#Pyrrha

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

For the first time, she smiled—a small, dusty, crooked smile that was totally alien to Cytherea's mouth, which had smiled at me often but never like that. It was the smile for your old cellmate who'd just landed back in prison, the one that told them at least you were in it together—or more correctly, the smile of someone stepping 𝘰𝘶𝘵 of jail after serving a very long sentence, having seen someone there waiting for her. Someone whose presence meant total reprieve, someone she hadn't expected. It was a little bit mocking. It was deepy relieved. It was a smile that said: 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘦?

—Wake, in Harrow the Ninth

I need y'all to know that the very moment I read this paragraph, I thought of Tía Dalma's smile (from Pirates of the Caribbean):

[davidellisartworkstuff]

"Death had me once, he can have me again once I know our child is safe."

[kiaraalazulu]

Pyrrha Dve Appreciation <3

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

I just want to add a couple ideas to this:

• When Mercy mentions “Pyrrha's trial”, John says “Projection”, ���room 3”. Harrow then believes she knows which trial—but she doesn't! She's remembering Avulsion, which was in room 2. We don't know what Pyrrha's trial was beyond the name and it needing brain fluid replacement.

• We do get an example of a necromancer in a cavalier's body to a degree, in Paul. It seems Camilla's body can channel necromancy without it looking like a necro's body. Granted, in their case they're a new soul, but it's the closest we've got. There's a lot of open questions—Alecto, for instance, can get into the River, but hasn't done any thanergy or thalergy magic yet beyond her strength.

• Gideon is all muscle and tendon, and I thought that was just John resurrecting him in an “ideal” ripped no-fat body like a dehydrated Marvel actor and not knowing how to do necromancy very well (Gideon was presumably his first resurrection after Alecto). But it's true that both Mercy and Augustine as described as having a necro's build, and Cytherea also looked necro-y. There's something going on.

(edit: I got my facts crossed and, as you can read in this follow-up, Harrow got confused with the winnowing trial)

TLT Theory: Pyrrha was the Necromancer

No get back here, hear me out. I'm not saying Gideon didn't become one as a Lyctor. But I've been noticing a lot of things adding up weird here...

In Ch6 of HtN, when preparing for the first trip through the River, they call it Pyrrha's trial.

Much later, when Pyrrha is mad at Palamedes for the soul fuckery he and Camilla are doing, she refers to it as one they designed together, but that doesn't negate Mercy calling it Pyrrha's first and foremost. And...

She's worried about Camilla's brain, and okay, sure, they only have Camilla's body. But with Cris and Mercy, it was Cris getting cracked open. With Harrow and Gideon 2, it was always Gideon in danger, not Harrow. And with Gideon 1 and Pyrrha, it was Gideon's skull, Gideon's brain, getting the testing done. No mention of the same kind of testing or Mercy or Pyrrha. The principle of it is the necromancer's consciousness being overlaid onto the cavalier's brain, right?

But okay, maybe Pyrrha just doesn't mention herself, and Gideon's "a control variable" to compare herself to? But there's more.

Pyrrha fights with guns, prefers them. Gideon fought with not just a sword but a whole ass massive spear for an offhand, and has easily more physical prowess than any other necromancer we've ever seen. His stomach is still desiccated in typical necromancer fashion, he's dehydrated and not a scrap of fair fat on him, but he's a wall of muscle and sinew. Yes he looks "like an idiot's construct", probably because John regrew him from an arm when he was still getting the hang of using that level of power, but he's distinctly not built like other necromancers. If he wasn't a necromancer prior to being a Lyctor, his build might make more sense. Moreover, we've seen other cavaliers turned into sort-of-constructs, with both Protesilaus and Kiriona.

I also want you to look at the Saint of Duty and tell me that man isn't the walking essence of what it means to be a Cavalier.

And he rarely uses necromancy. He can travel in the River, and he drains thanergy, but he never really uses theorems or sets up wards. His necromancy is used pretty exclusively in passive ways or to remove obstacles between himself and his weapons. But Pyrrha is extremely knowledgeable about all kinds of necromancy. She tells Harrow fresh thalergy is harder to drain. She sees Ianthe's brilliantly inventive combination of wards creatively mimicking the effect of Mercy's trial and can accurately tell what they're going to do, as well as how to break them. Among other things. She also says she walked the Eightfold. Maybe that means being led willingly as a cav, but what if she was in control of the process?

With Harrow, Gideon was constantly in and out of awareness, watching from Harrow's subconscious, things that Harrow was fully conscious for. Palamedes doesn't have that with Camilla, and both of them being conscious is rare and dangerous, as detailed above. Pal and Pyrrha are frequently compared with their situations. How did Cam and Pal work out how to do the switcheroo, especially while Pal had extremely limited ability to move or perceive? How did they work out a safe time limit before too much irreparable damage was done? Could they have had guidance from someone who's done it? Done it with a necromancer's knowledge, letting him know where he can safely go under in the brain, how to come out at will, what to watch out for?

On a separate note:

Lyctor names are sacred, but the Houses were founded before Lyctorhood was achieved. Anastasia did not become a Lyctor, so her name was not removed from history, and became common in her House. Judith and Marta are part of the Dve Territorials, and while that doesn't prove anything or could even be evidence against, I feel like it would make sense to have named prestigious military groups after the House's "main" Founder, before there were Saints and the decision to erase the Saints' names.

On a more meta level, I think it would be weird to have "their names were meant to be forgotten", history knowing jack shit about the cavaliers of old, and even emphasis on the Lyctors forgetting each others' House names, only to have a cavalier's House name in active use somewhere, if that information wasn't supposed to be serving a narrative purpose. If we weren't meant to question why.

"But they call her his cavalier. She calls him her necromancer."

Sure. And maybe that's straightforward; this is a theory, I could be wrong. But switching titles after Lyctorhood doesn't sound too out of the question to me. What's a bit of revisionist history in TLT? John knows where memory lives in the brain, and on Pyrrha's end, at least after Lyctorhood Gideon was the necromancer, after all.

(Edit to add: Augustine calls attention to how astonishing it is that Pyrrha never divided opinions, that not one of them has ever had a single bad thing to say about her. She's great but we've met her. We've seen John rant about her calling out his bullshit, in the dream. Not one bit of annoyance or criticism, from anyone? I'm just saying, if Something Happened that led to John needing to tweak memories, making everyone remember her nothing but fondly feels plausible.)

"So why can't she do necromancy when she's in control?"

"He took more from me than got taken from you" feels like explanation enough to me. He got her aptitude and more. She's a partial soul. If anything, she could even still has an ounce of it, to retain the body's healing capabilities. If Gideon was fully giddy-gone and the soul that was left had zero aptitude, what would the furnace be burning? But if Gideon's consciousness is dead and what's left of his soul is in the furnace with a (partial) necromancer at the helm, well, that's not far off from Lyctorhood working as intended.

"Why though?"

And there's the part that gets really tricky but interesting. My best guess short answer is, one of them was dying, and it was an act of desperation.

Maybe Pyrrha was dying and so brutalized her body wouldn't have healed right even becoming a Lyctor, but given what they're like and the Cam/Pal parallels, I feel like an even more likely answer was that Gideon was dying. Cris and Alfred had already put Mercy and Augustine in that position, and they took their souls to preserve something, but Pyrrha would have seen how well that worked, assuming the third ascension wasn't immediately after the first two. So perhaps in her own desperation, with endless adoration for the man so willing to burn for what he believed, she said no. You don't get to throw your life away. If you're going to keep throwing yourself on things, I will make sure you can survive it and keep surviving it, even if it kills me instead. And then walked the path in reverse, pinning her own soul to his instead of pulling his into her.

I've seen a post around here pointing out how when Pyrrha tells Nona about her first tantrum, she's laughing with her mouth but not her eyes, and it looks like it reminds her of something her brain doesn't want to bring back, and the post proposes maybe Alecto killed Pyrrha. And I do think there's a solid possibility it was Alecto's tantrum that mortally wounded whichever (or maybe even both!) of them and prompted them to ascend. If Pyrrha didn't blame Varun for Gideon recently, I doubt she'd hold it against Alecto either.

Either way, wouldn't something like that more than earn the title of Duty? Wouldn't it be beautiful that they both fit the title if both had in ways been the cavalier? Wouldn't it be fitting to allow the name Dve to stand in the military as a monument to such a woman?

I know this might still be a long shot, but I definitely think there's enough little things sprinkled around to at least to warrant some solid suspicion. And it honestly would explain a lot.

[rainbow-zebra-art]

Full color commission brought to you by a friendly anonymous customer! RWBY x Warhammer 40K crossover, Pyrrha Nikos in Sanguinius' armor. I put my sweat and tears into drawing these details 👊 And I'm happy of how it turned out in the end. Please enjoy y'all!

[nercynorning]

You know I had to do it to em

Based on this post

Characters made using this picrew by PotatoLord, clumsily edited by me

Sword made with this picrew by iienex

[juanarc-thethird]

The Arc curse...?

Ruby: You know, Jaune.

Jaune: Hm?

Ruby: Y-You're handsome

Jaune: Thank you. *Smiles*

Ruby: Can... Can I take your hand?

Jaune: No, is mine.

Ruby:...

----------

Yang: What are you going to do tonight?~

Jaune: Sleep

Yang: Without me?~💕

Jaune: Yeah, I'm a big boy now. I can sleep alone.

Yang:...

----------

Weiss: Hey, do you wanna get out of here?

Jaune: And go where?

Weiss: Wanna come to my place?

Jaune: Nah, is to far. How about McDonald's?

Weiss:...

----------

Blake: I'm so wet.

Jaune: How? I don't see any water.

Blake: No, like you're making me wet.

Jaune: Do I look like water to you?

Blake:...

----------

Pyrrha: I like your shirt.

Jaune: Me too.

Pyrrha: *Chuckles* You're funny.

Jaune: That's not my name.

Pyrrha:...

----------

RWBYP: (My God, how can he be so dumb. I love him💕)

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Every day Camilla and Palamedes looked at her, they saw what would be a bad ending for them.

the sun is coming up and i'm awake thinking about the tragedy of pyrrha dve.

oh to have known nothing but someone else's existence for ten thousand years. to seal your life away for all eternity in service of someone you love enough to make immortal even if it means never seeing them again. but one day you wake up anyway, in a body that isn't yours, and you weren't even supposed to be alive but you've been given a family that you must love tenderly with your dead best friend's hands and your dead best friend's voice.

coming back was not part of the deal. but you are alive and you cannot die a second time. and you will see gideon's features wearing all the wrong expressions in the mirror. you will eventually forget what his own smile looked like on his own face. you will be called by his name and you must answer to it. you wear your clothes strangely, and your posture doesn't fit his shoulders.

you are the only one who notices that there's anything wrong at all.

and you will live long enough to forget the difference.

[katerinaaqu]

I dunno if you noticed but regardless of whether Achilles got married to Deidamia before his disguise at the palace of her father or after and their union happened while Achilles lived there; Neoptolemus lived for a little while with his mother, a cross-dressing father and on occasion with the help of Patroclus and his grandfather.

Do what you will with that information!

[g1deonthefirst]

a while back in the discord server we were talking about the possibility of wake returning in atn and @katakaluptastrophy pointed out that we learn in HTN that revenants can attach to murder weapons and we get a very specific description of pyrrha pressing the gun against cytherea's skull when she shoots the body to kill wake's revenant — possibly creating an avenue for wake's revenant to jump into the gun.

then @eskildit pointed out that we get a clear chain of custody for the gun in NTN, so i wanted to highlight some of the passages where the narrative really seems to focus on pyrrha's gun. i thought it was particularly interesting that pyrrha's first priority is retrieving her gun even after camilla's just been stabbed, when nona describes everyone else as rushing toward camilla. admittedly this might just be because it has a herald bullet in it (which she later uses to shoot ianthe), but i thought pyrrha's fixation on the gun being because of wake's revenant was a cool possibility nonetheless.

[cred to @dve for the screenshots since i don't have the ebook tysm <3]

[calciumyum]

Pyrrha and Deidamia!! Yuri wins!!! (I've been drawing Pyrrha to keep myself sane between commissions) Ref under the cut!!

[palamedesnutz]

[bisexualandaninsomnia]

Sapphic Patrochilles is something that can be so precious

[davidellisartworkstuff]

"Wait, so who's the girl who led us to you?"

And with an awkward cough and a laugh, both The Rusted Knight and The Tarnished Spartan gestured to her...

"Ahem, well... Team RWBY... Please meet Cassie!

...Our daughter."

"Hey again!" She waved back.

And the stunned silence was deafening.

So everyone, please meet the Afteran daughter of Jaune and Pyrrha in the Ever After! Cassi Nikos-Arc!

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

In Greek mythology, Pyrrha (Πύῤῥα, meaning flame-colored or red) was the daughter of Epimetheus (“hindsight”) and Pandora (the first woman, who opened the famous jar contaning all the evils of the world), in the first generation of human beings.

This was in the Golden Age, when human beings lived until very old age with a youthful appearance, and nobody had to work as the Earth provided abundant food. As human beings degraded and fell from grace, eventually the Gods sent a cleansing flood to wipe off the Earth and start again.

Pyrrha survived the flood on the great ark her husband Deucalion built (as Noah and Utnapishtim did in their respective mythologies), and had the task of repopulating the Earth. They asked the oracle of Themis how, and the goddess answered they were to “cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder”.

Pyrrha was unsettled as this would dishonor her mother's remains, but Deucalion reasons that the goddess wouldn't ask them for a sacrilege and their mother was Gaia, so they threw stones over their shoulder and a new generation of men and women sprung forth.

Once the land was repopulated, Gaia answered by returning life to the land and the oceans.

Just food for thought.

“Ovid uses this opportunity to inform his audience that heat and water are the sources of all life”—“thalergy” presumably comes from thálassa, meaning “sea”, like the “saltwater creature”.

[rainbow-zebra-art]

September request from my Boosty! Autumn cozy Pyrrha <З You can download the full-sized version here.

The background was inspired by the autumn collages I saw on Pinterest. Here are the textures I used: plaid pattern, handwritten text, craft paper.