word ramble about the southerngothic farcille au bc im too tired to draw rn + i want to get better at talking about my fandom stuff on here !! below the cut since im still a bit shackled by cringe
so i had an entire whiteboard but its gone now because i am Not paying for premium but thats okay
this is pretty unstructured but i really like chewing on this au brainstyle
i think that imogen and laudna met on the island after separately being adventurers for a little bit (personally i think laudna wouldnt have had the best luck getting jobs, with the whole scary/off-putting thing about her, but still would be scraping by) – no magic academy, sorry farcille lovers
in terms of the bells hells: im honestly not sure !! i think that it would be cool to have them just be an adventuring party and all have ventured down to save laudna but i dont know how that would work, since it gets dangerous to adventure with a party larger than six or so... maybe someone joins after laudna dies, senshi style? i dont know how much meshi will be in the dungeon meshi au tbh
a lot of this au is me building around the fact i went "what if lesbians from one fandom were the lesbians from the other one" tbh
the treant that laudna is chimaeraed up with is definitely meant to do the same job as the red dragon from dunmeshi . im thinking about a crazy large treant btw. like a hulking monstrous mass of gnarled branches that shambles with alarming speed. bark so thick it seems like fire doesnt do anything except anger it. all that
also !! @/sharkodactyl 's comments on my first art post about this au made me insane (/pos), i def think that the imagery of replacing some of laudnas bones with parts of the treant is awesome... something something it ground up some of her bones to use like bone meal for itself and its not like they can just fix that damage
so they use parts from the treant in the ritual hoping that the absorbed bone will be okay to use . and it turns out fine (no it doesnt) !
ABOUT THE RESURRECTION: i think mashing the dnd and dungeon meshi resurrection scenes would be beautiful to me. i deeply enjoy laudnas resurrection in c3, maybe with the ancient magic ritual there has to be some calling of the spirit to beckon it forth or something?? i just want imogen to talk to laudna before the ritual . feels like it raises the stakes or something
also!! if you look at my au art youll see that laudna still has her ear cuff things. that is because i gave her different trauma for this au ♡
until there was some event like what happened in falins backstory, but after laudna was an adult, leading to worse, more direct treatment from her village/city – i was thinking that due to the general anti-elf/anti-magic attitude in her village, individuals deemed especially "dangerous" or suspected of practicing dark magic would have their ears cut to resemble elves (similar to the canaries but. worse i think)
from what ive gathered, a lot of tallman communities in dungeon meshi (specifically what ive seen of laios and falins northern village) are to some degree intolerant of magic, not super open minded, and to me laudna hails from a village or city around there (or somewhere similar to there) and ended up leaving because, like falin, she had an affinity towards seeing ghosts and performing magic and suffered for it
generally, she was a little bit of an outcast even as a child because she was just kind of scary? she had that weird girl swag but nothing that made her stick out all that much
SO BASICALLY thats why she has those ear covers. she doesnt like looking at the scars . maybe they also tried to hang her ? i dont know
also alsoo imogen in this au does have her lightning markies. frequently i forget those. i think theyre more subtle generally (to the point of looking like really pronounced veins) and restricted to mostly her wrists/hand area but they do glow when she uses magic (not a lot ! maybe a lot during the resurrection scene but thats for my enjoyment more than anything)
her lighning markies + hair color is still from her being ruidus-born. it has some sway over ley lines/mana in some way but the attitude in this au is very much the same as in exandria in cr (represents negative things to people, not seen as a good omen, and generally isnt focused on). it still flares and such, but the flares affect stuff with magic – something something it makes magic more volatile/is linked in some way to ancient magic
i think imogen (+ her mother) would have been fairly ostracized by the small village she grew up in (but not as severely as laudna) due to their unique appearances as a result of being ruidus-born. liliana still leaves relvin and a young imogen but not before introducing lifespan angst into her daughters mind
i think. ruidus flares fuck with peoples lifespan. generally elongates them by a good bit? since it has that connection with ancient magic which is from a time of longer lifespans and such
anyways. imogen ventured out from home to find out where her mother went + learn more about her ruidus-born status and such. she came to melini (or. the exandrian equivalent to it?) for research reasons, maybe to make money before setting off on her travels once again or something
and then met laudna and was charmed a normal amount by her on first meeting and decided to stay dungeon diving with her (and bells hells? for a little while after)
also dont ask about pate i dont know either. maybe he is just a little inanimate puppet made out of dead things or maybe hes a regular rat that wears a bird skull sometimes . maybe he has wings . hes a familiar he can do what he wants
if you made it this far, thank you for reading !! i would love interaction about this au :3 sorry if any of this got really long or ramble-y i have many thoughts LOL