#karvaea tag

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hi tumblr i have a short story on my website finally. it's about a dragon. 2.6k-ish words.

The Red Fool

Or, The Fury That Ate Itself

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Vampirism is a disease in Karvaea that affects most corporeal creatures. An entity afflicted with vampirism is typically referred to as a vampire.

Vampirism is transmitted through the exchange of bodily fluids. For most creatures, this is often through a bite, or consumption of infected meat.

Creatures that become vampires generally go through a few stages of infection. Early on, the disease will cause a mild iron deficiency, leading to a heavy craving for meats.

This is a vital time for the infection, as it is still curable in this state. If meat consumption is kept to a minimum during this time, the disease will pass. If meat is heavily consumed, the infected will go through further stages of the disease. Vampirism is particularly dangerous to obligate carnivores, who are unable to properly moderate their meat intake.

Once a creature has eaten enough meat to satisfy the disease, iron levels revert to normal, but behavioral changes do not: vampires will have a higher level of aggression and a larger appetite for meat than their peers. In some cases, particularly among social species, cannibalism will also occur.

Creatures will begin to physically change as vampirism progresses. Rapid gum recession is one of the first physical signs of vampirism. Following this, teeth will see a minor increase in size. In synapsids, (including mammals) canine teeth will see a significant increase in size in particular. For creatures with already large canines, this can result in injury. In creatures with a chitin shell, future molts will often see an increase in sharpness and rigidity of the shell.

Other behavioral changes that come with later stages of vampirism include a shift towards a nocturnal activity cycle in creatures that normally prefer diurnal or crepuscular activity cycles. Solitary vampires will become more territorial, and social vampires will become more reclusive among non-vampire peers.

Social vampires will also generally form their own groups separate from a larger group, referred to as a "camp." Camps will go on nightly rampages to mass feed on prey, often leading to the widespread slaughter of livestock. This explosion in vampire activity all at once is usually also when vampirism is finally properly noticed within a region, making outbreaks very difficult to prepare for.

After several weeks to months of feeding, vampires will begin to experience iron overload, and perish en masse. This will often create large corpse fields, where scavengers will often feed to continue the cycle of infection if they are not dealt with.

The origin of vampirism in Karvaea is the Divine Parasite Tholora, an entity that lives within the brimsanguid realm of life. Tholora is an entity that has been written about all throughout history, along with her plagues of vampirism. She wanders the world, spreading vampirism where she goes, and feeds on the corpses once the vampires expire. Tholora does not often stay in one place for too long, often moving as seasons change.

Tholora is approximately 3 meters tall and 2.5 meters long. She is mildly equine in appearance, though has a rather long neck and bizarre 8-toed feet. A majority of her body is covered in black feathers, except her head which has a hard chitin "mask" that keeps her mouth covered when she is not feeding or fighting. She has two eyes which see through triangular holes in her mask, and five horns. Along Tholora's back are a number of cnidarian-like tentacles, which extend to the end of her short tail. Tholora's blood is green, and her flesh is blue.

Tholora spreads vampirism by nonfatally attacking prey at night, generally small synapsids. As the injured animals are hunted by larger predators, vampirism spreads through the food chain until reaching apex predators. As this goes down, Tholora hides in waiting until the mass feedings begin. At this time, Tholora moves out and starts to actively hunt animals that have become infected with vampirism. It is not unheard of that Tholora will appear in the middle of a fetching operation to deal with vampire attacks. In these events, she is generally not hostile towards humans unless provoked.

When provoked, Tholora is often considered to be a cocky combatant at first. She apparently doesn't take most creatures seriously, and relies heavily on kicks, head slams, and just throwing her bulk around to subdue attackers. When something is not easily defeated, Tholora begins to take her attackers a little more seriously.

Tholora is noted to have a magical bias towards fire magic. With that, when she becomes sufficiently annoyed, she will wreathe herself in flames. Tholora will release the cover over her mouth, and begin to spit blood out in all directions. Being a brimsanguid, Tholora has a notable level of sulfur in her blood, and as such this blood is combustible. Tholora will set her blood on fire, hurting and confusing attackers all the while she also continues her physical attacks. Any attempt at slaying Tholora has been met with retreat or death. If she enters the area during a fetch, the area will be abandoned until she leaves. During vampirism outbreaks, fetchers will be instructed to make plans on what to do if they come into contact with Tholora.

Tholora, like all brimsanguids, originated from the Lilieaeta region. There are no known individuals of her species besides her, and investigations have led to believe she is the last remaining individual of it. The only region vampirism has never been found in is the Arisaerel region.

[vhouatroph]

been working on an encyclopedia type thing for nanowrimo about my silly worldbuilding project. not actually a novel, but fuck the rules. figured i'd spend the first few days on the geography and the magic system, then dedicate the rest to writing about a bunch of the species and stuff.

i was a fool. 17 days and almost 30,000 words in i am still writing about the geography. i probably shouldn't be surprised but i thought i'd be writing about my silly animals by now 😭

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Brianna vs. The Macrowave

just a little goofy thing for one of my characters

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i know it's been like. over half a year since i've said anything about my novel lol. i've been working through editing it, i had a bit of a snag for a while but i think i'm past that. i can't speak to its quality, but i think the second draft is at least somewhat better than the first.

my (new, more achievable) goal is to finish this draft by september, alongside a small pass over some earlier chapters before i was able to overcome the snag. then i guess i'll try to get beta readers or something somehow. we'll see.

besides editing, i've also been trying to do really small microwriting exercises for the past couple days. this has mostly been in the form of short poetry, which has been really interesting to explore lately. i don't think i'm going to share any of it.... most of it is embarrassingly angsty and i'm very nervous about widely sharing anything ever. yeah i gotta get over that. yeah i gotta share that short story i wrote almost two years ago now.

i cannot wait to be done with editing

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hello tumblr vhou base i have been terribly inactive here because i've been busy WRITING!

anyways i finished my novel's first draft, it's 75,969 words. kind of crazy! i think i hate it though so that kind of stinks. i'm gonna let it marinate for about a month to see if i hate it any less and then if i don't i'll probably go and rewrite a lot of it!

in the meantime i think i'm gonna revisit some of my older stories like that one with the fury dragon i thought about sending here but never did, a couple people have read it and liked it but there are problems i need to fix with it still lol

also maybe i'll make a website! that'll be a fun month project. anyways thanks for reading this vhoupdate if you like vhou posts please follow my bluesky at vhou.gloop.group thanks

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for the curious on how my projects have been going, my current manuscript (a first draft, story takes place in karvaea) has reached 37k words, and i have another project i'm currently outlining.

i plan on finishing my manuscript by the end of november, and hopefully i'll start revising/rewriting as needed in december. my goal is to have a solid readable draft by early next year some time. the story here revolves around vampirism and it's something i've been working on for a pretty long time now: according to my original outline notes, since march 19 2023. wow!

the outline project is in a bit of a complicated situation. it's in a completely separate universe i haven't really talked much about beyond the world's fundamentals to like two other people lol.

somewhat annoyingly, it also has a lot more of a cohesive story than the general karvaea storyline i already have planned out. still, i don't think i want to say much about it yet publicly. i think it's really cool though so look forward to that Some Day.

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my worst habit is being like "im going to make a species that's a big fuckoff dragon and make it defy logic and reason!" and then i proceed to make it completely within logic and reason