Dwarf of Bronze (ZnT/AU)

[TotalAbsolutism]

This is not the wife I was expecting. It's immeasurably amusing that Kenneth is the more comely of the two.

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I mean, she hasn't taken her armour off yet.

She's more or less a Paladin; that is in the D&D sense of a champion empowered by a divinity. Added to that is the Blood of the First Hero, a sort of mystical bloodline that makes her superhuman even for her own kind.

Red kicks ass, takes names, and had her heart stolen by a dwarf who proposed the instant he first saw not her, but her forge.

 

[LaughingProphet]

This is not the wife I was expecting. It's immeasurably amusing that Kenneth is the more comely of the two.

Click to shrink...

TA's more or less spot on the money but The Old Blood is a bit more of a nuanced thing than otherwise implied there. The Blood of the First Hero is a particular example of it, but when you get down to it that one has a more specific inherent bonus to it than just the physical boons; most forms of The Blood have at least some magnitude of benefits that boost you up past others of your kind. That's probably from a note mixup and miscommunication from my side.

Red's particular variant is Blood of the First Forge, an aspect that could have singlehandedly made her the greatest weapon- and armor-smith to ever grace the mortal coil with her presence even if she hadn't intentionally been trying to do so. There were no greater examples before, and none to match have followed since. Not yet, at least. The Blood does tend to weave in and out of family lines with a mind of its own outside conventional genetics.

Primarily, the Iron Wolf is Zhakar: Northborn Azekaran. They were touched on briefly earlier in the story when Saito's archery skills were put to the test. Red was already guaranteed to be a physical powerhouse by virtue of species alone. Her blood makes her fire- and heat-proof, gives pretty much everything she's ever made with a forge utterly outlandish properties, gives her the baseline boosts and traits The Blood provides to every individual known to carry it... And that isn't even getting into the other big quality of Kelicho heroes. I'm not sure that will show in this story.

So the biggest thing boosting her to utterly obnoxious levels of nightmarish power isn't even quite her Blood in this context.

It's that Red is a literal Saint of a literal God that presides over Justice, Heroism, Protection, and War in defense of the innocent. She's in her element, in a place that's explicitly fueling her God-given powers by having magic a magnitude stronger than her own homeland's has had in millennia.

 

[kabs]

Is anyone else having a hard time telling when Red is speak or the other one is speaking?

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

Is anyone else having a hard time telling when Red is speak or the other one is speaking?

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If you point out some lines in general I'll do my best to work on it. I generally try to make it so that new speaker starts a paragraph whenever possible, and that they don't start the paragraph if they're not the new speaker, but that's not hard and fast. I think I have too much of an aversion to speech tags; overcorrecting from past mistakes.