#no but imagine isa taking these two under his wing like lea takes roxas and xion

[kettsuper]

terrifying trio

[ohhicas]

i adore ur vor fanart and ienzo context but i must ask: why ienzo and aeleus? ik they have a fairly big age gap so im curious to hear your thoughts

because I like my pairings to have a friendship baseline and actually enjoy each other's company first, and when I take out Ienzo's two "Confirmed" (as in, he actually calls them by Father and/or comments about how they in particular were the ones to take him under their wing and raise him [even and ansem]) that sure narrows the field

Usually that's where I'd leave these comments but since you seem focused on numbers to get the 'gap', i'm curious, where do you have those numbers that signify their ages?

Here's what we know about Ienzo's age (note: it is not a number)

Interview with Nomura: Q. How old would you say the Organization XIII members are? Nomura: For some characters we have set a specific age, while for others it is not so clear. At the oldest we have characters in their forties and thirties, while at the lower end of the spectrum there are characters in their twenties, with Roxas the youngest at 15 years old.

Ventus is claimed to be 16 [interview] (KH2FM+ Ultimania states he’s the youngest before the two kids show up. NOTE: The specific page in question is in Japanese. However, chapter 2 of the 358 novel also highlights this.)

And then you add the timeskip in. Despite previous statements saying Nobody bodies don't age, this can clearly be seen by how Isa, Lea, and Ienzo all look pre/post RG's fall.

Here's what we know about Aeleus's age:

[he is within the 20-40 bracket given in the previous link for Ienzo]

like, he's not a minor. Ienzo is, bare minimum, 20. Comfortably I'd say even higher than that, since Ventus was 16, "not much younger" is generally a year or two (13, 14, 15), so 23+ range. But that's not canon, I don't know his "True" age outside of the brackets we're given. any "huge age gap" anyone says there is is currently imagined and self-made, as Aeleus has no age. Any "Confirmed age!!!" someone says they have from an interview or forum from 2011 is false, as by now with all the ultimania and etc on the series, it would've been brought up by a canon source or Nomura's own mouth.

It's more than fair to be uncomfortable with an age gap, but atm that 'age gap' could mean anywhere from 0 years (lmao can you imagine? I can't. it's silly to try) to 20 years because Nomura has told us absolutely nothing about Aeleus beyond "he was big enough to hold a giant axe in BBS". Anything past that, age related, is all fanon conjecture.

[antibioware]

do you have other things planned for the KH DA au?

Yeah, me and @ofseasworth ​ actually discussed a lot of things through and (with some help and insults from @himbocloud ​) we have a good deal of the AU figured out!

tw for: excessively long explanation post, a brief mention of slavery existing within the DA universe

The general plot is based on the initial premise of Dragon Age Inquisition, but takes a turn towards a more Dragon Age: Origins-like plot structure. In other words: you have Sora, a Rivaini warrior, Riku, a Tevinter runaway mage, and Kairi, an Orlesian rogue, who all happen to find themselves at the Conclave for their own reasons, and who also happen to be literally the only survivors of the explosion that wipes away the Conclave, together with the Divine. Sora wakes up with a painful mark on his hand, the sky torn apart and also finds that Kairi managed to break the three of them out of prison, because they’re wanted by the Chantry for supposedly killing the Divine. After that, they set on a quest together to find allies willing to help them close the Breach in the sky and find the actual responsible for the Divine’s death, all while escaping from the Chantry who wants them and the various pursuers who want to find/kill them for their own reasons.

In this vision of the AU, the foretellers and the MoM are the magisters that first entered the Golden City and corrupted it, and Xehanort is a Tevinter magister who found the foreteller’s notes and research and was curious about understanding magic that was lost to time and as his research grew desperate and dark, he grew in power and transformed beyond recognition, turning into a Corypheus like creature. So yeah, he’s an all powerful sentient Darkspawn who is also a magister and the entire point of the quest Sora, Riku and Kairi set on is to find him and put an end to all his evil plans and possibly kill him.

As I mentioned, the Destiny trio are being pursued by other people aside from demons, darkspawn, the Chantry itself. For this reason, when they first meet they all lie to each other about who they really are: Sora says he’s just a regular adventurer who occasionally works as a merc, Kairi says she’s just a regular thief, and Riku says he’s just a regular mage whose magister is against Xehanort and looking for potential allies. Obviously, this comes back to bite them in the ass and after that they all have to reveal their actual background to each other.

Sora is the son of a fisherman from Rivain, he turned to piracy out of genuine love for adventure and the sea. He was pretty tame for a pirate, thought known as a formidable warrior, but once during a job he discovered one of his fellow pirates tried to trick him into selling slaves and not only did he free them all as soon as possible, but he also crashed his ship in attempt to escape from the other very pissed pirates who had assigned him the job (so he has like, Isabela’s background without the bad parts and the sexualization). He was hired as a mercenary right after to cover his tracks from his pursuers, and happened to be at the Conclave by a really unlucky turn of events.

Riku is a mage from a poor family, he was taken under a Magister’s guidance who saw his potential for learning to master Blood magic. The Magister was cruel in her training, and often tried to use Riku to do her dirty job for him. After a couple years of training finally Riku realized how bad his teacher and her ways were, as well as her association with Xehanort. During a training day in which she was trying to convince him to finally use a blood sacrifice for a ritual, Riku ended up killing her and her guards and break himself and the “sacrifice” out of her castle. So Riku is wanted for dead in Tevinter, and he run to the Conclave in search of support against the growing problem in Tevinter with Xehanort. He’s literally wanted everywhere he goes for being very visibly a maleficarum, and also Ansem Seeker of Darkness in this AU is the Envy demon who keeps lending him powers, but who is also waiting for the day Riku will inevitably fall to his thrall to possess him and make him an abomination.

Kairi is a thief, among other things, but she’s first and foremost the princess and crown heir of some king (Ansem the Wise) who ran away from home since she hated both the concept of politics and regency and the rich. She’s trained as a bard and a spy, and uses that training to follow her own agenda, so in terms of comparison with actual DA characters, she’s a mix of Sera and Leliana. She also actually hates Orlais. She was at the Conclave as an actual spy to see how to turn the results against the Empress. She’s being chased around by Dilan and Aeleus, the regal bodyguards assigned to her since she was a kid, who just want her to bring her safely back home so she can become a queen.

Now, for some details a little on the specific side, AKA Which Characters Are What:

Roxas and Xion were twin mages who grew up in the tower. We are still deciding some details on how it came to happen, but they rebelled to the templars in their tower and their rebellion was suffocated in blood. As they were laying close to the embrace of death, two Fade spirits came to their help (Courage in Roxas’ case, Valor in Xion’s case) and much like Wynne’s case, they were granted a new life because of them. Since then, they have been forced into hiding from Templars. They were taken in by apostate Lea, and together with him and the rest of the Twilight Town gang, they’re all Red Jennies.

Lea is an apostate and an ex-assassin. He managed to run away from the Circle tower after his best friend Isa was made Tranquil, and he ended up taking in Roxas and Xion and helping them hide from Templars. Tranquil Isa was sent after him to retrieve him after he escaped from the tower, and after much fighting and many sad scenes (imagine Karl Thekla with Anders here) Lea finds out that the Fade spirits in Roxas and Xion can make him break out of the tranquility state, and from there they find a way through those to reconnect Isa to the Fade and bring him back from Tranquility. post-tranquility Isa is a Jenny as well, thought there is too bad blood with Xion and Roxas for him to be a “friend” of Red Jenny. He’s like an acquaintance of Red Jenny.

All of the Jennies become allies to the quest at some point, for various reasons. The main includes Kairi just being a wild and really powerful anti-rich supporter, and she also becomes a Red Jenny later on.

Naminè is Cole a Fade spirit of Compassion who was drawn to the living world by the sufference caused by the war. Her modality of helping suffering souls is to make them forget their grievances, but accidentally this causes those who were helped to eventually forget about everything, including Naminè as well too. Afraid of the suffering being unable to help was causing her, Naminè retired in an abandoned Templar stronghold, until Sora and co. found her, helped her regain control of her powers and took her along them in their quest.

The Wayfinder trio are all Grey Wardens. Aqua is a dalish arcane warrior mage, and the next Warden Commander after her master Eraqus sacrificed himself to end the previous Blight. Terra is her second in command, AKA Alistair a once Templar in training who was taken as a Warden from Master Eraqus and grew as his son. Ventus is a poor fuck who run away from Tevinter , while his twin ended up staying there, and he was recruited into the Wardens by Terra. 

The Wardens take the Destiny trio under their wing and they become their main ally in their quest to end Xehanort.

Vanitas was the very mistreated and experimented on disciple of Magister Xehanort, who also ended up running away from him after getting his ass kicked by Sora and co., catching the Blight in the meanwhile and was then found and forced by Ventus to join the Wardens to save his life.

Xemnas is the Black Divine who gets at some point rightfully killed by Sora and co. for helping and supporting Xehanort. Thus the Destiny trio caused the death of two whole Divines.

We are still deciding on some side characters but Ansem the Wise was a king who died to Xehanort and the reason why people want Kairi back to her home so bad. Larxene is Calpernia for the aesthetic. Marluxia is the court mage for the Orlesian Empress just For The Aesthetic. Demyx is this shitty assassin bard who was sent after the Destiny Trio at some point but didnt even tried to fight them, just asked them to kick his ass so he could not he killed by his boss

[ohhicas]

Maybe a sad headcanon (which might be kind canon?). It's about the moment, where Lexaeus slams Riku against the ceiling and shouts "Don't mock me!". I didn't exspected him saying this tbh, because he seems like a calm and collected person. So I have been thinking about this and got to the conclusion, that he (and Aeleus) were only reduced by their muscles. People might have mocked him, bc they thought he was just a brickwall. (He didn't talk much, so they didn't know his intelligence)

   I went and did dumb research (read: used this as a moment to go watch clips a bunch and be lazy) cause you got me curious, and while there’s already a lot of little small things different between japanese&english this is actually one of them? Like I’m fairly sure the translation of what he yells is “Cease this”/stop this, which sounds more accurate to his character than “BITCH YOU THOUGHT” and axe sword slapping him to the ceiling.

which may be why–

   his canon reaction seems to be “welp, gonna stand here and be quiet, threateningly looming behind Ienzo in case anything happens”. Swapping between the two versions it really seems like Lex(& later Ael) hold no grudges towards getting beaten? He blames himself for losing, taking a fight he can’t win, which is right up his alley especially when you count in the samurai theme to him, with personality, honor, etc. Like Lex dies basically going “oh shit you’re good, no wonder Ansem SoD wanted you. Damn sorry Zexion I shouldda known better.”    And if Ienzo is able to separate out the Repliku from Riku, his very :)!!! reaction to everything would make sense. But that boy is a bundle of contradictions for how I feel would be a natural reaction to things especially when he grew up in darkness but WHAT DO I KNOW? 

   Aeleus was considered one of Ansem the Wise’s best students so I’d figure everyone under Ansem’s wing knew this, I feel like they’d consider him more than his muscles? At least the original RG set, the other numbers deeper in may have picked on him, especially those who seem to be part of the KHUX timeline. BUT AT THE SAME GODDAMN TIME   Lexaeus doesn’t trust like, anyone right? Canonly? I’m pretty sure it’s stated he trusts everyone in the Org basically as far as they can throw him, which tends to be at arm’s length or less– besides Ienzo. And I dunno how he thinks really because he’s a fictional character in a videogame series with some questionable writing at best, but as a quiet person who is overly suspicious of everyone around me? I wouldn’t let anyone calling me dumb, or only good for my [one thing] get to me. It’s a ?? to me, whether or not that would’ve been the reason for the English line. 

   I FEEL LIKE, if I ignore the Japanese side, only using the English lines to draw headcanon from the line; it’s less of a ‘too much pent up he’s finally pissed’, and that final bit of “give me the respect, brat” coming from his fair/noble side. He’s Samurai themed, and beaten, and instead of getting the chance to bow out and accept a death since he was rightfully beaten, Riku (who is a kid so like, you can’t blame him) gung-ho charges in and Lex axe-slaps him back like bitch, you won but he’s not dead yet. 

   Im also talking out my ass here I just really want to talk about Aeleus but I’m super underqualified. 

Sidebar super unrelated to both of the asks I brought up but still related because it’s a good Mountain:    Do you ever get the feeling he’s one of the rare Org members who has, while not full, a pretty good grasp on his Somebody humanity? There was no reason for him to cling so hard to Zexion making him his “one” person he trusted in an organization where there was no reason to trust anyone; even beating out BFFL Isa&Lea’s crumbling friendship, and possibly beating out Lauriam&Elrena’s “Yeah I’ll follow you into the dark, why the shit not lets party”. When Dilan changed, Xaldin didn’t seem to care about any of his old team, even Ael/Lex who you could easily headcanon as a close friend just by their dual guard status. Vexen didn’t seem to care about someone who Even considered his son (or charge? ward?? I don’t know the official term for his feelings towards Ienzo, just that he Cared), but he still flocked to/ended up on the same mini-team with him. But fuckin Lexaeus is over there like, ah yes, the one we’re calling the schemer, the possibly next-second to our Master before Saix slams up the ranks in a showy, head-carving call of dibs. That conniving boy that nobody should ever trust just from what his power is.    This is the one goddamn person in the entire Organization I trust. The only reason I can imagine why is that underlying Aeleus heart in him like clawing and scraping up his chest cavity refusing to let him fail Ienzo again (since, well, they were clearly gathered around his fallen body. There was an effort to protect the scientists and he Failed). And then his final lines in both english and japanese being an apology for failing again/not being there for him. Lexaeus how do you have that much of a Heart in you. The only other ones really shown to do that are the ones important to plot (Axel’s buildup/sacrifice, Roxas as a whole, and I know I’m missing other people’s character arcs but this is fuckin Lexaeus, the most unloved member of the Org set or at least he was when I first got into the series. WHY DID HE GET THIS QUIETLY SLIPPED IN HINT OF HUMANITY, OF ALL OF THEM?) 

anyway right, yall are here for art