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Ladislava for day 5!!

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Today's comic with Marianne!! Also the remainder of the comics will be a day late because tomorrow's comic isn't ready, but I do have stuff drafted for all 7 days

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the kids just want to play roblox

Edelgard and Mercedes for day 3!

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Professor, has anyone ever told you you’re hard to read?

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Hbd best girl 🫶

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Wanted to try another Garreg Mach painting like I did back during Plein Airpril so I painted the Holy Tomb.

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portrait of saint cethleann

(actually a study of vigée le brun's portrait of countess anna ivanovna tolstaya, but featuring flayn)

i rendered most of this with dilated pupils and now i'm dying. anyway, happy birthday flayn!

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Ms Arnim before the bad times

YCH Art by @anrig8

Pre-TWSITD Cornelia is probably never gonna leave my head at this rate. The idea of this unseen miracle worker character having her life and image ruined is just too compelling to me.

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Skyrim, 4E201

at the dawn of the Dragon Crisis

>> Direct link to the map <<

Skyrim at the start of the game! For the most part, at least—the forts that the Imperials and Stormcloaks take over after you first clear them are marked as belonging to those factions. Also including a number of towns only found in the lore, and a few other locations expanded into being proper settlements.

The extent of Forsworn control is pretty speculative, but I based it on the areas where they control most of the locations in-game, e.g. with their various redoubts.

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POV you look through the peephole on your front door

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| The Rose of the Mittelfrank Opera |

A piece from about a year ago of everyone’s favorite wine auntie and professional drunk (affectionate), Manuela 💖

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Manuela and Cornelia doing that one meme

It also doubles as ship art which is double good for me :3

Artist: Calypso11 (they don't have a Tumblr sorry)

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that is definitely a possibility!! i could also see the Apostles being a mix of Nabateans and humans granted significant amounts of Crest blood, akin to Jeralt. i think humans granted Crests in that manner still age, just very slowly:

Rhea: When I first met Jeralt, he was quite young. Why, he could not even grow a full beard at that point!

Byleth: When did you meet? Rhea: It was a long while back. At the time, Jeralt was a soldier of the Kingdom. He was injured in battle, and I saved him just as he was about to perish. That was our first meeting.

so he was young enough to not be able to grow a beard when he received her Crest, but has clearly aged in the 300-ish years since then. Aubin is described by Yuri as:

Can't quite remember how old I was, but my mother had taken in an elderly man wandering the town.

so i could totally see Aubin being a human who received a Crest at a young age, and has aged enough in the past thousand years to finally be old, just as Jeralt grew from young adulthood to middle age over the course of 300 or so years. to be fair, i don't think there are any other cases of someone who was granted a Crest later giving it to someone else via blood transfusion, but given that they're able to pass it on to their descendants, i don't think it's impossible.

i tend to headcanon Aubin, Chevalier, and Timotheos as having been just humans who received Crests, and thus weren't quite Enough for Rhea to include as proper Saints with the real Nabateans. Noa, on the other hand, i like to think was a Nabatean, though there's admittedly little to back that up. perhaps the strongest evidence is actually from a meta perspective: the Four Saints get their names from the mythological Fomorians, who were said to have been descended from Noah. none of the other three are connected at all there, so it makes Noa stand out to me in that regard.

do people have thoughts on like. the normal hierarchy of the church of seiros. what do bishops do?? how many bishops are there?? how does one become a bishop? what about like, parish priests or the equivalent?

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ooh, honestly that would make sense, too. the Church could be split into a bunch of dioceses, each classed into one of the branches, with the Bishop of Rhiannon being ex officio the head the Western Church, the Bishop of Garreg Mach being the Archbishop, and the Bishop of, yknow, i'm not sure what the Eastern Church's chief bishop would be. maybe Kupala, even? it's in the right area. regardless, you're right and i could totally see that being a way to have loads of bishops, while still having one be the ranking bishop of the branch. so essentially each branch of the church would be analogous to an ecclesiastical province, with the head bishop being the Metropolitan Bishop, while each of the other Bishops would be the various Suffragan Bishops subordinate to them. i honestly like that more and might just adopt that into my headcanons there

that's definitely another possibility re: the Cardinals! letting them in on (part of) the secret around their identity is probably the next best thing, while still giving Rhea ultimate control over who achieves that rank. they might have some sort of right of recommendation, too, where they can put candidates forward that she has to consider, but has no obligation to actually appoint.

thank you!!! i really like the idea of having this much broader set of saints than what the Central Church currently focuses on. folk saints would also be very cool to see 👀 that definitely seems to be the timeline that seems most apparent in-game, but there was also that whole plot to assassinate Rhea that happened around the same time as the Tragedy of Duscur! the one Christophe got executed for participating in. Rhea covered that one up, but there's been some form of ongoing conflict for at least several years before canon, and very possibly even longer. personally i like to think that things really started splitting a long while before, possibly as a result of the dissolution of the Southern Church. maybe they were dissatisfied with how the then-Archbishop handled that? could definitely have amplified existing and growing doctrinal differences. i'll have to give it more thought.

and same!!! god i love worldbuilding, and there's so much in Fódlan that really just makes me want to expand on it,,,

do people have thoughts on like. the normal hierarchy of the church of seiros. what do bishops do?? how many bishops are there?? how does one become a bishop? what about like, parish priests or the equivalent?

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i have definitely had Thoughts about the structure of the church, but i've found that some of what's in canon feels unclear at best and conflicting at worst, so i've had to make headcanons with that in mind. ramblings below:

there's this one bit of dialogue from Tomas that elucidates a bit of the church's structure:

The head of the Western Church holds the title of bishop. That's not as distinguished as an archbishop, such as Lady Rhea, but it still comes with a fair amount of authority. If someone in that position plotted an assassination, I cannot help but think it must have been instigated by some outside force. There are bishops in the Eastern Church as well, but to speak frankly, they do not have much impact. They are under the influence of both the archbishop and the Leicester Alliance, so their ability to voice grievances is quite limited.

there are a few things that make me go ??? there, so i'm gonna machine translate the original japanese:

The head of the Western Church holds the position of bishop. Although not as high as Archbishop Rhea, he still has considerable authority. I can only assume that such a person was instigated in the assassination attempt. There is a bishop in the Eastern Church, but to be honest, he has no presence. He is under the influence of both the archbishop and the League of Leicester, so his voice is probably weak.

obv not perfect because it's just machine translation, but it does make me consider the english version differently. first of all, japanese lacks both articles and plural markings. this means that:

in english it says "an archbishop, such as Lady Rhea", which i think is a translation flaw. that would suggest there are multiple archbishops, but we see no evidence of this, and the original japanese version seems to suggest that that quote was only talking about her specifically. with that, i'm going to say that there is only one Archbishop of the Church, and it's Rhea.

the head of the Western Church holding the title of Bishop makes it seem like a significant title, but he also says there are bishops plural in the Eastern Church. does this mean there are actually a bunch of bishops around, and the Western Church is actually quite insignificant? based on the japanese version, i don't think so. since japanese doesn't mark for plurality, it appears that that bit could refer to there being a singular bishop in the Eastern Church, or many. based on the fact that the head of the Western Church holding that title seems to be significant, i'm going to conclude each branch is headed by a singular Bishop. the Archbishop could then ex officio be the Bishop of the Central Church (or vice versa. compare the Pope being the Bishop of Rome).

with this in mind, i think it's likely that there are actually only three proper Bishops in the modern Church of Seiros: the Bishop of the Central Church (the Archbishop), the Bishop of the Western Church, and the Bishop of the Eastern Church (barely has a say). there was formerly a Bishop of the Southern Church, but with that having been dissolved a century prior, there likely isn't one anymore. i could actually see the possibility of there still being someone named Bishop of the Southern Church as a de jure title with no actual church to lead anymore, but there's nothing in canon that indicates that's the case. i just think it'd be neat!

as a side note, it is true that we see tons of people called Bishop in-game. while this could be taken as evidence of a much greater number of bishops existing in-world, i think it's likely just a result of gameplay abstraction, given that "Bishop" is just the name of a regular old FE class.

as for becoming a bishop, there's very little in canon to go on. after Catherine's paralogue, she says:

The church will have to choose a new bishop, and do whatever else is necessary to rebuild the Western Church.

the phrasing here makes me think "The church" and "the Western Church" are intended to be distinct, with "The church" being the Central Church. we also get these from Dimitri and Hubert following the Goddess's Rite of Rebirth:

The church is led by those here at Garreg Mach, and the Western Church doesn't have a strong voice on its governing council.

It seems the bishop of the Western Church was always opposed to the church being ruled centrally from Garreg Mach. Perhaps they hope to remove the archbishop in order to completely strip the Central Church of its authority.

it's never specified exactly how the Bishop of the Western Church is selected, but based on these, it's clear that it's the Central Church that does the selecting. that brings me to the Cardinals. i think it's likely that the Cardinals are the ones who appoint the Bishops of each branch of the Church. there isn't too much in canon about the cardinals, but Tomas says:

Do you know about the cardinals? They are the ones who run the church. Their identities are a closely guarded secret...

they could be the "governing council" that Dimitri mentions above, and given that they explicitly used the term "Cardinal", it seems likely that they're the ones who pick the Archbishop and possibly the other Bishops as well. the fact that their identities are secret is very interesting to me, and it makes me think that Rhea likely uses that fact to rig the selection of Bishops and of the Archbishop. it's implied in Hopes that a former Archbishop was also Rhea:

But I also found a weird story about an archbishop from two centuries ago. [...] Still, is it just me, or does she look a lot like Lady Rhea?

so Rhea probably rigs the Archbishop selection in favor of herself whenever she decides she wants the position. possibly always, just swapping out her hair colors like some Clark Kent-tier disguise.

SO, that means we have a single Bishop heading each branch, and they are selected by the Cardinals.

as for the Cardinals themselves, when they reach that position, they undergo a rite where they receive a Crest Stone fragment and blood:

It is kept secret, but there is a certain rite that all initiates to high office in the church must undergo. In this rite, one pledges to serve the goddess, and in return, receives a Crest Stone fragment and blood. The ones who have transformed alongside Rhea just now are the ones who have accepted those gifts.

they don't mention the Cardinals by name here, but they do in japanese. the last line there, translated, is:

Now transformed with Rhea are the cardinals who have swallowed the stone and blood in the ritual …….

so Rhea gives the Cardinals a Crest infusion (probably extending their life), which does not seem like something Rhea would allow without having a say in who gets chosen. for that reason, i figure that the Cardinals themselves are probably selected by the Archbishop, given a Crest infusion by her, and have their identities generally only known by her. totally rigged by Rhea from the top down.

hell, bit of a conspiracy theory, but she may even have fake Cardinals. if she's the only one who knows who they are, who's to say that all these Cardinals supporting her positions aren't real?

however, Dimitri says the Western Church "doesn't have a strong voice", and not "doesn't have a voice". the "governing council" of the Church thus must include some delegates from the West and East, as well. maybe each of those branches has their own suite of Cardinals? i could see each of them getting a number of Cardinals that Rhea ensures don't outnumber her own Central Church Cardinals, thus giving the branches the appearance of a say when really they'll always get overruled if the Central Church disagrees. Rhea probably also doesn't give them Crest blood.

so at the highest level of the Church, we have

an indeterminate number of Cardinals with hidden identities. a majority are tied to the Central Church and are selected by the current reigning Archbishop, while the Western and Eastern Churches both get a smaller number of appointees that will never be enough to overrule the Central Church.

one Bishop for each branch of the Church. they are selected by the Cardinals.

the Archbishop, who is also the Bishop of the Central Church. they (or even just she, really. who knows if Rhea has ever let someone else become Archbishop) are also selected by the Cardinals.

all probably serve for life (or "life" in Rhea's case). given the amount of power Rhea seems to wield, it is likely that the Bishops have broad authority when it comes to managing their branch, likely including the appointment of lower-level priests and the like.

beneath the Bishop level, there are numerous mentions of priests and monks, and even a couple of nuns. no idea what the monk/nun distinction might be, since there are also female monks seen in-game, and lots of other titles in 3H aren't gendered, so,,, who knows. there seem to be a lot of folks at this level:

Ever since the Empire declared war on the church, we have lost all contact with the priests and monks who were in the Imperial capital.

there are a few of what appear to be churches or chapels in the backgrounds of some urban maps, so i think there are almost certainly an equivalent to parish priests/pastors. there's nothing in canon about it, but i'm not opposed to the idea that there's likely an intermediary level as well, just for convenience managing things, since the branches of the Church are still pretty huge in scope. we'd end up with a hierarchy like this:

on top is the Central Church. while technically a branch akin to the Western and Eastern Churches, their Bishop is the Archbishop and successor of Seiros, holding authority over all parts of the Church. since the dissolution of the Southern Church, their domain is probably eastern Faerghus and southern/eastern Adrestia.

the Western Church and Eastern Church. both are headed by a Bishop, and get some kind of say in the operation of the Church as a whole, but not much. the Western Church probably has most of Mach in its domain, while the Eastern Church gets Leicester, and maybe some of eastern Adrestia. i could see Viscounty Hrym falling under their influence.

possibly an intermediary level? having just the three diocese-equivalents feels like too few, but maybe they get by just fine. if this exists, i'm partial to calling the ranking members "presbyter", based solely on aesthetics

local parishes, led by priests. responsible for leading services, running parish churches, etc. normal priestly things. also within the domain of the parish would be chapels, like the old chapel where Jeralt gets killed.

various monasteries, inhabited by monks (and i guess nuns?). we only really hear about Garreg Mach, but i'd bet there are monastic communities all over the place in every corner of Fódlan.

a bit of a tangent, but one other point i wanted to dive into a bit is the role of the Saints inside of the Church. despite the Catholic-inspired trappings of the Church of Seiros (it's fun translating stuff from japanese, since when i look up definitions for these terms, it's always like "oh this is only used in Christian (esp Catholic) contexts"), the Saints don't appear to functional in the same way as Catholic Saints do. we have just the Four Saints, right? except we don't! first of all, there are the Apostles, who are also referred to as Saints. Constance, for instance, calls Noa "Saint Noa" a bunch. it's said that "everything about them has been lost" or whatever, but that doesn't really seem to be true. plenty of stuff is still named after Noa, and Linhardt's able to find/remember stuff about them.

but even if the Apostles really are "lost", there are a handful of references to completely different Saints, such as Luca:

.As another example, though much said about him is likely fiction, we have Saint Luca and his many offspring. The man loved love, and had great affection for the many children he brought into the world. However, appearances can be deceiving. Was he truly the comely saint?

like who the fuck is Luca?? i've seen some headcanons before that "Luca" might be a pet name for Lycaon, but i'm not sure about that one. Luca is also the name of one of Rhea's weird named golems! here are all their names:

Luca

Iris

Chevalier

Bernhard

Gajus

Wilhelm

Marcelle

Simone

so we have Luca, who's explicitly a Saint, and Chevalier, one of the Apostles and thus also a Saint. Wilhelm's almost certainly just Emperor Wilhelm, but might the others also be Saints? if so, why do we just have the Four Saints, and not like,,, the Fourteen? or more?

now this is getting fully into headcanon territory, but i think this is part of the major fundamental difference in dogma that is causing the schism between the Central and Western Churches. in Flayn and Seteth's paralogue, one of the enemy priests mentions:

It is our duty to worship Saint Cichol! We will not allow heretics to come near!

specifically calling out the worship of Cichol! i think that the Western Church may put more importance on the full suite of Saints than the Central Church does. the Central Church is very focused on Seiros (who would have guessed that Seiros would do that?), to the point where the whole organization is the Church of Seiros, not the Church of Sothis! just as Seiros is given primacy over the Saints, the Archbishop (her spiritual successor) is given primacy over the branches of the Church.

i headcanon that the Western Church styles itself as the Church of the Saints, and prefers a style of Church that's more decentralized, led by a council of equal Bishops instead of a "first among equals" Archbishop. these various other Saints, long ago left by the wayside by the Central Church as the focus of worship increasingly turned to Seiros and Seiros alone, would still be considered to be of major importance by the Western Church.

really, the views we see by members of the Central Church that the Western Church is "close" to splitting from the Central Church seem like a massive understatement. the Western Church priests explicitly refer to the Central Church members as "heretics", and call Seteth "dog of the apostate" (!!). i think that schism has already happened and Rhea is just pretending it hasn't!

i could probably ramble further on that topic, but this is already a whole 2.5k word essay at this point, so i think i'm going to call it there. long story short: the Church is structured solely for Rhea's benefit, and the Western Church has started to catch on.

do people have thoughts on like. the normal hierarchy of the church of seiros. what do bishops do?? how many bishops are there?? how does one become a bishop? what about like, parish priests or the equivalent?

[reyneluvirith]

Sothis' design symbols and colors are frequently represented in nabataeans design, game's UI and many more. In this post, we will address all of this.

Stars

These magical points of light would have always reminded people of other worlds and heavenly powers. According to spiritualists and astrologers, the stars transmit certain messages and energies that affect our own world. Stars are often seen as magical and mysterious, reflecting the mysteries of the universe. Also, the star would hold the meaning to something higher, beautiful, enlightening, mighty, and divine. All of these things unmistakably represent everything Sothis is in a game. The stars also symbolize guidance on the right path (either literally or figuratively), a role played by Sothis, Byleth, and Rhea in game.

Heart

The heart often symbolizes love and passion, but it also symbolizes spirit, the essence of life and strength, and this is in line with the concept of the crest of flames as the source of Sothis’ power. Furthermore, the crest of flames is in the stylized shape of a heart, and in the Sothis’ design it appears literally inside a heart in her necklace.

The similarity of the design of Sothis to the Nabataeans

In order to understand the method of my explanation of the similarity of the nabateans design with Sothis’ tiara, I divided the crown parts and named each part as follows: P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6, P7, P8, and P9.

Surely many have noticed that Rhea’s adornment is very similar to that of Sothis, while the patterns on her cape are similar to those of Sothis’ dress and the crest of flames. 

She has P1 and P2 in her outfit as Seiros.

Like Rhea, Seteth has in both his diadem and belt frame and tassels similar parts to that of Sothis’ tiara, but in a more stylized form as pictured below.

While Flayn’s barrette may not look like the parts of Sothis’ tiara at first glance, they are in fact stylized P1, P2/P3, and P5.

The distinctive pattern that Seteth and Flayn share looks like a stylized of Sothis’ knot, and even the pattern on Seteth’s back is similar to a P3.

Even the pendant owned by Sitri is the same as the P8.

Colors

Sothis generally wears blue (specifically dark blue), which is the color of the star Sirius. However, it is very important to note that the Sothis’ ribbons are distinguished by the color white, which in Buddhist culture and most world cultures symbolizes learning, purity, longevity and knowledge, and pink symbolizes the traditional Buddha. So we see Sothis in crests mural wearing only white and pink. (I avoided golden and black because I felt that they are just colors used in general in design)

Besides, all the Nabateans wear the same Sothis’ color scheme, white, blue, golden and black.

The only color they lack is pink, which only Byleth and Seiros wear in her hair band.

The Byleth’s dagger also has the same Sothis’ color scheme, representing the relationship they have. But I guess I’ll talk more about Byleth’s design in another post.

The rainbow fish bestowing the Goddess Messenger has the same Sothis’ color scheme.

I know that I ignored black and golden, and I know that some may think that the uniform colors of the Officers Academy represent the names of the three houses, but it also specifically represents the Sothis’ color scheme, and evidence of this is the white shirts, and the dark blue which is the same color as Sothis’ dress.

Its house leader insignia is similar to P1 and P4.

The pattern in uniform has P1 motifs, as does the infinity motif in Sothis’ necklace.

The uniform brooch is stylized for P1, P3 and P4, but in rhombus pattern style.

Speaking of the rhombus pattern, some must have noticed it given its presence a lot in the game, and in any product for it. Sometimes 4 rhombuses major are combined to form a four-pointed star, and sometimes 4 rhombus minors are also combined with the major ones to form an eight-pointed star. The eight-pointed star is the one that represents Sothis and the Nabateans in general, which symbolizes god, protection, and victory. Over the years, it has also taken on different meanings due to a variety of cultures and customs adopting it. In many cultures the eight-pointed star is also a symbol of harmony, spirit, and matter. You could even think of this star shape as two superimposed squares that form the basis for the universe. Sometimes a square is confused with a rhombus, especially since a rhombus can also form an eight-pointed star with a square. 

This pattern is present in many parts of the game, including white magic units, church npc, and the pattern found in Rhea and Gilbert outfits.

The pattern found in Cathedral.

And in many UI game.

There are also many UI that contain a Sothis’ design, as shown in the image below.

[reyneluvirith]

Happy birthday Caspar!! My favorite streamer :) Sparkle On!!