#the kestrel

[spoiledblogif]

I have come with kestrel fanart as I had talked of before. Unfinished but pretty :D

I am crying and screaming! I love this so much! Thank you!

[bannedaxolotl]

Characterizing The Crown of Glass: or How I Learned to Love the Fucked Up Slumber Party

clemposting and palisade partizan spoilers below the cut. Shout out to Rudy and the Boys

Given that we know the crown of glass to be one of the most heavily populated places on palisade as well as a party hangout destination for Millennium Break, WE know that Clementine isn't just insane when she mentioned the slumber party. She just totally flubbed the delivery. Rolled a 2 on Performance. Beefed it in front of the rival.

But she is totally right. She KNOWS what millennium break people get up to in the crown of glass. The benders, parties, the debauchery. She has eyes like, fucking everywhere now that I think about it. And she loves it because it's her little kingdom that these revolutionaries get to frolic in. It is the source of her pride and a microcosm of what she would do if... no... When she seizes Stel Kesh, and therefore, the principality(her thoughts).

Which is made all the more hilarious and horrifying that Millennium break, specifically the Blue Channel, gave her the key to unlock the power of the Iconoclasts. Is she grateful for this? Perhaps. But there's so little surviving information about the incredible beings of truths outside of Divinity that she's just gotta wing it and make a bunch of em and see what sticks. Hey that one looks like a squid doesn't it. Time passes, and Ope, Horrors walk the streets now. Axioms, we're pumping out Axioms now baybee. They all look hella weird when you're stumbling between bars drunk as fuck. Some of them are kinda cute like when the creepy kids in the horror movie draw fucked up shit. Eldritch doodles. Freddy fazbear. She thinks she's a goddamn genius with the kinds of iconoclastic beings she can make and fully control. Axioms, not so much but she can understand what they Do (they just Are).

Then when the opportunity arose to take the pride of Kesh. She seized it. But not only with iconoclasts. She also led The Armed Forces of the Crown, Millennium Break Joint Forces, and her very own personal squad (guess what she named it) to utterly vanquish the Whitestar fleet. Or maybe she just distracted the main fighting force long enough to sneak behind them and capture Lander One. I wonder where we've seen that gambit before.

So when she said slumber party she really did mean girl's night at the crown of glass. That's what it does best. She's flying Gucci there right now playing Barbie girl on the sound system. The sound system is The Kestrel’s internal vocal chamber by the way. It sings.

[yascaret]

FFXIVWRITE 2021 || 3. Scale

“I don’t think you’re ready for it.” Baghak’s tone is just as chiding as it is amused as the pair of them ascend the narrow stairway to the Kestrel’s deck. 

“I am.” Lofn insists, her ears pinned back, her face twisted into a deep frown. The ship’s crew, for all their accommodations, have remained steadfast in their insistence that she not step foot on the deck. It’s too much, they have told her--each of them--countless times. You’ll be sick. Worse yet, You’ll be scared. Each denial has only bolstered her resolve to break free from the ship’s belly.

“Lofn.” Baghak’s hand closes around her wrist just as she reaches the door, and it is only because this is the first time she has ever heard her true name from the bangaa’s lips that she glances over her shoulder. Baghak looks at her evenly, and Lofn meets her gaze with the same dogged determination that had pushed her from her bed for this in the first place. A tense silence follows, and then the bangaa laughs, giving her a hard slap on the back. “Right. Go on, then.”

She takes more comfort in Baghak’s blessing than she’d like to admit, but spares it little more thought for now. The lock clicks, the door opens easily--easier than she’d expected, all told, given how fiercely they fought to keep her below deck-- and for the first time since the Estersand, Lofn feels the sun on her face. For half a moment, she closes her eyes and drinks in the warmth, the rush of fresh air as it unrests her hair in great, steady gusts born from the speed of their sailing...

There will be time to enjoy it later.

“Oi!” A voice calls from across the deck. A young, female hyur with roughly-cropped brown hair that Lofn has only seen a handful of times starts toward her from a nearby mast. A hand reaches out. “Back inside! You’re not--”

With the urgency of a hunt, Lofn darts forward, too fast for a hyur to even dream of catching up. The deck is wide, but it only takes her two, perhaps three moments to reach the railing--at which point she lurches, nearly tumbling over it from the force of her sprint. Beneath her, an unfathomably vast expanse of nothing stretches between them and the ground, the trees and buildings below naught but grains of sand next to the limitless blue in which they sail. It is all so small. She is small. Her heart drops, and then she fills her lungs with crisp, cold sky.

“Frightful, eh?” Baghak takes place beside her, clawed hands curling around the wooden railing.

“No.” Lofn stares at a distant, hazy smear of green on the horizon; a forest--or perhaps a jungle. “I am…free.”

[the-final-sentence]

That’s one of your better qualities.

Lloyd Alexander, from The Kestrel

[amaranth-rpg]

The Kestrel, boss of many bird fellows.

[spoiledblogif]

Ngl, I was pretty smitten with R (what can I say, I love trying to one up a gremlin/smart ass) but then Kestrel came in with a lot more heat than I was expecting

And now I’m obsessed with ruining their life (affectionately) and fighting with them like we’re both bleyblades to see who will top (emotionally, mentally, physically, ten bucks neither of them know in what capacity). I want to looney tunes brawl with this fae.

Like don’t get me wrong, I love R’s pretty boy/girl vibe and the understanding that they can have about being weird and snarking them to death.

But also my mc would be that weirdo to end up wrapping a scary powerful ageless being around their finger and only to introduce them like a regular boy/girlfriend and I won’t lie, the hypertension it would cause in Carter makes it even more tantalizing.

Lol it seems like the Kestrel has thrown a lot of people's ro choices into disarray.

And no worries, "an eldritch ageless being falling head over heels for a mortal and being referred to casually as their boy/girlfriend" is the exact trajectory we are shooting for.

[spoiledblogif]

Chapter 5 excerpt

“You should be careful accepting gifts, Sparrow,” they say. They glance at the performer and then throw the flower back at them, which elicits a shriek of surprise.

The haze of the wine lifts enough for you to be shocked, but the person is already leading you away.

“What was that flower?” you ask, stumbling over your thoughts as you try to organize them amidst the chaos in your head.

“A trick,” they reply and they grin at you, revealing teeth that are too sharp to be human. They remove their arm from your shoulders and starts to lead you by the hand, walking backwards as they do so. Somehow, the crowd parts immediately for you both, even though they aren't paying any attention.

Your head feels foggy and you can feel your alarm slipping away, even as you try to hang onto it. “What–what kind of trick?” you ask, your voice catching a little as you try to muster some semblance of lucidity.

“The best kind,” the person says. They take a step closer, until there’s barely an inch between you, and their playful grin becomes just a little sinister as their voice drops into a whisper that you can feel against your neck. “The dangerous kind.”

[spoiledblogif]

Yeah, okay Kestrel, just go off and do your own thing without me. It's not like I'm the boss here or nothin'...