huh i have a #dates tag here but the only thing in it is the birthdays post? coulda sworn i had the sweven timeline on this blog already... well here, from my writings
-
1999 - 2003
ZOMBIE EVENT
A sudden wave of people being turned into ‘puppets’ occurs in Mueeth.
6/2012 - 12/2012
MISSING PERSON
Mid-year, a man named Sycamore is reported missing. He returns home in December.
2013
YEAR OF DEATH
The hunters Sycamore, Tyrrin, Firenze and several more die in suspicious incidents.
2015 - 2017
KNIGHT'S JOURNEY
A knight named Alec goes through his mission to kill Ounspux’s Queen. He meets a vampire along the way.
2017
THE SUN'S WRATH
Dangerous paranormal activity overcomes Ounspux, concentrated in the capital city. Most of the population experienced what was believed to be mass hallucinations. On the day of the Queen's death, people reported seeing the Sun look down directly at them.
It was eerily dark in these hallways, walking down them alone; you couldn’t guess it wasn’t night yet. 303, 303, my room is 303. Am I even going the right way? A form slowly makes its way towards me. Step… Step… Step… It’s a person draped in a familiar robe with an unfamiliar color for it – red – since when did they come in red? Was this person important? Taller than me with messy black hair and heavy eye-bags. Excuse me –
“And what are you doing down here?” He cuts me off. Hello…. My name is Ezekiel and I’m looking for my room. It’s supposed to be 303… Ignoring the second part of what I had just said, he tells me his name: “You can call me brother G██████”. Rubbing his chin with his left hand and looking off to the right instead of at me: “You’re in training yes, brother Ezekiel?” Brother. Err um yes I am, I was told to stay in The Eye for a month to complete it.
“Do you know why?”
Well…
I’m embarrassed about being asked on the spot and not fully remembering the answer. Um well being in the middle of a Hell Zone tests our. Spirituality? So we can withstand demon influence….? My body language gives my nerves away but it’s not like my words help much either.
“Don’t worry, brother Ezekiel, I’m not testing you.” He calls me brother again. Despite how the interaction is going I feel a genuine smile coming on. “I was just curious about what they’re teaching nowadays – since I haven’t been able to leave. It’s alright if you’ve forgotten.”
“Because Your Answer will reach you regardless.” He adds. “A saint died here but that might not actually be Your Answer.”
The man straightens his back, clears his throat, and begins:
“God’s Will is that You find a will of your own. Your own Answer. Your own Self. We serve Him not by serving Him but by existing and sharing the different forms of love. You have to live, and others will see You living and they will live. People will tell us to die so we must live. Demons were never the priority, there are no demons in The Eye.
The world is made of love and every part of our body is love and all of nature is love. We need to accept our negative feelings as well but this is the gist of it. Your Answer will lead to paths that create more love. For Yourself. That is why we come to The Eye. And if you Listen to The Eye it will speak to You, udder onto you truths about Yourself. The saint who died lives here, he breathes here. His lungs are in the walls and I lull myself to sleep in their rhythm and in his arms and in the walls. And he speaketh unto me. And I feel the music in the air - for you see, music is a form of love – and the music speaketh unto me. And the fear of dying and the fear of living it all leaves me. Because I confirm that I am alive and You are alive, there is no dread. And people will tell us to die and kill us but we will live. And they will live. The music will speaketh unto us. The warm flesh in the walls will speaketh unto us. For you see – we too are in the walls. When the world finally reaches the closest we can to peace, we'll be outside the walls. We can all speak to each other. Do you understand?”
Um…. A little bit? Not entirely, I’m sorry….
He smiles at me gently, giving a light nod. “That’s quite alright. I’m not the best at explaining things. But Your Answer will reach you regardless.”
Suddenly I’m grabbed by the arm. An older sister, one of the guides here, flashes the man a look as she drags me away by a few steps. “Sister E██, do not wander needlessly.” then “███████, you should not be out of your room.” He gives her the same smile, bows to each of us separately, then walks off... I guess he’s used to getting in trouble for this. But why?
“You’re not supposed to talk to that man, ok?”
“Why so?” I ask.
“He must stay in his rooms and. Meditate. To rid his body of demons.”
“He was not possessed, though. I did not sense anything on him.”
“But you heard how he talked, right? Clearly he’s mad.”
“He was not possessed.”
“Wasn’t he frightening?”
“No, sister.”
As we go back-and-forth, the sister’s face contorts with annoyance. I turn my gaze from it to over her shoulder and the lecture begins. Okay, I see, well okay – nodding my head, recognizing the argument was unwinnable. Oh, the door behind her says 100 → so I was going the wrong way → no one even told me → drats.
I left a week earlier than planned; forboden from returning. I never saw brother ███████ again.
A gray beach comes into view. The ocean waves are lethargic. Lying large in the sand is a dead whale. Is it a whale? It is a whale. For some reason, two middle-aged men are taking it apart piece-by-piece.
“Uuugh the smell is SO BAD!!” Orval’s glasses have splatters of an unknown substance on them.
“Complaining every 5 minutes isn’t going to change that.”
“But shouldn’t we at least get gas masks for this?”
“Well…”
Sycamore trails off, too tired to continue the conversation.
The men spend hours cleaning up an unidentifiable mass of rotting meat (it is a whale) near the shore. They don’t bother asking where it came from – that question usually has no answer in cases like these.
Disgusting wet noises break through the cries of seagulls as they break off chunks with their shovels. Slimy meat slaps together in trash bags. It started falling apart when they tried carrying it as a whole, so this seemed like the better method.
It was not.
A putrid stench fills the air more and more with each piece. Nauseating. Wild animals die after a single bite, but blowflies make themselves at home no problem. Too bad they aren’t decomposing it fast enough.
There's a machine in Sweven called the MEMORY ENGINE that records and repeats people's memories - among other things - but its replay of information comes out bizarre. This is basically a representation of it trying to repeat Sycamore's memories/feelings around the time of his death. Sycamore's favorite place as a child was the beach. He wasn't able to visit it often as an adult unless he was there to clean up a corpse. When he trained his partner Orval to be a monster hunter, he had him clean up the body of a beached whale to get used to the presence of death. The memory of that whale mixed with his thoughts of doubt during his 2nd death.
most of the text is obscured, but it's this:
"BZZZT you knew that the beached whale verily
from the outer otherside gargling on nothing
eaten by the seagulls with a rotten smell in
the middle of the afternoon on tuesday 3
years from now 10 years from now knows that
after death is. but even so you wkguibfs
sgkigd mbxzwuo l? why did you do that? why
did you do that? no one's here for you!
BZZZZZZZZT"
The MEMORY ENGINE was a machine created by scientists in Mueeth. It started off as something that simply read, recorded and played back memories. However, the team was ambitious to a bizarre degree; some members wanting to shift it into a tool for reanimation. The thought process of said members was this: "if we give certain types of undeads their memories back, they could act like they did when alive." while others thought: "it's not built to do that, it'd be more reasonable to let people rewatch their memories to help with grieving." Those who were firm on "bringing back the dead" pushed forward -- in the end all it resulted in was a murder machine that puppeteered bodies. After the lead scientist -- the Professor -- disappeared, so did the ENGINE. That is until Orval and co. located and destroyed it. The Professor was never found.
Before it received the function to make "puppets" it would play back memories in the form of audio along with a printed transcript. Memories of the deceased during their deaths are always greatly distorted and hard to understand.
edit: also the caption of the version i posted to main actually means something
zrzbel_erpbeqrq.6.20xx
rot13: memory_recorded
6.20xx is the month and year sycamore died the 2nd time
Alec + Wayne:
They’ve been together for almost a decade by now; they’re a really lovey-dovey type of married couple. Often not really in public though – Alec gets shy about physical PDA. As mentioned in their bios, Wayne is very flirty with Alec. He’s also really clingy and a bit too loud about his love sometimes. Alec sees his husband as one of the people who saved him and likewise Wayne sees Alec as the one who saved him, too.
When they first met, both of them were emotional wrecks – Alec even offered to kill Wayne. They ended up supporting each other well and came out of it with a healthier relationship. Though, Alec was super awkward when they started being an actual couple because he wasn’t used to the affection and couldn’t wrap his brain around someone being in love with him. Wayne has much more relationship experience than him.
They have a shared interest in different forms of art. They often cook together but Wayne’s sense of taste is off, especially with sugar (he can’t taste it well), so he’s prone to messing up. Alec helped Wayne learn how to fight.
To go more into detail about their meeting mentioned earlier: This happened while Alec was on his “death mission”. He ran into Wayne in a ghost town right as the other man had awoken as a vampire. Noticing how distressed and afraid he was, Alec said this:
“If you want me to kill you I will. If you don’t want to die, then live. If you need time then you can travel with me and we’ll die together.”
This strange way of reaching out was normal for Alec at the time. It’s his chosen method of pretending to be cold. Wayne took the offer to travel.
Deeper thoughts on them/ Author’s note:
My main thing I want to show with them is just, a very very very powerful love. It was a love that shouldn’t’ve lasted long at all – the type that normally wouldn’t end healthily due to the circumstances it was born in. There are signs of that in how they can’t be apart; how Wayne’s vampiric urges are aimed towards Alec. But ultimately they’re helping each other and the people around them in more ways than even they realize with the push of this love.
Alec + Sam (warning for animal death)
Most people never met Prince Samuel in person as he was confined to the castle. He had moments where he snuck out, though, which is how he had his first conversation with Alec. Samuel was in the middle of killing a rat, not understanding exactly why himself. The knight treated him not as royalty, not as unsettingling, but as a child. Gave him a simple lecture and washed the boy’s hands the same way he would've done with his niece. Alec’s understanding attitude made Samuel imprint on him immediately. Sneak-outs started happening more often. Alec would give him drawings, kickstarting Samuel’s interest in art as well as nature. They’d have casual conversations about “nothing” almost daily. And he’d call the boy “Sam”. So now Samuel was Sam. Sam knew about the rebellion plan, and when it partially failed, brought Alec to a secluded place to let the knight kill him in secret. The fact that a kid could even think of this idea devastated Alec, but Sam couldn’t understand why at the time. Of course, Alec would not do it. Sam would go on to save him from execution. Now, Sam has a room of his own in Alec’s house. “Samuel” has died and “Sam” can freely interact with people who care about him.
They mirror each other and can see that mirror clearly. Growing up mistreated, becoming standoffish and lacking affection as a result. Two people who saw themselves as tools. Two tools who believed they needed to die. They wouldn’t let each other die. Sam loves Alec to the point of risking his own life – you could call him a “doting son”. Alec doesn’t call him his son for various reasons, namely that he doesn’t think he deserves to be a dad. But Sam calls Alec his dad. He also likes copying his dad much to the man’s dismay. “Do as I say not as I do” doesn’t always work well with kids…
Alec + Miriam + Remmy
All three were drafted as knights. Alec rebelled but Miriam and Remiel felt that they couldn’t. Unfortunately, this led to them being forced to fight each other almost to the death. Fortunately, none of them died. Each one has a lingering air of guilt among them regarding this for their own reasonings. Miriam’s guilt is particularly strong. Even though Alec makes it clear he forgives her, she can’t help feeling uneasy and cautious. She has no problem with continuing to work alongside Remmy, however.
Alec + Ezekiel
Prior to the Queen’s death, they had only met in passing. Ezekiel was still with the church at the time. Many of it’s members regularly interacted with the knights to give prayers and medical attention.
One of Ezekiel’s only close colleagues is Phoebe, who directed him to Alec (or more like tossed the responsibility of dealing with Alec over to him) while the former knight recovered from injuries. He noticed Wayne wasn’t human and confronted Alec about it. Thinking he was the one dropping big news, Ezekiel was instead parried with: 1. Alec’s non-reaction 2. The reveal that Samuel was also living there. From then on they would work with each other.
Alec knew more about Ezekiel than the other way around due to how members of the church would gossip. Knowing the believer was trans gave Alec a sense of trust he normally wouldn’t have with any other stranger. Mutual understanding about their identities formed into a partnership too casual for the workplace.
Alec + Ty
Alec’s empathy strikes again by accident, dude can’t stop making friends…! He’s patient with Ty which she appreciates greatly. Even though he jokes around, he doesn’t make her feel inadequate.
Ty listens very intently to Alec but worries about coming off as annoying, or like she's putting him on a pedestal, since she knows he doesn't like that. Their relationship is sort of mentor-student, sort of friends. Ty reminds Alec of his sister. Alec seems to remind Ty of someone, but who was that again?
Ty + Orval
Orval is meant to be watching over Ty as her actual mentor. That isn’t going well. Orval sees Ty as a weak, immature hunter and Ty sees Orval as an old fogey.
*Orval + Wayne
Wayne has nothing against Orval but the old hunter certainly seems to have something against Wayne. The atmosphere gets very uncomfortable when it’s just the two of them.
Wayne + Sam
At first, Sam didn’t actually like Wayne. He saw him as a threat to Alec’s safety. That threat level quickly diminished with the growth of their shared love of music. They now have a very deep understanding of each other. It would be easier to convey their relationship with a song, so here’s a song: Zelle OST - Zelle (ADV game Zelle ED theme)
*Wayne + Mellow, Velvet, Novalis, Celeste
Mellow feels a connection to the main duo and finds themself confessing things to Wayne without understanding why. That’s the case with multiple of the non-human cast, though the rest know why they confide in Wayne. Velvet hopes he can manage to stay the way he is. Celeste’s loneliness disappears when he’s around. Novalis feels solace in meeting a demon he can reason with. And Wayne wants to help them all in whatever ways he can.
Spoiler Relationships
Wayne + Velvet, Raw Siren
Velvet does not want Wayne to become like her. Even though she’s lived this long avoiding killing humans, she doesn’t believe what she’s doing is truly sustainable. She has gone too far past what a normal vampire does and can no longer be satisfied with a small amount of blood. This causes her to worry she may have to kill Wayne when Dracula takes over. Siren also doesn’t want Wayne to become like him, in a different way. He was alive for so long that he lost himself. He couldn’t remember who he really was or why he was still wandering until Wayne made him remember. Siren asks Wayne to eat him, as he could no longer move on naturally.
Orval + Wayne
Orval keeps drawing comparisons between his past partner Sycamore and Wayne. Due to what happened with Sycamore, he’s assumptious and resentful.
The way Wayne clings to Alec, his wide smile, the look in his eyes – it all reminds Orval of Sycamore.
Orval + Sycamore
They weren’t just work partners, they were inseparable. They relied on each other heavily for support to the point of being over dependent at times, not too unlike how Alec and Wayne were. Sycamore trained Orval on how to use a weapon. Orval became a hunter because Sycamore was a hunter. The latter’s death absolutely devastated the former.
Young Orval actively wanted to ignore the fact that his partner was no longer human – even dismissing the other man’s attempts to talk about it. Sycamore was so focused on doing what he saw as necessary for his studies and Orval's improvement that he stopped holding himself back. His protectiveness became warped. It all snowballed into the worst possible outcome. Now much older, the sole surviving hunter feels constantly haunted.
i updated "dracula"'s bio a bit tonight just bc i've been getting different ideas
"Dracula"
A legendary being said to have ascended both humanity and vampirism, becoming truly unkillable. Tales about him vastly differ from each other and many are of questionable validity; to the point where it seems possible for his actual appearances to be equally inconsistent. Hunters believe this is the specific way he transcended death; by becoming a “concept” and no longer being a “physical person” – possessing whatever form is given his name.
What is known for certain is that the man now called Dracula was once human.
As “No one”:
Introduces himself as a man who no longer exists. He’s only able to manifest under certain circumstances. Though it seems he does have some kind of specific motive, he acts as if he doesn’t. Either way, his true self has been long forgotten. Like a black hole he’ll swallow any desires his target vessel holds. It is endlessly hungry.
As Wayne:
In this state the two men’s consciousnesses are not yet fully merged. Staying true to Wayne’s humanity, he initially carries out the former’s plan to isolate and avoid (majorly) harming humans. However he also exacerbates Wayne’s more unwanted, unconscious desires when given the chance. He doesn’t speak to people much but sometimes “converses” with Wayne by musing out loud.
He does not care for what’s right and wrong; it’s Wayne’s personality that currently holds him back. Additionally, he doesn’t care about power, wealth or material possessions either.
Alec’s presence causes his unnervingly calm demeanor to crack.
maaaaaade updates to sweven's writing n i'll paste them in here so you don't have to go fishing thru the google docs
link in case you're out of your mind n actually do wanna fish thru: X
dracula's bio has been updated; additions made -
"As “No one”:
Introduces himself as a man who no longer exists. Though it seems he does have some kind of motive, he acts as if he doesn’t. Like a black hole he’ll swallow any desires his target vessel holds.
As Wayne:
In this state the two men’s consciousnesses are not yet fully merged. Staying true to the “I will love for you” statement he gave Wayne, [Dracula] initially carries out Wayne’s plan to isolate himself and pushes away his family to avoid harming them. However he also stays through to Wayne’s more unwanted, violent desires too. He changes from a cold attitude into a frenzy the longer he’s kept from finishing the main plan."
changes made to the episode list -
some small points removed, other sentences moved around into other episodes (you don't need to know what they were but i figured i'd say so")
format of the doc changed to match the others (meaning i added an actual table of contents instead of just using bookmarks)
The episode "Who Are You?" was rewritten :
"One day Orval spots Wayne in the woods. It reminds the old man too much of his past partner, and he snaps. It results in a brawl in which both are immobilized.
Finally gathering enough energy to take shape, the so-called Dracula appears to a confused and vulnerable Wayne in his mind. In a way that feels more like a matter-of-fact statement than an offer, he tells Wayne that he’ll “live for him”, “love for him”. That they’ll “lose themselves in each other and become someone”. Without a say in the matter Wayne gives him control.
When he wakes up, he leaves Orval completely defeated, bleeding out on the ground."
added note at the end of the episode list -
"Sycamore haunts the narrative from the very start, even visually appearing almost like a spirit, but mostly only in ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moments
His first major appearance before it’s revealed who he is when he randomly appears in Ezekiel’s basement and causes him to instantly collapse, giving him sleep paralysis"
added in the "more character info" section of the main doc -
"Dracula presents himself as “No one” as if his true name has lost all meaning to him. He no longer has a face.
He pretends he’s a blank slate who only wants what his vessel wants, but that’s not truly the case. He has a seductive yet eerie air to him as well as an insatiable hunger."
i realized google docs lets you neaten up more now so i did that on all the docs lol. now they have actual table of contents instead of just the bookmarks (w 1 exception)
some changes were made to the sweven one w the big thing being the addition of a prequel
