#summoner oc eclair

[eriisaam]

First batch of my guys, and the ensuing chaos after letting them all loose.

[eriisaam]

As a compromise of overthinking and having a ton of stuff come up to not be able to commit to proper ref sheets the way I wanted, a prompt came up about major hairstyle changes, and this is an IOU of sorts in lieu of the ref sheets: Hair style refs.

They may not be as all-encompassing as I hoped, but it did some parts get me to draw out visuals on certain hairstyle changes that would've taken me a bit longer to get to otherwise, and other parts ease into drawing all seven summoners in their more updated designs to get used to them for later ideas I had in store for them.

This ended up being what sucked me into my Suddenly Stagnant Hole for a good while, (and you can probably immediately guess which one of them took the most time, Ephrel...) but! It's also the first time introducing and drawing out newcomer Mahiro on top of the original six! Worth it.

[eriisaam]

Me: Tired all the time, always feeling behind, burnout on everything, bad news from everywhere, running on fumes, dying badly

My first two (of many) little idiots, immediately getting to work in building up morale and whimsy, meanwhile:

(Granted I'm still on the fence if Kamui is an 'eh, good enough' mii right now or whether or not to bite the bullet and give him more accurate-looking bangs, but first miis after like three false starts in the demo.)

[eriisaam]

which oc is the Loudest 🗣 ?

All of them to an extent, but usually Kyo and Eclair on average 😂

It's more like they all have a moment of being CAPSLOCK LEVELS OF LOUD but have different ways and reasons of the why's and how's that they tend to get to be that loud, just those two are the most common.

Kyo is not just loud in a sense that he can be crabby and makes his disgruntling loud and clear, but he's also the most used to crowd control in speaking with a loud, prominently booming voice to silence a room and grab attention, something the other summoners usually do (but significantly less gracefully) moreso when you push them to their breaking point than as a skill they whip out whenever like Kyo.

Eclair's more loud out of excitement. He's like an excited puppy, his indoor voice of sorts can be a bit louder than the others, and he's usually the one more consistently loud not-entirely-on-purpose out of pure self-unawareness, unless there's something else that came up that made his tone even out and go lower. Ironically, he's the most naturally-loud when he's Eclair, whereas it always felt like he has to put the effort in to be loud and commanding as Magni, something that Thorr quickly picked up on and isn't exactly thrilled on seeing the contrast (since Magni is the most like her, and she expects him to have a similar commanding air to him, which doesn't quite stick the landing when he's voiced so timid and soft-spoken and hesitant over assured and dominating like her expectations of him).

The others kind of vary way more on 'you have to really work on them to bring it out' where Teru and Erin have somewhat shorter fuses and are easier to rile up into getting loud, whereas it speaks volumes the minute soft-spoken-in-general Ephrel or normally-the-softest-and-levelled-Sparrow suddenly decides to have a booming presence in their voice out of nowhere and/or weren't beaten to the punch by someone else first. (And it's definitely happened before, and made more than their fair share of heroes - support or otherwise - immediately jump.)

A part of it that also muddies it (and why even the short-tempered ones aren't normally, consistently all that loud compared to Kyo and Eclair) is they might also differ to other means to command a room that isn't solely on just how loud they get, between Teru and especially Erin commanding the room by simply sharing the shit out of people until they ease off, or how quickly a lot of the less-dicey-quarrels shut down instantly when there's a several-foot tall winged dinosaur with rocket-launcher tit-cannons towering over the summoner in question whose probably even easier to piss off than the summoner who called on them.

I'm sure there'll probably be other OCs who are equal amounts if not higher on the loud scale, but either they fall into the same category of 'you have to really work it out of them first' (not naturally all that loud) or they're still too undercooked to really dig into their hows and whys yet. 😂

[eriisaam]

does eclair bite ppl (in either affectionate or derog ways)? 🐍

Long story short:

Yes (in both counts 😆), though he has different layers of bitey, and said layers determine, on a scale of 'Oh whosea spicy noodle?' to 'hospital', how screwed the bitey really is.

Eclair, when turned some level of his beast form (either partially as the lamia, or fully as either the big or small noodle variants), is equipped with venom mimicking the same skill effect as Heal Smoke, though he is capable of dry bites (non-venomous bites) regardless, and he's always non-venomous if biting while entirely humanoid (no trace of snake in his form at the time).

Long story long though...

Usually, he can be lulled into biting in a dopey silly-noodle way when he's small and/or baited by someone to do it. He might be confused of it, but he can play-bite like when you tempt a kitten/cat enough and they just gently chomp at you after a while.

He's a lot less likely to do it while humanoid (unless someone kept baiting and poking him in the face anyways), but he can be playful-bitey equally to a piece of food dangled in his face long enough (and as a snake, he can unhinge his jaw to go full hamster-cheek mode trying to bite a too-big-for-his-mouth-right-away treat without thinking it through first), as he can also nip at people he's close to (like Kyo) either to get their attention, or as a form of affection (especially if either of them or their other supports get heated-affectionate. Although that one's less from being a snake. *coughs*)

Middle-of-the-road threat, he can also be bitey out of pointed irritation or as a warning, though this is still for the most part a dry bite.

He can bite in defense, usually of his supports, either to protect them from annoyances (like if he was a small snake and someone started poking Kyo, rather), or if he's caught up in the heat of battle where he might bite otherwise regardless, if caught up in the heat of the moment (either fighting dirty human bites, or full on viper attacks in bigger and dangerous forms). He doesn't like causing harm this way, but when he gets to this point, it's usually from feeling too threatened, feeling too keyed up he thinks his partners are threatened, or as a sort of last-warning attack to attempt to ward off a threat (proverbially firing a gun with a missed-on-purpose shot to warn them they won't miss next time if they don't back off).

Which brings me to the last one lending to why the need for warning-bites: The 'you're hosed' venomous bites.

Like I mentioned, he's full of venom as a cobra-like snake, though his venom has unique properties to it that can make it rather dicey to deal with for whoever's affected. Fortunately, it's not quite a one-for-one dangerous like the effects of an actual king cobra bite, but for what he can do with his venom, it's still highly dangerous in such a way that is especially the bane of the Order of Heroes's existence in particular.

Unfortunately, Eclair's venom doesn't have an anti-venom equivalent, though fortunately, his venom isn't directly deadly on its own... rather, the deadliness and danger comes from its primary effects, especially in combination of other factors at the time (like the wounds of the bite itself, or other wounds prior to the venom).

Like I said, he has properties similar to Heal Smoke, which is to say that when he bites - and the bite injects his venom - he's capable of completely and utterly shutting down not just the body's ability to naturally heal itself, but worse so all magic ability to heal likewise. Healing staves? Breath of Life? Aether or Sol or weapons that self-heal the user? None of it works anymore.

Thankfully, this is only for a finite time, and it's possible to completely ride out the venom's effects until the venom dissipates, and the heal-block effects passes, in which case it allows a healer enough time to reverse the potential damage before it settles and causes long-term forseeable damage.

This, incidentally, is why there was no attempt to try to milk Eclair (...gawd💦) of his venom to try to synthesize an antivenom, cuz not only would that just traumatize him more over the knowledge of this ability, but there wouldn't be a point since the venom eventually neutralizes itself on its own anyways.

Unfortunately, that's still a pretty dangerous time to wait out, since any and all damage sustained during that time has to pretty much force a medic to revert back to more direct, physical means of medicine and patchwork, especially if the patient was already really bad off prior to the magic-heal shutdown.

To Eclair's credit? He's been aware of what kind of power he holds with Thorr's devastating power and nature translating to something so potent as it had in his venom the more he became associated with cobras. He doesn't like to do it on purpose, and that's what made him drawn to the need to perform dry-bite warning shots where you had to really egg him on otherwise for him to even want to prime himself up to venomously bite a target. He's since been even less willing to do so on purpose since one of the first few instances he's venomously bit someone, one of those instances was Kyo, due to Freyja tricking him to attack him in friendly fire, and while Kyo survived (Erin's practical medical skills came in clutch with that), it left a lasting memory on Eclair's caution of resorting to that anymore, too often.

[eriisaam]

Day 6 - Meet the Heroes

(Sharena's goal is to befriend all of the Heroes - help her do it!)

Part of @sharenaweek

What better way to introduce Sharena to as many heroes as possible than the built-in feature of summoner greetings? Every summoner trust their best and beloveds to take on the careful duty of passing along a gift to another summoner, and the chosen hero of their summoner sends out their own beloved hero likewise!

With Sharena being neither a slouch, nor an exception, she jumps at the task of being the designated delivery hero, and even went above and beyond adding a bit more flair in her efforts to package it ahead of time (it's a box full of heroic feathers but look, it's the thought that counts, she tried to giftwrap it really well!)

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A surprise cameo? With Summoner OCs? It's more likely than you think. Meet Xiliang (left, closer up) and Eclair (right, further away) acting as two examples of many summoners Sharena visits and shares gifts with.

Onward to the... next... Wait a minute.

The skrunklies breached containment?!

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Oh, fun fact by the way. During the course of Sharena Week prep month, Minecraft celebrated it's 15th anniversary, and yesterday just recently released their major update in 1.21 Tricky Trials. What better way to celebrate than for her to breach containment into a land of blocks too? Surprise!

With special thanks to @mdzs-tgcf-svsss-fanblog whom not only let me borrow Xiliang for this, but also played Sharena for the purpose of my nonsense.

Now back to our regularly scheduled event.

[eriisaam]

10, 11, and 13 for the OC asks! 🩷

Ooh thanks~ 👀

For this, I'll run with the summoners (unless there's other characters with a pronounced answer, or them in non-summoner AUs).

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Is your OC sentimental or pragmatic? Do they keep mementos or only what they need to survive? Have they always been this way or did something happen to make them change?

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Out of the six, Kyo, Eclair, Teru and Ephrel are the most sentimental, with Sparrow and Erin being the more pragmatic, albeit on different reasons and scales between the two, before gradually easing into being sentimental themselves.

Kyo and Teru are both not just sentimental in a sense of keeping a lot of mementos between the two - usually of things related and/or accumulated throughout their times as trainers start-to-present - but of the two, Kyo additionally has an interest in relics and artifacts tied to legendaries or other history and mythology (especially tied to very notable or outright historically-legendary pokemon who went on to inspire the same awe and power scaling as anime-power-level legendaries), meanwhile Teru was pretty worldly in wanting to collect things based on different regions he traveled to in general.

Every so often, Teru and Kyo often gifted one another still with legendary-tied artifacts, even after they're exes (one of which ended up being very plot-relevant with Book IV's events: the lunar wing), meanwhile Teru continued the tradition even in different parts of Zenith, or the inner and outer worlds otherwise (like Nohr and Hoshido, Yilisse, even doing pokemon-digimon exchanges with Sparrow, among other places).

Eclair, by comparison, picked up on this from Kyo, and between part-learning-part-mimicking Kyo's habits on collecting knicknacks and things representing different significant points of his life, and finding himself in his own way, back when he got confused enough to be borderline dysphoric about who he even is (and where his differences were if he wasn't Kiran, Thorr, or a weird fusion of the two), he ended up adopting a similar habit of keeping different bits and pieces of stuff he was either given or found, many of which ended up being the basis of the in-game hats. (And on one hand, yes, that includes things like squirrels, birds, cats, etc, but on the otherhand given he's regularly made forma recreations of long extinct pokemon under the same pretense, it's not too far off he's probably either made friends with squirrels, or recreated forma squirrels in his off time otherwise, to Thorr's continued disappointment of where his forma powers could've gone instead.)

Unlike Kyo tho, he's got all the sense of awe and wonder for things like Ariel does, so he's also responsible for why there's so much variety of items everywhere in vast stocks of everythings. Rope? Bombs? You thunk it? It's his, and he's probably got all the rupees with them too. If the other summoners ever retired their robes (and given he's the only one wearing his standard issue one on the regular, it definitely happened), he's got a pile of basically everyone's robes as a whole ass nest in his bedroom, and Kyo's just gonna have to live with that now. He's not quite a hoarder in a sense he won't throw out or disallow people to take what they need or clean clutter otherwise, but he's right up there with the gamer instinct of hoarding all manner of supplies 'for a rainy day' and second-guessing whether or not a rough day is That Day to use stuff. Except sometimes there's also the added layer of "but… but Kyo gave it to me… :<" on why he won't use certain other less-dire items too fast. (Like Kyo could give him an emergency cupcake that restores all your health and stamina in case he didn't eat properly and to keep him from dying, and Eclair, who skipped breakfast and lunch, has one foot at death's door, and is in every way more than ready to use the cupcake for its intended purpose, will still second-guess about it cuz 'but... but it's a gift tho... :'<...')

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Ephrel is sentimental, but much more subtle and moreso with things they create, than necessarily things they collect. With one key exception being their heart-shaped charm, which was originally Deliah's (their sister's) hair ornament, kept in remembrance for her, and was so ingrained that this is why when Ephrel mutated into Spectabilis, the charm straight up mutated with the rest of their body with them: so integral to them it became a part of their own body in that state. The same trend also holds true in other alts, such as their ascended alt (which combines aspects of both their human and alfr alts, including that same charm becoming outright a part of their body then too).

In most other respects beyond things that were gifted directly to them, especially by their partners, they usually either capture moments in the form of sketches they draw from time to time of various things (landscapes, creatures, certain heroes, general inspired pictures, etc), or incorporated things into their main style (for instance Deliah loved flowers, so quite a bit of Ephrel's floral theme preferences even prior to being an alfr came largely from her).

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On the far opposite end, Sparrow and Erin were both from a background where they didn't keep a lot, and risked losing plenty, furthering their more pragmatic approaches: Sparrow due to packing light, keeping few things, and abandoning or losing lots of things to disaster or theft otherwise, and Erin due having a life expectancy of a stray outdoor cat, and roughly about the same legacy in kind.

Fortunately, both did end up somewhat becoming more sympathetic and sentimental over time, particularly with gifts they got from their partners and friends. Unfortunately, they both had to work past a lot of their issues to get to that point, between Sparrow trusting it's things she can actually keep (and not get immediately thrown out or stolen by one of her sisters), or Erin finding enough self-worth to accept being cared about, and likewise trust she'd stay alive long enough to treasure what she has (and make a more earnest effort to have better self care and preservation skills, after hailing from a world where people like her have a much shorter life expectancy in general).

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Incidentally, for MCs for projects, like Enoli, they're determinants based on player input, although depending on how their projects go and their contexts, I do have certain not-quite-canon-but-leaning-on-it ideas.

For instance with Enoli specifically, I'm a bit more biased thinking he's more sentimental than pragmatic, not just in terms of 'haha genre savvy gamer' easy joke-habits (hoard all the best shit 'in case of emergency', and then even in emergencies, 'but what if we still need it later?'), but since there's things the player cares about and works up to like collectables, upgrading rooms, and furnishing said rooms, he canonically has leanings toward collecting and keeping memerabilias, or being thoughtful of which ones the others in his project likes, especially when a lot of those collectables are either things he can buy from an in-universe series, win from arcades, and/or at least one of the other guys has as a liked gift.

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What does your OC believe in? God(s)? Monsters? Love? The power of unbreakable bonds of friendship to overcome any obstacle? The ability of money to open any door? Or are they indifferent?

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In terms of gods or adjacent figures:

Kyo and Teru live in a variant of the World of Pokemon where there's a distinct split between legendaries and legendary pokemon figures, and while there's some overlap (many legendary historical figures are in themselves legendary and mythic species of pokemon), not every legendary/mythic is a historical legend by default, and there's some who are of a more mundane species likewise who went on to make history.

The pokemon who are legendary (and mythic, but for simplicity sake I'll lump them together as legendaries) are encountered like any other pokemon species, can potentially be encountered while young and obtained earlier on, and it's possible that much like any other species, legendary pokemon can grow with the team, be utilized like any other normal pokemon, and often even made appearances in various tournaments, with certain caveats exclusive to those specific tournaments (ex: certain legendaries are still banned by species, for instance zacian or mewtwo, but not zapdos or landorus, a lot like tournaments IRL or in-game, assuming it's not an anything-goes bracket). These kind of legendaries can even be a huge show of either that trainer's specific home origin, or even which region played a significant part in their journey, and tell a story about a trainer all on its own at a glance (and Kyo and Teru are no exception: Kyo's zacian and zamazenta (before and after being given to Eclair) both reflect his start from Galar, and Teru's ho-oh is not only a rite-of-passage symbol from his home in Johto, but his sister Chiho has a similar rite with a lugia, both birds of whom have heavy associations with kimono dancers, of which both are descended from a long line of them on top of heavy eeveelution associations in general). They have all the mundane feelings and associations as like how we treat it as a regular sight in the (at the time) current meta of everyone having ogerpons, urshifus, some manner of djinn, chien-pao, and so on and so forth among other tailor made party members, and they achieve their full potential in careful training and care, rather than default inherent.

Historical legends, on the otherhand, are the kind of pokemon which the anime and game-plot scalings are much more relevant to: the kind that can terraform the earth, build the bedrocks of the various inner-world dimensions of the pokemonverse, the kind whom are the subject of tapestries and statues and stories passed down through generations, and are the actual basis for what people tend to think when they hear 'legendary' pokemon. A mundane legendary can grow up to become one - and many do in fact make it their call to adventure (sometimes species-wide like zacian and zamazenta living up to the legacy of the Founding Kings, or the difference between a lugia like Chiho among other trainers make it a huge coming-of-age tradition to befriend, versus the Guardian of the Sea Lugia of Orange Islands), and others can, under pretty challenging circumstance, eventually grow INTO a historical legend in question whether they intended to or not (such as the case of what happened to Sol and Hilo's left-behind yveltal, xerneas, solgaleo and lunala, all four of which are immediately recognized due to their immense power and size, their ability to be durable enough to stand up against Zenithian gods like Askr and Embla, and who had earned their keep when the four grew up centuries ago in Sol and Hilo's care, and continued to be re-discovered and cared for into the present day by the current royals and summoners).

These are the kind of legendaries that are also subject to various religions (although there's also plenty of cases of not-particularly-religious trainers who either don't make it a big deal, or don't quite follow them as gods, with Kyo and Teru fall into even if of the two, Kyo has admiration for the Founding King Wolves of Galar, and Teru with the Rainbow Reincarnation (Ho-oh) and the entire mythos of the burned tower and its unfortunate inhabitants and ancestral roots). There are also other legendaries with grey areas bridging the historic and mundane, such as Arceus whose more commonplace mundane arceuses are seen as extensions of the lord-god Arceus, (and as Eclair accidentally learned, certain 'hands of Arceus" can be crafted in earlier, less obvious forms, such as when combining its earlier, wispy, beta form with Eclair's own power to temporarily 'evolve' it into a proper arceus as long as that connection is maintained, and reverts to its original wispier form when the connection fades), and even with other significant legends, the tapus have a similar extension link to the mundane tapus who accompany trainers, usually bestowed specifically to trainers who complete a specific rite (the Trial of Alola Aina was a trial so ancient that Sol and Hilo were the first participants after both left Askr and Embla, but before Hilo succumbed to the effects of the Heart's Rite, sparing and saving both gods and their respective nations while sacrificing zirself in the process. This rite continued well after their timeline, where eventually Nohea, who is one of Kyo's and Teru's friends and another in camp F2P, is another example of a trainer who passed that same trial and earned all four of their own tapus likewise, Tapu Fini of whom became pretty significant in both what kickstarted Kaze's relationship to Kyo and his supports, then again with helping Embla seek closure over Hilo).

It is also not unheard of, under more extreme circumstances, for even the historical legendaries to step in during rare times of a trainer or non-trainer's needs, as was the case of what wound up happening with Kamui and Lifonse when the ancient god Arceus ended up taking pity enough to nudge them in the direction of a celebi willing to help with their plight, via connecting with Kamui's Yato at the time, after taking pity of just how fucked the two would be otherwise, neither of whom being trainers, both of whom isekai'd themselves willingly into this world, and both searching for a needle in a haystack like a wild celebi of all things. (Oathkeeper, the aforementioned Yato variant, is also the only variant Kamui and Corrin didn't otherwise test the battle prowess of, and neither would see that variant again until Eclair's arceus came into the picture, albeit to very limited degrees in terms of Yato's ability to connect with them again).

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On the opposite side of the coin, while Sparrow and Ephrel don't worship them, nor their digimon per se, Yggdrasill (Digimon's own Yggdrasill as a half-server half-entity, no relation to the realm of Yggdrasill in FEH, though one can argue the former superimposed data off history of the latter) is a pretty significant psuedo-digimon whom not quite every digimon is aware of by default, nor is it a universal deity, but for those who ARE aware of them, Yggdrasil tends to be seen on par to pokemon's equivalent of Arceus, and short of that, the digimon sovereigns (alternatively called the Four Holy Beasts) in Xuanwumon, Baihumon, Zhuqiaomon, and Qinglongmon. In the same manner pokemon have various historical legends broken down in legendary families (the tao trio, the creation trio, the life cycle trio, etc etc), digimon have similar hierarchies that have more or less weight depending on who you ask, where on top of Yggdrasil and the Four Holy Beasts, there's their subordinates in the form of the twelve holy devas (effectively a digimon zodiac), the royal knights (who are seen as Yggdrasill's own equivalent of their devas and arthurian-knight coded), the Warrior Ten and the Seven Great Demon Lords (champions of every digimon archtype and the personified deadly sins, respectively), among other pantheons. While also not deities in themselves, not only are the digidestined particularly notable among tamers, but their crests in particular (either known crests as utilized by those digidestined, or even newer crests discovered over time) tend to have heavy historical ties. Finally, while not as common in practice in modern times, the ancient ancestors of digimon, kemonogami, when not ruled out as youkai-based demons from a place of fear, are sometimes otherwise seen as mythical beasts or gods by the humans of their time periods, and if they themselves aren't treated to the level of gods, they were otherwise utilized in their long family lineages in important customs otherwise. Although Sparrow and Ephrel don't fall into this line either, this WAS the basis otherwise of Golden Fate AU's version of Jotunheimr, where the unique species Jotunaquimon and its evolution family were passed down through generations of its royalty (as in the eagles Dagr and Nott utilize, among other figures like their mother, are in themselves the aforementioned digimon: Jotunaquimon).

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Finally, stepping away from Eclair's half-respect-half-casual treatment of the gods of Zenith, partially from his ignorance or comfort level (ex: he'd treat Askr and Ymir with friendliness and some level of ease given their very approachable natures, but then be on edge in kind with the less-than-approachable Embla or Nifl by comparison), or his own complicated feelings of his ties to Thorr likewise, there's Erin.

Her world of origin, the Worlds upon Worlds of Cosmic Horror, is made out of a series of networked dreams: The root of all existence in her world was in the dreamscape of the Eternal Sleeper, Azathoth, and through her dreams, she dreamt up a series of gods, earlier ones being considered more ancient and with great power to match their seniority of sorts, while later gods are treated with somewhat more immature power scaling and matching exaggerated personalities to go with. That's not quite saying the newer gods are forever children, or that they stay always immature, but there's still a different feel of sort in terms of dealing with, say, Estir and Ln'eta (newer and on the farther-end of the pecking order) versus Rhok'zan or Nyanlathotep (treated as older regardless of age, certainly feel and act way older by comparison, and in Nyan Nyan's case, she especially makes her seniority loud and clear in other ways over the others). The gods have different concepts of age, relationship, taboos, customs, identity, etc from humans, and though usually some can be inferred fairly seamlessly (ex: Rhok'zan is the grandmother of Ln'eta and Estir, and both were seen as kids in both Stardust's and technically Erin's time, and adults by D's), but others are a lot more 'don't worry about it for your sanity sake' (Nyanlathotep is ANCIENT. She's one of the originals and Rhok'zan, despite being a grandmother to Ln'eta and Estir, is ALSO the niece to Nyanlathotep, who is also the aunt of Estir and Ln'eta in herself. This isn't to say there's something incestrously iffy going on in the scenes, their view on family structure is just way more complicated and murky and less straightforward by comparison, plus their customs are different, so it's all one big ' either they call each other whatever familial tie sounds cute and/or humans are trying to articulate the closest comparison they can muster and not always is that going to sound sensible at times'. Anyways, moving on…). The way the world operates is it's an interconnected system of dreams starting from Azathoth's dreamscape, then the dreamscapes of the gods she dreamt up, then the dreamscapes of the gods THEY dreamt up, and it's just an interwoven nest of dreams where the existence within said dreams end and begin anew if a given god behind it woke up. This also means that if Azathoth ever awoken, ALL of reality ends, hence the title and significance to keep her asleep (The Eternal Sleeper is not just a title, but a warning label). Gods can also exist within their dreamscapes, or escape to those of other gods to visit (or invade), and to say the least this is why Erin has such huge power associations with dreams and psyche without Freyja or Freyr's help (comparing and contrasting Ephrel, who had to be an alfr first).

In Erin's specific case, two gods are relevant to her background: The Black Goat of the Woods Rhok'zan, and the one of many titles (The Crawling Chaos, the Messenger of the Outer Gods, the God of 1000 Forms) Nyanlathotep. While Erin doesn't make a clear indicator whether or not Nyanlathotep is for sure her patron deity, or if it's a god of a different sort, possibly of a different reality altogether, she tends to dabble in both hers and Rhok'zan's domains, Nyan Nyan by her own accord, and Rhok'zan by virtue of earlier piggybacking off Stardust's own progresses and associations. Rhok'zan is a fertility goddess with heavy associations with romance, conception and nature, meanwhile Nyanlathotep has heavy associations with shadows, body horror, psychology, and basically fear of the unknown in whatever that ends up translating to. They're not the only gods of the world, and there's even creatures of other sorts who co-exist (…or hunt…) humans through various means (such as the shoggoth, like Muu), though their divinity is very subjective compared to the more definitive gods, and the gods themselves can range from co-existing with humans and benefiting them, to being taken advantage of and turning corrupt and hostile, (which is what happened to Rhok'zan on both counts), have a rather immature way of handling them or even just one in particular with massive world-scale rippling effects (Ln'eta and Estir to D), or even have it in their nature to be fickle if not straight up trollishly cruel all on their own (infamously Nyanlathotep), so the gods and the humans have an ongoing dance between how faithful, how devoted, how exploitive and cynical, or all manner in between, they are to one another on the regular and under what conditions. (For notable instances, Estir and Ln'eta are in a constant tug-o-war over D's affections or subservience, Rhok'zan started off nurturing, caring and kind, but then lashed out when taken advantage of to horrific degrees, and then learned to heal and be kind again through Stardust, and Nyanlathotep has equally been seen and treated with all the respect of a pharaoh as she had also been bamboozled through her critical weakness of her own hubris, and on top of the entire world's denizens regularly going insane, Erin's world is just a massive crapshoot of god-related tomfuckery. Think like if everyone was part of a different fraction of the grimeal, each summoning their own unique Grima variant, except Grima in all their forms is just as much the lord god pulling the strings as they are in it for Mr Bones Wild Ride of Fuckening themselves).

Erin is in a weird grey area in while she had certainly done her fair share in harnessing or exploiting the powers of both Rhok'zan and Nyanlathotep, some parts playing nicies and cooperating with them (so she didn't sour her relationship with Rhok'zan in particular like her Cult of a 1000 Young whom straight up abused her, although she still didn't play quite so fair either like Stardust), and other parts playing the long con of pretending she's much more attuned and in allegiance with her gods than she actually is, having done her fair share of big bluffs in going toe to toe and/or scaring the shit out of certain Zenithian gods (specifically Freyja and Laeradr) and unleashing psychological warfare on them via spectres of Nyanlathotep to get them to fuck off. (Notable examples: In Freyja's case, she used Takumi's nightmares as a trojan horse, so what Freyja thought was attacking Takumi led to her instead fighting a 'faceless' Takumi-variant of Nyan Nyan, and the second time was Laeradr thinking he got the drop on Erin to try to use her as a bargain chip against her supports to both poison what he thought was her and her heart, only for her to get the drop on him through his psyche and unpacked trauma with the tyrant king instead via a remote projection that she willfully allowed to break and rot in front of him to carry her point across, all to keep him distracted away from what the rest of the Order of Heroes were doing at the time).

While she has some level of respect for her gods, and isn't above utilizing their powers via rituals with some level of respect, at the same time she's not quite as lost in the sauce of their influence (and the insanity slippage to come with), so she's at least savvy enough to take precautions from learning of Nyanlathotep's weakness enough to lay down the law with her when needed, and cementing Stardust's role as the only (AU's exclusive) honorary F2P character who does NOT leave her world of origin or ever sets foot in Zenith proper (she doesn't trust Stardust not to immediately perform the ritual to call Rhok'zan into Zenith, thereby rooting her irreparably into the world networks and potentially endangering not just their Zenith, but numerous iterations of Zenith across AU timelines).

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In terms of the power of friendship and/or love:

Pretty much all of them do have some level of respect and influence from being loved in some way. Very 'to be loved is to be changed' and some are far more dramatic in others on how this plays out. Some like Erin and Kyo took drastic turns in their life through better care and understanding of them that they were failed on in previous incarnations (which is why there's such a huge shift between Kyo and Erin in the present being far more caring and willing to stretch their necks out when their supports reached out to them during pretty critical moments, meanwhile their doomed timeline hel alts are far more cynical and willing to watch the whole world burn by comparison, especially once Hel's influence brought out even more of their worst aspects in their resurrections as cohorts).

Erin and Teru also have a very notable platonic example when both daisy chained a link formed through exploiting each other's powers: Past-Erin previously stole the power of Askr and the dawn dragon through stealing Alfonse/Lif's and Ryoma's blood for ritual purposes, meanwhile present Erin, rather than do the same process, took a different approach with the same ritual via Teru's blood instead, and took an extent of his missingno powers instead to get the upper hand on her undead alt. That connection was much more stable and better utilized when the two cooperate with one another, and it cemented each other's roles in having each other's backs across different stress points. Teru gives her a boost in power and more toys to play with that doesn't otherwise risk her rocking the boat too bad to have Nyan Nyan turn on her, meanwhile in times of Teru's crisis or people trying to needle him into another catastrophic breakdown, she acts as a buffer and deterrent to protect him in kind. This is also why Corrin ended up recruiting and then trusting the two fairly highly, not just in a familial sense, but using both of them as safeguards to lay down the law if Ryoma and/or Xander respectively ended up straying and turning on one another for whatever reason (let alone on such a grand scale that Hoshido and Nohr go at war again with one another).

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In terms of the power of money:

While none of them are quite to the point of being money obsessed, Kyo of them isn't quite as ignorant of the power and sway of money otherwise, and is the most aware, particularly with friends like Charlotte later on. This is why he beelined to the most profitable safeguards in the pokemon world (particularly networked along Lumiose, if you know, you know), why he's the most business conscious (in a sense he's the only one of the six summoners who refuses to budge about abandoning his post or job in totality for Zenith, whereas the others are indifferent or more comfortable in Zenith than at home by comparison), and he ends up turning around and extending the fruits of his knowledge to others if they play nicies enough with him to a degree. (The basis of his friendship with Charlotte, once she learned he's not in the marriage pool in the first place and he easily saw through her ruse, was to introduce her to the wonderful world of treasure conversion ala easily farming goods from the pokemon world that have high resale value in Zenith and/or pokemon who are sentient money printers).

That being said, besides money, too-real related world concerns had sway over the summoners in other sorts that had a ripple effect on their work in Zenith too. (For instance nearly all of them are healers or have the capability of healing, and you can probably guess a huge inspiration for that… haha :') …)

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Otherwise, in terms of indifferent, there's Hiru (an ancient summoner) and Rhoswen (part of Enoli's project).

Hiru isn't quite so cynical and closed-off to the world and its wonders to the point of being close-hearted and cynical, but it does reflect back on him that a lot of the things that normally would've been reflections of the above points (a strong resonance and power from love, friendship, money, real-world-ish concerns, anxiety, etc) have a more pragmatic variant in him. He's supported to Eitri (or more specifically one of her past incarnations) in a platonic sense, but rather than out of friendship, both very openly and knowingly exploit one another in a way 'just business' makes the relationship sound too friendly. He has a renamon as well, to a point his renamon casts quite the shadow over Sparrow's centuries later, except whereas Sparrow and her renamon, Lerena, have a bond so strong that Lerena shaped herself into the big sister Sparrow needed most, and is equally just as supportive a big sis to other digimon in Sparrow's other partner, Althene, Hiru's was so duty-bound and seriously stoic by comparison and doesn't elaborate on their bond with Hiru so much as their sworn duty to lock Eitri out of Hiru's remains in his last moments. He's heralded by the records of past summoners as a legendary bard, and yet his final legacy was moreso his weapons and his old 'business partner's' destructive manner to try and fail to retrieve it than any of his creative exploits like the present day singer-inclined summoners by comparison. He's supposed to be a poster boy of heart and soul and full of whimsy, yet he's constantly overshadowed in cynicism, duty, business, and lost in an indistinct sea of data in the end.

Rhoswen, by comparison, at least had a chance to get better with Enoli, compared to how much of a fall from grace Hiru had. Starting off not quite so cold, but not quite wearing his heart on his sleeve like the other guys, not quite having as strong and apparent a show of his love and joys and goals, except for something so integral and late to his character, and a significant spoiler that appears just as his character reaches a turning point. I'm vague on purpose with him for spoiler sake, but if a player controlling Enoli plays their cards right, he takes Hiru's concept potentially in reverse.

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How important are romantic relationships to your OC? Do they prefer casual sex, short flings, or long term relationships? Do they want to get married or are they content with what they have? Or do they have no interest in romance whatsoever?

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In terms of romance, while all of the six did eventually find love that resonated with them so much that they outright draw strength or reignite their will from it, they also vary on how long it took to get there, how aware or cynical or quick they latched onto it at first, and (while I won't get TOO explicit about it for the sake of keeping this from being TOO adult, for anyone reading this far who got a bit worried), they have different relationships about sex, or in a few cases, lack thereof. (I don't mind getting more explicit about it, but if I do, it'll be for a different post to give people a chance to flee).

Kyo and Teru are the only one of the six to have been in relationships prior to the partners they ended up with: Each other. Although the two stay together in most other AUs, they break it off as summoners, as friendly exes albeit, and the rather horrid circumstances that led to that breakup (which is not present in the other AUs, hence why they don't break up there, but do here) paints a pretty broad bias about how the two ended up approaching their other relationships thereafter. (The only reason Ephrel didn't also count is cuz technically while they ALSO had a relationship prior, it was with a guy who still wound up in that new relationship too, so they just picked back up where they left off and it's different).

Both of them had a moment of still reeling from either feeling betrayed (Teru) or feeling the sting of critically failing their partner (Kyo), later events further compounded those feelings (in Kyo's case, Lifonse and Kamui saving Kyo and attempting to save Teru making a big enough impact to save him from the same grief that consumed his past self to destructive and cynical degrees, and in Teru's case he was further exploited by Garon and burned by a different Ryoma from Erin's Ryoma, in ways that made his initial impressions with his Takumi and Xander very rocky at first much later on), and both needed a lot of time to heal and come to their own terms with the damage of their previous relationship to come around in full to their present ones, just in time to be much more emotionally grounded and available in the meantime (with Kyo of the two having his fallen past alt as living proof of what happens when this fails).

Similarly to Kyo, Erin's past alt also is a personified version of when she is similarly not given the proper support and time to win over legitimately, to rather unfortunate results with how cruel and vindictive her fallen alt ended up turning out, but the present Erin by comparison ended up not only taking pause and reconsidering a lot of her more disastrously self-destructive tendencies (either from self-loathing issues, or by virtue that a carton of 2% strawberry milk had a longer shelf life than a lot of her peers in her home world, without much exaggeration), but be more thoughtful about her partners and of Zenith as a whole, compared to her more cruelly pragmatic approach that killed off her past life in kind. (To the point, like mentioned before, she has a be-subtly-cruel-to-be-kind approach to Stardust, who she did come to like as a friend, but not enough to risk Zenith's overall safety over risking Stardust basically supergluing Rhok'zan into its very core).

Beyond those ones on the more extreme ends of growing to be better people through the power of love and support of their friends and partners, Sparrow and Ephrel were more on the end of being withdrawn, kept to themselves, or more oblivious than malicious and cold, and opening up once it eventually sunk in how much their partners seemed to genuinely like them for them (and in Ephrel's case, to such deep extremes that their partner would go to the ends of the earth for their sake and then some to get them back). Eclair remains otherwise the only one pretty much full of love and hope out of the box, in spite of his origins, and while he's been some parts jaded by seeing the more crueler sides of life and people, and other parts sorting the difference on different kinds of love (romantic, platonic, the 'looks at you like cat looks at cheeseburger' general love…), he's still more 'despite everything it's still him' choosing-to-be-kind-and-loving-with-purpose, and more cautious of not being too naive to the point of getting hurt than necessarily jaded to the point he closes his off completely. There's a bit more self-awareness than blind love and naivety, but there's also a more naivety-by-choice sense of love he puts out there a bit more openly and earlier on, compared to the more guarded other five.

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As for sex (I promise again I won't be too detailed about it, like I said), the only one of the six that doesn't have sex period is Sparrow, whereas the other five have a bit of variance from willing to rare.

Kyo, to a degree Eclair by extension, and Ephrel are the three most active, although Kyo moreso than Ephrel, and Eclair and Kyo not necessarily to just each other. Eclair is very much a 'too-curious-and-bright-eyed for his own good type' despite knowing shit-all about sex that Kyo has to navigate him out of safety-related necessity, Kyo is much more active yet also the most thoughtful of reading his partner's comforts in absence of them saying or realizing it themselves (especially in regards to Kaze, his Kaze in particular being way more touch-averse than he lets on in a way he struggles with), and Ephrel is the most "sure, why not?" out of the lot where they are up for whatever their partners throw at them, and more in place of Sparrow, who is completely ace and gets flightly and panicked and scared off if you try to get too intimate with her up to a point. She's a hard nope and they're fine with that.

While Teru is also very experimental, and to a point Kyo and Teru not only regularly (playfully) tease one another, but know what makes each other tick and happily passes it on to their present partners in various scales of helpful to trollish, that leaves Erin as the only other ace besides Sparrow of the six (and indeed the two being ace are very big plot points in regards to why I earlier mentioned Erin had the capacity to utilize Rhok'zan's powers to a degree without being totally and utterly consumed by it), but while she's widely indifferent to sex, and doesn't really care much when approached about sex for sex's sake, she does like intimacy and comfort, and isn't quite as opposed to having sex that escalated from initial strong-feeling comfort and emotions going haywire. Otherwise, she very seldomly gets any, and to the surprise of nobody, Sparrow and Erin tend to have sort of chill-out hangouts with one another while their partners respectively are loudly fighting bedsheet demons in another room.

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I guess another way to sum up their relationships: They can all get very ride-and-die, they vary on how fast they can get to the ride-and-die state (between someone jaded and guarded like Erin, to someone with himbo levels of heart like Eclair), but if you got them to love you, they got your back for life (however long their life ends up carrying them, give or take many close calls cuz seriously all of them are reckless shitheads).

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Incidentally thanks again for the ask, and also thanks for reading and sorry for the delay. (Although given the sheer scale of.... STUFF... you can see why the delay. orz)

[eriisaam]

On this episode of "Boobs will continue until Eclair's clothes are figured out, both of them": A concept sketch of Magni, Eclair's fully-realized form.

I'll go over in much more detail when I actually get Eclair (and his alt as Magni) done sprite-wise, but the long and short of it is that Eclair has an innate and not-quite-in-control-but-still-predictable quirk to him in that his body undergoes pretty significant changes depending on his current power level at the time. On an average day, he might be category twink levels, but the more power he gains, the more the himbo graduates to a full on twunk. Likewise, he loses body mass the weaker he gets, and if he suffers either opposite extremes (either way too much power, or dangerously low energy otherwise), he might lose his ability to retain human form entirely, in which case, he turns into his beast form, a winged snake, and to the appropriate proportions depending on which end of the power-tipping he dipped into (no energy? You get a pocket noodle. Too much energy? You get Grima-but-with-an-orange-cat-personality.)

Contrasting how it was Kamui who gave him a proper name of "Eclair", Thorr attempted to likewise give him a proper name of "Magni", so whereas he's known as "Eclair" generally, "Magni" tends to be an unofficial+ distinction between when he's just comfortably being himself, or when he's revealed his hand as a god, usually when Thorr backed him into a corner badly enough to force it out of him.

+ By "unofficial", I mean that while the others don't necessarily call him "Magni" beyond Loki and Thorr (unlike Ephrel and Spectabilis where the latter IS used frequently by the dokkalfarians, Freyja and Freyr among a few others, for comparison sake), I tend to denote Eclair-as-Eclair and Magni-Eclair note-wise to make the distinctions clear about either alts, in the same way we know Yugi and Yami as "Yugi" and "Yami Yugi" when the latter is usually called "Yami" instead, when he isn't just called "Yugi" otherwise).

Since this was meant more as a stone-toss attempt for me to try to iron out and visualize details about Magni's design before putting it onto the sprite, which, for comparison...

... I was not entirely satisfied with the design I originally sat on, let's just say... this is done more as another quick sketch, cuz it really was just meant to be a quick experiment, and also I felt better sometimes drawing a bit more freely and loosely a bit more often (I do still wanna do things more cleaned up and/or fully realized, just for now, it's fun to cut loosely and messily on and off more, especially after seeing a lot of you guys with your own sketches and doodles.) Maybe I might come back to this to fully realize this pic too, but for now, I'd probably prioritize wrapping up the sprites and then moving next to ref sheets before walking this back among other things (*eyes last year's Sharena Week pile and weeps*)

Also there's a Youtube Friendly ™️Version too. As a treat.