Anonymous asked: tell me... the most loopholey bit of alleirai law
You, my dear anon, are a gift and a godsend.
Right, so, the absolute MOST loopholey bit of law in Alleirat is based on the ongoing detente between the two criminal organizations in most major cities and the lathan, the city guards. The way the major cities (there are four) and some of the smaller cities (to a lesser degree) operate is that there’s an undercity (Kal [city name], as in Kal Dase) in sewer tunnels or foundations and an overcity (Lai [city name], as in Lai Dase) on rooftops and abandoned balconies/etc. There’s generally a boss of Kal and Lai sub-cities, with ‘Below’ criminals specializing in more rough-and-tumble crimes and ‘Above’ criminals having a more cat burgler rep. Now, in order to prevent any gang-vs-law wars that might risk the Streets (the civilians between Kal and Lai), the lathan have a deal, and the deal goes something like this.
Any criminal from Above or Below is at jeopardy for the crimes they have committed for a given amount of time, and during that time capture by the lathan can result in trial and sentencing, which can range from labor to execution. However, the lathan cannot trespass onto Kal or Lai subcities without a writ for the arrest of a criminal and proof of their identity. If one of the lathan does enter the subcities without a writ, no crime committed against them in that location can be charged against any individual. On the other hand, the latha cannot be charged for any actions they take in self-defense.
The balance is extremely delicate and largely predicated on the fact that Kal and Lai operate on a certain code of honor. Other situations, like the ongoing bandit problem in the most rural areas and the White Touch, do not so much have that code, although the Touch has their own rules.
I HAVE N O IDEA WHAT YOURE TALKING ABOUT BUT TALK TO ME ANYWAY
YOU’RE A CHAMP AND I’M TALKING ABOUT THIS IN CASE YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO KNOW.
But so Krei, everyone’s favorite Buff Tree Lesbian (IN AN AMAZING SHOW OF RESTRAINT, THAT IS NOT HER ACTUAL TAG), really genuinely likes making flower crowns. It’s the only really finessed plant magic she’s good at–Krei is much more the ‘hey you need someone to wreck that wall, I got you’ type of magic worker, but she makes A DAMN GOOD FLOWER CROWN. (Her mother, who had a talent for delicate work and was known for her trellises as much as her sword play, despaired of her.) And of course since she’s a plant worker it’s practically legally mandated that Krei know the meanings of various plants, but her girlfriend Shiko is a baby who only just recently showed up in Alleirat and knows Nothing. So Krei gets away with a lot of shenanigans based on plant messages before Shiko finally buys a book of plant meanings off someone and bullies Brenneth into translating it for her.
But I just really want you all to picture a tiny serious-faced Japanese girl standing at the head of a small army of reanimated corpses with a crown of daisies and aster on her head the whole time.
Anyway I’ve been attempting to Novel for almost five hours now and I’ve decided that clearly I am too aggravated to write an emotionally wringing trial and sentencing. All I really want to do is talk about Shiko wearing flower crowns made by her girlfriend and Brenneth and Crispin sitting on a roof and looking at stars while they mutually get drunk on the most expensive wine Crispin can get his hands on and the fact that Brenneth and Krei are actually legally family according to Alleirai law.
So if you also wanna talk about that, hit me up so that I can pretend I’m being productive.
Anonymous asked: P for the fanfic meme!
Another ask for the fic meme!
P:
Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)
H A definitely a gardener. I’ll sometimes sketch out the VERY general outline of a universe, but almost never outside my own head–like, I currently have all three acts of my Alleirat novel planned out and I’m starting Act Two, as it were, but nothing is written down. I don’t think I’ve ever actually done a story outline in my life and I doubt that’s going to change anytime soon.
Anonymous asked: Crispin 14
I’m combining two anonymous asks for this thing that a bunch of people ended up doing against my expectations, because they are both about my poor murder boy. Poor Crispin, he makes so many bad choices.
14: Are they prone to outbursts (of violence, extreme emotion… exc… )?
…shockingly, no. Not even the White Wolf was really prone to losing control of himself. Losing his temper, maybe, but Crispin was raised as a diplomat, with exceptional control over his emotions (this emotional repression may have been a contributor to his eventual snap). He has always been prone to very cold anger–Crispin has always been the type where he can hold onto his temper until the most opportune moment to release it and then flay someone alive with a totally bland expression. Like, is he an incredibly dangerous, violent, impassioned person? Yes, 100%. But those things are always released with the sort of steel-eyed calculating precision to have the maximum impact. Which is somehow more nervewracking when he’s on the ‘right’ side of things.
44: What’s one thing they wish they could do more often, but can’t?
Crispin genuinely really likes children. He’s great with them. He used to hang out at Brenneth’s smithy before everything went to hell and the kids who drifted through (Brenneth didn’t immediately kick them out and told good stories, so she was something of a hit) adored him. The kids used to call the two of them pesaruld Crispin and pelali Brenneth (big brother and big sister). Crispin would love to be able to spend more time with children.
Naturally, absolutely no one trusts him with their children.
Anonymous asked: Brenneth and Crispin 16 if you don't mind. Love your work. :)
Listen I just want you all to know that I expected to get zero (0) asks for this, MAYBE one from a close friend or my mother or something who was trying to humor me. And now I have Many. Like eight all told. I have no idea if this is just one really curious anon or if this story got popular but welcome to my kingdom, you may call me my liege.
16: Is there anyone who makes them feel inferior?
I mean, each other, tbh. And they have understandable reasons for this, which doesn’t help their respective buckets of Problems.
So, Crispin’s reasons for thinking Brenneth is better than him are pretty plain and simple. Crispin knows that he was the villain of their story, and as much as he might hate himself for it, he knows that Brenneth did the right thing. He knows that–regardless of whether he was necessarily compos mentis at the time–he killed a lot of people and attempted a takeover, and Brenneth was the hero who came in to stop him, no matter the cost. Beyond that, Crispin genuinely believes that Brenneth is a hero, talented and clever and stubborn and strong, and even though he has a very accurate grasp of his own skills and abilities, he’s always thought that Brenneth was severely underappreciated by the people around her. This translated into more than one extremely ill-advised attempt to get her to side with him during his stint as the White Wolf.
And like moreover Brenneth won. Brenneth isn’t just the hero, in Crispin’s mind, she’s the victor. Obviously she’s better than him.
Brenneth, on the other hand, has very similarly logical (if…debatable) reasons for her feeling that Crispin is better than her. First of all, she was passed over for the prophecy when they first arrived in Alleirat as kids, and that has an impact–Crispin was fated to be the great hero, according to the people who took them in, and Brenneth still feels some of that imposter syndrome, like she stole his title or cheated him out of it, even though he very much surrendered that right when he started murdering folk. Second of all, flat-out Crispin was better in combat for much of their time fighting each other. Like, it was an objective reality, he had trained as a warrior and a diplomat exclusively while Brenneth was both a blacksmith and a warrior. No level of natural talent (and Brenneth is very talented) can make up for that kind of time devoted to practice. Don’t get me wrong, she did a good job–she poisoned him once or twice, fought to the best of her ability when they clashed, tried to blind him one time–but Crispin was just having more success, better luck. There was even a time where he believed he had successfully managed to kill her (and in his defense, stabbing someone in the chest and burying them alive in an avalanche does seem pretty foolproof). By the end of their four years, the two of them were well-matched, almost perfectly equal in skill, but that time of knowing that Crispin was more competent left its mark. Brenneth believes–erroneously, perhaps, but no one can prove her right or wrong–that if she was as good as Crispin, she would have been able to save him from himself.
Anonymous asked: Krei 5
I have like four asks for this ask meme I expected no one to do? So I’m grouping them by character, here is Krei, everyone’s favorite Tree Lesbian.
5: List 3 fears; one “surface level” fear, one “repressed” fear, and one “deep dark” fear.
Um….
Surface level is that, ironically, Krei is afraid of fire. She’s a plant worker and briatan, tree-folk, meaning that she has a bit of a hereditary stress about fire. She herself isn’t flammable, no more so than your average human, but her instincts are kind of…jumpy about it. So was her mother, but given that Torei died in a fire, Krei has some serious nerves about the stuff. Both of them keep it pretty well on lock (sort of necessary working with a firesmith like Brenneth) and let other people light the campfire.
Repressed is a hard one to answer, because honestly Krei is pretty comfortable with herself. Her people live a long time–Torei was almost 600 at the time of her death (some 50 years prior to the start of the novel), and would have lived longer if she hadn’t died defending a village against a grief-stricken firesmith–and are often very powerful, which comes with a societal expectation that they get their shit together. That being said…I don’t know if this is going to make sense, but Krei is afraid that one day she’ll turn around and decide that her mother wasn’t enough family for her. Torei died when Krei was about 100, which is young to lose a parent for a briata (also Torei had Krei older than most briatan have children), but moreover most families are medium-to-large in Alleirat. Even if you assume a monogamous couple, as opposed to a poly constellation or an open relationship, you might have two parents, some children who might be biological or adopted (abandoning children is strictly verboten and a willing family is usually findable), and the amiasa or amdri (or both) of either or both parents, as well as grandparents and aunts and uncles and close family friends. The word ‘family’ is pretty lax in Alleirat. Krei’s family for most of her life was herself and her mother, with occasional but rare visits to Torei’s clan in the north forests. Torei meant the world to Krei, and this fear that Torei might not have been enough family kind of haunts her. There’s a word in Alleirai for ‘the amiasa of your parent’ and it means ‘more-than-uncle/aunt,’ and in theory Krei could use it as an affectionate term with Brenneth. It takes her a long time to come around to the idea that it’s not a betrayal of her two-person family to extend that to another individual.
Krei’s deep dark fear, as cliche as this is going to sound, is failing to keep people safe. Torei was a good mother, mostly kept her daughter from hearing the worst stories of the White Wolf, but Krei worshiped her mother, and the idea that even Torei and her mighty amiasa, the Fireheart herself, couldn’t save the Wolf’s victims instilled a conviction that failure is inevitable very early on. Krei’s about 150 now and she’s mostly gotten over her angsty teenage phase where she harped on it more obsessively (like…her 60′s to 70′s were rough), but it still drives her. She’s a very accomplished warrior, the captain of the latha, the elite guard of her city, but it chews her up every time someone dies on her watch.
28: Is there a certain type of person that disgusts them?
Well, traitors, if I’m being completely honest, which goes great with Crispin. Krei plays nice with Brenneth on the subject of Crispin because it’s clear that Brenneth is upset, and treats him humanely when he’s her prisoner because Krei has a moral backbone like solid oak, but she’s kind of fundamentally appalled by him. Not so much because he’s a killer–Krei has killed people, Alleirat still uses hangings, death isn’t a stranger to her–or even because he tried to take over, but she thinks of him as having betrayed his own kind. She is not wrong about this–Crispin readily admits that he turned on his teachers, his comrades, his countrymen, and his best friend when he became the White Wolf–but it’s more complicated than that. The fact that that loyalty and betrayal aren’t always clearly delineated, and that someone can be forced from one to the other against their will, is kind of a major plot point. Shiko is loyal…to a terrible person. Crispin turned traitor against good people, but because he felt like it was the only way to fulfill a task that had been set before him since childhood. Brenneth is loyal to Crispin past the point of reason. The complexities of loyalty are sort of A Thing here, and Krei’s ride-or-die loyalty hangup (which she shares with her mother) is something of a wrench in the gears.
Anonymous asked: Shiko 36
Another ask for the ask meme I did not expect anyone to do!
For those of you Not Up To Date, Shiko is my poor necromancer who starts out as the villain of my Alleirat story.
36: Are they in control of their emotions, or are their emotions in control of them?
Ha ha, um? Depends on the emotion. Now, Shiko grew up as a trans girl in a Japanese family. I have More Research lined up and if anyone was comfortable talking to me about life as a trans person in Japan, I’d be thrilled, but I’m making the radical leap that life as a trans person anywhere comes with a certain degree of learning emotional control to not shiv ignorant morons every other day (extrapolated from being a butch queer in a small town as well as various conversations with my trans friends). More to the point, Shiko’s life on Earth often left her feeling very isolated for a number of reasons, which has led her to a good degree of control over her emotions as she doesn’t like to be seen to be upset or distressed. So anger, sadness, etc, not so much–she’s very good at tactical thinking and resisting the immediate impulse to do something to ‘resolve’ the emotion unless she decides it’s a good idea objectively.
That being said, Shiko doesn’t respond well to fear, specifically fear of the unknown, and will immediately grasp at any option that she feels will give her some control over an unknown situation–like for example winding up in a strange world where no one speaks English or Japanese and she can see ghosts. Pretty much Shiko’s response to that sort of event is whatever she feels will give her some understanding and control…with absolutely no thought for what it might result in.
This is the source of like 95% of her problems. The other 5% is caused by buff tree women.
