#Xerxes

[thatsbelievable]

[ballpitbee]

THE 'GOOD GUYS' OF STREETLAMP <3

[toixxy]

Drew my MHR and MHW hunters (I am physically incapable of not maining hammer)

[xinesthetic]

Been like a year. It was about damn time I draw him againg

[grokebaby]

He knew that it would cost him dear, yet did he dare not say

Where he had been that fateful night, secret it must stay

[adventuresofalgy]

The next morning was brighter, but also a great deal colder, and although the world was still dripping as far as the eye of a fluffy bird could see, it was as dry as anything possibly could be when it was already completely soaked through and through…

Now that the mist had cleared, Algy was able to see more of the woodland that stretched out before him, and at its very edge, just a short distance away, loomed a huge Atlantic oak tree, whose branches reached high into the sky and out across the still-chortling burn, which ran on deep into the woodland and vanished.

Carrying the magic pumpkin carefully in his beak, Algy flew over to the tree and landed on a wide, almost horizontal branch, which not only provided an exceptionally secure perch for both himself and his pumpkin, but also a luxuriously soft cushion of moss for the comfort of a fluffy bird's tail feathers…

As the low November sun squeezed through the clouds and attempted to illuminate the scene in front of him with a pale, watery light, Algy felt moved to sing to the magnificent tree – and as he could only think of one appropriate example in which the singer praised a tree, he opened his beak and did his best to perform that beautiful hymn-to-a-tree for the benefit of the hospitable oak, changing the words slightly to make it quite clear that he was not addressing some faraway plane tree in a mythical land…

Frondi tenere e belle del mio platano amato per voi risplenda il fato. Tuoni, lampi, e procelle non v'oltraggino mai la cara pace, né giunga a profanarvi austro rapace. Ombra mai fu di vegetabile, cara ed amabile, soave più. Which Wikipedia translates in English as: Tender and beautiful fronds of my beloved plane tree, let Fate smile upon you. May thunder, lightning, and storms never disturb your dear peace, nor may you by blowing winds be profaned. Never was a shade of any plant dearer and more lovely, or more sweet.

[Algy is singing what is sometimes referred to as "Handel's Largo", the aria Ombra mai fu from the opening of Handel's opera seria Serse (Xerxes) written in the early 18th century.]

But Algy, of course, has a fluffy baritone voice, and although he always does his best, this beautiful aria is really quite beyond the capabilities of a daft fluffy bird 😔 Nor is Algy's version anything like what the composer intended, as it was originally scored for a very much higher voice.

So Algy decided to provide links – for those interested – to two very different interpretations, out of the many, many available recordings of this famous, hymn-like aria. The first, in the unusually pure voice of America's great contemporary mezzo-soprano Joyce Didonato, goes straight into what is in her case an almost ethereal "Ombra mai fu", while the second, sung more robustly by the famous 20th century German baritone (or bass-baritone) Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, contains the complete aria starting from its less melodic opening, and is much closer to Algy's own rendering… 😀

[dfwbwfbbwfbwf]

What happened to the bodies in Xerxes?

I know there's a 400 year difference between The Crying Night (what I call the event that destroyed Xerxes) and our first look at the place, but you'd think there'd still be some remnant of all the corpses. A skull here and there. The occasional femur or ulna or ribcage. But, iirc, there's not a trace.

Plus, it's a desert. The chances of accidental mummification are higher there than other places.

... Did Hohenheim bury/burn (whichever one Xerxes practiced) all of them? 1,072,658 people, all by himself? Because that is a very Hohenheim thing to do.

[fmascreencaps]

[agbpaints]

Valkyrie Galaxy is one of the Rasalhague Dominion's most prestigious aerospace formations. Originally formed as the close defense lines for Clan Ghost Bear's warship fleet, in the modern era they are tasked with protecting Rasalhague and other key strategic worlds. In general only the best new pilots or very decorated veterans are assigned to its clusters.

The Xerxes is the Hunchback IIC of the skies- originally built by Clan Smike Jaguar but having proliferated to all Clan militaries, the 85 ton aerospace fighter mounts two leviathan Ultra AC/20s and a pair of ER Large Lasers, along with a truly mammoth carrying capacity for bombs and other externally mounted ordinance. The fighter has extremely poor heat management and very thin armor, but it generally only requires a single pass to totally obliterate a target.

Mmm tasty tasty countershading

[qs63]

Was Xerxes an isolationist-ethnostate? Why?

This may sound like a weird question but it's something that has been bothering me for a while. Whenever we see Xerxes everyone pretty much looks the same. Golden hair, golden eyes, light skin. We know there was a Xing-Xerxes-Amestris train and caravans of Xing merchants back then. Still we don't see a single non-Xerxian in the flashbacks or within Father's and Hohenheim's philosopher stones. 

This has led me to believe that Xerxes' must have been an isolationist-ethnostate. Here is my reasoning:

Neither Amestris nor Xing had alchemy before Father and Hohenheim taught them, and in present FMA alchemy is rare enough that only Amestris has military use of it. Meanwhile, Xerxes is presented as having alchemy knowledge that even present Amestris lacks. That must mean Xerxes' discovered Alchemy, somehow, and kept that knowledge for themselves alone. That could explain why there isn't a single foreigner in the flashbacks. People from the "lesser" nations must have been forbidden entrance in order to keep the secrets of Alchemy safe.

This also explains why we see the Xing merchants that save Hohenheim walking so far away from Xerxes, even though there was a train connecting both nations. It's entirely possible the trains were only to carry precious cargo from the subjugated nations into Xerxes, who would have many needs considering they live in a desert. This would also explain why the train line was completely neglected after Xerxes fall. If it was Xerxes running it (perhaps with alchemy) and only for their own benefit neither Amestris nor Xing would have the means nor want to keep it running. 

Lastly, considering how lunatic King Xerxes seemed, him being deadly afraid of anyone else getting the knowledge of alchemy sounds perfectly on brand for him.

[invizz]

any pandora heart fans around?? 👀 i cant find people who read and love it as much as i doooo 😭

[thatsbelievable]

[ballpitbee]

OH my god I never posted Xerxes. Hes a corner store shop keeper in Streetlamp

[silversailormoan]

Want to write a FMAB fanfic so bad (but I have skill issues when it comes to plotty fics) where one of the souls inside Hohenheim is the crown prince of Xerxes and he's very determined. Determined for what exactly even he doesn't know– since it's not like he can bring his people back– but he's determined all the same. Determined to not stay with Hohenheim, maybe. Determined to go and do something, maybe.

Whatever the motivation, he manages to slip by and get into Ed's body instead during some innocuous event or the other. Maybe Hohenheim was showing the boys alchemy, maybe he was doing alchemy and the boys sneaked up on him, either way, Ed was touching him or the array or somehow, he ended up in little Ed's body.

Fascinating how this'd change the story with Ed having another soul whispering to him. He still ignores his every warning and does human transmutation. Prince/soul is pissed off because to him, the brothers are the only remaining Xerxians and his foolishness nearly made that number go to zero. The soul whispering stories of Xerxes to keep Ed company while he heals from his surgery. It's fascinating, but all Ed can focus on is the grief, the bitterness in his voice.

(it's a thousand fold of what he felt when he lost his mother, and he sees where the soul was coming from when he got angry at them. just a little.)

The soul giving Ed little helpful nudges here and there when it comes to manners. Ed's still Ed, but he'd had The Voice with him as long as he can remember and sometimes it's hard to know where Ed ends and Prince begins. Sometimes he's just a little more graceful. Sometimes his hands shake, overwhelmed by waves of anger for people he didn't know and a country beyond his time. Ed is honest, brash, and sincere, but Prince gives him careful nudges here and there, knows how to manipulate and when they're being manipulated.

(both of them don't mind when mustang does it. but ed doesn't want to play in the political game either, so he reigns in prince before the soul goes overboard with his strategizing and reminds him of why they're here.)

Ed learning about the whole dirty backstory of what happened to Xerxes in the most flippant of conversations, because while prince tells him a lot about the country itself, he deems Ed too young to know the ugly truth.

(and tries desperately to convince himself that it's not because he's terrified of sharing the knowledge. that it's not because he's too jaded and hateful to trust this one child that he has seen grow before his very eyes. that he's not scared of the power this kid can and has wielded, that he wonders how far he'd go for his little brother.)

The Soul never expects it to come out from a half bitter joke about how Ed's probably the last crown prince of Xerxes now, Ed snarking back with a reminder that he's just a soul that hitched a ride and Ed's a separate person, thank you very much. He never expected the discussion to develop from just fooling around to a full blown argument about how "you need to accept that your country is gone and let go of the past" (he thinks it's rich, coming from Edward Elric) and "stop running away from your roots (Ed sparks up at that, because he'd always be Trisha's son, first. No amount of Hohenheim's blood can change that). It's their second big argument other than the human transmutation one, and somehow this leads to The Soul finally opening up about what exactly happened in Xerxes.

He doesn't know anything other than what he's put together after listening in to Hohenheim talk for all those centuries, and it's the ignorance that chafes at him more than anything, but he tells the child everything he knows. (He tries to end it with a joke about technically Hohenheim staged a coup against the royal family and won, so Ed would be the last crown prince–and that's what he originally meant anyway– but judging by the kid's pale face and faraway eyes, he doubts Ed heard him.)

They both have a shared dark humor though, and one time Ed ended up laughing for ten minutes straight when it hit him that he has a body-less soul and a soul-less body with him, and he can't help either. (It's not a good laugh.)

Just,,,, so many possibilities

[xinesthetic]

Celebrating Vnc's return by drawing Pandora Hearts

[grokebaby]

He had to fight the tears of rage, his heart beat like a drum

For with the wife of his best friend he'd spent his final night of freedom

[Sequel piece to This]