I wanted to write MOAR NARRATIVE STUFF!
Jul. 8th, 2010 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukieBut then someone new moved in (hi Orlouge) and I got infodumped hardcore.
SO!
All of this tentative/subject to change/stuff. But Orlouge's past is all according to him, and that's pretty steady at least.
***
Once upon a time, long ago, mazoku and fae had been the same race. The division between them came when they had to decide how to relate to the humans. The ones who would become the mazoku saw them as a threat and a nuisance and wanted to prove their strength; the fae saw them as a young race that right now didn't know better but would figure things out in time. The disagreement erupted into civil unrest. Nothing anywhere near war, but it was looking as if things would disintegrate into such chaos when one of the Firstborn Three offered a solution.
In the end, the mazoku left for their own realm, the makai. Humans called it the underworld, and that wasn't completely inaccurate, as the god who'd given his protection to the mazoku at that time, and who'd given them their own realm within the Siranoire, had been none other than the Emperor Lich. To this day, the only unsealed gate to the makai (the rest were sealed to protect the mazoku as much as the humans, who'd dubbed this clan of the strange people demons and were clamouring for a reckoning) was in Erebos.
Thanatos must have been sane then, perhaps.
FIRSTLY: Mazoku and youma, six of one half a dozen of the other. They're both valid terms for the same group of people who live in the Makai and who used to be one race with the fae before the big schism. Both are Japanese/Eblanese terms, because those languages are extremely good at decriptives without condemnations when it comes to magical beings.
The Makai (underworld/otherworld/sorcerous realm) is akin to the Fair realm, but unlike its sister realm, it's gated off from the mortal world for everyone's protection. See, some mazoku think humans are lunchie munchies, and some humans would be all to happy to jab sharp iron things into any mazoku whether she/he is hostile or not. As a result, all the gates into the Makai are locked. They can be opened from the inside by only a few people.
These people are the Maou (sorcerer/mystic lords). There are quite a few of them. The ones I personally know about are the hikikomori-esque Time Lord, Fanha's adoptive mother, and the most recent tenant, one Lord Orlouge.
Orlouge is the most active of the Maou and probably the most well-known on account of his past shenanigans. See - Orlouge's father (not necessarily biological, I'll get into this later), the late Lord Orgause, was a tyrant bastard. Miserable to his family, miserable to his subjects, and more than once antagonized Thanatos enough to be a danger to eery mazoku anywhere ever. Thus it was that orlouge took matters into is own hands, killed his father, and stole the old king's mana and prana for his own.
Therein lies the problem - the prana contained some of the dead king's will, a splinter of his soul. Orlouge only realized this when it was way too late and the damned thing had taken root in his own spirit. So Orlouge started to gradually go crazy - not in the same way as his father, but fucking nuts nonetheless. He started demanding that romantic partners never leave the palace (his upbringing left him with some issues, and his father's madness made them MUCH WORSE) and went as far as to bespell them into stasis-sleep if they told him to bugger off. When he hassled the wrong prospective partner, one Asellus Nashira (the only known artificially-born half-mazoku) and was truck down, he had about 100 sleeping female partners that anyone knew of. As for male partners, we're unsure. The known AWAKE guys are Zozma, Yildun, Rastaban and Scheat. Known ladies are the Gold Lion Princess, Rei-hime, and the Princess Whiterose. Asellus never ended u in the bedroom; she slapped him aorund with Asura instead.
This is what saved him. Asura is a prana-eating sword; for a wielder to use it at all, they have to make a pact with it and give it some of their life energy. From there it will only 'eat' enemies. Asellus's attacks relieved Orlouge of a vast majority of his prana - and killed the soul-shard. When Orlouge actually SURRENDERED to her Asellus figured something was up, and when she caught onto the shift in his aura, she decided to spare him on the condition that he wake all his partners and not be an ass from there on out. (She had the right to claim his palace and property for her won at that point but wasn't interested; Asellus herself counts as a Maou but she doesn't act as one, preferring to spend her days with Whiterose instead, just - being who she is.)
So now we have a recovered, mostly-sane Maou ruling a fair chunk of the Makai.
Now - remember I said I'd get back to his bloodline? Yeah. He is not Orgause's blood offspring.
His father is Thanatos. That explains why he's so terrifyingly damned pretty and so ludicrously powerful. Thanatos was fairly sane when he had his fling with Lady Circaea. Yes, Orlouge is quite old. You wouldn't know from looking at him or listening to him talk, though; he sounds like a young nobleman of maybe 25 or so, and often acts like one. ("He now sluts ethically and responsibly." thanks Asellus. XD) Many a would-be usurper has fallen for this and promptly had his or her ass handed back - Orlouge is no slouch in battle whether with magic or with a blade.
He's like Charlemagne in that he's in the lower branches of many, many family trees. yeah - he had a lot of partners, and even before going mad he did take care of them all. And why not? It saves him being potentially attacked later, and he doesn't want for money in the LEAST. Plus that way he has allies - not because they owe him but because he was fair and responsible. (Fae and mazoku do have nuclear families, but raising of kids is very much a community affair. They're very 'we'-oriented hang-together sorts.)
Among the family trees he's part of?
Well, in Kupop, Vicky's is one. But - yeah, CHARLEMAGNE.
Vicky does, though, have mazoku ancestry in both Kupop and Benighted (though Orlouge doesn't exist in Benighted, he does likely have an analogue I haven't met yet*); it's stronger on her father's side, which is why half of his family (maternal relatives) are so terribly twitchy about bloodlines and intermarriage. Fae and Mazoku never had a raging murderous hate-on for one another, but they DID squabble often, so a mazoku/fae marriage is like a Prussian/Hessian one maybe. They happened anyway, though, and since Owain's maternal family (minus his mom and her siblings, who went 'fuck that noise' and applied to found a new House) is very old-fashioned they're embarrassed about discussing that part of their bloodline. It shows itself, though, in the shape of their wings (fae have rounded wing 'petals', mazoku have diamond or lozenge shaped ones; any fae with Mazoku ancestry will have a point at the end of her/his wings as a result) and in the weird issues that sometimes happen with mana flow. Owain's crashy mental wards are a result of him not being taught to handle this innate mana turbulence (it's not BAD, just not the 'default' sort of flow and thus it takes some different tactics to use it well). Jer has the same ward-wobble but he's more able to handle it because Owain was open about their ancestry and explained what the deal was. This turbulence is also the reason for Vicky's occasional power 'spikes' and sudden third-eye hyperfocus when she was small.
So, yeah XD;
Orlouge will not oppose Thanatos because of his bloodine (he and his subjects did not participate in the most recent war at all; he couldn't support his father because Mazoku are beings of strong mana and YEAH fighting Chrystalis would therefore be dickish and wrong...but he couldn't oppose Thanatos either) and also because of the mazoku people's debt to him - well, at least until the god goes TOO far. Then? Oh, Orlouge will protect his people, and he will be an underhanded bastard about it if he must. XD
He wants to play chess with Xavier sometime.
"It is difficult, I know, for men such as we to oppose our fathers - be they by blood or by marriage - but in the long run, it is much easier on our sanity. We are, I think, allowed to be selfish with regard to that."
---
*Yes this does mean that Vicky has a very VERY distant relationship to Benighted's fae demi-deity of death and winter, Lord Alban. But again, Charlemagne. It's really not uncommon for this to be the case - the fae demigods took ordinary fae partners often in the past. Fae relationships with gods and demigods are sort of like kohai-to-senpai. XD; Gods are seen as elders or predecessors, respected teachers - not absolute superior authority compared to whom everyone else is a peon. They are to be respected and revered, but grovelling at them is considered plain insulting. Yes fae are weird. XD Mazoku are similar.
SO!
All of this tentative/subject to change/stuff. But Orlouge's past is all according to him, and that's pretty steady at least.
***
Once upon a time, long ago, mazoku and fae had been the same race. The division between them came when they had to decide how to relate to the humans. The ones who would become the mazoku saw them as a threat and a nuisance and wanted to prove their strength; the fae saw them as a young race that right now didn't know better but would figure things out in time. The disagreement erupted into civil unrest. Nothing anywhere near war, but it was looking as if things would disintegrate into such chaos when one of the Firstborn Three offered a solution.
In the end, the mazoku left for their own realm, the makai. Humans called it the underworld, and that wasn't completely inaccurate, as the god who'd given his protection to the mazoku at that time, and who'd given them their own realm within the Siranoire, had been none other than the Emperor Lich. To this day, the only unsealed gate to the makai (the rest were sealed to protect the mazoku as much as the humans, who'd dubbed this clan of the strange people demons and were clamouring for a reckoning) was in Erebos.
Thanatos must have been sane then, perhaps.
FIRSTLY: Mazoku and youma, six of one half a dozen of the other. They're both valid terms for the same group of people who live in the Makai and who used to be one race with the fae before the big schism. Both are Japanese/Eblanese terms, because those languages are extremely good at decriptives without condemnations when it comes to magical beings.
The Makai (underworld/otherworld/sorcerous realm) is akin to the Fair realm, but unlike its sister realm, it's gated off from the mortal world for everyone's protection. See, some mazoku think humans are lunchie munchies, and some humans would be all to happy to jab sharp iron things into any mazoku whether she/he is hostile or not. As a result, all the gates into the Makai are locked. They can be opened from the inside by only a few people.
These people are the Maou (sorcerer/mystic lords). There are quite a few of them. The ones I personally know about are the hikikomori-esque Time Lord, Fanha's adoptive mother, and the most recent tenant, one Lord Orlouge.
Orlouge is the most active of the Maou and probably the most well-known on account of his past shenanigans. See - Orlouge's father (not necessarily biological, I'll get into this later), the late Lord Orgause, was a tyrant bastard. Miserable to his family, miserable to his subjects, and more than once antagonized Thanatos enough to be a danger to eery mazoku anywhere ever. Thus it was that orlouge took matters into is own hands, killed his father, and stole the old king's mana and prana for his own.
Therein lies the problem - the prana contained some of the dead king's will, a splinter of his soul. Orlouge only realized this when it was way too late and the damned thing had taken root in his own spirit. So Orlouge started to gradually go crazy - not in the same way as his father, but fucking nuts nonetheless. He started demanding that romantic partners never leave the palace (his upbringing left him with some issues, and his father's madness made them MUCH WORSE) and went as far as to bespell them into stasis-sleep if they told him to bugger off. When he hassled the wrong prospective partner, one Asellus Nashira (the only known artificially-born half-mazoku) and was truck down, he had about 100 sleeping female partners that anyone knew of. As for male partners, we're unsure. The known AWAKE guys are Zozma, Yildun, Rastaban and Scheat. Known ladies are the Gold Lion Princess, Rei-hime, and the Princess Whiterose. Asellus never ended u in the bedroom; she slapped him aorund with Asura instead.
This is what saved him. Asura is a prana-eating sword; for a wielder to use it at all, they have to make a pact with it and give it some of their life energy. From there it will only 'eat' enemies. Asellus's attacks relieved Orlouge of a vast majority of his prana - and killed the soul-shard. When Orlouge actually SURRENDERED to her Asellus figured something was up, and when she caught onto the shift in his aura, she decided to spare him on the condition that he wake all his partners and not be an ass from there on out. (She had the right to claim his palace and property for her won at that point but wasn't interested; Asellus herself counts as a Maou but she doesn't act as one, preferring to spend her days with Whiterose instead, just - being who she is.)
So now we have a recovered, mostly-sane Maou ruling a fair chunk of the Makai.
Now - remember I said I'd get back to his bloodline? Yeah. He is not Orgause's blood offspring.
His father is Thanatos. That explains why he's so terrifyingly damned pretty and so ludicrously powerful. Thanatos was fairly sane when he had his fling with Lady Circaea. Yes, Orlouge is quite old. You wouldn't know from looking at him or listening to him talk, though; he sounds like a young nobleman of maybe 25 or so, and often acts like one. ("He now sluts ethically and responsibly." thanks Asellus. XD) Many a would-be usurper has fallen for this and promptly had his or her ass handed back - Orlouge is no slouch in battle whether with magic or with a blade.
He's like Charlemagne in that he's in the lower branches of many, many family trees. yeah - he had a lot of partners, and even before going mad he did take care of them all. And why not? It saves him being potentially attacked later, and he doesn't want for money in the LEAST. Plus that way he has allies - not because they owe him but because he was fair and responsible. (Fae and mazoku do have nuclear families, but raising of kids is very much a community affair. They're very 'we'-oriented hang-together sorts.)
Among the family trees he's part of?
Well, in Kupop, Vicky's is one. But - yeah, CHARLEMAGNE.
Vicky does, though, have mazoku ancestry in both Kupop and Benighted (though Orlouge doesn't exist in Benighted, he does likely have an analogue I haven't met yet*); it's stronger on her father's side, which is why half of his family (maternal relatives) are so terribly twitchy about bloodlines and intermarriage. Fae and Mazoku never had a raging murderous hate-on for one another, but they DID squabble often, so a mazoku/fae marriage is like a Prussian/Hessian one maybe. They happened anyway, though, and since Owain's maternal family (minus his mom and her siblings, who went 'fuck that noise' and applied to found a new House) is very old-fashioned they're embarrassed about discussing that part of their bloodline. It shows itself, though, in the shape of their wings (fae have rounded wing 'petals', mazoku have diamond or lozenge shaped ones; any fae with Mazoku ancestry will have a point at the end of her/his wings as a result) and in the weird issues that sometimes happen with mana flow. Owain's crashy mental wards are a result of him not being taught to handle this innate mana turbulence (it's not BAD, just not the 'default' sort of flow and thus it takes some different tactics to use it well). Jer has the same ward-wobble but he's more able to handle it because Owain was open about their ancestry and explained what the deal was. This turbulence is also the reason for Vicky's occasional power 'spikes' and sudden third-eye hyperfocus when she was small.
So, yeah XD;
Orlouge will not oppose Thanatos because of his bloodine (he and his subjects did not participate in the most recent war at all; he couldn't support his father because Mazoku are beings of strong mana and YEAH fighting Chrystalis would therefore be dickish and wrong...but he couldn't oppose Thanatos either) and also because of the mazoku people's debt to him - well, at least until the god goes TOO far. Then? Oh, Orlouge will protect his people, and he will be an underhanded bastard about it if he must. XD
He wants to play chess with Xavier sometime.
"It is difficult, I know, for men such as we to oppose our fathers - be they by blood or by marriage - but in the long run, it is much easier on our sanity. We are, I think, allowed to be selfish with regard to that."
---
*Yes this does mean that Vicky has a very VERY distant relationship to Benighted's fae demi-deity of death and winter, Lord Alban. But again, Charlemagne. It's really not uncommon for this to be the case - the fae demigods took ordinary fae partners often in the past. Fae relationships with gods and demigods are sort of like kohai-to-senpai. XD; Gods are seen as elders or predecessors, respected teachers - not absolute superior authority compared to whom everyone else is a peon. They are to be respected and revered, but grovelling at them is considered plain insulting. Yes fae are weird. XD Mazoku are similar.