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@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 9, 2026, 10:57 PM

#SFFChat Q4. A short but, I think, properly eerie one!

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #BattlemageAskaly

A soft red light bathed the buildings through the purple dome that encircled the island, a facsimile of Outworld’s sky. Yet, there was no sun or any of the rocky rings that crowned the planet, and the eerie sensation of being trapped in an illusion only grew worse as Askaly noticed how quiet, how lifeless, everything was: no animals, no rustling of leaves or whistling of wind, no footsteps left on the sand.
@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 9, 2026, 10:11 PM

#AwesomeCharacters Oh, most accurate goes to Mileena—many, many centuries of target practising with her sais gave her quite the aim that even Bullseye would find lethal! Her tarkatan eyes do help, too, as they're significantly better than normal dĩn’huei eyes.

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #MileenaSuêòng

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 9, 2026, 12:29 PM

#LitHodgepodge 9. I've mentioned this before, but I'd want 2 for #ChroniclesOfTheRealms. One, an Asian composer who could work with different Asian musical instruments. I'm not that knowledgeable to choose one.

But to drop a name here, I'd also love to have Bear McCreary🧵

youtu.be/jpyVfd8TyoI

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 9, 2026, 12:05 PM

#Conlangity 9. As I mentioned yesterday, plurals in Kraslan are accomplished with suffixes:

- Adding a -y to the end of feminine nouns (or -ly if it already ends in /y/ or in a diphthong or triphthong): arylo (wing) > aryloy
- Adding an -(l)i to the end of masculine nouns: 🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 8, 2026, 10:15 PM

#AwesomeCharacters Nitara wears a pendant with the popular symbol of a dancing nensii: her father's last gift to her.

Mileena and Kitana wear amethyst anklets that can only be removed by breaking them; it's an old tradition that extended to royalty.

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 8, 2026, 1:27 PM

#Conlangity 8. Suffixes and prefixes are very important in Kraslan, as it is an agglutinative language. There are many cases, more than I've created so far, but let's see some examples of when prefixes are used:

- To indicate the definite article (no indefinite here) 🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 8, 2026, 1:00 PM

And if you want some stories for #InternationalLesbianDay, I have two books out plus a few short stories (both spicy and not) from #ChroniclesOfTheRealms on Ao3: archiveofourown.org/series/4547401 💜🖤

Books: campsite.bio/nicolehidalgo.
Book 1 is also available 🧵

#Books #BookSky #QueerWriters #Ao3

Cover of This Is How Immortals Die by Nicole Hidalgo, made by David Leahey on Reedsy. It depicts the heavenly beautiful face of a woman (Aphrodite herself), a tear sliding down her only visible eyes, her hair flowing and blending in with the star-studded dark blue and purple cosmos behind her. The author's name, Nicole Hidalgo, is on top, while the title, This Is How Immortals Die, sits at the bottom. Some letters are stylised as Greek letters.Cover of Garden of Rotten Roses by Nicole Hidalgo, made by David Leahey on Reedsy. It depicts a woman (Aphrodite) dressed in broken Greek armour standing between a garden full of thorns and roses. The woman's hair is the colour of blood, and her face is half-turned towards the viewer, her one visible eye glowing red, her expression angry. The title and author's name are at the bottom, with some letters stylised as Greek letters.
@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 8, 2026, 12:16 PM

#WIPSnips 8. “Lizard”

I had “lizard,” but I couldn’t resist sharing a snippet from Syzoth’s short story and the introduction to the lizardfolk (and chameleonfolk) of #ChroniclesOfTheRealms.

If you want to read the first chapter: archiveofourown.org/works/899387....

#Syzoth #WriteSky #QueerWriters

Syzoth shook his head. “You speak of ancient fables, mother. They will not save my hatchling.” Not that he truly believed his child needed saving. But the longer they spent in the egg, the higher the chance it would crack into a lifeless hatchling. In every batch, that terrible fate befell at least one offspring. Too weak to leave the egg, the tribe would say. But his child was not weak; could not be, not when they inherited the scales of two of the mightiest saeriiss in the tribe. They would come out, alive and strong and proud! His mother regarded the eggs with an expression edging on sadness. “Perhaps our greatest mistake was leaving that which you call fables in the past.” With the claw of her forefinger, she drew an invisible symbol in the air. A long, intertwined snake, Syzoth recognised, though he wished he didn’t. She turned to leave, but at the alcove’s entrance, she spoke again. “These gods some of ours pray to may have scales, but they did not give us ours. They may yet take them from us, though. You may not see the world the way I do, but I know that, in your heart, you feel it, too. You became saorossi not only for your strength, which is great, but also for your vision, which is even greater, if you allow it to be. The question then remains, scale of my scale: where will your vision take our tribe? Our people?”
@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 7, 2026, 10:12 PM

#AwesomeCharacters Ashrah would go for the little known but amazing hole in the wall because chances are she'll find homemade food in there, perhaps made by a family with their own recipes and all that, and she prizes that.

If Nitara is alone, she WON'T eat 🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #SayaAshrah

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 7, 2026, 12:53 PM

#Conlangity 7. Ah, grammar, the thing I’m worse at (including in my mother language) 😅 My brain literally goes "nah, I'm out" when I start reading about grammar lol But let’s see what we can do here.

Kraslan uses a basic SOV (subject-object-verb) word order. When there are 🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 7, 2026, 12:30 PM

#LitHodgepodge 7. I... am bad at this. Internally, I recognise a "voice" in my stories, but I don't think I can put this feeling into words. I recognise POV traits, but... 🤷🏽‍♀️ So here's a snippet of Ashrah doing what she does best: fighting:

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #SayaAshrah

Fear did not stop demons, though. It only made them more reckless than they already were. And thus, the desperate horde swarmed Ashrah. Precisely what she wanted. She slashed and stabbed and skewered. Deflected a sword with Datusha, then gored the offending fiend, dodged under the claws of another, and brought the sword down on its back, cleaving its skull and torso in half. Her vambrace blocked crude steel as Datusha sank into the onasha’s stomach. Grabbing its neck, she turned it towards a band of demons before eviscerating it. Entrails poured out in a stream of lava, vaporising those fiends who, unlike the oni born from fire, had no invulnerability to the element. Among them, a piray strolled across the lava as unbothered as on solid earth and swung its hammer. She leapt atop the glowing weapon, and as she whirled above her befuddled foes, tearing and thrusting, the alarun of each slain demon mingled with Datusha’s blue light, drawing tapestries that illustrated her might. From the moment she was born and scorned for the light purple shade of her skin, she had been a fighter. And she enjoyed it—the weight of a sword in her hand, the rush of vitality when it was her against ghastly odds, the ecstasy of triumph. But it had never felt like this.
@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 7, 2026, 12:20 PM

#QueerPrompts 7. Not in an explicit way (so far), but it does, yes. Particularly with the tarkatans, such as Mileena and Baraka. You look at them with their large mouth filled with shark-like teeth, and "beautiful" isn't usually a word that comes to people's minds. 🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms

Bust of Mileena Suêòng, from Chronicles of the Realms, by Mery (@meryselda.bsky.social). It depicts Mileena in a three-quarter view, the absence of the veil letting free her large mouth filled with shark-like teeth. On her hair, half of it in a high bun and the rest loose, bloom two lilies of the valley.
@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 7, 2026, 12:14 PM

#LGBTQWriteAThon 7. Ashrah is forced to wear a mask of obedience when enslaved by Archdevil Ulorzz. For someone as fierce and independent as she is, this profoundly hurts her, yet she cannot fight this enemy, not now.

Sareena, though... Sareena has her masks.

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 7, 2026, 12:01 PM

#WIPSnips 7. "Comparison"

Patience, Mileena, patience. (I have the exact same thought towards drawing, though, so... 🤷🏽‍♀️)

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #MileenaSuêòng #ShangTsung #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #QueerWriters

Mileena sighed. Yes, spiritual magic was powerful and beautiful, but extremely difficult to manipulate, let alone master. She still had much to learn before she could become even half the mystic that Shang Tsung was. Before she could make him proud. “Have patience, Mileena. You’re just beginning to learn what I have been practising for longer than you have been alive.” More than two thousand years of constant studies, magical exercises, and martial arts practices. It gave Mileena a headache just thinking about it. Her connection with arcane magic, and even the little cultivation she engaged in, seemed so much simpler by comparison. “Maybe I’m just not made for this.”
@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 6, 2026, 10:15 PM

... possible.

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #CaptainNitara

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 6, 2026, 12:34 PM

#Conlangity 6. The standard Kraslan greeting, used when arriving or leaving, is “Agiola umʋreniea ty ƥísa” [ɐ-d̠ʒi-l̪ɐ yow̥-bɾ̪e̞-n̪ɤ t̪ʉ fɨ-ʃɐ / a-dio-la yow-bre-nu too fí-sha], which means “May the darkness bless you” (literally, “Bless darkness you may”). However, this is quite 🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 6, 2026, 12:16 PM

#WIPSnips 5. “Rice”

Couldn’t be eastern world-building without at least one rice paddy, huh? x)

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #MileenaSuêòng #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #QueerWriters

As they flew above the capital, Kira let out a sigh. “The city is even more delightful from up here. So bright and lively!” Beyond the palace, the Rúng’sé had already regained some of its lush green, and the red cluster of leaves that gave the forest its name started to grow on the legions of esã'kán. West of it, groups of dĩn’huei carried rice seeds into flooded paddies while nû’ëngo extended their roots across the wet soil to help the crop grow healthy and unbothered by pests. “Everything looks better from above, when all you see are the colours and the shapes.” “Don’t sour the mood, Your Highness.”
@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 5, 2026, 10:17 PM

#AwesomeCharacters Much like Ashrah and many other MCs and SCs, Quan Chi's story is about connection with the world and, most importantly, connection with the self; about self-love.

And while readers will likely not agree with his actions, I believe they'll🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #EmissaryQuanChi

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 5, 2026, 12:38 PM

#Conlangity 5. While there is archaeological evidence of languages existing before, the ancestor of Kraslan and a few others is considered Vienlús, or Ǔenluuč in the old alphabet, the language that arose with the Shadow Priestesses after the primitive nensy earned their 🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms

@sayaashrah.bsky.socialOct 4, 2026, 10:25 PM

#AwesomeCharacters In Eternal Flame, Ashrah lives in a hole in Ashazz'sosha, the mountain range that surrounds the Temple of Eternal Flame, where she stores her crafting items, has a nice little hammock (fashioned from lizard-demon skin), and which she protects 🧵

#ChroniclesOfTheRealms #SayaAshrah

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