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astarions-chosen · 8 months

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Hello~ SO. I have this character in ESO named Ysmeira. In ESO, she's a Maormer vampire Nightblade DPS for most of her playthrough, and then after Markarth she retires for a while to Artaeum and really focuses on studying with the Psijics and becomes a healer.

There's no real TL;DR for her story, so buckle up [there are spoilers for the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storylines, as well as the main quest/base game ending and a little bit of Elsweyr and Markarth]:

Her mother, Cyrella, is a Maormer Dragonknight healer. She's always been connected to dragons, she can't quite explain why or how, so she set out to study them and to learn how to incorporate the Thuum into her healing magic somehow. This led her to lots of old Dragonguard sanctums, and she ran into Ysmeira's dad at one of them.

Her father, Ysgafn, is a half-Altmer, half-Nord Templar tank. He's from the area of Cyrodiil that borders with the Valenwood, and was one of the last officers of the Dragonguard in the era before Sai Sahan's time (yeah, Ysgafn's OLD-old). He traveled between old Dragonguard sanctums on his own all the time, maintaining them here and there, salvaging any texts that may have been left behind, etc., and one day ran into Cyrella.

Of course, the two expected this encounter to be tense and fraught with violence, as encounters between Altmer and Maormer tended to be, but they each hesitated, and neither of them took advantage of this to do anything but peacefully (albeit tensely) part ways. They ran into each other a few more times, or otherwise one could tell whenever they had just missed the other, over the next couple months, until eventually one of them left a note for the other.

Eventually, they decided to wait for each other at what they anticipated to be the next Dragonguard sanctum on their route, and they finally spoke and got to know each other. Cyrella told Ysgafn of her inexplicable connection to dragons, hence her curiosity in any knowledge the Dragonguard may have of them, and Ysgafn offered to let her read the texts he had collected over the years. She never gets any answers as to how or why she feels this pull, except that perhaps it's a variation of the pull most Maormer have to sea serpents, but she does begin to incorporate more draconic magic into her healing and it helps her become more able to defend herself in combat as well as heal with more potency.

Over the next few years, they decided to travel between the Dragonguard sanctums together, the mission eventually becoming nearly purely maintenance rather than study, until Cyrella got pregnant and they decided to settle down.

They knew settling down as a Maormer + Altmer couple wouldn't be easy in most larger cities, and they still wanted some proximity to Dragonguard sanctums, so they decided to settle in the Stitches in Elsweyr.

Ysmeira grew up there, with the first ten years or so of her life being relatively lonely, but sprinkled with light-fingered mischief. There weren't a whole lot of kids in the Stitches, and most of the ones that passed through were with merchants who weren't too keen on hanging around a place like the Stitches for long, let alone letting their children run around with a child *from* the Stitches.

One night while Ysmeira was preparing to steal a bejeweled urn from someone's house, a small Breton girl and Argonian boy snuck up on her and offered to distract the homeowner while Ysmeira got in and out with the urn. Surprised by the Breton's mischievousness (and Ta'agra accent), Ysmeira agreed, and they ran off with their prize to the nearest fence (Humble Zaham).

She learned that the girl's name was Ashraf, and the boy's Dances-with-Dead. They grew up in an orphanage in Bravil, raised by their Khajiit caretaker, Ilari. (Ashraf was just an infant when she was brought to the orphanage, Dances was already about 7 when he was separated from his family and brought to the orphanage, hence Ashraf having an accent and Dances not. Dances also has selective mutism, like my IRL little sister, so his voice is rarely heard as it is.)

Ashraf, Ysmeira, and Dances become a thieving trio, and even earn themselves a collective nickname: Sticky-Paws, which Ashraf assumes the mantle of when Ysmeira and Dances eventually leave the Stitches.

Ysmeira and Ashraf have an intense on-again/off-again romantic relationship from about their late teens until their mid-twenties, and during one of their off periods, Ysmeira meets Quen in the Rimmen Outlaws Refuge. Begin Thieves Guild storyline [spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't played through it].

At the end of the zone storyline, when Zeira asks the player character to deal with ~that one person~, Ysmeira takes it to mean deal with them, and... sort of kills them. Whoopsie. Zeira claimed to have been fine with this outcome before Ysmeira set out, but when Ysmeira got back and reported what she'd done, Zeira became distant from her and put her on less and less significant assignments.

Quen rose in the ranks in the Thieves Guild, which Ysmeira was proud of her for and supportive of, but this also meant Quen would be working more closely with Zeira, which made Ysmeira nervous. She and Quen would get into mild arguments about it every so often, but one day Quen dropped a, "She didn't ask you to kill them," and it just stunned Ysmeira.

Ysmeira went for a walk to clear her head, and was attacked by some bloodfiends along the way. She got away, but not before getting bitten by one. She went home, frantically cleaned the wound as best she could, and went to bed.

For the next couple days, she thought she was fine, the bite seeming to heal, and no other symptoms seeming to crop up. Until a couple nights later, she had a horrible fever, and even more horrible dreams to go with it, to include one of her killing Quen. She looked down at the wound and saw that it had completely healed, and her skin was paler than before, with her veins being just the slightest bit more visible... and she was hungry, so she decided to leave before she could hurt Quen.

She spent a long time feeding on bloodfiends (not a good thing to do, but she couldn't bring herself to hurt people) and animals, struggling to satiate her appetite, but struggling even more with the idea of eventually snapping and hurting an innocent person.

Eventually she decided to begin feeding on the worst of the worst kind of people, but the first person she fed on opened the flood gates, and she found it very hard to be patient and picky, until one day she nearly drained an innocent. This sent her into an absolute spiral, and she wound up back at the Stitches, knocking on Ashraf's door.

They had ~a night~ together, even though Ashraf could tell from the jump that something was off. Ysmeira was very obviously changed physically, but Ashraf could see that she was emotionally and mentally falling apart. [I uh... have a NSFW fic of this night.... 👀👉🏼👈🏼] They decide once again to go their separate ways, and Ysmeira heads back to Rimmen to head off to somewhere else entirely. She ends up at the Outlaws Refuge, familiar territory, when she's beckoned over to a corner by Amelie Crow. Begin Dark Brotherhood storyline [some spoilers ahead here, too, but I'll try to keep it vague like I did for the Thieves Guild].

Right off the bat, Ysmeira did not like Amelie. Ysmeira's killing was never about any deranged desire to snuff the light out of someone's eyes, it was a byproduct of her lack of control of her new monstrous condition, a result of her curse. She did, however, like the appeal of having a direction to point her nature in.

For a long time, rather than using the Blade of Woe, Ysmeira would simply ~dine~ on her contracts' targets. Eventually, this caught the attention of the wrong people, to include Mel Adrys. Elam Drals caught wind of this before Matron Astara did, so he decided to talk to her about it [I also have a fic that flashes back to this, hehe]. He takes the time to get through to Ysmeira, and eventually she becomes one of the Brotherhood's top assassins.

Over time, Elam and Ysmeira fall in love, and after all is said and done with the Dark Brotherhood quest line (I guess I didn't really have to go into anything spoil-y after all, so that's nice!), they decide to take a rest in Stonefalls for a while.

While in Stonefalls, Elam hears rumblings about Baar Dau in Vvardenfell, and something strange happening with Vivec. [I have an entire other life thought up for Elam from before his time in the Dark Brotherhood. He was a member of the Morag Tong who got tired of the Houses' squabbling and eventually became the Scarlet Judge for a time. He was eventually put on a writ by one of the Houses for the Morag Tong to carry out, but it didn't demand his death - only that he was kidnapped and taken to Ashalmawia. Ironically, an assassin he trained (another OC of mine named Kaia) was the one to take the writ. She took him to the designated place, and then watched in horror as he was taken and sacrificed by the Worm Cult. Somehow he was spat out of Coldharbour into the sea off the Gold Coast, and he woke up being kidnapped once again, this time by the smugglers near the Withered Rose. He essentially Jason Bourne'd them all because of course he did, and took the name Elam Drals off a letter he saw in the cellar he escaped from.] He couldn't remember his life before the Brotherhood, but he'd always felt drawn to Vvardenfell, and so wanted to check it out. Begin the Daedric Wars storylines.

Ysmeira and Elam resolve everything in Vvardenfell, and realize that Elam's mother is Dredyni Imayn in Suran. She recognizes him one day while he's out in town (out of DB clothing) and tells him all about him growing up there with just her, the two of them against the world (she didn't know about his being in the Morag Tong, so couldn't fill him in there). He decides to stay with his mother and catch up while Ysmeira goes to the Clockwork City, giving her an enchanted earring before she goes. The earring allows her to call on him while they're apart to protect her [the Summon Shade Nightblade ability - JB Blanc does the voice for it, so I headcanon that it's a sort of astral projection of a part of Elam's consciousness being summoned to defend her], so he feels better about them being apart. It's also their first time apart since he helped her get her vampirism under control, so it was something that needed to happen anyway to essentially kind of make sure she wasn't dependent on him to stay on the straight and narrow, so to speak.

After the events of CWC, Ysmeira tells Elam that there's going to be trouble in Summerset, and it's the first time in a long time the subject of Quen comes up. Elam knows Ysmeira is still very much in love with her, and so he decides that while she goes to Summerset, he'll return to the Gold Coast, and if it's meant to be, they'll see each other again. Obviously this isn't easy for Ysmeira, but she agrees, and they part ways for the time being.

Ysmeira and Quen do reconnect in Summerset, and after the conflict is resolved there, they take some time away at the Psijic Villa. They decide to start a new chapter of the Thieves Guild in Shimmerene, and settle there for a time.

Eventually, Quen and Ysme get the itch to go on a real heist, instead of sending folks on one or just planning one but not being able to go do it. They decide to finish out Kari's list back in Abbah's Landing, and go for one of the relics in the Alik'r Desert. During the heist, while Ysmeira's keeping a lookout for Quen, she notices a dark figure crawling in through the window of the innkeeper's office. She almost calls out to the innkeeper when she realizes that the shadowy figure is none other than Elam, completing a contract. After his work is done, Ysme gets his attention and they catch up a little before Ysme introduces Elam and Quen.

Because I am made of 100% bi/pan panic, they do become a throuple and it's wholesome as heck. Elam and Quen have sneaking and lockpicking competitions (during which Ysme usually picks their pockets), and they just all generally help each other hone their specific skills.

After the events of Elsweyr, Elam catches wind of trouble in Auridon - something that triggers a flood of memories from his old life. The three decide to investigate, and so begin their journey through the game's main questline. They go through the entire Aldmeri Dominion storyline, when Ysmeira is essentially held up by Meridia, who tells her she'll receive a boon if she relives the events through her enemies' eyes (so, Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold). After completing this (which, in my canon she doesn't exactly have a choice, because... Daedric Prince, and all; it's basically presented as, "Sure, you can leave my Many Colored Rooms... as long as you do this. And don't worry, you'll get a treat at the end, too."), the "boon" she gets from Meridia is a cleansing of her vampirism.

This sends Ysmeira into a ~ s p i r al ~ of all spirals. She spent so long, and worked so hard, to get her vampirism under control, and to accept it as a new part of her... and then Meridia just zaps it away without asking.

Before I get into Markarth I'll just also say: I canon that Cadwell's Silver and Gold happen as a timewarp, since you are reliving the events that have already occurred. So, for Ysmeira, the events take as long as they take, but for Quen and Elam, nothing even really happened, they just got Ysmeira's soul back from Molag Bal and then boom - she's zapped into and back out of a fancy Welkynd stone she just touched, and she's not a vampire anymore.

SO. Between the last and second to last quests in Markarth, Ysmeira and Verandis have a long talk. He could tell when he first met her that something was different and familiar about her, which usually indicates to him that the person is a vampire, but he could also tell that she wasn't a vampire. BUT, the dude is a specialist in auramancy, so of course he's the only one from Ysmeira's timewarp that has even the slightest chance of maybe remembering having met her before (I canon that the rest of the NPCs don't, even though in-game dialogue reflects that they do), so when she explains what happened, he's floored by it, but 100% believes it.

She basically begs him to make her a vampire again, but he refuses. He says that he won't impose that on her, but that if she seeks it out elsewhere, he won't judge her for it. He also says that whether she ever becomes a vampire again or not, she will always have a home with the Ravenwatch, which just about crushes her heart into a million pieces (in a good way™).

After Markarth, the throuple takes some time off, with Ysmeira refocusing her energies into becoming a healer (though she's still a badass assassin and thief, of course). ALL OF THAT TO SAY.... Ysmeira is my Redemption Durge in BG3. In Faerûn, Quen is dead, and is Ysme's Dream Guardian (because who doesn't love torturing their OCs?). For some reason, I've decided to also torture myself, and make Ysmeira's run an Honour Mode run, so that's... great.🫠

In one of my runs so far, she didn't dream about Quen until after the first time she slept with Astarion, because of course she didn't.🫠 It was pretty perfect, though, and I think regardless of when it happens in future runs, I'm always going to canon that that's when it happens.

Astarion is of course her Elam, though he's also kind of representative of early vampirism!Ysme, which I love.

Abdirak has a HUGE impact on Ysmeira, even though the interaction in-game is really small. If I could do it mechanically, she would definitely convert to being a Cleric of Loviatar somewhere down the line, but since I can't, I'm going to multiclass her into Monk the next time she levels up after that interaction, and then possibly Cleric of Ilmater when we reach Wyrm's Crossing (if I ever get there again, lol).

Shadowheart and Ysmeira don't get along well at first, because she reminds her too much of Ashraf. She doesn't get along well with Lae'zel, but she does like her, I think, because she probably reminds her of a more militant Velsa.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my really long TEDTalk, I look forward to sharing more with ya!🥰

[My Twitter thread of her adventures in BG3 so far.]

#baldur's gate 3 #elder scrolls online #dark brotherhood #thieves guild #elam drals #quenneth #quen

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