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

well, it's just fanon that trolls leave their lusii behind at ascension, the canon says they're supposed to be pretty much lifelong mentor/companions. why not have custodial quarters— aviaries, stables— come standard on troll ships? mindfang's spider lusus acted as the ballast for her sailing ship, i believe. trolls build big, anyway, i don't see why that architectural penchant wouldn't extend to their ships.

 

"no, you're absolutely right! and he's starting to see that with erskin, when erskin just stubbornly insists on not embracing this cool one piece adventure future. he's still hoping erskin will get on board eventually, but the longer erskin holds out, the closer he gets to facing that no, dude, you are going to lose so much important shit."​

hmm, another thought. erskin's spent a significant chunk of his life hunting and being hunted. he's paranoid and flighty because he assumes the worst of people, but that worst is generally best way they might go about hurting him. this leaves him ill-equipped for peacetime sociability but also, i'm pretty sure, vastly more prepared for a ragged, renegade life on the run than the honorable battlefield-officer bel, who thinks outside the box when it comes to strategy and tactics but i think doesn't at all understand yet that he's entered a campaign that he will never, ever be finished with.

so like, bel is indignant and pride-stung that erskin keeps suspecting him of 'horrible shit', but to erskin, bel is brilliant and capable, so of course bel would be a ruthless (efficient) and underhanded (sensible) opponent. and every time bel is like 'god no i'd never do that!' erskin hears '...because of my extensive brain damage'.

it would actually be pretty funny if, at some point, bel realizes that erskin no longer thinks he's smart.

 

also, holy fuck, would i like to play through an adventure where bel and erskin have to pull some evasive maneuvers and erskin gets very exasperated* it'd be pretty funny to have erskin be the confident skills guy for a change, and bel the guy who makes the bad decisions because he's operating on a different setting. i bet bel would make some really great facial expressions.

*he is actually already exasperated that he seems to be more intent on keeping galley a secret from strangers than his matesprit and auspistice are, haha.

 

Aw! Yeah, sorry, I know you've had a really rough time of it lately but I guess I wasn't thinking of that. I kind of just try to pick everything apart because that's what's fun for me. I'd be happy to help you like, think... of smart things for him to do? I've been trying to check in when Bel does something that could be bad for him, to see if you want to roll with the action or edit— so please do feel free to stop and roll the RP back any number of posts if things aren't going how you like, I'm totally fine with it.

Anyway I get you on the honor thing now! And, yeah, Erskin makes the wrong call a lot, and he is paranoid, and I don't blame Bel for being hurt about how, like, he kept treating Erskin as a partner and family member, and Erskin kept warily assuming him to be an enemy.

But I think he does trust Bel not to be sadistic, by now— he's trying to work around the bite thing, he's stopped looking for deeper plots underneath every little thing Bel does. He knows for certain now that Bel wants him to be alive and well, and when he stops mourning Cloris I think that confidence will show more.

 

my preferred method of writing is co-op, so I've learned to be perfectly zen about scrubbing whole chapters and starting over with some fresh ideas. it's always cool to see how else a scene could go. aud can attest how much erskin/cloris we ripped out and started over on.

 

a portrait of fluffcheep put down in a park

 

it's interesting that bel says erskin sticks by his friends— he actually doesn't make friends for longer than he's in town, as a rule, if he makes any friendly contacts at all. he's planning on being perfectly courteous— generous, charming, protective— to lainey and arguus until he leaves, wherupon he will consider their relationship concluded. they'll be categorized as 'people i met' and he'll forget about them after a while.

of course, i'm happy to have lainey and arguus stick around and maybe even take up a clientage, so he's just gonna have to deal. but it could be funny when bel says later 'so your friend, lainey' and erskin is like 'my what now'

if bel ever brought erskin to a party he'd see that erskin is graciously attentive towards anyone put in front of him, and gives precisely zero shits about them as soon as they leave. it's not deceptiveness on his part, he's just... solitary. he cares about being friendly, not being friends, i guess?

 

bel thinks everyone is so nice. it's super cute. also probably significantly obnoxious to erskin.

 

how long would you like to spin out this outing with bel and lainey? i don't know if i should think up more details to go into, or start summarizing.

 

i worry about us getting too far ahead of poor galley and lu in the timeline, so adding lots of extra little mini adventures is ok. i thought when bel got back to the hotel their sleeping patterns would be kind of fucked up? and bel would just doze through most of the 'erskin is being a jittery dickbag' drama like 'wow i will deal with this LATER'. if you wanted bel to engage with erskin's jittery dickbag behavior we could do that too.

 

we could have something explode in the coffee shop if you want to write some of bel being in Cool Leader Mode. lainey would be flappingly stressed out in a rescue situation and need extensive bossing around. that could be interesting. or we could actually plan out some future battle stuff for bel to get into this upcoming season and drag lainey (and maybe erskin) along to?