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the sun and his companion 💛🤍

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Predicting now that Vanus' ally on the other side of the wall is Cadwell. No other explanation for that Honor side quest to exist without him being relevant

Which I mean, would be a cool returning character if not for the voice actor...

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Happy SOTWC P1 :)

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I had to wait at least a week after the console release, and June is almost over, but... HAPPY VANNIMARCO'S RETURN EVERYBODY (?!!?!)

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The Remnant of Meridia's Light

Reimagined sketch from this post of mine.

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I've developed an addiction. Addiction of asking for meme redraws from @ evanjarvi (Cara/BS)

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I can’t believe I actually finished it. I present the Five Companions (iteration 2).

Individual characters + info under the cut

They’re all squares for ease of crossposting to IG.

But yes I was admiring all of that Dragon Ball artwork where the characters are just standing there menacingly on a white background. And I thought, I want to draw something that could be a comic cover for the Five Companions. And this was born out of that. So a slightly unexpected origin but inspiration comes from strange places.

Their designs are mostly based on their concept art iterations so if there’s a few differences that’s why, along with a few creative liberties of my own (like sheathes for the swords, etc).

PS Iveri does have her weapons like everyone else, they’re just out of frame. She wouldn’t be caught dead unarmed.

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Between all the Darien postings, I did want to say my thoughts on Gabrielle as well:

In my opinion, Gabrielle's arc from base game to Solstice is a story of survivor's guilt. She goes from respectable portal mage in the Mages Guild, to combatant in the final charge against Molag Bal to stop the Planemeld. She's not some high ranking mage in the guild, she's just been in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time. She lets Darien flirt with her for fun but plays hard to get. This isn't the time for serious feelings - this is war. And then she watches him vanish in front of her without getting to even confront her own feelings, and watches King Dynar, leader of the charge, die in front of her. She watches these two brave warriors sacrifice themselves to save the day in a way she could not. That is a deeply, deeply traumatic experience - especially when everyone is likely telling you how brave you were for your part in the battle and how happy everyone is that the Planemeld is over. They don't know what it cost.

She spends the next few years doing little but trying to find Darien - scouring books in the Anvil mages guild and making no progress until you give her the note from Darien from Wrothgar. She even joins the Antiquarian's in an attempt to find him (dialogue you can only get if you did the main quest but Not Summerset). But she has to learn about Darien returning and then being lost again in Summerset, again from you. She didn't even get to see him or speak to him or help save the world again. She's been left behind yet again and is following in the trail of the Vestige and their encounters with her obsession. And then she feels responsible for the death of Merric and the capture of Vanus, and has to step in to fill his shoes as the leader of the Mages Guild and Stirk Fellowship alongside Prince Azah.

Look. Gabrielle Benele is not a leader. She is not some legendary, powerful mage with a high ranking in the guild. She is an extremely capable portal mage with experience in war and boatloads of PTSD, and a valued Antiquarian (albeit with some... controversial codices). She's portal girl. She's one third of the OG cov gang. She should not be leading the Mages Guild. That level of pressure on her after everything is insane.

I do not think her crush on Darien is solely why she was so quick to suggest sacrificing herself to bring him back - I think she was struggling and lost for many years. Her life purpose to alleviate her guilt was trying to find Darien; someone she viewed as the best of us all. I feel like it's not unreasonable to think that she may have had thoughts of "it should have been me", knowing how much she admired the person Darien was. I think that hero worship in itself could have fed into the romantic feelings she held for him, and made them into something more than what they actually had in Coldharbour. She's had a long time to stew in those memories and obsess over them. So it's not surprising she would be rather quick to suggest the exchange with the Gift of Death when presented with her own immediate and unavoidable death, and knowing that using it even once would stop Wormblood from being able to use it.

And I think in some way, she recognized that she herself was stuck in the past. Everyone else was able to move on, but she can't. Others may miss him, but she's the only one Still Trying to bring him back. She can't heal, she can't move on.

The only people who could understand are Vanus and the Vestige. Vanus is her superior and now imprisoned, and regardless of your Vestige's relationship with Darien, I think she would feel some level of jealousy at them getting to always be involved in Darien's life. The note in Wrothgar, Summerset, the sidequest in Southern Elsweyr, his ghostly apparition in Blackwood. She doesn't get to be involved, but the hope of his return is the only thing that keeps her going.

I think her sacrifice is far more than just "girl likes a boy enough to die for him" or "killing off woman to bring back some guy". It's a disservice to character to look no further to her obsession with finding Darien and dismiss it narrative favoritism to Darien. It's a heartbreaking conclusion to an 11 year long arc about the only other regular person to leave the Chapel of Light. You got to be a Hero, and she had to just... go on with life. Alone.

And maybe it's not a conclusion! Maybe she will come back in some equally miraculous plot twist. But I think it's important to view her story not as girl sacrifices herself for a boy, but as a story about survivor's guilt and hero worship left unchecked.

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Darien's reaction after Gabriele sacrificed herself to bring him back was so deadpan and confused I could not help but laugh out loud. Perhaps there is something internally going on in that head of his and the vestige is not the only one that is being held back by zos dialogue writing but good grief man, she died for him and he had a "huh? okay, cool I guess, kind of sad though" reaction.

This has been an issue of ZOS writing for years, and why I despise the "epilogue party" they've insisted has to happen. I've never really been excited to stop the world from ending when it cost the lives of those we cared for. The only epilogue party that worked was Necrom and that's because no one died (except Shelreni. And we hate Shelreni) and Gold Road because of what Happens at the party. NPCs don't react enough to character death anywhere in game, besides Gabrielle herself reacting to Dynar and Darien.

It feels like dialogue is too often written to push the plot forward and not as a reaction to a scene? We get Darien back and immediately have to go stop Wormblood. IRL I took 10 minutes of crying before I could even move forward. The writing doesn't really... Let the player sit in a scene? It's all gogogo. I understand the urgency of stopping Wormblood but jesus christ we just got THEE Darien Gautier back and even in base game he's friendlier. I know he knows how to focus on the job when it's important but the quick cutoff of part one doesn't give us a chance to see his funny little guy side again. Or even his emotional reaction besides like... Anger? Frustration? Bro one of your closest friends just Died for you

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Talking to Gabrielle about Darien. I really hope that ZOS won’t leave this as a ‘Gabrielle spends the rest of her life on a hopeless search’ and its instead telling us that we shouldn’t give up on Darien. 

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the more vestige forgets things the more i'm convinced shalidor's eidetic memory spell was faulty 😭

Vestige: I can memorize the contents of any book I read, in exchange for one memory about the world. Who's Vanus Galerion again?

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So before my computer decided to be a bitch, I managed to talk to Gabrielle about Darien...

And you're telling me that Skordo knew about what happened on Summerset, but no one told Gabrielle???? Y'know, the one who spent how long searching for Darien and never gave up on the hope that he was out there, and still refuses to give up??

Gabrielle better be damn instrumental to us getting Darien back for good this time, she deserved better than to be left in the dark like this >:[

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The fact that the high elves on solstice worship the three queens is really interesting lore but also funny as hell because of what happened during summerset

Did they know the girls were fightinggg

Solstice Altmer during Summerset

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SHUT UP

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happy pride month!!!

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Role swap anon I just want you to know I LOVE YOU and I'm going to answer to you with a drawing but I'm unfortunately extremely slow so you'll have to wait a while for it. I just got the divine illumination for tes-gala and I'm going to work on that first (yes. After days of the event being over.)

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martin ....