#which sparked a long bloody and notable war in history

[skegulium]

[Problème d'émotion]

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Man, holy shit. I've finished, just in time! Orivar's ball outfit for this year was hell to work on, but I'm genuinely glad I didn't try to cut the more complex parts of it out, since I do love how well this came together.

Orivar likely attended this ball due to the sheer amount of antique weaponry Kilran likely requisitioned from dealers around Alternia. She's wandering around, casually giving information about the history of them that she brought for display, while wearing one on her own hip. It's more gaudy than what she'd have liked, but she was asked to dress nicely by the host...

[Full Resolution]

[tc-doherty]

You reblogged that Fantasy Ask Game, right? I'm assuming, because you sent me one.

I saw your post about Silverwood and you threatening to never shut up. I am calling your bluff. For Silverwood: I know the answer to Hero will be insane. And I'm also going to Wizard you.

Have fun!

@unclear-contributions

I did indeed reblog it and, the consequences of this are entirely on your shoulders.

Before I get started I just want to say that there is nothing metaphorical, allegorical, symbolic, or referential in Silverwood to connect it to any events, people, cultures, or what have you on earth. Certain actions are the same as certain actions taken in real world history but my characters use them for the same reason the people in our history used them, because they work. It doesn't mean one side is representing any specific people.

I am also leaving out a lot of background and explanation but this is already plenty long enough. If you want more information about anything, feel free to ask because as I said, I truly am capable of never shutting up about this.

That being said, here we go!

HERO - What makes someone a hero in this world?

In order to understand what can make someone a hero in this world, I need to set the context a little bit. In brief, a few hundred years before the start of the story the Emperor of Sanirra (Human) desired the wife of Lord Sereman (Drezhein) and sent people to kidnap her. This sparked off a brutal and bloody war between the two races which ultimately ended in a humiliating defeat for Sanirra. However, although the war technically ended, the conflict between the two races never stopped.

So, then, who's a hero in this context?

The cool and calculating Empress Lyris is a hero to her people even though after the death of her first husband she formed an alliance marriage with the current First Lord of the Drezhein, Seilez. She had three children with him, but none of them ever saw the throne as two of them died in ~tragic accidents~ and the third vanished under mysterious circumstances. Her marriage did usher in a brief era of peace, mostly, between the two races and she encouraged Drezhein to move to Sanirra…while at the same time passing restrictive policies that controlled their behavior.

Lord Seilez is a hero to most of the Drezhein who practically worship him because he is incredibly charismatic and they think that he's about to usher them into a new era of prosperity and civility. They are willing to follow his lead when it comes to relations with Sanirra and with his prompting, many of them do move there, despite the increasingly more restrictive laws.

This notably does not work on Ithea because she was basically raised in a cult so she recognizes bullshit when she sees it, and was the only person who was even curious as to why he was working with Lyris on these obviously harmful policies. Unfortunately she is not a hero to anyone because although she did initially have the support of some of the oldest Drezhein who hate Seilez, her actions are erratic and baffling. Before her death she is the most hated person in both countries. It's only much, much later that people begin to understand what she was doing and why.

The human descendants of Empress Lyris are also heroes to their people as they continuously flexed control over Sanirra AND Cylli (with Seilez's help) creating policies designed to drive the Drezhein into extinction. They can't do it with military might but they can by disrupting their culture, separating them from their families and allies, suppressing their language, interfering with their reproduction, so on and so on.

Ro, who lived a quiet life during generations two and three, is considered a hero in generation four because she is the person who figured out how to break and modify the magical trackers that the Sanirran government was putting on the Drezhein to facilitate their control. (Her siblings are so proud of her, she finally became a true Silverwood by breaking the law. Ro is irritated by this, but like her adoptive mother Ithea before her, she was driven to act in order to protect her grandchildren).

And Rona is considered a hero for inciting the Drezhein to result and ultimately leading the charge to toppling the governments of both Sanirra and Cylli!

Taking a break from that conflict for just a second, Empress Tristira is also considered a hero to her people for killing her tyrannical father and restoring order to their country of Daemirra, but that's a whole other kettle of fish with a whole other multi-generational history.

So there's lots of conflict, and there are lots of heroes and villains on both sides!

WIZARD - Who is your favourite character in this WIP? Describe them!

Ithea is turning 20 this year! She's one of my favorite characters I've ever created, and has also been with me through the worst periods of my life. Even aside from that, she's just so much fun. She's complicated. She's arrogant, and she's violent, but she's also cunning and eloquent. She wants what she wants and she does everything to get it, but the things that she chooses to focus on make no sense to anyone else, and that's the way she likes it. She's incredibly glamorous, and also brutal and manipulative and unpredictable. I love her!

Aside from the obvious, I really do have a lot of feelings about Cyan Silverwood who, compared to the rest of her siblings, is not a particularly important character. She has intensely public persona styled somewhat after the glamour of her adopted mother, but she's a very private person and even her siblings don't know much about what she thinks about anything. Anthem and Ithea, one might say, were not particularly good parents. All of the other kids managed to move on and became well-adjusted and had families of their own. But Cyan ended up being put in a position in the past that she has never been able to move on from. After Ithea died, Anthem became increasingly violent and erratic. Cyan asked for help from other adults in their life but didn't end up receiving it and ultimately had to kill her father to protect her siblings. They don't know about that. No one knows about that. But Cyan was incredibly close to her father and although she did what she had to do, it's very difficult for her to live with it. We don't talk about her much but it doesn't mean I don't think about her a lot.

I also really love Ro because honestly she's just hilarious. She dropped out of school and ran away at 14, got married at 19, and lived her perfect little life with her farm and her community and her loving husband and their 10 kids, only to pick up the Silverwood mantle and commit treason much, much later in life. She honestly hates being connected to the Silverwoods. Although she likes her family, the fact that people always call her Ro Silverwood is a source of constant irritation. She just wants to leave her past behind her and be evaluated as her own person!

~Fantasy Ask Game~

[jadedbirch]

ARTIST CLAIMS ARE NOW OPEN!

If you have questions about some of these fics before signing up and want us to follow up with the authors, please shoot El an email.  Otherwise, read all 24 of these, and email in your top 4 picks!

SUBMIT CLAIMS BY APRIL 23rd

1. Good ships scuttled on the deep

His fingers follow flecks of blood down to the point of his captain’s cheekbone. A thin pink scar, no wider than John’s fingernail, marks Flint’s pale skin. Flint’s eyes close completely. “I thought it was a welcome,” John says. Silver and Flint become lovers following the battle on Maroon Island. S4 AU with established silverflint relationship and some canon divergences.

2. Pray For The Wicked On The Weekend    John Silver spends his days in a faded green pickup truck filled with salt-loaded shotguns and silver and holy water on the back roads of the United Stated hunting monsters and demons and things that go bump in the night, and he’s fine with it, because it’s the easiest way to forget what he’s lost. But there’s something coming, something that he can’t face alone. So where else would he turn but the best Hunter the US has ever seen. Even if no one has heard from James Flint since Thomas and Miranda Hamilton went missing.

3. patron saint of lost causes

It takes two weeks to get Flint off Skeleton Island. Or rather--it takes two weeks for the island to let them go. In which Skeleton Island is a living character and brings a host of nightmares through the mist which force Silver and Flint to confront the dangers of their minds. Featuring surreal dreamscape horror as Silver literally battles figures from his murky, unnamed past and Flint moving through a river of blood and ghosts until he and Silver finally meet in the middle. Influences include Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone and Maria Luisa Bombal's work.

4. Let It All Unbreak You Post season four. Alone in taverns, at different points in time, Flint and Silver ponder what went wrong with their different relationships. They drink, remember and regret. They reflect upon the little they had together, and regret not making it work after the war with Madi or Thomas, while knowing very well that the very reason it all went wrong is that they had changed too much, had given each other too much, yet were not brave enough to admit it to each other when it was still time.

(Ships: Silverflint, flint x miranda x thomas, flint x thomas, silver x madi) (Angst, definitely not fix-it, no happy ending)

5. Pirate Sex is In Vogue

My fic is a modern AU primarily through email correspondence between Silver and Flint, although other mediums (such as texting and phoning) will be introduced as the story evolves. Silver is a crack erotica writer and Flint is the librarian who just wouldn't showcase his books at the Nassau Public Library, despite the insistence of the latter. They become unexpected virtual pen pals after Flint sends a heated rejection letter and grow closer through their correspondence, helping each other confront the inner demons of their personal lives. There will be polyamory, since Flint is involved with Thomas and Miranda by the time he and Silver fall in love.

6. Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more

In the year 1725, or thereabouts, John Silver finds himself driven by a winter storm into an inconsequential little port town, barely a speck on any civilised map. Returned to the life of a drifter, tired and rough around the edges, he is resigned to waiting for the weather to pass before he can sail on again to the next town, and the next, and the next. That is until he overhears a conversation in the inn about a local fisherman, one Captain Barlow, and his tall tales of tempests and becalmings, devils and sharks, and Silver finds a new future opening up to him, haunted by the spectres of his past. Whether landed in this place by fortune, or fate, or even divine intervention, he finds he cannot leave again without following this trail that leads from an old and half-forgotten tether knotted deep between his ribs to somewhere that feels familiar and safe, like home. The way won’t be easy; it’s paved with notable absences and painful unspoken truths, and there’s as good a chance as any that he’ll find a knife to his throat before he can so much as say ‘Long time no see, Captain’. Still, all roads do seem to lead to them baring their souls to one another in the dark, and Silver would be lying if he said he hadn’t missed it.

7.  An Epilogue

After the events of Treasure Island, John finds James and Thomas. There’s a gradual awkward descent to domesticity when pirates retire. Madi brings Jim Hawkins with her from London. This is the ultimate fix it where there are no unanswered questions and everyone lives happily ever after. SilverFlint, SilverHamilton, SilverFlintHamilton, SilverMadi

8. Stealing Hearts

A 1920s AU with Flint as a mob boss, fighting a corrupt police force/police system, and Silver as a thief who gets caught up in all of it.  

9. Space Raiders of Nassau

The space station Nassau is in open rebellion against the interplanetary Imperial Alliance.  Captain James Flint is in deep shit for rearranging the face of a fellow raider captain.  As punishment, Nassau's leaders assign an inside man to his crew, with a very convincing cover story (that they're married). Complicating things further is the fact that Flint's shifty new husband, John Silver, knows a lot more than he's telling about their secret mission. Their own survival as well as Nassau’s future depend on how successfully they can navigate the dangerous skies… and each other.  

10. The Pirate Captain's Wedding Once he has his hands on the thief Flint is willing to do whatever it takes to get the page from him. And then Billy & Gates say marriage is the only solution left on the table. Or rather matelotage – the time honored pirate form of matrimony. Billy says it’s the only way to regain the crew’s trust, by marrying one of them, and Gates agrees. For once Flint’s desperate enough to agree to it. He never expects to actually fall in love with the little shit. Canon-Era Season1/Season2 AU– with angsty developing feelings, public consummation, & There Is Only One Bed night after hot sticky sweaty night. 11. The devil's gotta' earn

Supernatural AU. James Flint has been a hunter for over a decade now and he knows people join this profession for plenty of reasons and few of those are happy ones. Some people just seek the thrill, some want to protect the so called innocent, some - like him - are out for revenge and John Bloody Silver apparently is just trying to get rich. [Borrows mostly from first seasons of Supernatural, little to no prior knowledge of this show required. Miranda lives, Thomas tragically does not. Lots of angst, few monsters of the week and a demon or two.]

12. touch me James is a widow, bartender and owner of the gay-bar “The Rainbow“. After Thomas' death it had been John who had lift him up. One day one of his usual dancers - because what is a gay bar without your occasional striptease - can't perform. John offers to fill the space and James has to face that John is more than just a friend. Slow burn and StripperJohn!AU

13. Adamantine Flame Flint is a forest god called The Flame and Silver is part of the cult that worships him that resides on the fringes of the underworld. 14. [Title TBD] Silver never met another werewolf before. Well, realistically, he knew he must have because he wasn't born a werewolf so someone had to have done this to him. But that didn't count since his memory of the whole incident was lackluster at best. He knew others had to be out there somewhere though and he wanted to find at least one, just to know he wasn't all alone. Flint was surrounded by werewolves all his life. Always part of a family, always knowing someone cared for him. Knowing he had someone to care for. The memories were as vivid as ever, of a time when he cared for someone. But they were gone and he knew he was meant to be all alone. 15. set my soul on fire

Nothing quite like getting out of prison to make a man feel like pulling off the biggest heist you’ve ever heard of. But he can’t do it alone - he’s going to need some money, a plan, a crew, and of course, his partner. His incorrigible, oral fixation-having, blue-eyed devil of a partner. Who is this smooth, seasoned con man with his eyes on the prize? James fucking Flint, naturally. And his partner? John Silver.Viva Las Vegas, baby.

16. cat dad

Modern au. Flint's life is fine. It's quiet and it's fine and he's fine. Well, except that his upstairs neighbor is a dick and his relationship with Miranda is strained and maybe quiet isn't all it's cracked up to be. But then a one-eyed cat enters his life and with it one John Silver. Flint's not sure how he feels about that, but he's working on it. Plot includes cat shenanigans, cooking, fluff, and feelings. 

17. [Title TBD]

A post-canon rendition of the Silver and Flint reunion wherein rather than seeking each other out the two are brought back together by outside forces. There’s a wedge of sour history and new lives built between them but love and desire become hard to deny when every path you set out on to leave someone behind sends you hurdling straight back to them. Treasure Island divergent/ignorant, though I pull some things from TI including the bird. (Includes SilverMadi and FlintHamilton as side-pairings, warning for canon Black Sails side-character death.) 18. The Spark

it's a Girl Genius AU

That's it, that's the whole shtick. It's basically the plot of the show, but clockwork-punk with mad geniuses (of course Flint is one), Urca being chock full of Aztec tech a'la Mysterious Cities of Gold, and dr. Howell and colleagues taking medicine to some quite Frankenstein levels - convenient with so many characters who should know better than to fucking die.

Also John Silver might be a construct.  The prosthetics are not nearly as complicated as in treasure planet, but at least one person has a gun arm? dirigibles are "Supposed Not To Be Invented Yet", but not for the lack of trying. Silverflint revolves around having "The Spark" and personhood and is shaping up heavier than i intended... luckily they will have plenty of people to set them to rights - i'm aiming for a happy polyfamily forming in the background.

19. he’s funny that way

1920s Atlantic City. Everybody knows the only way to leave crime boss Eleanor Guthrie's business is through a funeral - either delivering the sermon or laid out in the casket. Still, Flint leaves anyway, because he likes to make his life as difficult as possible. Case in point: his new partner, the scruffy, irate, one-legged racketeer with a pretty mouth, a quick tongue, and a rye recipe even Pussyfoot Johnson wouldn't spit out. His new partner's making sure he's not joining the church and taking a celibacy vow anytime soon - but will anyone be able to save Flint from his early - or long overdue - grave?

20. Ship to Wreck 

"I don't know if you've noticed, Doctor," Silver snaps, incredulous, "But every moment the Captain is unconscious in that bed is another step away from five million fucking dollars. As if that weren't enough, we're locked in a ridiculous show of force with a madman who seems keen on blowing us sky high unless we concede to his demands; we've got a crowd of men up top losing their Goddamned minds because they've been promised a fight that we cannot presently even hope to deliver; and--" Silver pauses, exhaling hard. "Actually, you know what? There is no and.  I’d say that’s about enough shit to make us all a little tense, wouldn’t you agree?" "Hm," Howell says, mildly. A post 204 fic in which: Flint gets a fever, Silver has a panic attack, and Howell gets a migraine. Includes, among other things--Silver trying and failing at playing nurse; Silver trying and failing at controlling his feelings; Flint being dazed and delirious and soft; some singing, some yelling, and heavy doses of mutual pining. Love, obviously, turns out to be the best medicine. 21. More Than One Odysseus

Reunion fic, about two years after 4.10. Quite a lot of talking and a little of the following: fishing, sex, hunting, bathtubs, Jewish surnames, books, stories and Terra Australis. Canon-compliant, not TI-compliant. A few animals killed (for food, not sport).

22. Seedlings

"If there's anything I can help you with-- Or if you'd like to order flowers for an upcoming occasion--"

"All right, honestly?" Handsomely disgruntled customer looked Silver dead in the eye and said, "I'm looking for a gift that says, 'You are making a dreadful mistake, and you will regret these actions for the rest of your days. Call me when you've figured out what a fucking hash of things you've made.'" He spoke the way some people chewed tinfoil.

Silver felt two things: lust like a plague of locusts, and the words 'uh-oh' waft through his brain.

On the second anniversary of the worst day of his adult life, John Silver─temporary florist, burgeoning gardner, and former thief─meets James Flint. It is only love at first sight for one of them. (Or is it?)

23. The Curse of Aeaea

Inspired by the connection between Flint and Odysseus: Silver and Flint find themselves dealing with a very Circe-like situation. Once the curse affects Silver, they have to figure out a way to end it or be trapped on an island that’s not on any map.

(Animal Transformation, Body Horror, Poor Coping Mechanisms, Circe’s Curse, Odysseus, Post-Season 2, Pre-Season 3)

24. With Strange Aeons Months after the disappearance and presumed death of Captain Flint and Long John Silver, Max smuggles Jack and Anne to Oglethorpe’s plantation. Thomas learns that not only do the three of them have a friend in common, but he is not the only one whose dreams are haunted by a strange city and a terrifying name. Meanwhile, Flint and Silver try to escape an island trapped in time, impossibly built and impossibly old. Along the way they’re forced question reality, each other, and themselves.

And in his house in R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. (Prior knowledge of Lovecraft is fun, but not required.)