me when i finally (sort of) design a character that's been a vague blob in my head for months. also marivam is here
gralyth is marivam's guardian, though she's gotten pretty weak and sickly the past few years, so marivam's taken it upon themself to take care of her in turn. after all, gralyth is the only person they have.
ohhhh if i knew how to actually draw this it would be so over for yall i swear to god. lore dump under read-more
so the lore of maekrenia goes that everything and everyone has a little bit of magic of them, it's kinda synonymous with their soul i guess? and in the entire world there's this one little mountain of life (aka the maekrenian archipelagos) in this big stone barren wasteland. and that's because of this little kudzu-like flower, which feeds on magic. it was likely a weapon of war gone wrong, and it kind of ate everything. except maekrenia itself, which is only currently alive because of a Big Magical Storm Entity.
anyway this flower is technically fine if u touch it, but if u eat it or something it's gonna suck up all of your soul and youre gonna be a dead stone statue thing very fast and it ain't fun. for incarnates (creatures made purely out of magic), just physical contact alone is enough to corrode them. guarding is one of these incarnates.
at this time there was a big kind of fearmongering campaign thing going on against wraiths, which is a type of incarnate and also what guarding (and wildway!) is. gralyth was sent by Big Scary Unnamed Person to kill wraiths, and that caused guarding to hate her. and all this back-and-forth stuff happens to the point they really hate each other and it's impossible to tell who is really the bad guy now.
so, marivam's parents were scientists who were studying this flower, mostly to try to figure out a way to reverse its magic-eating properties and stop the world from Literally Being Turned To Stone. i don't think gralyth actually really knew them, probably just stopped by. guarding, who was actively hunting down gralyth, came to confront her there. idk i'm super fuzzy on this part LOL but the general thing is that it's supposed to be one giant extremely unfortunate coincidence.
guarding killed them all, marivam's parents and also her two brothers, but gralyth wasn't there. the only reason marivam survived was cause she happened to throw a jar containing some of that flower, and that caused guarding to flee in Complete Agony. i think guarding was completely mistaken coming here honestly, rushing too fast in his anger and mistook someone there as gralyth, i'm not sure yet. i want to avoid making guarding a flat bad guy, just... a guy who made really, really, really, REALLY bad mistakes for the sake of his fellow wraiths and ultimately will pay the price for them. he just sounds Particularly Bad rn cause i'm not going into his whole deal here oop this post is already too long
(also marivam has the ability to see these little magic spirits that are otherwise invisible, i think this is when it happens i'm just not sure exactly how yet o_o)
so gralyth comes and sees marivam, this sobbing brokenhearted little kid in their destroyed family home, and kind of realizing this is partly her fault for leading guarding there, gralyth takes in marivam and stops fighting wraiths, which... her superior wasn't too happy about.
and now marivam has debilitating nyctophobia among other things :) this stuff is all subject to change because i am extremely bad at keeping to one thing, but it'll probably remain this general concept.
this is what's in that upper left corner btw. gralyth concepts! antlers/spikes like these is an indication of how much magical potential someone has, but unfortunately a lot of that has been lost these days. gralyth here has a lot, relatively
montegracyn! she loves her son very much, though a lifetime of trauma and self-hatred makes her doubt herself constantly (also she abandoned him when he was still an egg but. well. she's trying now! smiles)
