“I bet I’m strong enough to pick you up.”

It would have been nice if Kyri had at least entertained the idea. Even just for a moment. Divider, it would have been nice if any of Delver’s ungrateful companions had responded with even mild acceptance of the fact that he possessed some measure of physical strength. 

Instead, they laughed.

“Delver, you nearly died that one time you had to carry me.” Sylda endlessly delighted in bringing up ‘that one time’ whenever it was even remotely relevant. Sometimes even when it wasn’t. Now there she was, walking beside him and grinning so hard her cheeks must hurt. “You didn’t even have to take me far!”

“Hey, I told you I pulled a muscle.” Delver gestured pointedly to his side. “Right here, remember? That’s the only reason I---”

---“Kyri also has a head’s height on Sylda,” Taelan interjected, as though he hadn’t even heard Delver’s feeble defense. Now if that wasn’t a wound to the ego, Delver didn’t know what was. The younger man barely spoke a damned word to him, but this was when he decided to offer his wisdom? Bitter though he was, Delver supposed it was a gain. Sure, it would be nice if Tael didn’t exercise his new-found confidence by dragging Delver’s pride over the gravel, but beggars can’t be choosers. A comment at his expense was still worlds better than the old hate and fear.

Grunting, Delver folded his arms, fixing his gaze on the woman spearheading their motley group. She never broke stride - not until the midday break. Entire conversations could arrive and pass without even a word of input from the Kyriin. It drove Delver mad, not knowing what it was that pushed her so ceaselessly forward. “Hey, Kyri,” he called. He’d drag her into the conversation whether she liked it or not. “Back me up here - we’ve sparred before. I held my own, didn’t I?”

So first of all, I apologise - this got a lot longer than I anticipated! I went with #76 - Top of head kisses, and decided to write a scene between Adiran and Riin. 

This scene takes place after the final round of the Red Fury - a Talveran tournament dedicated to the old god of war, Velos Devo. Adiran, after five years of training with Riin, managed to win his earlier matches and was finally up against the former champion. It goes... not so well.

The world returned to Adiran in flashes - shattered pieces of memory shaken loose inside his head. A roaring crowd. The smell of sweat. His skin, feverish inside his armour, brought to temperature by the blazing sun. It was the final day of the tournament. The final bout. He could remember the pull of his heart, insistent, like a hand tugging on a mother’s skirt. Remembered how he had pressed his own hand to his chest, leather gauntlet creaking, as though to still it through his plate. How many rounds had he fought? Six? Seven? He should know the number. Divider, he should live and breathe the number. But it eluded him, slipping from his grasp like an oiled vase. 

A sound broke through the images - a chair sliding over stone. Adiran dreamed it was a crow, shrieking in the cloudless sky above the arena.

Crosus waited, a mountain at the center of the sands. He was a man whose shadow stood a worthier opponent than any Adiran had already faced. Trained since youth in the barren stones of the Split, he had been named champion two times. Two times. To win once was to be favoured by Velos Devo, the old god whose name was only resurrected once every five years for contest. For glory. To win twice was a miracle - a feat for storybooks and legends. Three times would be utter madness.

Something soft brushed Adiran’s forehead. He flinched from it. In his mind, he shooed a fly from his face as he strode to meet his opponent in the red-lined ring. 

Sweat sticking to his skin, he positioned himself in the giant’s shadow. Brown eyes, shielded by a heavy brow, watched him quietly. He swore he read pity in Crosus’ gaze - a secret between only them, carefully kept from the crowd. Adiran had no time to question it, only to tighten his grip on his sword. A cry from the stands ripped the silence, sharp as an eagle’s talons. 

Begin. 

Howdy nonny! Well, as I am broke and have zero (0) artistic ability, I haven’t got anything that perfectly suits Delver yet. However, I’ve tinkered around a bit on the Black Desert Online CC (because I already own it and it has a fair few customisation options) and came up what is basically Delver on a VERY good day:

Main differences:

Sometimes, trusting someone doesn’t take years and years of small, slow steps. Sometimes, it just takes one moment. For Sylda, it was the moment Delver handed her back her book. She must have fallen asleep with it clutched to her chest. It was an old thing, but familiar, its leather cover cracked and weathered at the edges in patterns she could paint in her sleep. It fell during the night, and for the first time, Sylda was not the one to pick it up.

The way he did it could only be described as tender. Delver took it by its spine, gently lifting it until it rested in both hands, then paused. Just for a moment. Just to look at it. Just to trace a careful fingertip along the crease in the center of its cover. The movement was almost reverent, and even though the book was hers, Sylda actually felt like she was intruding on a something deeply personal. Something not meant for her eyes.

Then, he noticed her, and everything shifted. The calm broke and Delver returned to the man she knew - the one more comfortable clearing his throat and holding the book at arms length towards her. She’d lost her book, once. Let it be taken from her by a man who wanted to make sure remembered where her loyalties lay. She’d been a child. A fool. She’d promised herself, and in some ways her mother, that she would never let it happen again.

But then she looked at him. Truly looked at him, the book a dark shape between them, the room slowly filling with light from the rising dawn. She knew he’d wanted to open it. Wanted to desperately. But he hadn’t.

Slowly, she reached out... and pushed the book back towards him.

“Actually, Delver... I’ve always wanted to know what it says.”

46 - shimmer

“Take your time, Adiran. Fight better.”

Maybe it was all in Adiran’s head, but he swore there was a challenge in the words. Mockery. Disappointment. He ground his teeth until they creaked, pulling in air like the world was running out of it. “Fight better? That your official advice?” He spat in the sand, blinking away sweat, his hair slick with it. It had been for hours. “You know what? I’ve spent the past eight years training with you, and you haven’t taught me a single fucking thing I didn’t already know!”

Standing a few yards away, Riin’s brow twinged, but if the comment had bothered him, he gave no further indication. Instead, he just swung his sword down from where it rested on his shoulder, the movement slow and meticulous. His feet slid into position. 

“You believe I have taught you nothing?”

Before Adiran even had a chance to muster a scathing reply, Riin was coming at him in a rush of cloth and steel, sand churning beneath his feet, blade arcing high, sweeping down, cutting towards his side---

--- without thinking, Adiran lunged forward, breaching the distance between them, slamming Riin in the side with his shoulder. The warrior let out a grunt as he was thrown off-balance, landing in the sand hard enough to shake the blade from his grasp. Staggering a few steps, stunned by his own response, Adiran spun, breathing hard, harried and wild around the edges.

“What was that supposed to be?”

Pushing himself up in the sand, Riin shook his head and spend a moment in silent contemplation, as though regathering some pieces of himself that had been shaken loose. But then he glanced up, and there was an almost amused tilt to his lips. “I did what you do when you are frustrated. More often than you should. What you just did to counter it...”

Something about the shimmer in his eyes locked Adiran in place. Pieces began to slide together - the unpredictable lunge, using his shoulder to deflect a reckless charge. How many times had Riin sent him to the ground with the exact same move?

WORLDBUILDING WEDNESDAY 

Let’s talk about... Ciphers!

Are the Cipher family lines congregated in or around a specific country or set of countries? There’s no specific congregation of Ciphers. Within the known world (which is basically contained within a ring of extremely tall and impassable mountains, or oceans that are too deadly to travel once you venture to the deeps), Cipher families can present themselves in any of the major kingdoms, but the fact that they are quickly taken in by patrons and relocate to that patron’s estate makes it quite hard to pin-down exactly from where each Cipher family originated. Now, there is at least one in each of the major kingdoms, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the Cipher family line originated there.

Does anyone know, or think they know, what causes a Cipher line to skip a generation? At this point, no one really knows why Cipher abilities sometimes skip generations. There are theories that it is a kind of biological fail-safe mechanism, meant to stop an individual’s mind from becoming overwhelmed, but that theory was only really introduced in the last century or so. I know why they skip generations, but I’m not sure how spoilery I should make these posts lol. There is a biological element to it, and it is connected to the pre-Divide world.

Are there any superstitions or prejudices that have come out of a generational skip? At the beginning, yes. Although less superstitions and more confusion and prejudice. In the early post-Divide, Cipher families initially looked down on any family that skipped a generation, as though it was proof that they were not worthy to possess such a powerful ability. Then, like, almost every family started skipping generations, and their tune changed very quickly lol. Now, there is a more resentment among Ciphers towards families that didn’t skip any generations, or skipped very few. Those families are generally considered ‘superior’ by patrons (due to how well their skill has been maintained over time), which naturally results in jealousy, frustration and general dislike. However, now that madness appears to be a side-effect of the ability not skipping generations, other Cipher families are experiencing a kind of schadenfreude. Now they get to look at people like Delver with a mixture of pity and a “well, I guess that’s what you get” attitude. Ciphers have always been quite a competitive group, and any way of getting one-up on each other is usually grabbed with both hands.

WORLDBUILDING WEDNESDAY

Oh HELLO THERE!

So, energy varies depending on location. The Stonebreaker world is still pretty staunchly fire-lit (via hearths, lamps, sconces, chandeliers, etc) or reliant on natural lighting in most places, but if you are wealthy you can afford weave-lights (which are typically cylinders to which weavers have applied glyph strings, resulting in a steady pale glow). The only issue is they can’t really be turned on and off, so most of the time they are kept in sealed containers or covered until they are needed. They will eventually need to be replenished, but should last up to a few months, depending on the skill of the weaver.

Transportation is pretty standard. Most folks get about either on foot or on horse/mule if they can afford it. Wagons can often be found running the trade routes, so you could probably bum a ride on one of those if you don’t look like a disheveled roadside murderer. Some trade and transport is also done by sea, but as the oceans are dangerous, most would rather take longer and travel more safely by land. Majority of people don’t travel too far from their home towns/villages/cities/etc., so travel is more just between neighbouring towns or to local market fairs. Most towns are located reasonably close together (usually along a water source or near a lake), but moving between these residential ‘hubs’ or out to more isolated locations is where it starts to get a bit daunting and difficult.

In terms of what you’d need to do it, if you’re planning to travel long-distance, you’d be best to hire guards, even if you’re not travelling with particularly valuable goods. While the land is not as deadly as the sea, there are still many dangers, especially if you don’t know the terrain or the wildlife. This is one of the factors that prevents most people from travelling long-distance, because hiring protection ain’t cheap. So, you either go broke, or risk it alone, and most aren’t particularly willing to do either without good reason.

Nobility typically travel on horseback or in covered carriages, and never without a small army of household guards marching alongside. When one approaches, it often takes up majority of the road, and other travellers are expected to move aside. This has made for some awkward stand-offs when two noble carriages cross paths.

Thanks for the ask!      |         WORLDBUILDING WEDNESDAY

Healthcare

Healthcare is largely quite traditional (a.k.a. based on plants, bedrest and a prayer), which means that dying from disease or infection is still common if you don’t have access to a trained healer or alchemist or ‘leech’. Majority is based on herbalism, but with the kinds of creatures alive in the world, certain venom and toxins have also been used to counteract illnesses and symptoms (although great care should be taken because these can easily go from ‘cure’ to ‘poison’ in the wrong dosage).

There are ‘healers’ in the world - trained thaumists who can use their skills to restructure or mend their patient. However, it is extremely difficult to master, and even when mastered, it comes with a huge cost. Basically, they use the principle of ‘transference’ (one of the Six Principles of thaumaturgy) to perform the healing, which means that the injury is essentially transferred from the patient to the healer. So, if someone broke an arm, the healer could fix them, but they would then have to deal with a broken arm themselves (as well as exhaustion due to the energy expended to perform the transference). So, as you can imagine, healing is NOT a popular profession, and extremely expensive to acquire. Some of the negatives can be mitigated if you have multiple healers working together on one patient (so they can, effectively, spread the burden between them). Basically, the only people who would ever have healers at their disposal are royalty, and even then, there are limits. Even multiple healers working together to heal a mortal wound would likely die in the attempt, so it typically will not be done.

Esteemed Professions

Well, healers are definitely one, because it takes a certain degree of self-sacrifice and a massive amount of study of the human body to even consider going down that path. Other valued professions include:

Thank you for the ask!  WORLDBUILDING WEDNESDAY

Communication

Common: Most communication is done the ol’ fashioned way (letters, messengers, trained birds, word of mouth), so it’s pretty easy to lose track of someone if they take off suddenly and don’t say where they are going.

Uncommon: An uncommon form of communication is a kind of morse-code, transmitted between two identical and sympathetically linked devices (via a thaumic technique referred to as ‘bridging’). Dots and lines are used instead of words because a) it’s a universal code and b) the sympathetic link can get a little wonky depending on how far apart the two devices are, so forming letters properly can be difficult or impossible. However, there are some problems with it. Firstly, the device needs to be manned at all times, because when the head of the device starts moving someone’s gotta physically move the parchment under it or you’ll just have a big ol’ blob of ink in one spot. Some places have rigged it so that there is parchment (or even cloth) on a constant slow cycle beneath the head of the device, but someone still needs to be watching it regardless in case the message is long and the paper needs to be changed. Another issue is that damage to one device will disrupt its connection with the other, which leads to incorrect messages that, when encoded by dots and lines, can result in serious interpretive issues. Each device can also only be linked to one other device, so if you want to communicate with two different cities, you will need two separate devices. Finally, these are incredibly expensive to commission and are typically only owned by royal families or the most elite members of society.

Very uncommon: There are devices (typically worn as earrings) created by weavers that can transmit aural messages, but these are incredibly rare and quite new in the world. The only people who currently possess them are the Archonate in Tel Shival (which is basically a university city dedicated to the study and practice of thaumaturgy). No one else really knows about them.

Storyteller Saturday

Okay, this is great and had me thinking for a WHILE. I gotta say, it was so much fun! Also, the assumption is that the haunted house is legit (as in, not an amusement park haunted house, but a house with an actual reputation for being haunted).

Delver: He would 100% be the one talking loudly, acting like it’s not a big deal because haunted houses are dumb and everything can be logically explained... then be the first to scream at something completely innocuous, like a curtain fluttering. The rest of the adventure is spent feverishly trying to regain his pride, to the point that he almost forgets to be scared.

Sylda: She is the kind of person who would be constantly chanting “this is a terrible idea thisisaterribleideaohgodohgod” to herself but also never stop moving forward/peering around corners/checking in the darkest rooms to try to work out what is going on. Every empty room earns a sigh of relief, but then she immediately moves on. Her curiosity is so strong that, despite being terrified, it’s almost like she wants to find something.

Kyri: Operates in almost complete silence as she moves through the house, because using every sense is vitally important when you are being hunted. She is much more likely to be unsettled by intangible things (voices, flitting shadows, etc.) than something physically manifesting in front of her. She tries to place herself in the mind of an angry ghost - understand the enemy. It is a lot harder than expected.

Taelan: Probably glued to another person for comfort (like Kyri). He is the one who whispers “don’t go in there” every time they reach a doorway and quietly dies inside whenever his companion steps on a creaky floorboard or sneezes from the dust (or screams at a curtain fluttering). He dwells on the fact that they never go to nice places. He shouldn’t have to suffer like this.

Adiran: Adiran is boldly going where no man has gone before, five yards ahead of everyone else, throwing open doors and scoffing at the darkness before stalking to the next room. Everything he does is just to ‘get it over with’. Something from three rooms back is following him. He knows this and is pissing himself, but stubbornly refuses to address it. 

Riin: He’s the one bringing up the rear of the group, watching the others lose their minds with a fond smile, closing the doors after Adiran explodes through them, giving encouraging nods when his companions glance back for comfort. He approaches the whole affair with an air of quiet amusement, solid and reliable. Unbeknownst to the others, he has already sent several threats scuttling back into the dark with a look that says ‘Don’t even think about it.’

Hmmm, for era, I guess it’s quite late ancient/early medieval history inspired. In terms of technology, weaponry, medicine and warfare, late ancient is generally what best fits. Of course, there is presence of magic, so that does alter some of those elements in ways unique to the setting and advance some places further than others. But given magic is not commonplace and difficult to learn and practice, a lot of the fighting and politicking and travelling methods coincide with the late ancient/early medieval eras. I’ll pop some more specifics under the cut in case anyone is interested: