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Description
From left to right, this is Serif, Papyrus, Sans, Frisk, Chara, and Alphys; all but Serif are native to a swap-type AU I've called Jumbletale, named because all of the characters are "jumbled up" via random number generator (with a few pairs, like Dogamy and Dogaressa, counted as one). I wanted to keep the core of the character as close to canon as possible but having gone through different experiences. These are my main main characters but everyone else is there too, I just haven't drawn them yet (don't hold your breath for those).

~*~

SERIF'S ORIGINS

First thing's first, Serif is not native to Jumbletale; he used to be a fairly average, though highly traumatized, Sans from a near-canon universe that would eventually be called Crumbletale (for spoiler reasons). He remembered resets as more than the déjà vu most monsters got, especially for events repeated multiple times via loads or resets, but quickly decided to keep this to himself until he had more information. After realizing Flowey, and later the fallen human, had control of the resets, Sans tried to subtly manipulate events in his favor, or at least to avoid harm, but before he could try anything more substantial, he came to a harrowing realization; if it's all undone by the resets anyways, nothing he did could ever matter. So why bother?

During the resets, Sans had discovered a sort of autopilot he could fall into, compelled to do and say the same things he would have naturally said and done in a given situation, despite his extra knowledge. He let that carry him through reset after reset, timeline after timeline, while the human first gave up getting everyone to the surface, as they then explored neutral routes to see how their "friends" reacted to hardship, and as they eventually fell into a rhythm of genocidal runs just so they could fight their favorite characters over and over. Cuz that's all they were, right? Lines of dialog and patterns of reactions.

At the end of another genocide, Sans found himself at the Judgement Hall, once again fighting the human. As he killed them and their soul began to shatter, they happened to be close enough for Sans to reach out and touch them. So he did. Sans grabbed a piece of their genocidal soul, interrupting the load sequence, and catapulted himself through the Void. He woke up in the Snowdin house, on the couch, with Papyrus kneeling next to him. But this Papyrus was not his brother. He quickly realized that he was in a strangely familiar world with a foreign Determination squirming in his soul.

When a monster absorbs a human soul, their body changes to accommodate the influx of magic capacity, usually by increasing the monster's size, and control of the body is split between the human and monster. However, Sans only absorbed a piece of the human's soul, and as such retained full control of his mostly unchanged body, except for a pair of magic construct wings that housed the excess magic. He also inherited some LV/EXP from the genocidal soul piece, leaving him with violent thoughts and urges, but thankfully that's all they are; he doesn't have a full person living inside his head.

Since there was already a Sans native to this new universe, he picked the name "Serif" based on the sans serif font and its similarity to the word "seraph" as a type of angel.

~*~

JUMBLETALE

Of the main characters, the 6 "lost souls" have been randomized so that Sans takes Toriel's place as caretaker of the Ruins, Papyrus takes Sans' place as sentry and Judge, his sister Alphys takes his place as the rookie trying to get into the Royal Guard, Asgore is now Captain of said Guard, Toriel is the Royal Scientist (I swear the ship was an accident), and Undyne is Ruler of the Monster Kingdom. Asgore and Toriel are no longer Boss Monsters and have no relation to Asriel. Boss Monster souls are now a sort of mutation of regular monster souls and any monster could potentially be born with one, the parents status having no real effect on the odds. Sans and Undyne are both Boss Monsters, as was King Asriel before his inevitable death and rebirth as Flowey.

King Asriel and Advisor Sans were best friends before Chara (she/they) fell into the Underground and was adopted by Asriel and "Uncle" Sans. After waking from a nightmare, Chara decided to try baking rather than risk going back to sleep and in their delirious state didn't think it was odd to put buttercup flowers in a pie, which Sans then ate and got sick from. He recovered but Chara was still distraught and came up with the suicide plan, implementing it by herself, and only told Asriel about it after they were sure she couldn't be saved. Asriel/Chara found a lone hunter but couldn't bring themselves to kill him and promptly died in Sans' arms. Devastated and traumatized, Sans quit politics and secluded himself just outside The Deep, leaving a power vacuum that Undyne took advantage of.

Since Jumbletale Undyne didn't have the emotional connection to Chara/Asriel that canon Asgore had, she was able to think clearly about how to react to their death and the policy on humans ends up being adoption, generally speaking. Any human that falls is automatically considered a member of the Monster Kingdom and assigned a monster family to take care of them and teach them how monster culture works, no matter the age of the fallen human. When a human dies, usually of old age or some kind of accident, their soul is collected peacefully until they have enough to break the barrier. Frisk (he/they) comes along while the monsters have 6 souls collected, and eventually breaks the barrier with only those.

Frisk is a psychopath, feeling little-to-no empathy for others, and once given the power to reset, does exactly what you'd expect them to do. After a few of the more violent neutral runs, Chara's consciousness awakens and realizes they gain more clarity as Frisk gains Lv. Becoming sick of watching helplessly, Chara is forced to encourage Frisk to get more and more Lv, culminating in a Genocide run, which allows Chara to take control of Frisk's body, leaving him in the back seat instead. She confronts Papyrus, who had at least some recollection of resets, and enlists his help teaching Frisk that doing good to others can still benefit him, even if he doesn't get warm fuzzies from altruism. After several of the more positive neutral runs, Chara reluctantly returns control to Frisk and a true pacifist run is eventually achieved with the help of Flowey/King Asriel.

Serif arrives unconscious during the reality warping event that breaks the Barrier, on the doorstep of the house that was his somewhere else.

~*~

THE LABS

In canon Undertale, Gaster is alluded to be the old Royal Scientist before Alphys but he somehow got erased from existence, leading to sparse and conflicting information about him and everything surrounding him.

In Serif’s original universe (Crumbletale), Serif was an intern at the Hotland Labs where Crumbletale Gaster (Guile) was the Royal Scientist. Guile arranged an "accident" that left Serif and his brother (Cypress) orphans and then promptly took them in; Serif was too grateful and distraught to connect the dots at the time. Once successfully isolated in the lower labs, Guile showed his true colors and began experimenting on Serif, basically turning him into a child soldier, and forced Serif to submit on threat of Guile involving Cypress in Serif's place. Eventually, Serif panicked during an experiment which caused a chain reaction that warped time and space enough to erase Guile and several of his followers from existence. Serif took the opportunity to take Cypress and run. He was then promptly traumatized even more by the resets before crashing into Jumbletale.

In Jumbletale, The Labs are a bit more complicated; everyone kind of knew that something shady was going on at the Hotland Labs but no one wanted to look too closely since their products made life more livable for everyone else. As the Royal Scientist, Gaster was of course trying to find a way past the Barrier but he was also trying to basically build an army of modified monsters for when the humans would inevitably turn on them; or so he was certain. Being a boss monster himself, Gaster was a child during the war, remembering the cruelty of humans and despising them for it, justifying the hypocrisy of his own cruelty as a necessary evil. He hated that those who fell were welcomed with open arms.

Among his various experiments, Gaster attempted to solve the sudden epidemic of monsters Falling Down via cloning; "Lucky 13" was Gaster's 13th attempt to create a viable clone of himself and was the most successful, usually called 13 while in the Labs and Gaster's "son" Lucky any time he had to interact with those who didn't know of his origins. He would eventually choose the name "Papyrus" for himself. He interacted with many other test subjects, either assisting with the test or as another subject himself, one of which was training to shapeshift on command; the first "natural" form was smaller and more energy efficient while the second form would be bigger, stronger, and potentially ridable as a terrifying steed. This experiment is where he met Alpha Lambda 5, eventually called Alphys, and the pair bonded through training, often sparring with each other if they had their choice of opponent.

Flowey was also created during this time and discovered his reset ability after a test that accidentally killed him. Deciding to use this power for good, Flowey killed Gaster but quickly realized that his death alone wouldn't fix the corrupt system he'd set up and managed to manipulate events to get Gaster, and much of what was attached to him directly, erased from existence. This event locked the timeline for Flowey so he couldn't go back any further than Gaster's destruction, which honestly suited him just fine. After that, he could only resist the urge to play around with the timeline for so long...

While it mostly collapsed after Gaster's erasure, his operations were expansive and many subjects and followers alike retained their memories of the traumatic experiments, since he didn't have a direct hand in them; some projects even managed to keep going on their own. In the chaos following his erasure, there was plenty of evidence of a mastermind of some kind but information about him was sparse, vague, and often contradictory. With the lack of reliable information, rumors ran rampant but Queen Undyne, backed by a unanimous council vote, publicly declared a Protection of Anonymity for Lab victims; revealing someone's involvement in The Labs without that person's explicit consent was a punishable offense, not to mention the social consequences of "outing" someone who wasn't ready to face their trauma yet. The whole affair was effectively swept under the rug in all polite conversations but the consequences hung heavily over everyone in the underground.

Papyrus found Alphys and they moved to Snowdin, where Papyrus easily joined the Royal Guard. Alphys was just as powerful as Papyrus, and a good fighter too, but she lacked the confidence for interpersonal communication to be an effective Guard; having discovered their origins, Captain Asgore made it his personal goal to coach Alphys into being the amazing Royal Guard he sees in her. Serif was initially thought to be a clone of Jumbletale Sans before they realized he's actually from an alternate universe, but this assumption was embraced as a backstory anyways to explain his sudden existence, happily adopted as Sans' younger brother. While all of this isn't exactly fresh by the time Serif arrives, it's still close enough to say he was just hiding out a little longer than most victims.

Metta is a ghost-like monster called a Blook (they take the place of the Temmies) that loves uncovering mysteries; he doesn't necessarily feel the need to share those secrets but finding the pieces and putting them together is extremely satisfying. As such, he is the perfect candidate to put together what the heck just happened with all of this mad scientist stuff. He works fairly closely with Doc Toriel, who was technically given the title of Royal Scientist, but she's mostly there to help mother the survivors and maintain the underground infrastructure, rather than doing new science. As more of a chemist than roboticist, Doc Tori couldn't make a robot body for Metta but helped him find and customize a mannequin which was then strapped into essentially a wheelchair for mobility. Jumbletale Blooks are smaller and weaker than canon ghost monsters on average, but can get bigger with age; unfortunately Metta is too young to possess an adult human sized mannequin but too impatient to settle for less than "perfection".

While Metta is good at teasing out details, he's not as good at dealing with the trauma brought up by them, leaning heavily on Doc Tori for help with the emotional aspect. He's compiling everything on the Undernet, using alphanumeric codes rather than names to indicate individuals; everyone can learn what happened in The Labs, no one is outed unless they tell others what their code is, and some of this trauma can begin to be addressed, even if it's behind closed doors.

~*~

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

I'll make a map at some point, but Jumbletale's Underground features several new places as well as the canon locations.

The Capital - Also sometimes called "New Home", top of the cavern, above Greenyard, closest to the Barrier

Greenyard - Source of most of the Underground's food, between Snowdin and Hotland, above Waterfall

Snowdin - Far west of the cavern, as far from Hotland as possible

Hotland - Far east of the cavern, as far from Snowdin as possible

Waterfall - Below Greenyard, between Snowdin and Hotland, above The Deep

The Deep - Lowest part of the cavern, contains a deserted city called The Ruins (formerly Home), inhabited by monsters who don't want to participate in society

Mt Ebott is located at real-world Mt Shasta, California, which was rumored to have some kind of advanced city beneath it. I have an entire post's worth of information about what the surface culture looks like when the barrier breaks, due to alternate history; briefly, we lost the Civil War and the South became it's own country for a while before the two reunited for WWII and states have more power and control over their own governance. Califree (including California, Baja, and like half of Nevada) gave the area around Mt Ebott to the monster kingdom, calling it the Ebott Enclave, and promised to help integration in exchange for exclusive access to monster magic, giving them plenty of political leverage. Ebott also leans heavily on Califree for outside politics so it can focus on getting itself in order.

~*~

SOULS AND BOSS MONSTERS

Souls and magic work a little differently in every universe; the basics stay the same, where the soul is the culmination of one's being and magic is an expression of will, but specifics vary.

For Serif, skeleton monsters in Crumbletale share some properties with human souls, being mildly related; while still shaped like an inverted heart, skeleton souls are stronger than the average monster's (though not as strong as a boss monster), have a magic color like humans do, and have a super special ability that only the individual can use, called a dynamis. Serif's soul is a true blue for Integrity, staying true to himself and his morals throughout everything he's been through. Serif's dynamis is a form of viewing windows, which initially only allows light through (visual) but Guile trains and powers up these windows to allow air vibrations through (audio) and eventually solid matter. Now calling them shortcuts, they act similar to the portal gun in Portal but can be opened in mid air, allowing travel from either side of the window.

Another experiment tried to recreate an ancient, incomplete rite to set the subject apart as a Judge, connecting their soul to an entity also known as The Judge and allowing them access to incredible abilities, such as KR (Karmic Retribution). Being incomplete, Serif doesn't have a tight control over these abilities, leading to a dissociative identity when called on; Serif feels like his body is taken over by an external force, which he calls The Judge, whether it's actually related or not. He leaned heavily on this when fighting the human. His status as a Judge is displayed by a golden, 4-point star attached to his soul.

When Serif absorbed the human soul piece, his blue soul gained a red, inverted tear drop shape in its center, like half of a human's heart-shaped soul.

In Jumbletale, normal monster souls are white but have a faintly tinted glow, indicating an aptitude for certain types of magic. Boss monster souls are also technically white but have a stronger colored glow; the more saturated the glow, the more powerful the monster, generally speaking. While Gaster was a boss monster, Papyrus was not, despite otherwise being the most successful clone of Gaster. Since he knew he would naturally outlive Papyrus, he couldn't be Gaster's successor, so he trained Papyrus to be his steed and bodyguard instead, focusing on combat skills rather than education.

In canon Undertale, boss monsters are effectively immortal until the have a child and then they age in relation to that child. Frankly the logistics of this never made much sense to me so I'm dropping it. The boss monsters of Jumbletale age at about 1/10 speed, so if the average monster lives to 100 then the average boss monster would live to 1000, though some are effectively immortal because they're just too stubborn to die. Blooks are also effectively immortal until they bond to a body and become corporeal, and Napstablook is the oldest blook alive, let alone the oldest being in the Underground.

~*~

CALLSIGNS

Eventually, for peace of mind, Serif needs to figure out what happened to his original universe after the interrupted load and figures out how to travel between universes, which he comes to call AU Hopping. It takes all of his energy to do, and he's passed out by the time he gets there, but it does get easier the more he does it, mostly as shorter recovery periods. Along the way, he meets variations of the same people, generally seeking out the native Sans as his first contact, so to keep them all straight he comes up with a Callsign system: all natives to whatever universe Serif happens to be in are always called by their real names while anyone who is not native are referred to by a nickname, or as [Universe name] [Character name] if they don't have one. For example, "Jumbletale Alphys" has the Callsign "Amber" or "Amber Alphys" but "Jumbletale Doggo" doesn't have a Callsign because he isn't referenced often enough to need one. The Callsigns for those from Serif's own universe were created first out of necessity, so as to avoid suspicion/confusion from those who didn't know his origin.

List

~*~

TRIVIA

- While not pictured here, Amber Alphys has stripes on her back, haunches and forearms.

- Frisk's real name is Francis; he knew someone named Frank/Frankie and didn't like them so he refused to use that nickname, coming up with his own.

- I pronounce Chara's name as "care-uh". It's short for Charisa.

- Currently known Boss Monsters of Jumbletale: Undyne, Sans, Gaster (deceased), Gerson, King Asriel (deceased), Serif (kind of),

- Since they continue to share control of the same body, Frisk and Chara are often referred to as "they/them"; for the few that know, this is actually referencing their pluralistic nature, but to everyone else they identify as genderfluid/non-binary and use "they/them" as a neutral. Neither was very attached to their gender anyways so they don't mind but will still use "he" or "she" if they need to be referenced separately.

- I intend to make this a choose your adventure, visual novel style game and I will allow several chances to romance different characters. Personally, my canon ship for Serif is with Jumbletale Mettaton (Starling). The ship name is Mettarif or Starrif and they generally have a virgo/scorpio kind of relationship.

- I have jumbled up the characteristics of most interpretations of Chara and Frisk, represented by their swapped stripe colors.

- While Frisk and Chara are both Determined Reds, Chara's soul color is more raspberry while Frisk's leans more towards orange tinted.

- Serif was always good at reading people but with the soul piece, he has become a full blown empath, feeling others' emotions as if they were his own, the ability stemming from his wings and flowing into his soul from his back. It also combined with his dodging capabilities to become a "Danger Intuition" like Spiderman's spidey-sense.
-- Being summoned magic, his wings feel more like flesh than feathers and are hypersensitive to touch, on par with the human tongue (no taste buds though, thankfully). It's made worse because skeletons don't have skin and Serif isn't used to that level of sensitivity, making the wings painfully sensitive to touch.

- While Jumbletale monster souls have a magic affinity displayed by their shade, they can still learn any other type of magic; it's just more difficult the more it conflicts with their natural inclinations.
-- Serif is a True Blue, Papyrus (and Gaster) is a Just Yellow, Sans is a Persevering Purple (more indigo), Alphys is a Brave Orange (shocking, I know), Doc Tori is a Persevering Purple, Asgore is a Patient Cyan (sky blue), Undyne is a Just Yellow (golden), King Asriel was a Kind Green, Metta is a Persevering Purple (hot pink, bordering Determined Red),

- Frisk and Chara have developed a way for whoever isn't controlling their shared body to astral project into the real world, but the astral body can only go so far away from the physical body before it snaps back inside the shared space again. Normally, the astral body is invisible and intangible but they can make it seen or felt if they want to, independent of each other. Serif can feel the astral body's presence via empathy.
-- I left the light shines out of Chara's eyes to make her creepier and display her "dead" status. The physical body doesn't have eye shines when she's in control and the eye color shifts slightly to hers.

- Canon Alphys wears glasses, meaning she has less than perfect eyesight, but Amber Alphys does not; one of The Lab experiments was to enhance various senses and Amber Alphys had her sight effectively "enhanced" from poor to slightly above average.

- Amber Alphys' white jacket and black dress, while also matching Lucky Papyrus' outfit, is a reference to canon Alphys' two outfits; a white lab coat and a black dress with white polka dots.

- Amber Alphys and Lucky Papyrus can both shapeshift, Alphys into a wyvern-type dragon and Papyrus into a wolf-like blaster beast.

- Serif used to wear the same shorts and slippers canon Sans wears but now wears jeans tucked into boots, very similar to the human whose soul piece he now bears.

- Serif can't fly using his wings to displace air but he can levitate now, an ability resulting from his new wings. He gains a slight blue glow around his body when he flies and can extend the flight magic to anyone/anything he touches. The magic is immediately cut off when the contact ends.

- For most general uses, Body Magic is the "claiming" of clothing so that it fits properly and can accommodate for wings, tails, tentacles, etc. without having to be custom made for the particular monster. Clothing can only be modified so much, like something too big or too small can't be shrunk or expanded beyond a certain point, but it does mean that monsters can utilize mass produced clothing. The claimed clothing will also react to the wearers magic, flaring in anger, fluttering in a non-existent breeze, hanging bits not catching on things like branches etc.
-- Parents help their children learn how to manipulate body magic by manipulating it for them, usually by helping dress the child, sometimes into adolescence if they have special needs to be accommodated for. "Your mama still dresses you" is not an insult they really understand.
-- This is how things like tattoos are achieved, by manipulating the body's magic to permanently change a design aspect, usually by a professional but can be done by the monster themself. It is also how Alphys and Papyrus shapeshift; manipulating body magic on a large scale.

- to be continued...

Description
From left to right, this is Serif, Papyrus, Sans, Frisk, Chara, and Alphys; all but Serif are native to a swap-type AU I've called Jumbletale, named because all of the characters are "jumbled up" via random number generator (with a few pairs, like Dogamy and Dogaressa, counted as one). I wanted to keep the core of the character as close to canon as possible but having gone through different experiences. These are my main main characters but everyone else is there too, I just haven't drawn them yet (don't hold your breath for those).

~*~

SERIF'S ORIGINS

First thing's first, Serif is not native to Jumbletale; he used to be a fairly average, though highly traumatized, Sans from a near-canon universe that would eventually be called Crumbletale (for spoiler reasons). He remembered resets as more than the déjà vu most monsters got, especially for events repeated multiple times via loads or resets, but quickly decided to keep this to himself until he had more information. After realizing Flowey, and later the fallen human, had control of the resets, Sans tried to subtly manipulate events in his favor, or at least to avoid harm, but before he could try anything more substantial, he came to a harrowing realization; if it's all undone by the resets anyways, nothing he did could ever matter. So why bother?

During the resets, Sans had discovered a sort of autopilot he could fall into, compelled to do and say the same things he would have naturally said and done in a given situation, despite his extra knowledge. He let that carry him through reset after reset, timeline after timeline, while the human first gave up getting everyone to the surface, as they then explored neutral routes to see how their "friends" reacted to hardship, and as they eventually fell into a rhythm of genocidal runs just so they could fight their favorite characters over and over. Cuz that's all they were, right? Lines of dialog and patterns of reactions.

At the end of another genocide, Sans found himself at the Judgement Hall, once again fighting the human. As he killed them and their soul began to shatter, they happened to be close enough for Sans to reach out and touch them. So he did. Sans grabbed a piece of their genocidal soul, interrupting the load sequence, and catapulted himself through the Void. He woke up in the Snowdin house, on the couch, with Papyrus kneeling next to him. But this Papyrus was not his brother. He quickly realized that he was in a strangely familiar world with a foreign Determination squirming in his soul.

When a monster absorbs a human soul, their body changes to accommodate the influx of magic capacity, usually by increasing the monster's size, and control of the body is split between the human and monster. However, Sans only absorbed a piece of the human's soul, and as such retained full control of his mostly unchanged body, except for a pair of magic construct wings that housed the excess magic. He also inherited some LV/EXP from the genocidal soul piece, leaving him with violent thoughts and urges, but thankfully that's all they are; he doesn't have a full person living inside his head.

Since there was already a Sans native to this new universe, he picked the name "Serif" based on the sans serif font and its similarity to the word "seraph" as a type of angel.

~*~

JUMBLETALE

Of the main characters, the 6 "lost souls" have been randomized so that Sans takes Toriel's place as caretaker of the Ruins, Papyrus takes Sans' place as sentry and Judge, his sister Alphys takes his place as the rookie trying to get into the Royal Guard, Asgore is now Captain of said Guard, Toriel is the Royal Scientist (I swear the ship was an accident), and Undyne is Ruler of the Monster Kingdom. Asgore and Toriel are no longer Boss Monsters and have no relation to Asriel. Boss Monster souls are now a sort of mutation of regular monster souls and any monster could potentially be born with one, the parents status having no real effect on the odds. Sans and Undyne are both Boss Monsters, as was King Asriel before his inevitable death and rebirth as Flowey.

King Asriel and Advisor Sans were best friends before Chara (she/they) fell into the Underground and was adopted by Asriel and "Uncle" Sans. After waking from a nightmare, Chara decided to try baking rather than risk going back to sleep and in their delirious state didn't think it was odd to put buttercup flowers in a pie, which Sans then ate and got sick from. He recovered but Chara was still distraught and came up with the suicide plan, implementing it by herself, and only told Asriel about it after they were sure she couldn't be saved. Asriel/Chara found a lone hunter but couldn't bring themselves to kill him and promptly died in Sans' arms. Devastated and traumatized, Sans quit politics and secluded himself just outside The Deep, leaving a power vacuum that Undyne took advantage of.

Since Jumbletale Undyne didn't have the emotional connection to Chara/Asriel that canon Asgore had, she was able to think clearly about how to react to their death and the policy on humans ends up being adoption, generally speaking. Any human that falls is automatically considered a member of the Monster Kingdom and assigned a monster family to take care of them and teach them how monster culture works, no matter the age of the fallen human. When a human dies, usually of old age or some kind of accident, their soul is collected peacefully until they have enough to break the barrier. Frisk (he/they) comes along while the monsters have 6 souls collected, and eventually breaks the barrier with only those.

Frisk is a psychopath, feeling little-to-no empathy for others, and once given the power to reset, does exactly what you'd expect them to do. After a few of the more violent neutral runs, Chara's consciousness awakens and realizes they gain more clarity as Frisk gains Lv. Becoming sick of watching helplessly, Chara is forced to encourage Frisk to get more and more Lv, culminating in a Genocide run, which allows Chara to take control of Frisk's body, leaving him in the back seat instead. She confronts Papyrus, who had at least some recollection of resets, and enlists his help teaching Frisk that doing good to others can still benefit him, even if he doesn't get warm fuzzies from altruism. After several of the more positive neutral runs, Chara reluctantly returns control to Frisk and a true pacifist run is eventually achieved with the help of Flowey/King Asriel.

Serif arrives unconscious during the reality warping event that breaks the Barrier, on the doorstep of the house that was his somewhere else.

~*~

THE LABS

In canon Undertale, Gaster is alluded to be the old Royal Scientist before Alphys but he somehow got erased from existence, leading to sparse and conflicting information about him and everything surrounding him.

In Serif’s original universe (Crumbletale), Serif was an intern at the Hotland Labs where Crumbletale Gaster (Guile) was the Royal Scientist. Guile arranged an "accident" that left Serif and his brother (Cypress) orphans and then promptly took them in; Serif was too grateful and distraught to connect the dots at the time. Once successfully isolated in the lower labs, Guile showed his true colors and began experimenting on Serif, basically turning him into a child soldier, and forced Serif to submit on threat of Guile involving Cypress in Serif's place. Eventually, Serif panicked during an experiment which caused a chain reaction that warped time and space enough to erase Guile and several of his followers from existence. Serif took the opportunity to take Cypress and run. He was then promptly traumatized even more by the resets before crashing into Jumbletale.

In Jumbletale, The Labs are a bit more complicated; everyone kind of knew that something shady was going on at the Hotland Labs but no one wanted to look too closely since their products made life more livable for everyone else. As the Royal Scientist, Gaster was of course trying to find a way past the Barrier but he was also trying to basically build an army of modified monsters for when the humans would inevitably turn on them; or so he was certain. Being a boss monster himself, Gaster was a child during the war, remembering the cruelty of humans and despising them for it, justifying the hypocrisy of his own cruelty as a necessary evil. He hated that those who fell were welcomed with open arms.

Among his various experiments, Gaster attempted to solve the sudden epidemic of monsters Falling Down via cloning; "Lucky 13" was Gaster's 13th attempt to create a viable clone of himself and was the most successful, usually called 13 while in the Labs and Gaster's "son" Lucky any time he had to interact with those who didn't know of his origins. He would eventually choose the name "Papyrus" for himself. He interacted with many other test subjects, either assisting with the test or as another subject himself, one of which was training to shapeshift on command; the first "natural" form was smaller and more energy efficient while the second form would be bigger, stronger, and potentially ridable as a terrifying steed. This experiment is where he met Alpha Lambda 5, eventually called Alphys, and the pair bonded through training, often sparring with each other if they had their choice of opponent.

Flowey was also created during this time and discovered his reset ability after a test that accidentally killed him. Deciding to use this power for good, Flowey killed Gaster but quickly realized that his death alone wouldn't fix the corrupt system he'd set up and managed to manipulate events to get Gaster, and much of what was attached to him directly, erased from existence. This event locked the timeline for Flowey so he couldn't go back any further than Gaster's destruction, which honestly suited him just fine. After that, he could only resist the urge to play around with the timeline for so long...

While it mostly collapsed after Gaster's erasure, his operations were expansive and many subjects and followers alike retained their memories of the traumatic experiments, since he didn't have a direct hand in them; some projects even managed to keep going on their own. In the chaos following his erasure, there was plenty of evidence of a mastermind of some kind but information about him was sparse, vague, and often contradictory. With the lack of reliable information, rumors ran rampant but Queen Undyne, backed by a unanimous council vote, publicly declared a Protection of Anonymity for Lab victims; revealing someone's involvement in The Labs without that person's explicit consent was a punishable offense, not to mention the social consequences of "outing" someone who wasn't ready to face their trauma yet. The whole affair was effectively swept under the rug in all polite conversations but the consequences hung heavily over everyone in the underground.

Papyrus found Alphys and they moved to Snowdin, where Papyrus easily joined the Royal Guard. Alphys was just as powerful as Papyrus, and a good fighter too, but she lacked the confidence for interpersonal communication to be an effective Guard; having discovered their origins, Captain Asgore made it his personal goal to coach Alphys into being the amazing Royal Guard he sees in her. Serif was initially thought to be a clone of Jumbletale Sans before they realized he's actually from an alternate universe, but this assumption was embraced as a backstory anyways to explain his sudden existence, happily adopted as Sans' younger brother. While all of this isn't exactly fresh by the time Serif arrives, it's still close enough to say he was just hiding out a little longer than most victims.

Metta is a ghost-like monster called a Blook (they take the place of the Temmies) that loves uncovering mysteries; he doesn't necessarily feel the need to share those secrets but finding the pieces and putting them together is extremely satisfying. As such, he is the perfect candidate to put together what the heck just happened with all of this mad scientist stuff. He works fairly closely with Doc Toriel, who was technically given the title of Royal Scientist, but she's mostly there to help mother the survivors and maintain the underground infrastructure, rather than doing new science. As more of a chemist than roboticist, Doc Tori couldn't make a robot body for Metta but helped him find and customize a mannequin which was then strapped into essentially a wheelchair for mobility. Jumbletale Blooks are smaller and weaker than canon ghost monsters on average, but can get bigger with age; unfortunately Metta is too young to possess an adult human sized mannequin but too impatient to settle for less than "perfection".

While Metta is good at teasing out details, he's not as good at dealing with the trauma brought up by them, leaning heavily on Doc Tori for help with the emotional aspect. He's compiling everything on the Undernet, using alphanumeric codes rather than names to indicate individuals; everyone can learn what happened in The Labs, no one is outed unless they tell others what their code is, and some of this trauma can begin to be addressed, even if it's behind closed doors.

~*~

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

I'll make a map at some point, but Jumbletale's Underground features several new places as well as the canon locations.

The Capital - Also sometimes called "New Home", top of the cavern, above Greenyard, closest to the Barrier

Greenyard - Source of most of the Underground's food, between Snowdin and Hotland, above Waterfall

Snowdin - Far west of the cavern, as far from Hotland as possible

Hotland - Far east of the cavern, as far from Snowdin as possible

Waterfall - Below Greenyard, between Snowdin and Hotland, above The Deep

The Deep - Lowest part of the cavern, contains a deserted city called The Ruins (formerly Home), inhabited by monsters who don't want to participate in society

Mt Ebott is located at real-world Mt Shasta, California, which was rumored to have some kind of advanced city beneath it. I have an entire post's worth of information about what the surface culture looks like when the barrier breaks, due to alternate history; briefly, we lost the Civil War and the South became it's own country for a while before the two reunited for WWII and states have more power and control over their own governance. Califree (including California, Baja, and like half of Nevada) gave the area around Mt Ebott to the monster kingdom, calling it the Ebott Enclave, and promised to help integration in exchange for exclusive access to monster magic, giving them plenty of political leverage. Ebott also leans heavily on Califree for outside politics so it can focus on getting itself in order.

~*~

SOULS AND BOSS MONSTERS

Souls and magic work a little differently in every universe; the basics stay the same, where the soul is the culmination of one's being and magic is an expression of will, but specifics vary.

For Serif, skeleton monsters in Crumbletale share some properties with human souls, being mildly related; while still shaped like an inverted heart, skeleton souls are stronger than the average monster's (though not as strong as a boss monster), have a magic color like humans do, and have a super special ability that only the individual can use, called a dynamis. Serif's soul is a true blue for Integrity, staying true to himself and his morals throughout everything he's been through. Serif's dynamis is a form of viewing windows, which initially only allows light through (visual) but Guile trains and powers up these windows to allow air vibrations through (audio) and eventually solid matter. Now calling them shortcuts, they act similar to the portal gun in Portal but can be opened in mid air, allowing travel from either side of the window.

Another experiment tried to recreate an ancient, incomplete rite to set the subject apart as a Judge, connecting their soul to an entity also known as The Judge and allowing them access to incredible abilities, such as KR (Karmic Retribution). Being incomplete, Serif doesn't have a tight control over these abilities, leading to a dissociative identity when called on; Serif feels like his body is taken over by an external force, which he calls The Judge, whether it's actually related or not. He leaned heavily on this when fighting the human. His status as a Judge is displayed by a golden, 4-point star attached to his soul.

When Serif absorbed the human soul piece, his blue soul gained a red, inverted tear drop shape in its center, like half of a human's heart-shaped soul.

In Jumbletale, normal monster souls are white but have a faintly tinted glow, indicating an aptitude for certain types of magic. Boss monster souls are also technically white but have a stronger colored glow; the more saturated the glow, the more powerful the monster, generally speaking. While Gaster was a boss monster, Papyrus was not, despite otherwise being the most successful clone of Gaster. Since he knew he would naturally outlive Papyrus, he couldn't be Gaster's successor, so he trained Papyrus to be his steed and bodyguard instead, focusing on combat skills rather than education.

In canon Undertale, boss monsters are effectively immortal until the have a child and then they age in relation to that child. Frankly the logistics of this never made much sense to me so I'm dropping it. The boss monsters of Jumbletale age at about 1/10 speed, so if the average monster lives to 100 then the average boss monster would live to 1000, though some are effectively immortal because they're just too stubborn to die. Blooks are also effectively immortal until they bond to a body and become corporeal, and Napstablook is the oldest blook alive, let alone the oldest being in the Underground.

~*~

CALLSIGNS

Eventually, for peace of mind, Serif needs to figure out what happened to his original universe after the interrupted load and figures out how to travel between universes, which he comes to call AU Hopping. It takes all of his energy to do, and he's passed out by the time he gets there, but it does get easier the more he does it, mostly as shorter recovery periods. Along the way, he meets variations of the same people, generally seeking out the native Sans as his first contact, so to keep them all straight he comes up with a Callsign system: all natives to whatever universe Serif happens to be in are always called by their real names while anyone who is not native are referred to by a nickname, or as [Universe name] [Character name] if they don't have one. For example, "Jumbletale Alphys" has the Callsign "Amber" or "Amber Alphys" but "Jumbletale Doggo" doesn't have a Callsign because he isn't referenced often enough to need one. The Callsigns for those from Serif's own universe were created first out of necessity, so as to avoid suspicion/confusion from those who didn't know his origin.

List

~*~

TRIVIA

- While not pictured here, Amber Alphys has stripes on her back, haunches and forearms.

- Frisk's real name is Francis; he knew someone named Frank/Frankie and didn't like them so he refused to use that nickname, coming up with his own.

- I pronounce Chara's name as "care-uh". It's short for Charisa.

- Currently known Boss Monsters of Jumbletale: Undyne, Sans, Gaster (deceased), Gerson, King Asriel (deceased), Serif (kind of),

- Since they continue to share control of the same body, Frisk and Chara are often referred to as "they/them"; for the few that know, this is actually referencing their pluralistic nature, but to everyone else they identify as genderfluid/non-binary and use "they/them" as a neutral. Neither was very attached to their gender anyways so they don't mind but will still use "he" or "she" if they need to be referenced separately.

- I intend to make this a choose your adventure, visual novel style game and I will allow several chances to romance different characters. Personally, my canon ship for Serif is with Jumbletale Mettaton (Starling). The ship name is Mettarif or Starrif and they generally have a virgo/scorpio kind of relationship.

- I have jumbled up the characteristics of most interpretations of Chara and Frisk, represented by their swapped stripe colors.

- While Frisk and Chara are both Determined Reds, Chara's soul color is more raspberry while Frisk's leans more towards orange tinted.

- Serif was always good at reading people but with the soul piece, he has become a full blown empath, feeling others' emotions as if they were his own, the ability stemming from his wings and flowing into his soul from his back. It also combined with his dodging capabilities to become a "Danger Intuition" like Spiderman's spidey-sense.
-- Being summoned magic, his wings feel more like flesh than feathers and are hypersensitive to touch, on par with the human tongue (no taste buds though, thankfully). It's made worse because skeletons don't have skin and Serif isn't used to that level of sensitivity, making the wings painfully sensitive to touch.

- While Jumbletale monster souls have a magic affinity displayed by their shade, they can still learn any other type of magic; it's just more difficult the more it conflicts with their natural inclinations.
-- Serif is a True Blue, Papyrus (and Gaster) is a Just Yellow, Sans is a Persevering Purple (more indigo), Alphys is a Brave Orange (shocking, I know), Doc Tori is a Persevering Purple, Asgore is a Patient Cyan (sky blue), Undyne is a Just Yellow (golden), King Asriel was a Kind Green, Metta is a Persevering Purple (hot pink, bordering Determined Red),

- Frisk and Chara have developed a way for whoever isn't controlling their shared body to astral project into the real world, but the astral body can only go so far away from the physical body before it snaps back inside the shared space again. Normally, the astral body is invisible and intangible but they can make it seen or felt if they want to, independent of each other. Serif can feel the astral body's presence via empathy.
-- I left the light shines out of Chara's eyes to make her creepier and display her "dead" status. The physical body doesn't have eye shines when she's in control and the eye color shifts slightly to hers.

- Canon Alphys wears glasses, meaning she has less than perfect eyesight, but Amber Alphys does not; one of The Lab experiments was to enhance various senses and Amber Alphys had her sight effectively "enhanced" from poor to slightly above average.

- Amber Alphys' white jacket and black dress, while also matching Lucky Papyrus' outfit, is a reference to canon Alphys' two outfits; a white lab coat and a black dress with white polka dots.

- Amber Alphys and Lucky Papyrus can both shapeshift, Alphys into a wyvern-type dragon and Papyrus into a wolf-like blaster beast.

- Serif used to wear the same shorts and slippers canon Sans wears but now wears jeans tucked into boots, very similar to the human whose soul piece he now bears.

- Serif can't fly using his wings to displace air but he can levitate now, an ability resulting from his new wings. He gains a slight blue glow around his body when he flies and can extend the flight magic to anyone/anything he touches. The magic is immediately cut off when the contact ends.

- For most general uses, Body Magic is the "claiming" of clothing so that it fits properly and can accommodate for wings, tails, tentacles, etc. without having to be custom made for the particular monster. Clothing can only be modified so much, like something too big or too small can't be shrunk or expanded beyond a certain point, but it does mean that monsters can utilize mass produced clothing. The claimed clothing will also react to the wearers magic, flaring in anger, fluttering in a non-existent breeze, hanging bits not catching on things like branches etc.
-- Parents help their children learn how to manipulate body magic by manipulating it for them, usually by helping dress the child, sometimes into adolescence if they have special needs to be accommodated for. "Your mama still dresses you" is not an insult they really understand.
-- This is how things like tattoos are achieved, by manipulating the body's magic to permanently change a design aspect, usually by a professional but can be done by the monster themself. It is also how Alphys and Papyrus shapeshift; manipulating body magic on a large scale.

- to be continued...