#I officially headcanon that runaan likes cats

[ruthari-preacher]

Ethari: So you like cats?  Runaan: Yeah.  Ethari: *tries to impress him by slowly pushing a glass off the table*

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Bloodmoon Huntress thoughts

After watching the TDP panel yesterday, I am so full of thoughts I don't even know where to start! So I'll begin with the titular character, because the Bloodmoon Huntress is AMAZING!!

LOOK AT HER, HOLY CATS

I just.

Cannot possibly wait to see what she does, okay. It's gonna be SO BADASS. Stylish evil ftw!

long post is long, I have Many Thoughts tm:

Here's my favorite headcanon/theory about her: the Bloodmoon Huntress is the same elf who proposed mercy for the humans 1000 years ago!

we learned from the panel that she extends her life unnaturally, so she could be as old as the plot wants her to be (which could be an Aaravos thing too?)

she has a thick side braid like the elf in the show/art book sketch

who seems to have become an assassin with her wardrobe change

her neckline changes from that closed collar to the cutout-heart assassin collar that probably means you've killed someone for Xadia

she's hooded up in the sketch and you can see her braid, and the BH has both of those features too

also the cheek slash markings, unless that's a scar

her long sleeves have gotten tattered over time, like Aaravos's clothing, and we know he's been wearing that outfit for at least 300 years

the sketch version of the character has started to collect some bling, and BH is rocking a lot of metal bits

When the panel told us that some of the Moonshadow elves feel that the BH is going about things all wrong by extending her life using forbidden magic, Devon helpfully mentioned that Runaan specifically thinks the BH is on the wrong path. So I thought about what objections he might personally have:

she's a Moonshadow elf who ignores the cycle of life and death, so she's a bit of a disgrace to Runaan's people, and he would take offense

if she is or once was considered an assassin, then she's a bit of a disgrace to assassin honor specifically and Runaan would take even more offense

if she was the very first assassin, the one who spoke up for mercy on behalf of humans and then Luna Tenebris tasked her with taking out the "bad humans" herself in order to maintain a balance and show dedication to her cause (is this angsty dragon politics once again, yes it is), then she was supposed to be the best example to all assassins who followed her, and she failed by tainting herself and losing her honor, and that's not a good leader, so Runaan would be angry and defensive on the part of all the assassins he'd ever trained

the pointy shapes on her arms and boot tops, and on her amulet, are the same shape that Runaan wears on his belt. It's very angular and not swirly, so maybe it represents the dark and pointy side of Moonshadow culture, the assassin side. Maybe it marks the leader of the assassins. She's wearing a lot of this shape

when we first see Aaravos, he is covered in pretty golden bling, but he loses it when he is stuck in the mirror. Maybe golden bling can mark leaders, in ceremonial situations?

and maybe, since BH never died, she never passed the bling and its associated title on to anyone else

so no one else can truly be recognized as the properly titled leader of the Moonshadow elves

and this is why Corvus and everyone else just calls Runaan "leader", because he does lead, but he cannot use any official titles as long as the original title holder still "lives" - kind of like how Denethor is the Steward of Gondor, and he can't sit on the actual throne, but also like how Aragorn goes by Strider out in the wilds

basically Runaan is salty at this undying menace who has taken all the honor that should have belonged to serving his people and turned it inside out and he would absolutely kill her if he could

because that's a mercy she denied herself almost a thousand years ago, and hesitation is torture, and some part of him truly believes that even she deserves rest, but mostly so do all the elves she terrorizes and all the creatures she kills

Further BH design thoughts just for fun:

BH wears several dark golden chains with red stones in them

being chained is a recurring theme in TDP, used on characters who are not free in the metaphorical sense as well as the physical sense. Runaan, Harrow, Viren, Ezran, Claudia, Soren, Gren, and Amaya have been chained up so far

possibly she was once captured and chained by Sunfire elves because of the golden chains

but due to forbidden magics she had already performed or that she used in captivity she escaped

and now she wears the chains as a sign of her own freedom

as a warning to those who might hunt her, perhaps: "you cannot chain me for long"

maybe her collar simply cannot be removed and so she turned it into power jewelry

those gems might not have been red when they were set in her chains and bling

is it me or does that twisted seam in her visible boot top look like she may have literally exploded out of her clothing at one time?

and then stitched herself back together, yes in the creepy way

her face has a gray shadow on it - or is her very pale skin turning gray, perhaps for dark magic reasons

her white hair has purple color in it, which we've seen Claudia wear and Lujanne copy from her

that could be a nod to moon magic which is purple in the ToX playtests

and it could be a nod to dark magic which is always purple

[RoadToElDoradoBothIsGood.gif]

long ago I spotted some various rune spell art for TDP for the different magic types and the file name for the dark magic runes was called "blood magic"

we've seen the Sun Staff go dark purple and red when it got infected with dark magic

the elf in the flashback was holding a shillelagh-shaped (very druidic!) Moon Staff with a primal stone in it, too

if she turned to dark magic to extend her life, perhaps she tainted her own primal stone with it

a fitting term for a Moonshadow assassin who uses both dark magic and primal magic is Blood (dark) Moon (primal) Huntress (assassin, ft. "ranger hunter" class)

But does this mean she has to be evil? No! Well, not inherently. Evil is a choice - and more specifically evil is a series of choosing certain choices over and over - and TDP is very very good at showing us how so many characters are genuinely just sauntering vaguely downward without meaning to become evil at all! But those choices add up and up, over the years, and undoing a single bad choice is always far easier than undoing a series of choices over time.

So maybe that applies to the Bloodmoon Huntress too:

if BH is the same elf from the beginning, she probably spoke up for the humans' lives out of genuine empathy

the decision where she had to be the one to kill evil humans is pretty cruel but somehow that was agreed upon and the first assassin took her duty very very seriously

because if she did not do it then someone else would have to for reasons, and apparently that someone was going to be another Moonshadow elf who also loved and revered life, to whom killing was a very hard thing to contemplate doing

so if the daughter of the Moonshadow leader, aka the future BH, did not take up a sword or staff to kill, then she'd have to live with the knowledge that her cowardice and weakness would force another soft elf to do it, or to die trying

and that, she could not stand to see happen, so she threw herself into her duty with all her heart, to protect those she loved

she went dark - so very very dark - so that no one else would ever have to

it's the same sentiment Runaan shares in the graphic novel

and I think I finally know what Runaan's instinct is, when he tells Rayla in S1E2, "There's an instinct, a moment of truth." It's not to kill. It's to protect those he loves from suffering. He acts swiftly because it's merciful - to his targets, and to the elves who would have to kill if he didn't.

for some reason, Runaan and the BH accept this burden of killing as if it is too big to fight against, so they just do their duty as hard as they can

Runaan's training all day every day makes angstier sense in this light - if he isn't ready at a moment's notice to take on a mission or if he is injured or busy and can't go, then another elf will have to, and when someone else goes out into the night to kill a human, sometimes they don't come home, and that really weighs on Runaan's soul - that's a life needlessly wasted, which he could've saved if he'd just gone and done the mission himself

he probably takes every single mission he possibly can, just so no one else will have to bloody their hands except rarely, despite how well he has trained them

but he does train them as well as he can, because unlike the BH, Runaan accepts his death as an inevitability, even when he thinks it has come for him on Harrow's balcony. He wants someone to be strong enough to do what he does someday

is this another reason for Runaan to tear up on the balcony, when he surrenders to its power and waits for it to claim him, because he knows someone else will have to bear his burden now? yes it is Yet he accepts it because This Is The Way, whereas the BH refused to surrender to her fate

but she may have started down that path for the softest of reasons, namely, she could not stand to see another elf suffer the burden of taking a life, and so she simply refused to die and pass that weight to another

if she had a chosen successor whom she wanted to protect, and she got injured and was dying, and she knew they were not ready, she might have acted impulsively with some very shadowy Moon magic, or gone straight to dark magic, to survive it, and then she realized how pragmatic that approach was

but once you prioritize your life over someone else's, the slope, it gets slippery and perspective, it shifts

maybe she started using dark magic to strengthen herself like Doctor Strange in What if...?, so she would be stronger against the enemy, and it made her monstrous

at some point someone had to say she'd gone too far, and she probably didn't understand why they were angry at her

bonus points if it's her loved one, her own successor, who becomes an assassin to put things right, betrays her to the Sunfire elves or somesuch, and actually tries to kill her, and then everyone learns she kind of can't die

if she was imprisoned and broke free, she may have a very altered view of her purpose in life now

does she still hunt humans? Any evildoer? Can she tell the difference between good and evil? What's her rubric?

does she feed on any life she finds? Those are some seriously impressive red stabby fingers, very red lyrium meets Lady Dimitrescu, what are they for exactly

the fact that her colors are the opposite of Moonshadow colors, as if she is a thematic negative, is amazing. Red instead of green, black instead of white, gold instead of silver. She's as unMoonshadow as a Moonshadow can get, and yet, look at her, which other elf tribe would dare to look this dramatic and gloriously dangerous, come on

Final thoughts on this amazing new character I can't wait to meet:

the red she wears has me thinking. Maybe she chose to wear this color for multiple reasons (how Moonshadow of her, or do we call her Shadowmoon at this point? :D)

if she swore a blood promise to do her dark assassin duty, then perhaps she was trying to shed enough blood - her own? everyone else's? - to fulfill the bloodthirst of a promise that had no perceivable end to its appetite

maybe the red is a magical side effect of the tainting of Moon magic with dark magic, and when she started using dark magic, the effect on her arcanum became visible

or maybe there isn't actually any dark magic in her at all and red is just the shadow magic that's part of Moon magic but it's the dark and creepy stuff that Moonshadows have collectively decided is Bad and Wrong because it can be used to interfere with the natural cycle of life and death that they revere so much, and she's a Shadow Mage, basically a necromancer (cough @random-fandom-ramble cough)

or maybe she just works in a children's hospital, where she learned about color theory

none of my ideas actually have anything to do with lunar eclipses for once and that kind of shocks me, but if I had to guess, I'd say that either a bloodmoon gives the Huntress massive power and she comes out to strike at her enemies then, or it actually negates her power, and the one time you might have the slimmest chance at taking her out is during such an event

and now for some plot ideas

Runaan seems like he's going to hunt the BH in this graphic novel

I'm not sure he will catch her though

he could, and he could defeat her and save the Moonshadow elves from her menace

and that could inspire Rayla to ask to become an assassin, to save people too

but I think the BH's influence on Runaan and Rayla's lives might be angstier and more long-term than that

consider if Runaan can't defeat her and she escapes him and just vanishes back into the shadows to pop out next bloodmoon or something

and Rayla looks at this utter badass she loves and respects and decides "this poor fool needs my help, obviously" and signs up to be an assassin to watch his back

and to help him protect those they love, together

because she's so smol and she doesn't understand sacrificing yourself for others yet, all she knows is that idea keeps hurting her

so if she can protect Runaan, then he'll never leave her (oh Rayla)

and he does teach her how to think like he does over the years, so when she meets Callum, and Runaan sacrifices himself for her, Rayla just accepts that this gesture means "love" and "protection"

and she uses it on Callum at the end of TTM

she learned how to embrace the role of scapegoat for her people, as a love language, from Runaan. They're both very good at stabby acts of service

and what about the BH still being out there? Well, if the BH still lives in the current TDP timeline, then Rayla will encounter her again, and this time she'll understand sacrifice a lot better

and if the BH can only be defeated during a lunar eclipse, then may I helpfully point once again to "this was Tiadrin's master plan all along"

where Tiadrin had Rayla on purpose during a blue moon so she'd be strong enough to take out the BH and free the Moonshadow elves from a blood promise that was as undying as she was

and she'll do it on her birthday

Anyway I love the Bloodmoon Huntress and I can't wait to read all about her and how she messes with the moonfam, is it April yet

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Mirror, Mirror, pt 2

Part 1 is here, in which I thrill everyone by explaining a cool detail about the way the mirror seems to function and conclude that Aaravos was watching Runaan through the magic mirror.

Part 2 will be about what Runaan knows, and what Aaravos knows, as a result of that scene.

The first time the mirror is scooted into Runaan’s cell, the poor guy seems to be honestly asleep.

His body’s probably pretty exhausted, what with refusing food and all those injuries to heal. (This is going somewhere, I swear. You can tell by my eyes I’m innocent.)

And here comes the mirror.

This is just backward deduction, but since Aaravos turned his side of the mirror on and watched this scene unfold, he might have been able to sense the mirror being moved. Might have been concerned or intrigued to see where he was being taken next. Probably left the mirror on and pulled up a padded red chair with three points to see what would happen next.

The mirror isn’t uncovered right away, but later, Viren returns, having left the mirror alone with Runaan.

Runaan, wary, raises his head at the mere sound of Viren’s approaching footsteps. He may not be sure what the mirror is yet, but he knows it’s bad, and he can’t rest properly with it in the room with him.

Viren whips off the blanket and demands to know what Runaan can tell him about it. It’s possible, judging by the muted reaction the mirror gets from the assassin, 

that Runaan already knows what it is, just by its feet, and that’s why he couldn’t sleep and looked so pissed.

It’s possible that the scariest part for him isn’t the mirror itself, but his reversed reflection. Which he knows to look for. 

He sees something is wrong with his reflection.

So he checks. He looks to one side of it,

Then the other,

then back, just to be sure. He needs to be sure.

And he is sure. His reflection is flipped. The mirror is active from the far side. Somehow, he knows what that means. He knows Aaravos is watching him at that exact moment.

(note: I realized that’s what he is doing when I remembered Doctor Who S10E1: The Pilot.)

And that scares him so badly that this veteran Moonshadow assassin breaks all tradition and actually shows his fear.

His eyebrows bend in a direction that makes him look like a cornered cat.

He cannot help but stare like trapped prey for a moment, under the spell of power that Aaravos’s mere legend exudes. He knows he’s looking right at the most powerful elf in the world, and the most dangerous. That the Star Touch is looking back at him. 

But Runaan is battle-hardened, and he keeps his wits about him. He may or may not know whether Aaravos can hear him, but he’s taking no chances with his body language. He won’t show Aaravos anything of use.

When Viren asks for details, Runaan’s reflection makes its position clear.

Ain’t happening. No accursed Archmage is going to sit back and watch Runaan break down and submit to a mere human.

Runaan doesn’t even blink. Anything he says, any hesitation he makes, Aaravos might glean something from it. And more immediately, a human dark mage has captured the Mirror of Aaravos and is asking what it’s for.

Runaan feels the pressure of keeping Aaravos and Viren from connecting. What a horror show that would be! So he digs in his heels and provokes Viren. And it works.

Thing is, Runaan probably wasn’t expecting this kind of end. He was hoping, no doubt, for something more permanent, so he couldn’t be pressured to answer any more questions about the mirror. 

He does look legitimately terrified as Viren begins to suck out his soul. Moonshadows have a connection to spirits--Runaan would know exactly what was happening to him, know its utter wrongness. Possibly Viren meant the coin, in Runaan’s case, to function as solitary confinement, planning to pull him out later and demand answers again, but he figured out the mirror’s trick on accident first. Alas.

And now for what Aaravos knew:

Look at the above picture. You can see the mirror’s glass. Which means Aaravos can see Viren as well as Runaan. Can see the dark magic staff.

Aaravos knew Viren had his mirror before they “officially” made contact. It’s part of his power play. Pretend that Viren discovered him, rescued him, and act grateful, and Viren assumes he himself is in charge and doesn’t look too hard at Aaravos’s scheming and his prevaricating words.

I always felt like Aaravos was taunting Viren with this one scene. Making sure Viren could actually see him while pretending he couldn’t see Viren. (Who reaches for their cloak’s reflection instead of their actual cloak? Not this Archmage.)

Pretending to be the second one to turn on the mirror, when he was first. Aaravos is always first.

We know Aaravos can make his side of the mirror go black at will. 

Killing the fire was just a parlor trick for Viren’s benefit. 

Just look at that sultry pout of intent. So obvious. Does Aaravos write screenplays to amuse himself? This one he scripted for Viren is a masterpiece.

Aaravos even knew exactly where to look for Viren’s magic staff. He’d seen where Viren fetched it from when he bespelled Runaan

He’s jerking Viren’s chain so hard that Viren’s teeth should be rattling out of his head. Or, more practically, his brains. Which is kinda happening, and I am here for it.

So, if this all holds together, then we have one more person who knows Runaan’s actual fate: Viren, Gren, and now Aaravos.

But would he help Runaan, if he had the chance? Ooh, the possibilities!

My headcanon: Runaan has seen the mirror personally and knows it well enough to understand the reflection issue because he used to be a Dragon Guard. That job is why he stands so straight and tall and holds his hands behind his back all the time, compared to all the other lurky, sneaky Moonshadows. He was stationed, at least some of the time, at the Dragon King’s palace. He knows better than most the dangers of that mirror. (I use this in my rescue-Runaan fic if you’re interested)

Aaaand now I’m back around to which one is “worse than death.” First I thought it was Aaravos. Then I thought it was the mirror, as a prison. Now...

(now with part 3)