flyover-babbleon

[flyover-babbleon]

I finally got around to drawing my mechsona! This is Corvinia Ravel (she/they). Her mechanism is both her hands and she's the ship seamstress. (Look, if they can have an archivist, they can have a seamstress.)

[flyover-babbleon]

Role swap? Role swap.

Asteroid!Joss

His full name is Jocelyn Rashid, but no one has ever in his life called him Jocelyn.

Nice normal life. Not nobility, just some dude.

Well, okay, some dude who happens to be a talented artist, singer, and multi-instrumentalist, but...

Unlike Máire and Ethan, Joss didn't try to run from his destiny. He was still like "are you sure you've got the right guy" though.

Basically still his sweet, shy self.

Do Not Anger Him.

Luna!Máire

How is she alive

She's had to go through Reeducation so many times.

Her family was about to ship her off to a nunnery when she awakened.

Wasn't the absolute first to turn on the Luna King, but was pretty darn quick to go "fuck this" and leave.

Made entirely out of anger.

Luna!Tobias

Basically raised in a lab. Of course they would try to use unethical science to create the perfect Soldier and Knight.

He's not even a test tube baby, he's someone's actual kid.

Robotic and blank most of the time. Also weirdly sheltered in some ways.

Has a number he responds to more easily than his name.

One of the last to turn, and pretty much has a full breakdown.

[flyover-babbleon]

TMA AU part 2

So I changed my mind on what exactly our main group is supposed to be! Instead of archival assistants, they're paranormal investigators and researchers.

Tiernan is the leader now.

Idk where Lady went and don't care, she's an npc.

They still work for some kind of institute or something.

The Chandra Foundation has much looser hold on its employees. People can leave! Especially if another Entity has a stronger hold on them than the Eye.

Let us be clear: Avatars are not good people. They made an active choice to hurt people and keep making that choice. This includes the Investigation Team, after they've all fallen to the dark side.

When they're together, though, they almost seem like they're human again.

For a while.

Eventually someone gets bored, or restless, or something and everything goes back to hell.

Máire wanders off. Tobias picks fights. The others surely have their own ways of letting off steam.

It really doesn't help that they literally feed off of different kinds of fear and negativity. It's what avatars do. They must feed what feeds them.

Tiernan feeds on the fear of the people/things he hunts, for example. Sera feeds on people's fear of pain and loss as she burns everything they loves. Tobias literally needs violence to sustain himself.

Just. Yikes.

So let's talk instead about the people and things they encounter before they turn to the dark side.

Adam Warren

Not once do any of the investigators encounter him, but they've heard things.

He's unaligned with any Entity, but he knows what's up, and he uses that knowledge to save people, to help them survive their encounters with the Entities.

It's hard not to be a little in awe of him. The things he's done! The monsters he's defeated! The rituals he's ended! The people he's helped!

"The man, the myth, the legend," someone intones, every time Adam's name appears in the team's research.

They know nothing.

Nothing comes without a cost.

Joss Rashid

He's still a nice boy, all shy and sweet and smiling.

Nice is different than good.

Apparently he used to be a musician and an artist, at least until the accident that left his left hand unusable. The injury is a thing to behold, spreading halfway up to his elbow, but the less said about it the better.

However, this injury seems to be unrelated to his avatar status.

(A crack, spreading from the floor and up the wall of his apartment. A faint voice that moaned and sang like a siren. The voice started howling after the incident.)

Joss is an avatar of the Buried. Suffocation, claustrophobia, and crushing pressure, both literal and metaphorical. It often manifests as literally being buried or squeezed underground, but small, tight spaces are also common. Joss's particular flavor of the Buried, however, usually manifests as dark, heavy water, filling lungs and drowning deep.

Mostly the team just sees the aftermath of what he's done, the waterlogged corpses, the shivering survivors.

They do, however, manage to get an interview with him. Just once.

It doesn't go well.

Freyja Apollyon

How often is she seen? Heard from? That's a decision for Eli, but Freyja doesn't strike me as the type who shows herself often.

More often, what we see is the devastation left in her wake.

Freyja is an avatar of the Desolation. Pain, destruction, and loss, especially the loss of everything a person has and cherishes. Loss of potential fall into the Desolation's purview as well.

(Freyja had a friend once. A sweet and kind young artist, full of potential. He told her that she could be more than what the people around her expected her to be. That she was worth more. That she could find a new calling. That she could choose what she wanted.)

(Then he made the mistake of trying to hold her hand.)

(She knew better, then, than to ever try to leave the Desolation.)

??? (Marcellus Rey)

A man who wears many masks. What is his real face like? He doesn't have one. It's masks all the way down!

Marcellus (the name he usually goes by, when he bothers with something as pedestrian as names) is an avatar of the Stranger. The uncanny valley, things pretending to be human and friendly, the subtle sense of something not quite right. Also a good dose of identity theft and face stealing. The Stranger can be anyone. It's all a performance, in the end.

Máire does encounter this one out in the field and in person. There's a reason, though, why she doesn't ask for his name, and settles for calling him Doll.

He is not a real boy.

(He used to be.)

The Moth Woman (Irene Desrosiers)

An avatar of the Corruption. Insects, disease, uncleanliness, and rot. Being consumed from within. Becoming a home for what loves you.

Her face -- does she have a face? -- is hidden, shrouded by the swarm of moths that is her constant companion.

She never speaks. It's uncertain if she has a mouth, or vocal cords in her throat.

(She, if fact, does not have a mouth or a face. There is only a gaping hole, ragged and moth-eaten, opening up into a hollow body.)

(Well. Not hollow. There's more moths.)

[flyover-babbleon]

Tragic Planethopping: Oz Edition

Once upon a time, a winged prince became friends with a woodcutter's son.

They grew up, and the prince became the captain of the Flying Legion, while the woodcutter became one of the Empress's personal knights.

But Tiernan and Tobias became remained the best of friends.

Even after Tobias did as so many soldiers do and fell in battle, an axe to the knee.

Toby limped back to Tier with his new metal leg, and told him all about the strange doctor that helped him before he bled out.

(It was actually after he bled out, but neither of the boys know it yet.)

But we all know the story of the Tin Woodman, who lost himself piece by piece, replacing the missing flesh with metal until that's all that was left.

This Tin Man loses to endless battle, and not an enchanted axe, but we know how this ends.

Tobias withdraws from his friends as the process goes on, eventually disappearing from their lives altogether. They'd almost all started treating him... differently, as more and more of him was replaced with metal. Trusting him less, and such things.

(He didn't want to watch Tiernan do the same.)

So Tiernan has no idea where Tobias is and probably thinks he's dead.

Tobias's time is monopolized by the Empress anyway, and Tiernan's time is taken up by his duties to his legion and his people.

Then comes the Revolt.

Tobias is loyal to the Empress. But there are too many people he loves on the other side.

His heart is the last human part of him. It breaks when he's forced to stand against them.

The mysterious doctor plucks the broken heart out of his chest.

And she replaces it with nothing.

Meanwhile, Tiernan is... probably loyal to the Empress, but mostly neutral. It doesn't save him from being shot down. It doesn't save his wings from being torn asunder.

The doctor finds him and deigns to save him. His wings are replaced with metal and machinery.

One good thing about being a robot, Tobias can sit tirelessly by his friend's side while he waits for Tiernan to wake up.

Tiernan is, understandably, incredibly freaked out by basically everything. The unfamiliar place, the intense pain in his back and wings, the fact that his wings are now metal, the robot wearing his friend's face...

"Who are you?" Tiernan eventually asks.

(He doesn't recognize that this thing could really be his friend, or maybe just doesn't recognize Tobias at all. They've both changed a lot.)

Tobias looks as though he's been hit in the chest, all shocked and hurt and breathless.

"Call me the Tin Knight," he answers.

And off Tin goes, to find Tiernan someone more human to talk to.

[flyover-babbleon]

TMA AU

Just a funky little weird horror AU for me, my friends, and our OCs.

Let's start with the setting. The Magnus Institute isn't the only institution for studying the supernatural and strange. So let's say it has some affiliates, and this one is in America. LA or New York or something.

Let's call it the Chandra Foundation.

And let's start by talking about the Archival Assistants.

(The Archivist herself is an NPC, though some of the assistants may or may not have been friends with her for years. They call her Lady.)

Lady is a lucky one. She gets five whole assistants. Tiernan, Tobias, and Sera to start with; Máire and Charlie come in later.

I don't know the details yet, but BOY HOWDY do they Go Through It.

It's a horror-tragedy setting filled with Dread Powers that feed on fear. Our intrepid crew actively investigates these Dread Powers. It's amazing that they last as long as they do without any casualties.

At first, anyway.

They start to get picked off, one by one. They don't die, no that would be too easy. They just get tempted and taken in by the Entities.

(There are Fourteen, but also only One. It is ancient, eldritch, and it is Fear.)

(They can reach into our world and act on their own, but they sometimes they call out to human minds, and make those humans their servants. Their Avatars.)

Sera

I'm actually drawing a big huge blank on her?

I would base Fear Avatar!Sera on VesVes, but if I read any of her threads while SF was still around, then I don't remember them.

What is her MO? How did she choose to terrorize her former friends? Deception? Manipulation? Just taking all their shit and burning it?

So let's skip her and come back later.

Máire

They don't see it coming. They don't see her staring out into empty space. They don't notice her going off to stand on tops of tall buildings or on the ends of long, lonely piers, more and more and more.

They don't notice until the group is out on the open ocean for an investigation.

She laughs, free and bright and terrible as she steps off the boat and into the water.

And then she is gone and the sea is wide and empty.

And they don't find shore for days.

(They could have sworn they were only a few miles out.)

Máire becomes an avatar of The Vast - fear of wide open spaces, fear of falling, fear of being tiny and insignificant in a great vast universe. Often manifests as a wide open sky or a vast sea -- both with no ground in sight. Vertigo is also a big thing with them. Of course it is, you are falling falling falling and everything is too big. Sometimes a great beast is seen; you are smaller than the pupil of its eye.

Charlie

She as well, could be an avatar of the Vast. Charlie and Máire would love the freedom of it, the openness of it.

Perhaps, in true Uranus and Neptune fashion, they go together. Máire disappears into the sea and Charlie disappears into the sky.

It'd be a hard and heartbreaking blow, two in one shot.

But at least they're together, falling or floating forever and sending unsuspecting mortals to do the same.

Tobias

I actually have two options for him. One is more realistic (though of course still fun and horrifying). The other is just pure self-indulgence. For the sake of this storyline, I'll talk about the former, though I'll probably talk about the latter in another post.

So it's down to just Tiernan and Tobias. Sera, Charlie, and Máire are gone. Lady has become even more isolated and withdrawn. And the Foundation director just doesn't seem to care.

So Tobias

Just

Snaps

(He had been angry lately, so mind-numbingly angry. It was only a matter of time.)

Anyway, trying to stab your boss's boss to death is very much a surefire way to get fired. And he does not leave quietly, still raging as he is escorted out.

Tobias becomes an avatar of The Slaughter - fear of pure violence and fear of war. You don't know when the violence is coming, or how. If it'll be soon or later, if it'll be wild and frenzied or cold and calm. (You don't know when you will snap.) Sometimes manifests as music.

Toby is angry all the time, but sometimes when he's calmer, he'll hum to himself... and send everyone around who hears into a violent frenzy.

Tiernan

So that leaves Tiernan alone. By now he's likely feeling pretty disillusioned with the Chandra Foundation and their supposed mission.

But there are still so many monsters, and his friends might have all left, but they're still out there. And they're spreading terror with the rest.

While he wasn't the Archivist herself, he was still sort of the Lead Assistant. I'm sure he felt a bit of responsibility for the others.

And by now? He's feeling almost as angry at the situation as Tobias was. And even more desperate.

So he hands in his resignation letter, and the Hunt begins.

Tiernan becomes an avatar of The Hunt - feeds on fear of being hunted, fear of becoming prey. Its avatars often become monster hunters, hunting down servants of the other Dread Powers. But you know what they say about those who hunt monsters.

Out of all of the Powers mentioned so far, avatars of the Hunt are the most likely to experience more physical changes. They tend to get a bit... bestial. Yeah, I'm talking something vaguely werewolfy. They are the predators now.

Tiernan probably doesn't even realize that he has become an avatar of anything, at first. The Hunt keeps his mind focused on the pursuit, and not on the way his teeth grow sharp and his senses grow keen.

The others are easy to track. The girls and Charlie aren't exactly subtle. And as for Tobias...

Tobias is waiting for Tiernan when he leaves the Foundation for the last time. Despite everything, Tobias thinks they're still friends.

And maybe they are.

So they could continue this thing together. They could hunt down their old friends. They could bring the violence to the monsters.

(Though it should be mentioned that any argument the two of them have is 100% more likely to turn violent. They'd both survive, but still, yikes.)

So off they go, becoming the very thing they used to investigate and record, and spreading some terror of their own.

Maybe Sera, Máire, and Charlie will join them, when they find them.

[flyover-babbleon]

Freelancing in technical theater means you’re on a lot of different email lists. People need a crew, they send out an email, you respond with your availability. Now, most people start these with things like “hey folks” or “hi everyone”. Neal is not most people.

His openers started off innocent enough.

Then, he started to push boundaries.

And as you can see, it has spiraled out of control since then.

[flyover-babbleon]

I haven't gotten a chance to ramble about Amethyst in Tragic Planethopping, so I'm using this opportunity to do so.

Basic rundown: her machinery is her eyes and her official position on the ship is quartermaster, though she gives that up to Marcellus and becomes the navigator.

Even when she was the quartermaster, though, she was basically the back-up navigator and co-pilot.

Her eyes are very obviously mechanical, and there are burn scars around her eyes. You can already tell that her backstory is Not Fun.

Fun fact: this was originally a No Powers AU. Then I got to trying to figure out Ammy. Now it's a Some Powers AU.

To put it simply, psychic powers are a thing! They're a major thing in her home system.

Ammy was a diviner and precog serving as something advisory to someone high ranking. A State-Sanctioned Seer, essentially.

She was also feeding information to the Rebellion. Yep.

I have a few ideas as to who her contact(s) in the Rebellion were. A couple of her siblings, for starters. Among others.

(- 👀 @ a certain childhood friend of hers -)

Sooner or later, though, she somehow gets caught.

And executed.

No I will not describe how.

Meanwhile, our infamous Dr. Talbot, had been circling the Rebellion and fomenting unrest like a vulture.

(This was back before the crew kicked her out, btw.)

So of course she scoops up Amethyst on a whim.

So Ammy gets to live. Shame she can no longer show her face in her home system and has to pretend to be dead and can no longer help her friends and family.

#LetAmmyAndEmirBeHappy2020

[flyover-babbleon]

Some things about the current Tragic Planethopping wip:

Marcellus is a Dutiful Prince. When he was told to get close to the Princess of the Sirens, of course he agreed.

He probably wasn't expecting to catch the feelings, though.

Didn't stop him from agreeing to help orchestrate her death, though.

Did he even know that she would die at the end, though? Would he have agreed to the plan if he had? Both good questions!

(Okay, the answer to both of those is probably "no." He just strikes me as being very, very bad at thinking ahead.)

He has so many regrets. Instant regrets.

(Of course, I am just borrowing him from @pandora-roleplays so this could all change at her say so.)

Máire and Marcellus were dating for months -- possibly even a year -- before their deaths. So she probably taught him a good bit of Sirenese Sign Language!

Don't ask them what they're signing about with those grins on their faces, you'll get two innocent looks and no straight answers.

They do get to dance together! Just once, but they only stopped because the pain in Máire's legs got to be too much.

After the Nameless Starship picks them up, Máire ends up spending a lot of time with the Tin Knight and this is the one universe in which they become good buddies.

Meanwhile, Amethyst takes Marcellus under her wing. If he's going to take her job, she might as well teach him to do it right.

[flyover-babbleon]

Tragic Planethopping

I should probably give this thing a different name, but a silly project deserves a silly name.

This is heavily inspired by the Mechanisms, and it shows. It actually used to be a Mechs AU.

Also might have some similar elements to the Old Guard? I haven't actually seen it, but I've read summaries.

So this is about the crew of the Nameless Starship, a ragtag bunch with only one thing in common. They were all taken in by an immortal and unethical mad scientist who replaced a part of their body with machinery and made them immortal as well, all without their consent.

I've been calling the scientist Dr. Talbot in my head, btw.

She straight up just flies around looking for planets on the brink of tragedy or devastation or upheaval and grabs people from there. Her experiments are usually on the brink of death when she finds them, or otherwise in no position to say yes or no.

Dr. Talbot is not a great person.

This is why the crew eventually mutinies and throws her out.

Does that stop her? No.

The crew chases her down, while also trying to figure out a way to kill/stop her for good.

They've never managed to actually catch her, but she leaves her new test subjects behind for the crew to find, like gifts.

The crew do not like these gifts.

Stop giving people non-consensual body mods and immortality, Dr. Talbot.

Sometimes they do other things. It all depends on who picked the destination. They take turns.

The starship is nameless because no one can agree on a name.

This is the worst intergalactic road trip ever.