#old man polycule

[goblinintherock]

Yeah I read USM for the plot

The plot:

Based off this

[yinyangle]

noone else is posting to tumblr so i feel like i have a civil duty to do it myself anyway can ANYONE SEE MY VISION. CAN ANYONE HEAR MEEEEE

[yansurnummu]

azandar's about to invent the lint roller lmao

[handsareterrifying]

My old man polycule cross guild is complete. I am just chuffed. 😤

[fakecrfan]

Trevor can smoke a entire blunt in like 3 seconds

Jurgen would die if he even smoked a quarter of it

Dekker can't smoke weed cause he's a rabbi . But if he could, he wouldn't know what to do with a blunt. He would try to eat it.

Yes, yes, and yes. To add on:

The problem with Trevor is that smoking a normal amount of weed doesn't do anything for him. He has to smoke at least 5 blunts to feel as high as most people get from smoking like, one. He started when he had cancer for pain relief purposes, but now he continues even after being supernaturally resurrected because nothing else gets him to chill the fuck out.

Jurgen is just... a lightweight when it comes to any kind of drug. Just a complete bitch. He called 999 after smoking a quarter of Trevor's blunt. Unfortunately he wants to drink whiskey to look like a Cultured Academic so at parties he'll always be holding a glass of it and pretending to sip but he can't drink more because he knows he'll die.

Adelard: Initially thought the blunt Trevor gave him was a hidden explosive. Was very disappointed to find out it was food, apparently (???) and informed Trevor that he wasn't sure if it was kosher so he couldn't try it. He then got wistful over Gertrude because all of the apparent food she handed him was explosives, and he misses that.

[yansurnummu]

17, 24, 30, and maybe 34? for drals/azandar and drals/zerith? 🥺

17. Who fell in love first?

For Drals & Azandar, I think tl;dr I'm gonna say probably Azandar, though there is nuance. Azandar definitely recognised he had some kind of attraction to Drals first but went "well, that's a problem for later" and shoved it down. Drals on the other hand went through a good amount of time completely oblivious until one day crashed into a brick wall head-on and was like "oh fuck." But even then, I don't think either of them would really consider it "falling in love" so much as a feeling of being tied together by fate and wanting to explore what that means.

For Drals & Zerith, the easy answer is definitely Zerith, being the only one who I think experiences strong romantic attraction in that way. I explored it a bit in the oneshots I wrote, but he pretty quickly recognised he was interested in Drals.

24. Which of the two is the most competitive?

Azandar is pretty competitive, but Drals is very competitive. He gets really intense about card games and puzzles and the like. It's a good thing Monopoly doesn't exist in Tamriel, he would tear their family apart.

34. Do they give each other nicknames?

Answered here for Drals & Azandar!

For Drals & Zerith, I think the closest Drals will get is dropping the suffix on Zerith's name occasionally, but for the most part he will call him Zerith-var. Drals' aversion to terms of endearment applies here too, but I think he likes the ambiguity of Zerith calling him "tamiit."

[yansurnummu]

3, 8, 24 for the old man polycule (still such an iconic name btw 😭)

LOL thank you, I'm glad it stuck tbh!

How do you foresee their relationship evolving? Will they stay together long-term in some form, or eventually go their separate ways?

I think that all of them will remain part of each other's lives in some form. It might shift a bit; Azandar will always be incredibly important to Drals, but I don't see them ever committing to anything in a romantic way. There's also the fact that Drals will likely vastly outlive Azandar, and who knows what Zerith's lifespan is like now. But I think they will always remain close friends, even if other aspects of their relationship may eventually get left behind.

Also, I think absolutely Drals transing his gender would change their relationship in some interesting ways. Obviously in that he'd be much happier and more confident in himself, and thus have less of a short temper and wouldn't be so prone to sabotaging his own relationships. I can see him becoming a less reserved person and maybe branching out and seeking relationships with new people, though Azandar and Zerith will always be his safe harbour. I think he and Zerith are a lot alike in that they need a certain amount of freedom to roam, and there's a mutual understanding between them about it.

Do they have any inside jokes?

I don't think Azandar will ever fully let Drals live down the fact that he was talking to the floorboards in his workshop while tripping on mushrooms sdfghjk. I think he brings it up sometimes like "well why don't you ask your good friend The Floor" and Drals is like "come on man it was ONE TIME."

Putting this last one under a cut because it got long

Do they live together? Sometimes, all the time? What do their room(s) or common areas look like?

During the fic, Drals slowly, an inch at a time, migrates himself to Azandar's Apocrypha workshop. The two of them are fairly close-knit during this time, and after he loans his cave to Lleryse, it only makes sense for him to effectively move in with Azandar while they're working so closely together. It's purely for practical reasons, of course, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything else, no sir.

For the purposes of the fic, I have expanded the workshop slightly. There's the main workshop area, the majority of which is taken up by arcane implements, and along one side wall is a small kitchen space with a wood stove and a table with 2 chairs. On the rare occasion more than 2 people are present (like Leramil and Gadayn), he pulls in a stool from the bedroom and a small storage crate for extra seating. On the far end of the workshop opposite the front door is a small bedroom. The ceiling is low to accommodate a storage attic accessible by ladder from the main room. And of course he has a big comfy bed in there (which still tickles me that that's canon, he's got his priorities straight) that the two of them share.

Of course, once they do end up stumbling into the vicinity of a more... let's say "layered" relationship that's not strictly professional, they find that they actually sort of prefer having each other around. Drals likes living around Azandar; he doesn't handle being on his own very well, and it's nice to have someone who actually cares about him.

In my headcanon, I don't think Azandar is neat necessarily, but I do think he's particular. He keeps his workshop fairly minimalistic, only having things that absolutely need to be there. Everything is organized in a way that makes sense and he knows exactly where everything is. Drals is not like that. Drals does not put things back in their homes and keeps random junk around "just in case". On his own, he frequently misplaced things and constantly struggled to keep an organized environment on a good day. I think being around Azandar reigns him in a little bit; it's easier for him to go "wow, this is a fucking mess" when he has to share the space with another person. So I think Azandar’s workshop becomes a tiny bit more chaotic and cluttered when Drals moves in, but they keep it reasonably clean.

As for Zerith: by the time he joins the party, I think they're probably mostly living out of Azandar's Skywatch sanctum. Apart from that sad fucking bed he's got in there, I think I've kept it mostly the same. Like, I don't think that cot can handle two grown men, never mind adding a very large cat man into the equation.

For a good while during his relationship with Drals, Zerith does not have a home. They probably spend several months in Elsweyr just staying at inns and camping in the desert. They have an inn room in Rawl'kha they more or less post up at while they're travelling as it's a pretty central point they keep coming back to, but for the most part they're pretty nomadic until returning to Skywatch.

Zerith likes Auridon, but I think he gets antsy pretty fast and wants to travel again. Which is something all of them feel, but I think Zerith does the most. He's the one most prone to going off and getting into trouble on his own, though most of the time Drals will go with him. Even so, I do think he eventually considers Azandar’s sanctum home, even if he doesn't always stay for long.

[yansurnummu]

5 + 27 for drals/azandar/zerith :]

How would they describe the relationship when the others aren’t around to hear it? Is that an accurate description, or just their perceptions?

Drals: Beyond the fact that Drals is a very private and reserved person, I don't think he really knows how to describe their relationship. When asked, his answer will usually be some form of "I care for them very much" and leaves it at that. He recognizes on some level that their fates are entwined whether they like it or not, but is hesitant to call Azandar anything besides a good friend and colleague. He sees Zerith as something closer to a lover, and I think they have something almost like a romantic relationship, but even so, Drals would describe him as a friend.

Azandar: Has some meta awareness of the fact that he and Drals are soulmates in some form. Even so, he would describe Drals as a colleague or perhaps a partner, and someone he treasures deeply, but keeps it vague. He would describe Zerith more as Drals' partner than his, though the two of them are definitely friends.

Zerith: Drals is his tamiit; his comrade, his friend, his partner, his lover, his sun and his stars, and he is not shy about saying so. He cares deeply about both him and Azandar, though he definitely has a stronger bond with Drals. I think sometimes there is more friction between him and Azandar, but ultimately they're friendly with each other and they have a mutual respect between them.

What’s the most stressful thing they’ve gone through together? How did it effect the relationship?

For Drals and Azandar, I don't want to spoil too much because the worst is definitely yet to come, but so far per the events of the fic, probably a toss up between finding Martina dead in their laboratory, and the events in the Infinite Panopticon. For the first one, that was definitely the moment they realized they had been brought together for some greater purpose. There's nothing as sobering as helping a guy you don't know well bury an old friend who was killed by the same thing that's hunting him and now you feel an obligation to protect him from such a fate. And for the second one, there was a number of things that happened there; firstly, it really clicked with Azandar just how traumatized Drals was by his relationship with Shelreni and the attempted murder. Secondly, Drals started keeping some secrets from Azandar that surely won't come back to bite him in the ass at all. Thirdly, they both cemented their differing opinions of Torvesard; Drals has a lot of sympathy for him, while Azandar does not trust him at all. All that combined with the corruption of a place that's already spooky enough on its own, the portal magic kerfuffle and the ticking clock, it was a pretty stressful day.

For Drals and Zerith, definitely the events of Zerith's quests and facing Ravith. I did explore it a bit in their fic, but they both came out the other side with a better understanding of each other and an unbreakable bond.