Boat Trolls planning thread! (full of spoilers, non-players enter at your own risk)

Neat. Maybe the Chernobyl guys could have ties to the eurasian branches of the Foundation, though they'd have formed up in the 90's.

Also, I always think it's a cop-out to point at some big human tragedy or accomplishment and say 'yeah, magic. the great composers were aliens and tsunamis are because of dragons'. like it gets a little tired after awhile? It'd be neater, to me, if someone was like 'CHERNOBYL IS A COVERUP FOR A nDARK MAGIC EVENT, IT'S A CONSPIRACY' no it was just a really bad nuclear accident, those happen, the only conspiracy was the government that fucked up trying to pretend it didn't fuck up so bad, which also happens.

The Chernobyl werewolves could be cheerfully proud of this. They live in the middle of a beautiful, wild, thoroughly radioactive no-humans-allowed forest and they're the spookiest thing about it.

Also I am pretty sure it is a hazing tradition to make all new guys go up and lick the elephant's foot. It's terrifying, then nothing happens, then two days later all your fur falls out and you spend the next week itching like a bastard while you grow a new coat. Extremely good for a laugh.

 

also, unrelated, but things i think werewolves would discuss endlessly: how's the weather, what have you eaten lately, what would you like to eat hypothetically, which mutually known families appointed which members to have puppies and what the hell were they thinking, what new families have formed up and whether or not they're nice.

so, basically chatty human small-talk, but addressed as intensely as like a bunch of drunk liberal arts majors going on about politics.

 

bunch of friendly eurasian wolves LOOK HOW FLUFFY

 

woo, making up linguistic bullshit on the fly! italics for loudly enunciated word-concepts, parentheses for implied context.

 

that's adorable. also, maybe bel can feel better about blurting out compliments as a wolf, i think erskin doesn't see any reason to censor his opinions on how cute or charming or pretty people are. if they are nice they should be told!!

that being said maybe bel would wish he had not been paying attention when erskin puts his chin on mr kadros's knee and says 'i find you very attractive.'

 

also, do you think bel should fess up about the werewolf thing if the visit goes well?

 

i like the idea of erskin giving bel's dad the ok, he'd trust bel's dad with his secret after only a day or two. alex seems like a very honorable dude, and the fact that bel and his dad only really have each other— and the military as a sort of distant proxy— for family would be really affecting to him. i think he would feel like, this man only has the one kid, no siblings or partners, and if bel goes off and founds a family and leaves his dad out of it, that'd be tragic, and if bel keeps himself from having a family just to stick with his dad that'd also be tragic. this line of reasoning might be amusingly weird to bel.

i think also alex's lifestyle would be one of those like, Baffling Human Things, to erskin. why is it just them? even if alex didn't want to remarry he could have gotten together with some comrade-siblings and raised bel with their kids. does the military really serve such an emotionally fulfilling function? bel at least had a close unit, where is alex's, why don't they live together, isn't that really sad? alex isn't even in a roving bachelor state or anything.

also the idea of erskin at the dinner table with alex, carrying on like a fussy old yenta, makes me smile. erskin is dead certain bel should find a few Mr and Ms Rights, settle down in a cabin in some mountains somewhere, and raise twelve or sixteen sweet-natured saucer-pawed sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, and second cousins. erskin is also very cheerful about the inevitability of getting dumped. it'd be a crime if bel did travel with him longer than a year or two, it's not as if erskin is going to have puppies and just look at those genes! bel is huge, smart, nice eyes, huge, very fast, handsome, nice teeth, very nice hair, huge, and good-natured. he is a prize! a prize erskin intends to award to only the best looking couple or trio, don't worry! he is not about to abandon bel in alaska to the first sled team that says 'hi there'!

it is probably a very unique emotional situation to realize your 'boyfriend' basically considers himself your debutante chaperone with benefits. in front of your dad.

 

also wow thinking about bel being a hapless debutante is a really charming notion actually. he's got to be presented to society!

 

LATE NIGHT WORD DUMP

i just roughed out erskin's family tree, based roughly on the size and shape of my own family: basically no one on one side, and a labrynthian clan on the other. i went to a cousin's wedding a few months ago and it was pretty funny because the girl marrying in had basically one sister, two parents, and a grandma, and on our side there were like fifty people running around being very ambiguously related to one another. several generations of siblings had several kids apiece, plus various extra members from adoption and assimilation. the bride's family looked kind of wild-eyed and intimidated by the end of the first dinner.

anyway, Aspera Manor has a fluctuating population of 20-30 werewolves. Lord Aspera was an only child of parents that died when he was young, had a very lonely life, fell for erskin's mom and probably his mom's sister and brother too, and wound up with several branches of that family tree kicking around his gigantic formerly-cavernous pile, and has been extremely happy ever since.

I think Erskin's the only kid between Lord Aspera and Erskin's mom, who I am going to name Susan right now because Susan is one of my favorite names. Susan's mom has a few older kids from prior pairings that stayed stateside with their own families. Susan's sister, mom, and aunt moved with her. Susan's aunt was nearly as much of a wanderer as Erskin and has nine or ten near-wolf kids by way of a whole bunch of subspecies of wolves, and Susan's sister has a few balanced sons and daughters with other werewolves. One daughter had a one-off balanced kid with a turned-werewolf and the other daughter and sons formed up a purely wild family in france with a few regular wolves and had nearly-wolf kids, at least one of whom's got enough smarts to be dumped at Aspera Manor for fostering. One of the wolves from the french family has recently been radio collared, so lately everyone's got a different opinion on what to do about that.

Erskin's wanderlust isn't unusual. Most of the balanced and human-leaning members of his family lean towards globe-trotting before they settle down, and he's probably got a few cousins that never did and just roved around until they got killed somewhere. The wolfish members of his family are a lot more shy and risk-averse, and stick to the safety and well-stocked forests of Aspera Manor's territory, or other satellite families' territories.

 

also re: erskin casually dismissing his own breeding prospects. erskin's english nobleman heritage makes him a very questionable breeding risk. like the stereotype in the rest of the world is 'well the english are already kinda inbred, it's a small fuckin island, plus haven't their nobles been marrying their cousins for like six hundred years?' like erskin turned out hot (thanks america) but who knows what kind of problems would crop up in the puppies. better not. lord aspera ended up with a kid of his own as a sort of 'lol why not' experiment on the part of susan's family, plus he was human enough to want an heir and susan was again like 'lol why not'. neither susan or lord aspera were interested in having another few once they'd successfully had erskin and he turned out cute and healthy, if not very human. lord aspera is very human and treats erskin as his son in the regular human sense. he's fond of his dozens of nieces and nephews and step-children, but erskin is his.

anyway erskin could get a dna test if he actually wanted to reproduce and comprehensively prove to a partner that he's not going to be making any pasty, neurotic, chinless babies with cystic fibrosis, but he isn't really interested in directly siring any kids himself the way his dad was or a few of his mom's siblings are. he's already got a ton of nieces and nephews and half-siblings, so it's no big deal.

(alex and bel might be a little surprised that eugenics is SUCH a thing for werewolves. but welp! they are like fussy foodies about the quality of ingredients you should cook with. also it's funny to think about erskin, who can barely read, going on knowledgeably about chromosomes)

 

oh my god bel tragically moping about erskin, that's darling. he sure went from 'this random hookup is cute but we'll just be pals. pals that hook up.' to 'HE's ... THE ONE' fast.

i assume mr kadros has been dealing with bel being like this for years. 'NO DAD SHE'S... THE ONE' son you are 9 and she is your babysitter maybe you want to hold off on planning the soulbonding ceremony for a little while