Hi! Just curious- I’m sure you’ve talked about it before, but how did florilukas meet/fall in love? And how did the whole Vampirism Thing impact their relationship?
Omg hi anon thank you for asking me about them I always love yapping ocs!
Florian and Lukas met as kids in a fancy boarding school back in 1849 (yes we got exact timelines). Florian could've probably had a tutor but the school was prestigious enough, and Lukas' family had to put their only son in the best they could manage (I think that they were along the lower levels of fancy among the school if that makes sense).
Florian, as the youngest of six brothers, liked the idea of finally being a big kid and start school by himself; however, he was a bit nervous over how much of a change it was to be actually alone among new people. Lukas did not want to go to school because he was a foreigner with poor English (his family was of Germanic descent so his first language wasn't English) and he hated crowds.
Result was one kid being scared and finding another kid that was even more scared. Florian saw Lukas alone and figured it would be easier to talk to him than to other kids already making friends among themselves. Florian chatted enough for both of them and his persistence in speaking to him made Lukas feel wanted in this new place despite being the foreign kid.
They grow up together and basically obsessed with each other, they go to each other's summer homes and all, the families become friends and florilukas start their business together, actually get together after their angsty teenage pining...
I think that the vampire transformation wasn't really that much of an issue for them, their biggest issue was that Florian was dying before that, and neither of them knew how to exist without the other. First thing they feel when they wake up dead is relief, because whatever this new horror is at least it's not tearing them away from each other. Def also something that makes them even more codependent because they isolate from everything and everyone except each other, probably goes into crazy territory but hey, they're both happy now.
Two year old doodle of their early designs as a bonus:
questions!! how does vampirism work in toahk?
they seem to be immortal, but is that conditional? they're mostly active at night, is that a necessity? and they still eat regular food, is blood like a crucial supplement to that? also. do they get any cool powers And do they know about any other vampires beyond the fucker who turned florian?
Anon. I'm so happy you have asked this thank you thank you.
I was thinking lately about condensing the toahk vampire lore that we've been making with @saint-starling and @honey-daisies but seeing as you're giving me the chance to do it now--
I'm using Lukas as my main example AND because in canon he's a huge nerd that loves researching and curating vampire history and trying to find what's real and what's just myth. What I'm gonna say is basically what he's found out in the story:
Are they really immortal?
Yeah! Unless killed they will just live forever. Lots of methods to kill vampires have been written in stories but Lukas knows that at least the wooden stake method is real (don't ask how he knows, it's not a nice subject).
However as vampires age and get past the 300 years mark if they're too isolated they'll develop what's basically vampire dementia and get very, very careless with themselves. Which ends in accidental deaths and the reason why so little ancient vampires exist. Rip Grekos.
2. Are they most active during the night?
Also yes! They are simply nocturnal and are built for the dark anyway (ex.: the sun not only burns but it also is simply too bright and they can't see that well).
The light sensitivity thing also gives them eyes that are basically like cats, pupil dilating and going needle mode depending on the time of day and the light (but I like drawing them needle-pupil all the time cuz it's cute to me)
3. Do they eat regular food?
Florian and Lukas do, but it doesn't hold any nutritional value. However, according to research and memoirs by other vampires, Lukas has concluded that going for prolonged periods of time without the taste of human food ends up making them unable to taste it at all, and it's irreversible damage. Of course it's all alleged but Lukas doesn't exactly want to test if this is true or not- sue him but he likes filet mignon too much.
TDLR: They can eat for pleasure, but only blood actually feeds them.
Also fun little lineup I did about how hunger actually changes vampires. It's a mechanism that basically assumes that the vampire will try to deny their nature by refusing to drink blood- in turn, their bodies transform to make it even harder for them to blend in with humans, and thus force them to acknowledge their hunger and feed.
(Lukas and Florian also have an added step to actually disguise as humans, specially when Finn is around).
4. Do they have vampire powers?
I feel we've only discussed compelling. Kind of a mind-fuck hypnosis, works best with eye contact and spoken commands, helps to make someone do something, or forget they ever did anything at all, like seeing something they shouldn't have.
We've discussed the idea of telepathy and I don't remember making it canon but it would be funny because I think it would be a learnt skill, and Florian and Lukas were isolated from their start as vampires so if they learnt it is because another vampire found these two overgrown fledglings that didn't even know they could chat with their minds.
The blood. Though.
I like the idea that drinking another vampire's blood kind of puts the vampire that drank it in a very susceptible state to the one they drank from. It's like the hypnosis but fully out of control for the vampire that was drank from.
It's also fun? The most basic vampire drug is drinking a buddy's blood so you feel all nice and floaty. The florilukas case is 1000000 times worse because they are disgustingly in love, so if Lukas decided to take a sippy from his husband it's gonna turn him into a puppydog for the rest of the evening until the effects pass.
But in the case of a fledgling drinking their maker's blood, the thrall is a million times more powerful, and it's absolute. All free will gone, basically a puppet. It's a terrible power imbalance.
5. Are there any more vampires?
Probably? There at least were, because Lukas has a bunch of old diaries and parchment in his office by vampires, but I think in present day it's a tiny population that stays out of each others' business (also florilukas are weirdo freaks that don't like the idea of meeting vampires or going out in general). Also making new vampires via turning is kind of a no-no because there's the idea that if you make a fledgling, when they get to their angsty vampire phase of hating immortality, they most likely will kill their maker out of resentment. It's like a given, so I imagine that a vampire tells their vampire buddies that they made a new one and their friends are like 😬😬😬"Okay man so it was very nice to know you-"
But also with Beans and Daisy we have this non-canon (at least not rn) concept of "the vampire gc" that Lukas and Florian are in and it's just basically updates on whatever old thing they do nowadays or Lukas sending PDFs about his latest essay about vampires.
Anyway the gc (once again rip Grekos):
6. The fucker that turned Florian
. Okay not really a question but I do wanna elaborate on that fucker indeed.
The vampire doctor. No name no face because we like the mystery of this figure in black, hat shadowing his face, leaning over Florian's bed. @saint-starling did make lore for him which iirc showed him to have simply been a twisted person even in life. Killed his maker also, and had fun exploiting people that were vulnerable. Florian was probably one of many other "patients" that were actually just a farm operation to have easy blood available, the illnesses not being an issue for this particular vampire.
And then, when the patients seemed too weak and the effort to bleed them didn't pay off, the doctor would just bleed them dry. The reason Florian is around for toahk to happen is because the vampire doctor thought he was... pretty. So much that he wanted to keep him (and we have to remember, a maker's blood-induced thrall is absolute. Florian as a vampire would've been both healed and easy to control). However, Lukas gets home early and-
Okay I have yapped enough I think LOL.
Thank you anon for letting me be ill about vampires🖤🥺. I have more stuff in my head but this is long enough, so maybe at another time I can speak turnings or other vampire things- or just about the characters! I have a lot about them... I like them :)
hiiii ghast! i would love to learn more about finn my beautiful sacrifical lamb. curious about what kind of things he might notice/not notice in the early days of working at the estate? what kind of assumptions is he making about his mysterious employers?
HAUNTED HI HAUNTED THANK YOU FOR THE ASK I LOVE YAPPING ABOUT THESE GUYS
Okay Finn. The thing with Finn. The TDLR is that he is happy not noticing things until the novelty of New Job wears off and he starts actually paying attention to things. Which is his first mistake tbh.
Early days are mostly him moving in to the servant house (convenient that he's allowed to be on-site cuz he's been evicted LOL) and getting familiar with where everything is and how his bosses want him to tidy and clean stuff- put books over there but if you find trinkets leave them in this other place and this specific table is a special material so you clean it with this and that, which is stored over here- etc etc etc. Finn's thankfully good at picking up his new tasks and it helps that he likes a clean space anyway, type of guy to clean to clear his mind.
Finn does notice odd habits and schedules tho, of his bosses. They're already gone when wakes up, and he doesn't see them come back to the mansion even thought they assure him they were in town for work-related reasons. Is there a car here? Must be, because they can't make it on foot down the hill into the forest. And when they ARE at home, Finn doesn't see them until 5 or 6 in the afternoon, them seemingly appearing out of thin air.
He's also seen them eat, but- wow, rich people must really be used to gourmet because their plates looks like too little. Maybe they have more meals than just the three? But he's never seen that either. Overall they're weird and eccentric and seem to have an active night life that Finn cannot make sense of. Maybe it's a rich people thing? Maybe...
The house is also strange. He doesn't get all the keys at once, which he understands, but then when he does get bedroom keys it's strange. One is blank, old clothes in the wardrobe and the bed feels dusty. It's allegedly Mr. Lukas' bedroom, but it doesn't seem like he uses it. Mr. Florian's bedroom looks live in enough, though Finn does see reading glasses on the nightstand that he's never seen Florian wear.
And about Florian and Lukas, he genuinely believes them when they say they're just friends. Finn sees a gold band on Lukas' finger and he can't resist asking, and the man sort of stammers and says that oh, widowed very young, he'd rather not talk about it... And Florian with that bohemian way of his just laughing like "oh no, I'm married to my art and that only!"- and Finn tries to recall about a ring but Florian wears so many anyway so he's not sure if it was a wedding band what he saw. But oh, how nice that these good friends keep each other company like this! How nice. He keeps sweeping the halls.
Honestly his biggest worry is when he accidentally discovers that his bosses are very much not just friends- because hey it's weird rich guys that seem to be very private and not have a public persona of any kind and knowing personal things about them feels like the thing Finn should be signing fifty NDAs for. But then that is pushed back in the list of things Finn has to worry about, because he finds weird letters and death certificates and pictures hidden in a storage room (which honestly I think Florian and Lukas didn't know were there. They're old, they forget) and it makes Finn just.
Too curious. And that's what gets him in trouble- well, depends if he gets caught. Which he won't. He just wants to take another look... and another...
