Nine years have passed since the Rite of Ascension, and it's been the quietest - although far from the least significant and momentous - period of this old cat's life.
Say hi to Ty'at Ty'ukuk! Small yet, but twice as stubborn as both of her moms put together...
#gpose #clovelore #clomatyi
Ref sheet for Clove!
An Updated Table of Clovetents!
#CloveLore - Posts about Clove's past and travels!
#Clomatyi - Clove and Wuk Lamat!
#CloveComms / #CloMissions - Commissioned art of Clove!
#CloveArt - My own art!
#gpose / #gcloves - yep!!
#CloveSpice - Anything at least a bit spicy
A chocobo carriage trundles across the desert wastes of Thanlan.
Looking back towards the rear of the cart, we see a rapier propped up against the carriage wall and a woman, a hrothgar, seated at the back of the platform, gazing out into the desert.
We see the woman's face. It's Clove Chanterelle, age... 29 or so. A decade removed from the fire that consumed Bozja but still fresh off the front with the Empire. She's hardly been in Eorzea a year, already burned every scrap of goodwill she's ever accumulated, along with most of her hope in the cause that brought her here. She holds a bottle in one hand, two more rolling on the platform behind her. Her face is... distant, sour, sullen.
Closeup on Clove's face, the sun beating down below her. Tomorrow will be her 30th nameday. She won't remember.
Her reputation's trash, she's surly and uncooperative, and if you let her finish that bottle you're dragging her off the cart yourself once you get home.
But nobody will keep your passengers safe with half so much intensity, and that means something in these dangerous times.
#gpose #CloveLore
a young hrothgar child plays on the tightrope in the tuliyollal playground
hey who that 👀
#gpose #CloveLore
Low angle from behind as Dark Knight Clove stands on a broken road in Bozja, gazing up at the smoke-filled horizon, the shattered buildings blown into fused, crystallized aether by the force of the disastrous calamity that occurred here.
Clove looks sadly up at the blasted buildings around her, damage from the calamity compounded by damage from a decade and a half of conflict with the Empire. "Gods, it's... somehow worse than I remembered," she mutters sadly.
Title card "Homecoming," as Clove walks down the road, wending through rubble and under the blasted remains of Old Bozja.
Clove picks her way through a narrow alley choked with debris, carefully finding her footing on the loose rock. Narration on screen reads, "It's been nearly six years since I last saw Bozja, the land where I was born. More than fifteen since the disaster that destroyed her, crushing our dreams of freedom and ushering in an age of calamity. Yet still my feet find their way, over streets rendered strange and alien..."
Really excited and nervous to share this! I wanted to try a longer-form gpose comic, and I'm really happy with the result!
In the days after returning from the First, Clove receives long-awaited word from old allies, in a home she's left far behind...
(1/9)
#gpose #gcloves #clovelore #hrothgal
When she thought about that day, years later, what she remembered first was the boots - the regimented clank of metallic soles on cobble stones, gleaming buckles on leather uppers reflecting the oil lamps. She'd been nine, which would have made Sera.... twelve? So long ago. Her parents had been conscripted the previous summer, never to be heard from again, and so she'd come to live with Clove's family full-time. The pair had taken the household's weekly ration cards to market, collecting what few staples Garlemald deigned to share - a bit of old bread, two pieces of fruit, some broken rice; this week was lucky and they were given a few onzes of salted meat. They'd taken the long way back home, telling blustering stories of future accomplishments, dreaming up grand feasts to share with one another in imagination. The sun had crept below the rooftops and the gas streetlights were lit before they made their way back to Barter's Corners. They were only a few streets from home when it happened. At the notice board, a hooded figure scrawled graffiti before being startled by the sound of an approaching foot patrol, disappearing down an alley, elbowing past an elderly man in the process. They both recognized Mr Azbyna, a kind man who loved to tell stories from ancient Bozjan folklore. Bisera, ever the clear-headed one, was first to realize what was coming, and froze in the darkness between streetlights, clutching Clove's tiny arm in her fist, a sharp hiss of warning coming from her teeth. She pulled Clove behind a nearby crate just in time as the soldiers spotted the graffito and turned on Mr Azbyna. They never cared who was actually to blame - just that someone was made to suffer. She'd begun crying as the sounds of heavy impacts and feeble protest began, Sera gently hushing her as she removed their shoes so they could quietly creep down the next alley. They never heard Mr Azbyna's stories again, and Clove resolved to never let the Empire forget what it had done.
Some art from Inktober I don't... think? I ever posted anywhere, a bit of Early Clove. Maybe I have, but if so who cares cuz I like it. The prompt for the day was "Garleans" and "Boots." There's a some story to go with it in the alt text.
#CloveArt | #CloveLore
Scanned pencil sketch. A young Hrothgar woman in a torn sleeveless tunic kneels on the ground, a look of exhaustion and defeat upon her face. Her right shoulder has been pierced by a crossbow bolt, the arm itself hanging broken and useless, her arcane focus having slipped from her grasp to lay in the mud. Her rapier dangles limply in other hand. Her stomach is bloodied from a blow from some manner of beast or warmachina. Behind her, a Magitek sweeper approaches while a Garlena soldier readies his weapon and barks, "Let the legatus know we've cornered another Bozjan rat." Their camp had been caught unawares, whether by treachery, carelessness or simple chance, they neither knew nor cared. The end result was the same - a small gang of rebels, a few dozen unarmed and half-starved refugee families displaced in the disaster and unwilling to return to the Empire's heel, and their limited supplies for the oncoming winter faced down an Imperial patrol backed by magitek warmachina under orders to destroy them all. Clove leapt into action, vermillion magic bursting and rapier flashing as she barked for the rest to retreat to their planned evacuation routes. She would buy them the time they needed. No more families would perish under her watch. But they were many, and she was one, and young, and yet a novice in the arts X'rhun Tia had begun to teach her. Then a closeup of her eyes, flashing with defiance, her brow furrowed in rage. These bastards destroyed her home, stole her family, ended thousands upon thousands of lives, and still they refused to give them the simple dignity of independence? Refused to let the refugees alone, refused to treat them as people, called them dogs, rats... beasts. Clove Chanterelle would have none of it.
Scanned pencil sketch. In the top-left, Clove has impaled her rapier in the earth while reaching for the bolt in her shoulder. "For Sera.... For Brani... For Mila..." she breathes, chanting the names of her stolen wife and children in whose memory she fights. Closeup of her hand reaching for her arcane focus and reclaiming it. A menacing, bass-y r u m b l e shakes the heavens as limits are tested. A garlean soldier levels his weapon at her, shouting "Hey! Drop it!" A profound CRACK echoes from the sky as chains are broken and an unknown wellspring of power flows into Clove. She rises to her feet, rapier and source in wind, and shouts "You will take NO MORE!" as the soldier commands his fellows to open fire. An ear-shattering B O O M splits the heavens then, a blinding flash of radiance sparing the Garlean troops the sight of their obliteration. Violent tendrils of thorned purple and black lightning crash down from the sky and erupt from the earth, vermillion sigils manifesting and unleashing devastating arcane energy. The Magitek machina explodes, the soldiers are incinerated, a cascade of rose petals shower down around Clove, floating in place with eyes close, facing uncaring heavens. Her allies that witnessed the events spread the tale far and wide; already large, it grew further in the telling, and cemented her as a hero to the resistance fighters - The Rose of Bozja.
Daily sketchbook doodles from the last couple of days that kind of improvisationally turned into some #CloveLore
A level 1 Red Mage with nothing left to lose is pushed to her limits on the Bozjan battlelines... and then finds she can push beyond them (more in the alt text)
#CloveArt #hrothgal
scroll up for #CloveLore #Clomatyi #CloveSpice (very mild)
scroll up for the foundational block of #CloveLore and the first taste of #clomatyi! ~~
scroll up for #cloveart #clovelore ~~
A Handy Table of Clovetents -
#CloveLore - Writing and Bits about Clove's past and travels!
#Clomatyi - Stuff about Clove and Wuk Lamat!
#CloveFacts - Smaller pieces of bio, boundaries, etc
#CloveComms - Commissioned art of Clove!
#CloveArt - My own art!
#gpose - gpose screenshots!
Today's #CloveLore is another one from a prompt by a dear FC friend - 'Introduce us to your retainers and their relationship to your WoL!'
Clove's retainers are R'Honde, a Bozjan orphan she cared for after the incident, and Kiruvi, my previous, now-retired WoL living a life of catboys and ease.
Today's drop of #CloveLore - amongst her free company, Clove was one of the last to be stolen away from the source, arriving only a few months before the start of ShB. We were discussing how this went amongst my FC mates, so here's Clove's arrival in the First.
archiveofourown.org/works/59881492
