#rivendell twins au

[pacificwaternymph]

At some point I'm gonna have to start thinking about my next longfic after the Wolf Mother is finished.

I'll probably make an official poll at some point to decide but the options so far are:

Finish A Tale of Two Champions

Ocean Knight Ren

To Whom it May Concern (Fake Fic Title)

Deaf Scott AU

The Reimagining of Lizzie and Joel's first meeting (This one)

The Hourglass

This isn't official or anything, whatever you say now probably won't have any impact on what I choose to write next. But... I am curious to see what the general consensus is.

#she speaks!! #rivendell twins au #ren the ocean knight au #deaf scott au #the hourglass au

[tinapaysmp]

I lied, I did not went back to work. I was in ao3.

#empires smp #scwhip #empiresshipping #empires scott #empires fwhip #how did this happen? how did I end up shipping them? #dammit! now my swap au IS turning shippy #but tbf Scott being the count of the Grimlands initially sounded funny to me at first #he's still Aeor's champion and Xornot's twin in a past life but he's the count of the grimlands and isn't even an elf now #fWhip the elven ruler of Rivendell just has to deal with that fact #bread.img

[asterssunzephyr]

Ooooohhhh, me want hear more paranormal au.

Specially about nature wives!

Its a nature wives centric au!

The supporting cast is everyone in s1.

Rosetwins -> Vampires

Riventwins -> Eldric Horrors

Seablings -> Swamp monsters

Kat, Pearl, Pix & Sausage -> Hunters

Joel -> Innocent bystander (in love with a swamp monster)

Joey.. we dont know about Joey.

since Grian is canon to es1, yes hes included

Yes hes a vampire, and yes so is Pearl however Pearl hides this & doesnt tell her fellow hunters. (This is where the dl, 5am pearl outfit comes in, its a red riding hood esq outfit)

#zephs aus #empires smp #nature wives #paranormal au #grim siblings #rivendell twins #rivendell brothers #riven twins #rosetwins #esmp s1

[stiltonbasket]

the nielan twins do lotr cosplay as some of the lotr twins? except a lot of the twins get Bad Endings, so they only start doing this when they're a bit older.

Eight-year-old Yunhua, after googling sets of twins from LOTR: We want to cosplay as Elured and Elurin this time.

Lan Xichen: how about ✨ no✨?

#asks #lxc just goes you're not cosplaying abandoned babies whose fate remains unknown #it's either the rivendell twins or elrond and elros #no ifs ands or buts 😤 #nie yunhua #lotr au

[spawnofdeath]

Two Sons of Rivendell AU Masterpost

This is a masterpost for my "Two Sons of Rivendell" Empires SMP Season 1 AU (title credit goes to @floweroflaurelin), in which I've role-swapped Scott and Xornoth with the Seablings.

Title Inspiration

Premise and notes

More notes about the Twin Kings

A sneak peak for "The Twin Kings' Backstory"

Nighttime Encounter, the hastily named first chapter in the "King Scott and the Codfather" collection

Recollections of the Past

What Joey thinks of Scott supposedly dating the obviously non-existant demon

More general notes

A Frog and a Flower Crown, the second chapter in the "King Scott and the Codfather" collection

Our Memories in Ruins

More notes about Lizzie and Joel

Notes about all the Emperors' species

More of what Joey thinks about Scott's totally not hallucinated boyfriend

#jimmy solidarity #scott smajor #ldshadowlady #joey graceffa #joel smallishbeans #xornoth empires smp #empires smp #empires s1 #empires au #two sons of rivendell au #two sons of rivendell au notes #two sons of rivendell au writing #tsorau #jimmy is the demon here #because he deserves a proper villain arc #he is however so bad at being a villain that I have no clue how to write him as one #so please if you feel like he is out of character don't mind that please

[tanoraqui]

Elros&Elrond superhero anon here, I absolutely love those powers for them, they’re so cool. I mean, healing powers are fairly standard but you’ve got me entirely on board with healer!Elros (although I’m betting that Elros does NOT heal Maglor’s hand after the twins regain consciousness) and I just really love what you’ve done with Elrond’s powers!

(re: this post)

HEALER!ELROS SUPREMACY. And while I’m at it, Elros being the first to (conditionally) trust and even come to love their monstrous kidnapper-cousins, because quicker commitment and greater daring for the unknown makes sense in one who will one day choose to die as a Man; why is Elros always the stabby one and Elrond always the sweet one in kidnap-era fics! supremacy. Elrond is going to end up sweet, okay; he doesn’t need to start there. In the superhero au, when he masters his power of this aura of peace, he’s going to be able to do the “I am one with the force and the force is with me” walk from Rogue One through battlefields, but he has to learn how to maintain that true sense of calm and non-violence.

(Partial credit for the idea goes to @isi7140 btw, for suggesting the Elrond-appropriate twinly mirror to healing be making some sort of protected area a la Rivendell.)

Also ha, yeah, Elros definitely is NOT going to heal Maglor’s hand right there. Maybe, maybe, in several weeks when they’ve bonded a little he’ll heal whatever’s left of the wound as a show of the bond formed between them by then? …or in several months?

What happens in this weeks and/or months, of course, is Elrond and Elros making multiple attempts to escape supervillain captivity and find their mother while Maglor and Maedhros try to figure out who they are, where they came from, and can we ransom them to Doriath for Silmarils? Meanwhile Elwing doesn’t even know her sons followed her through the rip in spacetime; she and Eärendil are…idk if they both got to Earth at roughly this time, or if only one did and the other is off finding Valar in space somewhere, or if they’re BOTH off finding Valar and/or distant mermaid relatives (respectively) in space? NO WAIT, THE TELERI ARE ATLANTIS! PERFECT! That makes Eärwen and her kids’ genetics make so much more sense! So, Elwing ended up in the ocean somewhere, drowning, and is rescued to Atlantis, but she’s trying to find Eärendil who is in space somewhere, meeting gods…

Thingol is the former King of Atlantis who moved permanently to land to marry a minor forest goddess, who shaped herself a permanent material form in order to marry him…the romance… (Sometimes he makes noise about bossing around Atlanteans again and Olwë is like, “um, you LEFT, actually.”)

Yes of course this means that all of Eärwen’s kids, grandkids, etc. can shed their human legs & grow gills in water and turn into mermaids!! Though it gets harder the more they interbreed with humans. Finrod, Angrod, Aegnor & Galadriel can all do it easily. Orodreth, Celebrian and Finrod&Amarië’s Golden Horde have to make an effort and it hurts a little. Finduilas and Rodnor require Musical assistance, though much less than an ordinary human would. (Aegnor marries an alien of some sort so idk what���s up with their kids—probably standard quarter-Atlantean, really, because it’s about magic Music more than genetics. Amarië is also an alien but the Vanyar are only as alien as, like, Vulcans; Andreth is something much stranger.)

#silm super au #spitballing AUs is fun!! keep talking to me pls

[minecraftbookshelf]

Dark Marriage of State AU?? Please do tell more!

Currently it only exists as the amv in my head. No context whatsoever. Just everyone being badass and Evil AesthetiqueTM

Highlights include:

(Scenes of smol Lizzie and the destruction of the eggs of her and Jimmy's siblings and lots of murder and such by salmon and then growing up Lizzie in the process of conquering things. I guess there is some context to this and it is "Factions actively warring for control of the world")

Lizzie sitting dramatically on a throne with a trident and Joel standing by her side, fully armored up.

Pix with a channeling trident covered in lightning like a charged creeper

Jimmy doing a dramatic water entrance (also with trident. they all have tridents. its the Theme of the alliance in my head, and not just when they're all evil/dark) and pushing the codfather head back to show Teef

(Rivendell Twin Angst with alternating shots and lines and childhood trauma and being posessed and doing murder)

Rivendell Twins ft. Fire and Ice, two sides of one coin, posed back to back very dramatically.

Dramatic aerial entrance by Joey

Katherine in full, sharp-toothed murder plant fairy mode

Shrub as the Wolf Spirit with their wolves, full mask and outfit.

(Dramatic reveal of the WRA main four)

Sausage doing the throne sprawl. Lots of blood. Big sword.

Mad scientist Fwhip standing behind him. Goggles and mechanical elytra on.

GeminiSlay: Wizard Edition next to him

End with a solo shot of Pearl facing away from the camera, giant golden wings spread. Sword/Scythe in hand

And end scene.

#ask and it shall be answered #idontevenknowhowtolife #when i say i have this imagined in excruciating detail i am not exaggerating in the least #rain rambles #esmp s1: Everybody is a little bit more evil edition #i honestly might make a side fic for marriage of state for this #im already doing multiverse shenanagins in that #but you didn't hear that from me ;) #it isn’t necessarily marriage of state #just empires s1 #but I might end up connecting it to marriage of state #it would work pretty well #mos: asks #mos: sheeps #mos: ensemble

[the-journey-was-the-point]

Some sketches of my The Hobbit OC's! They hijacked my brain around hm, 2021? And have been slowcooking ever since.

Took a while for some of these designs to get to me. I have a number of rejected ones in my sketchpad. Might still play around with the colors and designs, but I think this is the gist.

To briefly explain: The Hobbit but no one dies, also Fili and Kili (then later Tauriel) meet my OC's and go on what seems like a minor adventure before the plot thickens.

First there's Linnea, an apothecary from Laketown. Fili meets her when the Company stops over at Laketown (in this AU, they arrive like what 5 days before Durin's Day?). Turns out she's a spy for Mirkwood and knows how to make more than just medicine. Also she's like 100-something years old (her dad was an elf, but she appears human cus genetics), and she's really just so Done with Middle Earth.

Then there's the twin elves: Callonduin and Calarphain. Callonduin is the thrill-seeking, orc-hunting, life of the party. He was born and raised in Rivendell, which is a great place, yet despite that, he has a whole host of emotional problems.

Calarphain is a pacifist and a friend to all living things. He was born weak but Galadriel saved him and he's now her apprentice in Lothlorien (where he grew up). He's got some really powerful and really suspicious light-based magic.

The twins meet Fili and Kili the spring after the BotFA because their dad, a diplomat participating in peace talks, brought them along.

There's one more guy but his design is still a huge "?" to me (he'll turn up eventually).

Another doodle. Callonduin looks pissed off here cus I was listening to a video about the doom of the Elves, a topic that throughly depresses him.

#the hobbit oc's #oc stuff #callonduin (oc) #linnea (oc) #calarphain (oc) #my art #artofmamon #darksideofthemamon

[valacirya]

Sending you three (if you don't mind) potential AU's because I am a hoe for you and your blog: 1) The Children of Dior getting role swap but instead of being left to die in the woods, Elwing is taken captive by the Feanorians; 2) Gil-galad and Cirdan actually arriving on time to save the twins from being kidnapped; 3) Your wonderful post where Elwing is a menacing swan, following Elrond everywhere and Elrond calling the swan Mom lmaoooo.

Why, thank you very much! I hope you don't mind that I only did 2 and 3. I couldn't think of anything for 1.

Gil-galad and Cirdan arrive in time to save the twins

They don't arrive in time to help Elwing but Gil-galad knows about the cave (he discovered it with Earendil) and finds the twins.

Cirdan sends a message via Osse to let Earendil & Elwing know that the twins are safe on Balar.

Earendil silently accepts Elwing's Silmaril and watches as she summons the power of Melian's line, transforms into a swan, and flies back east.

Elrond and Elros are still six years old when they reunite with their mother.

Seven years later, their father returns with an army.

Elwing is a menacing swan in Rivendell

The Valar look the other way on a lot of stuff and they're particularly fond of Melian's line, so when a lone swan is spotted flying from Elwing's tower in the direction of Middle Earth, well, they have more important things to do than chase after her- it.

While flying, the swan spots a lonely Noldo wandering on the beach and harasses him for a few days before taking off again.

In Rivendell, people will sometimes see Elrond and the swan sitting together quietly watching Gil-estel.

The swan likes to bully Thranduil whenever he visits. He just pats it on the head.

Elrond, Celebrian, Galadriel, Celeborn, Glorfindel, Thranduil and the kids when they grow up know who the swan is.

#elwing #earendil #elrond #elros #peredhel fam <3

[aesterium]

thorn, meet rose

a xornoth-centric fic in which they are forced to hold a debuttante ball and attract the eye of one particular Empire’s ruler.

word count: 6,732

relevant tags and notes: a jornoth romance (just the flirting stage). royalty au, xornoth is not corrupted, scott and xornoth have an agreement re: succession; he/they pronouns for xornoth with he/him only in narration for ease of reading. background flower husbands. a few innuendos thrown in at the end, though nothing worse than what’s in empires s2

read on ao3 || read below

Xornoth is going to kill his brother. He’s going to reach down that smug asshole’s throat and rip his tongue out of his mouth. He’s going to punch that horrible self-important smirk off of his face. He’s going to go back in time and eat him in the womb.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit too far.

The person staring back at him from the mirror has his cheekbones, his bright purple hair, and his burgundy eyes. They have the long-healed scar on one of his hands from the last time he attempted to carve something out of wood and the still-healing burn on the other hand from when he tried to make eggs the other day and hot oil sprang out of the pan onto his palm. Their hair is braided back in an intricate style that he decidedly does not style his in and their face has been subtly powdered and contoured to polish it into a sharp-eyed weapon, soft as rose petals. Rivendellian gold sparkles from their ears and their neck and their wrists and their fingers, and their formal silks are carefully dyed the violet-silver of their chosen deity. The only thing Xornoth recognizes is their dark canvas pants.

Xornoth scowls. They scowl back.

“Bitch,” he says at them. Their lips curl to spit the word simultaneously.

“That’s not very nice.” Xornoth watches the figure of his brother come up from behind the false version of himself in the mirror. In stark contrast, Scott looks far too at ease with the ceremonial robes he wears, gold dripping from his body and doing more for his modesty than the cyan-white silks he wears.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Xornoth grumbles.

“You talked yourself into it,” Scott corrects, straightening out the fabric on Xornoth’s shoulders. “I’m surprised you were able to hold out for this long, honestly.”

“A century and a half of service to this wretched kingdom, and yet I’m still being dressed like a doll and paraded in front of the very rulers I’ve fought to be here.” Xornoth glares down his reflection and fantasizes about tearing his hands through his hair, sending jeweled hair pins flying across the room, and he imagines ripping these robes off and clawing the delicate gold that rests on him and disintegrating it all with a single thought—

He doesn’t do any of this. He just gives himself one last baleful look, awkwardly dusts off the robes that Scott is still artfully arranging on him, and turns away.

“If I stand here one more second,” he declares, “I think I’ll set this palace on fire.”

Scott has the audacity to laugh at that. “We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

 •♚•

 Xornoth of Rivendell is the firstborn of his mother. He was born as a spring storm subsided, and five minutes later he was joined by his brother Ascorith. When his hair colored, he gave his claim to the throne to his twin and threw himself into training with the castle guard. While Scott’s tutors drilled him in the native languages used by Empires across the lands, Xornoth was being nearly run through by enthusiastic knights who would later brag about how any who tried to attack their princex would find themselves bleeding out in the dirt. At their maturity, Scott was declared Crown Prince of Rivendell and Xornoth was declared Commander of its forces. Scott prayed to Aeor for guidance in his diplomacy, and Xornoth sought out Exor for his overwhelming force and dominance on the battlefield. For more than a century, their kingdom spoke proudly of its twin kings, the Dark Stag and Ice King of Rivendell, of how they balanced each other out perfectly, of how the kingdom was stronger for it.

And now, that same kingdom excitedly cracked the foundation of that strength and dressed itself up to serve Xornoth on a serving platter to some other Empire.

“Stop whining,” Scott says.

“I didn’t say anything,” Xornoth bites back.

“You didn’t have to; I can practically read your mind.” Scott stops walking, and after a couple of confused steps, Xornoth turns to look back at him.

For the first time in a while, the confidence that usually bleeds from Scott slows to uncertainty. “Xornoth, we don’t actually have to do this,” he says. “We can work through whatever political quagmire calling this off so abruptly will cause, but Rivendell isn’t more important than you are.”

“Where was all of this a week ago?” Xornoth asks.

Scott shakes his head slightly while slowly taking the last few steps that would bring them next to each other. “Honestly, I didn’t think you hated the idea this much. Stupid of me, I know, but I thought you were playing it up just to complain.”

Reluctantly, Xornoth could understand. He would be the type to do something like that. He shrugs. “It just feels stupid to give up what makes us so powerful like this. It feels like trading our stability for dependence on another Empire.”

Scott looks at him strangely. “Xornoth, tell me the truth. Do you think my marriage to Jimmy weakens us?”

Xornoth can see where this is going. “No,” he grumbles, rolling his eyes.

“Does my marriage to Jimmy mean I put the Codlands before Rivendell in any political maneuvering?”

Xornoth tries not to look too grumpy. “No.”

Scott doesn’t look as smug at this admittance as Xornoth would have thought he’d be. “So why would your being married do anything worse?”

Xornoth picks at one of the golden chains around his neck. “It just feels wrong,” he says. “I’ve given so much of myself to Rivendell. I can’t imagine giving as much for somewhere else.”

“You’ll always be of Rivendell,” Scott says firmly. “You don’t have to do this ‘for Rivendell’ if you’re going to be unhappy.”

“Everything I’ve ever done is for our kingdom, Scott,” Xornoth says, “even being sold off to some ruler with a superiority complex.” They stand in front of the doors to the grand ballroom.

Scott sighs. “If you’re sure.” 

He lifts his hands to the doors, and with one last second of hesitation, he pushes them open.

 •♚•

 It takes Xornoth half an hour to feel like his smile is beginning to peel off.

“You look like a plucked goose,” the ruler of the Grimlands tells him. He looks ruffled, his hair all flyaways and his face covered in a thin layer of redstone powder except for two perfect ovals around his eyes. His red tie is crooked, the blazer thrown over his button-up open and its pockets filled with something that ruins its silhouette. He’s wearing a pair of chunky leather boots that Xornoth deeply envies. 

“Be nice,” Scott admonishes from behind a glass of wine. “They look far better than you would even if you’d actually cleaned up for once.”

“He’s got you there, fWhip,” the woman beside him says. She’s got matching red hair, though hers is less vibrant (perhaps because it isn’t filled with redstone), and she’s wearing an elegant green dress and a simple purple cloak. The rulers of the twin Empires of the Grimlands and the Crystal Cliffs had run up to them almost immediately upon their entrance, deftly cutting off the more pompous looking nobles who seemed prepared to descend on them. Xornoth makes a mental note to ask Scott whether they all became friends over being twins, which sounds like a really stupid reason to make friends with someone.

“Just because you all don’t have my rugged good looks doesn’t mean you have to be this obviously jealous of me,” fWhip says, preening slightly. “I don’t need to try to look good.”

Scott turns a withering gaze over to the Archwizard of the Crystal Cliffs. “Gem, if I managed to wrestle my meathead brother into something suitable for this, you should have at least gotten yours a new suit or something.”

She gives him an equally disparaging look. “Do you think I could force this lug to do anything?”

“I’m glad you’re here,” fWhip says to Xornoth in a stage whisper. “Usually, they just team up against me.”

Xornoth doesn’t think he’s said anything outside of the occasional “yes” or “no” to him before, but he just gives fWhip an awkward nod and hums in assent.

“Stop flirting with him,” Gem says bluntly.

fWhip makes a series of unflattering sputtering sounds. “I wasn’t flirting, I was commiserating,” he says defensively.

“Sounds like someone who was flirting would say,” Gem fires back. She turns an apologetic gaze at Xornoth. “Was he flirting?”

Xornoth blinks. “Um. If he was, he was doing a piss-poor job at it.”

“Xornoth wouldn’t know flirting if it smacked them on the ass,” Scott says to Gem. He glances back at his brother. “And don’t say ‘piss’ at a formal gathering.”

“You just said ‘ass’.”

“I never said I couldn’t say ‘ass’.”

“Don’t say ‘ass’ at a formal gathering, Scott,” Gem says in a shockingly good imitation of the elven king’s bored drone.

“Fine.”

Silence settles over them as they sip on their drinks. “Aren’t you supposed to be meeting people?” Gem asks Xornoth. “If you’re supposed to be getting married for politics or whatever?”

“Hell if I know.” He ignores his brother’s shushing. “I’ve met you two, haven’t I?”

“No offense, but I’m not interested,” she deadpans.

“None taken. I’m gay.”

“Glad we’ve cleared this up.” Gem glances around the room. “I mean, if you’re going husband-searching, you’ve got a nice selection here, I guess. No one came with me from the Crystal Cliffs, but I see a few of the higher nobles from the Grimlands and Mythland, if you want to be introduced.”

“Absolutely not,” Scott cuts in. “I’m keeping Sausage far away from this one.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad,” Gem says. “Just a little ambitious, but who isn’t?”

“Ambition is fine, but I think Xornoth would set Mythland on fire if he had the slightest inkling that Sausage wanted to attack Rivendell, and that’d be too many political nightmares in one event.”

“You have to be exaggerating,” Gem says.

“I would,” Xornoth adds helpfully.

“He would,” Scott echoes.

fWhip’s eyes are sparkling— actually sparkling, as if they’re ocean waves reflecting the sunrise. Xornoth didn’t think human eyes could do that.

“We’re keeping them away from your Empire too, then,” Gem says, jabbing fWhip’s cheek. “I’m not letting another pyromaniac by that powder keg you inherited from Dad.”

He pouts.

Scott notices Xornoth’s fidgeting pick up about now and sends him off to the table of unfilling finger foods to nibble from whatever stack of cheese and fruits and crackers he’s prepared for this event. He rolls his eyes at the suggestion but still makes his way over, making stilted conversation as various strangers come up and titter over him. At one point, he stuffs an entire bunch of grapes into his mouth to avoid responding to one particularly pushy woman’s questions about his place in Rivendell’s succession. It becomes a sea of faces that he doesn’t quite absorb, relegating himself to nodding vaguely as people jabber at him and drift away.

“Vultures, the lot of them.”

Xornoth glances at the latest interloper and has to hold himself back from a double-take. The man who joined him is somehow wearing even less than he and Scott are. His outfit almost completely relies on a sheer crimson cloak to preserve his modesty, and his pants stop mid-thigh, though a string of turquoise pendants circles his waist, holding up more crimson fabric fashioned into a mockery of a light skirt that flows to his knees. Bronze pauldrons shaped into feline paws grip his shoulders, claws out, and a pair of bright scarlet parrot wings peeks out from under his cloak.

Xornoth quickly looks away before he’s caught staring at this stranger’s legs. “It’s what they’re taught to do,” he says. “Cozy up to whoever’s available and powerful.”

“Mm, I guess that’s true.” The man shifts closer, a wing twitching, and Xornoth feels a stray end of his cloak brush against his arm almost imperceptibly. He wonders if he can get away with grabbing a handful of walnuts and absolutely sprinting out of here and back to his room. “I can see why they’d be interested in you.” He pokes a cheese cube with a toothpick and carefully slides it into his mouth. Xornoth quickly looks away.

“I don’t,” Xornoth says. He ends up taking far too many crackers and backing away. The man shifts over again.

“There you are, Xornoth.” He feels his shoulders sag in relief as Gem walks up to join them. “Scott was wondering why you hadn’t come back yet.” 

“He’s been getting accosted by everyone’s courts,” the man says to her. He’s still leaning against the table. “I don’t blame them, of course. If I had any fewer manners, who knows what I’d have said?” He winks at Xornoth, who glances away to give Gem a pleading look.

“Joey, you’re scaring him,” Gem says, sounding amused. Xornoth wonders if his mortification is what’s amusing her or if she’s just used to the antics she’s seeing

The man— Joey— laughs with an abandon that would better fit the top of a tree than the ballroom that they’re currently in. “Am I?” he says, and his words resonate like a cat’s purr more than a human voice. “What a shame— and I hoped we would get along.”

Xornoth wonders if he can get away with the grape trick again.

“You can be a lot,” Gem says, sipping on a glass of wine.

“I’m sure he doesn’t mind,” Joey says, chin tipped back to look up at Xornoth (and when did he get so close that he had to look up at him?). “I can’t be the scariest thing that he’s ever met.” He winks. 

Xornoth hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels like it is.

Gem takes pity on him (finally) and draws Joey in a conversation about alliances and trade agreements and whatever else it is that rulers of nations discuss, and Xornoth is able to slink away and flee back to where Scott and fWhip chat idly amongst themselves. They’ve been joined by a few other rulers: Katherine of House Blossom, who smiles at him sleepily, and Scott’s own husband.

“Hey, Xornoth,” Katherine says, idly brushing pollen off of her shoulder. “You look frazzled.”

“Do I?” he says distractedly.

“You do,” Scott says, eyeing him critically. “Your gold is all off and your silks aren’t symmetrical anymore.” Exasperation spills from every gesture as he rearranges Xornoth’s clothes.

Xornoth lets him fuss over him for a few seconds before irritably waving him off. “Honestly, I think I’m done for today,” he says. “I’m going to get out of all of this and head down to the stables or something. Go for a ride.”

“Won’t that be seen as impolite?” Jimmy asks. He’s foregone the usual clay mask he wears, but he’s wearing the illusion of a human man with bottomless black eyes rather than his typical somewhat monstrous appearance. There’s a violently red poppy tucked into his lapel, and as ill-fitting as it is, Xornoth knows he will at best ignore anyone who points it out. “Some of the nobles here are pretty stuffy; they might kick up a fuss.”

“Let them fuss,” Scott declared, tucking his hand into the crook of Jimmy’s elbow. “They’re here for us, not the other way around. If they aren’t interesting enough to make Xornoth want to stick around and talk to them, then they don’t have a leg to stand on.” He glances at him. “Just try to make it back by sunset, I think.”

Xornoth nods to Scott gratefully before walking out of the hall, uncaring of being seen. He doesn’t bother cleaning the makeup off of his face while he pulls on a silver tunic and black surcoat, leaving the flimsy gold and silks in a pile on a chair rather than figuring out how to hang them up properly. 

He catches his reflection in the mirror as he pulls his boots on. His face looks strange, as softened as it is especially juxtaposed with his far coarser clothes, and he rubs the color off of his mouth as he heads out. It stains his hand red, but that’s a far more familiar sight so he doesn’t bear it any mind. He flings on a black cloak just in case the wind gets too biting.

Xornoth doesn’t realize he’s being followed until he’s leading his steed out of her stall and he hears a quiet gasp. He whips around to see a wide-eyed Joey, his mouth slack-jawed.

“What is that?” he asks.

It’s a reasonable question, Xornoth supposes. He runs a hand through stiff silver fur, shushing her as she shakes her head at the interruption.

“This is Calliope,” he says, his voice low so as to not startle her. “I raised her from a fawn.”

“She’s beautiful,” Joey says, cautiously stepping forward. “I think I expected her to be—”

“Darker?” Xornoth snorts quietly. “I have no idea who came up with that stupid moniker, but it wasn’t me.”

“I don’t know, it’s kind of a sexy nickname.” The coquettish tone is back in his voice. Xornoth chooses, once again, to ignore how his throat dries. “The Dark Stag of Rivendell. It sounds like something out of a novel.”

“Not the kind of novel I’d want to be in,” Xornoth says, saddling Calliope with practiced hands. 

“It’s the kind of novel I’d read,” Joey says.

Xornoth sighs, tightening one last strap before glancing over his shoulder at him. “Look, Joey—”

“Ooh, say my name again.”

“Can you be serious for just ten seconds?” Xornoth asks. He doesn’t know if he sounds more exasperated or frustrated, but he sees the smirk slip off of Joey’s face, replaced by confusion and, for some reason, concern. “I need to explain something to you, and I just need ten seconds of your serious attention, and then you can go back to whatever the fuck this is.” He gestures vaguely towards Joey.

The sly light leaves Joey’s gaze, replaced by something more… curious isn’t the right word. There’s a cautious interest, along with something far sharper than he’s worn all evening, and underneath it all, a thinly veiled level of desire that marks his expression. He cocks his head to one side and stands up slightly straighter, and Xornoth can finally recognize how this man might lead an entire population of elemental mages.

“Go on,” he says.

Xornoth busies himself by finding Calliope’s brush and carefully working out tangles in her coat. “I’ve never done this,” he says, gesturing vaguely between the two of them. “It’s not that I don’t want to or anything. Scott and I were raised on the same histories of all of the Empires, and practically every one has their own version of a tragic romance somewhere in their royal genealogies. The Grimlands and the Crystal Cliffs and their Empires reunited after being sundered thanks to the love of a noble and a princess. The stories that Mezalea was once an island ruled by a man who loved the ocean, who died of grief when it retreated from his shores. Even now, Scott and Jimmy are writing their own story— when they married, all of the nobles clung to the tragic romance of two star-crossed lovers separated by their political duties to different lands. It isn’t like that, as you’re well aware; theirs is a respectful and trusting and, yes, loving marriage, but they’re just as aware of the politics required to convince both Rivendell and the Codlands to allow it. Nothing is as romantic as it first seems, and I feel like you’re being swept up in an image you conjured of me from my reputation and whatever Scott wrote on the invitations to that stupid ball.” 

Xornoth takes a moment to gently dissuade Calliope from eating his hair. “I’m not a romantic person. I’ve never dreamed of marriage, I’ve never courted anyone, formally or not; hell, I’ve never even had a sweetheart or anything more than a momentary flitting attraction. I’ve never sought it out the way Scott dreamed of that sort of domestic nonsense.”

“Is there a reason why not?”

Xornoth hesitates over his initial impulsive answer before sighing. “It just never felt like something I’d get, I guess,” he says. “I’m the soldier of the two of us. My lot in life is leading armies into deadly battles and coming home either victorious or on my shield. Seems like a waste of someone’s time to court them and promise my life to them when it could be cut short at any point.”

“I don’t think it would be,” Joey says. He cautiously steps forward, eyeing the deer, but Calliope is an intelligent creature and simply lowers her head to look right back at him. “Your life doesn’t have to be defined by your death. Isn’t it better to know what love is, at least a little bit, than to live in fear of hurting someone for your entire life?”

Xornoth drops his hands. He does not turn to look at Joey. “Maybe,” he says through a dry throat. He shoves the bubbling half-thoughts forming in his head, the dangerous ones that want to hope and believe in Joey’s words, especially given who’s telling them to him, and swings himself up onto Calliope’s back.

“Do you want to ride with me?” he asks Joey, a hand stretched towards him. It’s an offer thrown out somewhat impulsively, though it’s also one he’s given hundreds of times before and been denied each time. Calliope is faster than Scott’s mount, sacrificing comfort and ease for a whirlwind of speed that takes one’s breath away and exchanges it for heart-pounding adrenaline. It’s visible in every single one of her wiry muscles and in the way her eyes seem perpetually widened with glee. Xornoth wouldn’t insult himself by saying his reputation isn’t built on his fighting prowess, but he’s not sure how much of it is thanks to the sight of him pounding onto a battlefield, axe held aloft as Calliope soars across land to deliver him unto his enemies. Even the saddle he draped on her is steeped in war, the wider make of it designed to help cart an injured person back to a medic tent.

Knowing all of this, it’s a complete surprise when Joey says nothing, takes his hand, and hoists himself onto the saddle behind Xornoth after only a moment of hesitation.

Xornoth chooses not to read into this. Instead, he realizes just how violently Joey is shivering and unclasps his cloak to throw over the other ruler’s head.

“What?”

“Just take it. In case you, uh, get cold.” Xornoth glances over his shoulder at Joey, who’s awkwardly holding onto the edge of the saddle. “It gets pretty brisk up here.”

“Tell me about it,” Joey says, his voice clearing as he quickly puts the cloak on. Xornoth tries to ignore the feeling of his breath against his neck. “Honestly, I wish the guy that founded my Empire thought about other climates when he decided that this is what our formal wear would look like. The funny part is that it’s still almost too much to wear in the jungle sometimes.”

Xornoth adds this to the list of Things Joey Says That Should Garner Further Thought But Won’t, At Least Right Now. Instead, he focuses on gently leading Calliope down to a well-trodden path. She snorts excitedly.

“Let’s take it a bit easy for a bit,” he whispers into her ear. “Wouldn’t want to lose our passenger.”

“What?”

Calliope takes off as though her hooves summon the winter wind itself.

The wind bites just as much as Xornoth knew it would as it whips into his eyes and past his ears. Calliope leaps through the mountainous forests surrounding Rivendell with an ease that Xornoth has only recently begun to share, and she revels in long, soaring leaps rather than her typical death-defying speeds. A blessing, perhaps, especially for the Emperor who had immediately latched himself onto Xornoth’s waist and tucked his face into the crook of his neck as soon as Calliope started forward. 

For once, there is nothing sensual about Joey’s gesture; Xornoth could tell that the rapid rise and fall of the chest pressed against his back is due to some combination of panic and surprise rather than the desire or interest he had worn earlier, and the grip around him begins to choke him as it becomes immediately clear that Calliope won’t be slowing down at any point soon.

“Joey, you realize that you’re fine, right?”

His arms tighten even further in response.

Xornoth winces. “I really need you to let go a bit.”

“Why? Are you going to throw me off?” Joey’s much better at showing emotion in his voice than hiding it; his terror is practically palpable, as much as he’s attempting to veil it in indignance.

“Of course not,” Xornoth says. “I just can’t really breathe.”

Joey huffs. “That sounds like your problem. My problem is that I’m on your hellbeast and she’s going to throw me off if I don’t hang on!”

Calliope seems to take a bit of offense to the ‘hellbeast’ comment. She abruptly ducks her chin down and begins flying across the ground, her feet a blur as she tears through the snowmelt. She becomes a smoke-smudge more than a beast, pelting up mountainsides and leaping off to thunder through gullies with a single-minded pursuit for speed, soaring off of cliffs that lurch into forests only to pound back into the ground a handful of exhilarating seconds later.

And, to Xornoth, it is exhilarating. It’s oddly comforting to feel the air whip against his face and his hair fill with mist as Calliope strains against herself, refusing to accept that she can’t fly. Scott’s always called him crazy for encouraging his steed’s sprinting (“She could break her legs, Xornoth! What if you’re stranded miles away from the castle, with a deer with a broken leg?” “Well, I don’t know what you would do, but personally I would just pray to Exor for an hour of his greater blessing, be imbued with godly strength and wings, and fly back with her.” “Oh my gods, you’re so annoying.”) but Calliope runs like she was born to do nothing else, and Xornoth can’t begrudge her that.

He can, however, begrudge Joey the grip around his waist that he hasn’t loosened at all. 

“Joey, do you trust me?” Xornoth shouts back at him.

“I don’t know! Will you throw me off if I say no?!” Joey’s words are muffled by Xornoth’s surcoat.

“Of course not! That would be the height of impropriety.” Xornoth gently guides Calliope to dashing up one of the steepest cliff faces, and she tenses in anticipatory recognition.

Joey laughs a little too desperately. “I mean, I’m trusting you with my life right now, aren’t I?” he says.

“How incredibly romantic.” The words come out teasing rather than sardonic. Surprisingly, his flowery expectations don’t bother Xornoth as much as it had in the stables. “If you trust me, look up.”

There's hesitation. Then, miraculously, Xornoth feels Joey’s head tip up, his chin sliding against his shoulder. His body tenses around Xornoth’s as he registers the white-silver sky and the slate that makes up the mountain range Rivendell’s castle is built in.

And then Calliope reaches the zenith of the peak.

And leaps and begins to dive down.

Joey shrieks, but when he squeezes Xornoth again, he doesn’t try to avert his gaze. Xornoth shouts something wordless as well, the sound spiraling into the air as Calliope maneuvers herself through the air and begins running almost vertically down the other side of the cliff. She somehow manages to keep her balance while fluidly moving down a vein of quartz crystals that grow out of the side of the rock, splintering off bits of the clear mineral as she goes. 

“This is insane!” Joey yells in Xornoth’s ear.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Xornoth yells back.

Joey smacks his chest painlessly before returning the hand around Xornoth’s midsection. “Don’t make fun of me,” he says, and Xornoth can just imagine his pout.

What the hell. Xornoth chances a smirk over his shoulder and catches startled green eyes. “Don’t make it so easy for me, then,” he says.

He feels more than he hears Joey’s breath catch in the back of his throat, and then Calliope is leaping into a waterfall and racing along with the spray and Xornoth turns his attention back to her and whatever crazy idea she’s gotten this time.

Calliope leaps out of the waterfall in time to land rather gracefully on solid ground and slows herself to a careful trot, breathing heavily beneath Xornoth. He pats the side of her neck gently. “One of these days, you won’t exhaust yourself doing some crazy stunt,” he says to her, fondness creeping past the chastisement in his voice. She brushes his words off and calmly walks through the sparse trees as if she hadn’t just run straight down a vertical surface moments before.

“Does she want to do that every time you take her out?” Joey asks. His grip on Xornoth has slackened a lot, but he keeps his arms wrapped around Xornoth and at this point, he thinks it would be strange if he moved them.

Xornoth sighs. “Usually she wants to do much worse. She thinks she could run on the clouds, if only the mountains were tall enough to let her reach them.”

“To be fair, that would look super magical,” Joey says. He rests his chin on Xornoth’s shoulder. “I bet Calliope would be the only deer brave enough to find out.”

Calliope perks up slightly at that. 

“No,” Xornoth says gently, swatting Calliope’s ears when she irritably huffs at him.

They make it back to Rivendell in decent time. Xornoth’s heart sinks a bit when he realizes that the ball is still somehow going on.

“How haven’t they left yet?” he mutters to himself, sliding out of Calliope’s saddle with a practiced ease.

“We were only gone for like twenty minutes,” Joey says, an edge of sympathy leaking into his words. “I’m sure Scott didn’t want to start actively clearing everyone out until half the party left of their own accord, as well.”

Xornoth sighs. “I hate politics,” he grumbles.

That prompts a laugh from Joey, the most genuine one Xornoth’s heard all day, and he turns to see the Lost Emperor sitting side-saddle on Calliope still. “That was wild,” he says. “I had no idea what I was supposed to expect and somehow you still exceeded my expectations.”

“Is this where I say ‘thank you’?” Xornoth says. He goes to put a footstool down for Joey to jump down on, but instead Joey somehow maneuvers himself into Xornoth’s arms with a delicate flourish and gets down from there. He unclips his borrowed cloak and holds it in his arms.

“If you want to.” 

Joey falls silent as he turns to Xornoth. It doesn’t escape him that Joey’s eyes are absolutely wandering. After a few seconds of bewilderment, it finally occurs to Xornoth that his traitorous mount ran down a waterfall with him leading her, and he wonders just how much the stupidly fine clothes that Scott insists on are clinging to him. 

Might as well own it. “Like what you see?”

“Mhmm.” Joey’s eyes finally meet Xornoth’s, and the sly smirk from the canape table sneaks back onto his face. “I know you were basically shirtless before, but somehow this is better.”

Xornoth rolls his eyes. “I’m going to choose to ignore that,” he says, reaching an arm out for the cloak. Joey hands it over but lets his hand linger on Xornoth’s forearm as he takes it, and at this point Xornoth is wise enough to his flirtations that he lets this roll off of him without any fuss. “Do you need help getting back inside?”

“I’ll take help from you for anything, anytime,” Joey replies with a purr.

“Noted,” Xornoth says drily. He hangs Calliope’s saddle on its hook, gives her one last handful of clover, and ushers Joey back inside.

“I did want to ask you something,” Joey says, the coy tone mostly gone but his voice still light.

Xornoth hums in response.

“You seem— I guess, more relaxed now? You’re not snapping at me for saying anything.” Joey raises an eyebrow. “I’d ask you to my marital bed to see how far I can push it, but I have the feeling you’d take that far too seriously.”

“Do you not want me to take such a request seriously?” Xornoth asks. 

For the first time, Joey stutters to a halt, his eyes wide as he stares at Xornoth. Xornoth takes a moment to admire them; they’re the same shade as the moss that lines the room the Rune Blade is kept in along with Rivendell’s other ancient artifacts. He patiently waits for the Lost Emperor to regain his senses.

“Okay. I can’t say I was expecting that.”

Xornoth raises an eyebrow. “To answer your previous question,” he says, “I hate these sorts of events. Half of the reason I let Scott take the throne after our parents abdicated was because I didn’t want to have to deal with these things, and he’s always enjoyed them more. Frankly, I wouldn’t have shown up to this ball if it wasn’t technically for me.

“And if you actually meant the implications of what you were saying— I grew up with Scott. I’ve known him for more than a century. I’ve heard him say practically every innuendo under the skies, and the ones he hasn’t said Jimmy’s wandered into on accident. Just because I’m aware of them doesn’t mean I myself am fond of making them.”

“But you can.”

“Of course, I can.” As they step into the castle, Xornoth dries them both off with barely a flicker of thought and a rush of warmth through his veins. He wonders what Exor would think of all of this as he offers the crook of his arm for Joey to take and leads him back to the ballroom.

“My my, your highness,” he says, the sly tone back in his voice as he leans into Xornoth’s arm. They’ve reentered the ballroom at this point. “Making a statement?”

“Yes, a statement that visiting royals should be accompanied by a chaperone so they don’t find themselves with particularly sticky fingers.” Xornoth doesn’t catch what he says until he’s standing next to his brother, who at some point ushered his group to sitting at a table set up for both kings on a dais at the back of the room.

“Who’s got sticky fingers?” Scott says. He’s clearly had at least one more flute of champagne from how he’s leaning into Jimmy, who for his part is glancing around a tiny bit nervously but diligently holding his husband by the waist. Gem and fWhip are still with them, though they’re now joined by the third member of their historic alliance, a man Xornoth has definitely led armies to threaten when Scott was still wrangling the final details of his nuptial agreements with Jimmy. Katherine isn’t there currently, but a small plate of grape stems and apple bits implies her lingering presence.

“Definitely not me,” Xornoth replies.

“Well, I’d hope so,” Scott says. “Even if you were gone for long enough.”

“I was wondering where you went off to, Joey,” Gem says, delicately cutting into whatever Scott was about to say next. “What were the two of you doing?”

“Xorny was taking me for a ride on their magnificent beast,” Joey says with a wink, arm curling more firmly around Xornoth’s bicep.

“Do not say it like that,” he says deadpan as Jimmy chokes on a half-eaten cheese cube and Sausage barks out a startled laugh that soon turns into an out-of-control cackle.

Joey actually flutters his eyelashes at him. “What do you mean?” he asks with a slight pout. “It was the longest, roughest ride I’ve ever been on. I could barely keep up.”

“He’s being crass. Calliope ran us down a waterfall,” Xornoth says to Scott, who gains a calculating gleam in his eye that Xornoth has learned to fear.

“Sorry, did you say that your deer ran down a waterfall?” Sausage says. “How the heck did she do that?!”

“On her hooves. Very rapidly.”

“Your deer can do that here?”

Xornoth is beginning to feel the prickle on the back of his neck from nobles staring at his far drabber clothes, at the flyaways of his hair, and at Joey, who is burrowing into his side far less subtly than he must think he’s being. A buzzing is settling into his ears, a sharp sound that slowly digs into his head. He carefully extricates his arm, nods to the group, and quietly dismisses himself for the night.

 •♚•

 Xornoth expects that to be the end of it, to be honest: a single night of mostly one-sided flirtation followed by nothing truly happening, leading to Scott’s council of stuffy advisors throwing their hands up in defeat and leaving him alone for the rest of his life.

So when Scott walks into his room with a parrot holding a letter and the smuggest grin that Xornoth has ever seen, he barely holds himself back from throwing something at him and snatches the letter from the bird’s beak. Even without seeing the seal on the letter (it’s intricate and detailed and just on the knife’s edge of being ostentatious), Xornoth knows who sent this.

“Has Joey always been like this?” he asks with a grumble, idly whisking a sliver of his gift from Exor into a thin claw that effortlessly slides through the wax.

“Yes and no,” Scott says, sitting on Xornoth’s desk. “Yes, in that he’s an outgoing and flirtatious guy. No, in that he’s never sent a follow-up letter.”

“This is when you try to convince me to give him a chance, isn’t it?” Xornoth can’t keep the mild bitter tone out of his voice. He doesn’t open the letter. He considers just setting the letter on fire without reading it.

“Of course not. You don’t need to hear that from me.” Scott gestures towards the letter. “What did he say?”

Xornoth glowers at him half-heartedly before slowly opening the letter and glancing through its contents.

“Well?” Scott prompts.

“Don’t you have laws to write?” Xornoth mutters.

“That’s after lunch,” he says. “I get the whole morning to bother my favorite big sibling.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Xornoth ponders the letter, walks over to his desk, and takes out a sheet of paper (decent quality, not as amazing as a formal invitation would be but not of such shoddy make that it’d be taken as an insult), a wax seal (his personal one, not one of Rivendell at large), and a pen. He stares at the writing materials for a second longer.

“I’m growing old here,” Scott says with a sigh, sliding off of the desk and onto the sofa a few feet away. 

“He thanked me for taking him to see Calliope and wants to meet for dinner sometime,” Xornoth says distractedly. “That’s all he asked for. No mention of politics or beneficial partnerships or uniting families or anything.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t think so,” he says. “Just… unexpected, I guess.” He begins penning a response (short but not curt, with none of the innuendos of the previous night but enough of the implications to make one pause).

“Unexpected sounds good enough,” Scott says. “You need unexpected in your life.”

There’s an odd tone in Scott’s voice, one that Xornoth resolves is far too sly, a joke bubbling in implications and sideways glances. Xornoth raises an eyebrow at him as he dries the ink with a single thought, seals the letter, and hands it off to the parrot, who gently takes it from him and flies out an open window.

“He’ll be good for you, Xorny.” Scott lingers on the bastardization of his name.

There's nothing holding him back this time. Xornoth pegs him in the forehead with his wax seal.

#empires fic #empires scott #empires xornoth #empires joey #empires season 1 #jornoth #empires shipping

[tathrin]

So is au a fusion? Like SW characters are Tolkienized or the other way around?

Yeah, the characters from Lord of the Rings are dropped into a Tolkien-ified version of the Star Wars universe. Aside from a few cases like the Thrawn(Kreia?)/Witch King idea that I posted before, there aren't many straight-up character mash-ups, and even in the case of Thrawn it's more about merging the characters' roles and styles into one than actually blending the characters.

The only other straight-up Combined Character that I've come up with so far is Elrond effectively being either Bail or Breha Organa. Here's thoughts from the unhinged bedtime typing:

Elrond: Bail Organa basically. Elrond, Senator of Alderaan, whose capital city is named Imladris and lies in a valley surrounded by rivers, so it's often nicknamed Rivendell by the locals; it's a peaceful planet that is secretly helping to fund and run the rebellion. His wife and three kids are in on it too (and the twins definitely take advantage of the fact that they look alike in order to alibi each other and generally just cause shit that the Empire has to deal with a la that post about Bail's ships "getting stolen, guess the Empire needs to reimburse me now!" and pre-ANH Leia being…well, Leia, lmao and just basically using her diplomatic status to Be A Shit), and Arwen and Aragorn totally are in love but cannot be together unless the Empire is destroyed and the Jedi can stop being hunted because she won't abandon the Rebellion and he won't turn his back on the Order so they can't just run off together; the only way they can be together in more than secret stolen snatches is after a complete victory. (Or if Alderaan gets exposed for the shit it's pulling and the Alderaanian leadership manages to survive and go on the run, of course. But that's not exactly the result any of them are hoping for.) Maybe when he was younger Elrond used to go on sort of "Space Doctor Without Borders" missions to help in war zones and refugee camps and stuff, and that's part of what radicalized him to join the Rebellion. That bg gives him good holonews cred, motivation, and a backstory that puts him in a position to have potentially been involved in military action in a very media-friendly sort of way (e.g. Last Alliance Herald) without actually having to have had the Clone Wars/Rise of the Empire be a recent thing. Either Celebrían is the queen of Alderaan like Breha, or we're making Alderaan a democracy and he's just their duly elected senator, but she's definitely some kind of Ruling Figure at home like a member of Alderaan Congress or something idk. (Or should she be the senator, who commutes to Coruscant, while he's the one who stays on Alderaan in between Mercy Missions, since he's the one in the "homely house" so to speak?)

Neither Arwen nor her brothers are likely going to serve as straight-up Leia analogs btw, because even the twins are more sensible and prudent than Leia, and we're going more for a Three Hunters And Company storyline (I think, in the story that definitely is not being written) than any sort of direct ANH/ESB/ROTJ sequence of events. But they basically serve the role that Leia did before she took over as senator, e.g. the children of the senator and queen? ish? who go around being an Optics Issue and lowkey pain in the Empire's ass while secretly moving information/supplies/etc around for the Rebellion, getting away with it because of Diplomatic Status.

Although the more I try to think of what to do with him, the more Gandalf seems to be falling into a sort of Kenobi/Yoda role. Which I'm pretty sure leaves Saruman as—a little too appropriately, yes I know—a Dooku/Tarkin combination. Oops?

*I'm keeping links to all the posts I make on this ridiculous au collected here, if you want to see any more rambling about it.

#i don't know if i'm glad or horrified that people are apparently interested in this #(or at least one of you is) #because the more questions i get asked the more i'm going to THINK ABOUT THIS #but thank you for asking anon #(anons?) #genuinely. even if i wail and moan too lmao #lord of the star ring wars #star wars au #lotr au #my stuff #elrond #bail organa #breha organa

[pacificwaternymph]

so I was thinking about your Au’s and so many ideas have been assaulting me for a few days now so I'm just gonna word vomit the ones that I'm the most attached to here and let you deal with it:

So house au what if the version of Xornoths corruption here is just him going into other peoples rooms and just messing around with them mabey he moves things around in the room mabey he relocates objects from one room to another it doesn't matter but this being his "corruption" is important for 2 reasons one that way the way the corruption not getting to the Ocean empire/Lizzies room like in the lore is that they are terrified of Lizzie like she caught them sneaking into her room to spread his “corruption” and she made sure that they didnt do that again because as this established in the lore Lizzie is a BAMF and you do not want to be on her bad side not sure if it affected the swamp empire in the lore but if it didnt then I guess that's because Xor Xor decided to play it safe and just stay away from water themed rooms the second reason why its important is that then Joels I don't belive in demons/supernatural stuff thing can be that he's the only one whos seen Xornoth in the act of spreading his "corruption" i mean knowing him he's probably helped them but he thinks its funny to act like he doesnt believe that Xornoths doing anything and he keeps acting like things going missing or being in a different place then where they where last seen isnt happing when someone trys to convince him that it is happening hes just like “it doesnt happen to lizzie and it doesnt happen to me (it does he just acts like it doesnt) so it must just be that they forgot they put it there stuff” 

Oh and a quick question as a treat: you know that one au where Xornoth has gender marker bracelets do they ever like were multiple at the same time like as a marker that they are She/They today or something?

I hope you liked my stupid ideas lol ill probably have more that ill share soon whether you like it or not *evil laughter*

That is a fantastic idea oh my god I love that. Xornoth's just being a little shit at any given possibility. Jimmy thinks he's getting the worst of it but really his room is just super messy so whenever Xornoth is looking for something in it it requires him completely upending everything to find it.

Also for your second question: yeah, they do.

#house au #rivendell twins au

[tinapaysmp]

@mcyt-yuri-week day 7: free day

Didn't know what to put here and I ended up making a swap au.

Hear we have Lady Gem, Guardian of the Overgrown, and the Wizard Katherine from the Crystal Cliffs.

Headcanons and ramblings under the cut:

Okay, I gotta be honest. I actually hate this trope in AU making. What do I mean by this? I hate AUs that's centered around shipping, even though I'm also guilty of this. And I'm always very particular when it comes to swap AUs.

But, this swap led me to swap the others and the idea of fWhip being the ruler of Rivendell was already funny to me. I have many ideas for this AU, especially since I have a lot of headcanons on world building from the OG version.

So let's start with,

Gem

Gem here is still twins with fWhip. Both of them are instead from the royal family of Rivendell with their mother being a fairy coming from the Overgrown.

Them being fraternal twins, one was more elven and the other was fae.

Originally, Gem was gonna inherit the throne of Rivendell. But, at age 14 when the council from the Overgrown were to choose their next guardian, the Spring chose her.

This led to a change on their father's line of succession and now fWhip was next in line.

This led to the two of them being educated separately for the rest of their teen years as future rulers.

As the Guardian of the Overgrown, Gem does her best to keep the nation free from conflict. Especially while being sandwiched by two nations of the Wither Rose Alliance.

Katherine

The Crystal Cliffs, a nation that was formerly autonomous to the Grimlands was the nation that Katherine was born and raised in.

She lived an average life being one of its citizen, yet a student of flora magic in the most prestigious academy in the nation.

But by age 16 she was approached by Gandalf, the immortal cat as the next Head Wizard. This surprised her but gave her a sense of responsibility for being chosen.

However, being the ruler of the Crystal Cliffs is not an easy task. Katherine tries everything in her power to avoid war for her people. But the nation being part of the notorious Wither Rose Alliance, proves this to be difficult.

So how did they got together?

A part of me wants it to happen earlier compared to the OG version where they got together after Gem got cured from corruption.

In this AU, they got together while they were looking for a cure for the corruption mid-Xornot arc.

#mcytyuriweek2023 #empires smp #empires gem #empires katherine #kathgem #empiresshipping #eswap au #empires swap au #tinapay empires swap au #bread.art

[asterssunzephyr]

If this happens after the feud between Gem and Scott is over, I can think that Scott being Fwhip's roommate, would be the one to tell Gem what's wrong

ABSOLUTELY:] honestly he would tell her even with it going on because he knows how it hurts to have a sibling not talk to you. (Xornoth wasnt his biggest supporter in their younger years..)

#zephs aus #empires smp #roseblings #rivendell brothers #rivendell twins #yes Scott & Xorn are twins

[youareunbearable]

Was just reading your work and imagined a Maglor with the hobbits but it’s also your Pokemon au as well how do you think miriel absol would think about him being this close all along

Oh thank you for reading my ficlets! Im glad you liked them!! 💜💜💜

Personally, I think she knows. Being a pokemon that is so intuned to Maglor’s singing, through vibrations in the Music or something, and since Elrond lets her and Halda just roam (they're outside pets basically, even if Elrond would like them to spend more time in Rivendell proper with him) and it isn't weird of she strays for a couple of days, or follows Elrond’s twins on a hunt of theyre going west.

She stays by the rivers, close to the Brandywine and a Vaporeon will emerge to gossip with her. He'll tell her about how things are going with Maglor, and at first they're dreadful, but over the years and decades the news will become lighter until they are laughing at tales of Old Maggie Took.

Shes pleased, with Maglor’s healing. She grieves a little wishing Maedhros could have had the chance to heal with his brother as Halda dreams of when the Absol shares the news with the Zoroark. But well, maybe its for the best. She tries to lead Elrond’s sons to Hobbiton more than once, but the little beings think its such a fun game to play keep away with the elves that she hardly bothers anymore. Maglor is happy, and she tries her best to inform Elrond of that, so he's happy as he can be too.

Its only on one visit, well into the third millenia of the 3rd Age when she feels it. Her skin crawls and her fur stands on edge, something she's never felt on the edges of the Shire before, even when she travels through or past those haunted hills of the former Human Kingdoms. This is a different type of evil, a pure type she hasn't felt in Ages, last on the battlefield that shattered Kunyar and made the ghost pokemon dormant. She races into the Shire for the first time, not caring who sees her as she tracks the source of the Evil.

Soon, she crests a small hill, perching on top of a little hobbit hole, a light growl escaping her teeth and she glares down, down at the little being with something so FOUL in his pocket.

"My Goodness!" The little being gasps, hands inching towards his hip where a sword might be if he carried one on him. He trembled in his garden, realizing he has nowhere to run if she left at him.

And she could, she could jump and rip that nasty little thing in his pocket right off him, run it back to Elrond and Halda for they'll know what to do with the Ring.

But before she could do anything, a large Corviknight screamsbpopping out of the little wooden ball that Mortals like to keep their pokemon in. He roars and flaps his giant wings, furious at her for threatening HIS former master's dear Burglar. She could take this silly bird, but she won't. Before she can lunge with a fire fang, out of the corner of her eye she spots a Vaporeon dashing out from the river behind this hobbit hole.

"Stop!" He cries, "What are you doing you can't attack Bilbo! Hes done nothing wrong!"

The Absol shakes off the pleading, standing tall and knowing all eyes are on her, hobbit, pokemon, and even a single Elf gaze, shocked and stunned at seeing her for the first time in over 6 thousand years.

"Hear me!" She calls, knowing that only the pokemon can understand her words, but watching the Hobbits flinch away from her cry. "Hear me because I feel a great evil in this land! A discordant note in the Song and it resides in the shape of a ring in his pocket." She turns to peer at the hobbit, at Bilbo, from around the Corviknight. The hobbit shrinks behind the large pokemon. "That ring will bring downfall and doom! Beware!"

With that, and a fleeting glance towards Maglor once more, drinking in his healthy glow and well dressed, if strange, appearance, then bounds back to Rivendell.

Halda needs to know about this maybe she can speak to Elrond and warn him.

#silmarillion #silm fic #maglor #pokemon!au #maglor in the shire #bilbo baggins #amber rambles #ask #asks #lotr #thanks for thr ask!!! i hope this answers some of your question and was fun to read

[spawnofdeath]

As promised, since the overwhelming majority voted for wanting to see it, here is my Empires AU main post with all my current notes and thoughts:

Two Sons of Rivendell

(Title borrowed from the poem written for the ending of Empires season 1 by the wonderful @fishy-strawberries on their art blog floweroflaurelin)

AKA me realizing there's two plot relevant reveals of two characters being siblings in Empires 1 and thinking what if I switched them, so Scott and Xornoth get "Hold on now, we're siblings? How did we forget that?" And Lizzie gets "Wait, the demon is my brother?"

Summary:

Scott and Xornoth, rulers of neighboring elven kingdoms Rivendell and Erewyn, rediscover the tales of their people's old gods, Aeor and Exor. What memories have they lost along with the connection to their past?

Meanwhile, in the nearby Grimlands, salmon loving engineer fWhip starts having troubles involving a demonic cod creature. Who is this malicious stranger, and is he connected to Ocean Queen Lizzie?

In no particular order, some notes:

There aren't really just straight forward role swaps exclusively between two characters each, it's all a bit all over the place

I only watched six out of twelve perspectives (Jimmy, Joel, Lizzie, Pearl, Scott and Sausage) so I don't know if I'm missing anything but also it's not meant to be canon-compliant (but also means I don't know how to write the other characters)

This AU is fully falling into the trend of making fanon Jimmy much cooler than he is in canon, but I just think he deserves a proper villain arc (not counting the one he thoroughly failed at in season 2)

Actual story notes:

Xornoth identifies and presents as broadly male-adjacent, and uses he/they

Because there's no possible pun on "siblings" that could work as well as "Seablings" for the purposes of this AU, Scott and Xornoth will be collectively known as "The Twin Kings"

Xornoth's Empire Erewyn (name might be subject to change) is slightly down the mountainside from Rivendell, where it's a bit warmer than on the snow covered peaks (even without their gods, Scott prefers the winter and Xornoth the summer), and has shared borders with Rivendell, Crystal Cliffs, and the Lost Empire (small parts taken off each of those three, but mostly extends into the spawn area, I looked up a map for this so hopefully you get what I mean)

Erewyn exports enchanted books and offers services of custom enchanting for armour and weapons

The Ocean Queen, of course, cherishes all Ocean dwellers, which certainly includes, for most of their life cycle, salmon

Featuring Scott both as one of the Lost Siblings pair and as the guy who falls in love with the demon

Those two plot lines actually might interfere with each other, I cannot imagine Xornoth would be very fond of the idea of his friend/brother trying to date a demon and Scott probably wouldn't take it very well if Xornoth tried to talk him out of it, so it might put a strain on their friendship, but I don't care, it can't be anyone but Scott, I can't make it work with anyone but Scott (the only other option I can think of would be Sausage, and he's already allied with the demon in canon, I don't want him to be in this AU as well)

I'm gonna say Jimmy is also at least somewhat interested in Scott, because, well, he is kind of cute, for someone without any fins or scales, and why not? Some fun on the side, why shouldn't he? There should be more to life than just terrorising people, even for a demon

Farmer (and Fighter) Queen Pearl is far too exited about her new demonic sparring partner and the powers he's willing to share (just to make their matches more interesting, right? This surely won't corrupt her, nooo, how would it?) (Unlike with Sausage, here I actually do like the idea of Pearl still being in a somewhat similar to canon role, except cranked up to eleven to become the role of demon protégé)

Pearl is also involved in this AU's equivalent of the hostage exchange, the other side being Xornoth (Pearl started it by stealing one of Xornoth's owls, but I cannot think of who or what they would have taken from her in return)

Pix as the assassin in that storyline, I think, because it's really funny to me to think that the person who in canon is tracking people's deaths in this AU is causing people's deaths

Lady Katherine of House Blossom, Flower Mage Queen of the Overgrown, tends to what is known as the Memorial Garden

Lord Sausage of Mythland really just wants to be friends with everyone and is always advocating for peace

Xornoth and Shrub have this AU's equivalent of the Cod War (what would that be though? I'd appreciate any ideas)

Joey and Xornoth are the happy couple who had the big royal wedding, with Scott as Xornoth's best man, and officiated by Pearl

Joey also gets the role of the one who's in complete denial of anything demonic going on. Joey cares about two things, his beautiful builds and his beautiful husband, and that's it. Demon? What demon? There's no demon, why would there be a demon? The sudden surplus of cod make good food for the raptors, as such their unusual aggression goes almost entirely unnoticed, piles of slime are buried under dirt to form nice rounded little hills. He can't even see Jimmy during the big arena fight, just Pearl going mad for no apparent reason, like, what's up with her then? (Keep in mind that I have never in my life watched any of Joey's videos, I have not the first clue how to write him)

Who did Pearl build the arena with, by the way? Probably Gem, who starts out being somewhat complacent about the whole demon issue ("Oh I'm sure he's not that dangerous, he's hardly managed to hurt me, and anyways, he's got some very interesting abilities I'd love to study"), but after the big massacre finally realizes it's actually quite serious and also Pearl is clearly not herself and definitely needs help

Random thought, you know how manta rays swim like they're flying through the water? Jimmy flies like he's swimming through the air

Jimmy is short for Jimahinjao, although he doesn't go by that name anymore, and definitely only Scott is allowed to call him Jimmy

Lizzie is short for Lizmoa, which is already one of the shortest merfolk names, but she's always gone by Lizzie, except in situations calling for truly formal adress

I don't know if "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" would necessarily apply to a gay wedding, but I kind of want it to in this case because:

I imagine Scott and Xornoth would have similar styles in terms of clothing and accessories, because it's a traditional elven style or because they're unknowingly brothers, who knows. The point here is Joey coming to Scott for 'something borrowed' and Scott going "Ohhh I can make your outfits match, that's gonna be so cute!"

Thus, the four items: an enchanted golden apple found with the help of Joel (because I didn't know what else he could provide), a pendant made of pixandrian copper (paralleling my interpretation of the amethyst Lizzie got from Gem as a necklace), an elven crown borrowed from Scott (matching Xornoth's), and a bouquet of blue orchids from the swamp outside of Mythland (paralleling the fact that in canon, the warped fungus came from the same place as the corruption)

Speaking of the swamp outside of Mythland, it is regarded as a dangerous and possibly haunted place and thus uninhabited (except for Jimmy, who is the reason people think it's haunted)

The crown Scott receives from Jimmy is a flower crown (as a nod to the for this AU rather unfitting official ship name of "Flower Husbands"). It's made from water lilies and has, beyond the mind control, two rather obvious magical properties. One: it doesn't wilt. Two: it's always slightly dripping. Mostly water, sometimes mud, rarely a bit of slime, but it's always dripping something. Scott still wears it anyways

Lizzie and Katherine get kidnapped by Pearl and Scott, and rescued by Joel, prompting that particular romance

As it will eventually turn out, Scott and Xornoth are twins (Xornoth being older by an hour, though there's no real way for them to find it out that exactly)

Xornoth reads in the library about an artifact he's pretty sure is related to the old religion he and Scott are continuing to learn about. The artifact in question is a black iron crown in the shape of a pair of antlers, to be worn by the royal representative of one of the two gods. They resolve to find this artifact.

Meanwhile, Lizzie, in a treasure chest she unearthed, finds what she thinks is probably an interestingly shaped piece of scrap metal. Maybe she can trade it to some fool for something else. Maybe for a channeling trident. She's been wanting one of those. Calling lightning at will sounds amazing.

The Crown™ is still forged by fWhip, and makes the rounds from Joel, who gets killed for it by Lizzie, who, while trying to give it to Shrub, gets it yoinked away by Joey, who gives it away via a treasure hunt which is then won by Xornoth, who gets it stolen by Gem, who creates a quiz for it that's won by fWhip, who gives it to Sausage, who puts on a contest in which Shrub then cheats and kills him to get it

The Ocean Queen gets storm powers that she needs to learn to control, she probably strikes Katherine with lightning by accident and subsequently flees to a deserted island to not hurt anyone else

While Lizzie is gone, fWhip steals the nautilus shell "Jimmy" has been sealed in, prompting her to return when one of her axolotls comes to tell her about it

More notes to possibly come in the future via reblogs

#empires smp #empires s1 #jimmy solidarity #ldshadowlady #scott smajor #joey graceffa #xornoth empires smp #two sons of rivendell au #two sons of rivendell au notes #tsorau #long post