Aaaaah Okay SO I Recently Started Drawing Digitally Again After A Really Bad Bout Of Having Absolutely

aaaaah okay SO I recently started drawing digitally again after a really bad bout of having absolutely no spoons for it, and of course this happened right after the WondLa hyperfixation hit again, so of course I had to actually start drawing the AU that's been rotating in my head since last July (when the first season of the show aired). The gist of it is that Sanctuary 573 actually naturally failed on its own, right after Eva was decanted, while at the same time Rovender's family didn't die, therefore he didn't leave and stayed in Faunas. I'm borrowing bits and pieces of the worldbuilding from the show to flesh this AU out, so Rovender is a pathfinder and his partner and (first) daughter are Gisana and Hanno (tbh I'm really glad the show gave us canon names because I was FLOUNDERING in that department lmao).

For designs, I went with mostly Vibes for Eva and Hanno, combining a few motifs from Cærulean outfits from the books. Gisana's design is primarily my own, with her outfit colors coming from the show but with actual outfit design being inspired by the books. Her and Hanno have crests because Soth does and I thought that'd be fun to incorporate. Rovender's design is an attempted combination of his late-book 2/book 3 design, with the added caveat that he hasn't been despondently wandering around for who knows however many decades.

Anyway, somehow Rovender, while on assignment, finds Sanctuary 573 and ends up finding Eva and Muthr, who is shutting down. In a last act of desperation, Muthr manages to use the Sanctuary's computer to decipher the Cærulean language (just... work with me here) and decides to give Eva to this random alien that literally just wandered into the Sanctuary one day. Luckily for her, that was the best call she could've made, and 8-month-old Eva then goes off to Faunas with Rovender.

(Continued under the cut)

please do not repost my art

Muthr, before letting Eva go, also downloaded all the programs Eva would ever need (language modules and such) onto the Omnipod, just in case, which she then leaves with Eva. She, and the Sanctuary, shut down after that, leaving this poor guy with a baby from a species he's never heard about before.

Rovender, not knowing what to do initially, thinks he'll bring Eva to Faunas and then figure out where she'll be sent from there. What of course ends up happening is that Eva imprints on him, and Rovender bonds with her, and, well fuck, he just can't let her be adopted by anyone else now, can he? Luckily, he manages to convince Gisana. Hanno is a bit skeptical, but she, too, comes around eventually and she's kinda always wanted a sibling? So. Score.

Eva grows up very loved, with the sort of family she always dreamed of, in a lovely little community. In addition to Rovender being a pathfinder, Gisana is a beamguide maker and Hanno is a tailor, which means that Eva can usually get human-sized clothes rather easily. (My headcanon is that Faunas is also a huge textile creator and exporter, so textile-related jobs are pretty common.) The entire family has custom-made beamguides that Gisana designed and made-- they're locked in on each person, and show where they are relative to Faunas. Hanno uses this feature in book 3 to find where Eva and follow her. They eventually meet in the ruins of New York just as the airships and warbots attack. (That's one of the doodles here lol.) Additionally, Eva wants to be a pathfinder like her father, so Rovender takes her on as an official apprentice not long before her thirteenth birthday. What happens later on, during the period the books cover, is that Rovender and Antiquus, seeing how Eva is maturing and developing, decide to start unofficially training her to take on a council position, which she does eventually take in a few decades. Eva also shows hints of her powers early on in life, with plants and animals usually responding to her in little ways, but she doesn't really come into her powers until the events of book 1.

The books largely happen like canon, with book 1 being the most changed. I'm thinking what happens is that, as her official first journey as an apprentice pathfinder and as a birthday present, Rovender takes Eva on an Eva-directed journey back to her birthplace, which she's been wanting to do for years. Besteel, who has been a problem since Eva was little (the Kitts found out the Royal Museum was looking for a live human specimen, using Besteel to do it, and knew they had to keep Eva hidden-- it's been a huge game of keep-away for years, and Besteel certainly suspects Something), finds them out in the open near the Sanctuary and starts the pursuit. Eva and Rovender flee to Lacus, deciding to try and get to Solas via the ferry to try and clear things up-- Eva's an official resident of Faunas, after all, and part of the chief's clan. Can they please stop trying to capture Eva? Except, of course, it doesn't go to plan. They get captured, Eva meets Otto and unlocks stronger abilities, and Eva gets captured at Lacus. (The Haveports are also some of the few non-Cæruleans who know that Eva even exists.) Without Muthr, it's a little harder to escape, but Eva does manage it, being as familiar with Orbona as she is. She gets out, gets back to Rovender and Otto, and they go to the ruins, Eva now curious as to whether or not there are humans on Orbona. Events continue only slightly altered (Eva gets bad vibes from the oasis and they avoid it, for one, and Eva doesn't loose her mother, because she's back in Faunas, for two), and the arc ends with Hailey and the Bijou.

Books 2 and 3 happen largely like canon, I think, with the exception of Eva being able to introduce Eight to her Cærulean family (Eight still goes off the rails and turns into a tree, though), and Eva knowing, going into New Attica, that she's not staying, she just wants to meet humans and maybe make some friends before going back home. Cadmus, of course, takes exception to this and tries to force Eva to stay. Eva, of course, escapes, with her friends and family in tow.

Book 3's biggest change is the addition of Hanno to many events, with her intervening at the ruins and accompanying Eva to the now-destroyed New Attica. Everything's better with a sassy older sister who isn't about to go off the deep end :) Eva ends up back in Faunas at the end, instead of just her and Rovender in Lacus, like in canon.

I do have more about this AU, but, like, this here is long enough and I think the best way to communicate other stuff is through narrative format (fic :) ), so I hope I have the motivation to write those at some point lol.