worldwalkernovel

[worldwalkernovel]

Happy MGM from writingamongthecoloredroses! What Disney movie is your OC(s) favorite? Is there a personal reason?

Oh boy, it’s been a hot minute since I posted something on this blog, I swear to christ I’m going to finish the novel, things have just been...a little pandemicky out here.  Anyway!

Brenneth’s favorite Disney movie is Robin Hood, she likes the songs and she had Strong Gryffindor Energy even as a little kid, so the narrative appealed to her.  Honorable mention to Fantasia, which she started watching after getting back from Alleirat the first time as an anxiety management technique.  Sometimes she and Crispin watched it together and pretended they couldn’t see each other getting weepy during the Firebird Suite, because that’s what you do for your soulmate/mortal enemy/best friend sometimes.

Crispin’s favorite Disney movie when he was a kid was Mulan, he tried to convince his sister to help him dress up in Mulan’s matchmaker outfit for Halloween when he was six and their parents shut him down.  It continues to be his favorite movie post-Alleirat (she reminds him of Brenneth) but also he can’t watch it anymore because the avalanche scene makes him shaky (she reminds him of she reminds him of Brenneth).  

Shiko’s favorite Disney movie is actually not a Disney movie at all even though she argues that it counts because Disney distributed it, it’s Princess Mononoke.  Brenneth gets a real kick out of watching Shiko argue with Crispin about it.  In terms of actual Disney movies, she actually didn’t watch a whole ton of them growing up but she had a crush on Prince Eric when she was a kid, so, nominally the Little Mermaid.

Krei has never seen any movie, let alone Disney, but in any modern AU/if she ever had, her favorite would be Sleeping Beauty because she and Phillip are the same person.

#worldwalker #brenneth #crispin #shiko #krei the tree lesbian #original work #I ONLY MADE IT A LITTLE SAD #ONLY SLIGHTLY SAD #anyway krei and prince phillip are that spiderman pointing meme #and if she and shiko lived in nyc they would go to comic con as aurora and phillip at least twice and get a lot of pictures taken #also probably as ashitaka and san at some point because krei would also love that movie #i watched princess mononoke for the first time recently! it was a really good movie! #also yeah crispin was big into mulan which his parents did not approve of because...you know...gender norms #in that au where they live in nyc brenneth and crispin get roped into the cosplay thing probably #not sure who they dress up as...maybe the earth spirit and the firebird from that fantasia bit actually #nymph!crispin and firebird!brenneth #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #Anonymous #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

does shiko get an epithet? like white wolf, fireheart

Spoilers ;)

But since I feel bad aboutthat answer, may I also recommend the absolute hell out of the song Medusaby Kailee Morgue for Shiko, as well as My Boy Builds Coffins byFlorence + the Machine and Work Song by Hozier.

#shiko #worldwalker #original work #nontent #i discovered medusa recently and i'm OBSESSED with it for shiko #it's the perfect mix of light and delicate and COMPLETELY TERRIFYINGLY HAUNTING #i love it #music #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #Anonymous #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

oh dang I must have missed that one! New question then: What are some cool things Brenneth has made that she's proud of? Does she do a lot of personal projects on the side, or does she only make stuff she knows she can sell?

Oh, y’all, a fun fact I learned at the Met recently:armorers and weapons-smiths often made children’s toys!  Brenneth makes children’s toys.  They’re much more detail-oriented than mostof the things she makes—Brenneth specializes in weapons, although she’s beenknown to make some armor, usually as a collaborative effort—and she finds thefinicky little bits satisfying to work with. It also helps that she’s fully capable of grabbing red-hot iron with herbare hands if she feels like it, which makes finicky little bits much moreconvenient than if she needed to wear gloves. She takes requests and does not charge, which Crispin needles her about—herpayment scale is flexible to say the least and it gives him hives in aprofessionally mortified sort of way—but she refuses to budge.  She’s not proud of those toys in a technicalsense (they’re…fine, they’re just fine, but they’re nowhere near herusual expectations for herself) but she likes to make them and she’s proud ofhow happy they make people, so she’s happy.

In terms of personal projects, Brenneth sometimes makesstuff for herself, or for Crispin, but she doesn’t really believe inmixing work and hobbies anymore than she already does (which is…a lot), so shetries to do non-metalwork for stress relief.

#worldwalker #original work #brenneth #crispin #nanowrimo #brenneth makes CHILDREN'S TOYS and that shit is CANON #she's no great shakes at sculpture but her toys are sturdy and well made and the kids she makes them for like them #so she considers herself good enough to be going on with #brenneth also mercilessly upcharges anyone who comes to her for the Prestige #if they just want a sword or a knife or something that's fine but if they want something Made By The Fireheart #then they can pay for the privilege #which is how she justifies doing other work for less money or even for free (eg the toys) #crispin takes over her customer service because she's not NICE when someone takes offense at being upcharged #in brenneth's opinion if someone is coming to gawk at her they deserve it #crispin doesn't strictly speaking disagree but it's nervewracking to him that she'll tell people to get out if they don't like it #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #positronicdream #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

also also, in the hypothetical timeline where everything turns out fine and everyone lives happily ever after, do shiko and krei move in together? where? do they have pets? kids? houseplants that shiko makes endless jokes about?

In any “everything is okay” timeline, Shiko and Krei DO in factmove in together!  Krei spends all herfree hours for the first month and a half in their new home putting up shelvesand buying pots to fill them, until every room is dripping with greenery andsmells sweetly of growth and fresh soil. They get a place with either big windows or lots ofwindows, so that Krei can grow flowers in the sunlight and weave them intoShiko’s hair.  Shiko picks up books inAlleirai that start to fill their shelves, first children’s books—the Alleiraiversion of Have You Seen My Hat and Hop On Pop or whatever—and then,as her reading improves, books about religion and about history and about the arcane and about traditions of the dead.  She’s fascinated by the idea of dead gods,gods who were and now are not, and by the idea of runic magic, and by the way funerals on Alleirat were shaped by civil war, and Krei is fascinated by the way Shiko tucksher hair irritably behind her ears as she talks about something she loves.

Shiko also picks up a cat, after a couple years.  It is a non-traditional cat.

It’s dead, okay, she has a skeleton cat.  It’s some extraordinarily advanced runicmagic that really wouldn’t work on anything larger or more complex than youraverage housepet, but binding the cat’s—something, Shiko says cats don’thave souls like people do but at that point Krei kind of tuned out—back intoits bones means it can operate a little more on its own impulses and keepmoving while Shiko is asleep.  It takesKrei a little while to stop jumping every time the thing comes into the room,even if Shiko says that it doesn’t mind being alive again.  Shiko did it mostly as a proof-of-concept, away to make her name as an arcane scholar, but once she had the cat,what was she going to do?  Kill it again?  Obviously not.

She did not tell Krei that she was bringing a dead cat home.  This is because Shiko, while not actually a bad person, is a little bit of an asshole.

They do have children, I think—just one, a son with handsome darkskin toned with gold and hair as pin-straight as Shiko’s and eyes as emeraldgreen as Krei’s.  He’s the onlybiological child among the four of them, and grows up much loved, into a scholarjust like his mother.  Shiko always saysthat, when the other options were warrior, hero, and nightmare, he went withthe best option he had, and if that means her kid spent three years boring themall silly with his research about architectural styles in pre-Unification Obalin,that was fine by her.

#worldwalker #krei the tree lesbian #shiko #original work #worldwalker novel #nanowrimo #WOW THIS WAS VERY INFORMATIVE ACTUALLY???? #shiko: scholar and all around NERD #i did NOT know that about her until just now #but apparently in a modern au shiko would be like...writing her dissertation and doing work study in the library or something #oh god she's a NERD of course she is #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #aethersea #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

Ok so I'm not sure if you were serious about this or not but, can we know what daemons the characters of Alleirat would have? Sorry for the bother dude.

“am i serious” OF COURSE I’M SERIOUS PULL UP SOME CARPET BECAUSE THERE IS ONLY ONE CHAIR IN MY ROOM 

Okay in honesty I just threw that in the tags because it was the first thing that popped into my head, but I’ve given this exactly 0 thought, so bear with me here.

Brenneth

So the first thing that occurred to me for Brenneth was actually a wolf (pursuit predator), but instead what I think she ends up with is a mountain lion.  Solitary, adaptable, and an excellent hunter.  He settles when she and Crispin first arrive in Alleirat, so, fairly early (they’re ten), and for a long time it’s a mystery.  Brenneth, as a teenaged blacksmith and sometime warrior, is friendly and reasonable, good with children and happy with her work, quick to cut to the heart of the problem but not excessively aggressive except when the situation calls for it.  Not the type to make someone think apex predator, all things considered.  Her daemon lies under a table in her forge and lets visiting kids’ daemons attack his tail and generally does a good impression of an extremely large and easy-going housecat.

Then Crispin becomes the White Wolf and everyone remembers that Brenneth’s lazy nine-foot housecat is also an exceptionally well designed killer.  And there’s something mythic about it, the Fireheart standing there with her sword drawn and a cougar at her side.

There are statues.  Both of them are horrified.

Crispin

Crispin’s daemon means something radically different in Alleirat than on Earth.  Also, she’s not a wolf, she’s a golden eagle–he earned the epithet before his daemon was common knowledge.  Crispin’s daemon settles a while after Brenneth’s does, upon hearing the prophecy about how Crispin is supposed to save Alleirat from some great evil.  She’s big for a golden eagle, which is a big bird already (like, big enough to carry off a bear cub), and she and Crispin are Separated, to allow her to fly.  After their return to Earth, she’s suddenly far too big for Crispin’s tiny ten-year-old shoulder.  This presents a problem, as a bad mental day for the two of them means that Crispin can’t use his left arm and she can’t fly at all, so she becomes known for riding on his backpack during school. 

On Earth, she’s a symbol of courage, of nobility and strength and honor.

On Alleirat, they pay much more attention to the fact that a golden eagle will eat  anything from a rabbit to a small deer to another eagle–a killer of their own kind.

Additionally, she was caught in the lightning blast when Crispin killed his teachers and started his rampage.  They’re not sure what happened, but now she’s an albino, and nothing seems to change that.

Krei

Krei is enough generations removed from her tree-folk heritage to have ended up with a daemon, although the rules are a little different.  She’s almost a hundred before her daemon settles, after her mother dies attempting to evacuate a house fire.  Her daemon settles as a dog unique to Alleirat, but most similar to a Bernese Mountain Dog.  The breed is a little bigger, its fur is differently colored with a slightly different muzzle shape, but it was originally bred for very similar purposes, primarily for the defense of homes, livestock, and families.  Dog daemons, on Alleirat as well as on Earth, are considered hallmarks of protective personalities and service professions, and his particular breed is known for loyalty and devotion.  He’s almost big enough to be used as a small draft animal (Krei is 6′7″ and he passes her hip), and generally very friendly and easygoing most of the time, which serves both of them well training new recruits.  On the other hand, he’s a dog the size of a small pony and he has the jaws to prove it–more than one person has been put on trial in Dase with a broken arm from Krei’s attack daemon.

She actually shares the dog daemon with her mother, although Torei’s daemon was a rangier, mutt-y sort of animal more like a wolfhound.

Shiko

Shiko’s daemon always identifies as male, even before she transitions, which contributes in no small part to the independent, self-sufficient way she tends to think.  He settles as a red fox, small for his kind but about the right size to tuck himself around Shiko’s neck like a fur ruff.  He’s not super into ghosts.  He’s not super into zombies.  He’s not super into magic at all, really.  He has a lot of complaints about a lot of what’s going on here.  

When they’re traveling through Alleirat, a number of reports come back that he lacks the classic white tips, but the truth is quite simple: he helps Shiko raise the dead, and he frequently ends up with grave dirt obscuring the tip of his tail and front of his throat.

#worldwalker #crispin #brenneth #original work #here are some bonus shippy thoughts #brenneth's daemon is big enough for crispin's daemon to ride and they definitely do that #not often and not in public but wandering their own home it's just a bird on a cougar and no one questions it #sometimes shiko's daemon gets into trouble and krei's daemon just picks him up in his mouth and puts him somewhere else #krei's daemon is big and fluffy enough to curl up around shiko's daemon and make him disappear #here are some bonus tragic thoughts #crispin's daemon tried to blind brenneth's daemon by tearing his eyes out and the mountain lion had a scar from the most successful attempt #at least he did until they went back to earth #before everything crispin's daemon was a beautiful gold-tipped brown and everyone misses it #sometimes crispin wakes up from nightmares and can't stand to look at her (at what he did to her) without crying #sometimes brenneth's daemon sleeps in her bed (an achievement given his size) but more often he doesn't #they have nightmares and after the first time they woke up in a panic and he actually struck her #actually hit brenneth with his claws unsheathed because he didn't know he couldn't tell who she was they share a soul and he didn't know he #he started sleeping on the floor and he has been for quite a while now with relatively few exceptions #it absolutely fucking kills both of them #old content #i wrote this at 1 am and therefore didn't name daemons

[worldwalkernovel]

His Dark Materials type daemons AU/hcs?

FUN FACT, this AU already exists!  

#worldwalker #alleirat #brenneth #crispin #daemon au #i've been meaning to transfer this to this blog for MONTHS #thank you for the kick in the ass #gonna reblog it now #positronicdream #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

Anyway I’m doing NaNo in an impulsive push to finish Worldwalker before I go grey, and the issue I’m running into is that I point my brain at a scene and go “let’s talk about Shiko and guilt” and my brain instead goes “let’s talk about Crispin and combat skill level and recklessness.”

#worldwalker #this is not...new...but it remains very frustrating #i'm also writing some source and shield fic but MOSTLY i am writing worldwalker #in fact i am STRUGGLING a little so if anyone wanted an au of worldwalker you could send a boy an ask #some headcanons or something #no canon stuff but headcanons are on the table so as to get a better handle on what the FUCK my brain is trying to do here #nanowrimo

[worldwalkernovel]

An unkind person might say that plans and planning were never your strong suit,” Crispin observed.  It was not, strictly speaking, untrue.  I had always lacked the ambition to match Crispin when it came to planning—cutting a swathe of destruction wasn’t hard, but maintaining it for four years without being caught was a certain flavor of impressive.  I’d always been all reaction, as subtle as a hammer and about as good at the long game.  Crispin was the one who had a good sense of how to set goals and achieve them.  I just saw problems and solved them, took commissions and finished them, usually with a lot of snap decisions in the mix. Instead of saying any of that, I smiled at Crispin, broad and genuine, and said, “Lucky for me that you’re a kind person.

Worldwalker

#quote #worldwalker #original work #brenneth #crispin #hello friends!!! #i have implemented a new rule of writing 200 words a day and y'all #i have written over 7k in the past week and a half #that's literally and unironically more than i've written in the past 7 months #this is probably what it feels like to not be depressed huh????? #wow! it's been a bad year! i'm just now realizing this #regardless i wrote this today and i'm incredible pleased with this exchange #i'm alive again! #i'm gonna answer some asks! #i love all of you very much and am feeling much more...spiritually equal to facing my own characters again! #on today's writing update: #crispin is a hufflepuff who models slytherin and brenneth is a gryffindor dumbass

[worldwalkernovel]

I am Consumed By Guilt about having basically dropped my novel for four months while I had a long and varied series of crises, which has definitely affected my productivity on it, however

I did cross the 100K mark on Worldwalker three days ago, so.

That’s nice.

#worldwalker #progress!!!! #again!!!!! #finally!!!!! #god it's been...a rough couple months! but i am back! and hoping to get writing done again!

[worldwalkernovel]

Are there some people who KNOW they have magic because they have an adara reaction, but never figure out WHAT KIND because it's too general/vague?

Yes!  I talked a little in this post about how, for example, a flesh worker who specializes in bone might never actually figure that out, because they need to be touching the object of their magic in order to do magic, and live bone isn’t generally hanging out where people can get their hands on it.  (Before anyone asks: teeth are not bones, teeth are teeth.  Dentin is different enough from bone that magic treats it as a separate material when you get to this level of specificity, like iron and steel.)  But that bone worker might still make people taste iron from the bone marrow!  They’re just probably never going to get a sense of what they can do.  

As a rule, the really general magic comes out by accident at some point--if you’re a water worker or a metal worker or something, eventually you’ll be in contact with that thing in a moment where you’re upset enough to use magic.  Weather worker adaran effects can be pretty scattershot, but it’s weather.  You’re in it always.  Eventually you’ll use magic by accident.  It’s the highly niche stuff that gets dicey.  Like, say you’re from a poor farming family--when the hell are you going to be handling enough silk to realize that you can work magic in it?

#worldwalker #alleirat #magic workers and magic working #teeth ain't bones and therefore bone workers can't do shit with them #but in fairness bone workers generally cannot do shit regardless #if you have a bone PHYSICALLY STICKING OUT OF YOU then yeah a bone worker is pretty clutch #or if you have a shattered pelvis or skull that NEEDS REPAIRING more urgently than you need not to be filleted #then theoretically someone could cut down until the bone worker could get a finger on the bone in question #and they could heal you #but obviously that is uh...not considered ideal #especially since a more broad-scope flesh worker can also heal bones without the filleting #also High Power Levels usually accompany Broad Domains #you are not likely to get a silk worker who can control every thread in their clothing #but a broad spectrum cloth worker: that's more likely #queue deeper than the sea of stars #definitelynotscott #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

“You and me, Crispin had said, clutching at her hands, just like Torei was now. There had been something terrible and aching in his face, something broken in the adara, the electricity that his magic always sent across her skin harsh and hurting. Just like always, ah?” what is this adara? you’ve mentioned it before I think, something about their magic?

RIGHT, so, the adara is a magical circuit that closes when two magic workers look into each others’ eyes.  The adara is unique to each type of magic, and usually manifests as a smell or taste, although there are some people strong enough to throw a physical sensation in there--a plant worker like Krei might make people smell grass or blooming wildflowers, whereas a fire worker’s magic might taste like smoke and, if you’re Brenneth, make people feel a wave of heat like standing next to a bonfire.  Crispin’s gaze makes magic users taste ozone and feel electricity across their skin, like touching one of those weird glowing static orbs.  There is a mild-but-real societal rule (more than a courtesy but less than a taboo) against excessive eye contact in general Alleirai society as a response to the existence of the adara.  It’s considered something of a privacy violation.  It’s most common for people to look at the person they’re talking to while the other person is talking, and then look away while they’re talking, and so forth, or else to look slightly off from their eyes if watching them is important.  Close relationships involve more eye contact.  Eye contact is also sometimes employed by magic users to make a point or take control of a conversation, since the adara can be a bit of a jolt if you’re not ready for it.

Here are some rules about how the adara works.

First of all, the adara is a function of power level.  The more powerful someone is, the harder the adara will hit you when you meet their eyes.  A fire worker of average strength might be enough to make you smell candle-smoke, or a campfire, but not much more.  Brenneth can hit people with such a strong wave of magic that a glance usually makes magic workers come out in a heat flush, and if she holds someone’s eyes for long enough, she can make them break out in a sweat like they’re standing in front of a furnace.  

Second, only magic users can sense the adara.  That’s about a quarter of the population, to some extent, but your average non-magical person can stare deeply into any eyes they please without any effect.

Third, although the broad strokes of the adara tend to be in common within a magical “type” (for example, most weather workers will make you smell/taste ozone or rain and maybe feel electricity, as the magic usually works in storms, and most thread workers will make you smell dyes or fibers of some kind), it’s still relatively specific to each person.  Sort of like hair color.  “Brown” is a broad sweep, but if your girlfriend has brown hair, you probably know that color even if you’re just seeing her from behind.  However, someone’s specific adara can change if they suffer a major alteration of their core self, in some way.  That’s what Brenneth is talking about with Crispin--as the White Wolf, his magic feels distinctly different to her, and she thinks of it as the adara being “broken.”  It shifts back to more like what she’s familiar with eventually.

Finally, the critical issue with the adara in terms of tactically using it to know what you’re about to fight before you fight it is that it’s less effective for stronger magic workers.  As a rule, the adara only allows people to sense magic that’s close to their own power level or stronger than their own.  Brenneth and Crispin are, for all intents and purposes, nearly magic-numb, because their own power washes out any potential for another person to make an impression on them.  A weak magic worker will always know what they’re dealing with, because the adara will tell them.  A powerful magic worker is mostly flying blind.

#worldwalker #alleirai culture #magic workers and magic working #brenneth #crispin #SORRY I'VE BEEN A GHOST #but now i have a job and it's...idk it's fine #i like my patients even if my coworkers are hit and miss #and weirdly being busier has been good for my writer's block #so hopefully i will be making progress now! #but anyway yes here is a fun magical fact and sorry for the delay #queue deeper than the sea of stars #smallblueandloud #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

so i've been doing that boycott thing and just got back, and the whole time i was sort of thinking about the part in the ladyhawke au where crispen introduces himself with brenneth's last name. i was wondering, in a normal au, would they get married? what would happen with last names? on a slightly different note, what are wedding traditions like in alleirat, and do either b or c want to or really not want to marry the other? what are their general attitudes on marriage? nice to see you back!

Crispin’s deepest most secret most denied desire is to marry Brenneth and has been since he was twelve years old send tweet

Brenneth doesn’t have any Emphatic feelings about marriage one way or the other, but Crispin wants nothing more than to be able to call himself Brenneth’s husband and, while he very much assumes for a majority of his life that it’s wildly out of the question, he doesn’t care about how it’s done, where it happens, or who’s in attendance.  If Brenneth wandered up to him in her worst, rattiest clothes with soot on her face and ash in her hair and informed him that they were going to be sworn to each other in front of the gothed and five street urchins, he would be Absolutely Fine with that.  They don’t legally have last names in Alleirat (worldwalkers are identified as “of Alleirat” rather than by family name or city of origin), but in another universe, Crispin would be more than glad to do whatever Brenneth wanted with their last names--probably leave them alone.

As for Brenneth, like I said, she’s not strongly invested in marriage as a concept, particularly not to Crispin.  As far as she’s concerned, she’s more tightly bound to him than she ever could be to another living being, any ceremonial recognition of that fact is merely a formality.  She’d propose if she knew he wanted it, though, once they’re together.  (Someone eventually tips her off that he might enjoy being married properly--he’d never propose on his own time because he’s such a trainwreck of a person.)

Marriage in Alleirat is similar to marriage in, say, the 1300′s, by which I mean that there’s a distinction drawn between a legal status between two people which recognizes that their material possessions are being merged into a single unit (more common in the upper classes) and an emotional bond being recognized publicly (more common in middle and lower classes).  Generally speaking, arranged marriages are done for business dealings, as nobility isn’t hereditary, but there have been cases of trying to keep a line of powerful magic workers “pure” by arranging marriages to the same class of worker over the generations.  This does not always work--magic is generally loyal, but might occasionally decide to jump the tracks and give you a water worker after a hundred years of steel.

In terms of the wedding itself, attire and preferred season are heavily regionally dependent, largely because most Alleirai weddings happen outside--so, in the northern mountains, summer weddings are standard, whereas in the south only Bona Fide Idiots get married in the height of summer heat.  Some rich folks or Politically Important Folks (like, for example, Brenneth and Crispin) might get married in a ballroom or even in the audience chamber of the gothkenla, the city center, but most of the time marriages happen outside.  Weddings NEVER happen in temples--it’s considered bad luck to hold a wedding in a temple, for two reasons.  

First, while most people pray predominantly to one or the other god, it’s usually viewed as tempting fate to so obviously favor one over the other as to hold a wedding in a temple.  This general wariness is related to the fact that one time the gods got mad and fucking obliterated each other and also a whole continent.  

Second, while upper class and political marriages follow slightly different rules, most people consider it bad luck to turn people away from a wedding!  It’s widely believed to bring a marriage full of dissatisfaction and conflict if you actively turn someone away from an Alleirai wedding celebration.  This doesn’t mean you need to invite the whole town, you invite whoever you invite, but if other people show up it’s expected that you welcome them, give them alcohol, feed them, the whole nine.  While most people don’t bother to show up uninvited to a wedding for people they either don’t know or don’t like, this has led to the tendency to hold weddings outside where you don’t have a functional limit on space.

Most weddings are done by the town magistrate or some other person who is generally agreed to be a local social authority--a small enough town might have one of the local elders perform weddings, a large enough city generally has dedicated civil servants who act as officiants--although two especially devout people might have a priest of each god cooperatively perform the ceremony.  At bare minimum there are two witnesses in addition to the officiant and the couple

There’s some variation in the ceremony itself, but there’s always a handfasting element in which the couple clasps their hands together and have some form of liquid poured over their hands.  It’s usually water, although the extremely devout of the Wanderer sometimes use wine or even honey, and the extremely devout of the Lady of Stars will sometimes use silver ribbon or cord left to soak in cold water instead.  This is because the Lady is traditionally offered an empty cup at meals and associated with permanence and death, thus something that can be kept, and the Wanderer is traditionally offered a full cup and associated with wildness and life, thus wine and honey.  Gifts are sometimes exchanged after the handfasting, but it’s more common for the couple to be given garlands of flowers as a way to mark the end of the ceremony, and the couple usually gets some kind of matching indicator eventually (like rings or necklaces or tattoos or whatever), but it’s not strictly associated with the ceremony proper.

.....Brenneth decides that for once in their lives she will be the romantic one and gets proper gold rings to exchange during the ceremony, like they would have had if they got married on Earth.  The only problem with this plan is that Crispin bought rings, like...literally the second Brenneth assured him she wasn’t joking.  So they end up with two rings each.

#worldwalker #alleirat #bits and sundries #brenneth #crispin #alleirai culture #they end up just...wearing both rings #neither one has any stones they're just plain rings but they both like them very much #uh...this got kind of rambly and away from me #anyway! sorry i've been so absent! i've been applying for jobs! #and also writing on the novel! #but this ask was frankly delightful and exactly the kind of rambly worldbuilding i was in the mood for #queue deeper than the sea of stars #smallblueandloud #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

for your otp thing: who dies and who destroys a fucking city in grief

#worldwalker #'happy' might be an overstatement but brenneth gets everything she wants #it's more sweet than bitter as it were #however yes one time crispin believed he had killed her #and in a haze of guilt and grief he did some things that could never be taken back #in the month after brenneth 'died' criapin more than doubled his body count #brenneth #crispin #the white wolf

[worldwalkernovel]

so i'm being weird and rereading old posts, and i noticed that in your original post about worldwalker, you say that hair is a marking of status: the longer the hair, the higher the status. that struck me as interesting because crispin has long hair, and that makes sense, because he was raised as a scholar and whatnot. but then brenneth has long hair too? her whole life, i think. (forgive me if i'm wrong, my brain isn't great with details.) is there a reason for that? is she making a statement?

You’re correct!  Brenneth has kept her hair long for a number of reasons, some of them more esoteric than others, but here’s a short rundown of the main ones.

She’s alianater, a worldwalker, and therefore holds some default status in Alleirat because of her formidable magical abilities, to the effect of Might Makes Nobility--when someone "got bored” of having a bellows in her forge and opted to casually use the kind of magic most people spend years developing to keep her fires hot instead, it’s a rare soul with the guts to roll up and say she’s getting uppity.

Crispin fought for her to be trained with him, and then later for her to hold a rank equal to him.  This was unsuccessful, but won them both some goodwill, and as such the mutterings about Brenneth being above her station were mostly limited to behind their backs.

Brenneth never really wanted to be a hero, and that was true even when they first arrived and she was limping through Alleirai at a rate of a few words a minute.  However.  She also did not enjoy being written off as ‘irrelevant’ because she was a girl, and insisted on keeping her hair long, at first, because it was an indication of “girl-ness” on Earth, even if it wasn’t really the same thing on Alleirat.

Brenneth trained as a warrior as well as a blacksmith, which afforded her additional inherent status--warriors are considered of an inherently higher rank than craftsmen, a holdover from when Alleirat was determined to rip itself apart with wars and warriors were hailed as the pinnacle of human achievement.  It’s not uncommon for warriors to wear their hair long enough to put up in a bun, because the “warrior’s spike” is a traditional hairpiece worn by warriors at formal events or in daily life to identify them.  In old stories it’s a stiletto blade, more realistically it’s a single slender stick made of wood or bone (very occasionally metal) with a point on one end and some kind of carved ornament on the other, like a single hair stick.  Since Brenneth showed a natural talent for combat nearly as good as her natural talent for metalworking, she was technically within her social rights to keep her hair long as soon as she was given her first spike by one of her teachers.

Brenneth likes wearing her hair long.  Her hair is kind of her only vanity, she doesn’t like to think of cutting it off.  It reminds her of when she liked herself and her world the best, and eventually gives her some hope of getting back there.

Finally: there are things attached to her hair--memories--that Brenneth can’t bring herself to get rid of.  Before the White Wolf, she liked to have Crispin braid it for her.

#worldwalker #allierat #bits and sundries #brenneth #crispin #alleirai culture #on the one hand brenneth is hailed as...like...the beauty of beauties in alleirat #she's BIG and STRONG and she has the lush and lively coloring of the southern coasts! #she's a figure of courage and tragedy and honor! #she's adonis and hercules and helen of troy! #of course she's the most beautiful thing alleirat has ever seen! #that plays oddly with her life on earth where--well #she's a darker-skinned indian woman with big broad shoulders and muscles she works to keep strong #our world didn't cherish those things about her like alleirat did #(esp since alleirat has less comprehensive hangups about nudity) #(they have public baths and it's common for warriors to go shirtless in summer regardless of gender) #so...her relationship to...like...the IDEA of people looking at her is pretty complex by this point #but her hair has always been a point of uncomplicated joy in her appearance #she knows how to care for it and she finds it soothing to work with even though she goes through conditioner Very Fast #so on like a most profoundly basic level her point is #'i know you're looking at me and i'm choosing to look the way i prefer to look regardless of that' #a lot of brenneth is about that kind of pointed Self-ness #for lack of a better word #queue deeper than the sea of stars #smallblueandloud #asked and answered

[worldwalkernovel]

No Deference

#worldwalker #brenneth #oh goodness #oh gosh #oh i'm...i love this #this is the choicest brenneth content i've seen in a minute #hey op i adore your style and someday i would like to commission a thing because #WOW

[worldwalkernovel]

I'd like to thank you for the Legend of the Sword au you promised in the tags of that Alleirat post, I may not be good at coming up with them but I sure do love them

LISTEN MY DUDE, YOU SAID “KING ARTHUR AU” IN YOUR REPLY TO THIS POST AND I IMMEDIATELY SMASHED MY NOVEL INTO MY FAVORITE MOVIE AND NOW WE ARE HERE.  

Brenneth! Is! Arthur!  Not a discussion!  Obviously!  Come on, people!  

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#old content #worldwalker #legend of the sword au #alternate universe #ficlike #brenneth #crispin #krei the tree lesbian #torei akekrei #legend of the sword #anyway: brenneth king arthur and crispin as mordred/merlin and krei as...kinda lancelot? wait no krei is galahad nailed it #idk someday i'll write a more straight up and down king arthur au ramble for this #but the idea of having crispin be the one who destroyed camelot and enabled vortigern to take over: too good for me to pass up #ft brenneth's grasp of being king in this situation #which goes 'listen i say that you have to earn redemption however crispin has saved my life about eighty-five times' #'so when you reach that level of obvious diehard loyalty we can talk about you passing judgement on him' #did you save the king's life eighty-five times? no? then you can't bitch about her boyfriend #also in the movie of this au there's a scene during the final battle of the knights fighting their way inside #and shiko sees someone about to shoot krei in the back and kills them stone cold before they can release the arrow #and krei falls instantly and catastrophically in love with this murder mage who salutes her from a battlement #and suddenly she understands both brenneth and crispin better than she really wanted to #also poor brenneth in this au half of everyone she knows hunted her down because she's the born king #that's kind of the emotional throughline of this version--instead of brenneth being unwilling to take up the role of leader #brenneth is perfectly willing to take up the role of leader even if she's not thrilled about being king #but she has a bit of a journey to get to trust folks again #(crispin's sister rita is the lady of the lake) #queue deeper than the sea of stars

[worldwalkernovel]

Hey uh have you Ladyhawke au’d Crispin/Brenneth because uh I know I know a fraction of what you know about these characters and thinking about it still makes me want to whisper ‘holy shit’

THIS IS SOME GALAXY BRAIN SHIT.

This is specifically from Shiko’s POV, because she seemed like the obvious candidate for Phillipe, so if you are in the market for just…thousands of words of angst about Brenneth and Crispin in those intervening fourteen years, I could also write that.

So.

It goes like this.

Shiko escapes from prison with no shoes and a reputation asa grave robber.  She’s okay with thelatter—she is, after all, and honestly she figures it’s better to take from thedead than the living, who might still need their valuables—and would like toresolve the former.  The thing is,though, she’s only the second person to ever escape from the dungeons ofAquila, except for those whose bodies made good their escape without them, in apine box.

So she’s a valuable prize, even though she’s a grave robberand only barely a pickpocket and not exactly on a level with the man who oncetried to kill the Bishop and cut his way through the city guard like a demonbefore he was finally brought to his knees.

Really, who sends out the entire city guard after a grave robber?

This is what she tells the guard who ties her hands, in thevillage a day’s flat-out sprint outside Aquila, and the man chokes back a snortlike he thinks Shiko’s a riot.  The guardis tall and lithe, with muscles that are drawn with perfect clarity under themarbled white-and-brown skin, but his hands are surprisingly gentle as they tieShiko’s hands behind her back.

“You’d be surprised how many people agree with you,” theguard says.  “My captain–”  He breaks off, something hard to defineflickering behind his eyes, and he shakes her head and gives Shiko an apologeticshake.  “Come on.  The quieter you go, the better your chances.”

It’s about then that an arrow takes down a guard and thingsgo right back to chaos.

When the man on the white horse offers Shiko his hand, shetakes it without hesitating and lets him haul her up into the saddle, and sheclutches him around the waist as he boots his horse into a dead run.

“Your captain would be disappointed in you!” he shouts backover his shoulder, and Shiko hears the big guard shout something extremely rude in response.  “Hold on tight,” the man says, like Shiko isn’talready clinging so tightly she’s probably in danger of breaking his ribs, andthe sprint shifts into a slower but still ground-eating gallop.

They come to a stop, far enough away and deep enough intothe woods that Shiko starts to wonder, just a little, what fire she’s justjumped into.

“Get off,” the man says shortly, but he helps her down andcuts her hands free when she’s on solid ground. Rubbing at her wrists, she looks up at him in the honey-toned late light.  He’s handsome, narrow features and intense eyesunder hair the color of polished copper, and one hand is clad in a leatherglove like a falconer.  He’s plainlydressed in dark brown hunting leathers and a white shirt, but the quality ofhis clothes is undeniable, especially after riding with her face pressed to hiscloak for God knows how long.  There’s asword strapped to his saddle, but she hasn’t seen it leave the sheath yet, allthe guards in the village taken down with expert aim from the well-oiledrecurve bow slung over his shoulder.  Shehas a bruise from where it pressed into her chest.

Something about his face, about the lines around his mouthand between his brows, looks sad beyond words.

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#old content #worldwalker #brenneth #crispin #ladyhawke au #alternate universe #I LOVE THIS MOVIE #IT'S SUCH A GOOD TRAGIC ROMANCE SHIP #anyway torei is the priest who helps break the curse and krei is a guard who helps them get inside #crispin and brenneth look too young because they're only aging during the time that they're human #so they're only seven years older #now for some Facts About Gyrfalcons #they come in shades from white to black although the males are almost exclusively pale #they mostly hunt rabbits and other things of that approximate size but if aggravated will divebomb almost anything #they were the preferred hunting falcon of kings and lords #they mate for life #and they are natural prey of the golden eagle--which is crispin's daemon in that one daemon au #do i especially love ladyhawke and daemon aus because they legitimize a bunch of pointless Animal Research? that is correct #queue deeper than the sea of stars