AU Workshopping Post

[nashiramods]

au workshopping post
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This post is for players who have an approved invite to Stars of the Nashira to brainstorm AU concepts for a character (or characters, if you're trying to decide between more than one) you're thinking of apping. Post a comment using the form below with your thoughts and plans for your character's present and past lives, and reply to other people to help them decide on things they're not sure about yet or to suggest ways your character might already know theirs! If there’s a specific role that someone could fill for your character or vice versa, this is a great place to discuss those details.

Remember: you don't need to have all of this figured out before you app! The details of your characters' past lives, powers, and relationships will develop over time in game; this is just a handy opportunity to coordinate some stuff in advance.

Note: this post is intended for players with approved invites. Please wait until your invite has been approved to post.

<b>Player Name:</b> <b>Contact:</b> <b>Invite:</b> please link to the comment with your approved invite! <b>Character Name:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>Character Blurb:</b> <b>Code Name:</b> <b>Domain:</b> <b>Combat Type:</b> <b>Awakening:</b> How will your character awaken to their powers? If you want this to coincide with another character’s awakening, here’s a great place to plan it out! <b>Present Life:</b> <b>Past Life:</b> <b>In-Game Plans:</b> Put plans you already have in mind for your character here, if any. <b>Pre-Established CR Hooks:</b> Existing connections your characters could have before the start of the game — roles in your character's life such as family, childhood friends, colleagues, etc. <b>Desired CR/Hooks:</b> Relationships with other characters you'd like to develop in game. Friendship, romance, weird one-way rivalry, and everything else in between! <b>Other:</b>

Comments

[nashiramods]

HECK YES!! I am loving Natalia so far. I'll reply separately with stuff related to actual other characters, but I just wanted to note a couple of things as a mod:

• Code name doesn't have to be related to their passions or have a more positive connotation! It's an opportunity for you the player to pick something cool and potentially thematic. Rule of fun reigns supreme around here. If you're still struggling to think of a code name when it comes time for apps, I'm happy to help you come up with one.
  
• That goes ditto for domain! Whatever you think is most fun and thematically on point is what's important. You mentioned Temples as a domain in the Discord, which I think has a ton of fun potential.
  
• You have some VERY fun ideas for her past life that I'm intrigued by and would love to discuss more. Specifically "an Oracle proclaimed early on that she was fated to marry an Aster" — this idea has such fun implications that I'd love to flesh out with you. The heavy class distinction was a big part of Hassalean society, and while it wasn't out of the question for Constellation nobility and Aster to marry, it was usually a little bit scandalous. So an Oracle diviner proclaiming that a Constellation noble is fated to marry an Aster would be a pretty big deal, and would probably have raised something of a commotion (even if these class boundaries eventually broke down on the Nashira). I'd love to hear what you had in mind in terms of how this affected her past life (was she excited to have her marriage dictated by prophecy? How did she feel about the idea of marrying one of the Aster?) and how else something so profound might have shaped her life on Hassaleh.
  (To be clear, this isn't me saying no to this idea -- it's a very hearty YES, I LOVE IT, NOW TELL ME MORE)
  
• Grief is a great commonality between her past and present lives. Like I mentioned, hell yeah we love a tragic heroine. There are plenty of opportunities for her spouse to have died tragically on the Nashira before the final battle with the Abyss.
  
• This is more of a side note, but as this is a setting born largely out of self-indulgent nostalgia, the school year in Chalra City starts in the spring, so as of game start, we'll be about one month into the new school year.

Feel free to hit me up on Discord for more discussion if that's easier, or we can keep it to this thread here! Whatever works for you. Very excited to see her AU come together!

[theriflespiral]

Temples is incredible for multiple reasons, I think-- I think this all very much dovetails into the past life self.

At least partly that's because the class divide thing is intentional-- I fully intended to make the past self something of a social outcast, ineligible for marriage and therefore courting (and therefore, at least partially, deep friendships among other nobility), whose fortunes changed vastly when the Abyssal War began:

As a Prism-level user of Temple Domain, she wasn't simply building holy sites anymore. She could protect, cleanse, and attack at the same time using holy light/consecration and was therefore instrumental to the evacuation... But since she was so vital to that, and her primary remaining holy nature was, well, the prophecy she hadn't fulfilled, it might have led to a pedestal just as damaging-- and an increasing separation from her peers as she hardened herself against the horror of war. Eventually, she lost faith in the Oracle, I think.

but, regardless, love came for her before she boarded the Nashira, and it was a whirlwind of emotion. They had a child, I'm fairly sure. I think her past life might say that those last years, after the Abyssal War started, after she found them, were the only years she truly lived. And maybe she said that with bitterness in her tongue, crying over her lover's corpse.

The exact nature of the tragedy is, as yet, unimportant.

As far as school goes, that's fine. Six weeks "in Chalra City" is enough.

ETA: ... But that also means her past life was, well, in contact with Asters a lot, given that she was doing the equivalent of city maintenance and civil infrastructure, wouldn't it? Even if it was at a relatively high level.

.... Perhaps she had flings?

[nashiramods]

I LOVE the idea of Temples Domain lending itself to being an ancient magic civil engineer, and I think Natalia playing an important role in evacuating the planet touches on a part of the past lives that I don't think anyone else has. Hell Yes

I still have a few questions/clarifications about her being prophesied to marry one of the Aster (which I'm still very much into, ftr). Regardless of how it happens in reality, the implications of that being in a prophecy at all are pretty big, since it's basically a divine dictate to violate their otherwise strict social order. Viewed through the lens of their culture, I think the Oracle would interpret this as some kind of cosmic punishment for Natalia and/or her Constellation as a whole -- (this is just an example, but) for instance, if her Constellation was involved in some kind of political kerfuffle, that prophecy might be interpreted as her Constellation having to "sacrifice" one of their own (being condemned to be one of the Aster being akin to a social death of sorts).

You mentioned her being a social outcast, so maybe this is what you were already thinking and I just didn't connect the dots until now, so please let me know if I'm too far off the mark! I just want to get the general shape of the cultural impact it'd have, because it would be somewhat controversial and extremely juicy.

[theriflespiral]

I think we're both dancing around some of the same issues, yes-- my initial thought had been towards, in particular, the use of family ties for alliances and cementing political ties.

Being given a divine mandate to essentially break that rule might be considered a combination of punishment/sacrifice... And as she became more politically and civilly powerful thanks to her Domain, a tacit admission that she was a foretold rule breaker and therefore untrustworthy, staining her family and works by association.

i admittedly also did it because "character fated to do like... The worst thing possible socially" is just an incredibly fertile space.

ETA: And like-- I think arguably just as important is how the Asters take it, and I'm not entirely sure how that would work out.

[nashiramods]

> i admittedly also did it because "character fated to do like... The worst thing possible socially" is just an incredibly fertile space.

You are 100% right and I love it.

Re: the Aster, there would probably be a mixed response. In a society that's this stratified and focused on the nobility, the Aster are by default the Other; it comes to society dealing punishment to Constellation nobility, I think the result is often a social "culling". Natalia's case being especially dramatic because being fated to break one of their biggest social taboos is obviously a Huge Deal, but I think there are probably some in the Aster who welcome culled Constellation nobility (you KNOW people call them "fallen stars") into their caste, some who actively resent or ostracize them, and some who just don't care. It's your choice which of those you decide to lean into!