#THEY'RE LITERALLY CALLED OATHBREAKERS

[rainswolfs]

lucien your ocs are soooo cool i love them so much <33 can you tell me a bit abt them im very curious

!!! aaa miki my friend miki thank you and i'm SO delighted that you want to hear more of them !! of course don't mind if I do ! o7

Myr is part of an underground guild dominating his homecity, that he was sold to as a young child. His parents were wanted criminals who were in desperate need for gold in order to escape the city fast and with ease, therefore selling him off to the guild leader in exchange for coins. His parents ended up getting caught on their escape route however and executed, while Myr grew up mentored by the guild leader and working among the guild. The burning marks he got on his face and neck are from a failed theft attempt as a child. A blacksmith caught him red-handed and threw a pile of burning ashes at him, resulting in the injuries. Every established and high ranked guild member also has it's own pet crow, who usually function as messengers and scouts. Myr's crow is named Obsidian, and she's an old feisty lady with a nasty temper. :)

Raeran used to be a paladin who was originally tasked to hunt down oathbreakers and slay them. However, he went a little overboard and eventually started to "punish" whoever he fears might become an oathbreaker eventually and took judgement into his own hands, resulting in him officially being declared an oathbreaker himself. In revenge, he woke up a dragoness from her slumber, insulted her, lured her to the paladin cult, had her ran rampage, and then tracked her down again after literally digging himself back out of his presumed grave, to declare a blood pact with her to kill kill murder murder. Now, they're murder besties. <3 He also has cataract so he wears an eyemask most of the time to protect his eyes from any harsh light sources, as well as to trick enemies and not give away his partial blindness right away.

Lockesque is a protesting musician who kind of falls into a robin hood-esque category, by taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. He often gets arrested and has seen the cells many times for joining protests and rebellious groups and spreads their speeches and ways through his music and arts. His mother used to be an established poet, while his father was a teacher at bard school, and the one who taught Lockesque how to play the violin. His father got attacked and murdered on the open streets on his way home one day and Lockesque has been providing for his mother ever since then, despite his risky lifestyle. Lockesque and Myr are also familiar with each other and would sometimes exchange information. He also has a horsey companion named Biscuit. :]

Akiré is a woodelf druid who used to fall into the category of what I would call a "weredeer." They used to live in isolation for so long that they have become a deer along the way, before getting possessed and infected by a demonic plague festering inside of their forest grounds, and eventually morphed into a "predatory deer" , that resembles an horrific and grotesque fusion of a dire wolf and a deer. They attempt to mask this form up behind a humanoid disguise. Though, their possessed self becomes cruel and unpredictable beyond their control, isolating them further away from society and giving them the appeal of a demonic entity. They are essentially cursed to be a predatory prey animal.

[flowerflamestars]

A scene, if you will, mid-effloresce 15:

FEYRE, strapping on a bow? some knives, hurling herself down a hallway in the townhouse: TAKE ME BACK THERE

Rhysand: no

(Rhysand quite literally picks her up. Carries her back to her room and throws her inside. Locks the door FROM THE INSIDE and then dramatically sags against it)

Feyre: we have to go back! we have to- (begins to cry)

Rhys, all growly and window shakingly loud: NO

F: WHY NOT

R (all sad and quiet now): I WILL NOT RISK YOU- I Will NOT- Feyre, think.

F: MY SISTERS-

R: Your sisters are fine. You think they're anywhere but with Lucien Vanserra? With Cassian (brief smirk). The humans have an entire Illyrian legion evacuating them. What are you going to do?

F: It's my home too!

R: Is it?

Feyre, stomping right up to, back to furious for about ten seconds: How can you-

Rhys, touching her cheek with just his cold fingertips: You're my home, Feyre. And I will not lose you to the fires of Hybern. I can't. I won't. Call me a monster all you like-

Feyre, covering his hand: You're not a monster.

R: that's not what you said before.

F: I was wrong before! I didn't. (She clutches his hand tighter, pressing it along the lines of her sharp faery cheek.) You saved me, Rhys. I just-

R: You want them to be okay.

F: They're my sisters.

R: They'll be okay. Cassian has never lost a battle. (Tiny smug smile) Unless it was against me. (SIGH). And Lucien might be an oathbreaker, but he's a damn powerful one. They'll be fine.

F, nodding, taking this in like it's a fact: They'll be fine. And once they're here-

R: We'll make a place for them.

AND CUE WELCOME DINNER PARTY, the second.

What I think is really interesting about Feyre/Rhysand (and really the books as a whole in a ghoulish fashion), is that... there are no downsides to immortality? Feyre literally dies, becomes what she was raised to hate/fear and tells her sisters she can fight and fuck better now. Like?? Feyre thinks the version of her that is most like Rhys is actively better than whoever she was as a human.

And maybe part of that is hardship. She was so young, she wanted out, it makes sense.

But it totally, totally, strips all empathy from the potential human cost of the war.

AND THEN, we see this mingling wherein Rhys believing in Feyre is this direct pipeline to Feyre believing in (and creating) her own myth TO THE EXTENT that she's ordering around other high lords.

So, I think it's in character. That's exactly what they're doing, nothing. To Feyre, it's about romance. to Rhys it is also romantic but ALSO about Feyre's sisters being a problem and ALSO ALSO he wants to repay their trickery in kind.

You are spot on about Mor and Amren! (Amren didn't even come to dinner, she's drinking on her roof and watching the Archeron ships in port with little diamond incrusted opera glasses she doesn't need)

I think Mor's slow motion character breakdown is about how she uses Cas + Az to prop up this very specific status quo, but, BUT it was also always going to break down once Rhys brought Feyre home. she takes Mor's place as the desirable heart of the court. The most theorectically direct authority after Rhys. Mor is basically regelated a whole step back.

YES I HAVE CROWN ANSWERS- Where Lucien's crown was made for him (see the mixed Court iconography, final nail in the coffin of 'shit who is my father', ect), Elain's crown is the Crown of Autumn. It's an ancient, powerful faery relic with a mind of it's own. It's disappearing and reappearing at will. (Az 1000% clocked it. Those are his weird new High Lord + Lady friends. he's not saying shit past what he is impelled to)

(they had enough warning Lucien moved the hatbox + the cellar contents to Mist)

EFFLORESCE THOUGHTS (Round One: The last Cassian pov section)

When I first read through my brain did the over-excited-skip-words thing and I thought that Feyre just unilaterally declared that Nesta would be speaking at the high lords' summit instead of saying that she would ask and honestly it'd be so in character that she'd already be back to making decisions that effect her sisters without asking that I didn't even question the mis-read beyond "*heavy sigh* Really Feyre? Really?" (Have the other High Lords even agreed to the meeting yet or are you about to go try to demand Nesta speak at a meeting you don't even know is happening yet? (You wanna know what Nesta would say? She would say YOUR BOYFRIEND IS A SHITHEAD.))

And, like, Rhysand just, like, ignoring everything Azriel is trying to tell him. Like, dude, his job is to give you information. You literally (well, theoretically anyway) pay him to give you information. Why are you ignoring it?!

(The Az losing his shit train wreck is picking up speed.)

Cassian just seems like he's dissociating, like, soooo hard at the end there. "Oh? You're giving the literal child large amounts of (theoretical) political power and authority? Neat. Great. Whatever. Where's Nesta? I'm going back to Nesta." ('Titled nonsense' was something Feyre said in an earlier chapter. Does that opinion change when it's her being offered a super-special title by her boyfriend because she's super-special? Girl, you can't even grasp the responsibilities your sisters have for the people of their one patch of land. How are you possibly going to comprehend the responsibilities of an entire court?! (Rhys doesn't even really mange to))

300+ people are displaced or dead (Feyre's sister's included) and Rhys, Feyre, and Mor seem... mildly inconvenienced at best. (I had more flailing thoughts to add to this point somewhere but I seem to have lost them for now.)

(Have they even realized that Nesta, Elain, and Lucien have fucked off and left the house yet?)

Anyway,

<3

DELIGHTFUL

It's fully both things. The High Lords meeting has NOT coalesced into any real plan aside from something Rhysand has mentioned to Feyre. She has taken that and run to a plan that is emotionally satisfying to her, while he is, naturally, turning it a romantic gesture that means both trouble, and nothing. (Feyre's sisters aren't speaking to her)

(the stupid romance always works on her, too. She is very into Rhysand presenting power as devotion, specifically raising her, where Tamlin made it a responsibility and she fucking hated it)

Feyre also genuinely thinks they're going to come around. Hybern killed everyone, surely thats a reason to fight Hybern! That they'd be, in turn, fighting for Rhysand is a nonissue to her.

Rhys is way, way too deep in digging the grave of what could have been via protracted plans to get Feyre's sisters to just bend, to repay them playing him, to have control of the situation. And probably also some weird Feyre-based protective hostility. He does want them humiliated, but he's pissed at Azriel for just saying it.

Cassian is on the BRINK. Flying into Velaris? Panic. Carrying Morrigan? Different, horrified panic. Knowing his own feelings will be counted as betrayal, also knowing Rhys might skim for them? HE IS ILL WITH IT.

And he hasn't seen Nesta in five days. A very long time, considering he thought she was going to die last time they were in the same room. He has spent those five days doing things he, a member of the night court, absolutely should not be doing. (IS he an Archeron? Or is he a member of this court that he's loved and bled for and hated in equal measure so many long years? what matters more, the time of the vow?) He has not spent those five days thinking on a loop Nesta Archeron is my nation now, almost entirely because he thinks he does not deserve to.

Elain, Lucien, and Nesta have been going back and forth. Which is doing interesting things to the city wards, watched over by Amren.

[nine-effing-hells]

On Etymology

So I was thinking about D&D the other day, and something occurred to me: considering where the word comes from, the implementation of Warlocks in 5e is kinda hilarious? Like “Okay, so I’ve made this class that’s based around making a pact with a powerful entity, and you get various boons from drawing on this pact.” “Cool! What’s it called?” “Oathbreaker.”

Now if I were such an eldritch patron, I’d be pretty damn nervous about all this!

[potatoesandsunshine]

Hi as a known fan of paladins being captured in upsetting ways my friend has sent me your post and now I’m here. I’d be delighted if you would elaborate on the situation 🥺

hi yes hello i would LOVE to elaborate on the situation. my paladin is named beatrice pyre and i tag things for her / general dnd posts if you're ever curious about it :) but this situation specifically!!! i am Losing My Mind!!! it's extremely good. literally feels like we just had some kind of midseason finale

so BASICALLY her uncle is the viceroy and now regent of her country, they're at war with the very pro-necromancy country next door, the party has been going around looking for evidence to get him out of power bc we think the whole war is a Suspicious Plot. so for the last three sessions we've been breaking into his suuuuper haunted estate (coincidentally the place my paladin grew up! haha! was it always like this? she doesn't know!)

it's been extremely rough!! we're level 8 so things really hit back now in very strong ways!! and my paladin is very... not to steal skyrim's thunder but when they call people doom-driven they are actually talking about bee pyre. she's just like... she doesn't think about stopping. she will throw herself against this problem until something breaks.

this session we managed to get down to the basement of the estate and Oh Yeah It Sucks Down Here. we're talking ghosts we're talking undead we're talking pit traps. the whole nine yards. a series of tunnels full of magical darkness that doesn't like it if you cast in it. i rolled a nat1 and it still ate my spell slot :( rude :( ANYWAY we used a lot of resources fighting our way down there and trying to put our oathbreaker paladin friend back together after an incident with a hallway full of like... i don't know what to call it, chompers?? when the ceiling and floor smash together like THUD THUD THUD. so we were kinda low on spells and healing and stuff.

so we decide, hey, we didn't want to do a long rest down here because it sucks but we gotta do one. this is what historians will call a Bad Idea. also we did it in kinda the hub room that the dark tunnels branched off of which wasn't the BEST strategic thinking we've ever done. so basically, we all got hit with a strong cone of cold and nobody made saves. oof.

and bee pyre :) definitely not feeling self-destructive after losing her friend the party rogue a few days ago, definitely not feeling useless as her lover is off fighting the war, definitely not feeling like a burner that the gods forgot to turn off, says Okay :) I can sense undead in the magically dark tunnel :) I Will Go Down There And Tank :) yeah the cone of cold came from there, what could that mean? who in the world would have TWO cones of cold? (we have previously fought someone who did cast it twice. this was foolishness.) anyway there was a strong necromancer down there who immediately downed her and said "your uncle will be so disappointed that you didn't listen to his advice" and bee said "he gives shit advice" and KO. death saves start.

and then, something bee would NEVER have considered, the party heard her hit the ground (thank you plate armor :/) and started GOING AFTER HER!! in the dark tunnel!!! with the necromancer!!! who did do another cone of cold that, again, nobody saved against. bla bla bla, my friends did cool shit fighting zombies but it was a losing battle, i was feeling p bad as a player like How Could I Do This To Us, there was some epic shit from our fighter before he went down, bee stabilized while everyone else was dying which made me INSANE because she takes protection fighting so seriously, it was like a carousel ride of death saves before our DM gently cut away.

but then we woke up in a dungeon without all our stuff which INCLUDES the in-character letters i've been writing for the last few months and aaaaah

cut to my best friend our DM like, :3c Did You Like It ? and of course i did i was obsessed w everything

[ghostblackberry]

I am so proud of @rrrawrf and what she did with Torres last night.

The story is this: Torres is an ex-private with the Knights of the Crown. Most of his squad was killed by a dragon while they were still technically in training. His commanding officer, Sargent Morwin Cleary, got involved with some unsavory types and was at fault for the dragon attack.

Eventually, Cleary and her crew made their way to Eversnow, killed the ruler (a half-drow, like Cleary herself). After a brief trip to the Underdark to fetch her half siblings and a little half drow slave girl who may be Alimon's daughter, another party member decided to they were going to become tyrantical leaders. Cleary, uncomfortable but secretly in love with fallen angel party member, Micah, went along with it all.

The little girl, now called Lady Merryweather of the 4th House of Eversnow, found a book in the castle where 5 of The Six make their home. Cleary was in the room when the girl began to read. The book summoned The Great Old of the Ice. The Great Old One needed a tether to the material plane, a warlock, specifically one who was half-drow. Morwin, without hesitation, offered herself. Only that decision made her an Oathbreaker Paladin with one level of Walock.

By the time Torres and Vig walked into The Goblin School Cleary runs years later, Cleary is racked with guilt and unable to hear any God besides the Great Old One. After Torres failed to hide that he was indeed her former underling, she took him and Big to her office and begged him to get Merry out of the area and break the Tether. The only way Cleary know to break the Tether is kill her but she can't kill herself.

Torres, only knowing she wanted to die, responded with this:

"I'm not here to kill you. I need to know why. You were the only damn person I ever thought was worth following, and you left us. What the hell was I supposed to do? You weren't supposed to be like the rest of those bastard Knights. You were supposed to be better."

She came out with the truth as she understood it.

Then, Vig (who is a goblin fyi) went to fetch the other half of party, who were waiting at the Entrance to the catacombs.

The other two party members are Meric Torren, an aasmair druid, and Elizabeth "Sparks" Alspirk, a tiefling inquisitive rogue who is a journalist. Torres knows Meric is an aasmair. He found out from a fallen aasmair living in his apartment complex. But that fallen aasmair has a price on her head. Sparks suspected Torres knew one of The Six. So Sparks is upset that Torres didn't tell her his connection to these tyrants and won't let her write anything down. Meric is worried Sparks hates him. And Torres thinks they're both mad at him.

Vig, in case you curious, is just a civilized magical goblin with a gun. Literally. That's it. (Arcane Artillery, which is a gun flavored version of the Fighter Archtype Arcane Archer)

Anyway, so they have to go into the catacombs to meet a halfling smuggler. Torres is the last to arrive, with pastries. He apologizes to both Sparks and Meric as they follow a map Sparks and Meric bought at the library, which featured a lot of character growth and party bonding.

I love my players. I love this game.

Also a guard knows they were sneaking around near the catacombs now ha ha ha

[badwolfcreatesherself]

This drives me nuts. I'm rolling my eyes hard at where I see this going, but you know what? I'll take it BECAUSE MAD SWEENEY ISN'T FROZEN TO DEATH UNDER A GODDAMN BRIDGE, MKAY?

A few things:

1) I honestly don't see how racism plays into this, and trying to make it seem racist when it clearly isn't is the actual act of racism.

a) Shadow isn't obligated to be "loyal" to Laura. What she's done is completely disloyal and sociopathic. She died with another man's dick in her mouth while her husband was about to be released from prison. Her attitude that she should be forgiven simply because it meant nothing to her is just cuckoo bananas. In my opinion, that ended any obligation he had to her. He's been incredibly civil considering that fact.

b) Sweeney isn't so much loyal to Laura as he is to himself. In the show, he's responsible for her death, and her walking around with the source of his luck in her throat is the biggest kick in the dick. You can read more into this depending on which Buile Suibhne legend they're using for inspiration. In the original pre-Christian version of the lore, he had a vision that the battle he was due to fight in would result in his death, so he fled. This resulted in a curse that he would wander, mad and hungry, for eternity, deprived of the one thing he feared: death.

From there, you could maybe extrapolate that he has mixed feelings about her because she's an oathbreaker (as is he), which in his time was more than frowned upon. You could be put to death for breaking an oath. But instead of taking the coin and running after the ice cream truck incident, he stands in the middle of the road, screaming that he isn't evil, lamenting the loss of his luck, and gives the coin back to her anyway. Again, because he is ultimately responsible for her death, and he hates himself for being a murderer. So, he is torn between hating himself for what he is, hearing her for what she is, and feeling obligated to help her because it was his hand that killed her.

2) I'm not buying into the sexism angle, either. Well, maybe a little in that important-woman-in-male-protagonist's-life-has-to-die-to-further-the-plot kind of way. But not for the reasons stated by the OP.

a) Sweeney didn't give her the coin to begin with. Irony of ironies, that was Shadow, the man she betrayed. Even in the book, her purpose was to come running any time Shadow was in trouble. It's just fleshed out in the series. Sweney gives the coin back to her because he's reminded of how he murdered her, and I can only assume he wants to pay penance for that. Because he may be an oathbreaker, but he isn't evil.

b) Sweeney hasn't negated her autonomy at all. This dead bitch does anything and everything she fucking wants, and much as I HATE the character (both in the show and the book), she looks like a badass doing it. If anything, the writers have stolen her autonomy, because she exists solely to protect Shadow. At least she was trying to live her best life in the book. In the series she just follows Shadow around like a hopeless puppy. Again, the irony.

c) Yes, they have an absolutely toxic relationship, but it goes both ways. Laura is equally as awful to Sweeney as he is to her. While he constantly reminds her of her infidelity, she is physically abusive and emasculates him at every given turn. Her nickname for him is literally her calling him a pussy.

In conclusion, yes, I hate where it seems this is inevitably going, but I will roll my eyes and suffer in silence because my favorite book character is alive... for now. But so help me if my sweet, precious son has to sacrifice his life for this dead bitch to live, I will... just bitch and pout, really. That's all.

if you ship it fine but remember when the hobbit trilogy first started and it was like “aw Peter Jackson wanted to flesh out the whole guardians of middle earth dynamic that’s cool” but by the third movie you realised that pj was rlly making his big budget galadriel/gandalf fluff/angst fanfic and it just got fkn weird??? like………. weird, unnecessary irrelevant flex but…. Okay???? that’s how I feel watching this dumbass mad Sweeney/Laura jealousy plot play out. it’s also kinda racist and sexist to a) set up mad sweeney, the white guy, as a more loyal contrast to shadow when mad sweeney was not this at all in the book and b) use mad sweeney to constantly undermine Laura’s autonomy (which includes her death!!) which she takes responsibility for on her own terms in the book, not like here where the story saddles her with sweeney in a way like he is giving her purpose because of the coin. like imagine reading one of the most celebrated original novels by one of the greatest authors of this generation and having the ignorance and audacity to think you could make it more palatable and improve the story by making it partially about a leprechaun wanting to commit necrophilia all because you think Laura’s complex relationship with shadow and her journey of atonement and defiance wasn’t interesting enough. no thanks.

[thiskindofshootingstar]

Okay, I'm just gonna bring it up of no one else will

WHY THE FUCK WAS THE EPISODE CALLED "Last of the Starks"???????

They didn't do shit but plot treason!!