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The Madeleine Clan and Estate
by Sanagi
Watcher
2 weeks ago
A moment on the general lore of the Madeleines, their affairs, and their condition, and to display the familial Crest.
As one might suspect, they're a family that lives in a fantastical Victorian-era world, not dissimilar to your typical steampunk fantasy. They have existed for some time as a clan, well before these times, making their profit primarily operating iron mines to furnish their home monarchy with, developing further into early means of steelmaking; making them quite popular in this contemporary era!
Though several generations back, they have developed a surprisingly-successful venture into the art of orchardry and making various novelty drinks; neatly-organized columns of trees sprouted up rather quickly on their estate grounds and above certain mine sites they operated.
The Madeleines themselves are a deeply...*insular* family despite their success; outside of official functions requiring the clan Matriarch's presence, it is rare to see a Madeleine personally handling affairs outside of the home estate; often they operate through delegates if they can help it, representatives on their staff carrying their word, although not all of the family is steadfast on this matter. It is mostly to keep the populace from asking too many questions given their...peculiar appearances.
This is largely in regards to the clan's deepest secret, the Curse. A secret handed down and meant to be kept only by the clan Matriarch, though of course rumors cannot help but spread even within the clan, many theories as to why they are...the way they are.
The relatively mundane aspect of it is, simply, that they have an infernal taint upon the bloodline, as at some point an ancestor managed to woo a certain archdeviless after a shrine to her was found in one of the mines, and she was summoned through it. She bore him children after this tryst, and forever made the clan essentially tiefings. That's not the main event, though.
No, as a little joke to herself, Sucre left the clan with a bloodline-long berry curse, afflicting each member borne into the clan. However, the berry flavors are more...novel, favoring any sort of sweet flavor, not simply natural fruit flavors, though it does prefer anything that can be served as a liquid, with some leeway. The sweeter, more sugary, the better. As said, it is totally hereditary, thus anyone marrying into the clan is not themselves afflicted, but their offspring with a Madeleine will sport the curse and soon begin to swell out with juice. This likewise means that the juice itself, while intensely sweet, is not a vector for berrification itself; drink of your foolish, foolish fill all you want, it won't spread the curse. Likewise, one can drain a Madeleine veritably dry and yet it will not nullify the curse; given enough time, maybe a week, they *will* inevitably swell back up to a full-blown berry size, but this does mean it is otherwise manageable, and you will rarely see a perma-ripe Madeleine who cannot at least briefly be their normal self.
This curse notably seems to anchor itself upon the bearer's magical potential, directly proportional to their innate capacity for channeling magic, meaning their potential sizes are heavily influenced by how much magic they can meaningfully use; for instance, Selene, notably gifted in the arcane arts and herself inclined to grow this potential, can grow to *considerable* sizes even now and will likely grow *much* bigger later down the line. Meanwhile Phillip, one of her cousins, is magically-impaired, and thus can only really reach a stated *tubbiness* that he can pass off as fat, and this is not likely to shift too far beyond the effects of age upon their expansion.
On that note, as a result of the juice's magical (& mundane nutritional) richness, a Madeleine's lifetime is notably extended. While not immortal, they have been known to live on average a century longer than the common person. However, this does come at a cost, as the more they advance in age, the more they ripen. Be it due to a lifetime of swelling, stretching, or possibly more esoteric influences, their window of possible sizes does slowly drag itself upwards, meaning older members of the clan begin to develop a more pear-like, 'fuller' figure even when completely drained, and will be able to reach increasingly-larger sizes at max capacity. Their 'empty' size, more alarmingly, will also steadily creep upwards, leading closer and closer to even that empty state being near-on spherical. Thus you MAY see a perma-ripe Madeleine, but only well into their elder years. And by then, well...
The curse ekes its final strike and goes from simply laughable to horrific once more. Especially-ripened members of the clan begin to reliably drift into madness from the infernal influence and sheer fill of mana within them, usually manifesting in gluttonous and sugar-inclined breaks from reality. This is only amplified by the sheer amount of energy within the juice, manifesting itself into mild reality-warping effects contorting the world through their increasingly-distorted grasp on it in Sucre-touched, Saccharized corruption.
Though eventually, this does peter out as the madness turns inwards upon its own host, warping them into a more...'harmless' state as a massive, living, inert sweet-thing fit for the Dame's consumption, whenever she bothers to get around to it. They are...technically alive, but completely lost to reality, effectively in a sugar-soaked catatonia, and their body warped into some massively bloated combination of sweet/candy/treat and flora, usually a kind of tree, though this is not exclusive; at the least, something immobile, catatonic, and plant-like, but composed of candy materials despite all improbability.
These instances are escorted under strict secrecy out of the Estate, to a hidden location deep in one of the family's old mines, the rumored 'Glass Orchard' close to where the fool ancestor first found the shrine. For what little can be told of their mental state, they...seem to be most content, there, at least. Most at rest.
As said, all of this, ALL of it, is kept under strictest secrecy, information passed down from Matriarch to Matriarch and kept away even from the rest of the clan. What little records remain of the true Madeleine history are kept under firm lock & key to avoid the full picture escaping the estate and making the whole clan pariahs, let alone driving its living members into despair.
_____________________
Art ©
NovaButt
As one might suspect, they're a family that lives in a fantastical Victorian-era world, not dissimilar to your typical steampunk fantasy. They have existed for some time as a clan, well before these times, making their profit primarily operating iron mines to furnish their home monarchy with, developing further into early means of steelmaking; making them quite popular in this contemporary era!
Though several generations back, they have developed a surprisingly-successful venture into the art of orchardry and making various novelty drinks; neatly-organized columns of trees sprouted up rather quickly on their estate grounds and above certain mine sites they operated.
The Madeleines themselves are a deeply...*insular* family despite their success; outside of official functions requiring the clan Matriarch's presence, it is rare to see a Madeleine personally handling affairs outside of the home estate; often they operate through delegates if they can help it, representatives on their staff carrying their word, although not all of the family is steadfast on this matter. It is mostly to keep the populace from asking too many questions given their...peculiar appearances.
This is largely in regards to the clan's deepest secret, the Curse. A secret handed down and meant to be kept only by the clan Matriarch, though of course rumors cannot help but spread even within the clan, many theories as to why they are...the way they are.
The relatively mundane aspect of it is, simply, that they have an infernal taint upon the bloodline, as at some point an ancestor managed to woo a certain archdeviless after a shrine to her was found in one of the mines, and she was summoned through it. She bore him children after this tryst, and forever made the clan essentially tiefings. That's not the main event, though.
No, as a little joke to herself, Sucre left the clan with a bloodline-long berry curse, afflicting each member borne into the clan. However, the berry flavors are more...novel, favoring any sort of sweet flavor, not simply natural fruit flavors, though it does prefer anything that can be served as a liquid, with some leeway. The sweeter, more sugary, the better. As said, it is totally hereditary, thus anyone marrying into the clan is not themselves afflicted, but their offspring with a Madeleine will sport the curse and soon begin to swell out with juice. This likewise means that the juice itself, while intensely sweet, is not a vector for berrification itself; drink of your foolish, foolish fill all you want, it won't spread the curse. Likewise, one can drain a Madeleine veritably dry and yet it will not nullify the curse; given enough time, maybe a week, they *will* inevitably swell back up to a full-blown berry size, but this does mean it is otherwise manageable, and you will rarely see a perma-ripe Madeleine who cannot at least briefly be their normal self.
This curse notably seems to anchor itself upon the bearer's magical potential, directly proportional to their innate capacity for channeling magic, meaning their potential sizes are heavily influenced by how much magic they can meaningfully use; for instance, Selene, notably gifted in the arcane arts and herself inclined to grow this potential, can grow to *considerable* sizes even now and will likely grow *much* bigger later down the line. Meanwhile Phillip, one of her cousins, is magically-impaired, and thus can only really reach a stated *tubbiness* that he can pass off as fat, and this is not likely to shift too far beyond the effects of age upon their expansion.
On that note, as a result of the juice's magical (& mundane nutritional) richness, a Madeleine's lifetime is notably extended. While not immortal, they have been known to live on average a century longer than the common person. However, this does come at a cost, as the more they advance in age, the more they ripen. Be it due to a lifetime of swelling, stretching, or possibly more esoteric influences, their window of possible sizes does slowly drag itself upwards, meaning older members of the clan begin to develop a more pear-like, 'fuller' figure even when completely drained, and will be able to reach increasingly-larger sizes at max capacity. Their 'empty' size, more alarmingly, will also steadily creep upwards, leading closer and closer to even that empty state being near-on spherical. Thus you MAY see a perma-ripe Madeleine, but only well into their elder years. And by then, well...
The curse ekes its final strike and goes from simply laughable to horrific once more. Especially-ripened members of the clan begin to reliably drift into madness from the infernal influence and sheer fill of mana within them, usually manifesting in gluttonous and sugar-inclined breaks from reality. This is only amplified by the sheer amount of energy within the juice, manifesting itself into mild reality-warping effects contorting the world through their increasingly-distorted grasp on it in Sucre-touched, Saccharized corruption.
Though eventually, this does peter out as the madness turns inwards upon its own host, warping them into a more...'harmless' state as a massive, living, inert sweet-thing fit for the Dame's consumption, whenever she bothers to get around to it. They are...technically alive, but completely lost to reality, effectively in a sugar-soaked catatonia, and their body warped into some massively bloated combination of sweet/candy/treat and flora, usually a kind of tree, though this is not exclusive; at the least, something immobile, catatonic, and plant-like, but composed of candy materials despite all improbability.
These instances are escorted under strict secrecy out of the Estate, to a hidden location deep in one of the family's old mines, the rumored 'Glass Orchard' close to where the fool ancestor first found the shrine. For what little can be told of their mental state, they...seem to be most content, there, at least. Most at rest.
As said, all of this, ALL of it, is kept under strictest secrecy, information passed down from Matriarch to Matriarch and kept away even from the rest of the clan. What little records remain of the true Madeleine history are kept under firm lock & key to avoid the full picture escaping the estate and making the whole clan pariahs, let alone driving its living members into despair.
_____________________
Art ©
NovaButt
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