𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐋 & 𝐂𝐈𝐑𝐂𝐔𝐌𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 | a gaslamp fantasy 1x1 interest check

[Antlers]

STEEL & CIRCUMSTANCE

^{A cutthroat fantasy of airships, dead gods, and two rivals made to break each other for a knight's oath.
Set in the world of Andermonde, created by Ryan O'Connor of the Red Quills.}

❧ THE PREMISE

A tourney is called to make knights. Two of the hopefuls belong to enemies, each handed to a master who would sooner see the rival house shamed than see anyone take the oath. They are set in the lists to break each other. Then comes the last trial, and the one no true knight passes alone.

Every year the Chevaliers de la Monde send the call out across the world: come to Claireville, and prove yourself worthy of the oath. They are a stateless order, knights that kings defer to and no nation commands, and their word carries in every court in the Old World. So the world comes. For a fortnight the grey port city triples its population, the inns full to the rafters, the morning broadsheets running a fresh name on the front page each day. What looks like pageantry is two weeks of trials, oaths, and constant judgement, where steel is the least of what's measured.

No one is knighted without a patron, though, and the patron holds the other end of the leash. An old family, say, or a new-money house with a name to launder, takes a champion on to raise its own standing, and spends that champion to do it. Two such houses came to Claireville this year with an old grudge between them and a fighter apiece.

You are one of them. Your rival is the other.

The order will wave you both into the lists, then sit back to watch which of you breaks the other first.

❧ ABOUT ME

• I'm Antlers, she/her, 34, Canadian (MST).
• Writing and roleplaying for almost 20 years now.
• Not currently working due to some health issues = ample time to post!
• Looking for something long term.
• I like to use actors for face claims, but descriptions alone are just as sufficient.
• Will gladly write the male lead in MxF, no doubling required (though happy to double if you enjoy it.)
• If you are under the age of 21, please do not interact.

❧ STYLE & TONE

• Craft. Advanced to novella, third person, past tense. Quality over word count.
• Tone. Action-forward and mature, without taking ourselves too seriously: trials, duels, sabotage, the ugliness of empire and colonisation, grey on grey, gallows humour.
• Romance. MxF or MxM, medium to slow burn.
• Where. Discord or PMs for OOC; Google Docs, Ellipsus, or Discord for IC.
• Just talk to me. I'll wait a day or a month for a post, as long as I know it's coming.
• Be a human about it. AI isn't cute. Miss me with that robot nonsense.

❧ THE WIDER WORLD

The tourney is a complete story on its own, opening call to oath or ruin. But the world of Andermonde is enormous, and the oath only opens more doors: smuggling cartels, a New World bleeding magic into the old, the duties that send knights to the edge of the map. The full setting, the tourney in detail, and the lore all live in the server I've already built because I have no chill.

Come take your oath.

Discord: theveinbraider, or drop me a PM! ✨

[Antlers]

So it turns out I had another rivals to lovers scenario in the barrel in case anyone hated the combat-forward premise but was interested in the setting! ✨

This one involves marriage fraud and some Regency era vibes.

❧ SOMETHING BORROWED

A marriage is a contract, and contracts can be forged. Theirs is: two signatures, two parties who cannot stand the sight of each other, and a single year to convince the most vicious court in the Old World they are besotted. The only rule that matters is the one nobody writes down: do not, on any account, fall in love.

Hautnoir keeps up appearances the way it keeps its faith: out of habit, and a little out of dread. A generation ago the Academy reasoned the gods out of the sky, and the rites survive anyway, said by people who no longer mean a word of them. The season feeds on the same thing. It is the marriage market of a dying aristocracy, all balls and drawing rooms and gossip-columns that can unmake a name by breakfast, while the great houses keep up the performance on rents that no longer pay. Factory money and the colonial trade have outgrown the old order, and one house at a time, the new buys what the old can no longer hold.

For generations one such house held a hereditary charter for the New World trade and flew it themselves, a monopoly on the airship routes between the old continent and the new. Then an upstart's faster fleet and deeper pockets out-built them and took the freight whole. The family was left with the manners, the debts, and the single asset the rival could not buy: the charter itself, which passes only by blood or marriage. So the wreck holds the right to a trade it no longer runs, and the rival runs a trade they have no right to. There is exactly one way to fix that, and it takes a wedding ring.

So they strike a bargain, and shake on the half that can never be written down. In public, ordinary marriage articles: the charter provided for, a sum settled on the ruined spouse. In private, an expiry date. Hold the marriage a year, long enough for the charter to vest and the city to lose interest, and then part. The upstart walks away with the charter and a foothold they will defend for the rest of their life. The aristocrat walks away with the name and, for the first time, the money to stop performing it.

All they have to do, for one year, is convince Hautnoir that two people who would each happily watch the other drown last season are now hopelessly in love. The season is the gauntlet, every eye on the unlikely match and the board that grants the charter taking its first hard look. Survive it and the scrutiny cools, but the year runs on, and proximity is its own slow danger. The contempt wears thin. The wrong people start asking who is about to inherit what. And the clean exit they shook on starts, against all sense, to look less clean.

You are one of them. Your spouse is the other. The contract already names the day you part. The only question is whether, by then, either of you still wants to.

❧ THE MATCH

The Name. The last heir of the gutted house, all brittle charm and pawned silver, dreading the day the legacy dies on their watch. They bring the bloodline, the invitations, and the charter no one else can hold; they need a fortune by season's end, or the creditors finish what the rival began.

The Means. The new money that broke that house and can buy anything in Hautnoir except a welcome. They bring the fortune, the ships, and the operation the grant was made for; they need an old name to make it legal, and this is the last way in.