#playing around with tma fears in ga'hooleverse

[curious-sootball]

Alright, screw it, I'm writing down my GoG and TMA crossover ideas (because apparently I can't concentrate on anything else right now. ) Spoilers for both TMA and GoG

So... the base AU idea is pretty simple. The Fears from the Magnus Archives universe exist in Ga'hooleverse. Everyone is affected to some degree, some are having a horrible time, some are actually pretty ok. Some characters stick around longer or shorter than they do in canon, nothing is set in stone yet.

So, the Guardians as an institution were partially created to monitor, study and (if and when possible)contain& combat manifestations of the Fears. The Great Tree itself may or may not be a manifestation, nobody really knows for sure.

There was a roughly 450 years lull in Fear activity - not a complete standstill, but way less activity than before: not that many new avatars, less manifestations, etc. According to the records from the Great Tree's artifact vault, Hoole and his courtiers who studied the Fears found a way to lull the Entities into slumber; not a foolproof or permanent solution, but it was better than nothing at the time.

Unfortunately, that plan irreversibly fell apart when Coryn took the Ember out of the volcano(he had no way to know it was a linchpin of the plan: even the Guardians lost that information). That was the supernatural wake-up call for the Fears, and the Southern and Northern kingdoms found themselves plunged into the new age of wonder and terror.

During The Siege, the artefact vault has been broken into multiple times; a lot of artefacts have went missing, most showed up in pure ones' posession. That didn't go nearly as well as everyone involved assumed it would go.

Now, there is a whole bunch of newly minted avatars running around, and most of them aren't really happy with the situation.

The bit I'm really looking forward to is how the legends (the three book long flashback) plays out: the Fears are in play and they will affect what is happening. (featuring Web- and Eye-aligned Grank, Siv almost becoming a Desolation avatar after dishing out the most brutal verbal takedown of Grank's life, and almost everyone being done with lord Arrin's attitude)

In the current day of the series, people are still coming to terms with the fact that Fears being active is now A Thing That Happens. Otulissa almost becomes the new Archivist. Soren consoles some ghosts. Bess learns to control the weather in the Palace of Mists. Striga accidentally sets a bunch of things on fire (and later sets them on fire on purpose, once he figures out how to do that).

And now the Band needs to figure out how to kill someone Slaughter-aligned and make sure they stay dead (because Nyra jumped into being an avatar faster than one could say "NO")

@arthurian-owls feel free to add and define more! ^_^ it is so much fun to put this au together

[curious-sootball]

Some more GoG x TMA headcanons (Part 6/?)

Not strictly GoG×TMA, but I think it would've been kind of funny if Penryck ended up as Lutta's odd uncle. Not strictly because he's associated with her parents, but because he sounds like someone who would be Kreeth's customer.

Tangentially related to point 1: irl crows live in family groups and/or bands made of young crows who left their nests but hadn't started a family of their own yet (as far as I'm aware); my headcanon is that hagsfiends have very similar social organisation and most of Penryck's immediate blood family was killed during the very end of king H'rathmore's reign(because king H'rathmore was an asshole)

And que Lutta saying years later when Penryck is visitong Kreeth for whatever reason "hey, uncle 'Ryk, can I have your clan last name? As my own???" And him responding along the lines of "Why on earth would you want that, kid?!"

"Well, I can't claim my dad's family name because they disowned him, my mom disowned me, and auntie Kreeth said "oh fuck no" when I asked her. So you're the only one left."

Penryck needs some time to process that. (Yes, he is touched to the depths of his soul, but he'd rather die than admit it then and there) And maybe yell at Kreeth for good measure because he somehow ended up second most reliable figure in Lutta's life and he Did Not Sign Up for this. Kreeth is supposed to look after her own experiments, dammit!

He does let Lutta use his family name after that, though.

Lutta and Emerilla both would've loved "Black Sheep Daughter" ("I am my mother's savage daughter' filk lyrics by Piper CJ), but for different reasons. (Yes, the "She birthed a witch when she wanted a lady, she prayed for a child who'll walk with the lord; but I watch the stars and I live by the planets. I cut her dream short with the edge of my sword" bit is playing on repeat in my brain, why do you ask?)

Lutta and Emerilla working together against the king H'rath's court. I want to see those conservative owls blow a whole factiry worth of gaskets.

Way later, Hoole ends up brokering an uneasy peace with hagsfiend clans because he (somewhat accidentally) ended up marrying into de-facto stongest clan. Penryck is Not Impressed™️ with his new in-laws and neither is Kreeth.

[curious-sootball]

More TMA and GoG crossover thoughts, part 3/?

So, a little addition about Soren, Gylfie and later the Chaw of Chaws as they infiltrate st. Aegolius: they all are touched by The Buried, since st. Aegolius is a Buried manifestation and they all lived there for months. Just touched, since most of them have been touched and/or marked by The Vast first.

St. Aegolius was Soren's first proper exposure to the Fears (Kludd throwing Soren out of the nest was still his own doing - that's how he got marked by The Slaughter). He probaby would've ended up aligned with and possibly avatarised by The Buried later if he hadn't met Gylfie: he can sense that something Is Not Right, but doesn't have vocabulary for that yet.

Gylfie, on the other hand, grew up hearing lots and lots of cautionary tales about Fears, mostly The Vast and The Distortion.(I'm most likely biased since I grew up in a city, but deserts sound like a prime real estate for the Vast and the Distortion manifesting: easy to get lost when you don't know your way around(yet), and the horisons stretching as far as an eye can see, even from a bird's eye view. Yes, I also grew up pretty close to the steppes, I love the feeling of looking out from a high point and knowing how far I can see from there). So, Gylfie knows the signs of those two Fears manifesting nearby best, but she's kind of shaky on other Fears, so Soren's sense of Supernatural Bad Vibes comes in very handy.

More of a general thought for this AU: I feel like The Vast and possibly The Distortion would be the more... common and mundane,for the lack of a better term, fears? The "most-likely-to-run-into" fears, so to say (like how The Stranger and The Lonely and most likely The Dark are very easy to run into in the regular TMA: how many people had the Anglerfish yoinked? How many Anglerfish monsters are out there? How many of those people hadn't been tracked and reported because they had no one who would be concerned for them? Those are very common fears for people in big cities). Also, deep sea is a Buried domain, as far as owls are concerned (opposed to a human perspective of "does the deep sea/ocean floor count as The Buried domain or The Vast domain?")

Now that I think of that, st. Aegolius should be crawling with The Buried-aligned owls. (And Stranger-aligned, too. One of The Sranger's names is "I Do Not Know You", after all, and losing one's identity so bad they aren't recognisable as who they once were anymore seems to be a theme in st. Aggies, one of possible examples being Grimble)

St. Aegolius isn't just hoarding the specks - they're hoarding Leitners as well (they're called cursed books in-universe, because there are little to no records of Jurgen Leitner left and despite the fact that he had a little over a thousand books in his library at one point, there are many more he had no idea about, so there aren't many reasons to keep calling those things Leitners). No, they don't really know what Leitners do, either. Yes, they tried to use them and it went horribly wrong(and in some cases, horribly right)

Twilight would've been the most adamant Fear-denier untill the Band met Otulissa. He's the most grounded of them and is somewhat resistant to the Supernatural Bad Vibes that Fears naturally generate; he'd be hard to avatarise, but The Lonely would've eaten him alive sooner than later. Digger, on the other hand, is very much not a Fear denier. He'd get marked by so many of the Fears if he set out on his own (The Desolation, The Slaughter and The Flesh first)

[curious-sootball]

More GoG and TMA crossover thoughts, part 2/?

Not a point unique to this au, but: I headcanon Emerilla as pretty mean (at least, before she went missing and infiltrated Shadyk's army), so when Lutta showed up and replaced her, she ended up acting much nicer. Most characters assumed that a near-death experience made Emerilla change her attitude for the better; Lutta somewhat reluctantly played into that (since her and Emerilla's default levels of politeness are wildly different and she wasn't sure how feisty she should act)

Lutta has a sort of passive mind-reading abilities in this au - since she's Stranger-aligned, she can peek into memories of people she's impersonating (it isn't very focused and only works when she's actively impersonating someone). Peeking into Emerilla's memories isn't fun - Strix Strumajen isn't a straight-up horrible mother, but she is very abmitious and she banked a lot on marrying her daughter into the royal family. Emerilla believes that she isn't really allowed to be anything outside of her mother's design and takes it out on other people.

Kreeth knew about Hoole's powers manifesting, but didn't know how well-developed those powers are. She warned Lutta about being as amicable with Hoole as possible - since he's the only one who can 100% tell that she's not Emerilla, staying on good terms in theory means he wouldn't try and check that using The Eye (at least, that's what she thinks: Grank toned down his own use of Beholding, and Hoole's powers pull attention away from other avatars near him)

Lutta's first impression of Hoole's court was "Why everyone has tons of beef with everyone else?! Isn't that exhausting?". Strix Strumajen is wondering what the hell is going on in her daughter's head - why is she suddenly amicable with literally everyone? Why isn't she flirting with Hoole, like they agreed? Wait, why is she cozying up to Snow Rose?! *owl equivalent of pearl clutching ensues*

Yeah, Snow Rose is around. She's Hoole's honorary (Vast and Lonely marked) wine aunt. Lutta-as-Emerilla at first visits her only with Hoole, but she ends up liking her a lot more than she anticipated.

Snow Rose is concerned for the nobles's kids. She's on her way to be almost everyone's cool wine aunt, and she isn't against it, but those kids ought to get better parental attention!

Hoole figured out that Lutta isn't really Emerilla sooner than in the books, but didn't confront her about it (he talked about Emerilla with younger nobles who actually known her, and when they all confirmed that she changed in some ways that aren't really consistent with near-death experience and a following repentance, he started putting the pieces together, but never tried to confirm it). She ended up confessing it herself (because she thought he was going to check it using Beholding anyway), a while after they started officially courting each other.

Hoole was actually going to tell her she doesn't need to court him if she doesn't want to (because in his eyes he became the most eligible owl bachelor around without doing anything to earn it, and people competitively courting him on top of being a king is overwhelming). It was a very awkward conversation.

Hoole and Lutta team up. Please, I just want to see those two get in trouble together as the kids they are. (Also, the Eye avatar and a Stranger avatar working together. I want to see the ensuing chaos)

Meanwhile, Emerilla is getting her character arc - she's a server in a freshly ravaged Ice Palace and she wants to stab Shadyk to death multiple times over. She started out pretending to be a gadfeather, but switched to being a server after Shadyk demanded them to sing one raunchy song 17 times in a row - that was the final straw for the band, and they ragequit.

She heard about the new royalist stronghold in S'yrthgar, but doesn't really know where it is or how to get there. Besides, she can spy on people here, and that's very valuable intel, as far as she knows.

Shadyk isn't doing too well: marked by the Slaughter and speedrunning becoming the Corruption avatar. Ice Palace melting is the side effect of all the Corruption manifestations. (And yes, Hakon is very dead in this AU. Multiple people made sure he is very, very dead and not coming back)

[curious-sootball]

Alright, some more GoG × TMA headcanons, part 5(i think)/?

This au has a playlist! By me. On youtube. It is a work in progress and it is mostly shanties now (becase of Ezylryb. He taught his chaw the shanties. This man knows so many shanties and you cannot change my mind). Song suggestions are very welcome!

Every time the collier/all-weather chaw has to camp out near the shores of Hoolemere after a training flight, there is a shanty singing session (temporarily abandoned during the Siege). Otulissa went from a miserable bundle of feathers tapping her foot to the beat to a shanty enjoyer - almost smacking Soren with a rare edition of "Shanties and somgs of the Northern Kingdoms" penned by Lyze of Kiel at one point because Soren is very dense and doesn't pick up that Ezylryb is prepairing him to take over as the new shantyowl.

"Hell's coming with me" by Poor man's poison but it is Striga and Coryn summoning Theo's ghost specifically to yell at him (may or may not spiral into Striga burning the Panqua palace down via Desolation powers)

"Pressure cracks", also by Poor man's poison, but it is Penryck and Ullryck going their separate ways. No, I don't ship them, I headcanon them as bi/ace solidarity friendship. I want to see ending friendship get the same gravity that romantic heartbreak gets in songs. Also, they both said a version of "Go ahead, make my day, punk!" at some point in my headcanon.

Thora Plonk lives. She's scarred and marked by The Slaughter, but she lives and kicks ass.

[curious-sootball]

Arrrgh I'M OBSESSED with the way Karliene Reynolds says "Alas, my love, farewell, adieu; to god I pray to prosper thee" in her cover of "Greensleeves" and I want to incorporate this in every single one of my AUs

(Including the scenarios where characters say this in a deeply sarcastic and/or ironic way)

[curious-sootball]

Some more GoG and TMA crossover thoughts:

Hoole using Beholding powers to counter veiled insults and/or backhanded compliments - not out of active malice, but out of genuine confusion(at least the first few times): he's a very straightforward guy, so royal courtiers trying to play emotional 5d chess during a conversation would be annoying at best and deeply upsetting at worst for him. So, when he finds himself thinking about another conversation with an older noble where they were seemingly polite, but The Vibes(tm) felt off, and another courtier tries to talk to him, Hoole is having None Of That and tells the courtier "Just say exactly what you mean, for goodness sake!". It works like a charm, but the courtier is rattled to their bones afterwards (and probably spilled way too much tea about everyone's plans out of sheer anxiety).

Also: Hoole approaching avatars of other fears with an open mind - he pretty much thinks of them as potential friends/allies unless they prove themselves too hostile. (He also never really got the memo that avatar powers aren't supposed to manifest as early as they did for him - sometimes he unintentionally scares people by showing off).

Not unique to this AU, but: everyone roasting Lord Arrin. You know how in Elden Ring, when you sneak into Stormveil castle and talk to NPCs, they all say how they hate Godrick and how terrible of a lord he is? That's how Arrin's allies would talk about him. He's not a total idiot, he's actually pretty good at being a noble and running a domain, but he is also very good at getting at everyone's nerves and not noticing it until its far too late.

Arrin picking absolutely worst people to get into verbal duels with and getting his ass handed to him on a platter. He once tried insulting Hoole with "Where are your manners, have you been raised by wolves?" only to get "Why, yes; say hello to all my honorary cousins! *wide gesture at the wolves of the Beyond*" followed by the slyest I see what you're doing and I'm having none of that look from Hoole. This isn't even the first time Arrin tried "Have you been raised by [insert species]?" line and got destroyed with the comeback.

Seriously, this guy gets roasted behind his back so much(particularly by his hagsfiend allies), and most of it is deserved.

Speaking of which: Penryck keeps the somewhat unstable gathering of clan warriors and stragglers from fighting each other or Arrin's army. This man is going to have a back pain from carrying this alliance so far. He originally planned to team up with Arrin's son, Baldr(he has no canon name, so I picked one), but that didn't work quite as well as he thought: Baldr supports Penryck's plans at Arrin's meetings, but they are still kind of isolated from most other warlords (they're winning the younger ones over, but it is a slow process)

Penryck actually worked with Ullryck, Ygreek and Pleek before Arrin's rebellion - just not at the same time. Once Arrin made it clear that he's hiring hagsfiends, Penryck reached out to them - recruiting the best assasin and the best tracker in the field (technically, he's also marked by The Hunt and can track people pretty well, but his main fear entity is still the Slaughter, so he'll gladly outsource tracking and chasing to someone he trusts.) Not really related to the Fears, but: he has an accent - it is pretty subtle, but he sometimes puts on an exagerrated version of it specifically to annoy Arrin.

Kreeth is both a local cryptid of the Ice Narrows and a very common point of connection between other hagsfiends: she deals in Fear-affiliated artifacts, among other things. According to the wildest rumours, she can remove Fear marks - she never gives a clear answer if you ask her, though. (She can't actually remove the marks, but can sort of cover them up with new ones)

[curious-sootball]

Some more GoG × TMA crossover au thoughts: part 4/?

I am tempted to make a full-fledged (loose)humanisation!branch to this au for the sole purpose of making war horns/carnixes viable Hunt/Slaughter artifacts in this universe. Imagine the absolute mayhem those would unleash👀.

I thought about this for a while, and I think I'll make Coryn a full-on Extinction avatar. Nothing would upset his deadbeat mother more than seeing him shifting fear alliance in a blink of an eye because she killed soneone who(in her eyes) was supposed to be a sacrifitial lamb anyway.

Soren's character arc in this au would be so fascinating to watch. From being vaguely aware of The Fears's existance to being tossed right in the middle of a bunch of them acting back to a more controlled environment... that's got to take a toll on someone and I'm here for it.

The conflict between Ezylryb and Dewlap is going to get way messier than it was in the books. Those two are going to be at each other's throats, especially when the whole "science vs magic" thing comes up to a boiling point.

Not sure about this one,but Stranger-aligned Ginger? Eh?

[curious-sootball]

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