The castle stood on top of the small rocky island. It was old. More than a thousand years, specifically it’s oldest surviving part, the Black Tower, that rose from the highest point of the island. But to him the castle was as old as as the mountains. It grew from the island itself, getting bigger and molding into something new every decade. It's deep dark cellars carved themselves into the bedrock growing inside the island. And the island grew on it. The vines and moss reached from the ground up the rugged rocks. It held itself with the dignity and melancholy of someone seen all the times in the world, the wonders, the horrors.
For a long while now I’ve been struggling with renaming Fall and Rise of cor Mantgamia. It was too long as the series title and I would rather avoid names like that in title. Bear Castle Chronicle capture the same feeling I think while being shorter. I also like the idea that it sounds like it’s part of some longer chronicles. I wanted to go the route of the series name being the focus and the books names having more like a short sub-heading. I’m thinking the second one is The Rise and the third one is The Price (though I do despise that they rime, so I’m not convinced yet).
I also made two versions for a cover and I’m not sure which I like more.
All in all, from now on I’ll be using short BCC and probably tagging with that and bear castle chronicle when it’s more “official” post.
Cassia can disguise herself as other people via transformation magic. You can’t actually see her real reflection in mirrors, it's just a visual effect to show the "lie". The magic does involve killing people, drinking their blood and making a jewelry out of their hair, so not maybe the most ethical method, but very effective till people notice the person you are impersonating as is dead.
Yeah I didn’t finish the whole thing this year but here’s still some I did. I’ll just publish them in this one post :D
Day 16: Scar
Valeri has a big part of his back covered in burn scars, but he also has gotten into some trouble in the army thanks to his *ahem* temperament (kindly put), and if your offence is not bad enough to get an dishonorable discharge, you’ll get flogged. Some areas of his burns were 3rd degree burns and so his skin’s nerves got damaged. The damaged nerves causes him chronic pain. His back doesn’t hurt constantly, it comes and goes often.
Day 17: Bloodied
Valeri is acquiring some new scars lol. It’s from a scene where he’s fighting a small band of Imperial troops with Agrippa and nearly getting himself killed. They are in the middle of Dir’ahin’s wilderness, where he hasn’t gotten change to shave (which explains the beard) but they have gotten some ahinian clothing already.
Day 18 & 19: Feather & Bone
This is a tiny death spirit. They born from lingering feeling of fear of death and they poorly imitate scavenger birds. They gather in places with a lot of dying people which is why they can be often seen in hospitals and battle fields for example. They are not dangerous for people normally, since they are mainly scavengers and just wait for their victims to die before eating their souls. Though they might eat souls of birds who are not yet dead, causing weird and destructive behavior in them. If there’s a lot of them, they might try to gang up and take down a human too.
Prompt: This is pretty much like the classic intro - a small scene on who they are and how they see themselves, potentially with a moodboard or some further description. - provided by @yourocsbackstory
Age: 58 | Personality type: INFJ | Gender: Cis Woman | Sexuality: Heterosexual | Nationality: Half-Angusian, Half-Algonian | Current home city: Civitas, Angusian, Angusian Empire | Title: Empress Mother, Duchess | Appearance: Gray curly hair, olive skin, petite features, sunken brown eyes, bony skinny body, short
The following scene is 13 years prior the start of the story, when Verginia was 45. There’s some minor spoilery things.
CW: domestic abuse
Word count: 398
Verginia’s delicate hand rose and smacked loudly against skin. The emperor’s cheek glowed red. He touched his lips. They stained his fingers with bright red blood. His eyes shot at her and flared with rage.
“Who the damned you think you are, woman?” Drops of blood splattered through Maximus’ teeth on her dress.
Sharp pain throbbed on Verginia’s palm and wrist. She hadn’t ever thought she could find so much strength in her hand to cause another human to bleed. Her eyes rose from it to face Maximus’ raging glare. The purifying flames of her anger burned her from the inside. It was exhilarating. A cool and composed smile turned the corners of her lips upwards.
“Who do I think I am?” she asked. “I know I am Verginia the Third of house Emerentius. I know I am the rightful ruler of Angusian Empire. I -”
Maximus grabbed her wrist and shook her. “You’re nothing!”
She made sure her pain wouldn’t show in her face. Instead she stared deep into his eyes. “- know I am the daughter of the rightful heir. I am light. I am the Sun. And if you won’t take your hands off me, I will call upon the might of Ylía and he will burn your hand off, cousin.”
Apparently her unwavering gaze had convinced him, since a flash of fear widened his eyes and he let go of her. “You witch! I always knew there was something wrong with you!”
“I am not a witch.” Verginia raised her chin. She wasn’t going to hide in the shadows anymore. It was her time to take her place in the sun. “I’m the Avatar, Ylía’s hand placed on earth.” She opened the neckline of her gown to reveal her birthmark on the middle of her breastbone, shaped like a sun rune.
Maximus took a step back and shook his head slightly. His expression was confused between terror and rage, the truest expression of him. “How..?” He shook his head again. It was fitting her so called husband hadn’t noticed her Mark. “You did that with your dark arts!”
“My arts are only made of light”, she said, softly.
It was sealed. She would have to get rid of him. She had known that before revealing her true self. No. She had know that for a long time. Maybe from the day of his coronation. Maybe earlier. After all, it was her destiny.
Agrippa’s favorite thing in life is painting and she would do that as her profession if she had a choice. She loves painting her favorite scenes from books, portraits and animals, but hates painting landscapes, though sometimes does them as practice anyway.
I didn’t update my process along the way mainly because after my initial NaNo there wasn’t much. As said there I didn’t have high expectation and I wasn’t trying to win. The goal I set my self was half of the official, so 25K. I managed to write 14 041 words (very satisfying number but not that much as a result :D).
The problem I hit was that I hadn’t planned the chapters I was writing at all and just very hastily outlined some scenes along the way. It soon felt like I was just writing out the events rather than being sucked into the story, if that makes any sense. I don’t know how to explain it. When I outline chapters usually I first outline the character development in the chapter and then how and what events would play out. So now that I didn’t do that, the character development was increasingly all over the place. It wasn’t fun to write and the result was pretty bad. So I think I’ll rewrite the last two chapters. I can probably salvage a lot of it though so it’s not for nothing. I spent the last week of NaNo just outlining this part of the story.
Btw my process is very much plantsing. I can’t write if I don’t have some idea of structure and I can’t plan without writing. What a dilemma. So I tend to plan the overall structure very broadly and then plan next several chapters in more detail as I go.
Under the cut is an excerpt!
For a moment Valeri thought Agrippa wasn’t there at all, until he noticed a pile of red hair against the dark blue divan, where her black robes blended well. She lay there on her her stomach, face under the hair. One leg hanging over the edge motionless. Slowly she turned her face from the pillow towards him strands of curls still covering half of it.
He stepped closer, brows wrinkled. “Has something happened?”
“Not yet”, she sighed. “Can I act sick tomorrow, so I don’t have to participate in the spring blessing ceremony?”
He halted and crossed his arms. And he had been worried. “No.”
She let out a long groan and turned her face back to the pillow. “I swear I will die and it will be your fault.” The pillow made her voice into a mumble. “There will be speeches and long poetic sermons and I’m sitting there constantly watched by the whole city and have to look like I’m listening and I can’t move and...”
“You didn’t complain once — well very few times — traveling through snowy mountains and getting almost killed couple of times and now you complain about sitting and listening? You were raised noble, that’s what you’ve done all your life, right?”
“Yes, but... I’ve always felt the same way.” She rose sluggishly to sit up. “Doing might be straining, but in the end it’s often energizing. But sitting and listening, not doing anything, that’s painful. It’s actually painful to me.” Frustration bled through her voice. “I’m so tired after all these lessons and meetings and practices, tired to my bones, much more than I were after a day of hiking.” Through all the meetings Valeri had been present in, she had been playing with her hair, jolting her leg or tearing some paper into small pieces.
“I would also rather do something than sit in meetings, but I can’t say I really understand.”
She sighed. “I must be just stupid. I can’t digest information even if I really tried to listen with all I got. Or read, I’m bad at that too.”
“You’re not stupid.” He knew it wasn’t nice to feel dumb, surrounded geniuses like Faerathos, Cassia and mom or being uneducated in a military academy full of noble kids with all the tutors and educations money can get.
“I’ve always been a poor student, my mind always wondering immediately. Especially, if I’m not interested in the subject.”
“You’re a quick thinker. Being bad at some things doesn’t make you stupid.”
She rose her eyes to Valeri and smiled a tired smile. “Gid’alon, my tutor, used to say a similar thing. They said my mind worked differently than other’s, but not worse. Their mind does too. They can seem odd to others, but they are really smart and kind. They let me doodle in their lessons, because it helps me listen better, unlike my other teachers, who would punish me for it. Apparently it’s not good behavior and I have to sit still and stare at the speaker when I listen.”
He had also hated the governess he had before everything. The memories of the governess and her stick weren’t happy at all, but Agrippa having a similar experience somehow made it better. At least she had one good one.
"Maybe you should listen to them. They sound smarter than me.”
