#nerevarine oc: balaarys marethi

[whitegoldtower]

I think one of the most devastating parts of my Nerevarine’s story is this;

He was a humble farmer who daydreamed about something more, who wanted so desperately to know the source of his yearning, this black haired lover, this dream…

But the actuality of it wasn’t what he wanted. He was forced into this pre-written destiny which ended in him contracting corprus and slowly going mad before dying alone, and it would have been kinder to keep him as that lowly daydreaming farmer. To have him not even meet his soulmate in the first place.

And the true weight of his emotions get lost to time. Finding his skeleton and his journal is like finding the lovers in Pompeii; what were the last things they said to one another? We’ll never know. It’s like seeing a star, knowing that it exploded long ago and you’re only seeing the after image.

But reviving his song? Hearing it sung and loved and revived in taverns and the bard’s college?

Balaarys and Voryn Dagoth do get their happily ever after, in this sense; it just happens years and years after their deaths. We get a taste of what he felt through the way his song is sung.

That’s true immortality. They may be dead, but their love lives on through a sad little ditty hummed by a farmer on Solstheim.

Balaarys’ whole story is basically why gods shouldn’t be allowed to meddle in mortal lives, how a pre-written destiny can fuck someone up, and why music is such a clandestine human experience; it doesn’t matter when the song was written: music can still evoke emotion in any era and gives weight to context.

Balaarys Marethi dreamt of the sun and sky but he was forced to be Icarus.

To fly, for him, was a wondrous experience. He got to touch the sun, but he never was told that he was meant to fall. And when he did inevitably fall, it was written into his story by someone else. It was expected, and unavoidable.

That emaciated, frail dunmer at the end, dying in the tundra, sobbing over his journal and scribbling madly, ravaged by corprus, would never have chosen this if he knew this was to be his fate.

He was written to hit the ground. Brutally.

“I do not have wings, love, I never will,

Soaring over a world you are carrying.

If these heights should bring my fall,

Let me be your own Icarian carrion.

If the wind turns, if I hit a squall;

Allow the ground to find its brutal way to me.

If I should fall on that day,

I only pray,

Don’t fall away from me.”

✨

^^ The original tune Balaarys sings

^^ The sapphic version Panteia Atea sings in the Winking Skeever posthumously

^^ The song Veloth Sadri wrote about Balaarys

[whitegoldtower]

In addition to the last post;

Llevana rereads Balaarys’ journal over and over again whilst travelling to Morrowind, and catches herself humming the song.

She’s unsuccessful in locating the burial chamber of the Sixth House, and can’t get to red mountain to find Dagoth Ur’s remains, so she brings Balaarys’ skeleton home again, giving him one more adventure:

After she comes back to Skyrim, she goes to the Bard’s college in Solitude and shows Viarmo the journal, then hums the tune like

“Can you revive this song?”

To which he nods and directs her to a young dunmer bard, Veloth Sadri:

“This should be up your alley, if you’re feeling the challenge.”

The dunmer bard revives “Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair”, and is so moved that he also writes another song, this time in tribute of that sad Nerevarine, who flew too close to his ‘Sun and Sky’:

[whitegoldtower]

Yippee doing one more loredump about my sad Nerevarine

On a positive note, they do have their own personal afterlife. One made for them by Azura, herself, who - even though Balaarys forsook her and she cursed him - still loved the Nerevarine, and was moved by his love for Voryn Dagoth.

I keep saying that Nerevar’s feelings for Voryn were amplified in Balaarys, but I think a better phrasing would be this: Balaarys is the part of Nerevar that loved Voryn. He’s the embodiment of a doomed love. Like I said; he was written to hit the ground, brutally.

But!! In this afterlife, Voryn is alone in it for years until Balaarys finally dies, reliving his past in a reconstructed dream of Red Mountain, dying ofer and over again to faceless white haired Nerevarines… until Balaarys actually shows up.

Voryn is ready to fight again, used to the routine, but it caught off guard by Balaarys just walking towards him, quietly singing the song.

The song is like an instant balm, soothing both of them as it echoes around this dream of the heart chamber, quenching Voryn’s isolated madness and quelling Balaarys’ shock at his own death.

Singing the song soothes Balaarys because he’s completing his unfinished business, singing it to Voryn’s face. And it soothes Voryn because now he knows exactly who Balaarys is.

“You are the embodiment of his love for me. You aren’t Nerevar anymore; you are love, itself.”

(new Dunmeri daedra just dropped? A little scion of Azura representing the process of remembering (the transition between forgetfulness and remembrance), the immortality of a love remembered?)

To which Balaarys once more removes Voryn’s mask to speak directly to him, so that Voryn can’t hide. Balaarys speaks the words he said to Dagoth Ur’s body after killing him.

“We should have lived away from Vvardenfell together. We could have. You would have had me. A heart given freely to you. A heart you would not have needed to steal. Your moon and star. My sun and sky. We could have had it… you idiot.”

These words completely stun Voryn. It takes a moment for him to gather his thoughts enough to respond. But the key here isn’t speaking.

Voryn needs to remember. And the last thing he remembers is a pair of lips upon his own. A pair of lips he couldn’t kiss back.

So he kisses Balaarys, now, instead, and the world around them melts away, shifting from the endless loop of red mountain, to their true afterlife; a little pocket of Moonshadow.

Will they get jiggy with it in the daedric realm? Absolutely they will.

[whitegoldtower]

Mother, I have emotionally wounded myself again