#Orym knows Ludinus is more powerful than Otohan but to him Otohan is the most powerful version of who he could be

[vvitchllng]

In addition to Everything Else that happened this episode, I can’t stop thinking about the moment where Laudna asks him why Seedling isn’t enough why he wants This sword and Orym’s whole demeanor shifts and he looks Laudna dead in the eyes and says you’re right why Would you reach for a darker power.

Orym and Laudna are the characters with the most interparty conflict and they’re the same!!!!!!! At their core their strongest motivation is their drive to protect the ones they love at the cost of themselves if necessary. We see it all the time with Orym throwing himself in front of his friends over and over again, making deals with fae to try and keep them safe. And we see it all the time with Laudna and Delilah, where over and Over again she lures Laudna with the promise of being strong enough to protect her friends, to keep them safe. We saw it again tonight when Delilah manipulated her to get the sword by telling her it was a danger to Orym!!

Both of them looked at the power that caused their pain and decided to take it for their own, to use it to protect their loved ones instead, because if it was capable of such devastation against them, it was capable of delivering that same devastation to their enemies. Laudna asking why seedling isn’t enough (why he isn’t enough, the frustrated self-deprecating response “I have Push-ups!”) and Orym returning the question because Laudna Does have her own power separate from Delilah, she just doesn’t think its enough for what’s coming!!!

They both lost their families, but where Orym had the rest of his family, a purpose, a home, Laudna lost Everything and only had the voice of her murderer as comfort in the cold. So now they’re both taking on the power that destroyed their lives, but Orym can be rational and willing to have a discussion about doing so, while Laudna absolutely Cannot do the same because of how entwined she is with Delilah (with Delilah quite literally guiding her actions in addition to the years of psychological manipulation and abuse), and so they’re the same and yet so utterly different that they keep coming up against this fundamental inability to understand the other’s position because despite the same underlying motivations, their responses are so different.

Why would you reach for a darker power, why can you not understand why I’m doing this, why can you not see I’m doing this For You. Distorted reflections of each other wanting to be understood and at a loss when faced with the differences between them, what a fucking dynamic.

[ludinusdaleth]

i feel like the mere idea of bringing up orym & ludinus and their entwined threads of fate is taboo, but i cant stop thinking about it.

orym is a rare, nearly impossible kind of protector - a guard, somehow not attached to a corrupt, brutal system. he just wishes to protect his home, his leader. but ludinus, via otohan, attacks this peaceful place. he turns the ashari cautious & agrieved. he turns the society of air into the eye of a hurricane. orym is turned into a widow. his title as guard is marred; he failed. maybe zephrah is forever marked as a battleground & graveyard, now.

orym walks across tal'dorei & marquet, slowly healing beside his friends, protecting them as best he can. but then he learns who killed his family, and she kills his friends, too - and him, for a moment, giving him visions of his dead husband, reopening the wound. he is in the eye of a sandstorm, tinged red by the moon. he is a pilgrim no longer. his attempt to be a guard has once again been thwarted. maybe you cant have peace if you're a protector.

orym is at the center of the goddamn planet, the leylines aligning as he witnesses his leader fall at the hands of otohan, again at the center of his home's wound, and ludinus, again pulling the strings. a protector far stronger, more capable, than him, adorned in feathers, alight with divinity, falls worse. his friends are flung to the far sides of the world. he once again fails as a guard. maybe a guard is too small in the scale of this world's forces to impact the tide at all.

and so, orym nods to laudna as she rips bor'dor's life from him. he shears his hair ever more, adorns tougher armor. he makes a deal with a hag, desperate for any chance someone he cares for could maybe fucking make it out okay - even if his vastly increased sternness to keep them safe pushes all of them farther into fear of their own. he sneers with unfathomable anguish as he sees ludinus at the volcano and wastes every one of his action points to rip his soldiers apart. he uses ludinus's harness. he takes the willmaster's power. he keeps pushing into the bloodred storm. he could never be a guard right. so it is time to be a soldier. to truly protect must mean to run to the source of all of it and end it once and for all.

all of the bells have been forged by ludinus, a horseman of war, but orym takes it most viscerally. he does everything in his power to stop ludinus, but in a way the elf has already won - or perhaps, in his need for exandria to be "saved" (as he percieves his actions will do), he's failed, but the bells have still lost. because this new generation isnt at peace. they arent even heroes. they are soldiers. orym more than anyone else has accepted that is his life, his death, his fate. there is no goal of his that doesnt end at ludinus. ludinus, who just like him, lost everything in a war involving gods. who has felt the way the world keeps turning, unbothered by what destroyed his society. who uses that accursed harness to take power for a cause. who doesnt want to force someones mind to get what he needs, or kill, but does, because it is necessary. who has pushed himself to the point he is a means to an end more than a person, willing to rip himself apart because he doesnt matter, his goal does. who cant see anything but war on the horizon anymore.

when the two are mentioned together it causes folk to bristle. the idea orym could be in ludinus's shadow is seen as a suggestion that orym is evil as him. but, thats not what i intend. it is a terrible thing, watching someone's gaze harden after tragedy. once a long time ago, as the gods fought across exandria, ludinus saw his world destroyed. and so he enacted a plan to ensure that would never happen again. that they would suffer, and mortals would thrive. but his plan was a god's foot, trampling mortal society upon society. and so orym saw his world destroyed. and he knows killing ludinus is how to let it mend. as the two march forward, in a second calamity, i can think of nothing but the first scene of exu: calamity, when pelor & asmodeus fought as avalir fell below them. despite ludinus's raging, incredible hatred of the gods, the biggest tragedy of all is that mortals really are crafted in the gods' image: and he, & orym, are most representative of that endless cycle of war, of this war, a failure of the past generations, of ludinus, to ensure a "true" freedom of mortals. of peace.

willmaster edmunda was a terrible person, but i fear she was on the right track when she spat at orym "some would like to live in harmony [with Exandrians]. some... know the nature of violence, that others like you carry."

he would never have carried it if ludinus had not dropped it at his feet.