Tried this once here and none of that is strictly wrong, but I just wrote a killer blurb so we’re going again.
How would you fare if you became omnipotent on your fourteenth birthday? I imagine you might be able to figure something out given some time to get a handle on your newfound powers, but Hera Elizabeth Rider’s deicidal brother accidentally transporting her out of the universe while trying to turn her into a weapon is not giving her that luxury. It takes her a deal with the devil, unwitting service to a vampire hunter, the creation of several gods, and one eccentric genius before she’s able to do anything with her powers on purpose, and by then it’s really not clear what the right thing to do even is.
Relevant tags (searchable on my blog)
Forever project: all tag games, short stories, random thoughts, and if I ever do them character intros for this work are tagged with this tag. It’s the one to block if you are mainly here for Twilight content.
Elise Godslayer: This is the tag for the MC, Hera Elizabeth Rider. She goes by Elise because there’s too many Hera’s in her family (in her world Mary goes by her syncretized Greek name, and so most European historical figures that in our world are named Mary are named Hera there) and Elizabeth is too long for her tastes. The godslayer part is arguably a spoiler, but it happens in chapter three so I’m not too worried. Elise is a fairly normal fourteen-year old, outside of her godlike powers. She likes music (she can play violin and fiddle), was just starting to figure out she might like some girls as more than friends, is wary of responsibility, and has a crushing need to be liked.
Davriel Godslayer: This is Elise’s twin brother, though he was born human. Because he was human, he wasn’t seen as a threat like Elise was, and so while his sister was sent to live among humans with her powers locked away, Davriel was raised by their godly parents and named himself David after the king when he realized he was trans. Mount Olympus is not a great place to raise a kid, and rants by his uncle Ares left him with a certainty that he could do better. Hence his plans to kill all of the gods and become ruler. This is not to say that he wouldn’t make a terrifyingly competent and entirely benevolent god-king, it is simply that his understanding of what he’s working with (the world) is a scoche incomplete. As for why I and his tag call him Davriel and not David, well that is a smidge more of a spoiler, though I’m sure it’s decipherable from my writings in his tag.
Eric Melior: This is the blurb’s vampire hunter! What the blurb does not mention is that he is also a vampire (and a wraith) and was born in 1892. Since making the tag I’ve Polanized his name to Eryk, though future me and his pro-Tzarist parents might have something to say about that. He is a very dutiful son, which means odd things for a Nihil whose mother has been drawn into a cult promising protection from (read extinction of) the vampires that are beginning to spread through the Russian Empire.
Sorceress: Here we have our eccentric genius. The only person (selkie, dragon, centaur or siren) to discover how to use magic on a sentient creature! She used this power to give herself a pair of legs and a sealskin, having been born a siren but being too curious about the world to confine herself to the water. Even though Elise created her world, Sorceress is likely its most consequential figure.
Mlle Nefara: The most recent character to get a tag, Mlle Nefara is just trying to get rich. Unfortunately, honest means are not particularly available to her as a black woman in 1890s Europe, and so she has chosen the slightly easier route of lying to a bunch of rich people, telling them all about the supernatural threats only she can teach them how to defend themselves against. Her charisma and talent are serving her well in this endeavor until 1897, when a plague of monsters begins to creep through the land. They’re similar enough to the ones she’d made up for her sect to become increasingly popular, but she can’t be so lucky that the techniques she made up would actually defeat them.
Siren’s meet nada: Nada is the word for city among the most magically reckless group of humans on Globe, Sorceress’s world. They call the city that has built up around Sorceress’s first home on land Siren’s Meet, not because they really ever meet Sorceress (and very few know she was ever a siren regardless), but because the estuary has collected extremists and eccentrics from human and siren communities. While it was Sorceress’s presence (and her geologic engineering) that drew the first few citizens to the place, it continued to thrive long after she went to Nadalitas. I use this tag mainly for short stories and worldbuilding facts that take place in the city.
Nihil hunters: A nihil is the most dangerous of the monsters that have begun to infect Eryk and Mlle Nefara’s world. They are at once vampire and wraith, and so lose many of the vulnerabilities of both. The tag is nihil hunters for their whole world, because vampire hunters, what they call themselves, is simply too generic.
Southern dragons: These are mostly a world building project, as their interaction with the magic system and spatial/temporal laws I’ve built for this project is generally quite illustrative. While they originated in the southern continent of Sorceress’s world, hence their name, they have since spread to other worlds, moving through space and reality with a degree of mysterious ease I think is suitable for dragons.
Spacewhaling: It may not be correct to include this tag with this project; in fact, it started as an independent concept. If it does intersect with Elise’s story, it would only be in the third or maybe even fourth book.
Why must I be spawning Guys for book 3/4? I want to write book one.
But now we know who Chèvra is going to meet upon coming to Earth: [Vidit], the second daughter of the most successful Indian space venture that was developed after the Verdent Mars. While she was being groomed to inherit the business alongside her older sister, she had little interest in it, and instead became a reasonably successful singer. However, as the plight of the Spaceborne became more clear to her, she quietly dropped her career in entertainment, returning to the company with a degree of fervor her parents do not think to question.
With Chèvra now getting a pseudonym (I have written about her though, search #spacewhaling on my blog those snippets are from her perspective) I think my early fear that I would end up with a male dominated cast because Davi and Eric are both guys is entirely unfounded. There’s some gods, and one speculative dragon founder of nadalos, and I think that’s it for men.
How had I not previously thought that *OF COURSE* Sorceress would want to go to space. No way people are dragon riding to the stars without her. This is going to cause significant problems for the humans attempting to hunt those dragons. Perhaps a reason for Elise to throw her weight behind the Spaceborne who are Not On Board With The Job They Are Forced To Do, in an effort to get a resolution where neither they nor the dragons get annihilated.
