Kitchen And Craft Wix Corner (Exciteable Bird, Enter At Own Risk)

adding on from that and Hazel's backstory....................

Spoiler: probably upsetting, more rambles

There used to be magical creatures, hence the name of the feywoods and her title, but probably... most are extinct or good-as, they were a few of the last peoples able to throw real Wylders but their life force is bound to their leys and the land and the magical wellsprings and the more rigid magic became and the more leys were conquered and walled off the more the dryads and unicorns and fae and mers and so on started weakening, withdrawing and dying. There's some non human peoples who interbred and intermingled enough with humans or had complicated rituals to facilitate a decoupling that they are decently certain they will survive the cataclysm that's approaching but it's like literally anything but ideal.

concept: Orc-elf bastard, noble family's Big Walking Symbol Of Shame on the elf side, Family Disappointment of a long line of runeblade warriors on the orc side, who is genuinely just a useless bard and party gremlin forced into a position of political and religious authority by virtue of being the first Wylder either people has had in nigh on three centuries and they would very much like to not have to deal with this shit at all. Their domain is Inspiration and they have to unearth myths about both the song magic of the elves and the dance magic of the orcs to come into their own.

 

orc-elf bastard is titled Cliffdancer, their name is Dram, they use they and he pronouns (no gender with left masc) and they're a complete fucking mess, but they're ripped af at least

 

A Good!

 

they are v squeamish about blood which is why neither of their family's Mage Schools (very herbalism centric healing magic on the elf side and blade centric war magic on the orc side) are a good fit for them.
They also got most of their wardrobe by being this world's most useless sugar baby

 

... inky probably thinks dram is the most amazingly worldly and experienced person. Even with her amnesia quartz cannot help but snort with barely suppressed laughter every time they try to pretend they're like.... jet setting vodka aunt levels of Cool And Unimpressed
Hazel is just fondly done with all of them all the time but then she's a ball of anger issues and trauma so 'fondly done' is kind of the equivalent of 'writes poetic confessions of friend-love every other hour to post in the group chat' for her

 

I can and will acknowledge that Dragon Age: Origins may be a pretty horrible play experience but if you think I won't play it 3 more times for the sake of completionism and because this is a game that lets me give a dwarf an axe as tall as he is as a one handed weapon then you're underestimating my tendency towards masochism

 

sticks legy out
I saw Into The Spider-Verse (FINALLY) and I made a spidersona
who wants to see

 

show the spide

 

im taking that like as a yes :P

Arachnex! I'll probably go with artificial web shooters, but they have poison glands in their left arm/hand, that get accessed with three rings on their fingers, on the fingers that are bare:

• healing serum in the pointer finger ring (stimulant for cell division, numbs pain receptors, dysinfecting. not a good fix permanently but not the worst as a stopgap measure)
• paralysis poison in the pinky ring
• a hallucinogenic in the thumb ring that can be influenced somewhat via suggestion

their color scheme is something like a dark grey and yellow, the spider emblem is mostly abstract, if you look at them top down the four whispy cape things and the dark parts of the suit along their limbs form a somewhat spider-esque shape. With their poisons they're probably more of a support/stealth/assassin type, not much for fighting head on.
Yes the two-colored-fingers-glove-design is taken entirely from the nightwing suit, yes i thrive on chaos and the marvel/dc rivalry :P

 

Spoiler

i feel like arachnex *has* to use/wear the rings and bottle the poison occassionally if they don't get to use it, bc if the poison glands """overflow""" it adversely affects their health and they're probably not immune to the effects themselves bc the radioactive spider bite is like... obviously that kinda shit won't get you a *well* adepted physiology change. Probably it goes from discomfort to actual pain to bits of the poison being metabolized making them suffer the effects in slightly lessened ways (unless they continue draining the healy serum shit but not the other two, the healing stuff can counter-act both the hallucinogenic and the paralysis stuff somewhat)

U Thought i couldn't bring disability into it but dingdong ur wrong, im gonna make all my characters suffer.

 

claps hands
alright who wants to hear about cullen getting seduced by gremlin mages while stuck in a terrible situation

Spoiler: nsfw, obviously, no worse dubcon stuff than 'and they were stuck in a cabin during a blizzard for a while' levels stuff, but some withdrawal and health bullshit and ethical blood mage self harm

So! Between acts 1 and 2, sylvia is back from the deep roads, carver is off with the wardens. Darktown, during storm season, Knight-Captain Cullen Rutherford is trying to unearth some deeply entrenched apostate criminals, happens to run across sylvia merrill and anders, promptly enlists them under vague implied threats he'll have them arrested if they don't assist. All three of them are like 'Ssssssure mate, you know, you could just like ask.'
Some fighty fighty nonsense happens, they make their way into a tunnel complex in the undercity warrens. Meanwhile a storm rages on. Something somewhere breaks and they end up trapped in a room behind an old storm door that can easily be reinforced with a barrier to hold. So they're safe! But stuck in a room for an indeterminate amount of time, at least until the storm blows over and most of the flooding drains.
At first there's just some mild snarking and prodding at eachother while the mages take turns keeping the barrier up and cullen does breathing exercises so he doesn't freak out over being trapped in a room behind a barrier.
Anders is probably the best to help with that? At least in terms of getting him back off the ledge of panic attack central, given he had that solitary confinement thing going on.
That's approximately when cullen's health starts tanking and all the mages have to stockpile their lyrium potions for him, which probably... keeps the worst of it at bay but still leaves him weak, trembling, and with uh, less strength of will to deny himself things he desires than usually. By this point it is also getting very very cold in that enclosed space so they have to huddle for warmth. Cuddling occurs. Sylvia makes a few quips about it being much more effective if they weren't wearing clothes. Cullen does not say anythign for the rest of the evening in favor of being red like a tomato.
With the lyrium potions now going entirely towards keeping cullen out of the worst pain and danger, there's another problem, which is that Sylvia actually has pretty shit mana reserves and worse recovery. so approximately then she starts supplementing the barrier with blood magic, though she does at least apologize to cullen for it. He is oddly touched by this, if still quite horrified. Anders loudly complains about this ruining her health even more than usual. Sylvia does not listen.
At some point during all of this merrill and cullen should have a chat about magical theory and how she approaches barrier work, bc it's my undying headcanon that templars actually half attend a good few of the lectures for apprentices, nominally to watch over everything, but some of them at least listen, and cullen is a smart lad, or at least observant enough and with good enough memory he would hold onto some tidbits, at least enough to end up in a companionable argument about dalish technique being weird, no circle technique is totally counter intuitive, bla bla bla. Then merrill goes to take over for sylvia at the barrier and she collapses, practically on cullen's lap, leading to him tenderly dressing her wounds because anders is still asleep and sylvia is too groggy to do it herself. She half jokingly offers to repay the favor with a blowjob, cullen blushes to near fatal levels, considering the offer for way longer than he would ever admit in public. But nothing comes of it right that second because Anders makes his displeasure known.
Once Sylvia is actually bundled up to sleep and Anders is slowly dragging himself up to awakeness he and cullen spend some time studiously not acknowledging eachother until anders just snaps at cullen to go the fuck to sleep and keep Hawke warm, dammit, then goes to keep merrill company. Or start a fight with her about blood magic. Possibly both. Cullen tries not to enjoy being wrapped around Sylvia too much.
The big problem i have is finding a threadbare excuse to have sylvia and cullen fuck really. And then throw merrill and anders into that mess too.
part of me also wants to loop it back around to someone (probably anders???) half-in-jest suggesting cullen has a duty as templar to distract sylvia from using blood magic to keep up the barrier by any means necessary and his traitor brain goes 'huh yeah, if i eat her out she won't think to bleed herself dry' which makes negative sense, but then he's spent the better part of the weekend in a cloud of ambient hornyness perpetuated mostly by sylvia.

 

drag me

 

no one:
ivy: artisinal cooking

 

No one:
Ivy: But Elves tho!

 

No one:
Ivy: have i told you about my 500 year old Apple cultivar books?

 

No one:
Ivy: who wants to see my perfect dumb babies

 

I AM...... CALLED OUT.........

 

no one:
ivy: fashion is a game and i am winning

 

i'm earing a zip up flannel at the moment under a red sweater, if this is what winning looks like I'm not sure losing is even possible :P

 

bijou meme stealing is afoot once more
S U M M O N M E