#I've thought about this scene in canon almost every day for the past three years yet it was still hard to write

[crystaltikal]

Ephemer Week 2024: Day 2: Something You Wish Had Happened/AU

...or you can do so in despair, having lost a friend before your very eyes.

His eyes widened as his closest friend's brilliant Stroke of Midnight Keyblade rose up, as if to strike the unconscious Skuld lying on the ground.

"If only you had used the Lifeboats."

He instinctively lifted his shining Starlight Keyblade and pointed it at her, ready to defend Skuld. But then he stopped. There was something odd with what the Darkness controlling her had said. Almost as if...

She hesitated when he made no further move to stop her. "Well," he said, trying to keep his voice calm, "What are you waiting for? Do it."

"What?" came her surprised reply, as Ephemer got back on his feet, letting his Keyblade fade away, praying his gut feeling was right.

"It's clear I can't stop you," he responded, "So just get it over with."

One of the dark silhouettes observing them chucked. "My my, how callous."

Another spoke up. "What he says is true. We cannot be stopped. But whether the girl lives or dies is of no consequence to us." It seems to turn towards his friend. "All that matters is that our Gate is opened. Do it now while they are weak and cannot interfere, and let us be off."

"I--" She started to say, her mind racing. Sure, it may not have been the best of plans, if you can call a spur-of-the-moment idea that, but she thought she knew Ephemer, how he would react. This wasn't an outcome she anticipated.

It was in that moment that Ephemer rushed forwards, and grabbed her wrists. "Please, stop. You don't have to protect us. If you won't save yourself, then we'll take them on together. Just like old times."

[victorluvsalice]

Valicer In The Dark: A...Gratitude...Carol?

Hi, I know I just posted a whole long-ass write-up on stories and scores I adapted from other media for this verse yesterday, but this is an idea I almost literally just came up with, and it's delightful seasonal nonsense, so I figured that it deserved its own post. XD What happened is this: during a boring moment at work last week, I found myself thinking about my old "Scenes From A Multiverse Christmas Carol" fic (featuring Edna Strickland from BTTF: The Game as Scrooge; Victor, Alice, and all the various OC children I've given them over the years as the Cratchits; and young Emmett Brown (also from BTTF: The Game) and Bonejangles and Barkis Bittern (in the "shadow puppet" form from the "Remains of the Day" sequence) from Corpse Bride as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come respectively). Specifically, I found myself thinking, "If I was writing that fic today, I'd probably make Smiler the Ghost of Christmas Present -- they totally fit the brief for that spirit! Almost aggressively cheerful, has a magic liquid they can use on people to make them happier, has some secret darkness hidden away under the clothes...

"...Actually, thinking about it, I could turn the whole Valicer trio into the Ghosts of Christmas, couldn't I? Alice suits Past because her whole plotline in A:MR revolves around her rummaging through her past and using those memories to make herself a better person in the present (via Bumby-murder, granted), and Victor suits Yet To Come because he's very closely tied to death thanks to, you know, marrying a corpse in his movie. Plus he's pale enough for the role...it could totally work!

"...oh shit now I want to do a Christmas Carol parody with the Valicer In The Dark version of the trio and Lord Rowan."

Aaaand cue me pretty much losing the rest of the day to coming up with ways on how to make that work. XD Now, the traditional plotline of the Scrooge character being visited by three actual ghosts looking to help them change their ways wouldn't work in the world of Duskwall and the Shattered Isles, simply because, in that universe, ghosts are pretty much always very bad news. If a ghost ends up in your room while you're sleeping, it's pretty much guaranteed it's there to possess you and suck away your life essence, not help you become a better person. Not to mention, I wasn't about to kill off my trio to do this, even if I made it a one-off non-canon story. So my initial thought was that the whole thing would have to be a weird dream Lord Rowan had for some reason, with the three in the right roles doing their supernatural thing while he fought them at every turn. And then end it with him waking up the next morning and tracking down the Three Pillars to accuse them of breaking into his house again, only for them to be like "...we have no idea what you're talking about, are you feeling okay?" Which was -- all right, but wasn't really gelling with me --

And then -- I came up with something MUCH FUNNIER.

Allow me to set the scene for you -- the story would open on the eve of Gratitude (a Duskwallian holiday all about giving thanks to the Immortal Emperor for ascending to the throne and saving the Shattered Isles during the cataclysm way back in the day; it's a bit more "Thanksgiving" than "Christmas" but it's the closest analogue we've got in the main rulebook), with Lord Rowan throwing a party for all his family and friends and whatnot. Things are going pretty well for old Nathaniel --

Up until he's informed that there's a disturbance in the kitchens. And when he goes to investigate, he finds himself blinded by a shockingly bright light. Scrambling around, he manages to seize hold of an arm (or is it a leg? Or a head?) --

And finds himself holding a flour-covered Alice Liddell. Turns out that she and her compatriots broke into the house to steal any scraps and leftovers from his fancy party that they could find to distribute to the residents of Six Towers. The "disturbance" was her accidentally upending a bag of flour onto herself, and the flash was her using Smiler's "Flasher" device to try and cover a getaway. Lord Rowan is naturally pissed off and demands to know where the others are, but she says they split up a while back and she's not sure. So he drags her off to try and find them, complaining all the while about how hard they make his life and how dare they steal his food to give to those "leeches" outside. Alice is annoyed by all this and essentially goes "What the hell happened in your past to make you such a jerk?"

And cue them running first into Lord Rowan's father, Elder Gregorious Rowan, City Council member and high-ranking leader in the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh, and then into his older brother Graham, a decorated and important leviathan hunter with a wife and three children. Both of whom end up talking about Nathaniel's past and how they'd hoped he'd live up to his potential better. Alice is like "ah, second son syndrome." XD Lord Rowan is like "oh screw you" and continues his search --

And happens upon his study -- which has light coming out from under the door. And when he throws open said door, he finds Smiler sitting his chair at his desk, wrapped in stolen Gratitude decorations (including a wreath of moss and greens upon their head) and eating some food they got at the party (not even stolen, the waiters just gave them some canapes). Lord Rowan is even more annoyed now (while even Alice is like "Smiler, you took a snack break?" -- Smiler protests they were going to share) and starts going on about how they're ruining his Gratitude --

And Smiler responds with "oh, we're ruining your Gratitude? What about all your tenants whose Gratitudes you've ruined?" and drags him out onto a nearby balcony to show him Six Towers and have a little rant about how the people down there have almost nothing thanks to him, but they still do their best to be thankful and share the spirit of the holiday with each other. "And you can't even spare the scraps from your kitchen to help them? Tell me, if things had gone according to plan, would you have even known we were here? Or would you have not even noticed the missing food?" Lord Rowan protests he's not running a charity and if people want meals they can go to the Arms of the Weeping Lady, but Smiler shoots back that the soup kitchen can't do everything and that regular people have to help increase happiness too. Lord Rowan dismisses that as "Advocate nonsense" and heads back inside, intending to raise the alarm and call the Bluecoats on them. Alice and Smiler are like "oh come on, can you not be a dick for one day, we don't even want to ruin your party, we just want the stuff you'd throw away anyway," but Lord Rowan says he's had enough of their shenanigans. Alice threatens to hurt him, but Lord Rowan is like "oh, you wouldn't dare, not in my own house. You lot shan't summon the specter of death upon me!"

And then he turns around and finds himself face-to-hood with a tall figure in a black cloak with one skinny pale hand reaching out of it. He naturally screams like a little girl at this --

Causing the figure to recoil and trip over its own cloak, falling down and revealing it's Victor. (Or "Vincent," as Lord Rowan initially calls him -- Victor is like "Lord Everglot made the same mistake -- why can you rich people never remember my name?!") Turns out he's wearing the cloak because his usual coat is in the wash and he needed something to protect against the chill ("We told him it was too big," Alice says, prompting Victor to retort "I'm not used to things being TOO BIG on me"). Lord Rowan recovers quickly from nearly having had a heart attack and sarcastically asks Victor if he has anything to say about his lack of care about the "peasants" and their "pathetic Gratitude celebrations" -- turns out Victor does, saying that if he doesn't care how he's regarded in the present, perhaps he could care about how he's regarded in the future? After all, he's not leaving a particularly nice legacy behind him at the moment -- the people in Six Towers hate the Rowan name, associating it with fear and want and misery. "When you die, do you think anyone would come to your marker in the great mausoleum by the crematory and mourn? Or do you think there will be celebrating in the streets?" Lord Rowan is a little shaken by that thought, but manages to dismiss it, pointing out he'll be dead and his soul burnt away, so what does it matter? Victor starts to bring up the idea of his descendants suffering for his sins instead --

And then stops, because, uh-oh. There's a ghost in the house. And it seems to be right in the middle of the ballroom -- aka in the middle of Lord Rowan's party. The four rush there, to find the guests being terrorized by someone Lord Rowan recognizes as the ghost of one Ebenezer Marley -- an old school friend of his who became a solicitor and helped him occasionally with matters of property law. Apparently the dude was murdered recently, and decided to take out his spectral rage on the celebrants. Marley spots Lord Rowan and rushes to take him over --

Only to be caught by Victor, who just so happens to have his ghost-hunting kit on him. After a brief struggle, he, Alice, and Smiler manage to wrangle the ghost into a spirit bottle and save the party. The guests are all very impressed, going "bravo" and "thank you for helping us" --

And Lord Rowan realizes that turning them over to the Bluecoats now would make him look extremely bad. So, very reluctantly, he summons his butler and asks him to take them to the kitchen so they can collect the food they wanted before escorting them off the property. The Three Pillars are thrilled, but he makes it very clear to them that this is not him being nice -- this is payment for services rendered. And that he wants the decorations Smiler stole back, thank you. Smiler obligingly drapes it all on Lord Rowan instead, and the trio head off happily to collect their spoils. Lord Rowan watches them go, quietly steaming about them winning --

And then another one of his rich acquaintances (which I am so tempted to make Barnaby from Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark) drapes an arm around him and goes, "Oh, relax, Nate, it's Gratitude! You can go back to trying to kill them the next day!" Lord Rowan starts to protest that he hasn't been trying to kill them --

And then he stops. Thinks. And then smiles and goes, "why, you're absolutely right." Cue him returning to the party in much better spirits, thinking about how there must be someone willing to, ah, "take care of" the Three Pillars --

Aaand end of story. XD Yeah, a traditional Christmas Carol this ain't. But hey, at least this allows me to establish Lord Rowan's more murderous tendencies towards the trio in future stories! Hell, it might be good to follow this story with the Taskmaster-based one, since part of the joke in that one is Alex deliberately misinterpreting Lord Rowan's request to "take care of" the three, and the show is known for its "New Year's Treat" one-off episodes...

[keldae]

For the fic asks:

Every….third question!

LET'S GOOOOO =D

3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year

You want me to pick ONE?? Maaaan... I think I gotta go with this scene from the Soulmate AU we're co-writing! ;)

A second later, cold fire bit into Devi’s neck. She hissed as she felt Astarion close his lips over her skin, eagerly drinking in the blood that trickled out of her veins. Her heart raced in her chest as she fought the urge to squirm. How much blood did he need from her again? How long was she supposed to let him feed off of her? She set her hands on Astarion’s cold chest, ready to push him off. She felt cold, and her limbs had started to tingle. Shit, had he already taken too much of her blood? Abruptly, she felt a pull in her chest, coupled with the sudden, sharp sense of something being wrong. Before she could move, she felt alarm that wasn’t her own, followed swiftly by protective wrath. “Ignis!”

6. least popular fic this year

Probably A Very Fine Line, which was also the only SWTOR fic I got out this year. I guess all my AO3 followers nowadays are following me for BG3 content and not SWTOR, or maybe I just didn't tag this one well! But easily the lowest hit count I've had for fics written this year.

9. longest wip of the year

The modern!AU we're working on, hands-down! We're over 70K words between the two of us and STILL early-ish in the story!

12. favorite character to write about this year

Going off canon characters only, EASILY Gale. ;) Out of all my BG3 fics (60!), he's not tagged as a main character in like... THREE of them.

The rest of the questions under the cut!

15. something you learned this year

"Found Family" is my favourite trope (which I think I knew before anyway, I just never actually said it?), and I'm a more versatile writer than I know! Some writers focus primarily on one or two genres (which makes them masters of their craft!), I tend to bounce between everything that's not horror-related. ;) Angst? Domestic fluff? Smut? I probably have a fic for that!

18. current number of wips

... A lot. >.> The Soulmate AU and the modern AU are at the top of the list, but if I pull up my Google Docs with my assorted one-shot starts...

*counts on fingers*

... 16, I think? And that's just the ones I've started writing, not the assorted prompts in my inbox that I've pasted into a doc so I remember what the prompt is, LOL.

21. most memorable comment/review

All hail @kitoanthony for almost literally making me cry with her beautiful, thoughtful comments on almost every BG3 story I post! Her first one on the second chapter/epilogue of Abduction came the day after I got dumped over Discord, and it completely MADE MY WEEK. <3

24. favorite fic you read this year

HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME CHOOSE.

Okay so I don't think I can find it again, but there was a Gale/Tav smutfic I found here on Tumblr that involved some professor/student roleplay (listen, I have a kink dammit) and it has lived in my head rent-free ever since I read it. I wish I could remember the author!

27. favorite fanfic author of the year

That's like asking me to pick a favourite child! D: I have loved every author I've read from this year, for all the different reasons - sometimes I want shameless smut, and sometimes I want fluff!

30. favorite fandom to read fic from this year

To nobody's surprise, BG3. ;) But a special shout-out to the DATV fic writers who are doing their damn best to get me on the Lucanis romance train! (First I need to get the damn game... which means I should probably finish DA2 and DAI first...)

[traincat]

I feel like I've read a ton, but I'm honestly still pretty new to comics rn. That being said... What is one more day? Ik we don't like it and it happened a while ago, but that's about it [,=

Time for Spider-Man History With Traincat: Highly Controversial Storylines! And that feeling is totally normal with comics with huge canons -- you can read a ton and still have some fairly big blindspots in your understanding of the total picture. That being said, this is kind of a big one, both in terms of Spider-Man history/canon and in terms of how Spider-Man fandom functions. I would say probably no other storyline has had quite as much impact on how the fandom views and interacts with the source material as One More Day/Brand New Day. It's been the Wild West out here ever since it happened. (Which was in 2007, so like, yes, fairly long ago, especially when you look at how Spider-Man canon has evolved since, but in the grand scheme of things, also kind of recent. One More Day is not old enough to rent a car.)

So when people talk about Spider-Man's One More Day, they're usually actually talking about two related arcs: One More Day and Brand New Day. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering both. For the sake of transparency, I am going to admit that I think One More Day, as a self-contained story, is good, actually. This is controversial! I admit that! But I stand by my stupid opinions on this blog, for some reason. I think One More Day when you examine it on its own, by which I mean you ignore the decade and a half worth of canon that came after it, as a Spider-Man story and as a PeterMJ-centric story holds up under scrutiny and that people who don't like it don't like complicated love stories and might actually throw their own mothers under buses. No offense to the OMD haters. Little bit of offense to the OMD haters. Brand New Day, which is the continuation of One More Day, on the other hand -- largely bad. Very largely bad.

But let's backtrack. One More Day is a four issue crossover storyline that takes place directly after Civil War, during which Iron Man and Captain America got divorced and divvied up the superhero community and Spider-Man made some startlingly bad decisions and made a fugitive out of himself and his family in a manner that got Aunt May shot, and Spider-Man: Back in Black (Amazing Spider-Man #539–543) which examines Peter's actions immediately after Aunt May is shot and ends with him humiliating the Kingpin in front of an entire prison. One More Day consists of Amazing Spider-Man #544 -> Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 -> Sensational Spider-Man v2 #41 -> Amazing Spider-Man #545. In One More Day, Aunt May is dying, all of Peter's efforts to save her have thus far failed, and, consumed by guilt, he is rapidly running out of time. Approached by Mephisto, a literal demon from hell, Peter is offered a deal: Aunt May will live -- and Peter's identity, which was previously revealed to the world at large during Civil War, will once again be hidden from the memories of all but a select few -- if Peter trades him his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane struggle with this, but eventually both agree to the deal. The clock strikes twelve, the deal is done, and Peter and Mary Jane's marriage fades into history.

(ASM #545) A reasonably simple premise for a story that caused so many problems -- most, I would argue, not actually the original story's fault. So obviously, this was an unpopular move -- Peter and Mary Jane had for a long time been a fan favorite Marvel couple, and in a fictional universe where most relationships are doomed as soon as they begin, the enduring Spider-Marriage was sacred ground. And then, with a snap of its fingers, it was gone: Peter wakes up in Aunt May's house, no longer married, with Mary Jane out of the picture. (She would not return to the book on any sort of consistent basis for over 50 issues.) In the wake of One More Day began Brand New Day, which is basically what it sounds like: a promised "brand new day" of "exciting" Spider-Man content and a publishing schedule where Amazing Spider-Man came out three times a month. (Which sounds good on paper but I think in practice caused more problems than it created good storylines.) Peter, newly single again, had new love interests! And also Harry Osborn was alive again for some reason! I generally like Harry's post-BND stories so that part's fine with me.

But overall? Brand New Day is a mess. It knows it wants to tread new and exciting ground with Peter -- tell new stories! ensnare new readers! make them fork out for a book three times a month. -- but it doesn't know what those stories should be. Readers who were invested in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship -- a major facet of Spider-Man comics for decades at that point -- felt rightfully betrayed that the marriage could be so easily traded in and that Mary Jane herself, perhaps the second most important figure in Spider-Man comics after Peter, could be tossed aside. From a personal point of view, I think Brand New Day fails in large part because it abandons what has always made Spider-Man such a compelling series, and that's the mix of Peter's personal life with his vigilante life. BND sees Peter with new friends, new jobs, new love interests, etc -- it is very much a brand new day! But it isn't a better day compared to the stories that came before it. I do like some post-BND stories, especially American Son (ASM #595-599) and Grim Hunt (ASM #634-637), but compared to pre-BND where I think the majority of canon is good, it's a very lacking body of work that is hurt by the way it divorced itself from the PeterMJ marriage as Spider-Man's central relationship.

"But Traincat, I thought you said you liked One More Day?" Yeaaaaah. I do. This is why I keep saying I like One More Day on its own merits, and not on the merits of the stories it opened the doors for. I like a good romantic tragedy in fiction, and the way Peter and Mary Jane's final scene in One More Day plays out is beautiful. I like the idea of Peter caught in this impossible situation, being asked to choose between two women he loves more than his own life. A really common criticism I see leveled against One More Day is that Peter should have chosen his relationship with Mary Jane over May's life, which is -- okay, I think it's weird that people keep insisting on this, not in the least because by asking Peter to sacrifice his aunt's life they're essentially demanding he commit a callous, out of character act in order to further his own interests. It's also weird because the thing is, Peter already chose Mary Jane over May -- that's what gets them into this situation. It's literally in the scene where May is shot:

(ASM #538) When the gun goes off, Peter's spider-sense kicks in, and he covers Mary Jane, leaving May in the path of the bullet. He does choose Mary Jane over May, regardless of whether he realized what he was doing. And that's why he can't make that choice a second time. His actions in One More Day do make sense for him as a character, whether or not any individual reader likes them, and Mary Jane's actions make sense, too -- after all, she's the one who ultimately tells Mephisto that they agree to the deal when Peter can't bring himself to voice it.

A lot of people also like to nitpick One More Day by going, well, why could (x) or (y) with life saving powers save Aunt May which is like -- yeah, I guess, but if we're going to ask that about this specific comic book near death setup, you kind of have to do it with every single one, and I'm not going to stake every single moment of comic book drama on whether or not that gold kid from the X-Men was busy at the time. Comics are soap operas in flimsy paper form: serialized longform storytelling that relies heavily on melodrama. Sometimes you have to go with things. Sometimes you sell your marriage to the devil. Stuff happens. That in and of itself doesn't make One More Day a bad story -- and while some people blame the Spider-Marriage's dissolution entirely on One More Day, I think that's a little shortsighted when you look at the history of Spider-Man since the turn of the century. It's clear -- and Marvel themselves have been perhaps a little too open about this -- that Marvel in the past few decades has had trouble with the direction they want to take Spider-Man. They WANTED Spider-Man to appeal to a distinctly youthful audience that they didn't think they were actually reaching -- understandable, considering that Marvel nearly went bankrupt around 2000 and was saved by Ultimate Spider-Man, an out of main continuity series which retold Spider-Man from the beginning and focused heavily on Peter as a teen -- but the problem was Spider-Man in the main continuity was at that point in canon a happily married man who was pushing the dreaded 30 whether or not they wanted to admit that. This is also why Marvel has continually pivoted away from Spider-Man having kids, because they feared that making him a dad would age him too much and make him unrelatable to their coveted audience of Teens. (This is also why almost every new Spider-Man property, especially the live action movies, perpetually stick him back into high school, despite that occupying a very small slice of 616 canon.) So around the year 2000, they started trying things in relation to the Spider-Marriage, which was viewed as a major problem -- after all, what's more adult than being married and liking your wife. First, they had Mary Jane presumed dead. Then, they had Mary Jane and Peter separate. Then, when Mary Jane and Peter had only recently gotten back together, One More Day struck. If One More Day specifically hadn't gone the way it had, it's pretty clear that the Spider-Marriage was going to go one way or another -- it's a little bit of a shame it happened when it did, because OMD is the end of J Michael Straczynski's run, and JMS wrote a really beautiful Peter and MJ relationship. But Marvel as a company and especially editor in chief at the time Joe Quesada viewed Peter and Mary Jane's relationship as a major problem in how they wanted to portray Spider-Man and thought that striking the relationship from the books would allow them more freedom in their portrayal of him as younger and more relatable to their Desired Audience of people who I guess really wanted to see Peter sleep with characters who weren't Mary Jane.

(ASM #546. Younger! Fresher! Less attached! Kissing random women in the club!)

The problem with One More Day has always been in the follow through -- from the content of Brand New Day to the pacing of events to the fact that Marvel withheld key information for such a long time that it allowed misinformation to thrive. After all, what does it MEAN to trade Peter and Mary Jane's marriage to the devil? It altered the events of canon in Peter and the majority of other characters' memories so that the marriage didn't exist, but it left people wondering -- did the relationship as they remembered it existed? How much of Spider-Man canon was altered? And the answers didn't come for over 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. One Moment In Time or OMIT (Amazing Spider-Man #638-641), which revealed that while Peter and Mary Jane never got married in the altered canon they did continue their long committed relationship up until just after Civil War, was published in 2010, so essentially readers were hung out to dry without answers for three years. That's a long time to string people along, but not as long as it took Marvel to confirm that the popular fan theory that Mary Jane retained her memories of the original timeline as part of her own deal with Mephisto was also true, which happened this year. I would say, at least from my perspective, a lot of the frustration doesn't come from the individual One More Day storyline so much as how Marvel has continually dragged out the aftermath, using the promise of a Spider-Marriage return to keep fans on the hook. Which is why One More Day continually comes up in discussion of current Spider-Man, because Spencer's run has relied very heavily on imagery from that period with a serious question of whether or not there actually was going to be payoff, something which is still up in the air.

This has been Spider-Man History With Traincat, brought to you by anonymice like you.

[almosthumanophelia]

Tenno Ophelia

Backstory and Overview

// I decided to finally make a (coherent) post detailing Ophelia's history and origin story as a Tenno. I've discussed it a bit on this blog before, but a few things have changed, and I wanted to really get it all down. Some facts and the exact timeline may differ somewhat from the canon in-game Tenno; I don't really consider this an AU, just a thing to keep in mind. Feel free to spread this around or offer some thoughts, asks and feedback are always welcome. Story time!

Ophelia was born to well-off parents, both computer scientists and engineers, and some of the best in their field. They lived in the middle tiers of Orokin society, and had a similar level of standing as the high ranks of the modern Corpus.

Her father focused on the hardware side of things; her mother, the software. Though they were trusted with many projects, they were best known for their work with Cephalons. They instilled an early love of Cephalons in their infant daughter, who began to have conversations with the geometric holographic projections almost as soon as she could speak.

One day, the pair got an offer - or rather, an order disguised as an offer - to travel to the Tau system aboard the Zariman. They would be chief engineers for the ship's more complex systems, and assist in establishing the technological aspects of the new colony once they arrived. They had no close family, and nobody they trusted to take in their daughter. Because they would be gone for years, they had no choice but to bring her along as well. Ophelia embarked on the mission with her parents when she was just three years old.

The disaster that followed was well documented in classified Orokin records. Ophelia's father was the first to succumb to the madness. Her mother held on long enough to get their child to safety, hiding her in a cargo storage area, locking the door, and scrambling the door codes so that when she eventually gave in as well, she would be unable to enter.

The plan worked, but at a cost. The cargo area was not as well shielded from radiation and Void energy. Ophelia was left exposed, and suffered severe Void energy burns. They scarred nearly her entire body, leaving twisted, blackened marks over every part of skin they touched. Some of the other children could hear her screams of pain and terror, even from corridors away. She would not be extracted and treated until the Orokin recovered the ship. Although her exact memories of events were always fuzzy, the emotions and sensations she experienced stayed with her long after her rescue.

The traumatized toddler was very quiet, and often refused to speak at all. When she did, it was typically out of fear of being left alone and abandoned once more. The Void scarring left her physically weakened, and often suffering from pains and aches. Orokin experiments and probes to try and determine the full effects of Void energy were exceptionally painful for her. Often, anyone who attempted to treat her was subject to severe injuries and burns from outbursts of energy. But unlike most of the other Tenno, Ophelia's outbursts were deliberate. She learned to harness her power early as a defense mechanism.

The Orokin were left with a child who was volatile, traumatized, violent, and a selectively mute amnesiac - but one who was exceptionally powerful. They weren't willing (or, really, able) to dispose of her, but she needed a permanent guardian. Margulis, who had taken the Tenno on as her charges, soon noticed a pattern in the girl's behavior. Though she shunned human contact, she still whispered to the facility Cephalons, often late at night when she was supposed to be sleeping.

At the age of five, Ophelia was given her first and only Cephalon: a fairly recent Series Two by the name of Cephalon Ordis, whose sole standing order was her care and well-being. The two hit it off, and were soon inseparable. When she talked to her Cephalon, she became more personable, happy, and open. Eventually, slowly, Ophelia began to open up to the other children once again, though she still kept them at arms' length.

Then Margulis vanished, and Ophelia's fears of abandonment flared up once more. She clung to Ordis more tightly than ever. Her bond with him had evolved beyond Cephalon and master; they were much more akin to parent and child. Ordis was her sole support system as she was ushered into the role of child warrior, under Ballas's direction. When she eventually learned that Margulis had been killed, her upset over the situation, combined with how poorly she herself had been treated in the past, began to turn into a burning hatred of the Orokin. It was a hate she would carry the rest of her life.

Ophelia's first and favorite Warframe was a Volt, one that matched her volatile, fragile, but highly dangerous and powerful nature. She became known for quick, ruthless strikes, slaughtering the enemy before they had a chance to react. The bloody scenes of battle were cathartic to the girl, and helped her deal with her trauma and loss. She took a certain amount of pride in being good at what she did, trained hard, and soon was considered to be on par with the Orokin mercenaries of old. Missions were never a source of conflict or moral crisis for her; she did her job and did it well, and she grew up killing for a cause.

When the time came to turn on the Orokin, she saw it as a way to make them pay for what they had done. She moved against them without hesitation and without mercy, falling perfectly in line with Natah and the Sentients' plan. However, she would not go into cryosleep willingly, and be separated from her beloved Ordis. She had to be put to sleep, and never got a chance to explain or say farewell. She was thirteen.

Over a hundred years later, she was awake once more, and on missions once again - this time, following the guidance of the Lotus, though much more loosely than she had under the Orokin. She viewed the Lotus as more of a battle commander than a mother, but she still carried a certain respect and affection for her. Reunited with Ordis and feeling free for the first time in her life, Ophelia displayed a real sense of spunk and humor in her work, though she often acted outside the bounds of her orders. Other Tenno grew to knew her as something of a rebellious wild card.

Ophelia's skills aside from warrior and mercenary work included hacking and programming, something she inherited from her parents. She was always exceptional when it came to working with tech, and was never shy about showing that off. However, memories of the parents she inherited her skill from, as well as those of her life before the Zariman, would forever elude her. What little she had, had been permanently corrupted by her long cryosleep. She was now only a Tenno, and nothing else. Ophelia could not even remember her own last name. Meanwhile, aches and pains would forever continue to plague her, even as she grew a bit more physically strong. Nightmares and night terrors were more symptoms left over from her younger days; the only one ever able to calm her during one of these episodes was Ordis.

Upon uncovering fragments of Ordis's memory that revealed his past to her, Ophelia was shocked. She saw the parallels in their life stories, and carried a deep gratitude to the Cephalon that had looked after her so faithfully. After a bit of coaxing and coding backdoors, she spoke directly to the part of Ordis that was still faithful to his roots as Ordan. He admitted that he had not seen her as a punishment for a very long time, and they came to an understanding that their familial affection for each other was genuine and mutual. Her training from that point onward began to focus more on emulating Ordan's battle style. Eventually, Ophelia would adopt the last name Karris as a tribute to the man she considered her true father.