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thedo0zyslider · 2 years ago

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Long Forgotten But I'm Still Here - 4k words

Oli has some feelings about being thrown into Empires and forgotten by all his friends. And none of them are the good kind.

A03 Link

This new world--Empires as Oli had begun to call it--was quite a rollercoaster, to say the least. Being thrown into a new world randomly, separated from all your friends, was not pleasant. Zero out of five stars, bad yelp review, unpleasant experience, would not recommend.

He’d declared himself the king of Afterlife, which is what he’d called the one before this one, because everyone else had died. They’d used up all their lives or disappeared, leaving him in an empty realm. Until he’d been shoved into heaven that was, to this day he still didn’t know what that was all about, only that once he’d gotten there he hadn’t been allowed to see Sausage; who he knew was up there, for the record. Miss Pearlescentmoon also made a great first impression, by promptly throwing him into some random wilderness, in a world that was decisively not his old one.

If Oli was being honest he’d fucked around for a little while, doing whatever stupid idea came to his little head. He’d settled on a beach, in a poorly built wooden house that he deemed a megabase, with a little wolf companion to keep himself company. It soon became him and this strange little dog he’d tamed, named Sausage in memory of his long gone friend, against the world. It had been them against the mobs, the elements, everything. Even the Warden, a fateful encounter that had killed his beloved pup and left Oli friendless and alone. Again. For a third time, but that was okay, that was fine, because he could do other stuff. He could do stuff that didn’t involve other people, like burying his late dog on some random patch of snow. Like killing the ender dragon, a creature he had once respected and revered, and stealing its unhatched egg.

He could do things like floating in an endless void for god knows how many years, a stolen baby dragon clutched close to his chest and listening to some vague murmurings of a poem about love and players and the end of some kind of game . He could do things like being spit back onto his beach, his house now missing and in a world clearly full of people. A world clearly full of his friends, if the ever familiar building styles said anything.

It was kinda jarring really, to see almost everyone you care about and have them not remember you. It was fine though, nothing Oli couldn't deal with. It was just a little weird, how all his friends were both different and the same at the same time. Well. the ones that were actually with him anyways.

Some people, he found out slowly and over time, weren't here. Callum was the most notable absentee, to Oli at least, though he doubted anyone else even knew there were people missing. The fox had always had such a presence in his lifetimes, even if could only remember a few. It felt like a big chunk of the blonde was missing, and he silently mourned the absence of his furry friend. Lauren, his fellow Enderian, wasn't here either. (They hadn’t been Enderian's for long, or at the same time, but Oli didn't care for those technicalities. They were still fellow Enderians.) Though he wasn't sure if Lauren would have fared too well in this world, she did have a tendency to fold like a wet paper towel. Meghan and Mika were missing as well, and it was frankly strange to see Shelby running around without them. At least she still had Joey, and Katherine, he guessed.

Oli had figured all that out from observation mostly, because he was not ready to interact with people after spending god knows how long in the void. So he’d wandered around as stealthy as he could, investigating the nearest tavern he saw. Said tavern seemed to belong to Gem, but before he could even process that Fwhip had showed up and was shoving him in jail. Apparently that ancient city his dog had died in was the one Gobland was built above, and stealing from it thousands of years ago, before anyone lived there, was a crime .

He’d ended up being stuck in that miserable cage for a month, a month ! It was honestly torture, admittedly a little (more like very) inhumane of Fwhip, and had probably given him a fear of enclosed spaces, so that was great. He’d been stuck in that stupid fucking cage, left with nothing but his horrible, horrible thoughts and rotten fucking cave pork. He hated pork after that, didn’t think he’d ever be able to stomach the damn meat again. Oli and Fwhip had been friends, friends , and the bard had just been shoved in a cage like that didn’t matter, just because the little goblin couldn’t remember.

While in the cage he’d wondered why no one remembered, and why they simply just couldn't. He wondered why Pearl couldn’t just snap her godly little fingers and make everyone remember who they’d been before, however many centuries ago that was. Then he wouldn’t be in a cage, then he wouldn’t be forgotten and he’d get his beloved friends back. It really didn’t feel like all that much to ask for, in Oli’s opinion anyways.

The blonde hadn’t paid much attention to whatever community service he had to do after being freed. All he cared about was the freedom from the cage and Fwhip’s horrible goddamn cave empire. All he’d paid attention to was that he could actually walk more than five paces again, and the fresh surface air blowing through his unkempt hair and making it windswept. He’d pay whatever fine he’d been taxed with later, when fwhip eventually came knocking at his door. For now he set out, back to the one place he knew best in this weird little world.

The blonde had returned back to his beach, which was apparently a little ways away from Gem. He had a feeling that Dawn’s princess was faking, and that she did remember him, but he wouldn’t press for details. He wasn’t even sure he could handle that knowledge emotionally, so Oli was very content with not knowing. It did bug him though, that she wouldn't at least drop the act when they were alone, if only to make the world feel a little less alien and isolating than it was turning out to be. Instead Gem just acted like she was an innocent little sun princess, and also dubbed him a bard.

He only focused on Gem’s little act for a day, before setting off to sea. Oli was a little sick of this world. He wanted to go back home to Afterlife, where his original friends had lived. He wanted to go back to the orb and his other builds, maybe even see if some people had returned from their disappearances. This world, the one he’d dubbed Empires, was weird, strange and hostile, and it wasn’t home .

He’d sailed and sailed for a few days, going decently far out. There was land he could see sure, but it was strange and uncharted, which was reassuring. It was away from people, and maybe that meant he was getting closer to home. Maybe he hadn’t been shoved into a different world at all, maybe this was just another corner of Afterlife’s vast, mostly unexplored world that he could leave and ignore for the rest of time.

As soon as Oli had gotten his hopes up he had to sail back, because there was something, some kind of force above the water stopping him from going further. Because of course there was, because of course he was stuck here and couldn’t go home. As he traveled back Oli bitterly wondered if this strange border was just a him thing, and if Joey and his other friends had ever found it during their times with sea bearing origins.

Oh, yeah actually, speaking of Joey , the man had bloody attacked him! The pirate man (because Joey was a pirate now for some reason, and with an empire that matched the whole theme as well) had been rambling about skeletons or something as he sank Oli's small boat. He'd been free in this world for five minutes and people were already trying to drown him!

From there he'd washed up on the shore of Sausage's empire, who had kindly nursed him back to health after his attempted murder. Sausage still looked the same since Oli had last seen him, helping the man ascend to the heavens. He could tell this was the same Sausage though. There wasn't really a reason, more of feeling than anything. Joey had possessed a different, oh what's the word? Vibe. That's it. He'd had a different general vibe to him. This pirate man was still Joey of course, just more....devious than the previous version Oli had encountered. More pirate-like, if you really must. Sausage however was the same, there was no doubt about it. Sausage still worshiped the same god, which made him a little more suspicious, and now he looked at the mural of Santa Pearl with more disdain than wonder than he had before.

Oli suspicions of reincarnation were confirmed when Sausage mentioned visions, but he couldn’t pry on that one because the man had thrown him at Katherine as soon as he was fully healed. Apparently he needed a new change of clothes, or something. Oli hadn’t been paying much attention to what he wore, so he didn't notice until it was pointed out. Being almost drowned by a friend will disorientate you like that.

And for some unfathomable reason Katherine had dressed him as a bard! A bard ! He wasn't a bloody bard ! Being musically inclined didn't make him a bard , but it was fine. Everything was fine and not weird. It was just like changing origins in Afterlife, wasn't it? Instead of regular old Oli, he was bard, just like how he'd been an Enderian and then had to adapt to being an axolotl. Oli could adapt, that was easy. Sure, he'd adapt to being a bard, just like he'd been adapting to new things his whole life.

(If part of him was tired of adapting; of losing friends, then he didn't think about)

Yet despite that he'd left Katherine's place feeling sour, yelling about how he wasn’t a bard. If there was one thing that didn't change, it was Oli's commitment to the bit.

The newly made bard wandered the land for a little while after that, which gave him plenty of time to get used to the versions of his friends he was now stuck with. Everyone was still the same deep down, even if they'd formed into slightly different people. Sausage was the exception though, because he was literally the same person. He was worried about running his mouth just a lil, as mentioning past lives didn’t tend to go very well. But Oli also had a need to be annoying in an endearing way, and that need always won over his anxiety. So he set off, newly obtained lute in tow, and walked around until he found signs of civilization.

The first person he encountered, Scott, was still full of sass and his hair stayed dyed a teal blue. Oli started to wonder if it was even dyed at some points and if he was just born with weird hair, but it had to be, because he'd been blonde before as an angel. He wouldn't be surprised if this Scott had dyed his hair either, he was a very colorful and creative man. It made for quite the pretty empire, Oli did have to admit. That man still knows how to make a good block palette.

Joel’s empire was very close to Scott, close enough that you could see it from the latter’s house. He’d heard Joel was a god and Oli had hoped he would be like Pearl and that someone would remember him. But no, the sky god was like everyone else, he had no memories of before. Which was just dandy , didn’t hurt that one of his closest friends forgot him. Nope

Instead of remembering Joel had just called him weird and then introduced him to his child. Because Joel having a kid was normal and not a shocking development. The kid, very creatively named Hermes, was apparently Joel’s and Sausage’s, and had been an armor stand before being brought to life by the two. Joel had a living armor stand for a son but sure, Oli was the weird one. That was totally normal.

There was also a new person, one Oli had never met before, their name wasn’t ringing any kind of bells. Her name was False, and she was setting up a little steampunk themed area near this world's Scott and Joel. He hadn’t paid this newcomer to much attention though, he could always meet her later. There was plenty of time, for now anyway. Never know when God's going to throw you into a strange new world after all. Plus, from what he’d heard, False tended to be skittish, suspicious of everyone, and was very good with a sword. The bard would meet her later if it meant avoiding another murder attempt.

Katherine still kept her usual love for pastels, but her kingdom was apparently corrupted and being taken over by a mysterious black substance. All of the builds were split, one side being the princess normal style of building, and the other decayed and ruined. Oli’s second visit hadn’t lasted long after learning that. He did not want to get involved with any sort of curse, nope, no thank you.

He’d avoided going to Fwhip again, because he’d seen enough of that damn cave, and headed up the mountain instead. There he met Lizzie, who was once again living life as a small, furry, mischievous little animal. This time she was a cat instead of a kangaroo or raccoon, and still acted the same as Oli remembered. It was a little reliving, to know that his friend was still her unique little self, even if she didn’t remember him. Though Lizzie did seem more inclined to go along with his seemingly nonsense ramblings of the past, so that was a plus.

The Mayor of Animalia had warned him of a witch though, and Oli immediately made it his goal to find this supposed dangerous and scary witch. The witch wasn’t scary in the end, because it was Shelby. She, like everyone else, didn’t remember him, and was just a little spookier than he last remembered; almost like her shadow origin at the very start of Afterlife.

From there he’d wandered to a mesa, where he found the second to last person he had yet to know. The hot and dusty biome was inhabited by Jimmy Solidarity himself, the very man who’d given him community service and freed him from his stupid little cage. Oli already did not have a high opinion of the man, because he was working closely with Fwhip; other than that he seemed fine. Except for a slightly different vibe, one more troubled than before, he was basically the same Jimmy the bard had used to know.

The last person he met was his favorite, one that hadn’t actually been in Afterlife. This guy, Pixlriffs, was his favorite instantly. The archaeologist was a stranger to him, someone he could look at without a thousand memories flying through his head. Pix listened to whatever he’d ramble about, be it his past of whatever random topic came to head. The man seemed to be genuinely listening as well, and Oli wouldn’t be surprised if he took mental notes every time. There was a connection there of some kind. He didn’t really know why, the bard could just tell this man was different, that he wasn’t what he seemed. It was nothing sinister, not in the slightest, just a feeling that Pix also knew more than he was maybe letting on.

It was these little encounters, his time on this server that the bard replayed over and over again in his head as he returned to his beach. He set up shop permanently this time, deciding to build tents as an empire, because they were easy and only really required him to collect wool. He went through the motions, gathering materials, building, sometimes socializing, thinking and letting all his emotions bubble up inside him. Oli didn’t want to deal with them, because he was adapting again, that all he had to do was adapt again and everything would work itself out like it always did.

Sure, it hurt that none of his friends remembered him. But he was fine, he was over it. He just masked whatever he felt with his normal comedic relief attitude. That always worked before, so why wouldn’t it work now? It definitely wasn’t unhealthy or anything, definitely wasn’t coming back to bite him. Nope , not at all.

He broke down when he next saw Sausage.

Oli sat there in Sausage’s arms, feeling pathetic as he sobbed his eyes out to a man he barely knew. But he did know this man, he knew him well, they’d been best friends and that was why he was crying. He was crying because no one remembered him, and it hurt and he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

He barely heard Sausage’s comforting murmurs over the sound of his own sobs. Such a kind person Sausage was, to comfort Oli in such a moment. He was the one person who could maybe understand, with his visions and what not, but Oli wasn’t sure if he even would. How could he? The man didn’t even remember what his visions were about, which was arguably worse, but that wasn’t the point. The point was Oli remembered, and Sancuatry’s ruler didn’t, it wasn’t the same, it would never be the same.

Sausage shifted them both until Oli’s head was buried against his chest, dampening the nice fabric of his shirt. The bard felt bad about that, despite the fact Sausage had been the one to put his head there. It was a really nice shirt. “Shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Sausage muttered quietly, hugging the bard to his chest more. Hands began to stroke his hair tenderly, Oli leaning into it. He didn’t want any of that to calm him but it did , because Sausage was apparently great at providing comfort.

Oli always hated crying. It made him feel stupid, his face all puffy, nose runny and his eyes red. So now on top of having a mental breakdown he felt stupid, and in response just tried to hide himself more in Sausage’s kind arms. The brunette just couldn’t sit there and let him suffer though, no matter how much he knew Oli wanted to do just that.

“Now, what has you so upset, querido ?” Sausage asked softly, tilting Oli’s head so the latter would make eye contact with him. The bard met his gaze hesitantly, hating how he kept leaning into Sausage’s soft touch. He didn’t want comfort, he had never wanted to cry in the first place. He wanted to go home, back to his beach and his multicolored tent to mope by himself. He wanted to go home and watch the rain that was currently falling from the back of said tent and let it lull him into a fitful sleep, as he’d done far too many times for his short residence in this world. But no, he was here, in Sanctuary, losing all his dignity in an empty town hall, to a man who didn’t remember what they were once before. At least no random citizen was here to see his sob fest.

Oli didn’t respond at first, just stared back at Sausage with still watering eyes. He cracked eventually though, only because he could tell Sausage wasn't going to let him go until he did.

"It's, it's like your visions or whatever…" Oli began, looking away. "Like how you remember things and you don't know where they're from? I do that, but I know what they are." He explained it slowly, taking a few pauses in between his words. He was lying, he was lying through his teeth to Sausage . Oli didn’t get visions, not even anything close to that, he just had to know everything ever. He hadn’t been blessed with reincarnation, he had to remember everything . But he wasn’t going to cry again no, he wasn’t, not if he just gave himself a chance to breathe. "Like your sunflowers? I knew who they were from as soon as I got here." He ignored how Sausage stiffened under him slightly, before forcing himself to relax again.

Sausage made a quiet humming sound, seemingly a little lost for words. "Do you…remember anything else? Like my sunflowers, I mean?"

"I remember bloody everything , Sausage!" Ah, there goes the dam he'd been trying so hard to build. Oli clutched the fabric of one of their shirts; he couldn’t tell who's due to hot tears running down his cheeks again. "No one else does!" He snapped. "They just think I spout nonsense!"

No one had told the bard that exactly, but just because he was comedic relief didn't mean he was stupid . He knew the certain look Scott had given behind his back when he talked about the latter's time as a vampire. He knew the face Joel made when he thought people were mad. Oli knew these people too well, he knew all their little cues and everything. They hadn’t needed to say he was crazy for him to understand.

Oli waved his hand in dismissal. "But it's fine," He continued. "I'm fine, I'm just a silly little bard getting worked up over silly little-"

Sausage's grip tightened on him, and it was the closest he came to being anything but gentle all night. "Stop deflecting, Oli!" He hissed. "It's not fine because you're not fine, because you're crying over this." Oli wanted to break again, but he wouldn’t. He'd listen to Sausage scold him and he wouldn’t cry, because he was better at hiding his emotions than this and wasn’t supposed to break in the first place. "It's not fine that you lost all your friends and it's not fine to pretend ignoring it is healthy!" Sanctuary's ruler squeezed him into a tighter hug as he finished speaking, clearly dead set on not letting the bard go.

"I know," He whispered, burying himself closer to Sausage's warmth again. It was really all he could think to say

"Then why ?" Sausage asked, sounding so worried and desperate it hurt.

"Because what else was I supposed to do? Act all sad and depressed and weird everyone out more?" Oli snorted, sarcasm and slight irritation dripping into his voice. There was nothing he could do but his usual unhealthy habits, nothing his brain would let him even attempt to try.

"You could’ve talked to someone!" The brunette hissed, grip tightening around the smaller in his arms just a little, but not enough to hurt; just enough to convey his concerned frustration.

"They wouldn't understand, Sausage. No one else but you could-"

Sausage cut him off quickly. "They’d at least listen. People here care about you, Oli, even if they don't remember who you were to them. I don't remember but I still care!" He said, and yeah maybe that was what got through Oli’s stupid, stubborn head. Maybe that was what made his damn break again and made him stop trying to fight with his friend’s perfectly reasonable solutions and kind words about his unique problem.

"You were my best friend," The bard muttered, almost too quiet to hear. Yet it seemed to echo throughout the otherwise empty town hall.

Sausage responded just as quietly, and the response echoed just as loudly. "And I'd like to be that again."

They sat in silence after that, only for a little while though. Oli shifted into a more comfortable position, silent tears dripping down his cheeks. Sausage kept his tight yet caring grip on the bard, not going to let go until Oli started to feel better, or told him to leave. Kind words and comforts were muttered into dyed blonde hair, and it reminded the bard of his time in the void. He was again surrounded by silence, feeling numb as words of kindness and care were mutated into empty air.

"Do you…wanna talk about it? That is, if there were people who didn't come here, could you talk about them? If that helps?" Sausage asked it slowly, carefully, almost hesitantly. Oli was just as slow in his response, only nodding after a minute of careful consideration. Hiding from the brunette seemed a little useless, especially with the chance he would remember their old home too one day.

"Well….there was Mika." Oli muttered, beginning to tell of people he shouldn’t know in this world. He told the tales of the missing, some of the dead, to a man who’d lived alongside these strangers once upon a time. Sausage just hummed every so often, an indication he was listening, and stayed as a steady comfort when more tears spilled down cheeks that were flushed red from crying.

Maybe this world wouldn’t suck so bad, with moments like these. Maybe this could be home, one day, and maybe it'd be a bit more permanent this time.

#ron.fic #oli theorionsound #empiresblr #empires smp #mythical sausage #theorionsound #empires sausage #empires oli #empires season two

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maythray · 1 year ago

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had 2 dreams tonight i need to talk about the 2nd one first before i forget cause holy shit.

framed as if i were watching a twitch stream highlight reel of someones heavily modded minecraft hardcore world. biggest key mods were that they would not regenerate hearts (this guy was on about 7?) he had an upgrade that essentially allowed him to creative fly, and for some fucking reason he had some weird jerma mob that was roaming around the end. (later in the dream what were called "half life worms" show up which he gets confused by)

the main plot of the dream was this guy is about to go enter the end and defeat the dragon for the first time. when he walks in, he begins building some stairs, fancy things cause hes already planning what to do with the main end island. hes using blue/teal palettes (warped wood) because the first thing he notices is that the end is covered in a central jungle made out with teal colors. he quickly hears a groaning sound and realizes, hey! warden is spawning instead of a dragon! and begins to panic and flies towards the edges of the spawn island borders (theres a faint yellow transparent border surrounding the island. its also covered in a thick layer of frost (i guess?) and im telling u because its used later) before realizing that the warden is still very much targeting him and he is not safe yet. he begins to notice several key dangers about where he is.

1. he was not prepared in the slightest

2. the warden can still damage him from where hes at, and can still lock onto him

3. the jerma mob is around on the island, making noise and occasionally aggravating the warden so that it wont despawn even if the streamer is able to get it to stop hearing him.

4. the portal out is not activated and he has no other way home. he has to kill the warden and activate the portal to get home.

5. the health hes at right now is low enough that he can very possibly be one shot by this warden and have his entire hardcore world end at this fight.

at this point he spends the entire rest of the stream attempting to work out solutions to these issues. at this point all it consists of is him flying around, panicking, trying to scrape off the frost to use as an extra tool, taking potshots at both jerma and the warden, and overall getting nowhere before he ends the stream.

but this is a highlight reel like i mentioned so it just immediately fades into the next stream.

we open up on him *somehow* outside of the spawn island cage. the area outside is sky blue, and hes built around it these floating wood and tan paths, covered in jungle trees and shrubs and vines. tge actual spawn island cage has a lot of green jungle growth surrounding it, as well as a central tower/spire up on top of the box. this tower has a hole in the middle that allows this guy to see all the way down to the shrieker which is still active.

the guy is flying around, talking to chat about what hes done between streams, all while the warden is still shooting sonic booms at the streamer. these can be seen through the tree cover hes established just barely before their range ends.

the dream ends with no conclusion, simply me waking up while he is in the middle of this kind of introduction section.

#dreams

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the-dragon-folk · 2 years ago

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Super Loose Dragon age Origin OC breakdown sheet

My computer's been dead (and still kind of is) for a month after... the milk incident, so I've only had the opportunity to play through Partha, and I do want to re-run her since she was my first playthrough. All of these come with a grain of salt and a lot of opportunity to be changed Warden Partha Aeducan: True to the Dwarf Noble Origin, kings Alistair, Romances Morrigain (bi rights), and does the dark ritual. The Leader. The World's most cringefail trans girl boss princess <3. She's an incredibly strong and fierce warrior, a real shit brickhouse as far as dwarves go, but also really mentally not doing well, and she expends a lot of energy not confronting this. She's remarkably successful, it's just that she's guessing the entire time and a lot of her choices go against her own, or her friends' wishes, in the name of the "Greater Good," but what that means to her is really unclear. She is so desperate to protect everyone and save Ferelden because she knows its right, but she doubts every choice she makes and so many "good" choices cause a lot more pain. She begins her journey feeling unloved, put-upon and lost and ends her journey feeling unloved, put-upon, and lost <3. She's also batshit a little and spends a lot of time doing really risky shit in a half-hearted attempt to chase death in a very Zevran-esque way aha. She comes out of the Blight an extremely weird unsettling person, and I do spend a lot of time jumping the shark with her. She drinks that weird bottle at Solider's Peak and does The Golems of Amgarrak stuff, if that explains anything. She's a ball of knots and hard to explain quickly. Mingrin: Partha's dog. Really cool guy and good boy.

Warden Judpha: Dwarf Commoner, not Brosca, thruple with Zevran and Killian. Grew up in Dust Town and was the guardian to his niece from a young age and broke when she was murdered. He's effectively ripped apart in Ostagar, and this leaves him short an arm and a leg. His Ostagar trauma makes him entirely unwilling to face the Dark Spawn. Jud start off pretty coarse - particularly with Partha, who he bitterly refers to as "Peace-Keeper" - and he softens up over time. He learns to read and write and becomes the sort of book-keeper of the group.

Warden Killian Tabris: True to the Elf Commoner Origin, thruple with Zevran and Judpha. Killian's a little less developed than the other two, but she's also pretty prickly. She dislikes Partha and Alistair because of their highborn status. She tends to lead a secondary party. I think her story is about her growing from jaded and act-first-questions-later to a more tempered and empathetic leader, as she's left to be Commander of the Grey after Partha disappears. I think Jud and Zevran allow her to soften up and relax a bit. I think she'll probably parallel Partha in a lot of ways. She joins at the same time as Alistair. Warden (Unnamed so far) Mahariel: Likely true to Elf Dalish origin. He'll likely spend a lot of time on the side lines. He joins at the same time as Partha and, when he finds himself entirely alone at Ostagar, goes "why would i die for a bunch of people who don't give two shits about me when I can go home and help my clan??" and immediately high tails it. He comes back up when the wardens come to the Dalish and find him. He gets turned into a werewolf and at the end of it he probably choses to stay and help prepare the Clans for the Dark spawn. He isn't meant to come across as a coward, but just as someone who, rightfully, is more concerned with the immediate future of his loved ones rather than a more abstract Series of Misadventures to Maybe? Save the World. Not to mention, he's alone right off the bat and has no context on how to be a warden.

Warden Surana and Warden Cousland (also both unnammed): Both mostly true to Human Noble & Elf Circle. They're more of a MacGuffin. They're both slightly older wardens than Alistair & Killian. Warden Surana and Cousland survived Ostagar (Likely alongside Killian and Judpha) and immediately went into action. They presume the old treaties are lost with Alistair and decide to go to Soldier's Peak to try and find some sort of hope. When Civil War pressures get real, Cousland makes a plan to use his Nobility status to wed Anora and reign some things back into place. This is what sends Partha on the path to wedding Alistair to Anora. When The Party get to Soldier's Peak, Cousland has been killed and likely so has Warden Surana.

Ameira Surana: Sister to Warden Surana and another Circle Elf. Romances Alistair. She is a prodigious young mage who spent much of her life in her sister's shadow. This allowed her to get away with what she wanted in peace. I forget which exactly was the specific character issue that sent her down her path, but after her sister and Jowan bounce, she does become a practicing Blood mage. she keeps this under wraps for a while and eventually saves Judpha's life with it, so he doesn't say anything about it. She joins the party with Wynne to help the Wardens and eventually falls in love with Alistair, and it's really sweet and smooth up until Partha and Eamon make moves to wed Anora and Alistair. Alistair breaks up with Ameira to try and spare her from everything that is going on. Ameira, devastated by the last 2 years' shenanigans' like every one else, does eventually fireball-blood magic the shit out of Partha and Anora and Judpha is like "hm yeah i guess i should've said something sooner."

#dragon age oc #oc: partha aeducan #oc: killian tabris #oc: mingrin aeducan #oc: judpha #and the others just arent set in stone enough to get their own tags #sorry to whoever might accidentally see this on their dash </3 #oops all blorbos

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nemesis-is-my-middle-name · 2 years ago

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Laventon goes to see them all off and cyndaquil pops out of its pokeball to beg and plead to be allowed to go too. He tries to tell it that it can't go because it doesn't have a partner yet, and Arezu is like, "wait, that pokemon doesn't belong to you?" And he explains that no, it's not really anyone's, it was just the one neither the protag or Cyllene picked when offered. And like, it's clearly a fire type pokemon and she is already feeling the chill and has only just realized it's only gonna get worse as the sun goes down, so kind of half joking she asks if she can have it since he's just giving it away. And that's how she gets a cyndaquil. And also its pokeball, but she just kinda sticks that at the bottom of her bag and pretends it doesn't exist.

The tourism industry is booming in their little village and all of the shop keepers are too happy about how much money it brings in to care about the fact that it's driving their leader up the wall. Going to the pokemon salon raises friendship levels, so it has to be something they like a lot, right? Once she really gets the hang of it, at least, there's probably a learning curve there. Luckily their group has quite the array of pokemon to practice on.

Ouch, to be confronted with the fact that he's changed and realizing that it was for the worse... I guess the good news is that he is once again in close quarters with several people and has an important mission. And he's able to actually battle people again, for fun. I think maybe the idea that she's not super into battling comes from the fact that as a ride pokemon she never tries to fight you? I'm not actually sure, but that's my best guess. I don't know if I've ever actually read a fic where she was like genuinely into battling. It'd be fun if she was though, especially with Ingo as her warden. Once he got a part-time job at Jubilife as the battle director though she'd lose like half of her entertainment and probably follow him there. He can't exactly scold her for not doing her duties if he's technically not doing his wardenly duties either.

They might be even more susceptible because of whatever connection they have to arceus, or at least that could be why they get hit as badly as they do. Lol yeah after they catch a pokemon they let it out, string the pokeball to it, and then are like come find us when all this is fixed and we'll break the balls for you.

Oh I like that a lot! The arc phone would definitely need to be involved in closing them, since arceus is the one healing the hall of origin cracks and using its power would probably be the the only way people could fix the stuff on earth, though I'm not sure just pointing it at one would be enough, they'd probably have to actually go in them. Any pokemon brought by the bubbles that was still in one when it closed would be taken back to where it came from, but anything that was outside would be stuck in Hisui. The other wardens probably have their hands full, not just with their nobles should they frenzy, but with having to clean up after the frenzied distortion bubble pokemon that are messing up the ecosystem

ghskjhj or she's been absently holding it since it crawled into her lap bc it IS chilly out and it's nice and warm and laventon sees her doing it and is like do... do you just want to take it with you? and she's like HM. WELL. i have very weird feelings about your whole pokeball deal but... on the other hand... i might have to go all the way up to the highlands later... ugh fine yes give me the pocket hand warmer pokemon

awww... yeah, not only sneasler, and lilligant (who probably has also gotten in on arezu's grooming once or twice before now) but also oshawott/rowlet/cyndaquil, and abra, and whatever else protag winds up catching, and ofc all of ingo's team, who are like, not not well taken care of, but then magnezone got scratched up by a ground type and needed buffing, and probopass wanted in, and tangrowth gets upset about being left out of anything, and then gliscor was just curious what all the fuss was about, and etc etc. hey it's good practice!

well. to be entirely honest, i think if there IS a fanon of her not liking battling very much, it probably comes at least partly from fic writers not wanting to deal with the question of ingo adding her to his team in an au where she goes back to the present with him. just speculating here, but. yeah now we run the risk of going off into headcanons about what battling Means and Represents for the pokemon, and i really don't think a noble can afford to dislike battling considering how much of their job must be based on swatting other pokemon in their territory, so if anything i think her complaint would be that she just isn't challenged enough? because i think nobles are Really Strong even unfrenzied. and very few pokemon even want to fight her to begin with, based on reputation alone, so she's like... bored with it lol. in which case i think battling with ingo in distortions would actually be really fun for her maybe?

OH THAT'S INTERESTING. their connection to arceus interacting with the Magic Rabies... if anything i feel like having a direct internal Divine Light would make them more resistant? since arceus is the thing able to mend the distortions/fractures, i think it would track if the frenzy was like an internal fracture and the blessing of sinnoh made them resistant to getting those. not quite immune, though... but it'll take some time for any of them to figure that out. imagine them going around assuming the nobles are all immune to this frenzy, and exposing them without much concern, and then suddenly realizing that oh wait they're not...

yeah that's true. which maybe the loop of it is like, protag has to be there Doing Stuff to close the rift, which demands a lot of attention, so the others surround and defend them while they do that? idk, that's a thought

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #origin visions au

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amoebab22 · 3 months ago

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I completely agree with this. I feel like this is one of the worst parts about Veilguard. My Inky is in the South, and while I firmly believe Orlais is the devil, it's very weird that Tevinter is just super chill about my elf Rook when my elf Inky had constant micro-aggressions as well as just out and out slurs hurled at her. Also I'm going on a rant about Mythal.

SPOILERS BELOW

Bellara also seems to just...kind of ignore that I'm an elf? Davrin makes more sense. He left his clan and joined the Wardens because he just didn't really vibe with the Dalish. He'd think of himself as a Warden first, I think. Wardens don't seem to give much of a shit about your race or religion or sexuality or whatever. In The Calling, they canonically don't give a fuck about the gay couple in their little group, or that Fiona is a mage and an elf. Absolutely irrelevant. So Davrin could start to fall into that mindset because frankly, it's a nice way to live. It's just not real outside the Wardens.

So when Bellara is like oh my god our gods are evil and Davrin is like eh, fuck 'em, that's actually about the most realistic reaction we've got re: elves. Davrin is just out here like yo I'm a little busy saving the world fuck them gods. Love Davrin.

Also, in Inquisition, there's concern that knowing Corypheus's artifact is Elvhen will cause violence against elves. So knowing it's the Elvhen gods causing all of this? The consequences of that, even if an elf Rook saves the world, should be looming for a Shadow Dragon in particular. Clearly Inquisitor Ameridan's race did nothing for the elves of Orlais. It was covered up over time. His sacrifice meant nothing to the humans. This should make Solas's plans to restore the elves much, much more tempting.

The way the Crows were presented REALLY bothered me as well as someone who romanced Zev. The Crows *tortured* him, sexually assaulted him, made him feel worthless, because it was seen as necessary. Sure, Lucanis being blood family might give him a very different perspective and experience, but Jacobus is just allowed to be a Crow and start his own house when he wouldn't kill? I mean, I totally agree that prolonged, public shaming and imprisonment is worse for this individual, but like.... That's not how the Crows work. They kill stuff for money. Sure, they run Antiva and would be pretty pissed off about the Antaam taking their territory I'm sure, and they might work with Rook since Rook helped Lucanis and he's a big deal to the First Talon. But like... It should be a hard choice to work with them for Shadow Dragon Rook, because SLAVERY.

I feel like the pullback on slavery is to make Solas's actions seem more ambiguous, and to make it seem like there was some equal power between him and Mythal. But I have a very hard time believing he was never Mythal's slave. Also, a spirit of BENEVOLENCE? Get ABSOLUTELY fucked. She was fine with SLAVERY. Thought she could just slowly phase it out, maybe. Yeah, no .

Because here's the thing: slavery is evil. Whatever you have to do to stop slavery, short of participating or killing slaves, is pretty easy to justify. Maybe I'm just John Brown-pilled from living in Kansas a good chunk of my life, but killing slavers and slave owners and freeing slaves is MORALLY CORRECT. FULL STOP. A "kind" master is still a master. Sure, you can give them a chance to free their slaves and make reparations first, but waiting to vote slavery out didn't work. The US had to go to war. Haiti had to rebel (and give basically all its GDP to France for like two hundred years. Fuck Orlais AND France).

The only reason my Inky was able to befriend Dorian, at first, was their shared trauma in going to the future. That changes people (that whole quest fucked me up the first time I did it) and I think my elf Inky was looking for reasons to trust Dorian and ignore the system he participated in. She didn't have to see it so it seemed less real. He's an altus so he doesn't own the estate. He seems open to other opinions! And some part of him knows it's wrong, or he wouldn't be so awkward upon talking to Inky the first time.

But Solas's inherent and never fully overcome distrust of Dorian isn't wrong. Solas needs to see action; words aren't enough. I don't blame him.

This is the same softening we saw of the Templars in DA2 and Inquisition, but if you read The Stolen Throne and The Calling and play DAO, it's very clear that mages are oppressed by the Chantry and live in horrible conditions. The ones in Lake Calenhad are described as pale and kinda sickly looking (or something like that) because they don't get any fucking sunlight. Fiona is happy to go to the circle at first because she was a SLAVE in Orlais (Honestly Loghain's hatred of Orlais is justified even though his actions aren't). If you decide to allow the right of annulment or whatever in DAO, Zevran calls it genocide. Zevran isn't one to mince words. He doesn't pretend he isn't a killer or that he wasn't tortured.

My Inky and my Rook are both 'no gods no masters' types, which is why I think clan Lavellan sent their First on a risky mission supposedly by herself (got real sick of her shit lol). As a result, she heavily sympathizes with Solas's cause, and would have happily joined him in bringing down the Veil if he'd just agreed to spend time making sure as few people died as possible, particularly after she meets the Avvar and sees how spirits really are. She knows Solas better than anyone, and even without a full explanation, she'd know that his reasons for doing this were morally right. He freed her people. He never meant to hurt them. He can't live with his guilt. Inky (who in my game was more like 30 because I don't think she could have made decisions or led on her own at 20, nor would she have been a studied enough mage) wants freedom for everyone. She's chaotic good.

Rook is a Shadow Dragon who killed slavers a little too hard for an organization dedicated to killing slavers (based Rook). They're also chaotic good, and a bit of an idiot, bless them, who kinda sees everything as a nail because they have a hammer. They see slavery, they fight it. Fuck the consequences. Solas did the same.

So why is Rook not bringing up slavery a lot? Why is Rook only finding out that Solas freed slaves on the regular at the beginning of the game? Did Varric just decide that wasn't worth bringing up to a person whose entire life revolves around ending slavery? Why is Rook not having an existential crisis after talking to Solas and finding out the truth of his past in his memories?

Look, all I'm saying is that I don't understand why more people aren't angry with Mythal and why no one is talking about slavery and racism. The whole point of fantasy and sci-fi, and the point of Dragon Age, is to critique modern society through thinly veiled references. That's why people get so passionate about Star Trek. And yeah, yes, it's necessarily going to make a piece of media more niche, or people are going to bitch about it (especially gamer bros my dude calm down, sorry something is very briefly not about you), but it makes a game *good* and lasting

BG3 did a good job of exploring the themes of trauma and power imbalance, and while some characters I think needed more fleshing out (Wyll my beloved, I owe you a lengthy fanfic for the injustice done to you), it was particularly powerful in Astarion. The people are ready for real exploration of real issues. We always have been. Backing off was a mistake.

ANYWAY I have feelings and none of my friends share my special interest. Here you go.

Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.

About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.

How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.

So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.

But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.

We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.

None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.

The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.

Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.

Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.

Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.

And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.

Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.

This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.

Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.

And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.

I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.

#veilguard spoilers #datv #dragon age #datv is a good game but a bad dragon age game

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spiderman616 · 7 months ago

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as for zonic:

assuming the war with dr. eggman nega calms down or he’s taken out of the fight for a while due to a major injury (or something that doesn’t allow him to go out in his main field of work), would he eventually look into what goes on within the jail post breakout? try to speak to someone on changing the system in there especially now that the warden’s spotless record has been broken? people broke out, but why? how could have this been prevented?

it’s likely not in his place to do so, but we see that he’s aware of the inmate’s complaints about what goes on in jail. it might not be in his list of priorities considering the bigger things that go around in the multi-universe constantly. and they are criminals so why should he even care?

but i think the breakout would give him something to reconsider. he’s so different from sonic but i think he cares about what goes on within the no zone force. to not have problems continue to pile up on top of the no zone cops’ problems. and the system within the jail is…not the best. why would you want to stay in a place that treats you lower than dirt?

if the warden continues what’s he doing, he’s gonna get another breakout at some point right? the prisoners have now learned that there is a chance to escape. [ just what in the hell does being “remolded into being a force for good” look like anyway??!]

sigh, i get that even if the rehabilitation system was nicer before and that scourge would still break out with the destructix because he’s shitty like that. this could be something Zonic only giving a damn about it in first place through a writer’s whim.

what do you think?

um well ok disclaimer i really dont like lockdown in regards to zonic and the no zone. it explicitly goes against what has been previously established and is kind of obviously flynn turning the zone into the american prison system because he doesnt care about it and just wants a setting for him to play around with scourge. which i dont like and it feels out of character. that being said i am still a stickler for canon so iwill try to do my best to work within it. but im frowning the whole time

anyways yeah zonic just about says they are focusing on nega (even if nega isnt rlly a concrete threat) so he doesnt go after scourge. but i think if he was unable to do field duty (if he wasnt fighting nega but was still able to do shit he would go after scourge for sure.) yeah he would probably look into the prison a bit. its framed as if zobotnik is the one pulling all the strings there but the zone cops in the prison also dont really care. its made to be like a really weird structural issue that i guess only wwas created in the past month or so??? maybe they were setting up to zobotnik having some kind of defeat but i doubt it. this is one part of canon i just dont really like and dont want to have to work with because it goes against all the other parts. so sorry if this was unsatisfactory

#zonic #scourge

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randomwriteronline · 2 years ago

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What Gaeric first saw in the blizzard was an unstable cone of black striped with rust struggling to stand upright in the snow.

When his screams in its direction did not elicit any kind of response from it, he put two fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle as long and loud as his lungs allowed him to do; the strange thing turned around, a sudden icy pale line erupting from the darkness of the coat in a sort of thin rectangle. It attempted to settle into a rigid formal pose as it rose an arm into the air - in a motion that seemed like a greeting, a signal to stop, a call.

Through the flakes howling and shrieking with the winds, the approaching warden recognized a hazy glare pointed nowhere and lashes covered in frost.

Then the person swayed and stumbled back, visage unchanged in its frowning expression as if carved into stone, but eyes fluttering. Gaeric's speed and outstretched arm were the only things that kept them from plummeting face first into the snow as they lost consciousness.

They breathed still, thankfully: clouds of condensation left the rattling teeth behind pale lips, even if rough and labored. Their entire body shook fiercely in his hold as he wrapped them in his tunic and hoisted them over his shoulder, running through the storm back to the settlement.

In the haste, he did not notice the hat had fallen off their head.

Warden Calaba was quite busy with a crisis regarding the Ursarings of the Mirelands, and it would have been at least a day before she had a chance to cross the region - a journey that, without Ursaluna’s aid, would have taken two more at best and three at worst.

The stranger could do nothing but wait for her, and spent that time shivering uncontrollably in an unoccupied bunk inside of Gaeric’s hut, sweating themselves into nothingness like a pane of ice in the warming spring sun, breaths heaved in harshly through uneasy bouts of unconciousness as the warden tried to ease their pain.

The settlement children looked at that weird rambling creature quietly when they snuck in the warden’s abode, all standing near the door (even if that meant Gaeric would have caught them instantly if he returned too quickly, shooing them all away with angered reproaches) with their boots still on, half terrified and half devoured by curiosity: they watched careful and ready to bolt away as fast as they could while it laid on its side under the quilted covers, creating bumps and chasms as it sometimes kicked or tried to turn to no avail, body torn between being fully taken by either a paralysis or a frenzy. They listened to it rave and sob murmurs of gibberish with a heavy growl in its voice, like a beast out for blood after being mortally wounded, and each tried to make sense of the sounds that fell from its babbling mouth under the fabric.

When through the opened door a gust of wind stronger than usual made the fire within the hearth tremble to the point of extinguishing, the thing the warden had saved seized suddenly in the chill and gave a gurgling roar, a sort of guttural howling lament that had them all hastily making their escape screaming.

“The Baneful Fox!” they cried at the top of their lungs: “The Baneful Fox! Warden Gaeric brought home the Baneful Fox!"

Young Irida pulled their ears for being so nosy and inattentive, for allowing the only source of warmth to go out so carelessly; Gaeric was too busy making sure the feverish thing did not freeze to death to reprimand them himself, and only once the fire was restored to its prime and the wailing stopped and the trembling quieted could he give them a talk as icy as Lord Avalugg's favorite treat.

But now the fear was snaking through the settlement, like an Onix digging deeply across the weak earth of a hill.

The stranger had not talked yet, had they? No, it had sobbed and rambled, but never spoken a word. Its voice was low and mumbling, reminiscent of a restless brook - but anything resembling a human sound never came out of that dead pale mouth no matter how talkative it seemed to be; only whines and whimpers, and croaking howls when the fever burned its limbs.

Was it truly the kin of a terrifying monster, a phantom of vengeance and hatred? Was its humanoid appearance the work of an illusion, its sickness a ruse to infiltrate their homes?

The hut was circled, surveyed.

Yet none entered.

The murmurs and whispers sorrounded it.

The thought of sharp teeth and sharper claws being tended to by Lord Avalugg’s own warden...

Maybe they should have abandoned that cursed abode now... Covered its door and windows with snow and ice, to suffocate it... Trap it within...

"Fox or not, it is dying," Gaeric replied curtly, hushering the deafening mumblings seeping into his own home with his proud sharp voice. "And the less resentment we instigate from such a beast, if a beast it is indeed, the better. Who knows - it may even understand my kidness and refuse to harm us once it is back in its wild home. Either way it is weak and sick: if it wasn't, it would have leaped out of bed and torn me to shreds already, don't you think?"

Nobody had the guts to argue with him.

The stranger cried weakly, shivers taking over its frame; Gaeric laid another wet cloth on its forehead and gently squeezed its shoulder in his hand to soothe its anguish.

He was kind to it.

Irida struggled to follow in his example.

She stayed with him and the beast more than anybody else of the settlement - he was her teacher, after all, and with Palina he was most of her family, and it was her duty as his student to aid him, but the glances she could spare at the thing did not ease the questions and worries that gnawed at her stomach.

She sat away from it, prepared soothing balms and warmed the water if it was needed: not once did she dream of coming closer, of attempting to feed it somewhat through its confusion, and risk losing her face to a sudden attack.

Although the few times it did manage to sleep a little (something she could only be sure of because its perpetual babbling would quiet into weak intermittent howls, and even then she could tell it was never a true slumber, so thin and easily crumbling), she did try to approach it, and carefully analyzed the fake visage with which it disguised itself.

It was an honestly awful illusion at that - with skin so pale it couldn’t be real and white fur crawling all along its cheeks, clearly escaping the attempt at a human mask. That nose could have not been anything but the poor correction of a snout, and those hands too, so thin and curled upon themselves, claws struggling to hide their real nature -- and its eyes...

Irida had yet to see its eyes, but she would have bet they were a vibrant and mean saffron, so close to gold, yet lacking the gleam and shimmer completely.

She did not say any of that. She did not want her teacher to reprimand her.

She was there when the beast awoke.

After countless struggles it finally managed to turn upon its back without any help; as soon as its snout was pointed towards the top of the bunk, then, its body jolted upwards with a start, wracked by a bout of dehabilitating coughs, croaking and full of anguish and ripping through its throat with the fury of a stampeeding Rhyhorn, seeming as if they would never end.

Gaeric shifted it on its stomach so it would not choke, one hand holding a rag that he pressed to the white mouth without covering its nose, the other on its back. As the creature weakly tried to claw the wrist off of its maw, still sputtering and heaving and struggling to inhale into the fabric, the warden sustained it on his legs and slammed his palm on its spine.

The air was knocked out of it once, twice, thrice; then, when at last he felt a weight heavy and wet and slimy through the cloth, Gaeric pulled the beast back up from the scruff of its neck as gently as he could.

It heaved and hacked a little still, but it finally breathed.

WIth the help of his student he laid the creature back down, the girl watching him clean the foul phlegm trying still to drip from its maw. It inhaled deeply, mouth wide open, flat teeth peeking through its lips, and it opened its eyes slightly to fix them on the two faces it could vaguely make out between tears and illness.

(Irida found herself entranced by how white they were.)

It tried to call out to the two of them, make a sentence of sorts with broken syllables; what it managed was a painful growling wheeze.

Gaeric put a hand on its forehead and felt it warm: “Don’t speak,” he ordered, though kindly: “Rest. Warden Calaba will be here soon, she will cure you.”

The beast whimpered quietly; its pale hand rose to tap its chin, slipping down after a moment. It repeated the motion again, again, again, trying to communicate something that neither could understand.

“Breathe,” the warden insisted: “Rest.”

Irida listened to it heave until it finally fell, after days, into deep sleep.

Calaba appeared when the fever began picking up again; she entered the hut despite the frightful rising murmurs trying to pull her away from it, with a somewhat bitter yet amused smile pulling at the wrinkles of her face.

“You’ve moved on from Glalies and Froslasses, I’ve been told,” she simply commented. Her bag on the floor, her boots carefully removed, she spared a glance at the trembling coughing lump of quilts and covers: “Were they not dangerous enough for your bleeding heart?”

“It can barely breathe and its blood is boiling under its skin,” the man replied. “Even a Fox should have the right to enjoy air in its lungs without suffocating, should it not?”

The older warden rummaged through the ingredients for her many remedies: “I never claimed otherwise.”

Palina was strong enough to turn the mush of pulp into something easier to gulp down without breaking the mortar, but refused any further involvement. She insisted still to remain, keeping Irida behind herself - an arm outstretched lightly before the girl, legs ready to spring up from where she sat just in case the thing jumped out of bed to snatch her sister’s throat with one bite.

It struggled to drink - made a mess, really.

But some of the medicine did manage to go down, coating the mucus in its pained throat, slowly beginning to crystalize it so that it would come off in chunks rather than amorphous globs sticking to everything they could on their way out, stubbornly refusing to leave the walls they clogged.

Calaba manhandled the beast with no fear. She turned and swayed its head in her ancient but not yet frail hands while the haze and fatigue and illness and foul taste on its tongue made it too confused to react properly. She got a better look at mostly flat teeth, forced an eyelid shut tight to lift upwards, examined the snowy iris looking back at her without seeing.

“This is no Fox.” she sentenced at last, leaving it to digest the medicine. “Unless your deepest desire is to care for a foreign man with a leg on his deathbed, but I doubt it would have had reason to bait you for so long, let alone grow so engrossed in its own illusion to make itself truly sick.”

“Maybe it’s fallen for him like he’s fallen for it,” Palina joked, but there was no levity in her voice.

Gaeric gave her a glare, but did not say a thing.

The stranger slept slightly better, after Calaba’s visit.

Sometimes it would still awaken coughing up a storm, making Irida jump, and she would have to help it turn to stand on all fours and spit out the phlegm in a rag before the chunk fell down its throat and choked it. (Strangely it tried to hide its face from her when caught in a fit, mouth weakly shoved against its elbow so that she wouldn’t come in contact with its disease.)

Then, once its back was on the mattress again and the air flowed more easily, it would drag a hand over to its chin and extend it towards her, over and over.

“I don’t know what that means,” she told it finally one day, fighting against her fear of talking to a Fox - a stranger, it was just a stranger, as Calaba said - with short quick sentences. “Nobody knows what that means.”

The stranger’s expression did not change, but they seemed slightly distraught.

A wet croaking sound managed to get through their neck, but the mucus in their throat did not appreciate that, and they hacked some more. The sting softened with a long quiet hum and a sip of something bitter and almost thick.

They hummed again after swallowing, nodding intermittently. Irida looked at their display a couple times before turning to get a clean freshly drenched rag, imagining the confusing behaviour to be just another effect of the fever starting to build up again.

She laid it on their forehead carefully, earning a relieved sigh and another thankful hum. Two, actually -- two hums, repeated a couple more times. And now that she was close enough to the pale tired face she could see that the first of them was accompanied by a stretch of their closed mouth, while the second had them shrink it in length, as if to turn it into a circle. Curiosity had her analyzing the combination of sound and movement that seemed to mimic...

The stranger repeated it all again, now moving their hand in tandem, up to their chin and then towards her.

“Thank you?”

The stranger nodded with a noise like a praise, white eyes lighting up.

Irida smiled back at them, somewhat flustered.

“They thank us,” she told her teacher eagerly when he returned, arms full of provisions. She was grinning, sitting beside the stranger laying peacefully on the bed, who turned to him and waved a hand weakly in his direction as greeting; Gaeric straightened his already good posture and nodded deeply at them, in a sort of bow.

The stranger learned their names, learned to somewhat hum them; their throat was still too cluttered and pained for them to communicate with ease if at all, and their own name was still a mystery, but it was a start.

They were weak, but eager to move - especially it would seem that they ached to make themselves useful. A couple times Gaeric interjected them as they tried to stand on uncertain legs and get the water once it boiled or open windows if they heard him say it was a bit stuffy, or would suddenly see them sit up despite the strains in their muscles and offer to make food or the medicine themselves if he seemed tired. Their face was unreadable when he insisted they just rest, locked in a frowning expression not helped by the signs of fatigue the illness had carved into it, but they did not appear to be angry; in truth, the way they rubbed a fist on their chest in a pair of clockwise circles was almost bashful, apologetic.

Their posture was awful, hunched forward, shoulders closed in on their chest. Maybe that too influenced how bad their cough was. An attempt at rolling them back cracked something the stranger was not too keen on hearing crack, and so they preferred keeping them as they were.

Palina did not trust them still. She would come to drag Irida outside, to train her, as she would have likely become Lord Arcanine’s warden soon; her eyes would narrow coldly at the stranger waving the girl bye as she did the same to them.

Until the stranger talked, it would have remained a Zoroark to her.

That seemed to be the opinion held by most at the settlement - even after Calaba had reassured them there was nothing to fear.

But at the very least it kept nosy kids away from Gaeric’s hut, and if people insisted on murmuring they did not do so all at once, nor did they circle the abode anymore, and when they heard the rough growls and whines of pain coming from it they scurried off like frightened Kricketots.

The ancient warden was getting ready to leave when she heard her own name being shouted out in the middle of the settlement.

“Calaba! Calaba! Come quickly!”

Irida did not explain it well enough, scared as she was.

From what she gathered, the elder understood that the stranger had provoked a nasty fit on purpose, to get sooner rid of the foulness in their throat: they had coughed, and coughed, and hacked out some more into a rag, with a crescendo of noisily spat out air; then with a horrid noise a chunk of Sinnoh knows what had finally ripped itself out and fallen into their hand, and Gaeric had instantly bolted at their side afraid for their life, and Irida had ran as fast as she could to get the old woman so savvy in curing even the worst ailments.

When she arrived the stranger was holding their own head over the floor, blood pouring from their mouth in rivers.

They choked and gargled on it when their chin was forced upwards so that they would look at the ceiling of the hut, a hand still uselessly attempting to catch the thin scarlet brooks dripping along their neck. A fungus, a special type of rot was thrust down their throat to repair the ripped skin.

“Do you want to kill yourself!” Calaba barked at them. Trying to still keep their head held up so it would not spill on the bed as they struggled to breathe, the stranger recoiled at her tone and tried to shirk away from her as she forced their forehead down onto the bowl she was collecting their blood in so that it would not suffocate them. “To provoke a cough like that! When your body is still fragile after days spent barely able to stand! If your goal was to end your misery you could have done so before we wasted resources and effort keeping you alive!”

“They were trying to get better...”

She shot Gaeric an icy glare, so cold he hushed immediately.

“Don’t you dare excuse them! Do you not understand how big of a threat to their life that was?!”

Her reprimands were so loud, Palina and Irida barely had to apply themselves to eavesdrop on the scolding.

They could all but see her as she pointed her gnarled finger at the stranger’s nose with such might that lightning could have erupted from it while she shouted: “There better not come a sound from you in the coming days, not a peep, not a hum! And don’t you think of going outside with this cold - let that poor throat of yours rest, for the Almighty’s sake!”

The stranger must have been terrified of her wrath, because from that moment on they followed her orders to the letter and did not make a sound.

And while at the very least his thunderous cough had passed and it could no longer shake the entire settlement down to its foundations at random intervals, the sudden perfect silence which enveloped Gaeric’s home when nobody else was there was awfully eerie.

The children claimed the wardens had killed the fox-man because it had bitten Palina in the hand, which was why she had gloves on now, and why it was no longer heard snarling. They said they would have taken it away in the night - or maybe that they had taken it away already, but they hadn’t cleaned the blood, or that Gaeric was too sad that it was dead and so he had put it in the snow so he could drag it away alone later, to bury it properly.

They muttered that if someone were really brave, they would go in and see if the blood was still there.

But nobody volunteered.

The stranger seemed a bit angry when Lian came into view, their frown running as deep in their horribly white face as a river carving its was across the slope of a mountain, but they tilted their head curiously; so maybe they weren’t that mad that he was here.

The kid blinked to make sure he wasn’t dreaming them up, to make sure they were really there, and glared intently up and down their frame from where they sat on the bed, with that coat closed tight around their neck and their legs trembling a bit.

“Hello,” he greeted finally.

The other bowed their head politely to greet him back.

Lian hummed and rocked on his heels, holding the hem of his tunic. They decided it was too cold for them, and covered the lower half of their shivering body with the quilt sitting upon the covers.

“You don’t look that much like a Fox to me,” he commented.

The stranger agreed by shaking their head.

Emboldened by the reassurance that this wasn't a bloodthirsty ghost, the kid crossed his arms on his chest: “But you’re no Pearl for sure,” he noted. “Are you one of those Diamond Clan people?”

The stranger denied that by shaking his head, almost confused.

“Hmmm. And you don’t have bags so you can’t be from the guild. Then you’re a foreigner,” the boy decided. "Then you don't know anything."

The stranger didn't exactly respond to the accusations, but their gaze fell to their feet, toes curling on the floor.

"I bet you don't even know about Lord Kleavor then," Lian continued.

He bit his tongue immediately, remembering reprimands for being too rude with his excess in straightforwardness, afraid he had made a wrong move and the offended thing would have snarled, dropped the act, and jumped to devour him whole in a single bite.

The stranger simply shook their head and tilted it, as if inviting him with genuine insterest to tell them more.

The boy blinked.

"You really don't?"

They shook their head again.

Palina shrieked when she saw the child sitting so close to the bed, gesturing emphatically as he spoke of the magnificent creature he admired above all other beasts in the vast land of Hisui; with her eyes enormous and her brows furrowed in a strange emotion that was at once horror, anger and something that didn't seem like it was either, the sound that came from her mouth was supposed to be reminiscent of 'Lian', but ended up sounding like the roar of a furious creature that made both stranger and kid jump for the sudden scare.

“You should not be here!”

Lian scrambled to his feet and grabbed a dark clad arm to shield himself behind it: “I didn’t do anything!” he promised, terrified: “They didn’t know about Lord Kleavor so I told ‘em!”

She shot the stranger a glare as they tried to hide the kid from her fury.

“Didn’t you hear Calaba when she yelled at it?” she snarled. “It mustn’t speak! Not even hum!”

“They didn’t! I talked all the time like mama says I shouldn’t!”

The stranger was quick to reassure her with a nod, a hand to their heart to strengthen their vouch for Lian’s honesty. They held Palina’s gaze, as chillingly fiery as frostburn, for a time that seemed infinite.

“You still should not have come,” she hissed at last, chin held high. “Intruding in someone else’s home is an affront to their space. You know that. And you shouldn't bother sickly people with your ramblings.”

The child lowered his eyes to the floor, picking at his own fingers.

"But they liked it," he mumbled: "I was keepin' 'em company... I was gonna show ‘em my rocks..."

It isn’t interested in your rocks, Palina held herself back from saying, because on one hand he was only a boy, and she didn’t need to be so harsh; on the other hand, the stranger had turned in genuine surprise at the news and seemed, indeed, very interested in the rocks.

She guarded them closely for what felt like hours, sitting exactly next to the bed, at the stranger’s side. With her eyes narrowed she looked carefully as Lian settled on the mattress and began rambling about minerals and gems and stones of all kinds, shapes and textures, placing each one in the stranger’s hands as he explained everything about them so that they could better feel and look at it themselves. Young as he was, he was far from a skilled orator - interrupting himself over and over or losing focus halfway through to change topic entirely; despite that, Palina noticed, his improvised student listened very intently, nodding along with interest and following instructions carefully on how to handle each specimen.

They only spaced out slightly when presented with two wildly different stones - first with a translucent one, what seemed like electricity trapped within the greenish crystal, which had them pensive for a little while as they turned it slowly in their hands; second was instead a purple gem, its dark core mesmerizing them to the point where they had to be snapped awake.

Lian noticed - of course he did. Quickly snatched the rocks back.

“You can’t keep ‘em, they’re mine,” he reminded them.

The somewhat saddened nod he received as a reply must have tugged at his heartstrings a little while he bit his tongue, Palina noted, because he played with the stones and twisted his mouth for a moment, deep in thought.

“I mean,” he mumbled, “I’m gonna find more, ‘cause I can dig ‘em up, but they’re... Well, they’re not easy to - but since you’re, since you like ‘em...”

The stranger pointed at themselves, head tilted - a flabbergasted question. A gift? For me?

The child held the minerals a little closer: “But not these!” he repeated: his words were met with an understanding nod: “ ‘cause I found these first and they’re mine! But if I find some smaller ones, then I’ll give ‘em to you maybe. ‘cause you were nice and listened about Lord Kleavor and liked my rocks. But not these. I gotta find others and then I’ll give you those.”

The stranger bowed deeply, twice or thrice, without a sound (as Calaba had demanded), thanking Lian in their language of signs enthusiastically.

Palina had never seen anybody as interested in pieces of rubble.

Anybody aside from Lian, of course.

(The stranger seemed truly, awfully genuine in their excitement.)

The stranger slept like the dead. Fortunately, Gaeric might have added, seeing as several of their days in the hut had been spent in the grip of restlessness.

They wheezed through their slumber, quietly enough for it not to keep one awake and irritated at night or further tear at his massacred throat - yet remaining still so noticeable that one could easily tell when it stopped, and thus when they were awake once more.

“Do not move,” the warden ordered as he heard them shift noisily behind himself - no doubt trying to get up and attempt to do some chore or other. “Your medicine is almost ready.”

“Thank you,” a ghastly, horrendously raucous noise replied.

It took Gaeric a moment to hear it properly, buried in the crackling of a damaged neck and the struggle of a tongue that hadn’t spoken in a while. He turned to the stranger to find them sitting up on the bed, blinding white eyes still closed and brow furrowed, and looked at them with a slight smile on his tilted face.

“You speak.”

The stranger blinked at him, and opened their bloodless, colorless mouth: “Please do not tell Miss Calaba,” they begged slowly.

Gaeric laughed, soft and elated: “Of course not,” he assured them as he handed the bowl containing the remedy over to the grateful pale hands. “She would be able to strangle both of us with no trouble at all if she discovered your voice got out before your throat was fully mended.”

The other did not answer, sipping the foul liquid little by little until every last drop was completely gone from the recipient by the time it left their lips with a rather unhappy groan (no doubt due to the flavor) that made them stifle a cough.

The warden seated himself more comfortably on the carpet; his glacial eyes studied the human form before him.

“But since you did gain it back, fully healed or not - I would quite like to properly make your acquaintance.”

A raucous ‘oh’ and ‘of course’ left the stranger as they nodded, settling the bowl in their lap: they strained to lean forward and extended a hand towards the muscular man. This must have been how their people greeted one another, wherever they came from; so to be polite he reached out and took it in a likeminded grip, and his arm was lightly shaken by the person before him.

“My name is... My name is Ingo,” the stranger nodded to themselves, speaking very slowly as if unsure of their own words. “I am a... I am... Unsure of my current whereabouts.”

As he had imagined then, a foreigner; with a name like that, and such a lack of geographical awareness, they couldn’t be anything else.

“These are the Alabaster Icelands,” Gaeric explained. “In the North of Hisui.”

“I see,” the stranger nodded.

Bright white eyes seemed just as lost. Gaeric furrowed his brows.

“Where do you fare from?”

“You do not know?”

The tone of that question, despite being half hidden by the garbling of a ruined throat, struck the warden as incomprehensible. It was laced with a kind of surprise, a strange sort of panic navigating in a suspended cloud. The warden’s frown deepened in puzzlement in the silence that seeped into their bones; a breath sucked in too fast and the quiet cough that followed snapped him out of the bubble of his confusion, and he watched thin white fingers fidget.

“I apologize for such a strange question,” Ingo said, softly enough. “I simply fear I do not know, either.”

#pokémon #pokemon legends arceus #warden gaeric #pokemon irida #warden calaba #warden palina #warden lian #submas ingo #blood tw #random writing #ableism tw #possibly. idk.#part 2 coming never. or at least once i can unclog my brain enough not to struggle through finishing wips or writing in general #anyways! ingo appearing in hisui fic. hes very sick and loses his voice

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inquisitor-apologist · 8 months ago

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The people have spoken. Alright guys, here we go.

His Inquisitor title is Third Brother (I have had him in my brain since well before the Kenobi series came out, and I haven't been able to rename him, ok). His actual name? Well, he doesn't really remember

He was young when the purge happened--12 years old--so he was still a youngling, and he's honestly blocked out a lot of the stuff from before the Purge due to the trauma the Empire inflicted on him for literally everything related to his life as a Jedi, including his name, as I subscribe to the fanon that Inquisitors aren't really supposed to use their old names (shh, we ignore TotE here, none of its worldbuilding made sense)

He was one of the youngling group that Cere and Trilla had with them during Order 66, and, well, you know how that went. He's the only one of the younglings that survived the, y'know, brutal torture routine

Because of that, he has a really weird relationship with Second Sister up to her death; she promised to protect him when Cere left, but she also helped complete his training as an Inquisitor and forced his turn to the Dark Side.

He kind of feels like she protected him from dying like the others by helping turn him, like becoming an Inquisitor was a sort of mercy... but on the on the other hand, she reminds him both of how he was tortured into what he is now and of his old life as a Jedi, which he does not like at all. Doesn’t help that her attempts to ‘protect him’ are also pretty controlling and bad, because, well, Dark Side basically-Cult

His main Force ability is that he is a very talented telepath; because he's an Inquisitor, that basically means that he is insanely good at interrogating people and breaking into their heads for information (I imagine that, if not for the Empire, he'd be kind of like Ezra? very good at connecting to people through the force, communicating with and understanding them, but. Not how things worked out)

He's the main guy in charge of interrogating/torturing rebels and turning captured Jedi. Basically, he serves as the warden of Nur's prison and rarely ever is allowed to leave it because he is incredibly valuable to the Empire, though in my aus he's also in charge of Project Harvester

He's around the worst of the Inquisitors when it comes to straight-on fighting; since he never goes on hunts or military missions, he doesn't tend to actually fight a lot. In addition to his general lack of practice, he also does not like to use his lightsaber at all because his very sensitive telepathy makes the screaming, bleeding crystal incredibly painful to wield, and not in the 'pain gives me an Evil Powerup' way

He prefers to use the spinny mode to regular lightsaber fighting because it feels less like he's fighting with the screaming crystal and more like the crystal is just moving on its own and hurting people, which is... better? It’s hard to know

He uses the Force in battle a lot more than most of the others do to compensate, though it's less physical and more--he'll freeze enemies with the force (like Cal in JFO, but it’s more mental, less something is holding me in place and more I cannot move my body and I don’t know why), he'll use telepathy to confuse and distract them, and he'll sometimes full-on mentally assault people, breaking through their shields and making them feel pain that's not theirs, ripping thoughts and information from their brains, and just generally giving them a very bad time

The other Inquisitors, beyond the Grand Inquisitor, who very much sees him as a useful tool, and Second, who has a weird toxic mentor dynamic with him, don’t like him at all, since he's the one in charge of making new Inquisitors and punishing the old ones if they step out of line.

His relationship with Reva is... complicated. In a lot of ways, he despises her just like the others because she isn't like the rest of us, she chose to be here, she gets to keep her name and individuality and she acts like she's so much better than us when she hasn't gone through an ounce of what we went through to be here...

But at the same time, they're the same age, they were initiated at the same time, they even share the same name. They went through a lot together in training, and they're both hated by the others (though they hate Reva a lot more than him) so he feels like they kind of understand each other? Complicated fucked-up not-really siblings

From Reva’s end it’s a little different: he was like her, he was a youngling who survived just like her, the last member of her family… but he’s a traitor. He’s not like her, he joined them for real, he betrayed the entire Order and it’s not just an act. He could have been like her, but he��s not, he’s just one more obstacle in the way of her revenge.

He’s better than the others, though, they hate him too, and he tolerates her a little bit, and for all she despises his spinelessness, it’s… lonely being the scapegoat for the cult (look. The Inquisition fits a lot of the BITE method control points, especially the behavior ones, so I feel ok calling it a cult) and they were trained together, so there’s a camaraderie there. She does her best to manipulate him against Vader, which doesn’t really work

As for the whole name thing, I kind-of reshaped the lore to keep his name after Kenobi, so this might not make a ton of sense:

They were both brought into the Inquisition at around the same time (well. Reva joined and he was captured) and because this was still early days and most of the younglings were dying, they just gave them the same name, figuring one wouldn’t make it, but surprise! They both lived

They were trained together for a while before becoming full Inquisitors (because come on. They were 13, what Purge Trooper is going to listen to pimply teenagers) and I imagine at some point one of the older Inquisitors (probably Grand, he seems sadistic enough) made them fight for who would get to keep the name, but it ended in a tie because, while Reva was way better at fighting, she was also very emotionally unstable and vulnerable to his mental attacks

Back when he was first being trained, he was very much a poor, traumatized kid being abused and in a shit situation. As he grows up, however, fed nothing but Imperial propaganda, surrounded by the Dark Side, and constantly causing misery and pain, he gets worse.

Obviously the Empire never gives him full agency or anything, but at some point he does cross that line from ‘doing this because otherwise I’ll get tortured’ to ‘doing this because it’s my job’ to ‘doing this because I’m an Inquisitor and that what we do’, and he gets even worse after Reva—the one marginally-decent influence and relationship he had—betrays him and everything he knows, and by the time of Rebels he’s a full-on villain

As for how he sees the Empire and his place in it as an Inquisitor, it’s less the Grand Inquisitor’s ‘the empire is right and we’re doing good’ view and more Ninth Sister’s ‘you can’t stop the Empire, being an Inquisitor is just inevitable’ view. It’s very much, this is what I get, this is what I deserve, I am a traitor and the only way I can make up for that is by stopping others like me

He’s been fed so much ‘the Jedi were inherently evil traitors’ propaganda that at this point, he can’t really see himself as a good person—he’s a sinner, and this is what he deserves, a miserable, inevitable life of pain, serving the Empire (which he simultaneously views as an inevitability that he can’t escape and the only way he can repent for being a Jedi)

Yeah, he’s fucked up!

Here’s some miscellaneous stuff that I couldn’t find a place to include:

He’s Theelin, and I hc that Theelin are only super colorful when they’re happy and healthy, and when they’re… not for extended periods of time, their colors dull and pale, and their head spikes stop growing

Naturally, he’d have bright green spots and hair with the classic Theelin head spikes. Because he’s been in such a bad, stressful situation for so long, however, his hair is so pale it’s basically white, his skin is super washed-out and pallid, he’s only got a few sickly green spots, and his spikes so small and underdeveloped they’re basically pointy bumps

If he ever got out of the Inquisition (and I’m not sure if he does, I kind of flip-flop on that one), he’d get a lot of his color back and his spikes would start growing, but nothing would ever go fully back to normal. It would always be obvious to other Theelin that he’s been through some shit

Reva called him Tri when they were younger because it felt weird to call him Third when she was also Third and she got a name, but also in the hope that he’d follow her lead and become more of an individual and help her against the Inquisition when the time came

She uses it less and less as they get older. Quietly, he likes it, but he feels like he’s not allowed to have a name, like he doesn’t deserve it. After she leaves, he tries to completely shut anything that has to do with her away, including the name. If anyone else tried to call him that, he’d go berserk

He’s one of the only Inquisitors (Grand, Reva, and him) that doesn’t wear a helmet. It’s not that he has one and just doesn’t wear it, like Grand, or that he was never given one to single him out, like Reva, but because he just never goes on field missions, so he doesn’t need one

For the same reason, his uniform is a lot less armor and a lot more like the ISB/Navy Uniforms. If his wasn’t fully black without rank squares, it’d be pretty hard to tell him apart from a regular officer

I have this specific scene in my head of him giving a villain monologue to some poor captured rebel or Jedi, basically saying that usually torture is useless and bad at giving information, but it’s quite useful for him because it makes it a lot easier to rip memories/information out of their head

This was a lot lol, so I’ll leave it there

Guys how would we feel if I started talking about my inquisitor oc…

#third brother #is this the oc tag #sw oc #star wars oc #inquisitor oc

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iamthescalesofjustice · 7 years ago

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yknow what...anders was so fucking concerned the wardens would hunt him down for deserting but like. anders. have you fucking met the grey wardens? 100% some folks out in weisshaupt got a report that you had fucked off, had a good laugh, and updated their ledgers to read ‘warden anders between posts at own discretion’ and when you turned up in kirkwall some warden clerk just marked you down as ‘liaison to kirkwall’ and that was the end of it bc being a warden is for life

#da #im pretty convinced they knew about blackwall too #and just didnt fucking care #'well technically theres nothing in the rules that says a warden-recruit cant do the jobof a warden-constable #the clerk shrugs #the commander of orlais wants to send someone out to do his joining but he never really stays in one place long enough to track down #so eventually its kind of like 'eh whatever. hes doing the fucking job. its not that urgent #bc remember warden-recruits aka those who have joined but not Joined #are still wardens both by law and by general reckoning of the wardens themselves!#they absolutely knew he was claiming a fake id and waved it off like 'well hes a warden so does it really matter if hes one or the other?'#i mean wardens literally carry around the names of other wardens who have died in like lockets and shit #taking the name blackwall could be waved off as an extension of that #kind of weird but wardens are allowed to be weird if its not in the way of their duties #he sends a slow but not insignificant trickle of recruits their way and brings honor to the name of the wardens #and hes even vague and mysterious about warden stuff like a Good and Proper warden should be so as far as the brass is concerned #hes pretty much doing things exactly right except for being too busy to stop by and do his Joining #i have opinions about this

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sapphim · 2 years ago

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Okay, you got me, I am now interested in Ellaran. Could you tell us more about him? Especially how he ended up dating Bethany's crush

Oh!!! Ellaran is my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my good-time boy. He's a dalish warden OC... technically I first made him up as an Orlesian warden for Awakening. He's gay and got adhd (he's just like me fr) and a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease. I will endeavor to explain his whole deal.

(This is. Um. It's uh. It's long. I cannot overstate the length.)

So! Ellaran is a dalish mage, and was once first of his clan. He's also a blood mage and a shapeshifter. What's undisputable is that he has stored in his little noggin a really vast array of strange and esoteric magical and historical knowledge. What's not entirely clear, for the most part, is how he came by all of it. Any information he divulges about his past is wildly contradictory, and nobody who asks receives the same story.

Those among the wardens who happen to know him well tend to agree these facts appear true: He was the first of a dalish clan, before being exiled. Said clan spent most of its time camped in the Arlathan Forest in the north, between Tevinter and Antiva. He killed a clanmate, said clanmate deserved it, and this may have been the reason for his exile. Or it may have been entirely unrelated! Unclear. He spent some time with an Avvar clan in the Frostback Mountains, and learned further magic from their augur. After leaving the Avvar clan, he spent some time wandering before he was recruited by the Orlesian wardens.

He does talk about how Avvar mages train their magic by allowing spirits to possess them. What he doesn't tend to mention is that he was eventually ejected from the clan for his continued willful refusal to release a spirit of learning and curiosity &etc. that he merged with during this time. She's still riding shotgun with him. He was also married for a year to a sweet strong Avvar lad. He doesn't like to talk about that much either.

His time with the Orlesian wardens was, rocky. There was broad mutual dislike there, and when it came time to send reinforcement wardens to Ferelden after the blight was concluded, he jumped at the chance. He was out scouting (as a raven) at the time the darkspawn attacked Vigil's Keep, and thus avoided getting shanked. He's in his mid-30s at this point.

Warden Commander Sulina Mahariel and Ellaran both share an interest in uncovering secrets and lost knowledge of elven history and the blight, and he was quickly allowed to settle in and do his own thing. The information stored within the warden research library at Vigil's Keep now rivals whatever they have at Weisshaupt. They return all relevant information to the dalish at the Arlathvhen (this is in exchange for new finds by the clans, but they'd do it regardless) but are a good deal more selective about what they relay back to warden command at Weisshaupt, which has not earned them friends.

This is a good point at which to note that he is awful and should not be allowed to conduct research because he is the worst kind of hands-on mf who has never once ignored a poor impulse that popped into his head. Seriously, he'd have to be physically restrained from licking red lyrium to assess the nature of the way it makes his tongue tingle, and then he'd do it anyway while your back is turned. Ellaran, don't lick the lyrium idol. It is to his severe detriment that his "methodology" actually seems to work for him, because he'll never learn.

(He licks the anchor. When he joins the Inquisition he licks the anchor on Alden's hand, without warning. Well, okay, he said "hey is it okay if I do something kind of weird" and then just carried on without waiting for an answer. Leliana, who knows him and reluctantly vouched for him, utterly despairs of him.)

When the false calling starts, the Amaranthine wardens scatter to the winds. Some of them wind up mucking about in Tevinter, some of them head off in separate directions to search for a cure, some of them go off to check in on the other wardens, and only a small skeleton crew is left behind to hold down the fort in Amaranthine, Ellaran included. Lights are off, nobody's home. If anybody asks, seneschal Garevel's in charge.

Now, the wardens have had a vested interest in the darkspawn magisters since their initial encounter with the Architect, and in Corypheus in particular (and whatever the hell it was the Marcher wardens were getting up to with him) since the Hawkes' encounter with him. Ellaran is a leading expert in strange magical phenomenon and the blight, and is probably the foremost expert you could find anywhere in Thedas on the nature of creatures like Corypheus. So once the Inquisition is established, he lends his expertise and is appointed arcane advisor.

Since merging with his spirit, he's... kind of a dreamer? He tends to dream in the raw fade rather than within a constructed dream. Solas is a dreamer, and anyway, the veil being thin at Skyhold &etc. they kind of wind up in the same dreamscape every night regardless of whether or not that's what they were trying for. Sometimes certified Herald of Andraste© Alden Trevelyan is there too! He has no idea what's going on; he's just happy to be included.

When Alden is not crashing the party, they do wind up making out in the fade like horny teenagers—Ellaran's in his mid-40ies now by the way—because Solas forgets to have inhibitions in the fade. Solas does not want to talk about it after they wake up and he wants to make it very clear that he's not looking to get romantically involved with someone, but that's fine, because Ellaran is also very much not looking to get romantically involved with anyone, and you don't need to be romantically involved to have horny makeout sessions. I don't know if it's apparent at this point but Ellaran has uhhhhhhh, Abandonment Issues™ that a solid decade of friendship with the wardens hasn't resolved, as well as a history of romantic endeavors not lasting particularly long or ending particularly well. This will be relevant later.

They're both bitchy old queens with a propensity for spouting off utterly incomprehensible magobabble and everyone thinks they deserve each other. Don't try to tell me Solas isn't a bitchy old queen, I saw what I saw.

So Ellaran is an abomination and a blood mage who spent the better part of a decade and a half—including most of his 20s—living on his own as a hedge mage. He understands lying about everything. He does it himself, all the time, constantly! It's good for your continued health! Solas is lying. About everything. He's not gonna call him out on it—again, he gets it. But he does start to put together all the little things that don't quite add up. Most people wouldn't have the appropriate knowledge base for it, but Ellaran very much does.

This is also, for the record, his opinion about "Blackwall"/Thom: "I know this bitch isn't a warden. none of my business tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" Like, he served with Gordon Blackwall. He was right there when he gave that speech. He quite liked Gordo, compared to most of the Orlesian wardens! It's whatever, he's not gonna out him. He's also not going to help him lie any better, because it's free entertainment.

He also becomes a friend and something of a mentor to Shirae Lavellan, a young dalish First who joined the inquisition early on. They are, tbh, having the time of their lives whenever the Inquisition digs up something of interest. It's a feedback loop, perpetual enthusiasm-generating machine. They were bouncing off the walls of the temple of Mythal while Solas was slowly dying inside the whole time. Shirae ends up drinking from the Well of Sorrows. Ellaran declined to do so because he didn't want to taint—well okay, he claimed he didn't want to run the risk that the darkspawn taint within him would somehow taint the well, but really it's because he considers himself to be an inveterate fuckup who eventually ruins everything he touches.

Solas starts getting worried that he's getting too emotionally attached to Ellaran, and that Ellaran is getting too close to sniffing out all of his secrets. That "I'm in love with you, and also by the way I'm breaking up with you" move he pulls is a tactical missile strike to the heart seemingly designed to deal maximum emotional damage to Ellaran in particular. It could be considered, as the kids say, a dick move.

Jeeeeesus christ this is getting long. Okay blah blah, Corypheus defeated, game ends, Solas gets his little orb thing back and fucks off to go play with his super special secret club. He starts, like, feeling badly about how he ended things with Ellaran and wants to make amends. Ellaran went back to the wardens, who are starting to slowly re-gather. Solas, like, dreamstalks him just a little bit. He's like, "look, I can explain everything, you see, I'm the dre-" "you're the dread wolf" "what"

They spend some time hashing it out and Ellaran, although conflicted, goes to join Solas doing his thing. But also, like, with half a mind to try to veeeeery subtly convince Solas to maybe like slow his roll and reconsider if he really wants to take the nuclear option. He's not very subtle about it. Solas also knows that there are probably like three people alive who could convince him to change his course of action. Like, Ellaran, Shirae, and Inquisitor Kataara Adaar, end of list. So when Solas does his little "hey I'm the dread wolf" reveal to Alden in Trespasser (and does not get interrupted mid-speech this time, thanks Alden) he slams the eluvian closed behind him and ditches Ellaran. Uhhhhh, again. It is, uhhhhh, rude and bad, of him.

So Ellaran goes back to the wardens and like. Bella Swan blank chapters moment. He spends a solid couple of months in permanent wolfmode because wolves get to sleep in front of the fire all day and don't have to talk about their feelings.

So yeah I was being a bit flippant about the timeline in the other post for the sake of jokes, because this is well after Trespasser. Most of the Amaranthine wardens reunite, although some of them are just permanently off doing their own thing. Like Sulina's just gone for good, off doing things in Tevinter with Zevran and Fenris. She never officially abdicated as commander but, like, Nate's been "acting" commander for yeeeeeears now, like, he's the guy in charge.

The Amaranthine wardens have their own like, hookup culture? Like you spend years of your life living alongside the same people and frequently fighting in life or death situations, and things are gonna happen. Also, like, Zevran being househusband of Vigil's Keep basically makes the keep an extension of the greater Kirkwall area polycule.

So Ellaran over the years has hooked up with some of the wardens, but he's very careful to avoid any entanglements that he thinks would like, potentially jeopardize his ability to stay with the wardens, because being able to make a home there long-term reeeeeeally means a lot to him. Like he did hook up with Anders before Anders left to go after Karl, but he absolutely will not even consider a hookup with Zevran because that is the warden commander's husband and he is not sleeping with the warden commander's husband. And he never hooked up with Nate because, like, he knew he would never get over him.

So Ellaran eventually starts opening up again, and it's mostly due to Nate—Nathaniel being easily his best and oldest friend at this point, considering how many of the other oldheads have either died or moved on—being patient and understanding but also firmly like, "if you remain a wolf for much longer you're going to get stuck that way." Like Ellaran's just following Nate around for a while while he does his ranger stuff and Nate's like "not that I don't appreciate the company but when you don't talk back it feels like I'm just talking to myself."

And they're rapidly approaching their 50ieies and they are really, very old for wardens. And one day Ellaran is like "so how come all these years and we never hooked up" and Nate is like "idk" and like, Ellaran knows—it was because of his neuroses!—but fuck it, all he has to lose now is not going for it.

So he does! And they do. And then the younger generation of wardens wonder constantly why the very charming and attractive warden commander is dating such a weird little gremlin mage. But really, it's just because they've known each other best and longest and that's comforting, and it definitely helps that Nathaniel is like, the most easy-going person alive.

...the end. fuck me

#oc blab #ellaran

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lairofdragonagelore · 2 years ago

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Merril and the Eluvian (Merril’s Quest)

This post has a purpose to place all the miscellaneous details said along the game to keep the exact words accessible in case there is some foreshadowing content not easily noticeable.

When we first meet Merril in Act 1, we are informed all what I specified in detail in the Marethari post: the clan has been purposely placed here by Maretheri to wait for Hawke and obtain the amulet . Once they have the amulet, they need to perform a ritual in an altar.

As we talk to Merril, we obtain more pieces of Dalish “lore” and Dalish knowledge

Dalish think that all elvhen had magic once, but it was lost [DAI tells us it’s true].

Demons can possess Dalish mages, and when that happens, the Clan hunts them down and kills them.

The Chantry knows about these apostates in the Dalish clans, so this is the reason why Dalish always stay far away from cities and towns, permanently moving: to avoid their templars.

We discover she is a blood mage who has dealt with demons, claiming to know how to defend herself.

She thinks her interest in magic and history made her unpopular [we later know this is not true, since these are the interests of any First to the Keeper. The unpopular aspect comes from her use of blood magic, which is weird considering that Dalish see it as another kind of magic, dangerous as any other school. But we also know that Marethari has been telling them that Merril is dangerous by her own]

During Act 2, if we bring her to the Fade, she will show how worried about the consequences of using blood magic she is now, since she was unable to oppose the demon's offer.

She talks a bit more in detail about the technique she uses to protect herself from the demons: believe only in yourself, everything in the Fade is a lie, a trick or a trap.

She also explains in detail what Marethari said to Hawke when returning from the Fade: no one is immune to a demon's offer.

Merril knew she didn't have to accept the offer of the demon, but it spoke pulling her heart, and despite not wanting to believe it, she felt the obligation of believing it. It is implied this weakness comes from the progressive ”corruption” that blood magic causes in the mage.

She also explains us what we know if we play a Dalish Warden in DAO, summarising it as

Tamlen, one of her clan, found this mirror in the Brecilian Forest.

He was never found again [we know from DAO that he is a darkspawn now, who can be still alive if we don’t play a Dalish Warden], she only found a shattered pieces of the eluvian.

She took a piece of the mirror and started to recover it. Her first motivation was to find Tamlen. Now, since she assumes he is dead, she restores the mirror to recover a part of her heritage.

Marethari told her to destroy the piece of mirror, that their ancestors wanted this eluvian to be forgotten.

Merril also gives us our first-hand information about Eluvians:

Merril seems to know a lot more about eluvians that Ariane [DLC Witch Hunt]. It makes sense since she was meant to be a Keeper eventually. Ariane was just a warrior.

Merril knows that every city in the long-reaching ancient elven kingdom had an eluvian, used to communicate across their empire. She seems to have the same information that Finn [DLC Witch Hunt] had: they are unaware that these mirrors allow travelling, not only communication. [This info is first confirmed by Felassan in the book The Masked Empire]

The mirror, despite Merril's restoration with blood magic, is not responsive. She thinks that a finishing tool is needed, so she goes to her clan to ask for it.

To avoid the Keeper's refutation, she invokes the Vir Sulevanan: Dalish individuals seem to have access to community relics exchanging a service to the clan.

The Arulin'holm is a carving toll used by wood shapers, passed down for generations, old as Arlathan. So, what I infer is that Merril is thinking about reshaping the frame of the mirror to activate it: it's not a process on the glass surface, but on its peculiar frame.

As a task, Marethari asks them to slay a Varterral.

This should sound so strange for them: a creature that, according to their Dalish tales, is meant to protect their people [we know from the DLC Witch Hunt that this is not the case, and Ariane was in shock to see this creature was attacking her too] . This Varterral has killed 3 Dalish already. And Marethari has no problem in asking to kill this protector of the mountain. Again, Marethari gives such vibes that imply she knows more than what she says or simply cares little about her Dalish clan.

I like that this strange appearance of a Varterral is slightly in-game-explained by Merril in banter: she assumes that Marethari sent these hunters to recover artefacts protected by the creature, which is their function.

This place is, of course, filled with spiders and undead. The undead can be related to the ancient evil present in the top of the mountain [the Strange Idol] but the spiders make no much sense in my opinion, but we all know how difficult and in such rush this game was done. The joke of fighting too many spiders here even turned into a joke [said by Hawke] in the Fade of DAI.

Finally, we find the Varterral

Here we can see better its shape: many legs, two of them look like Profane limbs but made of bark instead of stone. It has 5 [in game], 6 or 8 limbs [concept-art: depending on how you see the hanging “humanoid” legs that protrude from its core]. I think it’s good to remember, and almost see the foreshadowing, that this creature has many “fused” legs, making us remember Xenon, and also some murals of multi-limbered animals in DAI. The pattern is there.

It's a mixture of a spider and a mantis [maybe that’s the reason why we find so many spider here, they are a bit of a kin]. The three back legs have a kind of sting. The Varterral seems to have 3 red eyes.

The survivor of the group of people sent to look for these supposed artefacts flees into the Varterral when he sees Merril, and of course, he dies. It’s clear that something is too wrong in the way the clan sees Merril, so she wants answers.

When she speaks to Marethari, the Keeper explains that she has informed the clan that Merril's potential restoration of the mirror can bring back the corruption [or something worse]. This clan is terrified of course, since they suffered the loss of Tamlen and Mahariel because that mirror.

Once more we see Marethari disregard ancient Dalish artefacts [she has a point with the mirror though] and, instead of keeping the Arulin'holm, she prefers to give it to Hawke. I'm so surprised of this attitude: first, Marethari gives a book about dreamers to Hawke, now she offers Hawke the Arulin'holm, trusting them that they will return it to her [and I'm not mentioning the fact that how this may be breaking rules and causing inner frictions: something so dear to the Dalish, that belongs to all of them, is borrowed to a shemlen just like that, specially a clan that may feel uncomfortable with humans if the Warden was Dalish]

Later we can ask for clarification about how the mirror led Merril into blood magic. We see once more that Marethari prefers to abandon ancient artefacts that belonged to the Dalish. It's true this mirror is not a simply Dalish artefact since it's corrupted, but apparently or Marethari cares little for any Dalish relics, or she knows where all this will lead.

What we learn about Merril's choices are:

She wanted to cleanse the mirror. Marethari refused to help her, saying it was an artefact meant to be abandoned.

Merril looked for help in a spirit, a demon.

She speaks of purification via blood magic. So far she explains later, she seems to use it to magnify her spells. This process could be done the same with big amounts of lyrium [which in a sense, it's also blood: of titans]. Note aside: this makes us think that all magic involving lyrium is blood magic too. And if we can restore and cleanse with lyrium, we could do the same with blood?

She is ready to pay whatever cost if it restores a bit of the past of the Elves.

In the end, the mirror is not fixed despite the use of the Arulin'holm.

We start the Third Act with Merril telling us about how she saw Tamlen out of the corner of her eye. I don’t think we need to read into this too much. It’s a mere narrative resource to tell us she is thinking in Tamlen as she works in this mirror. She never had visions or communication with dead people, so I think we should not read much into it.

Returning to the topic of the mirror, she informs Hawke that her plan did not work [it makes sense to me if the tool she used was applied to the wooden frame, instead of the surface of the mirror] and needs to talk with the demon that made her start all this.

She doesn't know the motivations of the demon for helping her. She thinks she is smarter than him, though.

She understands that dealing with this demon is dangerous.

She can sense the power of the mirror, sleeping. [After reading The Masked Empire or after playing DAI and listening to Morrigan, I think it's clear that what Merril needs is the key to activate it. Each Eluvian has a key or/and a password in order to be activated. However, we see in DAI that Kieran can activate it and force it to go to the Fade, to which Morrigan explains it’s only possible for very powerful mages. So power can override eluvian keys. Later, in Tresspasser, after accepting Mythal’s soul, Solas took control of the whole Eluvian network too, overriding its keys.]

She claims that the eluvian was lost before the fall of Arlathan, which I'm not so sure how she knows this. It’s true that Merril’s eluvian has a unique over-intricate frame that we never saw before, but we also know she picked a shard of the mirror, not the whole mirror itself [which we saw in DAO and had 2 Tevinter men at the sides implying this was a stolen and co-opted Eluvian]. So the frame is purely a decision of Merril. What I never understood is how this frame can be in other places [In DAI we found it below the Deep Roads [The descent] and in the Crossroads] I assume it was a careless detail during development.

The only creatures with knowledge about eluvians are Fade creatures.

She fears being tricked and ending up possessed.

She is so relentless that she is willingly to risk possession to recover a piece of the Elvhenan past.

When we return to Sundermount, Merril is surprised that the clan is still there. That's abnormal.

Marethari claims that the clan has still business to attend to. However, the Dalish have been overstaying for more than three years.

Then, when Marethari answers this question, she explicitly says “we will stay until MY business is done”. The clan has not more business here, it's hers. We remember that she brought the clan here to fulfil a promise to Flemeth, yet, she stays because there is more to fulfil. Considering how lightly she has been given Dalish relics to Hawke, it made me wonder if Marethari always knew that she would not leave this place alive, and her clan would perish as well? [two out of the three options at he end of Merril’s quest cause the clan extermination, so is Bioware canon to extinguish this clan?] I suppose that, in the beginning, she stayed because of the promise to Flemeth, but then, before the end of Act 2, it was the demon and how she had turned into its prison. However, she is always waiting for Merril to come back. Considering how much she loves her, it makes little sense to insist her to return if she knows the clan is doomed. Unless she hoped for Merril to return, kill her because the possession, and let her lead the Clan. Sadly, all this is pure speculation.

Here, she provides a nice piece of lore that we obtained in the book Asunder [but also it was hinted in DAO with Connor's quest]: even if a possession can be undone, the soul gets scarred and does not recover, becoming a beacon that attracts more demons. The only cure to possession is death.

Marethari claims that the mirror has stolen life [Tamlen’s and Mahariel’s] and promises from her clan [because it took her First away from the Dalish path]. Merril accuses Marethari of fearing the past.

In our way to the place where the demon resides, we climb the mountain and fight shadows that look like elvhenan shadow sentinels, like Abelas in DAI. They are protecting where the elders go to Uthenera [we see that this is their function in the Temple of Mythal as well]. Then, the game shows that this is a sacred elven place through those pots with green fire and the altar of Mythal where Flemeth can be summoned after a ritual of Uthenera.

In this instance, we realise that the altar where we summoned Flemeth was Mythal's.

Details said by Merril that are interesting but unreliable like so many of the Dalish tales:

Mythal saved the Dalish from the “darkness” [more darkness concept that could be the same one related to previous games, or not].

Merril explains the story: Elgar'nan defeated the Sun, so the Earth was submerged in darkness. Mythal calmed Elgar'nan and restored the Sun to the heavens. [I personally think this is an image that could, potentially, be related with the mural where Mythal extracts a titan's heart, which is depicted like a star/sun.]

Mythal put the moon in the sky

Mythal helps her people, but if you anger her, you will feel her wrath. [This aspect, so more related to Elgar’nan, can be explained later in DAI with the murals of the Temple of Mythal: Mythal, knowing the violent fury of Elgar’nan, asked him permission to impart Justice. So she took most of the time Elgar’nan’s role to avoid his fury for mundane problems]

Finally, when we enter to Pride's End [the name of the cave], we see a configuration quite similar to the ruins we visited in Sebastian's personal quest about the Harimann [which was related to a demon as well]. We find these three Strange Skull-Dragon totems too.

These Strange Skull-Dragon totems were also found in the mine where Hawke fought a high dragon, and in the Vimmark Mountains, during Legacy DLC where you can summon Malvenis.

The place has this mysterious Strange Idol which motivated me to do this blog. This statue is found not only in this quest, but also in Legacy, inside a small temple of Dumat as well as in Sebastian's personal quest, when we explore the ruins below the mansion of the Harimanns. In DAI, we find this statue, several times, in the ruined temple of the Emerald Knights in Emerald Graves, and during trespasser DLC, on Solas’ mural about the Vallaslin removal. Another statue of these can be found in a small cave in the Western Approach too. Details of this will be done in a post focused only on this statue in DAI.

Here, it's called Strange Idol and, to give us a better hint of what's to come, we find a Felandaris beside it. If we read the plant’s codex, we realise they appear where the Veil is thin, so the presence of demons and/or blood magic in this place is unquestionable.

A much curious detail about this plant as well, is that it's used by Qunari in Vitaars [their war paint that gives them boons]. The description of the Vitaar using this plant is more than curious:

This strange Qunari face paint is created from deadly poison—fatal when applied to anyone other than a Qunari, whose unique physiology somehow not only neutralizes its effect but also allows the paint's magic to harden the flesh and provide other protections.

This plant is poisonous, and for a mysterious reason, it's not on Qunari. I smell a strongly lore detail incoming.

As a colourful note, the description of the plant resembles two icons in the lore:

It's a twisted, wicked-looking shrub with long, thorny shoots, and no leaves: a skeletal hand, reaching out from an unmarked grave.

The recurrent image of thorny vines that we see in the presentations, which always represents darkspawn or Taint; or the not so recurrent but still important design of the Vallaslin of Elgar'nan.

There is no more information to relate any of these elements, but I personally think that it’s expected to, considering how these kind of narrations work. This has been a symbol too repetitive along the series.

At the sides of the idol, we see some windows and small altars with more pots that contain a green flame.

Details that are worthy to notice in this idol

It has many limbs: two legs, four arms

Its face is monkey-like or a bit toad-like

Its chest and stomach have swirls.

Its limbs have long carvings, like canals from which blood drips. It's very subtle, but the red lines in them have been present in both designs [in DA2 and DAI]

One can associate swirls all over the games with lyrium or, in DAI, with Veilfire and therefore elvhenan gods: the dragon statue that represents Myhtal as well as the howling wolf statue that represents Fen’harel both have swirls along their body. I would risk saying that this idol is elven: creatures with many limbs and curly swirls are common on elven aesthetics.

Here is where a lot of information is released in an implicit way:

The spirit was bound to this statue. Since Merril says that it can't move around freely, it implies that she started to work on the restoration of the mirror using this spirit quite recently: as soon as her clan settled in the Sundermount.

This place was, in the time of Arlathan, an elven grave. Back then, the elves went into Uthenera instead of dying. So, considering this hinted piece of information, if in this place ancient elves were resting, it makes sense the Varterral was defending the zone.

In this place, after Arlathan fell, Elvhenan [Merril is not specific here] fought Tevinter in a last stand fight.

Fenris added what he probably heard from a Magister’s point of view: The Tevinter unleashed chaos to teach elves that resistance was futile.

One of the two sides bind the demon to the statue, and it has been living there since that war.

Only powerful magic could free him, so much power that would require to do something terrible.

Here is where Marethari appears, saying that she released the demon, allowing him to possess her.

She also informs that an Eluvian can be linked to the Fade, something that we saw in DAI happening: Kieran can go to the Fade and meet Flemeth via the mirror which only went to the Crossroads.

Marethari explains that she could not fight this demon in the Fade, because it was trapped, and could not banish it without making it stronger. [More details about all the implications of this in the post of Marethari]

During the fight we find spirits or echoes of regret? I'm not sure who they are, it's always hard to see when fighting, but they shout things that seem to fit the hunters that were killed by the Varterral.

I personally like this comment from the demon: Merril has always sinned with her pride, the Dalish pride and the pride of being capable of bringing a piece of history of the Elvhenan. That pride grew weak over time as she saw the consequences of her actions, but during all those years, she fed the demon.

When the demon is defeated, Marethari recovers her form, and the demon tries to trick them. Merril ends up stabbing and killing her Keeper.

Of course, Hawke can blame Merril and avoid exterminating her clan, or, by using any of the other two options, end up in a massacre. You have more chances to kill them all than not, so I feel like the game is more inclined to follow the path where the clan goes extinct.

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore ]

#eluvian #Merril #marethari #elvhenan #dalish #dalish tales #strange idol

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lady-literature · 4 years ago

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Accidental Crime Boss Marinette

Okay so,, I have this AU in my head, right? (not surprised) and I’m lacking any real direction for it (still not surprised) but it basically goes like this:

Marinette moves to Gotham.

She’s drawn there for whatever reason and the kwami are saying something about balance and being a Guardian and her sacred duty and something but Marinette isn’t really listening. She’s too busy trying to find a shop front where she can open a bakery without having to worry about getting mugged every time she steps outside.

Chloé comes with her, obviously, because they’re friends and Chloé has a business degree she puts to good use actually running Mari’s bakery and online boutique while Mari gets to bake and fuck around basically. Adrien, Luka and Kagami are not there, but that’s mostly because they travel too much to settle down and keeping an empty apartment in Gotham is just asking for trouble.

Kagami is a world-renowned fencer and Luka travels the world for his music company. Not touring, but soaking up cultures and ways of life so he can make soundtracks to movies and tv shows. Providing the background and life to a film is more his style than touring the world ala his father, Jagged Stone.

Adrien is having the time of his life being Kagami’s trophy husband. He has no pressing responsibilities he doesn’t take on for himself and he gets to fuck with the world’s elite with little to no consequences. He spends most of his days donating far too much money to charities and orphanages and then causing minor scandals that land him on the cover of magazines.

He has much the same kind of ‘dumbass with a heart of gold’ persona to the media as Bruce Wayne does, only without the playboy bits.

(There is a wall in the back of the bakery, where Chloé and Mari carefully cut out and frame every headline and ridiculous picture Adrien has. He is very much delighted when he learns about his ‘wall of fame’.)

Anyway, Marinette finds herself with a bakery not overly far from crime alley, much to Chloé’s chagrin.

(“What do you mean it ‘just felt right’?! I swear to kwami, DC, you’re going to get us robbed and sold into slavery.”)

They do not get sold into salvery.

In fact, despite their less than stellar choice of locale, they do pretty well for themselves. The only problems they have (according to Chloé) is the army of children Marinette accidentally attracted.

When asked, Marinette tells everyone that it was an accident. Meanwhile, Chloé, standing behind her, will shake her head and insist there was literally never any other option for them the moment that first kid came in looking to nab some cash and a few pastries.

Mari lives by the phrases, ‘kindness breeds more kindness’ and ‘do unto others’ and all that other nice person shit. Chloé just lets Mari pseudo-adopt her strays and makes sure that they don’t steal anything too important in the time it takes her to gain their loyalty.

The kwami stay staunchly out of any arguments involving the kids (and eventually the homeless all along their street and every working girl in a five-block radius). They do so with a special brand of amusement that never means good things for either of them. (After all, the last time the kwami looked that amused, they moved to Gotham.)

The first kid is named Serrure, as Marinette comes to learn over the next month after he returns again and again, getting closer and closer like a feral cat. Other kids come during that time, all of them too small and too thin and too guarded for Mari's tastes. She wants to wrap them all up and tuck them into bed but she can’t. She has to be patient, has to be gentle. These kids are just as likely to bite her hand as they are to accept help.

Serrure becomes an almost permanent fixture at the bakery after that first month. Mari’s not quite sure what she did to get through to him, but she did, she supposes. He can’t be much older than eleven and looks nine, but after getting settled, she and Chloé discover this little slip of a boy is just as mischievous as Trixx and has all the dramatics of their favorite black cat.

The kwami, when talking about him, only refer to Serrure as Loki, even after Marinette scolds them for it. She eventually gives up trying to correct them, it’s not like Serrure talks to them anyway(yet)((that she knows of)).

There’s an apartment above the bakery, which is where Chloé and Mari and all her strays that grow to trust her enough live. It’s three bedrooms, and at first, Mari just buys as many bunk beds as she can fit into the spare room and calls it a day. The kids feel safe in her home, which isn’t too surprising. Everyone thinks the bakery feels safe, feels like home or comfort or whatever else eases their minds.

And Marinette should hopes so. She certainly put enough time and effort and magic and energy into the wards around this place for that to happen. To protect her and the children and all her strays that no one else will help.

But, she eventually amasses too many kids to fit into the one room. Chloé throws a fit about having to share with Mari again—“I had enough of that in university thank you very much”—but she relinquishes easily enough.

Mari buys more bunk beds, and Serrure has taken to sneaking into her room to curl up in her bed anyway, and sometimes the smaller kids who have nightmares will come in and pile on as well.

(There are only a few that Chloé will allow to do the same with her. It is considered a high honor and breeds a playful kind of jealousy that Chloé finds amusing. Mari scolds her for pitting the kids against each other.)

That only lasts them another two months.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Chloé tells her one day before the kids wake up. Mari is at the stove, cooking and baking for a small army while Chloé balances the books. “There’s not enough room for us all, DC, and the only reason someone hasn’t come barrelling down on us about the abundance of children is by the grace of your absurd amount of luck.”

“Well I can’t just kick them out, Queenie! What do you want from me?”

“Either we need to buy more real estate in this city—which I’d rather not do—or you open up the grimoire and start building pocket dimensions. I know you can. I’ve read the chapter.”

Marinette looks at her. “That is such a bad idea.”

They do the idea.

And then Mari adds about a thousand more wards to the bakery, carved into the wood and counter and anything that’s a permanent fixture. Doorways become particularly ward heavy, what with them being the entrances and exits to the hidden realms and children’s’ rooms.

The apartment above the bakery isn’t quite infinite but it gets pretty damn close some days.

This also means, of course, that all the kids definitely know about magic now. Some of them—Serrure—have known about it for a while she knows, but it’s different now. The kwami followed her around most of the time and she doesn’t keep them trapped in the Miracle Box like Fu did, but now that the kids know, they don’t bother staying hidden.

The children, at least, love them and the kwami adore them with all the ferocity a god can give. After Chloé gets over her ‘ew children’ phase, she throws herself into their education (on top of actually running the businesses Mari keeps, mind you). She has the help of the kwami, who act as personal tutors to the children, and it’s not long before the kids start to joke about her being the Principal.

(Some tried to call her Warden, but that joke didn’t last long.)

Marinette has also been telling the kids bedtime stories ever since this started. Old stories of the Guardian and Chosens who fought back the darkness, she shares all she knows of the Orders history with these kids and it’s not until Wayzz points it out to her does she realize what she’s doing.

“Ladybugs are known for renewal. It is no surprise that you are rebuilding what was lost.”

Rebuilding the Order using children was certainly not her intention but, well. She supposes there’s no place safer for her kids than what is shaping up to be the new Miracle Temple. It’s the only haven where they can learn to harness their Gifts and powers, it’s the only place where they can be surrounded by others like them without being thrust into superhero-dom.

Context: about a month into this whole circus, Marinette had realized there was a significant—almost all of them really—amount of metas and Gifted in her little hoard of strays. Which is… odd. Especially with how few metas there are in Gotham.

She had asked the kwami about it, and they have that amused look again. “You are their guardian.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re their guardian. True, you are the Guardian of us, of the ancient ways, but you are a guardian at your soul too. You protect what is yours, and they are yours whether you realise it or not. The children can sense that, so they flock to you.”

And, huh. She supposes that makes sense but that’s also really kind of strange and weird and she doesn't want to think about that anymore actually.

So things are… fine, Marinette supposes. The bakery is doing well, and she has about two dozen-plus helpers running around underfoot to help tend to the customers or run to the store or help in the back with the baking. And every kid of hers has new clothes, their street things thrown out for being too ragged and replaced with something fresh made by Marinette’s own hands.

She embroiders little fairy wings into the clothes normally, because that’s what her cloaked wards look like most times and the kids like it and its technically the logo for the bakery and there’s a million reasons she does it.

It is, perhaps, her first mistake.

(“It was certainly not your first,” Chloé will snark one dayin the future.)

Because now Marinette has an army of magical children learning to wield their powers and not fear them and they’re all wearing what can be considered her insignia and uh oh, it looks a lot like Mari is some sort of up and coming mob boss who uses kids and prostitutes and the homeless as runners. People on the street start calling her the Pixie, start referring to Chloé—her second in all things just as Chat had been her equal—as Wasp, as Yellowjacket, as the Unseelie.

(They cannot seem to pick a name for her, but Pixie is all but engraved in stone. Mari is not sure who coined it, and she doesn't think she wants to know.)

The first time the whole situation is brought to her attention, she punches the idiot who dared even imply such a thing so hard she knocks him out.

Because look. The kids are hers right? And she watches out for the people near her, makes sure the working girls are treated as well as they can be and offers the homeless extra food and a dry place to wait out the storm. She offers her hand and gives them all a place to rest, to eat, to exist without expectations or consequences.

She does that because she’s kind, because it hurts her to see people in need, to see them suffer, not because she’s hoping to gain something from it.

The fact that most of them repay her in gossip or information or bend her ear about the newest goings on in the corrupt elite or filthy underworld is strange, yes, but it’s nice to know what’s going on in the city, she supposes. And one time, Kathy, who works on the corner of Brookes and Gilmore, warned her of a drug raid that saved her an unnecessary trip to the police station so it’s not like it doesn't have it’s uses.

But mostly, Mari doesn't really think about all the information that’s unintentionally or otherwise passed onto her. She remembers it all, because it’s rude not to listen when people talk to her, but nothing comes of normally.

Not until Serrure—now twelve and well versed in the magic of illusions and glamors and knows almost as much about this city as her or the Bats—bursts into the bakery one day and grabs Mari away from the front counter right in the middle of a customer ordering. She should, perhaps, be a little angry at that but Tony, one of the older boys and just shy of sixteen, steps into her place almost immediately, so.

And then Serrure speaks and everything is pushed aside in favour of the next words to fall from his lips.

“Someone took Sophie,” he says and she nearly sees red.

After Serrure, Sophie has been here the longest. She is the youngest of them all, only seven, but oh so clever and kind and while she looks nothing like her, everyone calls her Mini-Mari. If Serrure is her beloved first son, Sophie is her treasured daughter.

She’s out the door in the next moment, storming her way to their base. She has Sophie and a handful of extra kids back by sunset, a little frightened, but no worse for wear. She doesn’t make a big deal out of it, besides making sure that the idiots who dared cross her never do so again, but word gets out.

Soon, her kids and teens and adults begin giving her more than just information, they begin giving her problems. Ones she’s meant to fix because she’s Pixie. She’s safety, she’s protection, she’s the one the people start to turn to for help.

And enter stage left, one Jason Todd who’s all snark and charm and smiles wrapped up in a nice leather bow and tall enough that Mari likely could climb him like a tree. If that was something she wanted, she guesses.

(She wants. She just won’t admit.)

He becomes a regular at the bakery and befriends most of her kids.

Mari’s wary when he first takes an interest in them. They’ve been hurt and a lot of them are still adjusting to being safe and it doesn't matter that this man is hot enough to burn, if he steps even a toe out of line with her kids she’ll make him wish he was never even born.

But, she stops worrying eventually. The kwami like him well enough, but seem to think something’s odd about him—but its Gotham, who isn’t strange?—and both Serrure and Sophie take to him like ducks to water and they’re both good judges of character.

There’s a certain intuition they both have that reminds Marinette just a bit too much about herself and pure magic. Not for the first time does she wonder if they got such strong magic from their parents or if it cropped up in them randomly, fostered by fortune and chance and the magic that’s so deeply seeped into the bones of her bakery it’ll be here long after she’s gone.

And, okay, so she was a little right to be wary because Jason was mostly there to investigate her. Far too many people respect her and are loyal to her and she has a veritable orphanage in her pocket and also Harley and Ivy like her and it just- it doesn’t look good right?

But Jason’s a good detective and it doesn't take him long at all to see that Mari is just as sweet and kind and loving as she appears to be. Not long after that, Red Hood declares Pixie and all of hers, under his protection. She, of course, is more than capable of taking care of her and hers, and the underworld knows this, has seen it, but he does it anyway.

The news, of course, gets back to Mari and she is… confused. Why would the Red Hood do something like that? She’s heard talk of him being sweet on kids, but to claim her? They’ve never even met.

Bonus points for Jason being there when she’s told about it. He kind of raises his eyebrow at her because, huh, that was fast, and then spends the next few minutes talking up the Red Hood to her much to her utter bafflement.

He actually keeps doing that too, talking up the Red Hood. Mari thinks he has a crush on the man for the longest time because of it. Until he reveals he is Red Hood, then she just wants to punch his stupidly handsome face for being such an idiot.

Shit happens from there and things go down and the two spend a couple of months dancing around each other and intentionally and unintentionally ruling the criminal underworld and at one point Marinette definitely punches Bruce and Batman in the face—separately, much to Jason’s unending joy—and she also definitely adopts Duke/Signal as well because that poor boy needs to know he’s not alone.

And it’s just them being domestic and badass and lowkey raising an army of children and falling in love while the kwami and the kids and Chloé are all in the background just yelling at them to get together already!

Which, they do. Eventually. After all the secrets come out and Jason knows about the magic and Order and meets Mari’s other friends, ie Kagami, Luka and Adrien who are all intimidating for wildly different reasons. And Mari finds out that Jason died and came back (which earns him the nickname firebird btw) and that he was a Robin once upon a time but is now Red Hood and oh my kwami it all makes sense now.

Jason confesses like three times via classic Victorian romance novel quotes because he’s a fucking literature nerd but it’s not until he basically spells it out for Mari does she really understand. it’s all very sweet and heartwarming and then the pair duck into one of the empty pocket dimensions they have lying around and aren’t seen for three days.

(No one really goes to look for them tbh)

Chloé definitely teases them about early honeymoons and things but besides the two being even more ridiculously lovey-dovey than usual, life goes back to normal. Or as normal as it gets for them.

And they all live happily ever after the end.

#maribat #jasonette #my typewriter #batfam #crime boss mari #miraculous ladybug #dc #mlb x dc #i was possessed by the need to write this all down #i have so many random ass moments from this au #just scenes taht barely fit together #zero coherency #let me know if yall want that ig #?

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