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

haha poor dude. he is definitely going to have to get used to Hot Dad Aspera, who is already halfway to broody over lil bel and accelerating. he's not even that much smaller than erskin, he's just suddenly not twice as large? like a baby rhino is still fucking adorable even if it's still mostly composed of tank. it's a baby rhino.



also erskin is going to be increasingly upset over having lost his bel the longer he goes without him and the more time he has to fret that something is gonna go wrong and he'll never see him again. he may or may not drive young bel bonkers about it.

 

in mechanics bel is going to hear so many nice (and embarassingly gossipy) things about himself. the few surviving sunslammer crew remembers that he's polite and practical and will get sweaty with them during all-hands-on-deck rush jobs, the one or two zero sum transfers that wound up in mechanics (most of them folded into security and administration) of course are admiring of his heroism in saving them at the expense of getting bit himself, and the half or more of the mechanics that are acclimating carnival transfers are raw and suspicious and jumpy and stabby but incredibly fucking grateful for whatever circumstances got them out of clown hell, even if none of them have gotten to know him yet and are a little suspicious of everyone's descriptions.

the crew that have known erskin for a sweep or so are of course entirely fond of him, in a very proprietary family kind of way, the zero sum crew have been around long enough to be impressed—if incredulous— and the carnival crew are still way too fucked up to actually believe erskin isn't some kind of monster sicko like all their previous superiors.

 

poor lycaon probably wet his pants in terror while his protector was yelling at the seatroll :P

 

as for gossip, i bet bel will be VERY surprised to hear how personable and fun at parties big bel is. once he got over the initial stickbutt phase, he was dancing with the crew and wearing goth bling with erskin at murfeys and everything! smol bel is NOT a party person and the last party he went to he kind of killed everyone. he will be most confuse.

 

ok would getting small bel drunk be any fun or would it just be sad, because the idea of bel being tipsy and giggly and sitting on grownup pancho's lap all scandalously (while he daringly hateflirts with erskin) is very cute.

 

oh no that's such a cute picture but i'm pretty sure he'd just be a sobbing wreck if his inhibitions were removed, sorry.

lycaon is adorable and we have to keep him, ok?

 

btw how tall is this erskin? teen bel is six two and erskin seems to be taller than that?

 

also: reminder that bel is wearing a flower in his hair rn

 

erskin: boy i'm so mad i want to mack on this small cute infuriatingly defiant kadros
sad clown victim: exists
erskin: okay now i'm TOO mad

 

i've been assuming bluebloods hit maybe mid seven to eight feet as mature adults, and the condesce is somewhere around ten, not including horns, and select indigos hit Hell No size. midblood trolls are closer to normally tall humans and lowbloods are the same size as regular humans.

captain erskin's probably 6' 8" ish now and is not likely to hit 7' for a century or more. younger 8 sweeps erskin is like... idk, 5'10"—5'11", the shorter side of average for a seadweller his age, because their growth curve starts obviously lagging behind blues and indigos around late puberty. but older erskin is very obviously too short for his caste and age, he was still probably 6'0" when he was 10 sweeps due to malnutrition.

 

ok, headcanon accepted! then teen bel is taller than most of the low and midbloods, except his new giant squirrel friend, but adoratiny compared to other highbloods. :D

 

yeah giant squirrel friend is like ridiculously enormous for brown, like steroid-huffing boss ruffianihilator size, and that's either what marked him out to be a clown toy or they made him like that as part of the joke.

 

erskin knows the commander is a pretty decent guy who doesn't kick anyone around and this is a trait likely to hold steady across all universes, even universes where he's a firey short-tempered adolescent. but he also knows a lot of egalitarian ideals get a lot less shiny when you actually have to take actual orders from an actual gutterblood who can't possibly know better than you. also, this is bel, who knows better than everyone. erskin would be completely unsurprised if teenage bel thinks condescending blueblood's-burden benevolent racism is the same thing as legitimately respectful politics.

 

i mean, that's actually really plausible. if galley hadn't weaned him of it he'd still be like that, probably. i'm sure big bel was like that until he was down in the trenches with the lowbloods and got to know them individually.

 

i would imagine coworker trolls fall asleep on each other in like, trench-and-seige comrade kind of situations. i'd think it would be less cute and more shockingly unusual to see subordinates curl up with officers and says a lot about how much erskin must hang around with the lowbloods and help out at crunch times. but heinsz is definitely one of the last remaining lowbloods who 'raised' him, so she don't give a fuck about his rank, really.

also she stone cold don't give a fuck about a lot of things. i like her.

 

i think bel must've assumed they're moirails.

 

do you wanna wrap this scene up and go to some other situation?

 

sure, but i don't have any ideas about what.

 

btw i am crafting mines, might be long pauses.

 

hmmmbbp.

-i come up with a bunch of mechanics to come in and meet bel? we skip to some kind of lunch break he could have with them and catch up on all the hot gossip.

-skip to the next day when erskin checks back in on him to see how he's doing? requests bel's assistance to help him fix some vent/pipe stuff.

-something with pancho if you felt like writing that, i'm sure it would be fucking adorable. maybe she drops by with erskin.

-lainey drops by to have a giggle at baby bel.

-bel goes home one night and finds erskin hanging around with lainey and pancho and arguus and murfey and they're playing troll bridge (haha) or something and bel knows it's a bad idea to hang out with these guys but also there's near-lethal concentrations of attractiveness in one room so he's not going to be making any good decisions.

-bel goes to find galley and it is upsetting for everyone