Battlescape Of The Gods Au - Tumblr Posts

Random thoughts for a new SP au that I’ll probably never end up writing 😀

Premise is set in something that hasn’t happened in canon yet actually, so it’s technically also part of the AU. There are still some spoilers for AMFoM though if anyone is hoping to avoid those.

Basically Winter wants to take over the world, right? She has a few years to plan that out and try an execute it, but she makes the mistake of trusting some of the wrong people and Valkyrie ends up knowing about the plan and trying to stop her.

At the end of fight between the general Sanctuary and Winter’s folks, a lot of people from a lot of different sides (including the two mentioned before) are trying to achieve some very different things, and the rib-bone wand they’re using goes haywire and ascends numerous people to varying degrees of godhood.

Bunch of these people are also now crazy, which leads to mortals finding out about magic, and within a few years Earth becomes a blasted wasteland with groups of sorcerers and mortals forming societies around superpowered sorcerers in order to form safety nets.

Some of the groups include:

- Mevolent, who got out because the Eternity Gate was destroyed and has put much of his effort into resurrecting Serafina. He was successful, and now the two of them intend on trying to take over this world and then getting back to Dimension X and taking that back as well.

- Valkyrie basically became a Seraph and is both incredibly powerful and insane. On top of being similar to harpy Val but with way more wings, she can also absorb the personhood of people she cares about when they’re dying (only if she’s able to touch them) and then they basically become an extension of her that she can summon or talk to. However, these people slowly start to lose more and more of their personality as the years go by as their souls are utterly meshed with hers. Also on her team is Anton Shudder, who came back with his soul half-fused with his gist. So instead of summoning his gist, he basically turns into his gist for a few seconds at a time (and also has problems with morality). Also in Val’s gang are Nefarian and (on occasion) Dusk.

- Skulduggery had to put most of the shadow armour back on (for numerous reasons), so while he isn’t Lord Vile, he’s also become a lot more violent and now lives as the king of the necromancers. Solomon and Melancholia are both on his team. While most people consider him and Valkyrie to be on different sides, they still love each other to an obsessive degree and their teams are basically fused. Consider them one team for plot purposes.

- Winter is still alive and has taken her sister’s place as a morally upstanding person, leading a rebellion against the more violent regimes currently running around. Alter is with her, but Mia is dead because of Anton Shudder murdering her on accident. As a result, Winter is dead set on killing Anton, which Valkyrie will not allow because she and Anton view each other as siblings.. Valkyrie considers Winter’s attempts cute but pathetic and usually defeats Winter with ease, but hasn’t killed her because she doesn’t want to kill her sister.

- The Irish Sanctuary, or at least the ones that didn’t go absolutely insane. It includes Ghastly, who is determined to actually make his area as safe as possible for those who want to stay there, Tanith, Fletcher, Militsa (who has broken up with Valkyrie again and probably for good this time), China (who’s been aged down to about her forties because of the magic burst), Dexter, Saracen, Temper (who’s normal but has no magic and relies on magic tattoos instead), Kierre, the zombiecule, and various other characters. Valkyrie doesn’t kill them because she still loves a large percentage of the people who run it, but Mevolent and Serafina have no issue with wiping them out and so they have to be careful. Auger is also there, and he works for Doctor Synecdoche. They all worry about Valkyrie’s state of mind and wonder if they could be able to fix her, but as of now have got nothing to work with. Frightening, Aurora, and the Monster Hunters are there as well, and they actually had to find a way in from the ruins of other countries.

- The Faceless Ones have broken out of their prison because of Malice, but they are significantly less powerful than before because of them sacrificing their power. Valkyrie’s team is determined to murder every last one of them, and they only have a small cult worshiping them left.

- Another cult, this time worshiping Darquesse and believing that they can reach out to her again and get her to come fix the absolute mess that is the planet. Consists of Bennet Troth, other religious figures of the Darquesse Society, and anyone who wishes for this nightmarish hell to be over.

- Omen is also still alive and is a signum linguist, although he also sometimes goes out of his home and draws art on walls and such encouraging people to keep going with life. He shares an underground laboratory with Abyssinia and Professor Nye, who’ve managed to keep a pretty healthy dynamic going given the circumstances. Most people don’t know they’re still alive and they prefer to keep it that way. Funniest trio of roommates ever and I will slap them with the found family dynamic if I find it amusing.

- Cadaver and a version of harpy Valkyrie who’s mind was partially fixed (and who I hope to give a name to). They’re both kind of insane and have gone off to do their own thing, but still sometimes show up to throw everybody off balance a little, although they often team up with Valkyrie and Skulduggery.

- Confelicity, Destrier, and other major scientists have congregated to basically create what passes for a magic university nowadays/scientists for hire. All other sides of the war have decided to not antagonize them, and they exist in relative peace. If a family has an especially clever young sorcerer and isn’t cultishly dedicated to whichever godlike sorcerer they work for, it’s normal for them to try to send their kid off to said university. They technically are still in danger from the Faceless Ones, but some of the more violent groups are willing to protect them in exchange for some service. The Engineer works at the university also, and students enjoy having conversations with it.

- The witches. All the different groups have formed an approximate alliance in order to get other people to leave them alone. They will also take in mortals in exchange for servitude, and many mortals consider it better than going to work for a sorcerer.

Other notes include:

- The god-killers are around and spread throughout multiple different teams of people. Valkyrie is still a walking god-killer (there was a botched attempt at removing the crystals from her system in order to preserve her power) and Skulduggery has the sword. Aside from that, Saracen has the bow, Winter has the spear, and Mevolent has the dagger. There is also some effort being put into sending shunters into other dimensions to try and find more god-killers to use, but it’s such an inefficient use of resources that it’s not a huge pressing issue.

- There are other singular figures, such as Crepuscular, who roam the landscape, but they usually aren’t powerful enough to do anything

- The rib-bone wand is now obliterated and nobody can use it anymore. Valkyrie also destroyed Project Veritas shortly before she went insane (due to an argument she was having with Ghastly about Lord Vile), so now Ghastly’s energy is completely focused on keeping others safe.

- Anton Shudder found a hidden room in one of Roarhaven’s buildings that contains echo stones of Erskine Ravel from various stages of his life, right up until a few weeks before he betrayed them. Anton keeps them around and talks to them sometimes, especially the older echo stones, because he has complicated feelings about Erskine and what he did. If Valkyrie or Skulduggery ever found the stones they would probably destroy them on instinct.

- Gog Magog is very much a thing, but people are struggling to figure out where he is. As a result, him and his followers are currently considered a threat on the horizon but not an issue that needs too much work being put into it right now.

- China is vaguely annoyed that magic keeps messing with her age.

- Abyssinia’s powers have been extended by the magic burst and she is now able to not only suck up other’s life force, but also move said life force into other people if they are injured or dying.

- Malice let the Faceless Ones out but instead of creating a cult around them, she basically acts as a shadow for Winter, giving her advice and making sure nobody is sneaking up to kill her, etc.

- Valkyrie has developed something similar to an obsession with finding and collecting the souls of people she knew and possibly even cared about. She’s definitely collected Billy-Ray Sanguine, and is currently fixating on trying to find Stephanie’s soul and apologizing to it for everything that has happened.

There is more I was thinking about, but that’s all I can remember for now. If anyone has questions feel free to put them in my askbox, because I really feel like writing right now.

Trying to write about Skulduggery and Valkyrie in an AU. It is turning out very long, so in the meantime I’m gonna talk about what the Sanctuary is up to.

This au pulls the very stereotypical “most of civilization has collapsed”, so Roarhaven is incredibly crowded full of people mortal and sorcerer alike, and the city is shielded at certain times of the day to protect from threats (most notably Mevolent/Serafina or the Faceless Ones).

Like, when I say packed, I mean packed. Pretty much the whole city is stacked on top of each other and some people are seeing if they can connect the buildings together to form one massive structure, and even that isn’t enough to hold all the people now penned up in this city. Splashes of magic are becoming even more widespread, especially among mortals, to the point that some of the police have started to crack down on it. There are also people who can’t afford places to stay who all sleep together under one big tarp to conserve body heat, it is a mess.

China got aged down to about her forties in this au because of the magic blast, which really led to her being annoyed that magical explosions kept tampering with her age. She’s no longer the principal of Corrival and now she lives on the edge of town running a business as a Signum Linguist (since Signum Linguists are in very high demand in Roarhaven). She doesn’t create Splashes, but she does make weapons and/or enhancements for soldiers, particularly mortal ones (which I will get into later).

Corrival Academy is technically no longer functional but many of the teachers do still teach, and they find places and times to do it so that students can show up in groups and learn. Teachers like Fletcher and Militsa are partially helping the Sanctuary keep organized and on-task and partially trying to organize and actual school for kids since the last one fell apart. Also Militsa broke up with Valkyrie again on account of Val being an evil god (AGAIN), and now she and Fletcher are disaster besties who’re trying to keep it together. The two of them somehow managed to keep Xena alive until her death at an old doggy age.

Ghastly is still running things over at the Sanctuary, and he is having a VERY rough go of it. On top of mortals finding out about magic and chaos ensuing, he also has to deal with the fact that he now knows that Skulduggery is Lord Vile (because of what Cadaver told him) and that Valkyrie defended him for years (and has now turned into a slightly deranged god). He, Tanith, and Temper have been working together to create different military units with different purposes now that they have more demographics of people to keep track of, protect, and make use of. In short, Ghastly is even more burnt out than he was before the apocalypse.

The mortals have also been making themselves useful, usually working as soldiers for the Sanctuary. I talked about technomages a bit earlier, and I am talking about them now. Lots of the mortals now living in Roarhaven have been going out of their way to equip magical tools (usually weapons) to help them keep up with the sorcerers. This has led to them basically forming into military units working for the Sanctuary and has greatly increased their firepower, making them slightly less appealing to attack.

On top of Temper, Tanith, and Ghastly at the top of the Sanctuary, Dexter Vex also has a little group of his own who technically don’t work for the Sanctuary, but stay in Roarhaven and are more than willing to do tasks alongside them. Aside from Dexter, this team consists of Saracen (who was revived in the same way as Anton), Kierre, Aurora, Frightening, Donegan, and Gracious. Kierre showed back up when the Sanctuary (aided by China’s sigils) figured out a way to fix her boyfriend, and Aurora and Frightening found each other in America shortly after the general apocalypse (North America did not take it well) and then hopped over to Ireland to find Dexter. The Monsters Hunters did something similar to this except that they were in England at the time, and Saracen basically respawned in Ireland.

One of the people who is not present at the Sanctuary (or in Roarhaven at all) is Anton Shudder. He’s off working for Valkyrie for reasons that I plan on explaining in a later post, but he (and Valkyrie) are missed dearly by their friends.

Unlike most of the other groups in this au, Roarhaven isn’t actually aggressive and doesn’t go out of their way to pick fights with other gangs, instead working to act as a safe space for refugees from the war. They’re also completely stationary, which is why they have the part-time shield to protect them from attacks. Valkyrie is willing to spend resources to protect them, but they don’t entirely trust her and so she tends to give them space. They do get visits from her occasionally though, and she’s described as feeling like a harbinger of doom.

Much words, sorry to spam you all with au stuff

I’d have to have literally zero other creative projects going on if I were to write this AU as an actual piece of fanfiction, because my overanalyzing dumbass would give every single character an arc and this AU is basically “how many characters can I have running around at once” 💀

Ok. So. I was initially going to make this in one post, but then I realized it was going to be too long and so have split it into two parts. This is gonna be me rambling about an AU. This is part one and is going to be about Skulduggery, Valkyrie, and how they’re doing in the war. This is still probably gonna be a long post that makes exactly zero sense, so buckle up.

Firstly, I’m gonna talk about what the two of them turned into after the big magic explosion.

At first Valkyrie seems relatively normal, albeit a bit injured. It takes a few days for her to realize that anything changed, similarly to what happened at the end of DoA. But she eventually begins to suspect that something is off about her and after a week or two manages to trigger a transformation that gives her several sets of wings and a set of retractable tentacles with which she is able to absorb other people’s souls and move power from person to person.

Shortly after this, she also starts acting a lot weirder. Similarly to Darquesse and her obsession with magic energy, actually, except that Valkyrie gains an obsession with absorbing everyone she cares about so that she cannot ever lose them. Luckily for everyone else, she’s only willing to do this if they’re close to death (at least in her current state). But basically, she starts talking a lot more like a god would, which is weirdly, vaguely, and objectifying of everyone around them. Skulduggery and Anton are both in something similar to isolation with her at some point, and so they are the first two to notice. Anton is vaguely creeped out but trusts Valkyrie in spite of it, even if he does continue to be slightly morally off-put by some of her decisions. Skulduggery doesn’t really mind it, and even welcomes the additional power since he’s now having to try and stay normal and not turn back into Lord Vile. In the years since she and Skulduggery split off from the main group, her form with wings has also grown in size, although she’s still normal on the rare occasions she decides to look normal.

Now, Skulduggery didn’t really have any big magic transformation. However, bad circumstances and peer pressure basically forced him to put large chunks of the armour back on so he could fight, and he ended up never really taking them off out of paranoia that he was about to be jumped by Sanctuary officers, even when he was at Valkyrie’s house. So it wasn’t the magic that eventually made him go insane, it was the magic armour, the violent tendencies that come with it, and his best friend randomly turning into a god.

While they’re technically classified as leading different groups, they work together constantly and are still pretty much inseparable. The two groups have also decided to just…merge together. It’s famously codependent duo that’s leading them, they might as well become besties at this point.

Another thing about how they work is that their dynamic drifts around a bit, but through areas that are pretty predictable. The two of them both sort of have the average SP god’s appreciation of life, that being “it’s all irrelevant in the face of the universe”, and as a result they don’t really think about the potential consequences of their violent actions. When they’re like this, they both tend to talk in such a way too (as stated earlier). However, they’ll also default to bantering as normal sometimes. But more importantly, the two of them (although most prominently Valkyrie) sort of…float in and out of lucidity.

To explain, they’re both insane and their brains work like gods, they don’t really think about the consequences of their actions. However, there are times when things such as their humanity, old morality and general personalities float back to them that sometimes cause them to have small breakdowns (although again, this tends to happen more with Valkyrie). And those usually last for a few days, and then their brains begin to slide more back towards the cold inhumanity of godhood. So their followers really just have to wake up and figure out how their bosses are doing mentally on that particular day.

That’s all I can think of for them right now tbh, but maybe I’ll add more in the future. Next post is gonna take a lot more organizing than this one.

Part two of that ridiculously long post about AU Skul and Val, this time covering where they are located, what they do, who their followers are (including relevant characters) and their dynamics with other groups. Again, long post. Stuff alluding to more stuff I will talk about in the future. Pretty standard for me, overall.

Group demographics: as I said in the previous post, they technically lead two different groups of people. Skulduggery’s group is the necromancers, including but not limited to the Wreath gang. He’s now considered the king of them and so the majority of necromancers in Ireland (and some surrounding countries) follow his orders and live with the group.

Valkyrie’s group is a lot less clear-cut, but her group generally consists of people who either want power, want to fight gods, or have some flavour of criminal record and therefore don’t feel safe living in Roarhaven with the Sanctuary tightly running everything (definitely with some degree of prejudice).

Which characters are there: needless to say they have a decent number of followers, but I’m just going to list some of the actually relevant characters in here.

Melancholia and Solomon Wreath are there, and while they technically follow Skulduggery they also both love Valkyrie to a stronger degree than the other necromancers. When they came back from the dead, they decided that Skulduggery being in a situation where he pushed himself to accept his necromancy more was a good thing and so they kind of just…chilled in the background for a couple years while they worked out the kinks in their plan. They also didn’t tell anyone who wasn’t in their very specific group of necromancers, hence why Melancholia avoided telling anything to Valkyrie in AMFoM.

Anton Shudder is also present and works as Valkyrie’s second-in-command, but the way he got here is a little different from the others. This is all part of a very elaborate idea I have that I might write out in detail at some point, but for now I’m sticking to a summary. When Anton comes back right after the wand explodes, there is a lot going on. Cadaver is there, Valkyrie is there, Skulduggery is there and wearing Lord Vile’s armour, and Ghastly is there with a squad of Cleavers in order to fight them. Lots of stuff, and Anton is immediately confused. However, he ends up latching on to Valkyrie because she seems normal. Skulduggery is being weird, Ghastly is acting vaguely like a dictator and he has no idea what’s up with Cadaver, so he sticks to Valkyrie‘s side while she explains the situation to him. When it’s all over, Anton is given the choice to either go with Ghastly so he can be properly assimilated back into modern reality, or he can go with Valkyrie and she’ll help him best she can. Again, Project Veritas is a thing and Anton chooses the safer option and enters what is pretty much social isolation with Skulduggery and Valkyrie. He…did not love finding out about the Lord Vile thing.

The only reason he didn’t leave right there and then was because he didn’t exactly have anywhere else to go and he was also in the middle of figuring out his own unfortunate powers. His gisting ability is still there, it’s just altered. So instead of summoning a gist and having it fight for him, his being sort of fades in and out of reality while being replaced with the gist for few-second bursts at a time. It impacted him similarly to Valkyrie turning into a god, except to a lesser degree. When she decided to split off from the rest of Roarhaven, he kept on following her because again, he didn’t have anywhere to go and was vaguely worried that other people would see him as a demon. Nowadays, he works as a high-ranking member of the group and has a tendency to emotionally adopt younger soldiers, possibly trying to make up for the misdeeds he actively commits as a soldier. Like, this man feels crippling guilt for what he does but also legitimately loves Valkyrie and sees her as his little sister and has so become pretty good at just…shutting off his thoughts. He’s very sad and very good at his job, and Valkyrie worries about him in her more lucid moments.

When Anton needs to get away from it all, he leaves base for a few hours to go find a secret room he found in the ruins of the Dublin Sanctuary (although it had since been renovated. And then turned back into ruins) to talk to a series of echo stones that contain Erskine Ravel, from several hundred years in the past leading up to a few weeks prior to him betraying them, with a new stone for about every fifty or so years. He talks to them as a weird sort of therapy, because he has complicated feelings regarding Erskine and so he has someone to talk to who isn’t loyal to Valkyrie or Skulduggery. Nobody else knows about this place because Anton doesn’t want the two of them to find out lest they destroy the echo stones in a rage against Erskine.

Nefarian is also present in the group, and he hangs out a lot with Valkyrie because she finds him funny, even in her apathetic god form. Nefarian originally left Roarhaven because he didn’t totally trust Ghastly to not prosecute him for his crimes and so left to go join his only friend, who was happy to have him. He’s silly and he makes annoying remarks, but he’s also careful to do his job well so as to stay in Valkyrie’s favour. He’s in the process of learning how to be what currently counts as a normal person, which involves him dealing with emotional issues galore. I need to know more about his relationship with his family, because there is a damn reason he’s so attention-hungry and I can probably pin it on those guys.

Dusk is technically also a follower of Valkyrie, but he sort of fades in and out of the group. He left Roarhaven for a similar reason to Nefarian and left a bit after, deciding that he knew and therefore trusted Valkyrie enough to not kill him for being in her encampment. He now spends some of his time working for her and some of his time chilling in the wilderness, avoiding other vampires who might want to kill him for his crime of killing Moloch. Some of the other members of the group don’t like him but Valkyrie is extremely patient with him.

Where they’re located: I want to say that their main base is in whatever’s leftover of Dublin, since it’s close enough to Roarhaven that Valkyrie can keep and eye on them, it has resources and room for the people to live, and it has some degree of familiarity/emotional meaning to her. If Dublin wasn’t already fully empty by the time the full group of them showed up to take it over, whoever was there either left, was killed, or was assimilated into the group. The base in Dublin also most definitely has a time-locked cage in it for the purpose of containing Dusk at night. But while their main base is located in Dublin, they most certainly spend a large amount of time outside of it. However, they don’t spend all their time in Roarhaven. It’s quite normal for large groups (and sometimes even all of them) to leave camp to go on a little crusade to kill a Faceless One or attack some nearby enemy group. So while they’re generally located in Dublin, it’s far from a sure-fire way to find them and they’re often out wandering the wastelands in search of a fight (often headed by Skulduggery, Valkyrie, or both of them).

Their dynamics with the other groups: there are many groups, and so I’m not going to list all of them. I will list their major nearby gangs though.

Mevolent and Serafina’s team: the two groups hate each other to a degree that would be comedic if they didn’t have horrifyingly overpowered leaders. Mevolent’s little gang doesn’t have a main base, and instead wanders around Ireland (and other places when he can access them) in search of bloodshed. Other groups avoid them like the plague. Val + Skul’s team and Mev + Set’s team will also go out of their way to pick fights with each other when they’re in the area with each other. It’s not particularly deep, but it’s this whole well-known thing how much these two incredibly powerful and bloodthirsty groups hate each other.

The Sanctuary: Valkyrie’s friends miss her dearly and want her back. Some of them have become so burnt out from fighting that they’ve seriously thought about accepting her offer to have their souls melded to her (most particularly Dexter and Saracen). Although nobody has taken her up on it yet, she keeps the offer open. She also goes out of her way to protect them from danger she knows is coming (mainly Mevolent), although she tries to not do anything too direct because the Sanctuary has made it clear that she isn’t welcome in her current state. As for Skulduggery, well…there are complicated feelings and a lot more hatred towards him, especially coming from Ghastly. After all, it was revealed to the world that Skulduggery was Lord Vile only a few weeks previous to the magic explosion that kickstarted the end of the world. A lot of Sanctuary officials probably wouldn’t even believe that it was him if not for the fact that he had confirmed it himself. However, these Sanctuary people also place relatively little blame on Valkyrie for protecting him for so long because Cadaver explained in pretty clear detail that he lowkey emotionally blackmailed her into keeping the secret when she was sixteen. In short, Valkyrie is more well-liked than Skulduggery. This is actually a trend across nearly all of the groups still around, actually. Skulduggery is bad.

Winter’s rebellion: I am going to make an entire post talking about Winter and her little group because there is a lot to cover, but she fears her sister. A lot. Valkyrie would never kill her of course, but is definitely willing to injure her and will kill Winter’s teammates if provoked. She also refuses to let Winter kill Anton as vengeance for the death of Mia, which is a huge source of frustration for Winter. It’s also very bemusing to Winter that she, the girl who once tried to take over the world, is now actively working to keep the world free and instead prevent her sister from dominating it. She also has a bit of a dynamic with Skulduggery, but I’d like to cover it later in more detail. Additional info, Winter still hasn’t found out about Stephanie, who is Valkyrie’s current soul-finding project.

Again, there might be stuff I forgot in this post. There is a reason I split it into two parts. Winter is up next and then I might write some stuff about Dexter’s team because I have a weird number of ideas for the seven of them. Have fun y’all, remember to stay hydrated.

Actually, before I forget, I’d like to talk about how the god-killer weapons are used in my AU! After all, they’re one of the few things that can still kill characters like Valkyrie and Mevolent. This one will be a lot shorter because there’s a lot less to say, just me giving a bit of info about where they’re at.

Valkyrie still has the fragments of the katehedral crystal inside her, so she’s basically a walking god-killer. She’s also gained a stronger control of her power since AMFoM, so she can shoot well-controlled beams and won’t accidentally obliterate her friends. This also makes her an on-sight target for many groups, since she can never be disarmed now. On another note, she cannot absorb the souls of people who were killed by god-killers, so they’re quite a source of frustration for her.

Additionally, the katehedral crystal (I think that’s how it’s spelled?) is actually pretty unhealthy for Valkyrie to have in her system, and it’s had some pretty adverse effects on her magic. Adding on to the fact that some of Valkyrie’s powers are growing weaker in AMFoM, the katehedral is basically draining them and by now it’s nearly impossible for her to access that vein of magic (although she has no problem with her god powers and can still replicate other’s magic). It was originally the Wreath gang who figured out how badly the crystal was affecting her (this being a few months prior to her turning into a god) and attempted to perform something of a surgery on her to get rid of the crystal? It didn’t work, hence why Valkyrie still shoots black lightning.

Other than that, the four god-killers are still around. Skulduggery has the sword, which makes the two of them an incredibly dangerous duo and make other groups avoid them even more. Mevolent got the short end of the stick and has the dagger, which he often uses to execute enemies or prisoners that he never wants to risk coming back. Winter has the spear, and she pretty much keeps it with her at all times. And lastly, Saracen has the bow (the Sanctuary doesn’t have a god-killer but does have Saracen).

Since god-killers are such a rare and useful commodity in this war, there was a several-year effort to try and find other dimensions that they could raid for god-killers (“they” being most or all of the local groups in this context). However, everybody eventually gave up because of how difficult it was to locate other habitable dimensions, let alone other habitable dimensions with god-killers (I’m going to note here that they do not have the knowledge of what the Darquesse society used to find Darquesse. In fact, none of them have probably questioned it).

And that should be all. Nice and short, might come in useful. I like making use of the god-killer weapons.

Okay…talking about Winter is really not cooperating with me, so I’m talking about Dexter’s team in the meantime because I find them fascinating and it leaves room for me to talk about some other Roarhaven people in the future.

Where they are: I’ve said this before but I’ll happily say it again: Dexter and his team are located in/around Roarhaven and live among the citizens.

What they do: They don’t work for the Sanctuary but they do tasks alongside the Sanctuary and will gladly help around keeping Roarhaven safe and in check. They also do little mystery-solving and/or murderous tasks that their own members want to do, most notably Dexter (since he is their leader). Ghastly is unbelievably paranoid and so doesn’t trust them to not be somewhat working for Valkyrie (this is specifically aimed at Dexter and Saracen and is actually rooted in something I will discuss later) but still gives them quite a bit of leeway in what they do.

Who’s there: THIS is the part I’ve been wanting to talk about, as I am weirdly brainrotted about them and have lots of ideas about how I would want to write them. There are an iconic seven members on the team, those members being Dexter, Saracen, Kierre, Donegan, Gracious, Aurora, and Frightening.

Dexter, as I said earlier, is the group leader. He does his best to keep his gang healthy and safe and has some emotional/trust issues caused by losing Saracen and being betrayed by…a lot of people. In fact, he was very possessive of Saracen when he came back because Dexter was scared of losing him again, and it took a hard talk between the two of them for Dexter to start backing off. Most of Ghastly’s slight distrust for the group is directed at Dexter, although also at a good degree towards Saracen. The reason for this being that Valkyrie, who wants to absorb the souls of those she cares about so that she can never lose them, has provided such a thing as a standing offer towards her various friends in Roarhaven. Dexter had extremely bad mental health and has strangely considered it multiple times, and Ghastly (as well as Saracen) is aware of this. Because of this, Dexter feels that Valkyrie is something of a personal threat to him, but in a way where the blame is ultimately put upon himself. He’s doing great, y’all.

Saracen doesn’t have great mental health either, but at least he’s better than Dexter. Saracen goes out of his way to help Dexter upkeep everything and stop his life from falling apart, effectively making Saracen the second-in-command. The war going on all around them has forced him to sober up a lot, but he still does try to maintain some of his silliness so as to not impact group morale. He also has the god-killer bow and is an excellent sharpshooter. He does sometimes wonder if he’d be happier as an extension of Valkyrie, but the thought of being nothing more than a branch of someone else scares him and keeps him from ever doing it. Despite this, he still loves Valkyrie and talks to her when he can.

Kierre joined the group last and was invited on by Dexter shortly after she and Temper landed in Roarhaven. She wasn’t sure about joining at first but eventually agreed to after some encouragement from Temper, and been doing excellent since then. She’s very slow to trust, but Dexter’s gang is a legitimately wholesome group of people and she has since learned to love them and is now quite protective of them. They’re also very important for her deprogramming a lot of the cultish religious stuff she grew up with, so Kierre is actually getting a lot of opportunity to grow and develop as a person from this war. She’s very small and Gracious made a stupid comment that infantilized her once, which resulted in her dislodging his arm. He has since learned his lesson and the event earned her a lot of respect.

The Monster Hunters are here too! They’re silly little guys who went to Dexter in Ireland after civilization started collapsing and ended up never leaving. They’re quite sad to see what has happened to their world and to Valkyrie. Not much else to say about them to be honest, although I will note that Kierre didn’t like them at first and now thinks of them as gay idiots (affectionate).

And lastly, Aurora and Frightening get to be here! I imagine they were both in America when things started going south, found each other, and hopped over to find Dexter in Ireland because they didn’t know where else to go (this is a pretty repetitive theme). Aurora is in a permanent state of “done with everyone’s bullshit” but she will not let anything happen to her friends. Frightening is an emotional capybara (he was the first person that Kierre started to actually trust) who’s very sad about everything that has happened but tries to stay positive in order to help his friends (particularly Dexter). Despite his efforts, this has led to some toxic positivity on his part that Aurora needs to point out to him in order for him to try and fix it. They’re therapy friends for each other, basically.

All in all, very fun group and I love them a lot. Lots of ideas for them.

It is FINALLY time to talk about Winter and her rebellion! This took me several days so I have zero idea how coherent it is! Sorry 😃

So, Winter spent numerous of her teenage years running a terrorist organization. As a result, she is no longer allowed in Roarhaven and so runs a rebellion against some of the stronger god factions (mainly Mevolent and Valkyrie, somewhat the Darquesse cult) with a gang of people who are left over from the terrorist group.

Winter is the leader, and Alter is second-in-command. I’m debating whether or not they should be dating and I’m leaning towards yes, but I also lowkey refuse to write romance so we’ll see where it goes. Alter was also the guy who convinced Winter to join the group and eventually run it, so he does feel some responsibility for the events that went down because of it. Also, constantly nearly dying has made him a lot less Nazi-coded, so at least that’s a plus.

Aside from Alter, Malice is also there (still in energy form) and basically acts like Winter’s shadow by giving advice, following her around everywhere, and making sure that nobody is trying to sneak up and kill Winter. Malice is directly the reason why the Faceless Ones escaped from their prison, but she realized that they weren’t going to help her and instead decided that it would be more vindicating to help Winter defeat Valkyrie.

Somebody who is not there is Mia. She and Winter both joined the organization at together (although for different reasons) and Mia ended up sticking around to support Winter when she took over. Eventually the bone wand exploded and turned Valkyrie into a god, yadda yadda, but the whole thing ended with Winter being sort of…cut off? From her sister, her parents, from the Sanctuary and Roarhaven as a whole…pretty much everything except for her little organization. And so when Valkyrie started acting weird and the Faceless Ones escaped, Winter decided to dedicate what little she had left to fighting her sister. This was going alright until a fight between the two groups where Anton was cornered and using his gist, and Mia tried to step in to protect somebody else, causing the gist to grab her and maul her to death before anyone could stop it.

Winter has since made it a goal to kill Anton Shudder in vengeance for what happened. Like, she loathes his continued existence to a Skulduggery/Nefarian level. Anton, on the other hand, did not actually know who Mia was but felt absolutely awful (and still does) about the fact that he killed a teenager who was trying to save her friend.

Since the organization and everyone in it was kicked out of Roarhaven, they have continued their lack of association with the Irish Sanctuary and move around a lot, not really having a single main base. I do think that they would spend a fair bit of time in America though, where there are fewer gods to fight and therefore less constant danger. Winter also regularly gets into territory skirmishes with Valkyrie over who gets to maintain control of the Grimwood House, although Winter doesn’t know what’s down there. She just knows that she wants Valkyrie to stay the hell away from it. Valkyrie, on the other hand, wants to create more god-killers to use on people like Mevolent but has a hard time with it because neither she nor Skulduggery can go down there on account of the fact that they would get torn apart by magic-sensing monsters. Also, they’re a tad nervous about waking up the dragon. Valkyrie is half considering trying to use it as a pet. But Winter knows none of this, she just spends a lot of time trying to stop Valkyrie from getting whatever’s down there.

In fact, the rebellion as a whole does a lot of that. Their purpose is to try and kill as many gods as possible to return the world to peace, with Winter (who has the god-killer spear) at the head of it. Aside from Valkyrie and Skulduggery, the rebellion also regularly gets into fights with Mevolent’s troops. They do, however, avoid going near the Sanctuary for various reasons, including the understanding that their existence near Roarhaven would disturb its place as a relatively peaceful haven.

And Winter herself? Lots of issues. Valkyrie becoming a god and then regularly defeating Winter’s rebellion in fights has really not had a great effect on her already bad self-esteem. She’s also now had to live her life for years without her sister to look up to, which is especially hard because Valkyrie was a huge role model for her her entire life. She also still has periodic breakdowns regarding Cadaverous Gant as well as something that Cadaver Cain did to her (specifically betraying and then shooting her. And saying that Valkyrie was superior to her for not trusting him). Winter is also very cut-off from her parents because they’re mortals who’re hiding in Roarhaven at best and dead at worst. Lastly, Winter has a bit of a complex relationship with Skulduggery because she now knows slightly more the extent to which he took advantage of Valkyrie as a kid, but she also remembers him protecting her from Cadaverous and him just…being a background figure in her life for a long time. Skulduggery would probably kill her if not for the fact that Valkyrie would be sad about it.

In short, Winter has many issues that I think would be interesting to write about, and if I ever write this out as a fic it will be written partially from her perspective.

As a slightly more lighthearted part of Battlescape of the Gods, I wanna talk about Omen, Abyssinia, and Nye being roommates. Because I find it funny. Found familying the most bizarre trio ever but it fits in my head.

So BASICALLY what happened was Abyssinia spent her life kind of wandering around and not doing much after she got brought back by Cadaver, because really, what was she going to do? And her misadventures eventually got her teleported to America, where she continued doing nothing with her life. The USA also so happened to be the place Omen was currently living in, although in slightly different places.

But then the Faceless Ones get out, and things start going down. It’s not as apocalyptic as UtE, but the damage that a bunch of scared people will do to each other is incredible. Omen ended up wandering around and trying to stay alive whilst Abyssinia had gained access to a gun and was making full use of it. They met pretty randomly because Abyssinia attacked some guys who so happened to be attacking Omen, and then Omen basically started following her around because she was bigger, scarier, and didn’t pay mind to Omen following her.

So the two of them wandered around for a bit, and eventually stumbled across the entrance to Professor Nye’s lab. It wasn’t particularly happy to see other people, but it did acknowledge the use of having someone who can absorb power to make herself stronger and a Signum Linguist on its team, and so agreed to let them stay so long as they didn’t interfere with its experiments.

And that is what they’ve been doing ever since. They aren’t allowed to leave the lab super often because it’s dangerous, but Abyssinia goes out to gather supplies and pick fights with random people while Omen sometimes goes out to draw art on walls, usually art that encourages people to keep going with life. It’s very much enrichment for them, because there isn’t really a whole lot to do in the lab. Nye has gotten slightly more comfortable with them over the years, but there are still parts of the lab that they’re banned from entering and…really, it’s a lab. People were not made to live there.

In the meantime, they’ve been trying to find ways to entertain themselves. Abyssinia sometimes finds art supplies to give to Omen and Omen has been trying his best to catch Abyssinia up with everything that’s been going on since her death (because she never really got an update. She’s just been chilling with no idea what’s going on around her). He once found a board game and tried to teach her to play it, and it turns out that she’s very competitive. And Nye absolutely refused to play because it thought that the activity was childish.

There’s more stuff as well, but this is basically what they’ve been up to these past few years. Pretty relaxed vibe going on there. I am DEBATING giving Nye a kid (Crenga reproduce asexually Because I Said So™️) but who knows if I’ll actually go through with it.

Actually talking about the AU (wow, I know) by rambling about how Anton Shudder ended up on a team with the necroking and a godlike Valkyrie, because he really isn’t on their level of gleefully deranged. I am so biased towards him it’s not even funny.

Anton came back when the rib-bone wand exploded and sent out a burst of magic power, hitting various people differently. Anton, given as to how he’d been dead for so long, was extremely disoriented and saw a lot of chaos going on around him. He instinctively latched on to Valkyrie because he trusted her to not lead him into any stupid situations and she actually still seemed normal at this point.

Valkyrie was really happy to have Anton back and tried loosely explaining the situation to him as they went along fighting people (specifically Winter’s terrorist group). After the fight was over, Valkyrie argued with Ghastly over what should happen to Skulduggery (the compromise being that Skulduggery can be in Ireland for the time being but cannot go in or near Roarhaven) and the three of them decided that staying around Valkyrie’s house for the time being would probably be a good idea, and so they do that so Skulduggery has somewhere to hide and Anton can catch up with what happened since his death.

Now at this point, Valkyrie seemed normal to everyone, including to herself (think of when she turned into a Faceless One god). It took a few days for her to realize anything was wrong with her, and then she had to figure out how to trigger her transformation and what to do afterwards. She and Skulduggery (who’s now using parts of the shadow armour) also started acting more and more violent and unhinged over the next few days, but neither of them really noticed it.

Anton noticed it though, and he had conflicting feelings about it. Because on one hand, he disapproved of the meaningless violence. But on another hand, he loved them both a lot (he and Valkyrie eventually view each other as siblings) and he was also going through an interesting transformation at the time: losing his ability to summon his gist and instead basically being able to turn into a shadowy demon creature for short bursts at a time.

And then the Faceless Ones got out thanks to Malice. And while they were weaker than before, it meant that the mortals now knew about magic and things started going downhill fast. And Valkyrie jumped to the opportunity and went out to go pick fights with the Faceless Ones, while Skulduggery grabbed the other necromancers in order to do the same thing. And since Anton had nowhere else to go, he just…kept on following Valkyrie. Throughout everything. When other people started following her, when they settled down in Dublin, when he killed Mia, the list goes on.

And now it’s been years, and he can’t imagine anywhere he would ever be able to go away from Valkyrie. He’s unhappy, yes, but he doesn’t hate her. Really, he’s learned to shut out a lot of his emotions so that they don’t keep on bothering him. We’ll see how long it takes for him to finally lose it, I suppose.

I am losing to my demons and am now talking about the university in Battlescape! 😀

I have no idea if it will matter to any of you, but I’m also going to discuss Skulduggery’s relationship with his siblings.

I already mentioned this in my post about the premise of this AU, but the university in Battlescape was created by a bunch of scientists who didn’t want to engage in traditional warfare and now exists as a place very separate from the rest of the world.

It is a physical place, but it is very hard to get to because it moves about, similarly to Coldheart prison. In fact, it was designed to act like Coldheart prison because Coldheart was famously so difficult to find and then break in to.

At first, it was just a group of scientists who designed somewhere to live, but it quickly branched out into a fully functional university that is now famous around the planet for being a place of legitimate prosperity. Families regularly send their children to try and live there so that the kids can live safer lives, and so the university (and it’s reputation) are always growing.

This university is magic-science based, and so those who founded it have made it double as a group of scientists-for-hire who will help anyone who pays them or offers them protection/resources. It’s a great way for the students to test their knowledge and abilities and it’s made it so that other conflicting groups don’t want harm to come to the university, making it even safer. It does, however, mean that some sacrifice of morality is necessary in order to thrive the way that it does.

China has been invited to live at the university but turned down the invitation because she didn’t like the idea, the people, or the thought of having to share her knowledge with an extensive amount of people (especially now that her magic charm is functional again). Nye isn’t there either because it hates working with other people and is cooped up in a lab with Abyssinia and Omen on a different continent. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some very intelligent people at the university.

For example, Destrier is there and has continued some of his experiments regarding temporal manipulation, although those ones are generally banned from the public and only some of his top students are allowed to know about it. He still has his nervous demeanour and so rarely goes outside the university to negotiate or make deals with other groups.

Confelicity, Skulduggery’s sister, is also there. She’s a lot more confident and so does a lot more of the negotiating, which puts her on the field with her older brother a lot more. She doesn’t like him on account of the whole Vile thing (and the generally heinous stuff he does nowadays) but has actually befriended Valkyrie, and the two of them interact sometimes. In fact, most of Skulduggery’s siblings now dislike him and prefer Valkyrie, with an exception being Uther (because he hates them both). Valkyrie has realized that there isn’t much she can do to get them on speaking terms with one another. Confelicity does a lot around biological warfare and magic-based fauna (she would go INSANE if she found out about the dragon in Valkyrie’s basement. Val hasn’t told her because Confelicity would pull the most airheaded scholar move possible and try to go and study it).

The Engineer is also present at the university, but it doesn’t do much research and is instead more of a mascot that people can occasionally ask difficult questions to. Like a calculator combined with a puppy, basically. The students love having conversations with it.

A lot of work also gets put into forming protections against the Faceless Ones, because those things are completely inhuman and so are one of the only groups willing to actually harm the university. That said though, they are probably one of the most well-off groups in this AU. Writing their little science-y shenanigans would be fun.

I’m just realizing this now, but the way I’ve written Valkyrie in Battlescape of the Gods really sets her up for slowly becoming more and more like Darquesse, possibly until she eventually replaces her or decides to leave in search of something more.

Like, Valkyrie’s obsession with protecting those close to her branching outwards and outwards until she sees herself as the protector of all beings on her world. Her friends slowly dying from varying causes and her absorbing each and every one of them until she’s no longer just Valkyrie, but the collective entity that is Valkyrie and everyone she has ever loved. Her friends slowly dying until there’s nothing left to bind her to this world, and she seems distant all the time.

Her friend’s souls slowly merging with her over many years, losing more and more of their individual aspects until they are simply a single being that wears the shell of Valkyrie.

Hm. Thoughts

I love Cadaver Cain so much, but I lowkey wrote him out of Battlescape 😭 man’s off getting therapy okay

Not really therapy, but he did get a slightly more reasonable version of Harpy Valkyrie (same way as Anton Shudder) back and the two of them decided to leave the others to whatever they were doing and like…explore the multiverse? Figure out whatever’s out there? They’re BOUND to wake up some Cthulu-esque monster and they just don’t care. It’s very fun for them.

They also sometimes visit their younger versions to see how they’re doing. This sometimes includes them showing up out of nowhere to lend a helping hand because they find it amusing and it absolutely JUMPSCRARES whoever it is they’re fighting. And since all four of them are now insane, they’re all friends and the older versions get along reasonably well with the younger versions.

So…definitely not therapy, they absolutely enable each other, but Cadaver is definitely less sadistic than he was without her because her being around has once again fixed him. Mostly.

Could I write them seriously? Absolutely, but where would be the fun in that? No, they get to go be silly together and have silly little horrifying adventures. I’m shitposting about them now. They are by FAR the least serious part of this au (although Omen, Abyssinia, and Nye are definitely runner-ups…but I have some actually deep ideas for them. These two have literally decided to spent their existence being silly and just a little unhinged).

I’m trying to decide what should happen with Skulduggery’s cats in Battlescape, because I don’t want them to die but I also don’t really know who’d take care of them.

I think I’m coming to the conclusion that when Skulduggery and Valkyrie’s gang (the necromancers and the god-slayers, perhaps) settle down in Dublin, they end up grabbing the cats from Skulduggery’s old house and they just…become the local pets. They’d probably be a lot less pampered then they would otherwise be but they’d have lots of room to run around and I imagine that the people there would enjoy the kitties.

Methinkin about ranks in the Sanctuary system in Battlescape, which would really be What’s In The Books™️+ other stuff. Let’s see how well I can organize it, I guess.

At the very top of the ladder is the Grand Mage, naturally. Official leader of each Sanctuary, gives out orders, makes laws and policies, and so on. I’m debating whether or not to make Roarhaven a democracy, but I’m leaning towards no because ain’t no way would the sorcerers ever manage to create a functioning democracy.

Right beneath the Grand Mage are the supporting Elders, who also give orders and help the Grand Mage keep organized and make policies. These two spots are currently empty for the Irish Sanctuary but they’re duties are performed by Temper Fray and Tanith Low.

There’s the Administrator. Keeps the whole Sanctuary organized, relays the Grand Mage’s orders to the soldiers/detectives. Since Roarhaven and it’s duties have gotten a lot bigger in the AU, I’m thinking of there being a council of five administrators, with Cerise as the head and the other four bring her assistants.

From there, the system goes into five main branches. Keepers of the Peace, the Detectives, the Specialized Skills units, science and technology, and the general military. Note that many of the people who work for these groups do assignments for other branches as well, or sometimes don’t belong to any particular branch at all. It’s very messy, but basically the types of activities they do is sorted into categories to make things easier (as opposed to strict lines in the sand about who they work for).

Keepers of the Peace are basically in charge of making sure that the various, very diverse groups within the city aren’t violently discriminating against each other. They also try to keep such corruption out of the Sanctuary as well. Duties include handling vampires (both helping and killing them when necessary) handling Gist-wielders, making sure mortals and sorcerers aren’t trying to kill each other, and splitting up hate groups. They also help people who are new to the city adjust, they have a whole system for it. This branch is headed by Temper.

The Detectives do as the detectives always have, which is solve problems, whether they be violence-based or mystery-based. They’ll also assassinate people when asked to, so really the detectives more serve as miscellaneous soldiers.

Specialized Skill units are sorcerers that are useful in wars but not your average fighting based soldier. Specialized skill sorcerers are ones such as Teleporters, Sensitives, Vitakinetics, and Gist-wielders (Gist-wielders need a lot of extra attention due to the raging mental issues that they usually come with, as well as their tendency to transform into full-fledged demons). Those in charge of Specialized Skill units tell these sorcerers where to go and make sure that they are safe and being properly cared for. This honour only extends to these type of sorcerers who work at the Sanctuary. Vampires who work for the Sanctuary (believe me, they are rare) would be categorized with the Special Skills unit but would probably do a fair bit of their work alongside the Keepers of the Peace.

Scientists/inventors are also pretty self-explanatory. They do science for the Sanctuary, which often involves creating new tech, new ways to stop the diseases that tear through the city, new ways to protect Roarhaven from invasion, and pretty much anything else useful. The science branch handles everything both magic and mundane, and is unaffiliated with the magic university that I still don’t have a name for.

And lastly, there’s the general military branch, which handles fighting, security, preventing street fights, and anything involving Ye Average Everyday Soldiers. Sub-branch of the general military branch is the prison system, which controls who works at the gaols, the locations of such prisons, and who is there (along with similar information). This branch is headed by Tanith.

The TYPES of soldiers who might belong to these units are as follows:

Sorcerers, who are exactly what you’d expect. They’re the majority population, they’re found everyone, and they can go into any branch they’re useful in.

Technomages, who are mortals that use magic tech to keep up alongside sorcerers. Some of them prefer to stealth and pretend to be normal sorcerers, while others are out and proud about being mortal. They aren’t really found in Specialized Skill units but can technically go anywhere else, although they’re virtually always some type of soldier (soldier meaning detective, assassin, cop, etc).

Completely normal mortals, who do not use violence-based magic tech. Since they aren’t violence-based, they go in the science branch. If they were to join one of the more militaristic branches, they’d pick up a magic weapon and become a technomage.

Cleavers, who go in the general military branch. How humane they are to keep around is under hot debate but for now, they’re staying. The science-tech branch is working on creating golems that function the same as Cleavers, but those are only in testing stages. Rippers can either leave, join a different branch, or stay in a different part of the general military. Cleavers are sometimes sent to do work for the Keepers of the Peace.

Miscellaneous magical beings who show up sometimes, such as witches, vampires, Crenga, and cursed magical creatures (such as Black Annis or Springheeled Jack if they weren’t dead). Quite rare but pretty useful (so long as they are kept under control), these types are usually given to Specialized Skill units for their unique abilities. The reason they aren’t given to the Keepers of the Peace is because that branch was made for protecting those outside the Sanctuary while the Specialized Skills branch was made to protect those inside.

There are NO Arbiters in the Sanctuary because nobody wanted to replace them when Skulduggery and Valkyrie left. There are, however, a few groups who serve a similar purpose, such as Dexter’s gang.

There are also probably a few programs and special units (similar to the Dead Men) in the Sanctuary, but the only particular idea I have right now is:

MILITARY COMMUNITY SERVICE! If someone fucks up with the law but has a relatively clean record or it was a minor crime, they can make it up by ensigning themselves to a program run by the Keepers of the Peace where they will have to complete or assist with one or more minor assignments (depending on the intensity of the crime). If someone is constantly going in and out of the program for committing crimes though, they usually get dragged off to prison or exiled unless they have a very good reason (such as coercion. In which case they have to help catch and punish those responsible).

Vampires and other similar creatures are quite common to find in this program because ✨discrimination✨. Really though, these types of people are usually under a lot more security than ye average citizen due to the fact that they can cause a lot more damage without being noticed. But since everyone in Roarhaven commits crimes at some point, these people all usually end up doing community service for something. They’re also more likely to get sent to prison or banished 😀 I get to write the fucked-up government system here

Also fuck it, another program is one run by the Specialized Skills branch that functions similarly to the Hidden Blades or the Cleavers, and what they do is they take orphans off the streets and train them to be gist-wielders, both because they then make excellent soldiers but also because then it can be discovered over time of gists really can be controlled or not. Anyways, orphans are picked up because it gives them somewhere to live, nobody is going to miss them, and they’re the most likely to have raging emotional issues, which makes them powerful as gists. The Irish Sanctuary, taking advantage of emotionally volatile children? Never.

But that’s the only idea for a program I have at the moment, so if anyone has any ideas let me know!

Fletcher and Militsa actually play a role in my AU and I want to talk about them because they are incredibly precious to me. Rambling ahead:

Starting off by officiating that Militsa broke up with Valkyrie again on account of the evil god thing, they’re both very sad about it but Militsa is firm in her decision and Fletcher supports her in it.

Fletcher and Militsa aren’t dating (I headcanon Militsa as lesbian), their relationship is very platonic, but they do live together because it’s very crowded in Roarhaven and so it’s hard to get places to stay. It’s also safer because they can protect each other more.

Because really, they’re disaster besties. The world has pretty much ended and their ex is an evil god, they are not having a fun time and are trying to salvage what little of their life they have left. They mutually decided to not go work at the university because while it is safer, it also requires a sacrifice of morals and both of them are very motivated by being good people.

Currently, they both still sort of work as teachers, but they definitely don’t do so officially. Mostly they find empty spots in the city to hold little meetings that students can show up to and learn so that they get some form of education. Some of the other teachers from the school show up as well or hold similar meetings separate from them. The Sanctuary is working on a new education system since the old one kind of got messed up by…everything, but the two of them are doing their best to help people with what little resources they have.

Fletcher is a very jumpy guy who is also very protective of Militsa, and he stays by her side pretty much all the time. If there is ever anything that vaguely resembles danger, he will immediately grab her and teleport. He sometimes does this on a false alarm and Militsa doesn’t really like it, but she also understands that he has had everything stripped away from him and he doesn’t want to risk losing his best friend too.

I haven’t decided how long Valkyrie’s parents survive for in this AU, but if they make it to Roarhaven, than Militsa and Fletcher would absolutely help take care of them until they eventually die of old age. The two of them also took care of Xena until she died too, so really the two of them did a lot of tying of the loose ends that Valkyrie left behind.

Fletcher is eternally an optimist who believes that there does exist a way to fix Valkyrie, but he was absolutely appalled (although sadly not too surprised) at finding out that Skulduggery low-key emotionally blackmailed Valkyrie when she was a teenager. Militsa has more complex feelings but she is also horrified. However, she’s not quite as optimistic as her friend that Valkyrie’s situation is reversible

If the two of them were to survive long enough, they’d probably end up taking some other, likely most sinister job in order to survive (I’m considering bounty hunter) but I haven’t decided on what yet.

Until then, they’re just two sad best friends at the end of the world who’re trying to help those around them. I wanna hug them both.

Talking about AU Temper because I love him and he deserves better! Spoilers for UtE under cut!

This AU still follows the canon in the way that Temper ended up being consumed by his gist, having that gist be edited by Nuncle, and then running off. Kierre decides to spend her time following him around for several years because she doesn’t really have anyone else to go to except her siblings and is too intimidated by the world to actually go out and make a life for herself (as a result of having to live completely hidden from the public because of her siblings).

When the world ends, Temper and Kierre, are forced to spend more time closer to Roarhaven because it’s safer for them and there are more people for Temper to fight. However, he is eventually captured by Dexter and Tanith, who convince China to try and use sigils to transform him back into a human (Kierre agrees to this but keeps careful watch over the whole thing).

And it works! Temper is back to his human form, with no real noticeable differences to before (although I’ve decided his teeth are a bit pointier than a normal human’s). The real kicker is that he doesn’t have his gist anymore though, although he still has Hansel and Gretel. But Hansel and Gretel aren’t actually effective for all the situations he needs, so he needs to figure out how he’s going to deal with this.

And what China offers to do is carve more sigils into his body that will offer him magical offence. And so he ends up agreeing, and so now he has energy claws he can summon from the tips of each of his fingers and I reckon he can also summon little shields from his forearms. After that whole ordeal was over, he and Kierre agreed to settle down in Roarhaven to try and start a life for themselves.

Temper actually does remember what it was like to be controlled by his gist, although it feels in his memory like how Vile feels to Skulduggery. He doesn’t like the memories and goes out of his way to avoid talking about it.

Nowadays, Temper works at the Sanctuary and is actually quite high ranking. His job is to keep infighting and discrimination going on in the city to a minimum (because of culture clashing sorcerers and mortals) as well as generally helping run things. He and Tanith aren’t officially Elders, but they basically fill the roles as Ghastly’s supporting Elders and some people jokingly call him an Elder.

Temper was also the reason that Kierre ended up joining with Dexter and company. She originally didn’t want to do it when Dexter offered the job to her, but Temper encouraged her to join so she’d have friends outside the cult she grew up in and so that she would be less reliant on him.

And one last thing, Temper isn’t actually very worried about Valkyrie. He thinks what happened to her was unfortunate (and currently has some very conflicting feelings about Skulduggery), but he doesn’t actually view her as a threat to Roarhaven on account of the effort she has put into protecting it. Ghastly, on the other hand, worries constantly that Valkyrie will one day get annoyed at the Sanctuary and decide to destroy Roarhaven, even if there is no indication of that happening.

In short, both Temper and Kierre are doing pretty well despite the circumstances, these two are a lot less angsty than many of the other characters in this AU.