#about delphine

[enby-trainer]

🔮 -tell me of powers

Well, hmm. How do I answer this? Not sure.

Both my gals are pretty "offensive" battlers, with hard-hitting moves, and as far as I can tell, it suits them fairly well. I mean, I'm their trainer, I'm the one who decides which moves they hone, so it was partly my doing why they're like this.

Their powers are both of Normal typing, if that answers your question in case the above paragraph didn't.

[bforblitz]

hey, i was really curious about your feelings on delphine? i feel like i saw you mention you had a specific take on her and i think you have a great tes takes!

If Delphine has a million fans, I’m one of them. If Delphine has one fan, I’m that one. If Delphine has zero fans, then I am dead.

But fr, Delphine’s one of my favorite characters in Skyrim. I think she gets a lot of flack because her writing is honestly pretty bad, but there’s potential there. She’s a very flawed character that imo wants to do good at the end of the day. I don’t even completely disagree with her take on Paarthurnax. She makes a lot of good points,I just think his writing is stronger than hers, leading to people siding with him more often (that and like. sexism. power fantasies. the usual culprits in bad Skyrim takes).

But I’ll never forgive her for what she put my boy Malborn through /j

[edenxroseyposey]

Arcane Lessons

[ehlnofay]

my tes secret santa for @anotherclassicpretence! truth be told I've been having a tad bit of writer's block lately but some of your prompts were VERY interesting (I liked the idea of writing delphine before the main quest a lot... this more or less counts) so I hope I've done them justice. hope you're having a splendid holiday season!

...

“Steady on, Hilde,” Delphine says with a brusque, manufactured sort of calm. “You’ll do yourself a mischief.”

It's a relief, she thinks, that the day Hilde has elected to barge in with world-upending news is a convenient one; it isn’t as though Riverwood is the kind of place to attract crowds, most of the time (part of the reason she chose to live here at all) but the inn is unusually quiet now. Orgnar is nominally organising something in the cellar, which means that he’s spending an hour swapping two bottles around and calling it a day, and the dining hall is warmed to a swelter with the ever-going hearthfire, and utterly empty. No-one’s come in for lunch yet. No rooms rented out last night, either, so it’s all silent on that front; it’s just Delphine and her wet cotton cloth, wiping down the stained tables till they shine, and Hilde with her hair wrapped and her string of beads tangling round narrow, hard-knuckled fingers. She’s sat herself on the chair with the wobbly leg; it needs fixing soon. Ordinarily, Delphine would herd her onto another, but right now she doesn’t think there’s anything in the world that would get Hilde to listen.

“Hark at her!” she complains to the bead-string - all marbled glass dyed blue and red and yellow, clinking together on their leather cord. “Do a mischief - do a mischief - it’s as if she can’t bloody hear me -”

Delphine swipes the cloth over the chip in the corner of the table. “I hear you,” she replies (does she ever hear her). Hilde’s hands are white where the necklace bites into her skin; her lips are pinched into a puckered line. Her eyes are red-rimmed and fierce. “Hilde. I’m going to get you a drink to calm your nerves, and then we’ll talk it over properly, all right?”

“Talk it over,” Hilde repeats, high and scornful, and then her face screws up quite suddenly as if all the fight has fled it - the wrinkles in her cheeks deepening to uneasy valleys, knuckles pressed to the thin slat of her mouth, beads digging hard into her cheek. “Nine have mercy… thank you, Delphine.”

The inner corner of Delphine’s lip snags, near imperceptibly, between the blunt ends of her canines. She nods once, and she ducks behind the bar, folding the cloth with damp precision as she goes. The cask of ale is near empty, the mugs lined up on their shelf, sparkling clean, cutlery rattling around in its tin. It's not fancy - Riverwood is a small, old town, built on the bones of an older one, and no matter how well-run the inn has been since she bought it it's not exactly a prime destination, but it's a good sort of a place. And innkeeping is decent work. Keeps you busy. Keeps your ear to the ground. Gives you something to focus on, in the meantime -

When Delphine grabs a tankard, she notes with some incredulity that her hand is trembling. She stills it. She pours the ale until the cup rim is flecked with froth.

(Gives you something to focus on in the meantime, in between real work, while you're waiting -)

(There is a feeling rising in her body, foaming like the ale; a sour, stomach-turning excitement, as if she's in her twenties again and wet behind her ears, biting back all the intrigue. Like she has an unlined face and fresh armour and is standing again in line for her induction ceremony. Like she's staring something in the face and thinking, finally.)

Delphine caps the cask. She is not in her twenties, and she is not staring anything down; bar Hilde, a seventy year old woman with tannin-stained hands and the latest in a line of tall stories. Delphine didn't get this far (how far?) (still alive, isn’t she) through credulity. She's a pragmatist through and through - won't believe anything she hasn't seen evidence of with her own eyes; and yet.

And yet.

She sets the mug down on the table; a pale and lukewarm drop slides down the pewter, just next to the handle. She'll need to wipe it all down again, after this.

Hilde takes it, absent-minded; the beads slither from where they’re strung around her hands to rest in a smooth curve over her chest. Her hands are shaking - she doesn’t seem to notice, or if she does, she doesn’t stop them. There is a look about her, all of a sudden, that seems dreadfully, fixedly haunted, like a woman looking down the barrel of a cannon, some rapid-rigged explosive, something to level the town. Like she’s caught the apocalypse’s eye. Delphine reaches out, perfunctory, and pats the back of her hand; Hilde grimaces and downs half her tankard in one long, desperate swig.

Light’s coming in through the window-slats up by the rafters, dull and gold, dust motes in the shafts of it. It makes the white wimple of cloth swaddled hastily around Hilde’s head shine in places.

“Big as the mountain,” she mumbles into the lip of the tankard, fingers wrapped tight around its handle, “black as night - flew right over the barrow like something fit to block out the sun.”

Delphine’s teeth scrape over that spot at the corner of her lip. She can’t help but say, “Are you sure -”

“I know what I saw,” Hilde snaps. Her knuckles and lips are blanched and colourless. Liquid sloshes over the edge of her cup with her sharp, abortive gestures. “I saw a dragon.”

Delphine is very careful not to let her face do anything at all, there.

(It’s adrenaline, she knows; the pointed, muscle-coiled readiness to move - to act - to make a plan in service of a solid end and carry it off perfectly; the comfort of seeing possibility roll out before her like a long many-doored hallway, like a road she might be able to walk instead of these four walls she’s circled for too many years. Innkeeping is decent work - keeps her ear to the ground - keeps her busy in the interim, but it’s not what Delphine does, not what she’s been trained to do; not a purpose, not something to strive for, and oh, Divines -)

(None of this is substantiated. Delphine is not a rash and green youth, not anymore and not again, and she will not start running away with silly fantasies before she’s checked anything at all; she has had her fill of disappointment, and should know better than to invite it - should know better than to start spinning grand plans, before she’s even sent out some missives to the pale cobweb of contacts she has left - over the barrow; west, then - is there a significance, to the barrow? Does she have anything about it in her side room? Nine, it’s times like this she misses the old library and the mad old codger that kept it, and, no. No.)

(Yes.)

“It’ll come back,” Hilde’s saying with fearful certainty; lips flecked with spittle and beer-foam, hands still shaking. “It’ll come back, and it’ll kill us all, and then you’ll believe me -”

“I believe you,” Delphine tells her, and it is inexplicably, regrettably true. (She’s thinking about the library. She’s thinking about the dragonlore. She’s thinking that if dragons are back, someone will have to do something about it - and oh Divines how she has missed being the one to do something about it.)

Her hands are still, but only through some effort.

She feels like she’s been dozing for twenty years and only now has been shocked awake.

Hilde looks at her, white-mouthed and white-scarved; she frowns, a tense, sour thing, and she says doubtfully, “You look like you need a drink.”

Delphine laughs. It’s a short, gruff bark of sound. Her hands are flat on the tabletop; her hair is coming loose in thin wisps from the tight knot at the base of her skull. Sunlight trickles through the windows, golden-fresh. “No,” she says. “No, thank you, Hilde, I'm good."

[skyrim-forever]

I wanna write this eventually but since I wrote the events of the Thalmor Embassy through Rulindil's eyes because I was thinking with my dick I want to go back and write up the whole party from Ondolemar's pov because it's very funny

At first he sees her at the party and is like "Oh". It makes sense why she'd be there in his perspective, she's a notable person in Skyrim and apparently here is where the notable people are (though the crowd Elenwen invites could certainly have him fooled). Though, obviously, they cannot be too friendly, absolutely not let on that they know each other n any more capacity then "Yes, I have seen you in the Keep, meeting with the Jarl." but they could speak. Could be fun to pretend they don't know each other in front of everyone, give him something fun at this party to do other than sneer at Erikur

But then she goes out of her way to avoid him and he's like ??? Normally she is the one getting his attention and leading him into some closet and even though it would be far too dangerous here, he's a bit offended to not even get an acknowledgement. She's chatting with one of the Jarls and briefly makes eye contact with him before returning to her conversation and he's not having it "Woman, I went all the way to Windhelm for you. I fucked you in the Temple of Talos of all place, do not ignore me." While some Redguard is acting like a drunken fool, he notices she slips away and he goes to confront her and then the rest happens.

[thesummerstorms]

I think Rook, despite being incredibly helpful with other people's problems, is a master at shrugging at their own life and saying "it is what it is".

To the point the companions contemplate strangling them sometimes.

[catbureau]

Every day I teeter back and forth between "my nose is actually cute and distinctive and gives my face character" and "anime egirl rhinoplasty"

[tridentrans]

The little Delphi 💥cute outfit edition from heeeeere. my friend dreamt of Maverick in this outfit so obviously i had to draw it. yeah let me tell you about my OCs you'll start having prophetic visions about them it's all very normal. trust.

[whogirl42]

So fucking incredible honestly to be rewatching Orphan Black from the beginning and seeing baby Cophine like. Delphine is all adorable stuttering that she never really considered bisexuality for herself until Cosima, unaware that she's facing the love of her life who she'll legit be willing to burn down the entire world for I can't even🥺

[lithugraph]

[timelessbian]

the way i haven't even seen any part of the new ob show but i'm literally going to be thinking about glasses chain delphine cormier in her gilf era for the rest of my life

[vox-off]

i love how 99% of conversations with paarthurnax are had mostly with his nostrils

[nethertrolls]

This is Delphine Bahamut (for the moment might come back and adjust later but for now)

and she’s an oracle who along with the usual duties associated with such a title also sends along spirits before they get vicious through elegant dance.

She’s always polite and formal in how she presents herself to the public eye and most trolls tend not to look deeper than that. She had many instructors through her life from the moment her potential was discovered. Everything in life has been part of a set plan.

( @/goldenguillotines created the design and the art)

[brinamerilis]

"If we can get there before it happens, maybe we'll learn how to stop it." I didn't really take this in initially, but the Kynesgrove trip is not one but two of Delphine's next steps coming together at the same time. She's been working on the dragon map and she's figured out what order the dragons seem to be coming back to life, so she now knows which will be next if the pattern holds, AND she went and stole the horn so the putative Dragonborn would come to Riverwood. If she convinces the Dragonborn to go to Kynesgrove with her for the (possible) next dragon, she'll see whether the Dragonborn is the Dragonborn, but she seems just as intent on the simple possibility of getting there "before it happens, maybe we'll learn how to stop it." She thinks there might be an explanation and prevention method ordinary humans can accomplish - since ordinary people might need to do it themselves in this modern mundane world where no one has found a Dragonborn in two hundred years.

From her startled awe at the end of the Kynesgrove fight, it seems like part of her wasn't really letting herself believe there would be a bona fide Dragonborn!

[spookyvalentine]

what the calling does to a guy

[lucid-heart]

french leather angsty sex where sarah thinks about how delphine has loved cosima in ways that she never could and delphine thinks about how sarah has cosima's face but she cannot have the real person