For Dust Thou Art Character Spotlight (Ch2)
If you're confused about context, see chapter one's post here. Fic is here.
Also, I've created a tag so you guys can find everything for this easier: Fanfic: For Dust Thou Art
These are the characters and dæmons that first appear in chapter two, so spoilers ahead!
Plummer, Master of Games/Ashford Steward
Just thinking of this scene triggers my gag reflex, and I had to watch it so many times, good god. So I kind of hate this guy, even if he did do Dunk a solid and gave him a chance.
He's a beta and his male orange-bellied newt (California newt) is named Asopos, which is a Greek name with the roots for 'mud, slime' and 'water'. These newts are 5-8 inches long and their skin produce a potent toxin, although dæmons can't produce substances harmful to others (ie toxins, poisons & venom) so he just makes harmless slime. Maybe it makes a great facial, idk. But phlegm man gets ooze dæmon, what can I say?
Moving on.
The Dondarrion Ladies of the Night
I love the Dondarrion whores so much. They're all omegas and all three have squirrel dæmons. There's so many barely distinguishable subspecies and color variants that I didn't really pick a particular species, sorry.
They make great masseuses and the girls charge extra for the pampering of their clients' dæmons while the humans are...occupied. Rowen's dæmon is named Rose. Beony's is named Blake, which comes from Old English blæc "black" or blac "pale". Daisy's girl is named Delwen, derived from Welsh del "pretty" and gwen "white; fair; blessed".
I thought it was cute, okay?
The Good 🍏 and Bad 🍎 Apples
Sweet Reymun, forgive me for putting you next to your evil cousin Steffon.
The Fossoway family tends to produce betas, including both these boys. Reymun doesn't care but Steffon is pretty salty about not being an alpha because he thinks alphas make better knights. He feels 'unmanly,' even through male betas of nobility are generally expected to be knights, and over-compensates.
Ser Steffon's male opossum dæmon is named Dereth, from the Gaelic dearg meaning "red". Very uncreative, as far as family dæmon names go.
Reymun's male raccoon is named Kesko, from Kurdish kesk meaning "green". His parents had him late in life, and wanted to celebrate their new apple. Little did they know how well it would fit later.
I picked these animals because both tend to like apples lol and because I wanted them similar but not the exact same. Also, poetry of the the bigger man getting the bigger dæmon is not lost on me.
Size Reference:
Tanselle
I'm kind of embarrassed to admit I forgot Tanselle was in this episode. I had to go back and write her scene while I was reviewing the episode itself.
She was originally going to be an omega, but I wanted her dæmon to be a bright and colorful bird, but most of the time, the female is way more boring! (Sorry, bird people.) So I made her an alpha instead, which also gave me a 'non-traditional' alpha character, which I kind of wanted because it always feels like omegaverse stories only ever have non-traditional omegas but never alphas.
Anyway, her dæmon is a male painted bunting named Dayo, which means 'joy arrives' in Yoruba. I'm not going to add anything more here because she has scenes to come and more details about her are likely to evolve as I write.
Ser Lyonel Baratheon
🎶daddy's home🎶
Finally! We get to the other half of the stormhedge equation!
His dæmon is a red deer, one of the largest deer species, excluding elks, moose, and (I think?) reindeer. It's also the 'traditional' one most would think of, especially in fantasy works loosely based on medieval Europe like ASOIAF is, as this guy has been running all over Europe for absolutely ages.
This deer is also where we get all those well-known terms from: Stag, Hart and Hind. A male red deer is called a stag or hart, and a female is called a hind.
His name is Audros, from Lithuanian audros meaning "storms". Audros is the god of storms in Lithuanian Mythology. In universe, he's named after an ancient Storm King.
Not gonna give a ton of backstory here, because it's probably gonna come up later in the fic, and would absolutely be spoilers.
He turned out a lot different in writing then I planned. While Dunk & Rafe are opposites in a lot of ways, I had intended for these two to be basically the same. But Audros refused to cooperate, and became this quiet, stately God instead, lounging imperiously behind his loud and brash human.
The platform was his idea, okay? Lyonel agreed for the ✨drama.✨
Ser Manfred Dondarrion
Last but not least, Ser sleepyhead here is an alpha with a violet-backed starling dæmon.
I was gonna do a deer but then I decided that I didn't want all the Stormland Houses to have deer. But House Dondarrion are Marcher Lords and live in the Dornish Marches, a mountainous region, so them having birds like the Vale made sense.
I picked this particular bird, after spending some time looking a predatory birds, none of which I liked, because this little guy has the Dondarrion house colors. Also, it's a flashy bird for a kind of flashy guy. At least he feels that way to me.
His name is Paylak, from the Armenian word փայլակ (pʿaylak) meaning "the light emitted by a lightning strike; brilliance, radiance".
🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌⛈️🦌
P.S. To anyone worried, I didn't forget the Egg scene at the end of episode 1. But the chapter was getting so long, I decided to move it to chapter 3.
I don't want to get too bogged down by trying to force 'episode x into x number of chapters', because trying to force a specific framework or chapter/word count is what usually kills my enthusiasm so I think I'm just going to write until I think it's good enough and post it.