#zen's worldscapes

[zenaquaria]

Aight buckle up; there’s a good fair few of you new to my blog here so I’ma just. Go. c: Gon’ be a bit of a read ahead!

My most beloved group of OCs is a handful of vampires and werebeasts from an alternate version of Earth storyverse of my own concoction. Chief among these (literally) is a stone cold ice queen of a vampire named Katarina Schneider of Acheron. She’s one of my all-time favorites among my cast. Acheron is her vampiric lineage and the clan that she leads. I’ve talked about her a lot in the past and I’ve pushed her into almost every AU or alternate design that catches my whimsy as a result.

Katarina, or Kat, is one of the major powers in my world’s vampiric/Night Eternal societies. Her clan is the one at the forefront of keeping the night monsters of the world hidden as best as possible from the light of day and the mortals on that side of the coin. She shook the very pillars of the olden foundations of their society and resculpted them to what she believes is the better path.  Kat is a staunch ally to the werebeast organizations of their world. Why should two kinds of monsters both predatory upon and hunted by humans be at each others’ throats? Are there not enough problems with which to contend without going fang-to-fang with each other? Time spent squabbling is time wasted, in her beliefs. And although she may have practically forever, there are better things toward which her energy should go. 

That said, no vampire was ever born nor made without some degree of darkness. Hers is that she is, twice over, risen from the dead. Once when she was physically brought back a vampire in the 12th century as Katharine Schneider; and again in the late 17th when the last man -a werewolf she’d once helped escape from hunters- she would ever love was murdered (forcibly by her own hand). Hell hath no wrath like a woman heartbroken and betrayed, and thus arose the new Katarina, cold and vicious and ambitious.

The coming centuries would watch her summarily cut down the diseased and obsolete vampiric powers that once were, and install herself as Clan Elder and her most loyal as her Council. The Night Eternal’s population at large did not deserve to have such horrific trials and fates as those of her generation under her predecessor’s rule. She saved a special hell for the mentoring vampire that forced her to kill the werewolf a century before.  There would be other trials and fates not-necessarily-merciful to befall others under her rule, but to her eyes, far fairer than those she had known and heard of. Rogue vampires still are detained and evaluated, but they are not mistreated as she and her maker had been, nor forced to join the clan as she had been. More dangerous threats to vampire society are still removed, but far quicker and mercifully. And no vampire is punished simply for pairing off with a werebeast, nor either party killed. 

Kat’s been my response to all the tropes I found boring and distasteful about vampires and werewolves. She was concepted in response to the Twilight series craze in 2009, as my edgy little self’s rebellion against what was popular and poorly researched. xD I wanted vampires who weren’t all lovey-dovey-stalkery-lusty and constantly in opposition to closet furries. So the storyverse to which Kat and her allies and enemies belong was born. c:

[zenaquaria]

Been tryin' to figure where my new werewolf gal Eliana might fit into the Wyrd West AU and keep running headlong into a wall. xD

I haven't introduced her proper yet, have I? Eliana Lopez is a trueborn Mexican Gray Wolf werewolf (wifwolf for my fellow etymology people), a cattle ranch owner, and the latest addition to my rosters!

She has two loves: Her horse Teton, and her pack. Her pack being whoever she takes a shine to, not just other werewolves/beasties. DO NOT mess with either one, horse or pack. She raised and trained Teton from foalhood, he’s her baby. And those she considers part of her family, ya gon' catch teeth upside the head if you hurt them.

In my storyverse, she runs cattle drives mostly on her lonesome, sometimes with hired hands what could use the money. Keeps a well-maintained rifle and a handy knife. When Eliana runs cattle at night, she goes almost full-doggo to keep them in line and protected.

Among people, she loves to laugh, and has got this deadpan poker face that could make people believe she really does have that bridge to sell. She doesn’t much like city slickers moving in on her territory, though as long as they leave her alone and (learn to) respect her, things will run civilly. She’s also a good friend of my Western vampire pair, Rosie and Dakota. Rosie initially, Dakota later after he proved he was no longer the same dude who tried to rustle cattle from her some time ago.

[zenaquaria]

Related to this post here! 

Katarina may be my all time favorite in my cast, but she is often followed by those most loyal to her, her allies, and those to whom she’s a good foil. These are almost always the same four or five. Those are three vampires in her Council, one specific werebeast ally from the leading werebeast organization, and one rogue to whom she is contrasted.

Her Council members are a Sicilian Mafioso and vampire law expert, Salizar Inglesé; a Romani bounty hunter/recon agent (office: Bloodhound), Selina “Circe” Raisch; and Spanish-American medical doctor and pharmacological expert, Aureline DeSoto. These three are some of the vampires she works closest with, and understands most, and vice-versa. 

Look, I love a good fictional political intrigue and backstabbing as much as the next gal, but a leader needs good people in her pocket without threatening, blackmailing, and coercing them. The relationship between Kat and these three is all built on common ground, common goals, and actual communication. There is very little that they don’t relay to each other. Seeing vampires constantly backstabbing each other over differing goals makes for a fun movie/game/book time, I guess, but I got bored with the idea and wanted cooperative leadership for mine. I can explore each of them in their own posts!

By extension, the ally and liaison from the leading werebeast organization is all about communication. He’s an Argentinian Trueborn werebat of the White-Winged Vampire Bat persuasion, Alvaro “Chiro” Morales, and he finds more common ground with vampires than he does with his own kind (werebeasts in general), sometimes to his own detriment. It was by the Acheron Clan’s efforts, in tandem with the Therianthrope Defensive Coalition, that put him into his office as the Coalition’s ambassador to the Vampire Nations. So not only does he communicate with the organized Clans of the world, but very often with unaffiliated rogue vampires wandering the earth, too.

Rori H. Mauer is one of those unaffiliated rogue vampires. One who seems to keep brushing with the Acheron Clan, or at least Katarina and her Council. She shares a lot of things in common with Kat, when Kat was still Katharine and not Katarina. Rori’s also the last known vampire of her lineage with no intentions of creating more. Her development has been a very fun exploration of how two similar personalities turn into almost polar opposites based on their circumstances and experiences. She’s been determined to keep her humanity intact as opposed to those organized vampires she views as having caved to their monstrous natures and predatory superiority. At the same time she holds everybody two or three facades away from her actual personality.

[zenaquaria]

Does Katarina enjoy sports?

Kat's not much of a sportsy type. Outside of swordplay and recreational target shooting. Archery if she's feeling really old-school. She knows a thing or two about a few different swordsmanship practices. The feel of a handgun in her hands is what she prefers over shotgun, but a rifle feels like second nature just as a bow did back in the early days for her.

Watching sports isn't really her interest either, be it contact sports or e-sports.

[zenaquaria]

How long has the Foxhound Club been hunting non-werewolves, and how did it get founded?

Hadn't thought about it incredibly much, but it's been probably since the 1800s? Started when a group of upper class werebeasts got jumped -on their own safe turf, mind- by a vigilante group of hunters and turned it hard around on the attacking humans. This was before the Supernatural Control Agency was fully established, hence why a vigilante group was still around.

They didn't much like being attacked by a bunch of ragtag upstarts, so they gave them a... *ahem* "Sporting chance", by showing them what it feels like to be hunted. And the thrill of hunting prey as sapient as themselves was addictive. That said they still understand they can't just go whole hog and hunt non-werebeasts wantonly. For one they'd run out of sport, and for another that would call much larger, better prepared, forces down on them. The scary thing is that they are smart about it, and it's very rare that they let other beasts who've seen their cruelty out unscathed.

[zenaquaria]

Remembered that there’s been a few OCs who emerged to my rosters in the last year that I didn’t say anything about anywhere else than my Discord server. o:

Like one that came about because I wanted to turn the Vampire Gal x Werewolf Guy thing around and have a Vampire Guy x Were(bear) Gal thing instead. So my brain discovered a Viking vampire of a lineage long since extinct in my storyverse, who has only given me one name to know him by: Nóttolfr. His strain predates all my current Oldest Vampire OCs. His powers are the same as Katarina’s, Rori’s, and several others’ combined as a result, since the strain he bears is the one that begat their lineages.

He’s currently still around the globe somewhere, and he and my werebear lady Tundra, given name Dárjá, are pen pals to this day. c: They used to ramble around before Tundra was employed by the Coalition. I unfortunately didn’t get much else out of him and Darja before they both retreated back into the depths of my brain. lol Although, it seems now that, because Darja is a stable connection for him to the modern world, he’s briefly met some of the other Important Players of the storyverse. Never for very long, as he wants to keep exploring the world, but he stops in to speak with his werebear sweetheart often.

[zenaquaria]

Had an unexpected revelation about my pacifist werebat tonight, concerning his parents and upbringing and its effects on his current self. o:

Alvaro is hardly the first of his kind to befriend vampires. But now he's not even the first in his family to do so! His parents instilled that curiosity and open-mindedness towards vampires in him. It might well even be a family custom.

His parents are werebats, naturally. His father a trueborn Diaemus youngii, same as Al, and his mother a feral Desmodus rotundus, a common vampire bat. His father seems to have been the one to help his mother understand her condition and master the involuntary changes it brought.

So I've learned that Al was raised in a household wherein frequent visitors were vampires that were family friends. Not entirely sure how his folks knew said vampires, only that they did. The batty boi has literally been making buddy-buddy with vampires his entire life. :D

[zenaquaria]

Tell us more about Ysra! Or at least as much as you can that won't give spoilers to your other party members should they be on Tumblr as well.

Actually I think my entire party is on Tumblr and I’m mutuals with most of them. xD At least two of them are mutuals, anyway. LOL 

But yeah! So Ysra Galaren is a wood elf from the co-authored-with-my-husband high fantasy setting of Sel. Neutral Good Ranger with a particular distaste for owlbears, and is a little more standoffish than most of her people towards other classes/races/castes. Wood Elves in Sel are more like the Fair Folk of Tolkien’s works. They’re happy and merry and passionate and open. So for Ysra to be aloof and closed off is odd for one of her people. But it’s kept her alive this long! That and her training with the Rangers’ Guild in Thannorn, her hometown. 

A bit about her hometown and the surrounding forest kingdom of the Elves, Thannorn is one city in the forest realm of Vaeleryn. Capital city is Tol’Dorom, and a major city between them is Lothel. Just two years back from the campaign’s setting, Vaeleryn had been under siege from the neighboring kingdom’s self-styled King of the Undead. Lothel and Tol’Dorom were both besieged, and Lothel had fallen. Ysra was one of many rangers who helped pick off wandering undead in the forest after the two cities were reclaimed by the living. Which opened up her eventual pathing into the archetype Monster Slayer, and probably had a good bit to do with her becoming more closed off. Ysra’s seen some stuff and said stuff -natural and unnatural- does NOT care how wealthy or poor or well-mannered or uncouth you are; it will EAT you. 

So all that goes back to how she doesn’t much care for all the verbal meandering and plotting it takes to navigate upper city society, how much she despises what’s unnatural (undead or corrupted) and prefers Nature to take its due course, and lastly, that there’s been wisps and flashes of visions of some coming disaster.  She just recently got it yelled at her by an Abyssal creature the party faced that she MAY have Abyssal blood in her heritage. Ysra is pretty damn sure she doesn’t, but after everything the party’s been through and how the bloody abyssal creatures keep messing with her, she’s having some second thoughts about that conviction. owo

[zenaquaria]

Tells use about Moon Blaze

Moon Blaze is the first pony that Thorn Oakheart turned vampire after the fall of Nightmare Moon and the Flight of the Four. She's always been the one to put herself between danger and someone else, the protector. But for all her fiery spirit, she wasn't a match for bandits that attacked her family's traveling caravan and left her dying on the road.

Oakheart came upon the scene and, seeing this small batpony still clinging to life as it slowly slipped from her grasp, balanced the inequity that was her spirit and her body. By making her the first Oakheart newblood. She awakened the pupil of the Earth Pony Lunar Councilor, and under him she would learn about being vampire, and what carrying such a cursed blessing meant.

Blazie, a couple centuries after Turning, founded the Argent Sanctuary and established the Blood Guard to protect it, as her way of saying that she was ready to be on her own as a vampire. The Four and their youngbloods were welcome there until the Progenitors decided to wander off alone in their advanced ages. Blazie has kept the gates open to any vampire who needs a home or protection since, as long as they abide by the Argent Tenets. Which is basically just "Be civil and don't kill on Sanctuary grounds. Don't give me reason to lay hooves on you or kick you out."

Moon Blaze was intended to take over on my story blog, but she decided that this was her story instead of supplanting pony!Katarina. So she's the mom-friend vampony! The momma bat. Who can just as easily destroy with an "I'm not upset, just disappointed," as she can with a backward kick or swing of her sword.

[zenaquaria]

Can you give us a summary/overview regarding your skypirates based on the pony movie?

Actually, because I STILL haven't seen the MLP movie, I can't! Yeah, I know, it's been out for years. But Carina and Crew were injected into ponyverse because I missed my birds and the MLP movie gave me an in to bringing them back!

Most I can say is that Carina's run an all-gals ship since she became a captain. Turn that "women are bad luck on a ship" thing I heard once around and see where the inverse of the superstition winds up. Conceptually, I just wanted a tropical bird pirate crew back when I was a teenager. They were going to be in a story with other bird anthros, but my attention span just never let that happen. Lol

[zenaquaria]

Which of your worlds/universes do you like the most and least?

I spend the most time between ZenVerse Equestria and my Urban Supernatural original storyverse, if that's any indication which I like most. Lol

I spend the least amount of time in this sci-fi storyverse that I copilot with my Taller Half, since it was his creation first. But it's where the latest iteration of my first long-term character, and naturally her partner (who is also Taller Half's creation), both exist. But because it wasn't of my brain first, it's where I spend the least time, creatively.

[zenaquaria]

Do you have any characters that you feel you don't appreciate as much as you should? Or any that seem to fly under the radar?

There's a good handful of characters in my worlds that haven't yet opened up to me in order to let me appreciate them. Part of that is that I haven't researched enough into whatever would unlock a given bit of information from them, and some I just haven't connected to yet.

Like my werebear guy who is half Nez Perce. I don't know enough about his heritage to pry into his backstory like I have for many other characters. Or the weretiger who can't transform as far anymore because of the shards of anti-werebeast ammunition embedded in his back. Or the Southern US mad-doctor medical expert vampire that even my ever-sunny vampire and fellow medical expert Aureline doesn't want to talk about.

[zenaquaria]

Does your urban supernatural universe have any smaller/less known factions other than the vampires, werebeasts, and SCA?

If by that you mean other species of monsters or creatures, no. I kept the main populations of species restricted to my interests.

But if you mean besides the Vampire Nations, the Coalition, and SCA, then yes there are smaller factions/groups prowling the world! One such is the Foxhound Club, a group of werebeasts who pay premium for only the Most Dangerous Game. Humans are sport, and so are half-blood dhampir.

Then there's Witherfang Biomedical. The big pharma name no mortal in-universe knows. There's always another name, another brand, another front. They're constantly forging ahead on mortal medical fronts, but so too do they pursue supernatural endeavors. Synthetic blood, ways for werebeasts to prevent losing their mind to their animal halves, the cure for vampirism. Technically they're my Taller Half's creation. Lol

And lastly the informational network of Simon Valence, Taller Half's character who is romantically involved with and emotionally invested in my Rori Mauer. His entire thing is to be the guy everyone in the know, knows; and to have information on anyone and anything. And also keep ties healthy between vampires and werebeasts unaffiliated with the Big Factions.

[zenaquaria]

Okay so the Reversed Roles AU thing that was suggested to me managed to crank something loose in my braingears so the cogs got turning. owo

It took me a minute of talking with Blu/CapCrew to spitball and bounce ideas around, but at the very least this info got ironed out: I’m putting all the old vampires as modern humans who became hunters at the ages they appear to be. So Kat would’ve been 23 when she entered the trade; Rori would’ve been 20, etc. And the factions that exist in their canon, don’t in this AU. So there’s no Agency, no Coalition, and the ruling Vampire Clans are different.

Hunter!Kat is the leader of a hunter’s guild. A syndicate or lodge or LLC or the like in these modern days. Salizar is a highly-effective “Give me the next mission” sort of guy. Selina does some hunts but she does more recon missions; sometimes she accompanies newer hunters to show them the ropes. Aureline is still a doctor! And occasional dabbler in research and dev for their gear and such. And then there’s Rori, who is actually not polarized against Kat in this AU! In fact they’re guildmates and a well-coordinated team!

Regarding the hunters turned vampire, I haven’t put much thought towards them yet. lol Since for the supernatural earth story I’ve mentioned like maybe two human hunters and two halfbloods here.

I kinda forgot my werebeasts there at first! But they’re human too, naturally. So Alvaro (Chiro), Glenn (Ghost), and Esther (Strix), along with [insert human names of] Tundra and Kodiak and Bengali are here too. And they’re “That weird club of fantasy fanatics” to most humans, but their real deal is that they archive the information and records of monster hunter guilds like Hunter!Kat’s.

I’d be happy to receive any asks regarding this InverseAU! c:

[zenaquaria]

On the note of the InverseAU, I remembered this morning that the Foxhound Club of werecreatures was a thing and boy that could lead to some mean rivalry. owo

Naturally they’re human in this AU but they’re still ritzy sports hunters. And in this AU they *do* keep trophies from their hunts, proudly displayed in their lodge. It’s grisly. And Hunter!Kat’s company does not approve. 

“Those were people.”  “Keyword, darling, being ‘were’.” “...You’re disgusting. You’re not hunters. You’re just a club of serial killers, dancing on the fringe of illegality by turning your sick practices onto 'monsters’. Monsters who used to be humans!” “So I take it you decline our invitation to join our lodge?”

“With every fiber of my being.” ~Katarina vs. Foxhound Club President

[zenaquaria]

mymind-theirvisions replied to your post: mymind-theirvisions replied to your post: Okay so...

That’s so freaking neat!!! Their would their appearance change too? I’m curious to see the new group of hunters hang out haha

Besides the clothing they dress in and the gear they carry, not much about their appearances changes! Maybe some scars or disfigurements, but I dunno that far yet. xD Oh, and obviously eye colors. xD What their eye colors used to be instead of red. Kat and Salizar both had brown eyes, Aurie had green, I think Rori’s were... blue or hazel, I’m not sure. And I’ve never known what Selina’s living eye color was. xD