world-of-terra-deorum - Tumblr blog

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HAHAHAH THERE IS NO LORE ONLY MEMES

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Wyvry

Wyvry, a self chosen name, is a spiderling created by a necromancer ruling in the Lower Wastes out of spliced corpses, originally intended to be used as one of the necromancer’s many undead servants. They start their life very similar to Frankenstein, brought into the world in an adult body with the understanding of a newborn. Wyvry escaped the necromancer’s lair and wandered through the lower wastes’ deserts, making their way into civilization. Aven, the court mage before Wyvry, had met them haphazardly, but took note of their tenacity to survive and fresh slate of a mind in a fully developed body. There, Aven decided, he would take Wyvry in as his apprentice to eventually become the new court mage. 

Wyvry now is Queen Lavender’s Court Mage, overseeing the monarchy’s arcane progress, development, research, and defense. When they took over Aven, they were still very inexperienced, but eventually stepped into the role well. It also helped him ease into being the court mage that he and Nigiri, the Court Medic and his partner, are Lavender’s closest people. 

Wyvry’s favorite studies are the Celestial Gates, a gateway to the Celestial Plane where there can be a chance of meeting a Celestial Being and asking them for a gift. Wyvry had met a Celestial Being while wandering through the desert, which had gently stirred their mind down the path of this interest. Throughout their life, they struggle greatly with madness that inflicts them with their frequent contact near the Gates. He is sporadic but calculated, expressive but observant, chaotic, but collected. They have the animosity of a true spiderling and the discipline the best mage in the monarchy needs to succeed.

"Hold still you little wall-crawler."

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Speaking of Lavender’s medic and mage, I’m gonna let Mod Lemon and Mod Serpent explain them

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Marriage is a whole other story.

Not only does Lavender have far too progressive ideals for most men, not only is she difficult to court, not only does she have 16-year-old family baggage, not only does she have issues with her anger, not only is she a smoker, not only does she swing first in a fight...

But she’s also a lesbian. Not exactly an ideal situation for a position typically meant to be subservient to a king.

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Lavender never wanted to be queen.

She’s a simple girl with simple tastes. She likes going out into the wilds and picking berries, she likes hunting with bows and arrows, she likes sitting in her study and reading, she likes making potato soup and sleeping until noon and tending her herb garden and wrestling with her medic and her mage, both of which are older friends and like brothers to her. All the glitz and glamor that comes with being a queen is hollow to her. All the jewels and pretty dresses in the world just look like funeral dressing after a lifetime of knowing there’s a target on your back for who you were born to.

But without someone to take her place she’s trapped in a lifetime of servitude and paranoia. She’s been studying democratic theories all her life and wants to implement them. But that would mean the end of both monarchy AND oligarchy, and the four noble houses...well, even the smallest slight against them could send the country into financial chaos.

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At the age of ten, only a week after witnessing her mother’s death and funeral, a very young Lavender was primmed and propered, pampered until she shined like a gilded cup, then led to the throne room of Antinyma Keep and presented for all the nobility and a small host of common merchants as the too-young Queen Lavender Betelgeuse.

With a crown on her head and a star-shaped staff in her hands, the girl looked out on a sea of painted smiles, powdered wigs, and pretty jewelry, and found in her heart only hatred.

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By the way, I’m adding a couple mods to this blog, namely @1candynerd, @sunsetredlemonade and @ellis-illustrates-2, because they all have characters in Terra Deorum that I don’t feel adequate explaining myself. So I’ll tag my posts from here on out with #mod rose, and the other three will choose tags of their own

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When Queen Song died, it made Lavender the last of the known Betelgeuses.

The human/faerie relationship has been on the mend for some time, as they both have alliances out of necessity. Queen Song was on a visit to the Southern Lush when it was hit by an unknown third party with mustard gas. Dozens of civilians died within moments. The earth around the attack site now has scarring. And Queen Song was rushed home with severe burns and breathing problems.

She fought for two long weeks against the effects. But her lungs simply weren't strong enough, and at the age of ten, Lavender was held by her mother for the last time.

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Lavender's father, King Leon Betelgeuse, was the second to die.

At the time he was dealing with foreign issues, particularly trying to mend the rift between human and draconic society. But a third party didn't want this to happen, and moreover they wanted to blame this on the dragons. So they hired a half-drake to sneak into the bedrooms at night and slit King Leon's throat.

The Betelgeuse family discovered this when the assassin was imprisoned and interrogated for answers. But Queen Song still had to hold her husband and watch him bleed out on their bed.

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As far as Lavender's direct family that she would have lived with goes, her little brother died first.

There was a double agent in the kitchen who slipped a drug by the name of RiseGone into the young prince's food. His two-year-old body seized with convulsions not even ten minutes later, and by twenty he was pronounced dead by the royal physician.

The prince was too young to even have gone through his naming ceremony.

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So much of the Betelgeuse family has been lost to assassination. It started with distant cousins and aunts and uncles, moving in the family tree, until the royal family was isolated. The royal guard was boosted in response, but the sheer number of assassination attempts would exhaust anyone. And all it takes is one slip-up to end up with another royal funeral on your hands.

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Now that I've covered the noble houses, I can go over the one thing they have in common.

They've all been cooperating, for five thousand years, to destroy the Betelgeuse family and reclaim their position as oligarchs of Terra Deorum.

Most of this has been in the form of court drama, playing an elaborate game of chess to claim more and more resources from the Crown so they'll do what the four families please. But Lavender Betelgeuse alone has counted 438 assassination attempts in her sixteen years as queen.

Her parents and younger brother were not lucky enough to survive so many.

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The Explofloras:

-Oversee the lumber industry and owns 90% of the farmland in the Riverside Crest.

-Live in Little Bay.

-Demand exploitative taxes be paid to them directly alongside the taxes already owed to the government, assuring the people who work the land don't have nearly the food they deserve in good years and need in bad ones. Also influence environmental policies.

-Has the power to repossess all farmland and leave it fallow, as well as cut off all lumber from harvesting, if Lavender doesn't cooperate with their desires.

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The Erstenmeirs:

-Manages almost all overseas trade and ocean fishing in Terra Deorum.

-Live in Noiur.

-Maroon or downright privateer smaller upstart sea-based businesses, maintaining a monopoly on fish and trade goods and keeping prices high.

-Have the power to cut off Terra Deorum from the rest of the world and from their siren neighbors if Lavender doesn't dictate laws they like.

-Cobalt and Ingenium's "father" came from this family. He's actually a kidnapper who used their mother, and then them to garner power and royal favor, then discarded both when they were no longer useful to him.

(Cobalt and Ingenium both belong to @ellis-illustrates-2 and I won't be elaborating on them here.)

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The Presersmiths:

-Owners and operators of whatever few mines and quarries don't intersect with Deepholm.

-Live in Dyrebeach.

-Influence many of the labor laws in human society, if they don't outright demand Lavender pass them by headlocking her.

-Have the power to cut off all access to metal, minerals, stone, and other underground resources if Lavender doesn't play nice with their agenda.

-Charlie's birth family. Her mother is trying to climb to the top of her family's power pyramid and then supercede Lavender so she can turn Terra Deorum democratic by force, consequences be damned.

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I should take a moment to talk about the noble houses. They're all equally bad and self centered.

So I'll just copy and paste my notes.

The Bridgertons:

-Enormous tech monguls on the level of Elon Musk.

-Live in Antinyma, in noble acres. Favorite pastime is watching the common folk work their shared plot of land and mocking them.

-Own ~75% of the housing in the human cities of Terra Deorum and leech exorbitant rent.

-Have their hands in enough businesses that they could throw a hissy fit and collapse the entire tech sector if Lavender does something they don't like.

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Even though they quickly went from being a human sacrifice to the celestials to the most indispensable person in human society, Aurora remembered the pain they and their parents lived in before. They knew the pain of being poor, the abject hopelessness.

They dedicated their life and their family's lives to closing the wealth gap. They've always been a hero of the people, but an enemy of the nobility. Even beyond their death.