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Fantasy Somebody date my grouchy boi [Closed]

MolecularMachine

Fears and respects angle grinders
Edit: Closed. Saving for future reference.

Hey there! My name's Mole (they/them), and I've been RPing on and off for... oh jeez, 10 years? I have a very specific concept in mind that I want to write, plus some caveats. If you find that it's what's up your alley, I'm excited to meet you!

About me:
RP style: I don't believe in hard length minimums. Sometimes, the best post is just a character asking one bewildered question. However, role play is a constant exchange of responses and hooks, and the majority of the time, I find that I need at least a paragraph or two to fit enough of those in. I tend to have a quick and dirty writing style because I like going back later and editing for flavor. I'll always let you know if I've updated something, and I won't edit things in a way that changes the direction of the story. I prefer a good deal of OOC chatting and planning. I like knowing the basic points of what's going to happen before I write it. I'm a stickler for grammar, and I prefer my partner to at least have a solid grasp on punctuation, capitalization, and homophones. I write in third person past or present. I'll usually aim to respond at least once per day. I only write with people who are 18+.

Caveats: I am catastrophically depressed. I have finished like three role plays in my life, despite my best efforts. My goal with this role play is just to finish it, or at the very least, to not ghost my partner. This in itself will be a huge challenge to me, but I'm determined to see it through. If you have any strategies that might help with this goal, I'd appreciate it so much.

The pitch:
I have a character who's been rattling around in my head for a while, and I want to put him to some use. His name is Isail Lyrecine, and he is a grumpy wizard who is destroying his mental and physical health by refusing to sleep. He exists in a steampunk/fantasy industrial revolution setting. I want to use him in a slow burn romance story with a parallel plot of office drama, corporate espionage, political drama, or a similar urban, character-driven situation. He can be paired with any gender, and the setting is mostly queer-accepting with a few bigots for flavor. Think a major city in a blue state.

Isail comes from a declining old money family. When he was ten, he got into a plane crash that ended up killing his father and, unbeknownst to him, lodging a piece of toxic material into his skull that exacerbates his depression and nightmares. He apprenticed under an abusive wizard, where he also met his rival, Rosaia Namli. Upon completion of his apprenticeship, he bought a house downtown and installed a spellwriter in order to develop his own spells and potions. He eventually made a potion that kept him awake indefinitely, but not without side effects. After an incident where he blacked out in front of the board while presenting a research project, he is required to sleep at least once a week or he will be stripped of his license to practice magic. He is 29 at the time of the story.

Isail is self-destructive, a bit selfish, intensely guarded, and sarcastic. He is also intelligent, focused, thoughtful, and flexible. His lack of sleep affects his memory and mental processing, so his work and living spaces are covered in memos and notes. He smokes his sleep deprivation potion with a bit of tobacco, causing him some coughing and making him easily winded.

Isail's mother runs the family estate and a publishing company known for fiction and a small, human interest-focused newspaper. His older brother, Maevus, runs the family's bank and is determined to prove that Isail was responsible for the plane crash that killed their father.

The magic system is supposed to feel a bit like coding, so whatever company Isail works at functions like a software developer. A spell is an intricate magic circle that is precisely machined onto a surface, usually a sheet of metal, enchanted with a powder made from a poorly-understood mineral (which is what's lodged in Isail's skull), and then powered with electricity or fire. Spells can be used for just about anything.

Let me know if this interests you! If you have some different ideas, I'm always open to tweaking things, as long as the general concept is still there. Pitch me your character and any ideas you have for the plot. Thanks for reading!

Yakkeh vaguely noticed Misam shifting himself between him and the elevator. It wouldn't be easy getting around the dog, even if Yakkeh weren't so drunk. He'd watched Misam fight in tournaments, and he'd once witnessed him and Holdran take down another magician in what had seemed like a single coordinated movement. He was glad, then, that Holdran was upstairs.
One movement. One... movement. His mind raced.

I just need a few words. My... my...

The elevator clanged into place, empty.
The noise shocked him into awareness.
"Okay, Met, there's nobody here. Let's just stop and think for a minute, okay?" said Misam. "We need to wait for the others."

Nope.

The words came to him, and his raised hands softened and lowered. "My soul in stone."

He pointed, and the stone floor rippled and rose like an ocean wave, grabbing up Misam in it and dragging him away from the elevator. Misam yelped and barked at the sudden movement of stone beneath his paws. After he was dumped to the floor, he tumbled and sprang back up on all fours. He leaped for the elevator just in time to see the tails of Yakkeh's robes disappearing as the human stumbled into the car. Yakkeh slammed the gate behind him and yanked the lever to the notch marked B2.

"Sorry, buddy," Yakkeh called up to the light as it shrank away from him. Another light rose up from below.

"Met, no! You'll be killed!" Misam cried. He leaned over the edge-- the metal box sank deep into the ground, Misam's gut along with it. A whine grew in the back of Misam's throat-- if he beckoned the elevator up himself, could it take the strain? Would he send Met tumbling to his death?

We have to do something! He sprinted up the stairs. "Holdran! Everyone! Come quick!" he shouted.

Misam's words knocked around in Yakkeh's head. You're just too inebriated to fight. He knew they were right. He scrunched his eyes shut and dropped his weight on the elevator wall. "Ether, help me. Help me think clearly. I have to defend your temple to the death. Make me sharp as a knife--"

The elevator clanged to a stop. All at once, the fog over Yakkeh's brain lifted. And as he stared into his trashed cabin, his first thought was, I should have listened to Misam.

He hadn't given a single thought to the possibility of an ambush. He hadn't counted the seconds when he was raising the elevator to give him any guess as to where the infiltrator-- or infiltrators-- might have been.

Damn. Damn.

His heart raced. He crouched down and plucked a tin of tea off the floor. Its corner had been dented when it fell.

Someone is in here. Someone has touched my things. Fear gave way again to rage. Something deep in his chest burned with malice. Every bag, book, or utensil tossed aside reeked of unworthy hands. He felt as if those hands had reached into his guts and scattered them, too. Smoke rolled out of his throat. They would pay.

"Yakkeh, you fucking idiot!" Holdran's voice echoed down the elevator shaft. Yakkeh ran back into the elevator and peered up through its wire ceiling.

"I have to handle this myself. Once, just this once, you have to trust me," Yakkeh called back.

"Moron! You can't stand up by yourself, let alone fight! We're coming down there!"
One of the stones of the elevator shaft bowed to Holdran's gesture, and he stepped out onto it.

Yakkeh cursed under his breath. He glanced around for anything to use for a spell, then guided a coil of fire up into the shaft. He raised his hand and swirled it, and the fire melted a ring of stone and flattened it to seal the shaft, leaving just enough room for the elevator's cable.
"Artist's will, dragon's fire, seal the way to brash desire." The stone shimmered. More shouts echoed through the little hole, but he ignored them. The ball of rage in his chest pulled him outside.

In the starlight, he could see that the rows of waist-high bookshelves lay undisturbed. He spit out a comet of fire which flew around to the shade tree. No figures hid inside. The light fell on a particularly precious book, which sat on a blanket under the tree. It was just where he'd left it, he knew.

No one on B2. In truth, it made him nervous. The deeper down an intruder went, the more damage they could do.
Did I catch them? Before… Damn. I need a plan.

Any magician capable of simply slicing through his many, many wards could very easily kill him if he showed up unprepared. Who could it possibly be? The councilors? Why didn't they just ask him? Dog? Any one of the tournament planning committee? Had they grown suspicious of Yakkeh's higher-than-average number of meetings with the councilors? He shuddered to think of how someone as unstoppable as Dog might end him.
I really... really wish I had listened to Misam.

Too late for that. The only way was down.

He thought for a moment, then stepped out onto the grass. He had been shouting and laughing. His throat felt a little worn. It would have to be enough. He breathed out fire and let it coil down and around him. His posture straightened, and his belly pressed against his sashes as he breathed in deeply. He sang.

"For long years, this temple I have made
To raise wonders and to praise Your name
And in an instant, blasphemy has come
To rain down sin upon Your holy home."

He raised his hands and the fire burned hotter and brighter.

"So bless your loyal priest with burning hands
So he may strike as dragons' law demands.
Let me become your spear, your bow, your shield
And as your blade, my body may you wield."

All at once, the coil of fire tightened around his body, and every inch of him but his face seemed to burst into flame. Snapping jaws and snatching talons flickered into view and disappeared as the fire roared. Yakkeh stared at his burning hands for a moment. Neither his flesh nor his clothes were burnt, but he felt a comforting warmth from the flames.
So this is all I need. I'll trust you, Ether. He clenched his fists, stepped back into the elevator, and descended.

When the elevator clanged again, he lowered his hands from where they were readied. The temple door's latch lay on the floor, cut cleanly in half. He had latched all the doors from the inside, so that only those the Ether deemed worthy might enter. Many times, she had locked him out of a particular room or even the whole temple, forcing him to think of more clever ways to solve a spell than his usual tactics. But now the temple lay wrenched open and exposed. The fountain of holy water lay still. The absence of its sound only added to the punch to his gut.

Barely breaking his stride, he threw off his socks before sprinting into the hallway, the fire around him lightening his footsteps. No one in the storeroom of rare components. The things in here he dared not hide even in the decoy basement. He ran ahead to the fountain room. The first thing he saw-- after the horror of every door cut open-- was the sight of the shrine to June shattered across the floor. The flames around him flared with his anger. One of the last things June would see before passing the world to July and falling asleep would be the desecration of one of her shrines. Who would do such a thing? What arrogant bastard would risk that kind of curse? Forgetting caution, Yakkeh tore through the rest of the temple.
He searched the alchemy room, where he spent hours distilling and refining components. No one. He searched the workshop, where he spent untold days crafting vessels for his spells. No one.
He steeled himself and entered the cathedral. There, of all places, he expected a fight. It was wide-open, perfect for flashy spells, and the machinery of the pipe organ was all there. The walls were laden with ornamentation and ancient magicians gazed down from their mosaics. But there was no one. Mercifully, everything was untouched, including the altar to the Ether at the far end of the room.

He searched the minor casting room. It was small and intimate, a miniature version of the cathedral with a miniature altar. There, he had sometimes sung satire to the Ether just for fun, not even for a spell. No one. Finally, the testing room, where he'd tried out enchantments and weapons. His heart pounded. No one.
It could only mean one horrible thing. Whoever it was, whoever had gotten in, had descended to the final room.

Yakkeh picked up a piece of a broken door latch. Whoever had gotten in could destroy the temple. Why wasn't Yakkeh dead yet? His literal guts lay exposed to the intruder. That could only mean that they wanted him alive. His memory flashed back to the tortuous interrogation from the council when they discovered his true self. "The hydra experiments," Folaw had remarked, "were real?" Had those researchers come to claim the fruits of their labor? He shook the terror out of his mind.

No, no, he would never be trapped again. He had fought with every waking moment, every ounce of cleverness, every drop of will he possessed to be free of his curse. Nothing would trap him again. Nothing would make him feel small.

"I swear it," Yakkeh growled, "I swear it! Whoever has defiled this temple will never see the light of day again!" He ran back to the elevator and, his bare feet on the cold metal, pulled the lever for B4.

On the way down, he focused his flames. He imagined a party of magicians, all aiming their deadly spells at the elevator shaft, ready to spring as soon as he appeared. He would strike first. The second the top of the doorway was visible, he unleashed the full force of his fire, giving not a moment's thought to the room's contents. The charms could be replaced. The medicines could be remade. His uninhibited fury rolled through the dim room in the shape of a dragon's maw, consuming every flammable object in its path. The heat blasted back at his face like an oven, but he held on, even when the elevator clanged against the final platform.

He could see no figures through the flames. He prayed they were burned to cinders. He could only pray.
 
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