#ISMwriting

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

My Current NaNoCryMo Project

Title: Beasts of Elenghul Genre: High fantasy Setting: Snowy active volcano, fantasy Second Great Awakening -> fantasy Victorian era Synopsis: It's been an age since the last long sleep, when the Wanwathin race last passed their usual winter in the presence of their forefather. It's been many more ages than that since they lost sight of their guiding star. The newest generations have been born short-lived and unsightly, and for some of them, a growing movement in the bowels of their fair settlement will take them to a city rife with offerings too tempting to refuse.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

I will be participating in NanoCryMo with friends this year!

October is prep month! I will be reblogging Tumblr posts requesting that you send in asks about my story, characters, setting, and worldbuilding. Please don't hesitate to send those asks! The more October prep I do, the better writing in November will go.

My project is an original high fantasy novel about a thrice-widowed church mom from a fantasy race who asks for forgiveness right before she commits sins. Then she helps create an eldritch cult. She didn't mean it like that

It's time for: NaNoCryMo 2024!

It has been five years since I attempted to do NaNo, and this year I am BACK, ready to get some work done on an original project. For those who have not been her for previous NaNoCryMo, I love to bring my friends with me (and I'm always happy to bring more), and for the month of October, we prep for the long haul by doing a few exercises to help us out.

We’re mostly all working on original works, so if you send in asks about AnS fics-- or other fandom's fics!-- I won’t be able to prioritize answering them. But if you’d still like to help us out, I'll be posting ask memes each week to help us with character and world building, and we’d love for you to send us some asks. Most posts will be accompanied by a list of characters (different for each of us, of course) to make it easier to pick who you want to hear about.

Otherwise, I'll still be posting a few fics this month-- maybe into November, if I get a good queue going!-- and I'll be back for winter challenge at the end of December!

Other NaNoCryMo participants:

@infinitelystrangemachinex @claudeng80 @kirayaykimura @officiallallorona @balfrey

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

NANO DAY 1

Excerpt:

“A cursory inspection betrays no abnormalities,” he told her coolly, a limp protest and a limp reassurance all in one and matching, in Manjee’s opinion, his sparse beard and thin black hair clawed back from a high, smooth forehead. The better to make room for his horned spectacles winking at her in the green-glass gloom of his office, glinting from every angle with the apparatuses of the alienist’s trade. He peered at her. “My good woman. Tell me truly. Are you absolutely certain that these - images - you saw. These seized upon you in the night?”

This was not a morning for politeness. Nor one for slow, patient reasoning. This was a day for the ending of Manjee’s world, and for that, the First Father deserved only her best. Manjee’s voiced filled the office with her hissing, sliding rasp. “By the darkened star, I do solemnly swear, last night there crept a dream into my head. Doctor.”

A slumped shape in the back corner of the office near the flowing windowpanes twitched. The alienist, perched on his stool with his back to the windows, did nothing but tip his nose down an inch so he could raise his eyebrows at her over his spectacles. “You leverage against yourself a most serious accusation.”

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

7, 17, and/or 23 for the Summer Camp prompts please!

7. A conflict that involved a changing environment

The Wanwathin groped blindly for a long time before they finally found the caldera and its volcano. When their most powerful elders determined that the people could survive here, they quickly found the best place to settle on the volcano's slopes, but blind as they were in a world with only sunlight and the twinkling of other, disinterested stars, the people were too slow to find Elenghul nearby, across the mists. The original residents of Elenghul were almost entirely human, and the wan, strange, utterly nonhuman appearance of the Wanwathin frightened them. The Wanwathin were raided multiple times by the neighboring city, until residents of a nearby village brokered a peace, the details of which have been lost to the depths of Illuvitas' records.

17. A tradition that gives comfort

The Wanwathin have a ritual that nowadays is meant to be reserved only for spouses or similarly equally devoted life partners, be the connection romantic, civil, platonic, sibling, or otherwise. Thought to date back to the days of the darkened star, the ritual begins by one person placing their hand over the other person's eyes, invoking the sensation of being lost in the unknown. The person then recites a script, then makes vows to the other person to suit the present situation. The final vow must always refer to the other person never being lost to them, for they will search to the end of the world. The person receiving the vows is free to break off the ritual at any time, though this usually results in the end of the relationship as well. At the end, the second person may accept the vows and say a piece if they want to, though accepting the vows typically means that they are saying the first person's words back to them. This ritual is taken extremely seriously in Wanwathin society, especially nowadays since it's done so rarely. Even if the ritual is done lightly or as a joke between two people, its consequences are still legally binding. If done in private, that the ritual was performed must be confessed to a member of the Elca Sacra so it can be recorded.

23. An evil spirit or divine antagonist

This may or may not count as divine, but the one antagonist that the people of Elenghul truly believe is stagnation - devolution, rot, withering away without purpose. The city's most prominent members have devoted themselves to not only battling this antagonist, but defeating it entirely.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

13, 23, 33!

13. A naturally sheltered place

On the outskirts of Elenghul, there is a ridge with a natural outcropping just large enough for two or three people. It's perfectly sheltered and gives a view of Elenghul, the woods, the mists rising off the caldera, the harbor, and the main road. There's a path that's little more than a goatpath leading to the outcropping, but the path still has a name, Two Moon Promenade, for when people get above the city to look at the moon when it's positioned near Illuvitas, which glows in the distance like a second moon.

23. An evil spirit or divine antagonist

Longterm residents of Elenghul have little concept of a divine antagonist or of any kind of evil that people don't create and perpetuate themselves. However, Wanwathin residents of the city have taken the belief in the laughing wolf trickster deity from Illuvitas and truly turned it into a devil figure. It's said the wolf whispers to people when they sleep without dreaming, and giving into bad decisions or laziness the next day is due to the person listening to what the wolf told them. The figures the people of Elenghul revere have been silent long enough that even they begin to wonder if this laughing beast crept through the city's streets one night and tore out their beloved ones' throats. It would not have been the first monster in Elenghul to dare try.

33. A profession that is considered dirty

Elenghul employs street cleaners of all kinds, and what they often spend their nights sweeping, scraping off of wood and stone, and buffing off the ancient buildings' walls is often too unmentionable to bring up in polite company.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

13, 14, 26, and 33

13. A naturally sheltered place

Deep underneath Illuvitas and Elenghul is a network of caves and tunnels where the most unfortunate of the Wanwathin live - protected, certainly, but unfortunate, since hiding from the very sky is viewed as both barbaric and an act of utter cowardice. Though Manjee was very young when she and her mother emerged aboveground to seek better lives in Illuvitas, she can still remember the quiet of the caves punctuated only by a strange, sweet music she could sometimes hear in her loneliest moments.

14. A building considered a refuge against the world

Illuvitas has cradles built all over the city which are now used like chapels, but whose primary purpose used to be for the yearly long sleep, where families and communities would bunk down and hibernate for the winter. Since no one has been able to enter a long sleep for decades, this use for the cradles is quickly passing out of generational memory, except that there are still a lot of songs and stories - usually romantic ones - detailing social conventions and exceptions around who did or didn't rest in the same cradle as someone else, or the feelings of separation young lovers experienced during a winter they spent apart, or when they resisted the long sleep long enough to try and have the city to themselves while the rest of their community slept. Cradles built for the upper echelons of the Wanwathin have trees growing in them with glass ceilings that show the night sky, replicating older ways of living before Illuvitas was built.

26. Slang or a language associated with a religion or belief

Since the development of their organized religion and their transition to calling themselves the astrolatic faithful, the Wanwathin have personified various astral bodies in their view of the cosmos and named them deities, but deities who won't take the Wanwathin as their own, since the people are still forsaken. Though there's increasing pushback against this view of the world because of a growing interest in explaining the world with science, some of the old curses still stick - "And so the laughing wolf smiled" is among the more archaic, referring to a trickster deity who was created to explain why the long sleep started becoming more scarce hundreds of years ago. It used to be said that this so-called laughing wolf roamed the caldera when it dried up, a rogue star taken physical form, and the long sleep couldn't come until it was pierced through the throat. So long as the laughing wolf lives on to smile, the long sleep will remain out of reach, and it is implied, the Wanwathin's eternal exile will also continue. A certain cult developed many years ago that believed that the wolf moved among the Wanwathin in the form of a person, and every now and then throughout the people's history, a witch hunt is recorded where people were killed in an attempt to root out the trickster.

33. A profession that is considered dirty

Any job that involves the ground, but especially being UNDERground, is considered low and dirty, which includes mining, excavating, and more. These jobs are usually left up to horned Wanwathin, but they have their own beliefs about people who dig or work with the ground, such as men and women who were born from moving lava, or people who were struck by the volcanic lightning that makes much of the Wanwathin's glass and lived.

Worldbuilding asks

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

02, 13, 25

2. An environmental or other large-scale natural disaster

Back in the days that only the very oldest Wanwathin remember, the people had a home bathed in the light of their guiding star. Then one day, the star glowed brighter, and brighter still, until it rivaled the sun both day and night. There were some who wondered if their mothers and fathers were finally coming to take them all into eternal blissful rest, and others still who thought that the time of their people had finally arrived and that all other races would soon look to the people to build the waking world anew. So it is hard to measure the devastation when as quickly as the star had begun to burn, the sky went dark - save for what the Wanwathin elders call the watchful eye, which burned orange and blue and violet and opened, wider and wider, night after night to glare down at the people who cowered in terror.

The people thought they could exist for a time without their star. Night after night they searched for it and could not find it. Eventually the people grew sick and weak and their harvest yielded little. Worse still, the other races of the world continued on as though nothing had occurred, for all they needed was sunlight and the constance of a few stars to go on living. The people, forsaken, became withered creatures of the night, such that some elders claim that the people went blind, or would eat nothing but raw meat, or slept for days on end, or would go weeks without sleeping at all - the accounts differ. The people had no concept of hell, but other races who happened upon them thought of their decimated home as such. Some of the people wandered off into the unknown in search of some other star to nourish them and were never seen again. In an act of desperation, the people left en masse and began a decades-long journey to find their own salvation. And this is how the Wanwathin came to be separated from the world the way fish in an ever-shrinking pond are separated from the land that goes on so easily without them.

13. A naturally sheltered place

The Wanwathin city of Illuvitas is built into the side of a very old volcano, placed such that the volcano itself shields the city from severe winds, winter avalanches, and more harsh conditions. Most importantly, it shields the city from most sunlight, which doesn't necessarily harm the people, but they prefer to avoid it when they can. The city is even built to withstand lava flow and ashfall. The Wanwathin have spent many long years huddled in this one place, so they've refined Illuvitas over and over again to suit their needs. But the most important element to their protection is the natural volcano itself, as well as the caldera which is flooded for most of the year and discourages outsiders from casually making their way to the city.

25. A relic or symbol of belief

The Wanwathin's obsessive searching of the heavens has led to them creating highly detailed and accurate maps of the cosmos for veneration by the astrolatic faithful. There is a symbol that resembles one of these maps that is widely used among the longlived Wanwathin, but is given much more reluctantly to the horned and usually shorter lived people because of their association with the underground instead of the skies. This symbol of the cosmos looks far too similar, in some people's opinion, to the symbol for the brain used by the fanatics of the neighboring city of Elenghul, though that is hardly where the astrolatic faithful's similarities to Elenghul's oddities begins or ends.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

13 and 19 for Joa?

13. Instead of your standard four elements, consider what kind of metal represents your character.

Bronze! Joa was born to be the hero of a story that has already happened and where the ending has already been written by someone else. The society he lives in was made to venerate him for rising above his birth. But now that very society is in flux and Joa has to find something else to be. This makes him susceptible to the charms and the ideas of people who know his type and who know him better than he knows himself.

19. Which of the four temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic) are they?

Phlegmatic, probably - he asserts himself in a quiet way by positioning himself to be the voice of reason amongst his siblings, but on the inside, he wants more than he currently has and he thinks he deserves it, especially when he compares himself to his sisters. However, he does have a real edge over his sisters in that he can wait and play the long game that they would rather not play, at least not at first. Something he learned from Thedran whether he realizes it or not.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Manjee 8, 16 & 17

8. Which of the seven heavenly virtues are they associated with? Do they embody that virtue or are they trying to learn it?

Diligence! She embodies this the most in a paradoxical kind of way. She sticks with her society's beliefs and standards in a lot of ways no matter what is happening around her, but at the same time, she doesn't hesitate to break rules if it means getting what she wants for her loved ones - but that commitment to her loved ones is diligence too. She used to not be able to justify this paradox when she was younger and she got burned a lot because of it, especially in how it complicated her relationship with her eldest daughter basically from the get-go.

Chastity is a big one too in the literal sense I guess. She has a "lust" for like, this one ambition, and she has a sense of entitlement she tries to keep buried, but I think those things roll up under greed better than lust. So chastity comes in at a safe number 2 🤣

16. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and anything between. What kind of dish are they?

Breakfast! She's a morning person and has a good grip on taking care of the essentials in life. She'd be a solid eggs, sausage, hashbrowns, and orange juice.

17. What instrument would be used in their leitmotif (essentially their character song in this context)?

Probably a pipe organ, lol

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

1,6,10,14 and 20 for Edi!!

What is the main color associated with them? What connections with that color do they share?

Probably yellow for feeling like she stands out, and also for a bright and kind of new resentment that's in her.

6. Which of the four seasons best fits them?

Autumn for change and adaptation.

10. Are they closer to life or death?

Closer to death, but she doesn't know it. In that she's fighting for her life in a way, but she's going about it in a foolhardy way. On top of that, her loyalties are divided, which makes her more vulnerable.

14. Regardless of whether or not they wield any, what kind of weapon do you associate them with?

A bow and arrow, because she wants to view herself as both self-sufficient and a provider.

20. What word/phrase is central to their character? (It can be something they say or something that summarizes them meta-textually.)

The lone wolf dies

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

What fantasy race is church mom from for your novel?

Thank you for the ask!

Church mom is named Manjee and she is from a race called the Wanwathin. It's an elfy race where they live basically forever and stay isolated from the rest of the world. For the last couple hundred years though, some of their children started being born with stockier bodies, horns, tough hides, sharp teeth, etc. These people were all ostracized until recently, where starting shortly before Manjee was born, they could be accepted if they went through a religious ritual where their horns are cut, teeth filed, etc. These ones tend to live about as long as humans in our world and have children much more frequently. Manjee had her horns cut when she was little.

My thinking is that evolution moves really fast in this world and so that's part of what's behind that transformation, but I haven't fully fleshed out everything about that!

I decided on this race after I was stuck a couple years back on what I really wanted this story to be, and decided to root the story in something more blatantly Tolkienian. They're roughly inspired by Tolkien's Avari elves. I didn't want magical humans because I wanted to be able to make up wild stuff about their physiology 🤣 I wanted a name for them that sounded like "wayward" because I think of them as having split off from the rest of the "elves" a way long time ago. They didn't have any organized religion, but they revered a star, that star disappeared, and they considered themselves lost after that. They're pretty much extremophiles and struggled because they need specific conditions to thrive. They ended up settling on an active volcano as a result, and organized religion developed to help cope.

Part of their being extremophiles is that they hibernate, which I think is something all "elves" do, but the Wanwathin have mostly forgotten everything that goes back to before they split off anyway. When they hibernate they supposedly enter a shared dream where they spend the time making music and learning from their first ancestor. I say "supposedly" because they stopped hibernating about 100 years ago, most of who is still having children are shortlived people afflicted with horns and stuff, and so there aren't very many Wanwathin around who have even done it. It's a growing sentiment with the newer generations that the long sleep isn't real and neither is dreaming, especially as their society slowly turns more and more to science.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Thedran, Are they closer to life or death? Which of the four temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic) are they?

10. Are they closer to life or death?

Thedran moves through life and death in a constant, churning cycle. Ironically for this story, though, he's closer to life right now. He's set himself up for such a terribly, grueling long time to really start living and now all he has to do is reach for it.

19. Which of the four temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic) are they?

Probably equal measures of sanguine and choleric. He has the benefit of being able to look back on his past as more sanguine while also facing the reality that to get what he wants, he has become choleric. He can therefore slide between these two at will - mostly. Only Manjee knows him well enough to see clearly what he's doing, though she doesn't know why, and it's this shift in him that starts driving a wedge between them and their "understanding."

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

9 and 11 for Thedran

9. Which of the seven deadly sins are they associated with? Is it a negative trait of theirs or something they actively struggle with?

Hmmmm. Pride :)))) Definitely a negative trait of his.

He really struggles with Sloth. At any given moment, he either has something he's supposed to be doing but he's not, or he's strongly prioritizing something personal over the greater good.

11. Land, sea, or sky? Of the realms of the world, which one does the character belong to?

Land, despite his best efforts. He keeps trying to make it into the sea or sky, either one will do, but he keeps being found wanting. Meanwhile, the land changes, erodes, reforms, things grow and things die, and he's still stuck on it.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

About Me

***Followers, just wanna give a heads up that the next few months are going to test just how unhinged this blog can get 🤣 There will be a flood of reblogs for certain fandoms that will probably last through a good part of 2025 if not longer, and I only use my queue sometimes. So please feel free to block any of the following tags if you want:

#obiyuki, #ans

#arcane, #mel, #viktor, #mh

#dragon age, #solavellan

Writing

For my written works, search #my writing, #ISMwriting

Ao3 links: infinitelystrangemachinex and infinitelystrangemachine_old (for older works)

My main current fandoms are: Akagami no Shirayukihime where I ship and write for Obi/Shirayuki (#obiyuki) Arcane where I ship and write for Mel/Viktor (#melvik)

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

For the drabble ask: Ryuu and Obi and an umbrella?

“They’re all the rage in Tanbarun,” Obi laughs. “Don’t you want to be fancy?”

“No!”

As with most tasks of a tactile nature, Obi’s hands require only one attempt to fix the umbrella’s position on Ryuu’s shoulder. “You’ve got reach on me now. You’ll stop us dripping all over the Miss’ shiny new diagrams.”

“I don’t think arm length and height are as correlated as that,” Ryuu says by way of complaint. “This is heavy.”

“You’ll have to do most of the real heavy lifting eventually anyway, kid.”

“Why?”

“Because.” Ryuu has spent enough years in the shade of Obi’s wing to inventory his smiles, but… “I’m getting old.”

Subcategory one: grins, and subcategory two: smirks, both land well within the scope of Ryuu’s literacy. Here is something entirely new.

Ryuu has no idea how many seconds pass him by in silent freefall. He should be grasping for words that keep slipping out of reach until Obi, as ever, swoops in for the rescue. Instead, the umbrella is the only discomfort in the rainy world. There’s pain, nothing atypical. But the look on Obi’s face makes it a kinder pain than any Ryuu has felt in a long time.

It can’t end. It’s such a desperate thought.

A grin is the last thing he sees before his vision goes black. He splutters; Obi’s gloved palm smears his wet forelock out of his face. “No more weaseling out of haircuts on my watch. I can look you in the eyes now.”

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Arcane - jinx finds rio?

Veiled in oily Emberflit Alley fog, the door hangs ajar, not a single trap engaged. His hind brain, ever four-legged, whispers, RUN.

Familiar chittering noises waft faintly through the opening. Thugs, topside or bottom, wouldn’t have suffered a monster’s company.

Viktor walks calmly inside.

“You’ve got a freaky taste in pets, mister,” says the girl belly-down on his workshop floor, with deep approval. Across the shop, her bulk squashed belly-down in the tiny kitchen, is Rio.

“Traitor,” Viktor tells her. Rio purrs, her enormous eyes never leaving the girl’s.

She’s carefree, boots kicking in the air. “Rio isn’t a pet,” he informs her. “She’s… a stray. I take care of her.”

“Sure. Go ahead and die on that hill, pal.” Then she’s twisted to scowl up at him. With huge, violently pink eyes.

Interesting.

Viktor’s mind churns, calculating. Then he clicks the steel tines of his fingers, and Rio drags herself to him.

“She likes her head scratched,” he says, demonstrating.

“Why does she look all-”

“People hurt her, many years ago. Changed her body against her will.” The girl goes tellingly quiet. “I chose to help her adapt.”

The congress of girl and beast is like two binary stars tentatively brushing, then collapsing into one in a rush. Rio curls around the child, her head cradled between the twig legs, while the girl presses her face to the bruise-colored hide and coos. When Rio licks her face, she shrieks, “Gross!” in sheer delight.

Viktor circles them. The girl is fifteen. No, eighteen. No, older. Just malnourished. Unpredictable. Possibly manic, unless placated. He’s seen it a thousand times. Heavily armed. In the beginning, Rio broke half his ribs and almost bit his arm off twice.

“Can I help, too?” the girl whispers.

Yes. Stay. Here, I can help you.

This is the undercity. She can trust nothing that comes for free.

He says, “You wish to assist me?”

“Ye-”

“Absolutely not.” He opens the front door wide. “Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”

She tries every day for three weeks, nearly kills him five times. On the twenty-fifth day, she hauls over her entire repertoire of tools and snarls, “You want it? I can make it. I’ll prove it. So cough up, you piece of shit tin can. Whaddaya want?”

From behind, Rio rushes to slobber over the girl’s wrench collection. And Viktor smiles.