Oct 28, 2022
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wip wednesday
yeah yeah… this is a bit late but it’s the only thing i’ve been able to work on lately. I need to get some 911 stuff done this weekend but Reyes has captured my attention this week.
From: Andromeda’s Oracle (tentative title) aka Seer!Reyes fic
Fandom: Mass Effect Andromda
Pairing: MReyder
Warnings: first draft. Seer!Reyes. Reyes POV.
Keema didn’t drop it a second time.
The next time he slept it was the same. Scott falling. The exchange of helmets. Alec Ryder dying in his son’s stead. Cora calling for an exfil. The Hyperion medbay and the swarm of medical personnel before Scott was rolled into the AI’s core for SAM—who evidently was an AI that had a direct link to his lover via a brain implant—who was able to manipulate the other biological implants that Scott had to speed along his healing.
Reyes spent what felt like hours just holding Scott’s hand and petting his hair, whispering that he was there. Scott didn’t awake this time and Reyes was desperate by the time he awoke.
“You are distressed. More than you were and sleep is making it worse.”
Storybible Day 9
Today’s Prompt:
Worldbuilding: Culture / Religion
What kind of cultures does your world have? What is the most dominating one? How does religion play into the culture? Do people have different belief systems?
Bonus: write a snippet about a character struggling with old and new cultural/religious convictions.
Andromeda has two alien species that are sentient that Reyes interacts with on a regular basis. The Angarans and the Kett.
We’re not sure what the Kett believe in but we know that they reproduce through genetic manipulation of other species into Kett and there’s something cult-like about their devotion to genetic manipulation and strength of their species. Reyes isn’t sure it meets the standard of a religion but his universal translator has picked up on their captains being called Cardinals and he’s not sure how he feels about that. He’s heard the tales from Scott about the abomination of a process that twists bodies into Kett. About the way they attempt to indoctrinate you before the process.
He vaguely wonders if kett age once they’re kett. Or do they get more mutations as they gain rank? There’s so little known about them because they’re basically on a shoot first and kill without mercy basis so he’s never really had a prolonged conversation with one. Mostly it’s just battlefield taunts and screaming back and forth at each other.
He’s heard the tales of the insidious ways they got to the Angarans at the beginning of their war and he’s too attached to his angaran friends not to react with extreme prejudice. This is the species that slaughtered Keema’s family.
The Angarans are more spiritual than Reyes himself is. He was nominally raised catholic and had a complicated relationship with organized religion before he came to Andromeda. His abuela was the type of woman who went to Sunday service and made sure he said his prayers but it was an expectation rather than a devotion. His mother… after the whole mess with his father she retreated into going to church as a way of moving through the day and in his darker, more angry with his father moments, Reyes thinks that she would have died without the church proscription against suicide. She’s the type who went to daily services, a prayer for ever occasion as she moved through life hardly seeing any other person let alone her only son. A half-living shell with a rosary always wrapped around a wrist and a prayer falling from her lips—sometimes in spanish but often in imperfect latin.
He misses his mother and abuela dearly when he thinks of them. Wonders how the rest of their lives went after he left. Were they safe? Did they live a good and happy life without him? His abuela was the one who told him to go to Andromeda and before he met Scott he wondered if he did the right thing following her urgings.
Reyes has found an adoptive mother figure in Keema and, he thinks, she feels the same. Keema is fierce and motherly, calls him taoshay (loved one) and sholaon (adopted sibling) often which conveys how close she feels to him but she also calls him ongaan (child) and there’s been moments where he thinks he somehow has taken the place of her dead children and feels supremely guilty.
Why guilty? The Angaran believe in reincarnation of sorts—not the kind he was familiar with in the Milky Way. The angaran believe isn’t that everyone gets to be reborn in a new form but only certain individuals and when they are most needed. Reyes isn’t sure he exactly understands who is and isn’t reborn under their spirituality but he knows that there’s times when Keema looks at him a certain way with a small smile on her face and it’s not him she’s seeing. And she sometimes calls him tavetara (reborn one).
She calls Scott the same but he’s pretty sure she sees him as some valiant warrior from the past. Either way, she seems very invested in his relationship with Scott and it warms him to think of her as Scott’s mother-in-law, Reyes’ mother. Their relationship is complicated but they’ve never fought over goals and he’ll go to his own grave before admitting it aloud but when he’s injured it’s only her or Scott he wants close.
Storybible Day 5
Today’s prompt
Characters, character motivations:
Why do your characters do the things they do? What motivates them?
For Reyes it’s all in pursuit of his goals—at least initially when he meets Scott. He sees Scott’s title and knows there’s both advantages and disadvantages to working with Scott but he knows he needs to meet this Pathfinder. He needs to weigh his options and see just what sort of man the human Pathfinder is and how amenable he is to either helping him or if Scott is going to be another barrier that he’ll have to work around.
The Collective has been born out of Reyes’ goals. He needs people to work with him or for him—there’s too much for him to do it alone and he can’t depend on the Angara. The Angara are his friends and he has become part of their Resistance but their goals and his are not exactly the same even if their aligned very closely and Keema views him as her adopted son.
The driving force behind all of this is survival at it’s most basic but Reyes isn’t going to be satisfied with just survival. He wants to make a home in Heleus. He wants to have a place to come home to that he doesn’t have to always have a gun in his hand or be worried that his water is poisoned. He’s a man of simple comforts—he wants his whiskey smooth and a place to rest his head that is safe—but he also wants control. He wants to feel like his work matters. He thinks he can run things better than the current management who are, in his opinion, going to eventually get them all killed. Whether that’s Sloane Kelly or Jarun Tann.
He’s seen their mismanagement. He was there in the aftermath of when the Nexus hit the Scourge. He was the pilot who shuttled the first teams back and forth from Eos. He was there when the first colony attempt failed, the scientists faces sunburnt and gaunt as he picked them up, their expressions bleak and hopeless as they gave up. Reyes has watched as more and more of the exiles end up thrown outside of the Port gates, bodies twitching in withdrawal from the Oblivion that Sloane’s people sell for profit. The heads on pikes that he passes every time he flies his ship into port and enters the market is a grim warning of the kind of temper Sloane has.
Because Sloane Kelly is a pirate queen now and was a hotheaded bully in the Alliance. How she ever ended up in a position of power Reyes doesn’t get but he knows she doesn’t wear the mantle well. Tann is just a salarian accountant who’s both incompetent and uninspired but wants to hold onto his position badly enough that he has no control over his own people. Both are getting people killed.
Reyes knows he can do better
wip storybible day 4
Getting this out a bit late as it was stuck in my drafts.
today’s prompt:
Character goals:
What are the goals of your main characters in your story? Make a list of big and small goals.
Reyes’ goals are ambitious but he’s careful to not overplay his hand. To the casual observer and those who aren’t in the know, he’s just a smuggler. One that’s perhaps more successful than others but still small time, if well connected to the angara. His goals appear to be the same as most of the other exiles—survival foremost and profit second.
But that would be both inaccurate as well as deceptive.
Reyes’ goals are much more than just simple survival. He’s well aware of the value of each meal, of the spaces between his ribs that grew more prominent as did the hollows of his cheeks after they first arrived in Heleus and before he met Keema. He understands the value and the drive behind simple survival.
But that’s not his goal. His goal is to thrive and he knows what he needs to do in order to succeed. Sloane Kelly is an ineffectual and violent leader who will get them all killed—he undermines as well as builds a separate power structure to supplant her. He makes allies of the Kadaran Angara Resistance and is all but adopted by their leader, Keema Dohrgun. He recruits, he hoards, he gathers intelligence as well as people.
Because no one will do it better than him. Kadara needs him. The Kett are still a looming threat. The environment is harsh and unforgiving. Each meal, each swallow of water, every resource is carved out of desperation.
There is no going back to the Milky Way. There’s hundreds of millions of kilometers and light years between here and his old home.
He’s going to succeed or die in the process.
He doesn’t plan on Scott.
Doesn’t plan on the Initiative Pathfinder being more than a token asshole who sticks his nose into where it’s doesn’t belong.
He doesn’t plan on falling in love with a man who is both brave as well as competent. He doesn’t plan on adjusting his goals to protect a desperate assault on another world that might actually be one giant AI. He can’t let Scott die.
He can’t keep Scott—or at least not forever.
But each night he can steal is an eternity spent in the love of his life’s arms. All he ever wants or needs is right here tonight.
Musings
Was struck by this idea earlier this week and talked at @radio-chatter and @quietborderline about this idea from Ellen’s POV…. Yeah…. This is part outline part writing. Maybe I’ll finish fleshing out this idea someday….
From: A fic i’ll prolly never finish writing, aka the snippet/outline folder
Fandom: Mass Effect Andromeda
Pairing: Established Scott/Cora but this is most def MReyder endgame
Warnings: Implied relationship problems with established Scott/Cora, angst, Ellen pot stirring. First really rough draft vs partial outline
Cut put in for length.
They’re on Aya, maybe two months later. Another trade summit that Ellen managed to get herself included on as a mini-vacation but really she just wants to be with her children. Cora is also here with Scott.
But Vidal is also here.
Vidal greets her perfectly politely and asks after her health. If she didn’t—hadn’t seen that nighttime visit—she’d never know how it is between him and her son.
It’s at a dinner after a long day of negotiations with her son and his wife, Keema Dohrgun, Vidal and several others at the same table when Ellen realizes she can’t take it any longer.
Someone jokes with Vidal about settling down—he demurs.
Another joke is made about having kids or a woman in every port.
Scott’s grip on his spoon is so tight that it’s going to be bent when he releases it.
Cora makes a pointed joke that is a bit too sharp and at Vidal’s expense.
Scott doesn’t react. Neither does Vidal.
Ellen has had enough of this shit.