#i reread everything from the eastern continent onward cuz MAN a lot of it i didnt pay proper attention to the first time

[felikatze]

rereading the ember knight (again) and picking up on more stuff because i actually remember more character names (i can successfully tell myusa and wadrin apart now!) and when i got back to laurun's backstory arc i felt so stupid because like

at the veeeeeeery beginning, nagyunn says najin suddenly became stronger after nagyunn got sick when they were kids. and then laurun says najin approached him when nagyunn was sick. and najin was apparently part of the dragon's descendants. and the dragon's descendants have a ritual that grants power equivalent to the knights' geas, which can also be performed by outsiders (as shown by laurun himself performing it!!)

so yeah duh. najin joined them for power when he felt the most powerless (with nagyunn, his protector, being extremely ill). he was probably so strong because he went through the ritual. HOWEVER we've seen that the power granted by the ritual is tied closely to the chief, and the chief has to give permission to use full power, as we saw when lyamin asked laurun for permission to go fight the apprentices again, so it really is exactly like the conditions placed on knights through the geas.

and like, quaring's sudden power up is also after she makes a vow to the dead jiroon, so promises are just fucking like. All Powerful, but Restricting. this overlap is probably why laurun used to research the geas with the komaeda look alike and zius. i forgot his name. LEGIA. WHITE CROW LEGIA. that bitch. yeah.

obviously there are still Many Questions. like. how does The Actual Dragon factor into this. didn't he call the dragon's descendants posers.

oh also sidenote. rereading laurun's backstory just made everything so much clearer cuz i got REALLY confused when i read it the first time cuz all the names are so similar. we have laukan, laurun's adoptive dad, his unnamed mother, and lauzun, his little brother. the old chief of the descendants is gonna kick the bucket, as is the old mother of dragons.

so the conflict is between who's gonna be chief between laukan and lushul. lushul is luyan's dad, who has a "will they won't they" thing with laurun, and is slated to be next mother of dragons.

laurun would be the perfect chief candidate if not for his status as an outsider, which leads to extra squabbling between laukan and lushul as both families have one super promising kid each.

we also see lyamin's dad!! he was one of laukan's supporters, apparently, and we also have mention of kallan, the super smiley one who murdered jiroon.

lushul killed the old chief and laukan. laurun arrived to the scene after his talk with luyan, and retaliated by killing lushul as well as lushul's whole group. then, the knights show up and demand an agreement, but laurun sends them off cuz lushul did that, and fuck lushul, he's dead now.

before the fighting broke out, laukan told lauzan to run away, cuz lushul would also kill him. that's gonna be how lauzan ended up in woodion, since it's now established that the two settlements were close to each other.

so close, in fact, that when laurun searches for his brother, he runs into najin in the woods.

the knights r also super suspicious here. the way they talk abt the mother of dragons makes me suspect she was their end goal in massacring the descendants, since we saw who we now know as luyan in their custody in the capital city before. laurun probably doesn't even know she's still alive.

it's all super interesting!! everytime i read this series i understand more!!

and like yeah a lot of this is because all the names are so similar and it takes a reread to untangle them all, but it's also just well crafted. like when nagyunn meets up with the first special class, one of em perks up when he mentions being from woodion. this is just ONE thought bubble, but it's notable because this knight is later revealed to he tyr's older sister! she honed in on it cuz she's also from woodion! or at least because her brother lived there.

anyways. read the ember knight. it's good.