An elf maiden dances on feet of living wood sung into shape, planted in soil and watered when she takes them off. Every year she plants the old ones and sings a new pair. (Incidentally, the pair of peach saplings from three years ago have produced an excellent crop- She makes preserves from them, and despite the inevitable jokes about “toe-jam”, they are appreciated.)
A dwarf king has a metal fist, all tiny gears and fine wires, kept wound by a mischievous mine-spirit bound to the spring as punishment- the more it struggles, the tighter the spring.
An orc chieftaness is regularly asked for the story of how she earned the name Wyrmthrottler- she boasts of how she strangled the dragon that ate her arm, and had her shaman make a new arm from its bones, with its fangs as the fingers.
A necromancer simply re-attached his old leg bones- Sacrificing a few mice each day keeps it going.
A pirate captain lost her arm to a shark attack: a passing selkie saved her, and gave her tattoos of kraken blood. Now she has an arm made of salt-water, that grows and wanes with the tides, and swings a cutlass as well as the original. (She doesn’t sail as far these days though: she doesn’t want her wife to worry.)
A wandering swordsman was broken at the waist- his ancestral armour allows him to walk again, as long as he keeps it polished, and burns incense to the ancestors regularly.
A high priestess has an eye made from a crystal ball- to predict the future, all she has to do is wink.
A bard was struck deaf by illness- he struck a deal with the god of music. Now he wears hearing-trumpets made from his old pipes, and dedicates his every song to the god of music- the better he plays, the better his hearing. (It is said his music could make statues weep, and he can hear a mouse fart at 60 paces.)
A princess has the arm of a golem, enchanted clay with mystic words carved in- her music tutor despairs of how her harp playing has become even worse, but her calligraphy tutor is ecstatic over her handwriting.
A goblin pickpocket has an arm made of whatever he steals- no-one feels his fingers, and even if they did, they couldn’t find their possessions amongst all the rest.
A witch has eyes made from shadow and starlight, given to her in a game with a demon. Nobody dares to ask what she wagered- they aren’t even sure she won.
A warg was born deaf and blind- his people learned of his power when the nearest birds started staring at them, and dogs pricked up their ears as he walked past.
But what if the princess was in the tower because she was the dragon?
Like the queen gives birth and oops it’s this adorable little scaley lizard with tiny wings that she can never quite seem to fold right
None of the King’s advisors or doctors can explain it, no one can remember anyone who might have cursed the royal family, plus sire she’s clearly yours still I mean look at those eyes
They just kind of accept it and keep her in a tower so no one tries to slay her
The queen or castle servants reading bedtime stories to the toddler princess, who’s made a nest of her favorite toys and some jewelery she stole off her mother, and when she laughs little puffs of smoke come out of her mouth
The king being so proud when she flies across the room for the first time
And once the princess comes of age, confused knights breaking into the tower to find a twenty foot long dragon sitting at the vanity getting her horns polished by her handmaidens
and the “kidnapped” princess is her girlfriend?
this feels like a minotaur myth gone amazingly right.
Okay, who brought this back? Because I haven’t seen notes on this thing in literally months.
She goes flying around the surrounding kingdoms, just watching and listening.
And pretty soon she has a dozen girls sharing the tower with her.
Some were being pushed to marry, or promised in marriage to someone they hated. Some were already married.
Some were poor, or hunted, or enslaved.
Some were thrown out, abandoned, banished.
There’s a princess there, yes, one who would rather sit in the solar and read books than marry a boorish prince and interact with her subjects all day.
There’s a wizard-student who fled her university after one of the professors tried to curse her for disagreeing with him.
There’s a girl who ran away to be a knight, and a girl who was thrown out for being pregnant, and a wife who ran out the door with her toddler carried in her broken arms, her belly swollen and unwieldy, and stories circulate from the bar the next day about how the dragon swooped down and stole away a man’s wife.
Probably ate her, he says. Good riddance.
There’s a formerly-wealthy merchant wife, cast out by her husband in middle age so he can wed someone young and pretty.
There’s an elderly grandmother who’s outlived her family and her usefulness.
A street child, rag-clad and starving. A baby, left abandoned on a hillside.
It begins to filter through the land, spoken from fathers to daughter, husbands to wives, employers to servants: if you are bad, the dragon will take you. if you are stubborn, or willful, or refuse to marry, the dragon will find you. if you are useless, or slovenly, or disobedient, you will be thrown out and the dragon will pluck you up in its claws and take you back to its lair filled with bones.
They do not understand that this is not a threat but a promise.
They do not know that the version their servants tell each other, their wives tell their daughters, their mothers tell circles of friends, is “if you are desperate, the dragon will find you. if you want out, the dragon will rescue you. if you pause outside, and tell your fears to the soft beating of wings somewhere in the sky, you will fly, and the dragon will carry you home.”
There are bones, but they are surrounded by living flesh.
The tower, the Princess’s Tower in the central kingdom, is hidden by the finest spells and left alone by longstanding tradition. The nature of the Princess’s curse is a matter of speculation, but most likely, people say, she is under some fairy’s enchantment, and she will sleep for a hundred years until the right prince finds the way in.
The wizard-student was fairly advanced in her studies, and is quite good at teaching the runaway scullery-maid and the young unmarried mother turned out when her belly showed. The gates to the far reaches of the tower grounds open to a hillside two kingdoms away, and to an alleyway in a major city, and to a deep tideswept cave near a fishing village and a harbor, and to a storage room in the oldest wing of the Princess’s home palace.
The rich former merchant’s wife sorts through the dragon’s hoard of gold and gems, and delivers instructions to the runaway postulant and the worn old farm wife; dressed as a young clerk and a common tradesman, they go to call on this merchant who sets the best prices, and that factor who has misplaced goods available for a low price, and this manufacturer of looms and that seller of books.
The farm wife knows the best sheep to buy at market, the ewes who will bear twins and the lambs which will have the finest wool. Another country over, this time in the company of “his” elderly “father,” she buys cows that will give good milk, and chickens that will lay good eggs.
An elderly wizard visits a university, and inquires after their library; she is let in, and watched as she pages through books filled with arcane topics in languages she can’t understand; back at the tower, the wizard girl and her students capture the pages in a scrying crystal.
A pretty young fishwife smiles at the vegetable-seller as her daughter clings to her skirts, and soon the girls and women of the tower have seeds to plant. Looms hum, and dyestuffs are boiled, and even the poorest in their former lives wear bright dresses, or breeches and tunics if they prefer.
The dragon brings back a pirate woman from the harbor, stolen from the hangman’s noose while the crowd cheers; she knows where there is treasure stored, and soon the young girls have gems to play with, and the girl who ran away to be a knight has someone to learn proper swordwork from.
The little girl whose first flight was in her mother’s broken arms wants to be a blacksmith; when a swordblade breaks, the dragon breathes on it, as long as needed, while the child determinedly hammers it back together.
The dragon princess surveys her kingdom with approval. It is small, and tonight she will fly over a small town, where she heard breaking crockery and yelling last night, to see if someone steps out into the darkness and wishes for a better life, and tomorrow there may be one more.
OKAY SO PEOPLE WANTED TO KNOW SO I DID MY BEST TO REWRITE IT!
(I HOPE IT MAKES SENSE I AM VERY TIRED AND THIS IS A LOT OF TEXT.)
My HC for Dwarf Beards and Gender Presentation
So the first thing you need to know is the average dwarf will have a primary braid and a secondary pair of braids to either side of it. These two sets of braids denote different things so
Primary Braid
The Primary Braid is the large braid down the center of the beard. Traditionally there are three recognized genders in Dwarven Society, though they do acknowledge an individual’s desire to express themselves in new ways. A traditional 3-strand braid denotes male preferred pronouns, a 4-strand braid denotes female preferred pronouns, and a 2-strand twist denotes a non-binary dwarf with gender-neutral pronouns. These are entirely based on gender expression and not related to sex or genitalia of the dwarf, which is considered a private matter that matters to no one but the dwarf and their mate.
It is possible for a dwarf not to have a primary braid, but this style is considered a time of transition or change in a dwarf’s life, and gender-neutral pronouns should be used until otherwise stated. Some dwarves cut off their primary braid when moving away from their home so as to reevaluate and reinvent themselves in their new residence, but it is not something all dwarves do.
The majority of dwarves use he/him pronouns outside of all-dwarven societies due to gender stigma against female presenting dwarves by other species, but in an all-dwarven society the mix of genders will be fairly even.
To save timelines I put the rest under the cut, but I talk about more below!
Congratulations, genius. You convinced your best friend, the Protagonist, not to marry the story’s Love Interest, and instead go off and have awesome adventures with you forever. But in doing so, you pissed off the Author.
After the third bandit ambush, the Unnecessary Character waits until the Protagonist falls asleep to turn an accusing look at the sky.
“Hey,” the Unnecessary Character says, jabbing a finger stupidly at the non-sentient array of stars, “you quit it. You quit it right now.”
The Unnecessary Character, henceforth known as TUC so as not to waste too many letters on them, looks rather rough. Their hair is a tangled mess from the swallows who’d mistaken the horrendous strands as nesting material.
“I know that was you,” TUC hisses. “Swallows use mud and spit to make their nests, not twigs.”
TUC is unaware that they actually look like dirt, just terrible, smelly dirt.
“This is a lot of unnecessary anger,” TUC says to the sky. “You’re the one who thought Ally needed a friend and now you’re mad that I’m being a friend to her? Josiah was a creep, you know. Maybe you think he was charming, but he’s borderline abusive. No, scratch that. He was straight up abusive.”
TUC’s main weakness has always been the inability to see the big picture. They don’t know that the Love Interest would do anything for the Protagonist, up to and including battling the dragon that would inevitable be coming to the castle.
TUC pales until they begin to resemble watery porridge. “The what?!”
Their voice is shrill and stupid. The pitch of it nearly wakes the poor, exhausted Protagonist who’s had it rough these past few nights with TUC waylaying her with their idiocy.
“Let’s…let’s swing back to the dragon later,” TUC says. They pinch the bridge of their nose, trying to ease the headache thinking so hard has given them. “Look, Josiah wanted to keep Ally in the castle, okay? Like, all the time. She’s an adventurer, dude, not a stay-at-home wife. And have you already forgotten how Josiah locked her in the dungeons when those rebel forces tried to break in? And then just forgot about her in the aftermath until she broke out?”
It’s not surprising that TUC has misinterpreted that lovely and gallant action. Ally is a lady, forced to work hard all her life to support her mean family. She needs someone to take care of her so she can finally be happy.
“Her mean–they were poor!” TUC says, missing the point completely. They direct a hideous look at the sky. “No, I’m not missing the point! Everyone in her family was worked to the bone, not just her! They all had to work insane hours just to pay taxes! Taxes, may I remind you, that Josiah and his father set!”
Steel Phoenix Studios 