also tagging @afarcry5fromstraight, @socially-awkward-skeleton, and @miss-jennifer-cormier since y'all also asked for project feather and fang (fr tho i'm so touched that so many of y'all want to hear about my silly little og work 🥹)
project feather and fang is my jakesyb viking au with the serial numbers filed off. it's a fantasy trilogy(?) heavily inspired by the viking raids and danelaw in 9th century england. it follows Caedra the Ironbrow, a mercenary who was sentenced to a trial by ordeal after she was caught attempting to steal a horse from the local lord's stable. she's sent to the battlefield (along with other prisoners/criminals) to fight against the army of a man named Osmund, aka, the Heretic King. his army is led by his long lost-then found brother, Hakon, who was raised by the northmen/invaders. Caedra is captured in battle and Hakon chooses her to be his thrall as his war prize and takes her back to his settlement. from there, she must navigate a new world, one where she feels more welcome compared to the one she grew up in, as well as navigating the politics of Osmund's ambitions (and unwittingly/unwillingly getting swept up in them and being forced to be his pawn...or his knight, rather) while trying to reunite with her younger brother (who is on his own journey and ends up acting as a spy for Osmund's main rival/the king of the realm where Caedra is from)
also Hakon is the earthly vessel for the war god, Skeldr (often depicted as a wolf/with wolf-like qualities and his followers are called ulfheðnar) and Caedra is the earthly vessel for Skeldr's lover (still unnamed, but essentially a valkyrie who was turned into a raven, according to legend, to escape being locked away like Skeldr was/is). Hence, project: feather & fang.
here's a rough snippet from somewhere in the "fun and games" (save the cat writes a novel) section of my outline, where some young warriors are being initiated into the ulfheðnar, but caedra and the rest of the clan had returned to the longhouse to wait and see if the kids survive the night:
Vigdis waved her over and slapped the empty bench-seat beside her. "Come, sit."
Caedra obeyed.
The shieldmaiden snatched the pitcher from her hands, poured an unattended tankard out on the floor and refilled it. "Drink."
Caedra cradled it in her hands, but did not lift to drink. It felt wrong to celebrate after watching her master and his priest chain two young men to stones and pour a strange drink into their mouths. Throughout the feasting, it had been too loud to hear their cries and moans, but now that most of Hakon's warriors have succumbed to their cups, wind is not the only thing heard howling in the night.
A particularly pained scream slips through the crack in the hall's doors along with flakes of snow from the winter squall. Gooseflesh pebbles over her arms and the fine hair on the back of her neck stands on end. Her gaze does not leave that gap, as if expecting the men's corpses—or their ghosts—to walk through.
Bragi hid a smile behind the rim of his cup. "Do not worry yourself with the pups, Ironbrow," he said. "They walk with Skeldr now. Their fate is his to decide."
The longhouse's rafters groaned as the wind continued to bluster outside, angry and tempestuous as the storm that roiled in her gut. "How long?" she asked.
"Until morning," Vigdis said.
"And you just wait?"
Vigdis nods. "There is nothing else to do but hope they are strong enough to find their way home."
Caedra peered into her tankard and let the silence settle. All her life, she heard stories of the northmen's cruelty. How they pillaged, plundered, and killed without regard or remorse. It was, after all, their fault that she raised her brother when she was no more than a child herself. Yet in the half-season she spent among Hakon's clan, not once had she seen anyone—not the old, nor the sick or disabled—abandoned by their kinsmen. "This ritual," she said at last. "There is something I do not understand. You speak of yourselves and act as a pack. Hunting together. Fighting together. Feasting together. Why must this be done alone?"
They stared into their own cups the way one looked into fire, silent, deep in thought.
"Because some fights can't be shared," Bragi said. "Sometimes the only one there to pull you through is yourself. And once you know that—once you've done it—you find the living is easier when you've got others beside you."
"So you've all been through it?"
"All who call themselves ulfheðnar." Vigdis said. She lifts her wrist, brandishing the iron cuff, which sat dull and dark against her bronzed skin. "It is why we wear these. So we don't forget what cold feels like when you are alone in it."
"And to remember we are bound," Bragi shrugged. "To our god. And to each other."
This made sense to Caedra. Her own kith used arm rings to signify the oath-bond between lords and thegns, but those were typically cast in gold or silver, not the shackles or collars Hakon's warriors wore. Her gaze fell to the doors again, and she thought of the man weathering the cold just outside. He did not wear such iron.
"What of Hakon?" she asked. "He wears no bands."
Vigdis and Bragi exchanged a look that carried an entire conversation, one that Caedra was not well-versed enough in their ways to fully understand.
"We all had a choice," Bragi said. "We sought Skeldr out ourselves. Hakon did not."
Caedra frowned. "Then how did his god come to him?"
The skald shrugged. "We don't know. He will not speak of it. But I think he waits out there in the cold because no one waited for him." He drained the last of his ale and belched so mightily that a man beneath the table jerked awake, bashed his head against the underside, and reclined back into his cloak and furs with a pained moan. "Do not tell him I said that."
rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your wip folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. tag as many people as you have wips. people can send an ask with the title(s) that most intrigue them, then you post a snippet or tell them about it!
tagged by @josephseedismyfather and @miss-jennifer-cormier (thank you both so much~!)
a lot of my creative energy has been going into my dnd campaign recently, but i'm also trying to get back into fic writing, so here are what i consider to be my "active" wips (i.e., the ones i've glanced at within the past 6 months). also put the fandoms in parentheses for the non fc5 stuff.
chapter 8 (katc)
chapter 4: so what's your damage? (the damaged)
act II: incubation (the horror & the wild)
jakesybeli threesome
the one where johanna is obsessed with her "sitcoms" (dragon age)
post fort drakon rescue aethelsten (dragon age)
project feather & fang (og work)
and since it's been a while since i've shared anything and i haven't been around much recently, i'll just ignore the game's rules and blast my entire taglist (mostly to give folks a chance to opt out of the taglist or tag me back in case i missed one of these from y'all orz)
cannot wait to get through the workday and then go to the grocery store afterwards. gonna get myself the ingredients for mini charcuterie boards/snack packs and then go into werewolf au lockdown
there is a version of fc5 that lives exclusively in my brain that's more of a strategy and resource management kind of game (a la sid mier's civ series) that was brought to me by thinking about how the cult was putting bliss in the water supply and how the water treatment plant would probably be a highly contested location in the henbane that is constantly having skirmishes between the cult and resistance around it.
planning on breaking out some art supplies this weekend. moots if you want me to draw your ocs...drop me a line with the oc(s)+their tag(s)/face claim(s) so i can draw them :3
