#Zafirah

[intern-seraph]

hi i am here with a pinch of alfswen content. come witness my salad being just a wee bit unhinged. also on ao3

cws: lws4 spoilers, alfswen basically tells someone to pull the trigger piglet, generally just alfswen being a bit of a freak

Alfswen dropped her swords to the ground with a noisy clatter. The Deadeye crouched behind the battlements stared up at her, warm brown eyes wide with shock. Immediately, those eyes narrowed again, and she reached for the daggers sheathed at her sides.

“No.” Alfswen’s voice was calm and level. She crouched down before the Deadeye and took hold of the rifle’s barrel. With her other hand, she pushed down her blindfold. Cool gunsilver bored into the woman before her. “You want to kill me, yes? I’ll let you. Under one condition.” She pulled up the gun until the muzzle pressed against the flat leaves at the bridge of her nose. “I want you to look me in the eye as you pull the trigger.”

The Deadeye’s jaw dropped. “You-you’re insane!”

“Maybe I am.” Alfswen tilted her head to the side. “But I think I was right about you. You don’t really want me dead, do you?”

“I…” The Deadeye dropped her rifle in favor of wrapping her arms around herself protectively. Her eyes slid shut, exhaustion overtaking her stricken expression. “I think I did, at some point. But now… now I’m just tired. My fight is over. I’m ready to join my family now. Just do it.”

“Hm.” Alfswen dropped into a kneel. Her cool gaze flitted over the Deadeye, and recognition swept over her. “I know your face. It’s you. From the vision.”

“Wh-what?”

“Your fight isn’t over yet.” Slowly, Alfswen rose to her feet. She held out a hand, fingers spread in welcome. “I can’t bring your god back. But I can offer you a chance to finish what he started. I’m working on a way to kill Kralkatorrik, and I think one of the missing pieces is you. Help me finish it.”

Baffled, the Deadeye stared at her. Then, slowly, she reached out and took Alfswen’s hand. She stumbled as she was pulled to her feet, the strength in Alfswen’s grip startling even after a prolonged battle. “Anyone else would simply kill me and take the sword.”

“Anyone else, you would have killed.”

“We reforge the weapons of the dead—to pass their strength on to others. So. You may have his sword. My help, on the other hand...we'll see.”

“You’ll come around.” Alfswen took the sword as the Deadeye handed it to her. She examined the blade, appraising it. Peering over the edge, she asked, “What’s your name?”

“I’m Zafirah.” Zafirah gave Alfswen an appraising look of her own. “And you are not what I expected.”

Alfswen laughed. “I’ve been told that many times before. Humor me. What did you expect?”

“I was under the impression that you could deliver me a swift death.”

A pause. Then, more laughter. “Ah… whoever told you that was pretty cruel, huh?” Her eyes squinched up at the corners, giving her the look of an amused cat. Alfswen walked up to Zafirah, leaning down to whisper in her ear, “I’ve never been known for giving swift deaths.”

[i-mybrunettelady]

ZAFIRAH? HELLO ZAFIRAH I MISSED YOU SO BAD

[guildtree]

Had a weird thought a bit back while playing Season 4: if both Caithe and Zafirah followed the Commander back to Sun's Refuge, then did they notice each other sneaking around? So:

I wrote a little one-shot to try out a new character's perspective. There will probably be a few of these types of things while I work on a bigger Aurene fic.

[wyldblunt]

okay actually i'm rethinking this. maybe in this specific case, seeing that glyndwr has These Specific Friends is not going to actually make him seem any more approachable at all

the living world stuff i'm catching up on keeps dumping new besties into glyndwr's lap. first zafirah, now malice. how is he supposed to maintain his prickly unapproachable socially inaccessible reputation now?????

[hawkfurze]

Happy Pride Month Everyone! My horror comic, In Harmony, is also a queer horror story and features a cast of queer characters! I hope everyone has a happy Pride Month this year!

[melesor]

Gods I am fucking FRIED. I forgot my patient's name so when the nurse asked what it was I just deadass turned to the patient and said, "Zafirah?" and she looked at me like I had hydra for a head.

[overwatchfanskinarchive]

Alexstrasza Widowmaker by Zafirah Khan (lolika_art)

[pyreo]

playing gw2 is like. did you know many of the main characters have introductory short stories you can read online from ten years ago. did you know they make cute episode trailers for youtube and one of them is a mission impossible parody and one of them is the most heartwrenching scene acting in a video game, but it's. it's on youtube.

did you know there's short stories on their website about caithe finding herself after heartbreak, and zafirah coming to terms with misguided faith, and rytlock finally understanding his inferiority complex and the crutch he's used to overcome it at the expense of people he should've been there for. no it's not in the game it's on their website

there are official interviews with most of their voice actors discussing how they approach the character and the emotion they put into it and how they've developed over a decade

there's an alt goth version of the main sylvari theme that literally everyone swears by and it's really goddamn great but someone has to tell you where it is

don't even get me started on abaddon, one of the most important characters in their world, who isn't in the game and is barely mentioned

[cindermetalheadgw2]

Is there any better combination than Guild Wars 2 and Powerwolf? Heretic Hunters is about Kalla Scorchrazor and her warband. Thunderpriest is about Balthazar. Incense and Iron is about Zafirah/the zaishen. Where the Wild Wolves have gone is about Braham and Eir

[riotrenegade]

For Graywall: 1, 3 and 4!

THANK U FOR ASKING ABOUT MY BOY AAAAA

fair warning i am too excited to Talk About Badger to bother editing this or waiting until I’m not stuck in a freezing cold room to write this, so this’ll be very off-the-cuff stream-of-consciousness sort of answers djjfkfjfkg

Aurene & OC ask game by mistfallengw2!

1. Gray definitely sees Aurene as a daughter first and foremost! His connection to her was stronger at the beginning than in canon due to his preexisting connection with Glint (being a Herald and also her having physically dragged him to Tyria via Gaia’s spell) so the second he laid eyes on that egg he knew it was going to become a huge part of his life. When she hatches he immediately understands her as someone he has to protect, then the trials bring him closer to her and he sort of begins to see her as like. Like if your best friend had a child and for some reason had to leave that child in your care for an extended period of time. Like that’s not Your Daughter but that’s like. Your daughter. By the way in-game those trials are a single instance, but in Gray’s canon it takes like a solid week.

3. Most of Gaia’s magic was lost when Djall consumed Her and the Earth, but a small amount was dragged to Tyria with Gray and persists like smoke in a room. Certain places on Tyria are havens of nature and healing magic all of a sudden, and the source is hard for Tyrians to pin down because the magic that’s causing it isn’t native to Tyria’s cosmic ecosystem. (This may or may not be causing Problems in certain places and certain people may or may not be associating these problems [kind of correctly kind of incorrectly] with Graywall)

In Gray’s canon, each time Aurene absorbs new magic, she absorbs some of Gaia’s lost magic as well. It doesn’t affect her appearance much, if anything she just looks a little bit more… Mordrem-y? Sort of? But her prismatic effects are a little bit color-shifted to the green side of the spectrum. Ever so slightly. She has memories of places she has never been, on a strange world with a shattered moon. Wherever her branded crystals grow, plant life flourishes. Like Zafirah seeing Balthazar in Aurene, Graywall sees a bit of Gaia, in some small way.

4. Gray has… Mixed Feelings on the Prophecy. In his canon, part of it specifically mentions the Earth being consumed for further events to even take place (him being spirited away to Tyria) so as you might expect he has negative feelings about that. But on the other hand he wouldn’t have wanted Tyria to be destroyed either. One world survives, the other crumbles. It’s an impossible choice to make, and one that he had no real say in at the end of the day. He did all he could to save his homeworld and failed, and as a result another world had the chance to thrive. He thinks about it every day, still, and still doesn’t know how to feel about it. There’s no one to blame for it, so it’s not like he could direct his emotions at a person. Even Glint isn’t responsible for the Prophecy itself, she was just a messenger and a tool by which the Prophecy was enacted. When I say Gray is dealing with a lot of difficult emotions, this is a huge part of what I mean. I cannot stress enough that on a cosmic level in his canon, his world had to die so Tyria could live.* And it fucks him up every day of his life.

As for Aurene, she struggles with anger and sadness. About those who had to sacrifice their lives, sometimes their whole worlds (physical and metaphorical), to fulfill it. Survivor’s guilt. The problem with a Prophecy woven into the fabric of reality is that there’s no one you can direct your emotions at. She’s glad that Tyria is safe, the only world she’s ever truly known, but every time she’s around Graywall she sees flashes of a different world, one that she knows had to be destroyed so that Tyria could flourish. She can explore these visions as completely as she would any other, and she sees Graywall and his friends fighting fate the same way that he did for Tyria. She sees him fail, completely and utterly. She sees herself, as Gaia, consumed by a world-ending darkness. The same kind of thing that threatened Tyria. And she knows that all of this had to transpire for her to even be alive. She’s grateful that the Prophecy is complete, but at what cost? She leaves at the end of EoD to rest, but also to process. Her whole life she’s been her mother’s pawn, for better or worse, regardless of what Glint or Gray or her or anyone else would have preferred. She’s an elder dragon, yes, but she’s also fucking 10 years old! She was forced to mature at a frankly dizzying pace and deal with things no ten year old should ever have to deal with. She needs time and space, to rest and to be her own person as much as she, as the last Elder Dragon, possibly can.

Both of them wonder how inevitable it was. If it had to be this way. If there was some way both worlds could have survived, thrived.

*Is the Prophecy really woven into the fabric of reality, or is that a story we tell ourselves to ease the pain of what we’ve been through? To make a narrative out of predicting people’s behaviour? Isn’t it easier, in a way, to say “It had to be this way”, rather than deal with the fact that it could have been different?

[girlbob-boypants]

I hope Zafirah is doing well and I hope she knows I miss her

[freedomcrows]

was tagged by @hawkepockets!!! blorbo selection no 2 begins

Challenge: make a poll with five of your all time favorite characters, and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favorite

tagging: @lyriumsings, @ghostwise, @veilgu4rd, @hawkeish, @katari-adaari, @cosmicteafox, @inquisitor-julia, @babayagaii, @deleteanders and anyone who sees and wants to participate!! <3

[i-mybrunettelady]

open question, genuinely curious: what are some of your ships that you're sad never sailed bc of lore, character development, etc but that there was potential for?

i'll go first: nyra/zaeim, renira/zafirah, nyra/ren, el/adryn

[stormsworder]

1, 7 and then 25 for whoever you'd like!

How good are they in combat?

With all the time spent fighting against the Elder Dragons and all manner of threats, Danielle Roivas is pretty much an expert in combat by this point, though it's taken its toll on her. She's far from perfect, but more often than not she has the endurance to persevere.

Lex Steiner is NOT a fighter. Sure, she can use a rifle to protect herself when need be, but after what her actions and creations helped lead to in Lion's Arch during Scarlet's War, she resolved herself to only fight if absolutely needed... which also means that in a combat situation, she typically tries to just escape.

7. How much have they trained to get where they are?

Danielle started training since 6 or 7 after Eir saved her from the krait in how to use a bow to fight and defend herself. She's spent most of her life training for combat, though after the injuries taken during her stay in the Tower of Nightmares she did have to re-train herself to be able to learn to fight all over again.

Lex has extremely limited combat training. She's learned some during her time with the Aetherblades, but she specifically tried to avoid getting involved in their raids or anything that might hurt people. Most of her training pertains to mechanics and engineering, which she was drawn to with her parents both being Vigil engineers.

24. What weapon skins do they use? (because I already answered 25)

Danielle uses to very specific skins for lore reasons at the point she's at in current timeline: Aurene's Wing is the weapon she gained when she fell to the Void in the final battle of EoD and was revived by Aurene. With her existing bow destroyed, this was the new one granted to her... and she's kept it ever since. Save the Queen is her sword skin, which was actually her mother's sword and is one that has been passed down through her family line.

Lex uses Zafirah's Rifle Skin, which is basically a rifle that she's taken and modified a bunch with the skills she knows and pieced together after leaving the Aetherblades. Her other weapon is a devil-rending greataxe, which only really comes out when she relies on her demonic magic and dons her armor that's a mix of technology and demonic magic

[wyldblunt]

hanging out

[forseaken]

Its soooo sad that we're unlikely to ever see Zafirah again what a cool ass character. Yes i know her small character arc is mostly complete with her both avenging her god and coming to terms with the fact that he did deeply evil things and no longer has to follow him, just what the Zaishen meant to her but. Shes so fucking cooooool bring us back to Elona anet