welcome to underlight 2.0. this little alternate universe is, terrifyingly, five years in the making. it's based off jakei peñaloza's underverse, but barely. honestly it's three steps away from me scrapping the underverse angle and starting from scratch but you get the point.
in a purely theoretical, no-need-to-worry world, xgaster dies under mysterious circumstances. the prime suspect? nightmare joku, prince of darkness, guardian of negativity and also: guy allegedly plotting to explode the multiverse forever.
naturally, cross peñaloza of xtale fame is not happy about this. xgaster was a terrible, horrible person, but even he didn't deserve to die like that. knowing nightmare, it was probably unpleasant. plus, it gives cross an excuse to hunt nightmare down and cause his death under mysterious circumstances.
dream is not happy with the idea of their brother's murder, and so travels with cross, if only to prevent such a thing from happening. blue tags along as well, because he's tired of being left behind and seen as nothing but a burden. travels to where? oh, nowhere important, just darkmoon manor, nightmare's base of operations. doooooon't worry about it!
i'm a lover of character explorations, lore, and how ideology motivates people, so i intent underlight to hold these themes. additionally, there will be ships. you may not like them. you can tell me why, if you so desire, but to be honest, i likely won't listen. hold your opinions and accept that others may disagree. they're just ships, after all.
cross peñaloza
heh... our protagonist. s/he's a laid-back yet passionate ex-member of the royal guard who goes through normal, everyday struggles like you and me, like having his/er father murdered, universe deleted and restored, and falling for a demigod that will never return his/er feelings. y'know, normal, everyday struggles.
cross' inconsistent pronoun usage on this page springs from the narrative i want to tell with them. imo she's a trans woman who doesn't know yet and almost figures it out by the end of the story (if everything goes well, that is...) (it will not go well for her)
dream joku
our deuteragonist. theyre so fine and normal about cross' death grudge against their brother who they are definitely not debating killing themself. their personality is hard to define- all their life they've played the part of the good, perfect little guardian and generally they don't allow themself to be any more than that.
i want to explore how stress can lead good intentions down darker paths, in a way. dream sees no other option by the end of the gold route that the only thing they think they can do to "fix" it all is to kill the one who "ruined" it in the first place.
swap "blue" prince
a stowaway. too weak to join the royal guard, too weak to survive underverse. he can help, he really can- but only if you give him the chance. blue's a disabled trans guy who overworks himself way too much, and he's aware of it. he's aware in the way that one can have no mouth and must scream. he cannot get any form of gender affirming surgery due to prior health complications (1hp) and he cannot work as what he dreams as for the same reason.
it probably doesn't help that he's a clone. (wait, what?) a replacement goldfish to too many people. dream looks at him and sees shadows of their brother. cross looks at him and sees shadows of her own. nightmare looks at him and sees the shadows of the person he used to be (will be, soon to be). error looks at him and sees shadows of the original swap (...the one they fell in love with.)
killer rahafwabas
i've typed his name so many times i get it right on the first time, now. he's the quintessential lackey, the right-hand man, the second-in-command. (the others died before anyone could remember) and yet. and yet.
was there something between them, so long ago the memories feel like they are not his own? (her own?) if there was, it doesn't matter now. he knows and he knows that he could've saved him far before he did and chose not to. because it was convenient (because there were others or because he was the first?)
nightmare joku
prince of darkness himself. horribly egotistical and yet irritatingly charismatic, nightmare's only goal in life are making everyone else's worse. he refuses to accept that he was not irredeemable from the moment he first sinned (to him and to many, it was his birth), and to those who still want to "save him," he will do anything to convince them otherwise. to know he was not always going to turn out this way would destroy him.
there is a version of him who became holy and good and divine. you can find him if you look hard enough.
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