#malbringer chronicles

[charlemagedoesart]

A break in the forest - Malbringer Chronicles

[charlemage]

Some d’vline ladies from my Malbringer Chronicles story in response to @bunny-loverxiv questions. One was “What do female d’vline look like?”. The other question was:

There’s a longer two-part answer that relates to both (under the cut!)

In overall appearance, male and female d’vline look pretty much the same. Notably, like the naked mole rat, all d’vline don’t have hair. Since the col in their bodies makes them naturally cold-resistant, they just never needed hair to keep in heat, evolutionary speaking. Given that, they think hair on humans is just plain gross. I mean, this ugly rat’s nest stuff just comes out of their faces? And on their arms and legs and chests?? Grows, like, everywhere really??? Ew, disgusting. (Some of the d’vline who are less used to how humans look will actually gag and throw up just seeing it up close).

So, culturally speaking, there was probably a lot of pressure for Atria to cut her hair when she arrived. Atria didn’t really care about that kind of pressure, though (she’s there for revenge against her father, not to impress the d’vline court). What really made her cut off her braid is that in a couple of the political arena fights, her opponents grabbed on to it and just slammed her. The second time it happened, she just sliced it off mid-battle and then cropped it shorter after. So she had a practical reason, but it’s also kind of a metaphorical physical change. As she stays in the mountains longer more and more of what makes her human slips away and she starts to become what she hates most about the d’vline factions.

[charlemagedoesart]

Atria, my perennial petunia of an original character.

I mentioned in this post that Atria gets stronger if she stays in the mountains for long periods of time as her body absorbs more of the mineral in this world called col. Another side effect of long-term exposure is that she physically begins to take on more d’vline characteristics as well (permanent purple veins, ashier skin, etc). This is what she would look like after a couple months of constant exposure to col. On the plus side, it means she becomes stronger and more resistant to cold (hence the d’vline styled summer-in-the-snow outfit). On the downside, she can’t recognize herself in a mirror and more strongly resembles the man who destroyed her village, has terrorized her people, and she has made her sworn destiny to destroy (so, you know, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

When it comes to pure strength, Atria never quite catches up to full-blown d’vline, though. So when she gets forced to fight in the political arena (which, for d’vline, is literally a battle arena), she has to win by being quicker and more agile. That means she has to drop her great sword, Malbringer, in favor of a lighter weapons like daggers. Honestly it was a crappy sword anyway. Her father wouldn’t have left it behind if it was actually valuable. Oddly enough, though, Atria feels kind of bad about being forced to not use it anymore (even though it belonged to her father and she hates him). The Malbringer had seen her through many adventures and battles and, even though it was crudely made, she had grown comfortable with it. I’m thinking that for narrative symmetry, when it comes time for her to make her final stand in the d’vline court, she ends up having no choice but to wield Malbringer again.

[charlemagedoesart]

Atria finds herself in a spot of trouble.

After a fair amount of adventuring, Atria finally gets information on which stretch of the mountains her father may be residing in. At this point, she’s taken down more than a couple of d’vline (almost exclusively ones that are ransacking human villages inside the various valleys where the humans are) and is pretty confident that she is ready to face her father. So, she journeys into the mountains to find him.

However, what she wasn’t counting on is that d’vline are much much stronger when they’re actually living in the mountains. Like I mentioned in this post, the col is a naturally abundant mineral in the mountains (look how purple that guy’s veins are!), and col boosts d’vline strength and stamina. Ergo, in her first fight with a mountain d’vline (who is fortunately not her dad), she gets her butt solidly handed to her.

Still deciding on this d’vline guy’s name, but I’m leaning towards “Vito”. He is part of a rival faction to the one that Atria’s dad leads. This puts him at a bit of a crossroads. On one hand, the arrival of an heir to her dad’s faction would actually strengthen her dad’s campaign quite a bit. On the other hand, at this point Vito thinks she’s a complete weakling. Having a weak heir would absolutely destroy her dad’s campaign. So Vito decides to guide her to his faction’s leader, with the plan of eventually using her to their advantage (which, as he neglects to mention to Atria, will probably involve killing her publicly). Conveniently, Atria also hates her dad. Not so conveniently (at least for Vito’s faction), Atria also gets stronger and stronger the longer she stays in the mountains as her body starts to process the col there. Eventually, she starts to show her self as a very formidable opponent, even against the toughest d’vline fighters. The d’vline politics really start getting dirty at this point, as there is a lot people will do to either take her out of the game, or force her to work for their cause.

Another side note about the pseudo-science of this universe: col makes the freezing temperature of liquids a lot lower, so the d’vline are naturally resistant to cold. Atria in this scene is pretty much freezing (which may have contributed to her rather poor performance in this match), but to the d’vline it’s practically golfing weather (hence the shorts sans shirt).

[charlemagedoesart]

For fun, decided to sketch out Atria in a slightly more realistic style.

[charlemage]

-I never wanted to be like you, yet here I am all the same

Another drawing of my character, Atria. She's got some issues she'll have to deal with over her arc.