#velan

[twi-quotes]

That was Izril for you. Gnolls and Drakes and Humans, all of whom could kill each other so efficiently they barely had time enough for one another.

It made her miss the Antinium Wars, even Velan the Kind, it really did. Peace was harder than war with all the idiots clawing at each other for power. Magnolia Reinhart sipped at her tea to wash the disgust off her tongue.

~ 7.54

[oozeandgoo-art]

Transcript under the cut:

Panel 1 Investigator (left): Look, Mrs. Oserisades- Ath Velan ket'Oserisades (right): Call me Velan. Investigator: Um, Mrs. Velan. We're pretty sure we have a link to your clan and Investigator: um Investigator: notorious pirates. Velan: My, that's an embarrassing mistake for the EBC's tax offices to make. Velan: A waste of both our time, really. Investigator: Not so- Velan: I guarantee it is. Investigator: Look, your paperwork seems clean, but- Velan: Because my clan has done nothing.  Velan: Have some tea. text by Velan's ankles: shoes off means she can transform very quickly - prepared for violence! Velan's stool: chest full of extremely incriminating records Card at the top: The notorious pirates in question left the Oserisades camp 20 minutes ago. Non-card text at the top: Ath: A title, indicating the leader of a dragon clan. The EBC: The Ever-Burning City, a city-state with a military-meritocracy & a monarchy slowly trying to grab at more and more land for the last 40-odd years. Very serious about both piracy and tax fraud (Velan is involved in both).

Panel 2 Investigator: With respect, Mrs. Oserisades- Velan: Ath. Investigator: What? Velan: My title is Ath ket'Oserisades. Investigator: Mrs. Oserisades. Investigator: I know that you've done it. Investigator: I just need to prove it.

Panel 3 Velan: Hmm. Velan: Color me concerned. Velan: But it sounds like Velan: and do correct me if I'm wrong Velan: it sounds like you have no actual proof.

Panel 5 Velan: Don't worry, kid.  Velan: We're all wrong sometimes, ha ha. Velan: I can tell you have a lot of passion. Velan: You'll make a great investigator someday. Velan: You should drink your tea. bottom card: End.

[bitegore]

for the spotify ask thing: Velan; 81 (when you've time, given that hopefully you're hooked on R by now...)

Velan ket'Oserisades + Dark Ocean Summoning by Old Gods of Asgard (Poets of the Fall)

Velan fell through the shadow and landed on the other side of the wall, tucked low in case anyone was in there. The hall was empty. Perfect. She'd be in and out, with any luck. She'd memorized the map, but nonetheless it was drawn in short, fine lines on the back of her hand if she hadn't. It wasn't like if she was spotted she wouldn't be completely screwed anyway. She'd kept Vakori's good-luck charm on her wrist, too. Not that it was necessary. She knew what she was doing. She glanced down at both. Two sets of walls to the right from where she was. Then two down and four forward, easier to do on the sub-basement. She cracked her neck, feeling the joints between her bones vibrating still after the last step, and started forward. The part of this which was an assassination was easy enough that Velan only spent two minutes on it, something approaching a personal record. She stepped out of the darkness into the chamber, and then when she saw the three people inside they were arranged easily for her to dispatch. She stabbed the one standing in shadow through the throat in one step, and before the swing was finished had already begun stepping aside to a few feet away from the next (who hadn't yet had time to react) to put a hole in their belly. By then the third had a chance to startle away from his compatriot and she stepped again through the shadow to cut him off from the exit, and then cut his head off for good measure. Then she went back and put a stiletto through the second one's eye, because they hadn't died as quickly as the other two and she didn't need them getting to a healer. The papers were harder to grab, but not by much, and she was more than capable of making judgement calls as to what was worth the risk and what wasn't. Sure, she'd lingered longer than the plan had strictly asked for, but Vakori needed information and Vakori wanted as much recon as they could get, and Velan and Rocaim were working hard to make sure Vakori had as much as they needed. So she made it happen. By now the shadows weren't buzzing inside her so much as biting at the insides of her joints, because she'd gone through too many too fast and they were clinging to her too tightly, but she could tell she had at least ten or eleven steps left in her before she had to really call it quits, and she could make that happen. She thought. It was never getting in or getting anything done that was hard. it was the getting out. But Velan was good at this. They'd been calling her a prodigy for the last eight years and she'd been getting better still every time she did anything like this. She'd make it happen.

[oozeandgoo-art]

everyone is sooo in love with vakori on account of le is so cool and smart and deeply pragmatic and is also completely batshit insane

[bitegore]

OC SMASH OR PASS: Velan ket'Oserisades

(i have drawings of her i just hate them lol)

This is Velan! She is very busy on account of she's currently running several, concurrent, tax fraud schemes, is busy leading a group of people as their borderline-autocrat, doing mediator shit, and keeping track of the logistics for all of that. And making sure everyone gets fed. She is forty or fifty years old and does not need all this (well, technically, eighty-eight, but dragons age slower than humans). She also turns into a forty-foot-or-so dragon and can teleport to anywhere there's a shadow. She doesn't use the latter very often since she's not an assassin any more, but she used to. Most of the time, she's doing paperwork.

PROS:

extremely on top of everything. you'll never run out of condoms, lube, toys, or anything else you need if Velan is there alongside you. So long as you ask.

Been around the block a few times. Knows what she likes. Will tell you, not shy about it. Takes out a lot of the guesswork

Never involved in drama because she's way too mature for that

Probably one of the most pragmatic people you've ever met - she has her priorities all figured out. When she explains things it seems crystal-clear and obvious.

CONS:

Wayyyyy too busy to plan for you. You have to get everything together and get her to put the work down.

will not put up with boring sex or unpleasant relationships if she doesn't have to, which she doesn't, so you better get creative

Either you travel with her and join her clan as a traveling-companion or she vanishes off the face of the earth for all but three days per year.

You will always, always play second fiddle to the tax fraud schemes. They come first. You will be expected to deal with this like it's not upsetting at all.

Probably one of the most pragmatic people you've ever met, meaning that if you start being a problem, she'll just cut you loose. When she explains that, it'll seem obvious, too.

I want her. I won't even lie. If you don't smash I will.

SMASH OR PASS

SMASH

PASS

Voting ended onApr 19, 2024

[oozeandgoo-art]

also a handful of polly-pocket style tiny low-detail doodles of ocs of mine for nefarious purposes, the first three cut from the last piece i posted

[bitegore]

aggafshfdsgfhdfh wait. various magical girl transformations for my chaotic ass shitlord ocs

rex: he spins around and gets sparkly and then at the end of it just shoots you in the face because you were distracted by the lightshow. get fucked. hesitation is death loser

felyx: has a proper magical girl transformation and everything, shows up in a cute little purple dress with flowy sleeves, except at the end of the lightshow he just fucking disappears in a puff of smoke. so does your wallet

azkaileh/ayleh: magical-girl-transforms from big badass lady to bigger badasser lady. she gets a cool spear for her trouble but she doesn't use it because she can already shoot fire from her hands and punch you through walls without it and that's more fun

taz: magical girl transformation does nothing but fluff his hair up, unless he's in dragon form, at which point he immediately starts glowing. he gets more of a super saiyan transformation than anything else except he doesn't go blond. he used to transform cool armor out but he thought it was uncomfortable and petitioned the board of magical girl transformations until they'd let him stop

adder: are you prepared to be lit on fire and/or frozen to death? he hasn't done the magical girl thing since he was like 18, joined a pirate ship, moved to a different country, transed his gender and learned that there were more effective threats. now he will just put a hand on your shoulder if you're getting heated with him and smile and let you know you're fu-hucked if you want to keep on in this vein, but if you'll cut it out we can all be friends so why don't you sit the fuck down? but his magical girl transformation gives him a giant fucking sword and a cape that changes color every time you look at it

silas: she's already time-unlocked so frankly the magical girl thing is not that scary in comparison. she also doesn't use it often but it gives her a strength buff so it makes it easier for her to lug her plant experiments around. she also gets a giant sword and a cape that changes color every time you look at it but she doesn't wear those around while moving science from place to place, obviously, she just takes them off and leaves them somewhere safe. she's petitioned the board a couple times for it to be switched into a pen or something she can use for scientific purposes but they're not going to bend on the protector/fighter focus of the transformation so she just has to deal with that

velan: i cant say "fuckoff big clipboard" but i am sorely tempted to. if she were a mage she would use it to automate her fucking paperwork. she was the closerverse version of spec ops, she would be personally offended by the lightshow thing..... maybe she gets like shadowstep and shadow blades. i think that'd fit her personality. there's a big lightshow but she vanishes out of it literally the second it starts going and while you're watching she cuts your spine out of your torso. or something. but for the most part these days she doesn't use it and complains about how she can't use it to do import forms and taxes with

nadiya: FUCKOFF BIG SPEAR nadiya is already a spear person but her magical girl transformation is like "big spear. on fire. magic fire. stabs you and you burn green. get rekt" (additional post-story leveled-up diyel variant: still a giant spear but now it's a little more like a javelin. he can throw it off taz and hit people with it with uncanny video-game-tracker-style accuracy on account of how its a magic weapon. it explodes. no one wants to deal with him)

redshift: its just his takeoff/launch sequence. it is hot pink and full of sparkles. the sparkles are highly toxic and very hot ofc but they sure are pretty. but this has always been how i imagined him turning into a live sparkly triangle LMAO

[bitegore]

For the OC situation game:

Velan -

3. Your OC unexpectedly wins a prize in a competition or quiz (ideally in a situation where it has tax implications. Actually I would also like this one for Haven)

20. Your OC loses something important to a partner or close friend - perhaps something of great sentimental value or simply very expensive.

35. Your OC finds a lost child in the marketplace or commercial district.

Erica -

32. Your OC is being lectured, or possibly even scolded, by someone in a position of authority. (and here we mean authority in the sense of your universe; someone who can do her real damage if offended but may be bound by specific rules)

44. Your OC is called upon to recount an embarrassing or comic incident in which they have been involved.

50. Your OC finds something they though had been lost forever long ago - perhaps a letter from a friend, a picture of a family member or a souvenir of a even many years before.

H'zar -

8. Your OC is handed a baby to hold whilst their parent attends to an emergency. (pretty sure the answer will not be good, but I want to know how)

31. Your OC wakes up with a thumping headache and no clear memories of what happened the night before.

44. Your OC is called upon to recount an embarrassing or comic incident in which they have been involved.

(There's a lot there, so feel free to pick and choose if you don't fancy them all...)

I'll put this one under a cut because it's pretty long. Even just answering the first question is like a full page length lol.

3. Velan unexpectedly wins a prize in a competition or quiz (ideally in a situation where it has tax implications.)

So, Velan wins the lottery? LOL

Objectively, though, the first thing she does is open a new bank account in a relatively large polity somewhere in the central-west with a favorable tax policy that she does not do business in. She has the winnings put in the name of - if she won it has to be her name, doesn't it? Only her name, though, instead of a more traditional shared account. This is relatively unusual for her - usually she gives that money directly to people who will hold onto it for her without necessarily tracking it super closely - but the point here is to have reciepts, and to have those reciepts outside the hands of either empire directly because financial holdings in one empire have high import/exchange fees in the other - it's easier to exchange them from a third currency that has better exchange rates with both, even if they're not necessarily the ideal ones. She also makes sure to get a good interest rate so it appears like she means this to be a serious bank account, even though she plans to empty it as soon as possible.

Next, she spends whatever amount of it is necessary to get herself out of the Ever-burning Commonwealth tax bracket she's suddenly pushed the clan into, because the EBC's non-resident tax brackets are more unforgiving and broader, and focusing on the Eastern Dominance is less necessary - probably in materials and infrastructure - and writes them off as business expenses. To do that, she also goes to the EBC and spends them in legally-trackable ways in the EBC instead of out, because there are better tax breaks for in-country spending. (The EBC is one of the two big empires, and the Eastern Dominance is the other. They are in a sort of financial/proxy-based cold war at the moment.)

Then Velan makes a mid-sized charitable donation to the train-line expansion fund (a public service in the EBC), which is both another decent tax credit and something completely explicable as motivated by self-interest.

She invests the rest in... I really need to decide what I'm doing with the investment market in the Closerverse, because I like the idea of a stock market but I keep changing my mind on how it works. Nonetheless, there is some sort of speculative investments market, and she's putting the rest into it, across exclusively central-southeast and south-central-desert polities that can be (generally, anyway) relied upon to report haphazardly back to the empires and which have poorer investment markets, because she's going to launder that money into the pockets of her clan without reporting it as anything but losses on the market.

She has to pay six months' worth of doubled taxes in the EBC even with tax breaks, and a year's worth of taxes at a 35% increase in the Eastern Dominance, but that's fine. Investment in tools and materials goes further than hard cash for the most part, and she is getting that money back.

Lastly, she has to hunt down whoever entered her into that competiton, quiz, or lottery in the first place, because she has spent a lot of time keeping a deliberately low profile and if that gets jeopardized she's not the only person in danger, so she needs to impress upon them exactly what a bad fucking move that was. At which point they'll point out that she's doing all this unnecessary tax fraud, probably, and Velan will explain that those are different things, because the people who will end up investigating Velan for tax fraud aren't the same people as the ones who will come kill her and several other people in the clan if they find out she or they are alive. Really awkward conversation for whoever that was.

20. Velan loses something important to a partner or close friend - perhaps something of great sentimental value or simply very expensive.

Not unlikely, and it's happened before. Velan travels a lot. She's also had to own up to worse things, and has become - not comfortable, exactly, but familiar with the process of explaining a mistake and finding solutions. She tells them as soon as she finds out, and then offers to either try to look for it or replace it.

Expensive goods are much easier to deal with - Velan is connected with pirates, who are connected with other pirates and thieves. She's also capable of (basically) teleporting. She can just steal it. Not the ideal thing, but some obligations (says Velan) transcend laws.

Sentimental items... well, Velan will go back to where she thinks they might have lost it and look. No guarantees, though, and there are more important things to do. She can't spend more than a few days on it. Most of the time, people understand.

35. Velan finds a lost child in the marketplace or commercial district.

Velan takes taking care of kids very seriously. She would... well, actually, first things first, she'd make sure the kid had eaten and drank something in the last three hours, and if they hadn't, she'd send one of her clanmates to go buy them like a small meal and a large drink (Velan is a big proponent of hydration). She'd send a handful - probably 3-5 people - to go find out if anyone has heard about someone missing a kid. And, if Velan is there and she hasn't sent a Sylath while staying back to handle her stuff at the camp, it's not a shopping trip, but Velan helping run a stall where they're selling clothing - Velan is a tailor and clothier - and metal goods. So in the meantime she'd bring the kid back to the stall and have them sit there in the shade/warmth until they find the kid's parents.

Presumably they do. If they don't, Velan is just going to take this kid home and keep them. They're a small clan, they have room to take in a few extra faces. And she really does take this one seriously.

3. Haven unexpectedly wins a prize in a competition or quiz.

First he's surprised, because if he didn't expect it, he didn't cheat. Then he's very smug, because he didn't cheat and he still won. Then - if it's not first place - he gets offended, and resolves to cheat next time.

Then he brags for the next three months anyway.

32. Erica is being lectured, or possibly even scolded, by someone in a position of authority. (and here we mean authority in the sense of your universe; someone who can do her real damage if offended but may be bound by specific rules)

Erica is very contrite. She understands exactly what the problem is, and sees why it was definitely her fault, and she'll fix her behavior immediately (she says). She'll even take initiative to make sure her next chance to do the same thing is handled correctly (she says). She certainly is never caught for the same problem twice.

Internally, she is keeping a ledger of every time they "insult" her (all the way through to "you did this wrong" if she thinks she didn't) and resolving to get even for it. One day. When she can do them real damage instead. She isn't bound by specific rules, after all - and if she is, she disregards them when she can get away with it!)

44. Erica is called upon to recount an embarrassing or comic incident in which she has been involved.

Depends who by and what kind of incident. if she has to maintain a relationship with them and they haven't offered her insult, or she has to play "nice" for want of consequences, she'll just do it, and play up whatever reaction she thinks they're looking for - usually good cheer, sometimes mild humiliation. With Haven specifically (instigator supreme), half the time the reaction he's looking for is anger, so she'll let her frustration and annoyance show, but definitely not with anyone else.

if she doesn't have to do any of that, she's very cool about, like. Not engaging with the question and turning it around on them. "You want to hear about me? That's interesting, considering you --" and then she picks something she thinks will bother them worse than whatever it is that bothers her.

If it's a funny story and she doesn't think it reflects badly on her and she can do whatever, she might just recount it; it depends on whether or not she's in a good mood.

50. Erica finds something she thought had been lost forever long ago - perhaps a letter from a friend, a picture of a family member or a souvenir of a even many years before.

I have no idea. She's singularly unsentimental. I think she'd just throw it out. She has her own memory for that, after all.

If it's a useful item, though, she'll keep it and use it. But a letter or a photo, or a souvenir... she's not keeping it. Knicknacks are for other people.

8. H'zar is handed a baby to hold whilst their parent attends to an emergency.

This is a question of disposability. Who is the parent? Do they matter? Are they in public, with people who matter? Does the situation matter?

H'zar is quite charming in public when he thinks he's around people whose opinions might have an impact on his career. In which case, absolutely no harm will befall the baby and he'll probably offer his most sincere assistance with the emergency at hand.

If not... well, who's to say. If he's in a hurry he hands it back. if he's in a bad mood he hands it to some random person in the room. If he has a grudge against the parent that baby is going in a garbage can somewhere and he's not telling anyone where. Or maybe he'll just hang onto it and give it back, normal as anything. Entirely depends on what the mood he's in is.

31. H'zar wakes up with a thumping headache and no clear memories of what happened the night before.

Okay. Imagine TF: One Sentinel Prime. He'd call Airachnid and ask, right? H'zar is calling his personal aide and asking if they have any idea what happened and if there will be any political ramifications, and if there are, to write them up and send them to him to look at. And then he's ordering a bunch of Space Ibuprofen and taking a nap.

This is not exactly a familiar situation for H'zar but it's sure as hell not that unfamiliar, either. What's the point of getting Ultimate Power if you can't throw your power around to get into private clubs and bars and do specialty Space Cocaine with extremely rich assholes? Says H'zar, anyway.

44. H'zar is called upon to recount an embarrassing or comic incident in which they have been involved.

Again: by who? Are they disposable? Because they're getting held at gunpoint. Are they not? He plays along just fine, and doesn't even really mind. it's different when it's a "real" person.

Well, actually, now that I think about it, he might be offended if it's an alien from a species he doesn't like even if they aren't disposable... he'd still bite his tongue and play nice, though.