#// anyway have deep thoughts with an amanda who has to get up at 4am

[thanatologie]

i guess it's just my life now that Deep Thoughts About Emmrich™️are some of the first things to brain worm me after regaining consciousness (waking up), but hear me out okay-

emmrich has, really, four - no, sorry, five - paths his story can take, right.

mortal and romanced

mortal and unromanced

mortal and dead

lich and unromanced

lich and romanced

it's the first and last two i really wanna talk about, and mostly the last, but let's consider:

the implication is, i think, when you choose to romance emmrich, it's an in it to win it kind of romance. it, more than the age gap, is why harding brings up how fast he and rook are moving (i'm sorry i love her and calling her lace is going to forever feel weird, forgive me), she gets that he's in deeper probably than intended, way faster than intended. like lich or mortal, it doesn't matter, it's very much implied rook becomes his Person™️in a way, say, an unromanced emmrich going out with strife doesn't have happen. that's just a date. but as a romanced emmrich progresses through the story, after the big fight he and rook have, after they kiss and make up post-fade prison and leading up to the last push for elgar'nan, there's a chance to have an interesting piece of dialogue with him where he talks about how he has so many plans he wants to share and talk about once everything's over and they're back home.

i don't think it's a stretch to assume where those plans lead, is what i'm saying, right. like...maybe more so than another of the other companions, emmrich finds his soulmate with rook. guy's just been handed everything he's ever longed for on a silver platter, especially in the mortal and romanced path, because he has manfred, and he has rook, and that's it. he's gotten his family. and i'd be lying to you if i didn't say he was probably terrified going into that last fight, because he could lose it again, just that quick, either by his death, by rook's, by something happening to manfred.

but this ain't about him.

where it really has interesting implications - and by interesting i mean horrible - is if emmrich's gone the lich and romanced path. because the tone changes in...a lot of stuff. the fight is different, because while both boil down to his fear of losing rook - which i will argue is actually greater than his fear of dying himself - a lich emmrich is very much kind of...overbearing? in a way? trying to get rook to hang back because now he's no longer as easy to kill (and i don't even know if kill is the right word there, either for me to use or emmrich, destroy might be more accurate). it's no longer an issue of his fear of death - if they've been all aboard the bone express with a lich emmrich, it's now all about rook. losing rook. how he's now afraid he'll mourn rook forever. and now he no longer has manfred.

so, my thought on this is - and not to make it dramatic, because emmrich's got enough of that nonsense for the both of us, dude just feels things incredibly deeply and 0/10 shows it - romanced and liched out is the worst possible ending for him. worse than a mortal him dying in the battle - that's quick, it's over in the blink of an eye. a lich emmrich...sure, he's got someone that loves him no matter what, that's nice. who supported his choice in becoming something more. but he has immediate buyer's remorse about that decision, because for all his talk about keeping rook safe, etc etc, the truth is, he's going to end up mourning them forever regardless. he's still lost manfred, and it clearly hits him harder than i think he would like people to think. i think the crushing weight of the certainty that, no matter what, he's going to lose rook regardless also comes crashing down on him.

all ground i've stomped on before, i know. but consider the implications of that. people like rook - heroes, is what i mean, i've got a lot of experience with heroes - don't die easy in their beds, you know? some people can settle down after something like this and live a quiet life forever after, but those types are going to be rare, because the types of people who answer the call to be a hero can't leave shit alone once they've been bitten. they see trouble and run toward it.

i think....a romanced lich emmrich goes bad. i don't mean a mwoo ha ha kind of bad, i don't mean...i don't know...a corypheus kind of bad (is that even going bad, though, considering- you know what, never mind). i think all those oaths he's taken as a watcher, and all those he probably had to take as a lich lord go out the window. i think there would be a lot of line crossing. a lot of big flashing no nos. mostly because no, i don't think emmrich is equipped for eternity. i don't think he can handle others passing through death when he can't. he might get, hell, forty+ years with rook, but what's a handful of decades with the love of your life when eternity stretches like a yawning void without them in front of you, right?

what that looks like, i don't really know. does he do what others have done before him and try to bring them back from wherever they go after death? i don't know, maybe. he's a necromancer, play to your strengths, i guess. whatever it looks like, i do think there's a distinct possibility for him to get pushed over some edge. like...it's hard to imagine, i guess, because he's so damn kind, but he's also not built for what he's asking himself to do, and i think instead of his (trauma-induced anxiety disorder) fear of death very quickly could become replaced by an all-consuming dread for the inevitable which could take him down some very, very dark roads.