I cannot see him having a favourite colour at all. He would likely prefer warm colours to cool colours, and bright colours to muted colours, so he probably has little against pink, but it's not his favourite.
Davriel
Davriel has punched a hole in their wall: 6/10, Davriel is not a particularly expressive guy, most of his anger tends to well inside him rather than venting out. He also tends to use magic before his fists. However, he may well have done it just as an experience, to see what it's like, because the whole "destruction of property" thing is of little import to him, and would not provide a barrier. Certainly if true it would only be after hooking up with God, he's much more liberated at that point.
Davriel is very willing to eat inedible things: 9.9/10 on a technicality, since really nothing is inedible to him and Elise, they can convert any substance to energy if desired. For that reason he is very willing to eat things that are "inedible" if he needs the calories, and also he would also be willing to eat a whole host of strange things if prompted, so it would be 10/10 if inedible things existed.
Davriel is not good with social cues: 10/10 as I said earlier my autism does tend to seep into my characters, and this guy was even more sheltered than Eric was, so by virtue of low exposure to humans he's not great with them.
Sorceress
Sorceress is afraid to close their eyes in the shower: 2/10, this is interesting. I am unsure if sorceress has ever had a shower. She also used to be a siren, so it wouldn't be a fear of water thing, nor does she tend towards fear in general. There might be something in there with past life triggers and dysphoria, but I somehow doubt it. The only fear would be that Elise was pranking her tbh.
Sorceress makes your mom jokes: 0/10, the only way Sorceress would know your mom jokes would be through Elise, either from her inherent knowledge of the language of magic, in which non-literal statements are generally a bad idea, or personal contact. Sorceress is not a huge fan of Elise, and certainly wouldn't want her mannerisms rubbing off on her, so I doubt she would ever use them.
Sorceress forgets to eat sometimes: 10/10, this woman is a scientist. There is no way she hasn't used the mastery over using the bridge to heal her body to recover her nutritional reserves. She probably thinks eating is a waste of time, unless it's a new food.
I'm gonna keep doing @squarebracket-trick's tag games until she starts actually tagging me.
Rules: turn some lines of dialogue from your own WIP into an incorrect quote that the person you tagged can insert their characters into. (original concept by @olive-riggzey)
My lines from Square
Davriel Godslayer: I made a promise to you Frederick Von Nocte. I said you were living on borrowed time.
Frederic: Before you kill me I think I should like to collect the winnings from our bet.
Davriel: Oh?
Frederic: Don't you remember? The loser must address the winner as your highness for a day. That means... do whatever pleases you but, no matter what happens, I am going to live through the day.
Davriel: You think death is the worst I could do to you, your highness?
Uh I have run out of individuals who might want to do this so I'll tag anyone who has fairy lights in their room, prefers salty to sweet, or lives in Canada.
You dialogue is:
Character A: Those are our children. We must stop them but we need not kill them.
Character B: Those are my real parents?
Character C: Our parents, not that they ever did much parenting
That was arguably the least lore-specific exchange I could find. I really don't write a lot of dialogue, and when I do it's just what's needed for exposition then I get out of there. Should probably change that but oh well, I don't search the real writing for these, just the fun for me stuff.
Happy WBW! Let's talk sacred oaths! Do they exist in your world and what events call for them? Have your OCs ever had to swear an oath?
In Tsarist Russia, oaths are common. Humans swear their allegiance to the crown and promises of repayment or mutual respect, flowing freely as lies from the lips of people hoping for a better position in a brutally unfair world held together with fear and brute authority.
Very few people are aware of the vampires, strange creatures that fear God’s light but which can bend faith, truth, and reality itself. When oaths are sworn to them, they conspire to make reality bend to hold them. When they swear oaths, they hold as the same twists of reality force truth into their speaking. It is not to say they cannot lie (certainly they can if that’s what they were intending to do), or even that everything they say becomes truth. But it is closer to that for them than for most people. So when they swear an oath with conviction, fully intending to follow through, it takes on a fated character, and violating it becomes nigh impossible even if they change their mind, which itself is quite the challenge.
Eudoxia is a Nihil. This means she has the powers of a vampire, and more of them too. She swears he sword to the service of protecting the children of the Tsar, and this choice is so profound it is the inciting incident to Book 3 (or at least it will be when I get that far)
It's a day with the possibility of answering asks! If your character was to come into guardianship of a child by accidental or otherwise means, how would they deal with it?
Hi Sleepy! Thank you for the ask.
If Elise were to become the guardian of a child her first instinct would be to outsource. She does not have the emotional maturity for this- she’s fourteen! The thing that changes over the course of the story is who she would rely on. At the beginning it would be her fathers, who have already proven themselves extremely capable adoptive parents. She leaves the child at their doorstep as she goes to deal with the plot.
When that is no longer an option — she has fled Earth and unmade the door behind her — she would rely on the community that has built up around her at Nadalos. Brig and Mitella were young yet when they arrived, and did very well under the care of the adults there.
But it’s a hard life — while magic affords more stability to the community, they are still functioning with bronze age technology. When she has the chance, she would move the child in with Eryk. His life as a lesser Russian noble isn’t perfect, but they have a stable source of food shelter and education, and she can keep them safe from the worst parts of 1915.
When she figures out her way back, her parents once again become her best bet. Unless the child is magical in some way, in which case the Court of Death is a surprisingly nurturing environment. Thanatos, the Lord of the Court, owes her. He will keep the child safe (and his boyfriend Lazarus will help him with the particulars of humans needing food and whatnot).
Eventually, when her life has settled more, she will once again turn to Eryk. Not for the comforts of his station — he has long since left those behind — but for his careful intelligence and calm problem-solving, so suited to high tempers and inarticulate needs.
