Welcome To The Chateau

A worldbuilding blog for my in-progress suburban fantasy universe

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Lyall Fisher

Physical Appearance

Lyall Fisher is an average Caucasian 37-year-old male, 5’9” tall and weighing 155 pounds. He has tanned skin, gray eyes, and messy reddish-brown hair. He’s not as muscular as he used to be, but he’s by no means unhealthy.

As for clothes, he is a fashion disaster, on purpose!

Personality

Lyall worked as a cop in the city of Camphor until his boss fired him for not engaging in corruption. Needless to say, that experience greatly soured his view of law enforcement, and he’s now a firm believer in ACAB.

Currently, he works at the local library. It’s nice and peaceful, plus it gives him an excuse to look through books about supernatural stuff.

This man is addicted to coffee and out of fucks to give. He can’t function in the morning without a cup. 

As for the fucks he doesn’t give, here’s a list of things that don’t receive his fucks:

Fashion

How stupid his car looks with all the ridiculous stickers on it

What people think about his sexuality

What people think about him liking Pretty Kitties Adventures

Other people’s opinions in general

Being skinny

Lyall actually giving a fuck what you think is incredibly rare. Some members of the Society of the Supernatural haven’t even managed that. (If you’re wondering who makes the list, it’s Mary Anne, Amelia, Christine, and Ulysses.)

Abilities

Lyall’s magical specialty is fire– good thing “not setting everything ablaze” is one of the things he gives a fuck about!

His days as a cop have made him incredible at reading people. If he thinks someone is untrustworthy, listen to him.

His current job as a librarian has taught him good memorization and organization (the latter of which he sorely needed at the time he was hired).

Finally, he’s great at writing down notes in shorthand.

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Basilisk and Cockatrice

Despite often being conflated in fiction, basilisks and cockatrices are very different creatures in the ChateauVerse.

The Basilisk is an ordinary-looking snake sometimes mistaken for a black rat snake. It is particularly dangerous to magic users, as its venom works by turning the user's own mana against them. Thus, the effects of the basilisk's venom vary depending on a magic user's specific talents.

Cockatrices, on the other hand, are small ratites (flightless birds like emus or kiwis) about the size of a chicken. They exclusively feed on stone, and they possess a magical gaze that turns prey to solid rock. Petrified victims of the cockatrice rarely last long as flocks of them reduce the statue to rubble within minutes. Fortunately, their gaze requires direct eye contact, and so can be beaten with simple sunglasses.

I promise I'll get another character profile up soon, I've just been low on motivation lately.

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Lester Blakeslee

Physical Appearance

Lester is a tall, lanky 17-year-old Caucasian male. He is 5’11” tall and weighs 158 pounds. He has peach skin and long dirty blond hair held back by a rainbow bandana.

He’s into bohemian fashion, and his outfits reflect that. He also usually wears sunglasses.

Personality

Lester is the son of Elijah Blakeslee, a fast food tycoon who runs the chain restaurant Herbie’s, and his wife, Caren. Despite living a rather wealthy lifestyle, Lester always had a strong sense of empathy that compelled him to help those less fortunate than him.

His parents never understood his philanthropy, and see it as a waste of their money. Thus, Lester had to be sneaky in order to achieve his goals. He’s used to lying to his parents and has given up trying to get them to give a damn about other people.

He never had many friends growing up, due to his father’s tendency to underpay and mistreat his workers, and what little friends he had were often just after his money. For a long time, his only true friend was Tamela. (No shipping! Tamela is a lesbian and he’s aroace.) 

He jumped at the opportunity to help even more people as a member of the Society of the Supernatural. Whenever the Society needs something, he’s almost always the one to pay for it.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, Lester doesn’t have the best relationship with his parents. Aside from everything else I’ve mentioned, he’s deathly afraid of coming out as aroace to his parents, who see him as a means of continuing their bloodline.

However, he has a great relationship with his maternal aunt, Leontyn Withacee. Both are free spirits who desire freedom from others’ expectations.

Abilities

Lester’s natural magic is wind-based. He can create breezes and small tornados. With enough training, he might gain the capacity for limited flight.

He’s not very book-smart, except for math. He can easily add up finances due to the tutoring his parents forced on him.

While not very good at most academics, Lester is very street-smart and emotionally intelligent. He can read people pretty easily.

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Minor Worldbuilding Thing

Society of the Supernatural does nearly all their shopping at CheckMart, a massive department store that sells pretty much everything. "Check off everything on your list at CheckMart!"

Speaking of which, I might put together and post a shopping list of everything they bought shortly after the formation of the Society.

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I know it's been forever since I've posted on this blog (curse you, wildly fluctuating hyperfixations) but I think it'd be really funny if a kitsune just moved into the Chateau with no one's permission. It makes sense kitsune would be immune to magical mindfuckery, so what if one just waltzed into the Chateau and took up residence in one of the rooms.

She would definitely still pay rent though.

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Regarding the post you made about the mythological creatures, I can offer this wiki page which contains a hefty amount of mythological creatures and has helped me a lot.

Personally, I'm very fond of kelpies and the Bulgarian variation of the zmey, also known as Slavic dragon (actually, I'm fond of most Bulgarian myths and legends).

I don't recommend using the Wikipedia article on the zmey though. Most of the facts there aren't correct for the Bulgarian zmey, and there's barely any information there to begin with.

I could translate some information from the books I have, if you'd like? I was originally going to add it here, but I wasn't sure if you'd be interested, plus it's a lot.

Thank you! If you really want to send me the information, go ahead, but I won't mind if you'd rather not.

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Also, my apologies, I can't remember if you've posted about this before, but is there any forbidden magic? Or people/creatures one is not allowed to contact?

I apologize for not making it clear that the supernatural world was hidden from the normal one. There will be spells that one really should perform, but I haven't put too much thought into them yet

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Fortescue

Physical Appearance

Fortescue is a three-foot-tall golem made out of clay. His golden brown body is smooth and round, with two small holes in his face for eyes and four fingers on each hand. (Literally, just look up the Doodle God symbol for “golem” and you have Fortescue.)

Being a golem with no anatomy, Fortescue rarely wears clothes. However, occasionally he will wear a scarf or a hat if he feels like it. He especially likes straw hats.

Personality

Fortescue was created by the Terwilliger family to act as a butler. He’s a very old golem, older than the United States itself, with a long history of serving the Terwilligers. So with them gone, he’s lost and bereft of purpose. When Mary Anne, Jenny, and the Society of the Supernatural come into his life, he treats them as his new masters. However, they encourage him to think for himself, seeing him as a friend rather than a servant. (And yes, this character arc was inspired by Pearl of Steven Universe.)

During his long decades alone, Fortescue passed the time by taking care of the Chateau and reading the library’s books. Multiple times each. As such, he has the entire contents of the library memorized and can easily find the book the Society needs.

Sydney introduced him to anime, which he enjoys. (He likes subs and dubs equally.) His favorite anime is a pirate show called The Lost Treasure.

Abilities

Being an artificially-made golem, Fortescue is limited in the spells he can cast. He uses utility spells, such as telekinesis and spells to find small objects. While not very good for combat, which Fortescue rarely sees anyway, these spells are incredibly useful.

Fortescue was not built with the ability to speak, so the Society taught him how to speak in sign language. Having only four fingers sometimes makes it difficult, but he’s pretty good at it. However, the Society is still working on a way to give him a voice.

Despite his small size, Fortescue is surprisingly quick.

He also has a great memory and has memorized the contents of the Chateau’s library.

[inthefallofasparrow]

XVI. The Tower

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I would love a set of tarot cards in this vein.

Edit: posted this on the wrong blog but whatever

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Jenny Garrand

Physical Appearance

Jennifer “Jenny” Garrand is an average half-Caucasian half-black eight-year-old, 4’5” and weighing 59 pounds. She has golden brown skin, blue eyes, and afro-textured black hair in twin buns. Due to going on lots of adventures with Mary Anne, she has a somewhat athletic build.

She wears square glasses with thick purple frames and carries an average-sized pink backpack.

She prefers cute clothing, especially purple and pink, but her clothes almost always get dirty due to how active and nature-loving she is.

Personality

When compared to her best friend Mary Anne, Jenny is noticeably shyer and less confident, often following Mary Anne’s lead. However, she also genuinely loves the adventures they go on.

Jenny adores nature and carries a notebook full of the flora and fauna she meets. She loves gardening with her parents and growing her own food.

She’s not very confident in her own abilities, and often needs encouragement from others. Unfortunately, her progress in this area is hampered by bullies at school. It doesn’t help that Jenny, like Mary Anne, is very kind and doesn’t want to hurt the bullies. (Mary Anne often disagrees in that regard.)

Jenny is often the voice of reason for Mary Anne, always trying to get her to think before she acts. However, her low confidence and fears of ruining their friendship prevent her from holding Mary Anne back a lot of the time.

She is very conflict-avoidant and would rather run away than get into an argument. When forced into such a situation, she bursts into tears.

Unlike Mary Anne’s strained relationship with her parents, Jenny is very close to her parents, Odelia and Arthur Garrand. They were Jenny’s first choice when discussing members for the new Society of the Supernatural.

Abilities

For a child, Jenny has very strong magic. Her specialty is plant magic, allowing her to affect the growth of plants. She can make plants grow much faster and change the direction in which they grow. She also has a limited capacity for water and earth magic.

She inherited her father’s keen eye and can easily identify animal and plant species, even those that look alike.

Jenny is very athletic and healthy due to her outdoorsy nature and love of vegetables.

Being friends with Mary Anne has taught her how to be good at packing.

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While I make the rest of the character profiles, does anyone have any good obscure folklore/mythological creatures I could potentially sprinkle in?

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Merfolk

Merfolk in the world of the Chateau are the descendants of a magical family called the Mersons. Like the Terwilligers, they did not want to mingle with the magically-ignorant populace, so they turned themselves into sea-dwelling beings with a fish’s tail, scaly teal skin, octopus tentacles for hair, webbed fingers, and glowing monochromatic eyes. They can turn themselves into humans temporarily with some effort, which the females do to find males to mate with.

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I've decided that Devon's magical specialty is electrical/lightning magic rather than a mix of earth and plant. This way, he has his own element. Not sure why I didn't think of this earlier.

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Some fun facts about the Chateau itself

There are more than enough workshops in there for all the members of SotS to have their own little space to work on their magic and research.

Devon's workshop (where he studies magical creatures) has a taxidermied alligator in it, and no one knows why. It kinda creeps Devon out but since A) it's probably been there longer than he's been alive, and B) it fits with the theme, he keeps it.

There were so many enchantments on the garden to keep out weeds that the Society had to spend a week removing them all so they could plant what they wanted.

There is an indoor pool that is also kept clean via magic. Since it's unchlorinated, they could technically store aquatic life in there.

The property is protected with gargoyles, but they've been severely damaged and need repairs. Thankfully, Xavier is no stranger to fixing stone statues.

Ever since SotS moved in, the place has a very distinctive smell. Not good, not bad, but certainly distinctive.

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Youkai In Pine County

Pine County, the fictional county where most if not all of the action takes place, is in Massachusetts. And yet, you can find youkai, monsters of Japanese folklore, within this county. Why is that?

Youkai are indigenous to Japan, but Japan only has so much space. So, as youkai populations continue to grow, many emigrate in search of more places to live.

Kamaitachi (a weasel-like youkai with sickle-like claws, the inspiration for the Pokémon Sneasel) have taken up residence in Mt. Evergreen. Kappa start swimming in Duckweed Pond. And a kitsune may or may not have moved into the Chateau without anyone's permission.

The thing about kitsune is that they are always on the chaotic side of the alignment spectrum. (And they have illusion powers and shapeshifting. That's important.)

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I saw your post asking for asks, so I decided to check out your blog and see if any questions popped out to me. I haven't read it all, but I am curious why the Spring Court kidnaps children. You explained the reasons behind the other 3 courts, but why would the Spring Court do it? If anything, wouldn't their laziness encourage them not to do it?

I haven't read all your posts, so if this is explained later I'm sorry.

This is a very good question! Sorry if I wasn't very clear in my post. The Spring Court foists their children onto unsuspecting human parents so they don't have to raise them themselves, and keeps the human children as mildly entertaining pets.

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I think the best way to revive this blog is to request asks. So, go on. Ask me anything about the universe of the Chateau.

(For those of you who don't know what this universe is, please consult my other posts)