ilsabet

[ilsabet]

For the Knight Who Moves Like the Flash of a Sword

I know not when or where we may meet again

In this life or in realms beyond

Ephemeral your light may have been

But the spark it kindled will never fade

[ilsabet]

Do you like Darien Gautier? Do you like Bastian Hallix? Do you like crying over fictional characters? Well do I have the fanfic excerpt for you!

The latest installment of Ilsabet's Headcanon is so packed with feels that I decided to put it on AO3 so even more people can be vaguely aware of its existence. And hey why not toss up a link here too for all the Darienmancers and Bastianmancers and anyone else who might like to read one of the best things I've ever written.

And of course if one dose of angst isn't enough, feel welcome to mosey on over to the complete Ilsabet's Headcanon thread on the official ESO forums for much, much more.

Enjoy!

Ilsabet's Headcanon: Apocryphal Interlude on AO3

Ilsabet's Headcanon (the whole dang thing) on the ESO forums

[ilsabet]

Dear Tumblr please make this an actual link to the ESO wallpapers page for my friend who needs Darien goodness.

so theres a loading screen and I cant react fast enough to get a screenshot of it but iirc it has all the fan favorites (razum-dar, cadwell, gwendis, etc.) and i think right next to gwendis is our one and only bread boy, darien gautier.

if someone could screenshot it for me and send it to me id be forever grateful.

[ilsabet]

Y'know what, I'm more of a lurker than an active participant in fandom discourse, but after some recent conversations I've seen and been part of, something occurred to me and I feel like sharing.

I feel like Darienmancers as a whole are some of the most wholesome and least possessive and toxic fanpeople I've seen. I can think of a bunch of Darien lovers from here and the ESO forums and Twitter, and I don't think I've ever seen any of them act like he belongs to them and nobody else can touch him. We just love him and have our shippy headcanons and read about each other's shippy headcanons and share how great we think he is. And I enjoy that about us.

So... rock on with your positive selves, Darienmancers.

[ilsabet]

Very interesting point about Dawnbreaker and the Crystal Tower…be a hell of a twist if getting her grips on that was Meridia's whole plan from the get-go.

Might be my own headcanon talking, but I'd love it if that actually was Meridia's plan all along, and she knew the Vestige would do anything her handsome, charming champion asked because they're totally in love with him so all she had to do was string Darien along until the job got done. Or maybe that's just me. >_>

One thing that concerns me a little about our long-deserved follow-up is that they were giving us overt Darien teasers every year after Summerset, but we haven't had one since Blackwood. Doesn't necessarily mean they've forgotten about him, but I'd feel better if they were still tossing us crumbs.

I'll hope your intuition is right, though. I thought the same thing about the year of the Bretons (which in retrospect was more hopium than anything else), but the 10th anniversary of the base game would be an even better opportunity to revisit some of those characters and plot threads. And if you're feeling good about the direction of this year's story, that gives me something to look forward to even more than I was already.

Okay, this is a ramble, but bear with me: I've been playing a lot of recorded game footage recently while writing, and I noticed something today; after defeating Veya in the Crystal Tower, when Nocturnal turns everything dark, she 'invites' us to join Meridia in her eternal darkness.... Now, I have some more research to do here, but off the top of my head, the final time in-game that Meridia is present, or interacting with us, is in her shrine, when talking to her statue. Then she senses Nocturnal's intrusion in her realm, leaves us, and the statue weeps gloam-tears. We don't hear from her again in later chapters, do we? She's absent from her shrine during the Markarth chapter, her followers believe she has abandoned them. We do find that dead Khajiit in Elsewhere with her beacon and a note saying she wants a new Champion who 'won't betray her', but when exactly did he speak with her, or die? So when Darien sacrifices himself, what if he ends up fading in the Coloured Rooms because it was his default revival location, but Meridia isn't there to heal/release him, because she's compromised/trapped/corrupted by Nocturnal? Darien doesn't actually say she refuses to let him go. He tells us in his book that she agreed to release him after he finishes saving reality from Nocturnal, so was it his request to be freed, to come back to Tamriel, that she saw as a betrayal, but she agreed to the bargain anyway? He's not dead, because he doesn't appear during the New Life Festival. But his soul is 'lost', because we're all sure it's him who appears in Auroran armour, and wearing Dawnbreaker, when summoned by that wandering mage in Blackwood.

So my question is this: has Meridia been trapped somehow, a victim of Nocturnal, THIS WHOLE TIME, while we've all been hating on her?

I'd love to hear if anyone has any evidence for or against this, and theories on whether restoring Meridia (and Darien!) has anything to do with Ithelia's absence in the Elder Scrolls timeline post-ESO, because I don't think we end up with her return becoming a permanent thing, that would me a massive rewrite of history.

[ilsabet]

This is a pretty wild theory and really interesting to think about. While I agree that we've had too many bad-guy flags for Meridia to be completely redeemed, it would add some fantastic nuance to the whole situation for her to actually have been compromised by Nocturnal's invasion of her realm. (It was certainly a plausible explanation for her absence when her temple in Skyrim was attacked.)

Unfortunately I feel like if ZOS intended to make that a thing, they probably should have brought it up before five years' worth of unrelated storylines had gotten in the way. We already know that continuity isn't ZOS' strong suit given their commitment to the play-in-any-order philosophy, and I could see that kind of callback feeling like an afterthought to a chapter that many newer players might not have even played. (Unless it just really has taken that long for Meridia to deep-clean the gloam gunk out of the Colored Rooms and get back into the action.)

With all that said, of course, ZOS absolutely owes us closure on Darien after kicking the door back open with that book. And if there's anyone I trust to do a character arc right, it's Darien's creators. (Assuming ZOS hasn't inexplicably decided to just set aside whatever ideas they were working with for him, which I really hope isn't the case.)

I like the take on the Golden Knight ghost from Blackwood being an indication that his soul is "lost" rather than confirmation that he's dead. And not just because hiding that kind of reveal in an RNG-dependent random encounter that a lot of players won't even see would be akin to killing off a beloved character off-screen and only referring to it in a scribbled note in a jumbled pile of papers on a desk that's only visible in the background of a ten-second scene. They wouldn't do our man dirty (and waste a perfectly good opportunity to twist the knife embedded in our souls) like that, right?

Also some really interesting insight into Meridia and the possible connection to Ithelia in those readings y'all suggested.

And finally, one potential lorebomb that I wish would be pursued is the implication of us using Dawnbreaker to repair Transparent Law at the end of Summerset. We know Nocturnal intended to infuse her essence into the crystal when she repaired it, and that this would give her control over the Crystal Tower and all connected realities. Since we used a divine relic infused with Meridia's essence (her Last Light), shouldn't that have given Meridia control over the tower? And shouldn't that be something she would want to exploit?

Okay, this is a ramble, but bear with me: I've been playing a lot of recorded game footage recently while writing, and I noticed something today; after defeating Veya in the Crystal Tower, when Nocturnal turns everything dark, she 'invites' us to join Meridia in her eternal darkness.... Now, I have some more research to do here, but off the top of my head, the final time in-game that Meridia is present, or interacting with us, is in her shrine, when talking to her statue. Then she senses Nocturnal's intrusion in her realm, leaves us, and the statue weeps gloam-tears. We don't hear from her again in later chapters, do we? She's absent from her shrine during the Markarth chapter, her followers believe she has abandoned them. We do find that dead Khajiit in Elsewhere with her beacon and a note saying she wants a new Champion who 'won't betray her', but when exactly did he speak with her, or die? So when Darien sacrifices himself, what if he ends up fading in the Coloured Rooms because it was his default revival location, but Meridia isn't there to heal/release him, because she's compromised/trapped/corrupted by Nocturnal? Darien doesn't actually say she refuses to let him go. He tells us in his book that she agreed to release him after he finishes saving reality from Nocturnal, so was it his request to be freed, to come back to Tamriel, that she saw as a betrayal, but she agreed to the bargain anyway? He's not dead, because he doesn't appear during the New Life Festival. But his soul is 'lost', because we're all sure it's him who appears in Auroran armour, and wearing Dawnbreaker, when summoned by that wandering mage in Blackwood.

So my question is this: has Meridia been trapped somehow, a victim of Nocturnal, THIS WHOLE TIME, while we've all been hating on her?

I'd love to hear if anyone has any evidence for or against this, and theories on whether restoring Meridia (and Darien!) has anything to do with Ithelia's absence in the Elder Scrolls timeline post-ESO, because I don't think we end up with her return becoming a permanent thing, that would me a massive rewrite of history.

[ilsabet]

I like how Ilsabet gets this sword in her hand and immediately looks like she's ready for some long-awaited retribution.

Now to get around the fact that she doesn't use one-handers in her build...

[ilsabet]

So happy to see this on the screen after having it in my head for so long. The road ahead might be hard, but never forget that you don't walk it alone.

“Don’t forget, I’m right behind you.”

commissioned by @ilsabet

[ilsabet]

A Short Film in Three Parts

"Bastian it's a door, you can just... Bastian? ...Bastian?"

[ilsabet]

In which entire universes of interpersonal relationships are summed up in a single image.

[ilsabet]

DAMMIT BARNES YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE DOING.

eso: blackwood - trauma edition

[ilsabet]

Okay I haven’t even finished Greymoor yet and I’m pretty sure I’m legit in love with Fenn just based on this. :D

Hehehehehe cant say they dont know their fanbase....

[ilsabet]

Oh hey, I made an art one time. Maybe I should post it here.

The Hero and Her Knight

"But first, there was the mission. Always the mission. But even now, knowing that we were once again putting duty before ourselves, I didn't feel conflicted or unhappy about the situation. On the contrary, I was looking forward to seeing where our adventures would take us this time. No matter the dangers we might face, the man I loved would be with me. The hero and her Knight in shining armor. And nothing was going to stop us."

- from the personal reflections of Ilsabet Menard

[ilsabet]

Okay so I don't know how many people will see this or care, but in the interest of shameless self-promotion satisfying the world's need for more Darien-Gautier-related Elder Scrolls Online fanfiction, I figure it's about time I post a link to my little thread over on the official ESO forums:

Ilsabet's Headcanon

It's a mostly quest-based chronicle of my Vestige's adventures and the ruminations she has along the way. (There's a spoiler warning and zone outline in the first post for people who want to avoid reading about content they haven't done yet, or who want to jump right to a particular zone.) It's not all about Darien, but let's just say Ilsabet's feelings for him have a way of staying relevant. :D

[ilsabet]

Number of characters I've seen in-game and recognized as fellow Darienmancers from Tumblr but didn't have the nerve to say anything since I assume they have no reason to know or care who I am: 2

[ilsabet]

They said on the announcement stream that Gabrielle is going to be our contact for the Antiquities system though. So they won’t be able to do anything drastic with her, because they need her in place to handle ongoing fetch quests. (Kind of like Varo Hosidias in Murkmire, I imagine.) This actually makes me worry that it’s less likely they’ll involve her in something related to the Greymoor main quest or Darien, which she absolutely should be since she’s been as invested in finding him since Coldharbour as we are. At the very least we need to have a conversation with her about Darien as soon as we see her again.

100% that they need to address the Darien thing if we interact with Meridia again. They’d be stupid not to after the major events of Summerset and the bread crumb they left in Dragonhold. Even letting us into the Colored Rooms in Depths of Malatar without any Darien followup led to a lot of unfulfilled shouting on the part of my Vestige. :D

Oh boy, Meridia items in the crates, a Meridia quest in the new Chapter, the Chapter taking place in an area with a well known shrine to Meridia, and an unaddressed side quest about Meridia and Darien from Dragonhold? I cant wait for bad guy Merid-

"You're probably going to have to team up with her against the vampires for the greater good."

[ilsabet]

Okay I kind of want to know exactly how much Darien fanfic the ZOS writers have been reading... ‘cause this is way too on the mark... :D

cant say they dont know their audience