#The only kind of character who should be considering a kelpie as a reasonable mount is another water-based monster

[apocalypticvalraven]

Dungeon Meshi Ch14- The Kelpie, when you were a mythology kid

"That's a Kelpie."

"No, she's not, that's a kelpie, kelpies are ravenous beasts. Stop whatever you're doing, Senshi."

"Yes, they're omnivores that lure people onto their backs, drown them, and eat them."

"Senshi, no. That is exactly what a Kelpie wants someone to do so it can eat them. You will get eaten."

"Listen to the boy! When the monsterfetishistlover thinks its a bad idea, the man who reads about monsters in his free time, it's a bad idea."

"Senshi. Stop. Get off while you can. If you can. You're an idiot. Fucking stop this idiocy."

"Get that fucking shocked look off your face, Senshi, this is what kelpies do. You literally did this to yourself. Because you're an idiot."

"SENSHI. THAT'S JUST WHAT KELPIES DO. THEY'RE NOT MAGICAL WATER HORSES, THEY'RE SHAPECHANGING MONSTERS THAT TAKE ON THE FORM OF A HORSE TO LURE DRUNKEN IDIOTS ONTO THEIR BACKS. THIS IS LIKE SAYING 'I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THAT DRAGON BURNED DOWN A VILLAGE AND TOOK OUR SHEEP.' IT'S WHAT THEY DO. YOU'RE LUCKY YOUR PARTY DIDN'T CONSIDER YOUR DEATH TO BE THE JUST CONSEQUENCE OF YOUR IDIOCY, AND SAVED YOU."

[myupostsheadcanons]

My loooooong rant about The Aen Elle: The Witcher

Book Spoilers, not so much Game Spoilers.

First off, my “elephant in the room” ... Eredin.

In the books he is nowhere near final-boss material like he was in the games. He’s the “That One Boss” rather than “The Big Bad”. Eredin has less of his shit together in the books tbh. He’s like Kylo Ren Evil rather than Voldemort Evil.  They both did extremely bad things and you can’t deny either of them being villainous characters, just different types of evil characters.

Book Eriden has no filter, literally, he says what’s on his mind and doesn’t hesitate to go after what he wants. He’s arrogant and too the point, and doesn’t know what discretion is.

Some of his semi.... alright.... ? qualities:

1. He accidentally insulted Ciri upon first meeting her and apologized right away, he even gave her a flower. 2. He was the only one to be upfront with Ciri that she was a prisoner and will never be released. Even though he did lie to her about her friends being dead and gone. (Unless he wasn’t in his POV and just didn’t understand that TIME means nothing to her).

3. He wasn’t a bad sport about loosing a horse race with her. While he was competitive while it happened, at the end praised her skill and her horse for winning. Note: Kelpie let him pet her on the muzzle. Kelpie, the super horse with a foul temper that Ciri had made sure to note that would bite.... Either this was to show that he is decent with animals or to prove some kind of point of rebuking the “animals hate them” trope that villain characters often get stuck with.

Side Note: Considering he is the commander of mounted combat shock troops for the past several hundred years, it would be logical enough to say that he has a healthy amount of knowledge on horses and their mannerisms and knew if it was safe to pet Kelpie or not.

4. He was honestly trying to help further their people’s common goal when he offered Ciri the aphrodisiac to give Auberon, enough so that he gave it to him himself anyways. And was surprised to learn that it killed Auberon. 

I highly doubt that Eredin’s skilled enough to make the potion properly 100% of the time, or making it more potent/concentrated turned it into a poison  OR, somebody else made it...... (Avallach???? hmmmm???) and gave it to him with instructions on what it does.

((Avallach making it would mean that him getting the hell out of dodge was intentional, that he wanted to be far-far away when Eredin put the puzzle pieces together.))

Auberon, Avallach, and Eredin had a Triumvirate going on. The Unicorns specifically called out all three of them as being dangerous and behind most of what the Aen Elle had been doing. Together they followed the Face/King (Auberon), Brain/Sage (Avallach), and Hand/General (Eredin) .

Just look at the nicknames the Unicorns gave the three of them: The King of the Alders, The Fox, and The Sparrowhawk. They mean something.

While Alder can be an alternative name for Elder, as in the elder blood, the Aen Elle themselves, an actual Alder is a kind of birch tree common in wet areas and used often in dying leather, charcoal/gunpowder, and for making structures that need to be held in wet areas without rotting. The Alder is also a sacred tree, the tree of Bran the Blessid, and was the inspiration for the Weirwood Trees in GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire, the insides of the Alder tree will turn red/brown/dark when it is cut (weirwoods are blood red on the inside).  Forests of Alder are considered “cursed” and to be avoided at all costs, those that go in unprepared or properly blessed will not be seen again (killed by monsters or taken by Fae, the Sidhe, to their realm (hmm, Aen Sidhe.... any one?). Though irl, it is because Alder Forests are in wetland and boggy areas, people just get stuck in the mud and drown.

(Note: another literary example, The Erl King from The Dresden Files. King of the Alders also refers to the character he is based off of: Erlkonig (Elf/Alder King). And in the Dresden series, The Erl King is a powerful wild-fae, the Goblin King (think: The Labyrinth) and King of the Wild Hunt (The Elk-Horned King). It is a also a common fan theory that he is /the/ Oberon, though he is called Lord Herne by name, another horned-crowned hunter of myth as well. As a lord of the wild-fae, he is neutral to winter and summer.   ((Yes, one character can have many identities. This is a word where Odin the All Father is also Santa Clause)).

Remember, Auberon wasn’t some aloof sassy king. He’s jaded and apathetic from being around for over 650 years. But he’s ordered the deaths and enslavement of millions of humans, a genocide, and Avallach and Eredin were right there carrying out these orders. He was polite to Ciri because they needed her, and that eventually went out the window when given an opening to do so.

The Aen Elle’s entire plan was based on re-opening the gates so they can continue this practice. They tricked the Unicorns into doing this once before, but they grew wise and are now at war with the Aen Elle. Lara was the culmination of the Aen Elle’s breeding efforts to create somebody powerful enough to accomplish this. There is a strong possibility she completely disagreed with her people’s ideals, be it that she knew she was being used and/or because she fell in love with a human and changed her ways. But she completely booked it and left them all to rot, while giving them two big middle fingers  (which were later mailed back to Avallach in an envelope...... bad joke).

IMO, Avallach, The Fox, was the more dangerous of the trio (not necessarily the most evil of them). With Eredin he didn’t hide who he was, but Avallach.... he had an agenda a mile long and lied through his non-pointed teeth.  He would present a kind and helpful facade, and when ever something underneath would slip through the cracks, it wasn’t very pleasant.  Foxes are depicted as tricksters, cunning and wily, an animal most frequently associated with being deceitful, or having ulterior motives. When Auberon threaten to give Ciri over to Avallach and his laboratory,  my mind went straight to Vilgafortz and his plans for Ciri... i don’t think this was unintentional.

There is several instances in the novels (The Lady of the Lake especially) where events parallel one another (like Auberon’s abhorrence to Ciri ended up mirroring itself with Emhyr rejecting his plans for Ciri in the end. The theme with Ciri escaping people associated with Birds of Prey (Cahir (his helmet), Tawny Owl, Eriden the Sparrowhawk.... Merlin better watch himself)). Vilgafortz was the obvious villain of the saga, the biggest threat at the time, but did not start out that way, he was first presented as a diplomat, somebody who should be respected and came off as being the reasonable authority figure compared to the decadence of the Sorcerers. Then was revealed to be a sick, twisted SOB doing science experiments on abducted women in order to perfect a technique he was to do on Ciri. Everything he did was in order to accomplish this end goal, to harness Ciri’s powers for himself, even his kind and diplomatic facade at the start and him spending decades gathering political influence in both the North and Nilfgaard under it. The disfigurement of his face was a physical representation of his madness, that the mask was removed and now showed on the outside the ugliness on the inside.

Emhyr’s plan for Ciri started out as Vilgafortz’s plan. Vilgafortz was the one that knew of the prophecy and was the person to find out whom Duny was really. He brought the prophecy to Emyhr and put the idea that the heir of Nilfgaard will be the chosen one.  When this was proposed, Ciri was a toddler at the time (keep in mind that Pevetta was only around 20/21 when she died, and wasn’t 15 yet when she met Emhyr/Duny. In perspective: Ciri was 16 by the end of Lady of the Lake).

Avallach was part of the original breeding plan with Lara, a multi-generational slow-burn magical science experiment. It was more than likely that it was arranged that the two of them become a couple. Avallach is a powerful Sorcerer, member of the Aen Saeherne, sages with specialized training and secretive knowledge about the “Lara Gene”.  When the actual Lara, also an Aen Saevherne, broke up with him and left their people he was very upset about it, something he’s still grudgingly bitter about centuries years later. This is one of the cracks in his facade, when people talk about Lara, and when he did snap at Ciri it was because she compared herself to Lara and in anger suggested that Avallach should be the one to knock her up. He pretty much told her that she disgusted him (maybe even more than Auberon was of her), that her human blood was an insult to their people, that a human took their gift away from them and Lara away from him.

Avallac’h isn’t even his actual name, it’s Creavan Espane aep Caomhan Macha. The root of the nickname also gives us the name to Avalon (the Isle of Apple Trees)... Avalon is were the faeries live, where Morgan La Fae learned her powers, /The/ Lady of the Lake lives there in some stories (she was the one to give Arthur Excalibur, the “sword in the stone” is Uthar Pendragon’s sword), and where King Arthur was taken after he was mortally wounded by Mordred. Geralt and Yennifer were basically taken to Avalon by Ciri and the Unicorn. Then sometime between that and showing up before Galahad, she got into a bloody fight (and won/escaped from that).... (If you believe that Avallach betrayed his people intentionally and ran off.... Ciri taking Yen and Geralt to Avallach for help would be quite the literal interpretation)

Eredin being the Sparrowhawk is one of the more straightforward meanings, its practically hanging a lampshade on what his reason is in the over all story. Like the character himself: to the point and doesn’t hide his motives or pretends to be something he is not. Sparrowhawks get their name because small birds are their most frequent prey. Cirillia’s name came from the Aen Elle word Zireael, a word that means Swallow, a type of small bird. Sparrow and Swallow are very similar words.  Book Eriden calls her Zireael instead of her name to put further emphasis that he sees her as prey.

Wiki Note: Falconers have utilized the Eurasian sparrowhawk since at least the 16th century; although the species has a reputation for being difficult to train, it is also praised for its courage.

Falconry is a practice of keeping birds of prey captive in order to hunt small game for sport or food. They are kept on a leash, hooded, and in cages/aviaries.

Who had Eredin’s leash and used him to hunt prey? Auberon, The Alder King. There was very  little indication that there was a conflict of interests between the two, Auberon even trusted him enough to take the vial from him on his word alone. And, again, Eredin seamed not to have expected it to kill Auberon.

Eredin’s name doesn’t seam to have as much significance as Auberon (Oberon) and Avallac’h (Avalon). Eredin Breacc Glas  (fan nickname: break glass)  he’s literally the first thing that comes up, excluding “witcher” from the searches, you get results from League of Legends, Star Wars, and Final Fantasy :/

A shot in the dark is the Eridanos (river of Hades). AND I only thought of that one because of.... Homestuck’s Eridan Ampora being named after it.  It means “Amber” in Greek. And when i think of “Amber” I first think of Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles. Another series based off of Arthur and Shakespeare Mythos (King Oberon, Avalon, Traveling through Time/Space (Shadow), Blood of the Unicorns, Merlin). Amber was written in the 70′s and 80′s, Zelazny died right around the same time the Witcher short-stories were being published.

Note: Ciri escaped while fighting him on a river, because it was the only path to get out of the loop... if that means anything. :/  (water is a common “ground” for magic, it disperses the energy needed in the spell. it is why Vampires can’t travel across moving water).

The mere presence of Ciri among them, her curse of destiny, ended up breaking open the below-surface cracks in their Triumvirate.   Auberon’s disgust, Avallach’s jealousy, Eriden being the unhelpful helper... Ciri’s insistent want to go home... the Unicorns.... Their plans just crumbled in their hands and resulted in the death of Auberon, Avallach possibly deserting them, and Ciri’s escape from Eredin.

Myu Recommends, Extra Reading Material:

Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files.... A Wizard for Hire, solving supernatural cases, and later gets tied up in wars with the Vampires, the Fairy Courts, Arch-Demons, and Ancient Horror Terrors. 

Roger Zelanzy’s Amber and Chaos Chronicles. (As Collected in The Great Book of Amber). Corwin of Amber wakes up with amnesia, discovers that his father Oberon, King of Amber, is missing or dead and he is now on the top of his siblings’ hit-lists. Those born of the unicorn and traversed the pattern can freely walk through time and space, The Shadow. (Chaos Courts have an older and more complex version of gaining the same ability, The Labyrinth/Logrus, The Serpent .... most people die before completing it)

King Arthur: Le Morte de Arthur, The Once and Future King, and (maybe) The Mists of Avalon. The Faery Realm, Galahad ascending into Heaven, Merlin being Trapped in a cavern for centuries, The Isle of Avalon.... The basis of many of the modern “alternate dimension” in fantasy stories, including The Witcher, Dresden, and Amber.