d1sa5t3r

[d1sa5t3r]

This is also going to change some of the lore I've already come up with--as of yet, Not-straea doesn't have a cute bite-sized version you just want to putt across a football field, though that's subject to change. I'm sure I can recycle a good bit of it, but fair warning! (i say to a mirror, because I forget I am my own audience lol)

Astraea is nO MORE

Because she is being entirely revamped!

Meet--well. This is awkward. Not-straea doesn't actually have a name yet?

I have a few ideas--Iris, Arien/Arienwyn, Vesper, Aria--but the tricky thing is I can tell Not-straea is on the verge of usurping Aster as my primary persona (not surprising if she is meant to be the meld of the two personas I have representing the two halves of me).

However, I still love using the pseudonym Aster, and the username disAst3r (find me places lol), and I don't really want to stop doing that. However, I also feel bad changing OG Aster's name purely to give it to another. I'm no stranger to renaming OC's, but that was always because their original name was outdated or didn't fit

So for now, Not-straea's name is a WIP. On Artfight for this year she's currently listed as Iris (you can find her here if you're interested), but TBD on what i settle on :)

[d1sa5t3r]

Astraea is nO MORE

Because she is being entirely revamped!

Meet--well. This is awkward. Not-straea doesn't actually have a name yet?

I have a few ideas--Iris, Arien/Arienwyn, Vesper, Aria--but the tricky thing is I can tell Not-straea is on the verge of usurping Aster as my primary persona (not surprising if she is meant to be the meld of the two personas I have representing the two halves of me).

However, I still love using the pseudonym Aster, and the username disAst3r (find me places lol), and I don't really want to stop doing that. However, I also feel bad changing OG Aster's name purely to give it to another. I'm no stranger to renaming OC's, but that was always because their original name was outdated or didn't fit

So for now, Not-straea's name is a WIP. On Artfight for this year she's currently listed as Iris (you can find her here if you're interested), but TBD on what i settle on :)

[d1sa5t3r]

The Cast Expands

It was over in a moment, punctuated by a blinding flash. Aster clutched her chest, feeling the stone embedded there. It was cold. She pulled back her hand, like she’d just touched a hot stove. Her stone had never been cold. And she couldn’t shake a strange, hollow feeling that had come over her. Like she was watching herself move from behind a glass wall, where although she could see the emotions flashing over her face—discomfort, anxiety, hope—she couldn’t quite feel them.

She turned to Tempest’s apparition, blinking away the rest of the light. She was staring to Aster’s side, a strange expression on their face, and Aster followed her gaze to find….

Well. Not what she expected.

“Why is it cute?” she asked hoarsely.

And whatever it was, was cute. Tempest’s attempt to give sentience to Aster’s cursed star had resulted in a person—it looked like a young girl, and yet there was an agelessness to its silvery lavender eyes. It was dressed in a simple nightgown with a fluttering skirt, adorned in star-patterned ribbons. It was also wearing a ridiculous star-shaped hood over its head, covering all of its darker periwinkle hair save for its heart-shaped bangs, tied over its head by a bow beneath its chin. Aster couldn’t comprehend how the five points of the hood were standing at attention, unless it just had so much hair beneath it was filling the hood's form like the stuffing of a toy.

Tempest’s gaze flickered off to the side, expression still unreadable. “Well, I may have taken some creative liber—”

Aster straightened up, leveling Tempest with an accusatory glare. “Why did you make it cu—”

“And what’s wrong with cute anyway!” Tempest demanded, cheeks flushing. Hints of rainbow iridescence were flickering over her hair and clothing—whatever she was feeling about this, she was clearly pleased with herself. “I had to give her a physical form to let her—”

“Her?”

“—come out of your stone—yes, her, Aster, keep up!—and I figured that if I was already going to go through all that, I may as well—”

“Oh my god,” Aster groaned, wiping a hand down her face like it would wipe away her exasperation.

The sentient star had been watching this interaction silently, its silly hood making the swiveling of its stare extra obvious. When Aster met its eyes, it tried for a too wide grin. Aster winced.

“Well, I suppose there’s no changing it now,” Aster said, half a question as she shot Tempest another glance. The goddess only shrugged. Aster let out a heavy sigh. “Alright then,” she continued, looking back at the star. She held out a hand. “Well. I’m Aster. You’ve been living in my chest for two or so centuries. Nice to meet you properly.”

The creature raised its hands to lower her hood, revealing a head of ringlet curls that clouded around its cheeks, before it took Aster’s hand in one of its own—well, took two of her fingers, really, its hands were ridiculously tiny. “Hello, Aster. It is nice to meet you. My name is Aster.”

Aster froze. Tempest let out a surprised snort. The little imposter kept giving that weird, too-wide smile.

“You can’t be Aster,” argued Aster. “I’m Aster. Get your own name.”

“No,” said the twerp. “You forget. You were named by your Goddess after me in the first place.” Aster shot Tempest an accusatory glance—that was news to her. All she got was another stupid shrug and a building sense of detached annoyance. “I have lent you my name all these years as a kindness. Now that I am free, I want it back. You can go back to your other name.”

“Why—*you!—*Other na—what?” Aster sputtered.

In the middle of all that, Tempest winced. “Well. Free is a stretch.”

The star whipped its stare to Tempest, eerie smile dropping.

“I gave you a physical form so that we could communicate with you when it came to you exerting your power out of Aster’s control. However, you’re still linked to Aster. If you go too far from her, bad things will happen. To both of you,” she added firmly. “The symbiotic relationship between you two is too intermingled to sever cleanly. This is the best I can do. And you’ll still need to go back into Aster’s stone now and again to prevent either of you feeling too poorly.”

The star blinked, considering. “I see. Although that is rather unfortunate, I understand that you are a weak goddess and could only manage so much. Very well.” It—she?—looked back to Aster, who was still flickering through thoughts and emotions like the pages of a book. “We can share my name, then. I know well you do not remember yours anyway. Consider it a thank you for giving me a home for all these years past, and for those to come. I do appreciate it.”

“I—share?” Aster looked to Tempest again, running out of words. The goddess clasped her hands, and her iridescence faded as her coloring went dark, the clouds of her hair growing heavy with rain.

“It is true that your name wasn’t always Aster,” she said softly to Aster’s unspoken question. “When I first captured the star in the stone, it caused all of your memories prior to that moment to be blown away. And I never got your birth name before that moment, because you were—preoccupied.” With not dying was the unspoken implication there. “So I don’t know it either.” Tempest looked down, and her clouds began to drizzle. “I’m sorry. If its any consolation at all, I’ve always thought Aster suited you rather well.”

Aster pursed her lips, suddenly feeling nothing but bone-deep exhaustion—through all of that detached numbness she’d been experiencing since the extraction of her curse, of course. She wiped at her face again. “We can talk about that later. It’s… Well. I’m not going to lie and say it’s fine. But it’s in the past.” She looked to the star again. “But it is true that we’ve held claim to the same name all these years. It’s hardly fair for either of us to have to pick a new one now, just because we can both be outside at the same time sometimes. But we do need a way to tell us apart.”

The star blinked owlishly. “I mean. I suppose you can interpret the naming that way. Sure. Equal claim.”

Tempest tapped her chin. Her rain had cleared away, but her coloring was still dark and damp. “We could give her a nickname. I call you Az half the time already—we could call her Ter?”

Aster gave a half-hearted snort. “Could add a ‘D’ and really have fun with it.”

The star frowned. “Who are you trying to warn by naming me Deter?” Tempest snorted a bit, her color lightening again. Aster rolled her eyes.

“I didn’t mean—never mind. No. Not Ter or—other similar alternatives.”

”Al-*turd-*natives,” Tempest whispered, giggling.

A fond smile tugged at Aster’s lips, but she brushed it aside. “Focus, Tem.”

“Right, right,” Tempest sighed, wiping at her eyes and attempting to discipline her expression. She was at least returned to her normal, pale blue coloring, which put Aster at ease. “How to distinguish this Aster from that Aster,” she said, humming.

“Ooh, I like that,” said the spirit, nodding. “I call this Aster.”

“More like disaster,” Aster sighed, getting the laugh she hoped for out of Tempest and a confused look out of her curse.

“Disaster, oh that’s good, Az. Whew!” Tempest smiled. “Aster and Disaster. Could you imagine?”

“We could expand the name,” Aster suggested. “Astraea, Asteria, Asteris…”

“Ooh, or mash our names together!” Tempest jumped in. “Ast-pest? Ooh, no, Temper!”

Aster flushed. “What, like a ship name? That makes it seem like she’s our child!”

The slightest iridescence flickered over Tempest before evening out again. “I mean, if you think about it….”

“Oh my god, that’s why you looked so pleased earlier,” Aster groaned, ears going hot as she covered her face. And now that she knew that, she could see the resemblance. There was the star theming, of course. But her coloring did look like a softer, Tempest-inspired version of Aster’s. And her hair was distinctly cloud-shaped.

“In my defense!” Tempest cried, flickering iridescent again. “If you think about it! Your star, mixed with my magic for centuries—she kind of is like our—”

“Ohmygod don’t say it again,” Aster cried.

The star followed this conversation silently again, but Aster couldn’t help but feel it was enjoying itself watching their interactions. “You two are an awful lot of fun, now that I have a sentience with which to watch you. Call me what you like, if it means I get to watch more of this.”

Aster could hardly take it anymore. Tempest smiled kindly, taking pity. “Perhaps we should bookmark this for another day. Neither of you are going anywhere anytime soon, after all.”

The star nodded approvingly. “Very well,” it said. Then there was another flash, engulfing the spirit's form, and Aster’s gemstone grew familiarly white hot once more. When the light was gone, so was the cursed star, and Aster’s hollow feeling finally faded away.

“I’ll, ah, take my leave too,” Tempest said softly. “You probably want some space now, I imagine.”

“No. Stay,” Aster said, without thinking. But she did want her to stay, now that the thought was out there. “I don’t think I can start talking through all of this yet. But please. Keep me company for a bit?”

Tempest’s gaze softened. “Of course. Whatever you need.”

[d1sa5t3r]

On Astraea

Like clockwork, nearly another year rolls around since the creation of my last persona, and I begin to get the itch. The result of that itch is Astraea, the personification of the star in Aster's chest mixed with Tempest's magic--the lovechild (or fusion) of the two personas, you could say.

It's funny that it took me three years to make a persona that actually represented both clouds and stars like I initially wanted to, but I wanted to introduce her to what is really becoming far too much lore in a way that didn't make Aster and Tempest obsolete. I still wanted to use Aster as a primary persona, despite the fact that Astraea covers the grounds of both. I wrote another snippet to kind of explain this, but the gist of it is as follows:

After Aster and Tempest start to work together properly, they begin to find that Tempest's control over Aster's star begins to slip, and the magic is behaving erratically. Afraid of it turning into the same situation that nearly led to Aster dying in the first place, Tempest uses her powers to give sentience to the cursed star--this severs her control over it completely, but would at least make the star something that could be communicated and reasoned with instead of something they simply had to bear.

The result of that is Astraea, who, upon learning that her newfound freedom was rather limited (ie, she couldn't stray too far from Aster, and would need to return to the gemstone in Aster's chest now and again to let the two of them recharge), agrees to work with the two of them.

Astraea is a mixture of Tempest and Aster, both in appearance and personality--and thus making her the most true to myself as far as how she acts. She is mischievous, earnest, a showman, a bit naive and gullible. She's got a hefty temper and will go to bat for those she loves. She is also very sleepy very often, which works with the star-and-moon induced lullaby theming.

Part 1 // Part 2

[d1sa5t3r]

STAY

13.5 hrs

I’ve held onto this for a few days in fears of posting it unfinished, but after a certain point I need to let the art belong to someone other than me. I relinquish it here.

Closeup and Progress Photos Below

[d1sa5t3r]

aster post-star-capturing came to really love foggy and cloudy weather ((ie when the clouds are closest--though unaware, she thrived on the feeling of her patron being near))

despite the hard feelings after she becomes aware of everything, she still loves that kind of weather.

[d1sa5t3r]

aster experiencing mild memory loss when first coming to new world leads to a lot of pets named after her deity

"would you know, that's the fifteenth cat named in my honor."

"you've gotta be joking"

"nope. i'm honestly pretty torn between flattery and insult"

over time aster masters the ability to become aware, and for a while tries her best to not name pets after them. but if they were in disagreement aster would instead try to find the most ridiculous thing they could to dub tempest.

[d1sa5t3r]

A Little Red House With a Star Inside

When I was a little girl, my school teacher told my class a story about a mother, a child, and a house.

In the story, the mother instructs the child to find a little red house with no doors or windows and a star inside. The child goes outside and asks the people they come across about the house, leading them from person to person until they come across a big red apple. The child brings the apple home to their mother, who takes a knife and cuts it in half horizontally to reveal the star inside—a ring of five seeds around the core.

Now, morals about knife safety and talking to strangers aside, it always bugged me that there were two answers to the story’s riddle.

If the child had only come across the little girl with night-dark hair and sun-bright eyes, and asked her about a red house with no entrance and a star hidden inside, her answer would have been much simpler.

“My heart,” she would have said. “My heart is red, it has no doors or windows, and there is a star inside.”

The child’s face would have screwed in their confusion. “There can’t be a star inside of your heart. It wouldn’t fit.”

“It barely does,” the girl would whisper. “It burns. And it hurts.”

I rubbed my chest, fingers catching on the smooth protrusion of the gemstone embedded there, right above where my heart lay beneath. Though the stone did a lot to temper the rioting force beneath, it still hurt sometimes.

~*~

BASICALLY Aster was born with a star in her heart that made her volatile and dangerous. IN THAT CASE, Tempest’s gift actually was a gift, in letting Aster have more control over her magic and making her less unpredictable. The whole forced world hopping hting could have been a trade for the life saving magic stone, to let tempest live through her in exchange!!!!

Aster born with only dark blue hair—golden hair (that shines w use of power) could either be just a sign of Tempest’s gift or a side effect of the trauma involved in installing (?) the stone

[d1sa5t3r]

Aster Color Palettes

Aster's colors were actually recently changed to be slightly more gray-toned out of personal preference, so some older art of her may appear more vibrant. The yellows and blues are also colors I tend to use in my "marketing," if you can call it that (my blog colors and the colors I base my personal notion off of lol). I love blues and yellows together, which did lead to a very basic star-oc color palette, but its oft-repeated for a reason--it's a delicious set of colors

[d1sa5t3r]

Tempest Color Palettes

As mentioned here, Tempest has a slew of color palettes, because part of the reason I love clouds to begin with is how different they can look. The time of day ones are like defaults--if she's not feeling anything particularly strongly, those are the colors she wears, based on the time wherever Aster is. The conditions ones are tied more to her moods, though:

Iridescence is when she is feeling Overjoyed

Overcast is when she is feeling Numb and Detatched

Rain is when she is feeling Sad

Storming is when she is feeling Angry

*marked mature bc her boobs are out lol*

[d1sa5t3r]

On Tempest

After Aster existed for about a year, I started to feel like she was missing something. Or someone. Really, it was that she alone couldn't cover all of my interests. She was a sliver of me--the confident, headstrong sliver, the part that takes a moment every time I glimpse the night sky to count all of the constellations I know (not as many as I should considering my branding). I said in my post introducing Aster that I have a fascination with celestial bodies, plural. Really it's only two things: stars, and clouds.

So I began to ponder a second half to my heroine, with hair that waterfalled into a ring of clouds, who was soft and sweet and mischievous. Who wore frills and bows whereas Aster wore collars and belts. A goddess, maybe, giver of Aster's powers--or source, maybe, of her curse.

She looks much more like the real me and resembles early iterations of Aster--wavy hair (though mine is longer now), soft shapes, round. Because part of the allure of clouds to me is how they reflect the light in different conditions, she has multiple color palettes depending on the time of day and her emotions. If I had to say, she resembles my outer me, while Aster represents my inner me.

The whole backstory is spread between a slew of snippets and half-baked ideas, but the gist of it is as follows.

Aster was born a long, long time ago, an Elf from a home she no longer remembers. And she was born with a star trapped inside of her chest. It grew stronger every year, and would eventually kill her if left unchecked.

Tempest was created even longer ago, a trickster goddess of the skies, put away by her deific siblings for one slight too many and thus had been trapped in a single, small dimension for millennia.

By some turn of events--likely, that Aster's dimension-hopping power had manifested and was throwing her through worlds until she landed in Tempest's prison-- Tempest is made aware of Aster, finds her just when the star in her chest is on the verge of evaporating her. While Aster is barely conscious, Tempest strikes a selfish deal--If Tempest traps the star in Aster's heart, then Aster will serve as Tempest's view to the outside world, slave to her desires. Safe to say, Aster agrees out of desperation.

The star is trapped in the gemstone embedded in Aster's sternum, framed by the star-shaped scar it carved. Through that gemstone, Tempest can watch her. Unfortunately, also through that gemstone, Tempest gained full control over Aster's world-hopping abilities.

For a long time, there were no consequences--when Tempest grew bored of the current channel, she would switch Aster to a new one, and Aster would be none the wiser. She only seemed aware of whatever world she was currently in, and Tempest only felt a little bit guilty, because she did save the brat's life after all.

One day, though, Aster realized that all of the strange dreams she thought she was having weren't dreams. They were real. Real places she'd lived, real people she'd loved, real people she'd killed. The illusion shatters and what's left in the shrapnel is a bitter woman haunted by the pasts she shouldn't remember, and the regretful goddess who can't undo what she's done, even if she wishes she could.

Of course, there is a sense of star-crossed, forbidden, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers sapphic yearning thrown into the mix, because I can't help myself. Isn't it weird that your two personas are in love with each other, you ask? Well, maybe it's just an act of self love, alright?

Part 1 // Part 3

[d1sa5t3r]

On Aster

Aster began as a self-insert/persona character for when I play video games. It felt boring to just play as myself, and I didn't find much joy in having to create new shells every time I started (or re-started) a new title). She was me, but cooler--brave, strong, confident. Not so different that I felt like I had to act to play as her, but not so like me that I couldn't make bold moves.

None of which matters, of course, in the realm of video games and roleplay and whatnot, but it felt nice to have a shell that fit, that I could take with me from place to place.

I was partially inspired in this by my older brother, who has a lot of online friends on discord servers and whatnot. He's been going by Jet online since we were in highschool, and I liked the simplicity of it all. "Here is a name that isn't me, but is. I protect my identity, and sound just a little bit cooler while I'm at it."

She was inspired by my love of celestial bodies, a theme that Tempest also shares. Aster, of course, is star themed. With her night dark hair, the underside of it the color of starlight (which I'm leaning towards being a side effect of the star trapping Tempest performs) and eyes like twin suns. She is built oppositely of Tempest, and as such built oppositely of me--tall, strong, long, hard. A lot of my early sketches of her are very knightly in essence, partially bc I had just used her to play BG3, partially because it fit her silhouette.

Part 2 // Part 3

[d1sa5t3r]

On Pantheons

Aster eyed the room around her. The floor was cold, even beneath the soles of her boots, and the walls were hazy, like a cloud of fog held at bay. Grecian marble columns held up drapes of gossamer fabric, reflecting iridescent white despite no obvious light source. Other than that, the space was empty except for herself and... her.

"So," she said, even though the idea of making small talk with the goddess that had been puppeteering her since before she could remember was insane. "Marble columns. Did the Greeks have it right then?"

"Hm?" said Tempest, who was now floating up to the left, fiddling with one of her fabric garlands. If Aster knew any better, she'd wonder if the deity was shy about allowing her into her domain.

"Are you a Greek Goddess? One of the wind gods? Aeolus, Boreas, yada, yada..."

"Oh! No," Tempest replied, laughing lightly. "No, I just like how they look! Very regal. But this place can look however I please!" And then suddenly instead of in a cold cloud the two of them were in a cozy studio apartment. And then in a grassy meadow. And a penthouse. A museum. A city street. Locations flashed before Aster's eyes and she keeled over, reeling, nauseous.

When she opened her eyes, Tempest had settled on a glass-still body of water for a floor, and that was it. It seemed to stretch to infinity, reflected by an empty white-blue sky, but Aster had a hunch that if she walked in a direction long enough, she'd find she had gone nowhere at all.

"I'm sorry," Tempest said. "I forget your limitations. Your blessings don't prevent you from vertigo."

Blessings, Aster scoffed to herself. "It's... fine. So not the Greeks. Probably not the Romans by extension. [List of different pantheon religions im too lazy to google rn]."

The goddess giggled, but there was a sad undercurrent to it. "No. None of those. I have no pantheon."

Aster's eyes widened. "Don't tell me you're the only goddess--I mean no offense," she interjected, floundering, "I was just expecting that if there is just one person Upstairs, they'd be less... themed."

What just might have been a snort came from Tempest. "No, probably not. To be honest, little star, I don't know. I don't have a pantheon, but that isn't because there are no pantheons. I am simply not of them."

"Well, how would you know if there are, if you aren't a part of them?"

Tempest's smile truly was tinged by sadness now. "It is only a theory. But somebody of higher power had to be responsible for imprisoning me here."

"Imprisoning?"

---

ie Tempest past as a trickster goddess, pissed of her pantheon, they trapped her away a la Calypso or Circe style. somehow she connected to Aster, who is now her window to the outside.

[d1sa5t3r]

To Start

A relatively quick rundown on what the hell is happening here, as well as a list of frequent tags:

This is Aster! She is an elf with a star trapped inside her chest, kept from killing her by virtue of that gemstone you see embedded there. That gemstone is a gift from:

Tempest, a minor wind deity of unknown pantheon. As payment for helping Aster with her little supernova problem, Tempest utilizes Aster as a window to the outside world that Tempest herself is forbidden from. Problem is, Aster didn't necessarily agree to this deal, and only recently has become aware of the fact that she is uncontrollably jumping between realities, and now no longer knows which life that she's led is actually hers.

Additionally, the blog name, Caelum, is the name of the dimension Tempest is jailed in--a detail arranged purely for games where I need to name my world as well as everything else. But it's a pretty word and I figured context would be appreciated

Tags for Navigation:

#Aster is for any posts heavily featuring Aster (more than just name-dropping her)

#Tempest is the same but reversed--Tempest focused posts exceeding mere mention

#Temper is their ship name, ooooh. This is for any posts that feature both Aster and Tempest--which is most of them, to be frank.

#Astraea is for any posts heavily featuring the character Astraea

#Sketch is for any posts that contain unrendered illustrations of any character

#Illustration is for any posts that include fully rendered illustrations of any character

#Text is for any post that contains text, regardless of depth. Like the Temper tag, this will also be nearly all of the posts

#Snippet is for any lore-adjacent bits of writing that haven't been fleshed out--just slapped on a page for safe-keeping

#Story is for fleshed-out snippets, usually short stories that focus on characterization and whatnot

#Fanart is for any Temper artwork I did not create. I have a small collection of pictures from ArtFight 2024 that I eventually want to put on here, because they give me joy. Those specifically will also be tagged as Artfight, in case I ever get actual fanart (lofty goals, I know)