Fun Worldbuilding Idea For Roarhaven, Specifically The Leibniz Mortals.

Fun worldbuilding idea for Roarhaven, specifically the Leibniz mortals.

It’s been stated in-series that the mortals there are developing their own culture and such since they’re no longer being systematically oppressed by Mevolent, correct?

But these are just the mortals who actually grew up and spent their entire lives under Mevolent just learning to be happier now. Mortals live much shorter lives than sorcerers, and probably a bunch of the Humdrums mortals will start trying to catch up and better live alongside their fellow sorcerers (I know some of them might also leave to go live with other mortals, but I reckon most will want to stay around the place they grew up, especially when things tend to be fancier than mortal stuff).

So I have a suggestion. AMFoM used the term “technomage” to refer to a sorcerer who relies on magic items. WHAT IF that term were then commandeered for mortals who rely on magic items to keep up alongside their sorcerer peers? They’d suddenly live and work together so much better with the other sorcerers and they could be integrated into official sorcerer areas like the Sanctuary and they could perform certain tasks and do so much more, while also having to live under the reality that they age much faster than sorcerers, therefore causing them to work harder or live more chaotic lives?

I think it would be super fun to see how the mortals work to become equal to the sorcerers, especially if some of them try to stealth as sorcerers. Plus there’s also how sorcerers would react to having mortals who’re suddenly on the same level as them and doing the same jobs as them and not being so inferior anymore. It’d be such a fun topic to write about and worldbuild.

Currently writing a short story/novella set in present tense and I can confirm that I keep switching back to past tense by default. It’s incredibly annoying but I’m determined to write this in present tense.

You should only write in present tense with extreme caution.

not because it's bad or anything but because if you do it even once you're going to be editing the bits where you shifted tenses out of your writing for the rest of your life

there are no words to describe how much I love these early defying shapes for the elders twig legs, amogus, hips and thighs that can kill, two skrunklies, arms for days, roumd, and last but not least, refrigerator.

More thoughts about Valkyrie and Nefarian, specifically related to SoW.

By the time book 13 rolls around, Nefarian has never actually cared about anyone (by his own admission). He doesn’t love anyone, he’s selfish, and he likes to press people’s buttons, that’s the persona he plays. But Valkyrie does not take his bullshit and handles him in such a way that it becomes a fun back-and-forth for them.

And so the idiot gets emotionally adopted by her and now they’re friends, and Nefarian has to deal with actually learning to care about someone and how to handle those emotions for the first time in his life.

And now getting to the point of this post, the book doesn’t really discuss how Nefarian handles this, so I’m going to talk about it (and probably state the really obvious in the process). Nefarian becomes really, really hungry for attention from Valkyrie, even more so than his general “I’ll be a bitch so people focus on me”. Like, when they’re standing at the wall, he’s literally going “Valkyrie Valkyrie Valkyrie are you paying attention to me” while Valkyrie has to tell him that she can hear everything he’s saying, she’s just ignoring him. He also tries to divert her attention and/or affection away from her friends (most notably Skulduggery) and towards him. Does this work at all? Hell no, and she tells him that. But it’s really interesting to watch him actually fight for the attention of a singular person.

And thinking about why he learns to care about her is really fun to think about as well. Because a lot of their interactions in the beforehand part of SoW was Valkyrie disrespecting him and projecting how much she hates herself and views herself as evil onto objective reality. And Nefarian can see this woman perfectly fine; he knows damn well she’s not evil. But for whatever reason he sees her being all “I’m an evil person and all those war crimes are my fault, I’m a worse person than Skulduggery” and immediately goes to “hm. friend material”. This has…so much potential for backstory stuff, as well as being really funny to watch.

And watching Valkyrie go from “hey am I allowed to murder this guy” to “guys stop bullying him” was hilarious. I really hope we see more of them in phase 3 because they are such a funny duo and I like turning them around in my head.

Want to edit a video. Have nothing to edit. Tragedy.

Trying to write about Skulduggery and Valkyrie in an AU. It is turning out very long, so in the meantime I’m gonna talk about what the Sanctuary is up to.

This au pulls the very stereotypical “most of civilization has collapsed”, so Roarhaven is incredibly crowded full of people mortal and sorcerer alike, and the city is shielded at certain times of the day to protect from threats (most notably Mevolent/Serafina or the Faceless Ones).

Like, when I say packed, I mean packed. Pretty much the whole city is stacked on top of each other and some people are seeing if they can connect the buildings together to form one massive structure, and even that isn’t enough to hold all the people now penned up in this city. Splashes of magic are becoming even more widespread, especially among mortals, to the point that some of the police have started to crack down on it. There are also people who can’t afford places to stay who all sleep together under one big tarp to conserve body heat, it is a mess.

China got aged down to about her forties in this au because of the magic blast, which really led to her being annoyed that magical explosions kept tampering with her age. She’s no longer the principal of Corrival and now she lives on the edge of town running a business as a Signum Linguist (since Signum Linguists are in very high demand in Roarhaven). She doesn’t create Splashes, but she does make weapons and/or enhancements for soldiers, particularly mortal ones (which I will get into later).

Corrival Academy is technically no longer functional but many of the teachers do still teach, and they find places and times to do it so that students can show up in groups and learn. Teachers like Fletcher and Militsa are partially helping the Sanctuary keep organized and on-task and partially trying to organize and actual school for kids since the last one fell apart. Also Militsa broke up with Valkyrie again on account of Val being an evil god (AGAIN), and now she and Fletcher are disaster besties who’re trying to keep it together. The two of them somehow managed to keep Xena alive until her death at an old doggy age.

Ghastly is still running things over at the Sanctuary, and he is having a VERY rough go of it. On top of mortals finding out about magic and chaos ensuing, he also has to deal with the fact that he now knows that Skulduggery is Lord Vile (because of what Cadaver told him) and that Valkyrie defended him for years (and has now turned into a slightly deranged god). He, Tanith, and Temper have been working together to create different military units with different purposes now that they have more demographics of people to keep track of, protect, and make use of. In short, Ghastly is even more burnt out than he was before the apocalypse.

The mortals have also been making themselves useful, usually working as soldiers for the Sanctuary. I talked about technomages a bit earlier, and I am talking about them now. Lots of the mortals now living in Roarhaven have been going out of their way to equip magical tools (usually weapons) to help them keep up with the sorcerers. This has led to them basically forming into military units working for the Sanctuary and has greatly increased their firepower, making them slightly less appealing to attack.

On top of Temper, Tanith, and Ghastly at the top of the Sanctuary, Dexter Vex also has a little group of his own who technically don’t work for the Sanctuary, but stay in Roarhaven and are more than willing to do tasks alongside them. Aside from Dexter, this team consists of Saracen (who was revived in the same way as Anton), Kierre, Aurora, Frightening, Donegan, and Gracious. Kierre showed back up when the Sanctuary (aided by China’s sigils) figured out a way to fix her boyfriend, and Aurora and Frightening found each other in America shortly after the general apocalypse (North America did not take it well) and then hopped over to Ireland to find Dexter. The Monsters Hunters did something similar to this except that they were in England at the time, and Saracen basically respawned in Ireland.

One of the people who is not present at the Sanctuary (or in Roarhaven at all) is Anton Shudder. He’s off working for Valkyrie for reasons that I plan on explaining in a later post, but he (and Valkyrie) are missed dearly by their friends.

Unlike most of the other groups in this au, Roarhaven isn’t actually aggressive and doesn’t go out of their way to pick fights with other gangs, instead working to act as a safe space for refugees from the war. They’re also completely stationary, which is why they have the part-time shield to protect them from attacks. Valkyrie is willing to spend resources to protect them, but they don’t entirely trust her and so she tends to give them space. They do get visits from her occasionally though, and she’s described as feeling like a harbinger of doom.

Much words, sorry to spam you all with au stuff