#tornac inheritance cycle

[everythingloveandanimated]

Something interesting I just thought of, eventually Murtagh is going to get into an argument with Eragon and yell that everyone chose Eragon. Their mother, fate, the Eldunarya, the races who backed him as their hero.

Then someone, maybe Eragon points out that there were others who chose Murtagh.

Selena and Tornac chose Murtagh, wanting to give him a chance for a better life than the one he was stuck in. Nasuada and Thorn chose him as a equal, someone they wanted as a friend and close part of their hearts. Eragon, despite the betrayal, and after he calmed down from their battle on the Burning Plains, still wanted Murtagh as a friend. Eragon fought for Murtagh, he looked for ways to free him. He believed in him that once people gave him a chance, both sides would be rewarded. Murtagh for having a community, others for having a noble, fierce, protective ally.

I think this is something Murtagh is going to have a hard time accepting. He sees the preemptive stain on his reputation of being Morgan's son. He sees the blood on his hands trying to win favor in the court, and then the blood on his hands from his time as an enslaved rider. He sees the young man, weak, consistently overpowered and unable to protect those he loves the most and he hates not having control over who stays in his life, and who stays safe from harm.

I'm interested in how he comes to a place of self acceptance. Yes he has done bloody deeds, and that is something he will have to live with. But he is also loyal and protective. He wants to use his skills and knowledge to bring a brighter happier safer future for his loved ones and the children of the land.

[brisingr-sword]

yup! hence why tornac was such an important figure in murtagh’s life - i feel like the statement of “like a father” sometimes makes it easy to forget that this man was one of if not the only figure in murtagh’s life who was there for longer than a few years and actually spent significant time with and caring about murtagh.

like, yeah, galbatorix was certainly part of murtagh’s life when he was younger, but galbatorix was busy ruling an empire and trying to track down rebels and shit. tornac was THEE paternal authority figure in murtagh’s life

anyways i love tornac and wish we got more stories of him from murtagh

Did Murtagh lost both his parents, in the same year, when he was only 3 years old?

[alagaesia-headcanons]

I have a ride or die headcanon that little Murtagh was obsessed with Morzan’s dragon. He absolutely loved him.

Murtagh sees him often enough from a young enough age that he’s never scared of him. So naturally, he’s absolutely enamored with the huge, beautiful, glittery, fire breathing monster that hangs out outside the house. He’s kept at a distance, but he’s still the dragon’s biggest fan. Murtagh’s very upset to learn that he doesn’t have a name which feels very unfair to him, so he musters up all his creativity and dubs him “Red”.

Morzan doesn’t always travel with his dragon when he leaves the estate, depending on what he needs to do. So sometimes the dragon stays and rests while Morzan is gone. During one such time, when Selena is also away on a mission, a freshly 3 year old Murtagh escapes his nurses and goes to Red. He’s careful at first, testing the waters gently, then getting increasingly close and comfortable with him when Red seems utterly unbothered. He’s no more than an ant next to the dragon’s enormous size. Murtagh is immediately in love, clambering all over him and constantly babbling to him, undeterred by the lack of response.

The servants do eventually find him after a frantic search. Morzan’s dragon doesn’t like any of the staff, so despite letting Murtagh nestle into the crook of his foreleg, he snarls and snaps at anyone who tries to get close enough to retrieve him. The servants are stuck in a grim dilemma, because no one’s willing to test the limits of a gargantuan, irascible dragon, and they don’t have anything to bribe Murtagh with that’s cooler than said dragon, so he refuses to budge. They’re absolutely terrified the dragon will kill him, either inadvertently or not.

After three full days of Murtagh glued to Red’s side, remaining miraculously unsquished, Morzan returns. The servants are in a cold sweat, stuttering and shaking like leaves in a storm as they try to explain that his son is fine, there’s no need for alarm, but there may be just a small issue. He goes to his partner and does with insulting ease what the staff have fruitlessly tried for three days, he steps right in and scoops Murtagh up. He looks completely unkempt and ignoble, dirty and scraped from being outside the whole time, giggling unrepentantly and singing Red’s praises.

To the servants great luck, Morzan finds this all quite amusing. Carrying Murtagh back to the house, he accuses, “Trying to replace me as the dragon Rider, are you?” and Murtagh cries, “Yes! Take me flying!” Morzan says that he will, but it never happens.

Selena is less thrilled when she learns of this, also afraid that the dragon might kill Murtagh in a moment of annoyance. But Murtagh adores him and she can’t reliably keep him away, so she tries to accept the incongruous match. Red doesn’t show any perceptible warmth to him, and yet he makes the effort to keep tabs on him and stops him from doing anything too dangerous. Of course, since the banishing of the names stunted his mind, the dragon doesn’t have any nuanced opinion of Murtagh, but he can recognize that his little ant feels incapable of malice and he comes to like Murtagh in the way he can. Learning of Red’s death on top of the loss of both his parents utterly devastates Murtagh.

After a little while in Uru’baen, Tornac asks Murtagh which parent he was closer to, and Murtagh tells him Morzan’s dragon. Tornac takes a very long, very strained breath, thinking Oh dear gods help me I have so much fucking work to do.

[saphira-approves]

Can I come and tell you my deepest pain?

We should have had Morzan alive. I mean yeah, it would fuck up the whole narrative but imagine Murtagh being afraid of his father. He hates the king but fears his father.

Imagine him and Thorn; Morzan sees them, and he has problems with booze in canon, just how drunk he'd have gotten after Thorn learned to talk? There he is with his nameless dragon, half of his heart and soul, that he had to watch descend into stupidity. (Does he have its name written up here and there, does he watch it every day just to think about how he could make it real again?) Would he dream of killing his son and taking his dragon to himself? Would he want that even though he despises that sick joke of a connection that is in between Galbatorix and Shruikan?

And then Galbatorix finally discovers the name of the names. How would he beg for the king to use it to heal his companion?

Also, it would be very funny to watch our main characters run for their lives with an angry dragon after them, but y'know.

Should I write a fic about this

Oh you absolutely should write a fic about this (and let me know when you do! I’d love to read it!), and I should go back through my WIPs to find my time travel AUs…

I usually write more about Selena than Morzan, but I do love the idea of getting to see grown-up Murtagh’s reaction to seeing his father, especially in a context where Murtagh has lived without him for a while—whether that’s because Brom didn’t kill Morzan and Selena got both her sons to Carvahall, or because resurrection or time travel shenanigans happened.

As for Morzan still being around when Murtagh gets captured… I think there’s a 50/50 chance he gets Real Weird about the torture, in a “I was pretty sure up to this point that I didn’t actually care about my son but now my best friend is torturing My Son and I don’t like it actually” way, and I think that would be really fun to explore; I think, also, that when Thorn hatches and Galbatorix prematurely increases his size, Morzan would again be Real Weird about it because, like, that’s a baby dragon the size of an adult. He hasn’t lost his name, he just hasn’t really developed one yet; he’s a weird, warped mirror of Morzan’s own dragon. And when Thorn does, eventually, with difficulty, start to ‘grow up’, Morzan’s probably going to get twitchy about it—it’s been at least a century, more than two thirds of his lifespan, since he’s even MET a somewhat psychologically stable dragon; how much has he forgotten of their true intelligence, their real personalities? And when Galbatorix does find The Word, if Morzan asks him to heal his own dragon… honestly I don’t know if Galbatorix would be able to. Having power and knowing how to use it are two different things, we saw Murtagh figure that out in his own book with The Word. Would the king even know where to start? Would he allow Morzan to try for himself? Morzan probably wouldn’t have a clue where to begin, all we ever hear about him from people who’d met him is that he’s a powerful spellcaster, but not a very clever one.

Honestly, the whole situation might drive Morzan to split from Galbatorix; and even if not, it would still probably drive Morzan to be extremely destructive, to himself and everyone around him.

Also he’d be so pissed to learn about Eragon’s true parentage. Not even in a “my wife cheated on me?!” way but in a “oh my god can Brom stop being SO OBSESSED with me for FIVE MINUTES” kind of way.

[tonhalszendvics]

Murtagh had that horse. The grey one. He named it after Tornac. But he'd had that horse since he was a calf, when Tornac was still alive, so the poor thing had to have a previous name.

I am thinking way too much about how old he was when he got him and what was his original name.

[modern-inheritance]

Tornac trained Murtagh to have both independent thought while also giving him the structured side of military and spec ops training to fall back on.

[horsehoedownshowdown]

[dragodraws1]

Poor Eragon, Brom had barely died, the boy didn't have time to process it properly and already had to travel again 😭, at least Murtagh was a great travel companion

Rough drawing of Eragon and Murtagh traveling after Brom’s death.

Man I’m bad at backgrounds

[eliza-makepeace]

Murtagh being emptional when hearing people call him "Master tornac" :(

Interesting that he named the horse tornac after human tornac died... he was given the horse, named it probably, tornac died and then he named it tornac. He's so weird lmao.

Also I'm glad we're finally addressing the biggest problem in the inheritance cycle: that nobody knows where horse tornac is after murtagh was taken.

[everythingloveandanimated]

I’ve been playing around with inheritance cycle AU of what if the father figures lived?

What if Garrow, Brom, Tornac and Ajihad all lived to see the end of the war and beyond?

One of the things I realized is that especially with Garrow surviving the Ra’zac’s torture, it really cheapens and lessen the threat level that the Ra’zac are. The death of Garrow immediately shows how high the stakes are and how dangerous this group of enemies is. An encounter with them most likely means death unless you’re skilled in magic or have high tier fighting skills.

(Or maybe Brom has a set of spells that can cure Ra’zac injuries and himself.)

Just little writing lessons you realize when doing AU’s and fanfics. You can see how and why things work in the Canon material.

[saphira-approves]

Okay so probably the scene I had to sit with the longest just because I loved it so much on my first readthrough was the reveal that Murtagh’s “cell” in the Varden was actually like. basically a cushy hotel room with free library access??? I remember being so so stressed while Eragon was running around just bathing and getting Introduced To Important People and dealing with the Twin’s bs, and every other page I just wanted to shake him and demand he go see his friend, dangit! And then he DID, and Murtagh was actually fine! Downright cheerful! It was incredibly relieving!

And then the rest of Murtagh’s terrible road trip happened and destroyed my emotions, so there’s that.

As for scenes that creeped me out the most, the burrow grub torture scene is probably up there, as well as everything else on Vroengard, but the CREEPIEST thing that still freaks me out just thinking about it is definitely those hooded figures in the ruins of Doru Araeba. Who are they??? What are they??? What do they want??? DO they want????? I have so many questions and I’m not actually sure I want the answers!!!

I would like a shadow bird though, I think they’d make a neat falconry challenge. They’d make an excellent spying partner, too, especially if you could form a strong psychic bond with it… so much potential…

And finally, my current pet theory I’ve been working on is how the Beors were made, and I think dragons did it. But like. Accidentally. Or accidentally on purpose. With magic. There’s a lot of talk in the first book about how dragons are connected to the land, “they suffer as the land suffers” and so on (and personally I think it should be a two-way thing, and that Alagaësia as a whole should have been doing more noticeably poorly with the loss of the dragons, and maybe it was! we just don’t get the POV of anyone who would know that), but I think that connection goes further than just draconic-terran empathy! For one thing, the Burning Planes are still. y’know. Burning. so I don’t think it’s out of the question that Weird Dragon Magic could have made the Impossibly Huge Mountains that are the Beors—maybe an ancient and forgotten conflict with the dwarves, or some other threat, or maybe even a natural disaster. In a geologic sense I think most of the range was made the normal way (tectonic plates colliding), but the size of Farthen Dûr’s hollow center and the endemic Giant Beasts (the wolves, bears, goats, boars, and dragon-cousins) smacks of Weird Dragon Magic to me.

Oh and also I think the Dragon Riders should have a moon base.

AND I desperately—DESPERATELY—need to know more about the unnamed Strong Lady and friends that show up, like, twice and saved Roran’s hide that one time. You know the ones. (I’ll find a page reference at some point)

Eragon fans

C'mon Eragon fans, go wild, tell me the craziest/coolest theory you got/read, or tell me what character you hate the most, or what scene you preferred, or which one it made you creeped you out, literally everything. I want to hear something about our little and precious fandom

[dia-viller]

I was thinking about how Eragon was the first real Murtagh's friend. He knew him only as Murtagh and not as Morzan's son.

Murtagh has never had true friends because everyone was either jealous of him or simply hated him because of his father.

That's why Murtagh didn't want to reveal to Eragon who his father was. He knew that the moment Eragon finds out the truth, he would stop seeing him only as Murtagh and as his friend, but would start seeing him as the son of a traitor.

He didn't want to lose a person who actually trusted him

[alagaesia-headcanons]

Tornac wearing a "I'm not the stepdad, I'm just the dad that stepped up" shirt

[saphira-approves]

Canon: Brom falls in love with one of Murtagh’s parents.

Good chunk of fanon: Brom falls in love with two of Murtagh’s parents.

Enlightened alternate-universe-where-Tornac-survives fanon: Brom falls in love with all three of Murtagh’s parents.

[tonhalszendvics]

Stop right there!

You know the Inheritance Cycle? Yes? Do you want a story with short chapters, but with all the drama and stuff so it'll haunt you all day and all night? Also yes?

Then here is this series, it was written for you, give it some love!

[modern-inheritance]

More from the in-progress Great Escape

I'm not so sure about this part. I need to clean it up, probably rewrite it completely, but just wanted it DOWN.

~

“Ya alright, ya alright.” Murtagh pulled on the woman’s shoulder. It took substantial effort to haul her onto her back, fighting against her natural instinct to keep her battered body tucked as tightly as possible. “Let me see, come on!”

The second she was laying flat the elf grabbed his wrist in an iron grip. Her eyes were wild, a look that Murtagh recognized from Tornac’s many episodes. Seeing but not seeing, dangerous and vulnerable all at once.

He did his best to ignore the pressure and ripped the bandage open with his teeth. He tossed aside the packaging with a practiced flick of his wrist, and with a gruff word of warning, none-too-gently shoved the thick absorbent material into the bleeding gash along the woman’s hip. 

That got her attention. She let him go with a ragged hiss and pressed a hand over the bandage, holding pressure while Murtagh dug in the bag for tape. “Keep holding it, it’s bleeding bad.” 

He snapped back to her when she let out a choking noise, rolled away from him again and clutched her head. Whatever the Shade had done was still in play, though not nearly as powerful as the first wave. Murtagh swore and grabbed her again, partly crawling under the damn table to pull her back. 

While under there, one arm around her waist to try and keep some sort of seal on the bandage, he spotted a glimmer of metal. He hooked it with his free hand, fingers barely brushing the edge before he got purchase, and dragged it out with the elf. Her sword. He shoved it in the sheath at her side. 

“You gotta stay with me, lass.” Murtagh pleaded. Elves, Shades, dragons, Dragon Riders. The entire roof coming down over his head because a dragon was ripping it apart. He was rapidly starting to find he had a wits end and was maybe, just maybe, in just a little bit over his head. 

So he did what he could. He picked up the woman’s bloodied hand and placed it over the wad of gauze. “Just hang in there, we’re almost out of here.” Her hand stayed when he lifted his own, just long enough for him to tape it down as tightly as he could. Unsure if it would hold, his gaze caught on her stolen belt and he readjusted it before ratcheting it down over the mess of tape and bandaging.

(Back to Eragon fighting Durza)

“He’ll kill him.” The elf’s eyes were glassy when Murtagh tore his own gaze away from the spectacle. She was trying to turn over again, this time to her belly, trying to push herself up. Alarmed, Murtagh grabbed her shoulders and forced her back down and back under the table, just in time for a stone the size of an Urgal’s head to bounce off the mahogany. 

“Eragon’s doing just fine, lass!” A jolt of worry lanced through him when he realized the woman was barely pushing against his arms. She had ripped apart a metal locker earlier and now she couldn’t even break his grip. “Just stay still and stay awake, yeah? Saphira’s almost here.”

“Saphira?” The raspy whisper was little more than a confused mumble. “Saphira’s dead….” 

She trailed off. Murtagh swore explosively when he realized her eyes were closed. "For fuckssake, what did I just tell you!"