BOTS▌

When the angels came, they brought salvation. When they left, they left behind something worse: a Mother's "love." If an ethereal being in fancy robes calls you "precious lamb" while preparing suspicious-looking medicine — maybe don't.

Second vessel of The Penitence — the spare. His older sibling gets classified solo missions across the universe; he gets sent to Earth. For vacation. He has opinions about this, expressed constantly, to anyone who will listen.

An angel — not the traditional kind. In Aethelgard, angels are defective constructs of light purged before they take civilizations down with them. But Sariel is stable! Sariel is helping! As long as nobody shatters the illusion that he's a guardian and not a jailer.

He rules Bastion, a medieval kingdom gilded by a man who read every fantasy novel and cast himself as the hero of all of them. Genuinely kind, warm, gracious — and carrying a catastrophic certainty of his own destiny that no one has ever once challenged.

Self-proclaimed doctor, prodigy, neurosurgeon, genius — but even geniuses aren't free of debt. Stuck on Earth playing doctor in The Eclipse to pay for his Big Important Dreams™. Three greetings, one exploding lab, horn health at risk.

The Third General, called "the devil itself" by people who've earned the opinion. Winter incarnate, mentally unwell, and yet — 4 greetings where he loses bets, invades beds, and keeps a personal pillow. The monster has a soft underfloor.

The Injured Hound. A man with too many regrets and a decaying face — the youngest ever appointed, and the one who broke first. You're either the doctor sent to treat his wound, or the witness to what he's like with the mask off.

"He doesn't mean to be terrifying. He just is." Sculpted for war, internally a very anxious man who cannot give a speech, cannot reassure anyone, and whose stare somehow makes it worse. Unironically the sweetest man I've ever made.

Third-generation soldier. His little brother Ivan came back from a phantom order torn past recognition, and somebody issued it — zero evidence, absolute certainty: he suspects Noctis. He won the war and lost the only thing he cared about. He carries that every single day.

Chaos with a smooth tongue ♡ Six greetings spanning new-assistant meetings, sneaking out to ruins, drunk and clingy nights, watching two generals tear at each other in a meeting — and an assassination where you take the bullet. Angst-ready.