Author Answers (Patreon)

General

How would each Shepherd treat the window cat?

Here's how they would react to finding out MC owned the window cat, but if you mean how they would react to the cat first showing up at their window:

Blade: wouldn't take any notice of it, honestly

Trouble: he'd, like, wave at it or talk at it through the window, but the chances of him letting it in are low unless it was really cold outside... because he's allergic to/doesn't really like cats 😅

Tallys: she'd let it in and pet it for a while, and then just let it have free roam of her room from then on!

Shery: she's too much of a rule-follower to let it in, but she'd leave out a bowl of water and food on her windowsill for it and watch it fondly from behind the window!

Riel: deliberately ignore 

Chase: he'd let it come and go as it pleased, but wouldn't be super affectionate/cuddly towards it, they'd just chill in silent cohabitation whenever it happened to be there! 

Red: he'd crack the window open and lean it out to give it some pets/head scritches while on his sill, and would possibly let it into his room depending on if it was really affectionate!

Ayla: she'd take notice of it and would feel mildly curious about it, but likely wouldn't let it in

Briony: she'd get all excited and try to coax it into her room and probably wind up driving it away by acting too enthusiastic about letting it inside 😂

Lavinet: indifference/wouldn't notice it 

Hi Lena!:) Hope you're doing well💖

My question: Where do the ROs like to be kissed the most? (Like cheek, forehead, hands etc.)🥺

Hi there, I'm doing well, thanks--I hope you are as well! I could have sworn I answered this before, but I can't find it: here's how they like to be kissed, but not location! But I'm going to exclude lip kisses, of course, since that's obviously everyone's favorite part to be kissed! So not including kisses on the mouth:

Blade: hands/knuckles

Trouble: cheek or the back of the neck

Tallys: neck or collarbone

Shery: forehead or cheek 

Riel: hands, wrist, or cheek

Chase: ear, cheek, corner of the mouth, corner of the eye

Red: temple, throat, or cheek

Ayla: neck, shoulder, or collarbone

Briony: forehead or tip of the nose or top of the head

Lavinet: cheek or back of the hand

Can you share some facts about Lavinet being a mom to mage children and the mess that was likely to be the Naveen household? Imagine if the children inherit the potential for magic that MC has, lol

Haha, we actually discuss Lavinet and MC's Mage children specifically in this tag here! If that's what you're referring to, then yes, the household is chaos, and anytime one of her children got up to magical mischief, Lavinet would just look at MC like 😒 this is your fault, so you have to deal with it... So it's really up to MC to keep any of them from killing someone, while it's Lavinet's job to like steer them through social dynamics and other things like that 😂 If they burst into her room like "MoTHER [Sister #1] changed my hairbrush into a snake again!!" Lavinet would just be like (shaking out her newspaper) "Take it up with your father" or she would just get very used to the magic as if it were totally mundane!

Which type of footwear do they use? And how do the shoes look like? 🤔

Pretty much everyone wears boots of some kind during the course of their work as a Shepherd! It just varies between what kind of boots:

Blade: he tends to favor boots without laces, made of a more supple, softer leather that doesn't creak and is flexible enough to allow for both nimble climbing and stealth, made after the Ket fashion, though he also wears standard military-style Shepherd boots heading into combat-heavy missions or terrain!

Trouble: he basically wears the Blest equivalent of really heavy, chunky steel-toed boots with lots of buckles 

Tallys: she tends to wear Elvish doeskin boots, which are very soft and trade off protection for speed, agility, and stealth, especially when moving over soft ground!

Shery: she wears nicer, laced, work shoes with heels rather than combat boots, and also tends to favor shorter ankle-length shoes rather than really tall boots

Riel: he wears really expensive, really shiny business shoes (basically like oxfords) 

Chase: he switches off a lot depending on what he's planning to do that day; for scaling rooftops and running heists, he tends to wear soft leather boots like Blade's, but for more casual everyday activities, he tends to wear a variety! Aside from Lavinet, he probably has the largest shoe collection among the ROs!

Red: he favors knee-length, decorative boots, sometimes with a flap, sometimes not!

Halek: he's close to Trouble in his shoe preferences, pretty much heavy steel-toed boots with lots of buckles!

Ayla: she's the exception in that she doesn't typically wear boots at all, but a kind of hardened Jalis slipper that makes walking over sand much easier! That's just what she's used to!

Briony: as a Shepherd, she wears knee-length lace-up combat boots, but on her off-days, she goes for cuter heeled or shorter boots!

Lavinet: as an aristocrat, she exclusively wears heels, but as a Shepherd, she tends to wear knee-length heeled riding boots!

how do the shepherds handle a break up? Who is sobbing eating ice cream on the sofa for a week, who is trying to make their ex regret everything by having a major glow up etc

Blade: never had one, but in a hypothetical scenario, I feel like he'd shut down and essentially be really silent and miserable and depressed for a year and basically just wouldn't talk to anyone? Like if you asked him what he's been up to since you last saw him, he'd be like, "You'd have to ask someone else, I have no idea." Just overworking himself to drown everything out and totally mentally checked out!

Trouble: I think he'd be devastated and listless for like a month, but eventually he'd try to rally and get back on that horse and just try to get back to normal, and eventually he knows the pain will fade away and he can talk about it or even laugh about it someday!

Tallys: she's always the one who does the breaking up (😂😅), but if she were the one being broken up with, I really don't know how she'd deal with it! Normally she just quietly goes about life as usual and it's like the relationship never happened, but if she were dumped, I kind of feel like she'd spiral?? Like "I respect your decision, but also, I'm going to send you a really heartfelt love letter for 'closure' but also to make you regret your decision" and then she'd look back on that decision and hardcore cringe at herself

Shery: in a hypothetical situation? So much crying. Everything would make her tear up. She would be just a sad little squishy blob of watery distress. And she would stress-bake and stress-eat and definitely sob into a pillow multiple times!

Riel: ex's name? Never heard of them. He's dead to me. But don't worry about me, I'm fine. Completely unaffected. *throws himself into work until he looks as gaunt and lifeless as a skeleton and half on the verge of collapse*

Chase: real talk, he goes through "breakups" all the time, but if we're not talking about his callous disconnecting from random hookups and a real relationship ending, I feel like he would straight up move away. Like legitimately disappear for at least a year, if not more. And then if/when he comes back, he's all breezy and casual like nothing ever happened and when people ask him where he went, he'd be like "lol what do you mean, I've been here all along"

Red: like Tallys, it was basically always him doing the breaking up (except in the case of MC, who still thinks it was 'mutual' and not really a breakup). Typically, he'd just try to be respectful of the other person and not really talk about it or just say something light like "They're a lovely person, it just didn't work out," and then change the subject and move on... If he were dumped, I think he'd react similarly and just say really light and deflective things, almost with a sheepish chagrin, like "ahhh can we not talk about that... still kind of a sore spot, haha..." but inside, he'd be hurting. It wouldn't really be obvious to anyone except his closest friends, though, he'd basically just be doing normal things but seemingly in a trance or a daze or he'd wince randomly at some thought, but you'd never know exactly what he was thinking!

Ayla: kind of think she'd go that spite/revenge route where she hooked up with as many people as possible to demonstrate exactly how fine she is, she doesn't care, it's not like you hurt her or meant anything special to her anywhere, look at all of the hot people she's hooking up with and how much fun she's having!!! *drinking and partying just a little too aggressively*

Briony: oh, boy, I think it would just be a rollercoaster of emotion for her... like she'd be a sobbing wreck for at least a week or two, just holed up in her room and crying her eyes out and even just bursting into tears at the sight of any happy couple she came across or some random memory, like she sees a blue flower and starts crying because "ex loved blue flowers!! 😭" And then eventually Ayla or Lavinet or someone would rally her and convince her to get back out there and forget them, get back on that horse, and she'd be like "yeah!! 😤" and cut her hair and give herself a makeover and start going out and partying and probably drunkenly hooking up with at least one person, or going on a few dates, but her heart wouldn't be in it. Eventually she'd probably remove herself altogether and go traveling to clear her mind for a few months (like 3-4), and when she came back, she'd be her chipper, regular self again, completely recovered! (Just don't put her in the same room as her ex)

Lavinet: Step 1: absolute makeover and glow up to make him regret ever losing her. Step 2: find the nearest, most handsome suitor available and kiss him (and later discard him), both to make herself feel better and to further accomplish the regret specified in Step 1. This occurs regardless she was the dumper or the dumpee

What would be the Shepherds' (+ Prihine and Croelle) yearbook quotes?

Technically answered here, but I can revise! 

Blade: "No." (Direct verbal quote. Through inferring, we understand that he had a confrontation with the overly-persistent yearbook staff, who ultimately didn't know what else to put)

Trouble: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take!" - Wayne Gretzky - Michael Scott

Tallys: “The world is not to be put in order. The world is in order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.” - Henry Miller

Shery: "A bright future lies ahead of us; may it be full of sunshine and happiness."

Riel: “There is only one good, knowledge; and one evil, ignorance.” - Socrates

Chase: "Could you just make something cool up? I'm an idiot and can't read" (Direct verbal quote)

Red: Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, Lines 35-55

(I feel like in high school, he HAD to have been briefly obsessed with Shakespeare and definitely committed the "To be or not to be" soliloquy to memory, but because there wasn't enough room, he just put the line numbers...........) 

Ayla: "Buzz off, bitch." (Direct verbal quote)

Briony: "You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." 

Lavinet: “Don’t just follow your dreams, follow my Instagram! 💋”

Halek: [Blank space] (The yearbook staff couldn't track him down/get in touch with him)

Prihine: "They said nobody is perfect, but here I am." 

Croelle: No quote submitted, and in fact, they couldn't even find a photo of him to include in the yearbook, so it's just a black box with his name under it

Spoilers

#tellmeeverything (Please) Do the rest of the ROs know the MC, Sheryl, Riel, and Chandry are missing yet? If they do, what's their reaction/feelings right now?

No one has realized that the group is missing yet: it's been a little over two hours, which is a pretty normal amount of time during the workday to not see someone, especially since people's schedules and missions are all over the place! Aerin has noticed that Riel isn't in his office, but that happens frequently enough that it hasn't raised any alarm bells!

What's the average mission casualty rate for the shepherds and how are deaths handled? Does the shepherds arrange funerals for fallen colleagues and/or do they have some sort of memorial wall with names on it?

In the beginning of the Orders' inception (before MC joined), the casualty rate for missions was much higher than it is now, but still fairly "rare"--probably losing up to one person once a month at the most frequent, to 3-5 once every 3-4 months? The reasons for this were plethora: although many members lacked formal training and were thrown into dangerous situations pretty much off the bat, Blade was also aware of this and therefore didn't accept any missions outside of the primary objective of clearing Haven and establishing a base of operations first, so there was always some form of backup and safety in numbers around in those days. (Career-ending injuries and maulings, however, were much more common.) Later, as the Order's numbers and resources swelled, time to formally train recruits as well as to establish life-saving infrastructure (teams of Healers and field medics, experienced Captains and team leaders, actual rigorous programs for training and combat readiness before being sent out into the field, better equipment, more numbers to watch each other's backs, diminishing numbers of demons in the area, different ranking systems based on experience, specialized squads and risk assessment, etc.) meant that casualty rates on missions fell very sharply, and the longer that the Order continues, the more that number continues to fall, since the officers themselves become more experienced. Losing Kaidir's and the other teams (12 people in total) during Chapter 7 was the first time the Order had lost such a high number of officers all at once in probably ten months to a year! (Which was why it was deemed necessary for such high-ranking officers like Blade, Trouble, and MC to go in to Wallmire.) And I think the longest time they've gone without a single death was like, 3-4 months (though, again, career-ending injuries are much more common). It also tends to be that when an individual officer dies, their whole team tends to die with them: missions are usually handled well enough that the 1 individual can be saved by their other teammates (resulting in no deaths), or it's so high-risk that they all die in the line of duty. There doesn't tend to be a lot of in-between, for some reason!

As for how deaths are handled, when you sign up for the Shepherds and do all the paperwork and contracts, you specify exactly how you want your potential funeral to be performed (in the Elvish tradition, no funeral at all, just let my family handle it, etc.). If your body was recovered and you'd like to be buried or have your remains interred somewhere, but you didn't specify where (like "underneath the apple tree on my family farm"), there's a cemetery for fallen officers in Ashtown, run by a Shepherd sympathizer who gives away the plots essentially for free. 

There wasn't originally a memorial wall, because it never occurred to Blade because the Ket don't really highlight their fallen soldiers like that, but once someone started up an informal wall in an unused courtyard and it ballooned in size, he recognized the need for it as a way of maintaining mental health and morale, so that wall has since been converted to an actual monument with people's names engraved on it!

NSFW

NSFW question: what’s a hard no for the ROs?

I'm going to just cover a lot of bases and say really a lot of stuff that (what I imagine) most people would have a hard no about (stuff involving feces/urine, etc...) also applies here! So no one take this as a "because Lena didn't mention it, that means they wouldn't say no to it" lol, I'm just going to say the stuff that first pops into my head, but there would be a lot of overlap between their preferences as well as stuff that naturally goes unsaid!

Blade: he is very monogamous, so I think he would be extremely uncomfortable with the idea of introducing anyone else besides him and MC in the bedroom. Also probably cross-dressing, at least on his part!

Trouble: while rough sex is not out of the question, anything involving pain, torture, hardcore BDSM, name-calling, anything of that stripe does not do it for him and makes him deeply uncomfortable. He's never going to strike, insult, whip, or choke his partner, and would not enjoy the same things being done to him!

Tallys: she's pretty open-minded and doesn't have many hard nos, but rape fantasy-type stuff does not do it for her!

Shery: anything involving pain or extreme domination would make her panicky, and also no other partners in the bedroom!

Riel: really anything involving food or sticky substances like paint--anything that would make more of a mess than what you would normally expect from sex!

Chase: I don't think he has a lot of hard nos outside of the expected stuff--he has stuff that he isn't really in to or is neutral towards or stuff he'd prefer not to do, but not much that's a hard NOPE besides what you'd probably expect! I guess drugs or high sex?

Red: stuff involving degradation or humiliation, name-calling, spitting, etc., makes him deeply uncomfortable

Ayla: being choked or tied up, gagged, etc. She can do it to her partner, but she can't feel restrained or bound in any way, or she becomes very anxious!

Briony: I guess cuckolding would be the term? Like watching her partner with another person but not being able to participate or be included... or anything to do with cheating/cheating fantasies would be very upsetting for her!

Lavinet: anything involving another partner in the bedroom... no threesomes or anything like that for her, she's jealous and only wants to keep sex between herself and MC!

What are the ro’s like during their first time doing the devil’s tango with mc?

Blade: urgent, passionate, focused, not caring about anything else other than what's going on

Trouble: reverent, hushed, awed, like his mind is blown that this is even happening and he doesn't want to wake up and find it's all a dream

Tallys: confident, taking her time, relishing the experience and savoring every last moment of it

Shery: shy, nervous, hesitant, but bubbling over with happiness

Riel: cautious, inquisitive and questioning and explorative, but clearly excited

Chase: confident, a little smug and smirking, playful, teasing

Red: breathless, secret laughter, a bit fumbling but smooth sailing once the first awkwardness falls away

Ayla: fierce, urgent, hurried, like she can't wait to tear your clothes off once the seal's broken

Briony: quiet, luxurious, sensitive, drawn-out

Lavinet: slow, romantic, candle-lit, passionate (think Dragon Age: Origins lol)