So her canon backstory just fits in real well with Viva La as an AU

so what we get is:

-Her father is a powerful Imperial guy, either military or noble, and I'm leaving this open for a player to slot themselves in

either a villain or one of those turncoat-noble-types (Zorro,,,,,)

-Her mother would be a courtesan of the Vale of Flowers, bedridden now as in canon, which means that Maomao was practically raised among the courtesans there

which opens her up to any potential CR from there

-In canon she's then adopted by a former imperial doctor and trained as an apothecary

which I'm kind of leaving open again for any older characters who'd want the role of adopted parent within Elysium

and just writing off her apothecary training as something she did under a different mentor, maybe off the Vale of Flowers's previous medicine supplier or something

If you want to have her under a noble lady I'd be happy for her to get her contract bought up by Musse

AzureChrysanthemum: I had been planning on the "gets enslaved, then gets rescued by the Corsairs" route, but that is another route that still gets her back to Elysium

She'd still have occasion to leave to the Isles Above under Muse but yeah she'd be in Elysium most of the time

that does sound like fun tbh

let's do itttt

Yes done

She'll get to see Musse's more serious side

Maomao's generally good at getting people to show their second sides anyhow

Trying to think of how willing Musse will be to just poison people if she has that resource lol

it can be non-lethally if needed!!!!

I honestly see there being a lot of interest in that

Incapacitating someone without killing them to make it less suspicious

Maomao is devious she can definitely come up with some very unpleasant but non-lethal poisons

Thoughts on character #2:

I don't think I have it in me to try playing Linie after all. It was a good thought but

within an AU there's no real possibility of exploring Frieren's version of demonhood, which is something I would want to touch on if I ever did play her,

plus just the canon review, even if she's not in many episodes, eh,

but I am thinking about other characters and

I think I can swing Fritzi into a workable villain AU

Fritzi being, an OC (NPC) from my Trails of Valor game

her original past being, a rogue element from the government completely obliterates her hometown (there are two survivors - she's one of them) and she goes completely scorched earth in response, fuck everything, the world can burn,

which could translate into two ways, depending;

1. the Empire decimated her town and she vows revenge, but she does NOT care about collateral damage, she wants EVERYTHING destroyed and so the Corsairs want to take her down too

Villains work directly for the Empire

2. a rogue element of the Corsairs at one point went overboard and destroyed her town/killed her innocent fambly, and even though the Corsairs disavowed it / possibly even took care of that rogue element themselves, she still wound up joining the Empire's forces to make the Corsairs suffer

So that's something to keep in mind

yeah that was the depending

3. as 2, but it was a false flag operation and the Empire was behind even that

"two ways" /provides three

that's on the backburner anyway

I'm mostly just excited for Maomao

I am now also excited for Maomao

Fiore and Maomao are almost polar opposites. Maomao is very reserved and will shut up and suffer in silence in order to survive. But she'll also work to get revenge where she can lol.