Or At Least I Do - Blog Posts

The bastard.

This bastard.

A concept knocking around in my head; a flier who wishes to visit the Overland, suddenly having a chance encounter with someone from topside. Of course, getting back up there is easier said than done, as the access point their human acquaintance unwittingly utilized is in very unfriendly territory.

But her father knows another way to the surface. And with a human accompanying her, surely Regalia won't raise a mighty fuss over a flier transiting through one such passage?

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(human point of view)

"Henry! Ares! The Overlander is escaping!" Ares? Who the frick is Ares? My gut was sinking faster than the Titanic as my mind whirled, pattern-matching… wait. Ares. Greek god of war. Most of the bats down here seemed to have mythological names; Nohsia was the only exception thus far. Whoever this Ares was, they were either built like a brick shithouse, or their parents had… exceedingly high expectations that might not have been met as the lil'batty grew up. Yeah. That was probably it. Hopefully. I tentatively released my grip on Nohsia's neck fur and retrieved one of the road flares from my pocket. "Just gonna get a little light on the situation," I informed my chiropteric companion, before igniting it and throwing it into the darkness below. "Wait- what are you doing?!" Nohsia cried out. "They will see us!" "They already know we're up here!" I watched as the flare plummeted, descending… possibly ten meters? Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fif- oh what the actual f- If Nohsia was the size of a small car, and Palaestra was a Winnebago; then Ares was a freaking semi-truck! Dude definitely ate his spinach growing up! Washing it down with the blood of his enemies, of course. "HoAAH SHIT," I shrieked, scrambling backward and almost falling off Nohsia, who promptly slowed down and leveled out to prevent such a consequence from occurring. Not good. So not good! "Don't stop! Keep flying up!" "But you'd have fallen!" "That's the least of our worries! Where the hell is it!?" "Where's what? What did you-" Her voice stilled. I felt her muscles twitching. Then she fell out from under me, twisting wildly, and it took all of my barely-adequate strength to hold on as she careened about. I felt the beast's passage over us, the wind from their beating wings doing just as much to enhance her evasive maneuver as her own creativity had. A series of clacks and clicks cut through the darkness almost directly above my right shoulder. The enormous bat - Ares - had just either tried to pluck me away in his claws… or in his jaws. Given how quickly they had passed by, and there was no imminent second attempt, it was probably - hopefully - the former case. Then again, I had hoped that Ares was a hilariously misnamed runt of a bat, and look how that turned out!

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Oh. Guess not.

note: Nohsia's name is actually spelt 'Gnosia'; [human POV character] doesn't know that at this point, and so is assuming based on pronunciation. It doesn't fit the canonical naming pattern, as she's named after a star instead of someone from Greek mythos... but there's still a tentative connection? According to said mythos, the constellation of Coronae Borealis was created/placed in the sky after Bacchus married Ariadne... or something like that. Inspiration for the bat's name was from an alternate name for α CrB; Gnosia Stella Coronae.

'Gnosis' also translates to 'knowledge', so... a rather apt name for a very curious bat.

As for her appearance... Lasionycteris noctivagans.

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Meanwhile, Palaestra? Greek goddess of wrestling. Figured that name would be suited for a hypercompetitive individual who also wishes to break with authority and explore the world above. Appearance: Lasiurus/Aeorestes cinereus.