#eswap au

[crimson-roots]

pearl the bard :) places her down real gentle-like // other versions in reblogs!

[tinapaysmp]

@mcyt-yuri-week day 7: free day

Didn't know what to put here and I ended up making a swap au.

Hear we have Lady Gem, Guardian of the Overgrown, and the Wizard Katherine from the Crystal Cliffs.

Headcanons and ramblings under the cut:

Okay, I gotta be honest. I actually hate this trope in AU making. What do I mean by this? I hate AUs that's centered around shipping, even though I'm also guilty of this. And I'm always very particular when it comes to swap AUs.

But, this swap led me to swap the others and the idea of fWhip being the ruler of Rivendell was already funny to me. I have many ideas for this AU, especially since I have a lot of headcanons on world building from the OG version.

So let's start with,

Gem

Gem here is still twins with fWhip. Both of them are instead from the royal family of Rivendell with their mother being a fairy coming from the Overgrown.

Them being fraternal twins, one was more elven and the other was fae.

Originally, Gem was gonna inherit the throne of Rivendell. But, at age 14 when the council from the Overgrown were to choose their next guardian, the Spring chose her.

This led to a change on their father's line of succession and now fWhip was next in line.

This led to the two of them being educated separately for the rest of their teen years as future rulers.

As the Guardian of the Overgrown, Gem does her best to keep the nation free from conflict. Especially while being sandwiched by two nations of the Wither Rose Alliance.

Katherine

The Crystal Cliffs, a nation that was formerly autonomous to the Grimlands was the nation that Katherine was born and raised in.

She lived an average life being one of its citizen, yet a student of flora magic in the most prestigious academy in the nation.

But by age 16 she was approached by Gandalf, the immortal cat as the next Head Wizard. This surprised her but gave her a sense of responsibility for being chosen.

However, being the ruler of the Crystal Cliffs is not an easy task. Katherine tries everything in her power to avoid war for her people. But the nation being part of the notorious Wither Rose Alliance, proves this to be difficult.

So how did they got together?

A part of me wants it to happen earlier compared to the OG version where they got together after Gem got cured from corruption.

In this AU, they got together while they were looking for a cure for the corruption mid-Xornot arc.

[severevoiddragon]

Pearl the bard!

Yay more Pearl!! As requested by @ilexdiapason (not on an ask tho-)! I was gonna draw her like. Actually fretting the guitar but. No. It was too hard. So enjoy Pearl just kinda holding the guitar. Also I think I made her left handed looking at it half an hour later, bc that's the way I play guitar so it's natural to me- Oh well! Also tagging @pearlthebard bc it is fanart of that character-

[charascarlet]

if you're doing the empires fanon swap meme, would you doodle a scott of animalia ^_^

hi!! i am definitely not uhh *checks watch* 12 days late for this :D but here it is!!!

with a bonus pearl the bard as a thank you for waiting! to be fair i got hit by the double combo of death (exams and art block), so this is just a traditional sketch i colored on my phone with slightly off anatomy but hey! it's art!

[pearlthebard]

Right. That’s it. Pearl has got to do something drastic, and she’s got to do it now.

She has no idea how Scott - how Not-Smajor, because it’s not him, it’s not - how he managed to hit exactly on some of her worst memories and her least proud qualities, but she won’t be standing for it. He’s - look, obviously he’s trying to be a good guy, she can tell that... but he was so familiar, and she was so achingly ready to lean into it, and then he had to go and ruin it. Things were nice for a second there. He gave her an amethyst.

This damn amethyst. Pearl holds it up to the light, squinting at the sun-glare, twisting it back and forth and watching it refract bright facets on her hand. It’s small and incredibly pure. Would have made for a great spyglass.

Shame she’s got no copper, and she’s not planning on heading back to Pix’s any time soon. Not when he could still be there, or be returning. Who knows what that llama of his will want next. Nor does she have glass, or really know who’d sell it to her. There might be a village somewhere, maybe, where people buy? Or she could go home, and dig up some of the beach around her settlement?

No. Better to give up on the spyglass.

(Of course Pearl can’t have the one thing that she thought might come in useful. Of course she’s got to give up her dreams and her desires wherever she goes. Nothing lasts - not the beautiful, not the hopeful - nothing stays.)

Which leaves the question of what to do with it, because she can’t just leave it knocking and scratching around the bottom of her satchel forever or it’ll lose that purity, the smoothness and shininess it’s clearly prized for. Maybe she could sell it on - but she doesn’t want to undermine Scott’s business, not really.

... Not-Smajor’s business, that is.

A thought occurs to her. An awful, selfish thought, honestly. Pearl’s no stranger to selfishness, to thinking that she could - and ought to - have the things that she doesn’t deserve, but knowing that she’s guilty of it doesn’t make it any easier to shake the urge. And god, she wants to do this - to give herself this one selfish thing, knowing that it’s a fool’s errand, that she’ll never have what she really wants.

She pulls something else from the bag. A ribbon. Red, satiny, with faded bloodstains and frayed forked ends. The ribbon she’d been wearing around her arm in the game, to mark her lives when the rest of her was red from the beginning, and which had come with her to the new lands. A reminder of that final life she’d lost.

Just long enough to loop around the points of the amethyst and then knot around her neck.

It’s such a bad idea. She feels so, so shamefully comforted with it sat against her sternum.

Right. She’s gotta get out and she’s gotta get free, and she can’t do that if this stupid connection keeps leading Not-Smajor (it’s not him) exactly to her. There are not a lot of ways of getting yourself into a situation where you can’t be randomly encountered by another person, and far fewer where that specific person seems to have the unnatural talent for figuring out where you are without even meaning to do so.

There is one idea that Pearl comes up with on her journey west, though.

She’s going to do something drastic, because the alternative is letting herself get in too deep with someone who’s never going to be good for her, and she can’t have that. Better to lock herself away than end up hurt again.

(Cold, smooth crystal warms against her chest. Pearl tries her best not to think about it too hard.)

[beansfrombeans]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

@pearlthebard, and (some of) her experiences on the Empires SMP server.

-

(reblogs appreciated! :D)

[maverickflare]

couple of eswap morro doodles. why not.

[crimson-roots]

mrs false symmetry.. the guy ever. for real