#gardener essek

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

[disasterpurplebois]

“I think the smartest thing to do in this situation is to just eliminate the offender,” Essek said as he lifted his mug to take a sip. The steam fogged up his glasses for a moment before clearing up and giving Essek a view of the woman across from him.

Yasha shook her head, her braids and beads clanking softly. “But what if I just chop the heads off? Then I can put them on display.” She pushed the tray of cookies towards Essek. “Try these, I just got the new recipe from Martina.”

Essek reached a hand out and plucked a still-warm cookie from the top of the pile. “Alas, no, cutting off the heads won’t kill them, their roots go deep. I’m sorry, Yasha, but you’ll have to rip them up if you want to protect your tomatoes.”

Yasha sighed. “I suppose I can dig them up and plant them somewhere else in the garden, away from the vegetables.” She glanced across the kitchen table and out into the back garden at the offending plants.

Essek noted that the garden was flourishing, much better than his own. He tried to employ the tips Yasha gave him but he found that growing vegetables required much more work than the simple picturesque flowers he planted at Caleb’s cottage.

“Do you want to take some more green bean plants when you—” Yasha started to say. Her voice was cut off by the sound of the front door slamming open and heavy footfalls entering the house. Essek heard Beauregard grunt a question to which Yasha answered, “in the kitchen, babe.”

Beauregard rounded the corner, clad in her blue and gray Expositor robes. She was clutching a stack of notebooks and looked a little wild-eyed when she entered the kitchen. She dropped a quick kiss to the crown of Yasha’s head before turning to Essek.

“Yo, Hot Boi, you gotta get home. Caleb got a message from that druid lady in Tal’dorei and it sounds like he needs you for something. I have to review these notes from what we found the Archive today. We’re on to something, there’s definitely a connection to Molaesmyr.” The Expositor kicked out another chair at the kitchen table and plopped down, already flipping open one of the notebooks and tapping her chin. Yasha got up and set another cup of tea down at Beau’s elbow before walking Essek out to the front door. She pressed a basket of green beans into Essek’s arms and waved at him from the doorway.

“I put Martina’s cookie recipe in the bottom, if you want to try it for yourself.”

Essek waved back to her and hurried away down the street, his mind already swirling with the possibilities of what Keyleth of the Air Ashari might want with him. Something to do with another Beacon? More about that echo backpack being used by the Exultant Thule? Did she have a location on Ludinus? Oh, how his mind raced with the unending potential.

He rushed down the busy streets, reminding himself several times that Caleb would have messaged if it were life-threatening. But, then, Essek was still a little shaken up by the recent events with Trent Ikithon, and he hadn’t even been present for the encounter. Maybe Caleb was downplaying it? Although Beau hasn’t seemed that worried about it, just anxious to find more information about how to take down Ludinus. It probably wasn’t worth wasting a teleport spell to get home faster.

In eight minutes flat, Essek was rushing up the little path in front of the cottage he and Caleb called home. He was breathing hard, having pushed himself to go faster than his usual. When he pushed open the front door he found Caleb pacing in front of the couch.

Caleb’s crystal blue eyes jumped up to meet his upon his entrance and Essek quickly closed the door before closing the distance between them. Caleb’s large, warm hands grasped his own and he intoned, “Schatz, I need you to speak with Astrid.”

[yikes-ajax]

I love how everyone is freaking out over Essek being threatened by Trent, meanwhile I was out here hyped up by the mere thoughts of him, not even aware there was a reunion happening. Everyone was suddenly going feral about him and I was like "huh, must be a full moon, all the thelyss enjoyers are howling"

[gilmores-glorious-blog]

who up idealizing menial tasks by applying them to a fictional character??

[zahecrow]

I pass by this on my way to and from work on Saturdays. It's been there for a year and a half, is just a design on a construction wall blocking the view of the unbuilt high rise apartments, park and train station. This is located in Osaka, Japan, by the underground pass that takes you to the Umeda Sky Building.

Every time I see it, I can only think of Essek taking up gardening alongside Caleb, and him growing these flowers for a bouquet or for Beau and Yasha maybe.

It's a bright spot before and after a long day of teaching kids.

[playerkingsley]

caduceus and essek should get to spend the entire m9 reunion in the blooming grove gardening & sipping tea (literally and figuratively) while they listen to all the uk'otoa highlights via sending

[wizardnuke]

am i gonna have to write the fic i want to see in the world. i'm tired though

[cryptidcrew]

Another orchid remount+terrarium placement of another little guy who was way too thirsty even in a greenhouse. It lost most of its roots and is p withered so I got it for super cheap, hopefully it’ll spring back with a nice damp moss blanket around its feet.

I saw this terrarium and immediately thought of Essek trying gardening so it had to come home with me.

(C. scarlet imp)

[rainbowcaleb]

Next up for Shadowgastober, my Over the Garden Wall fusion fic :)

Warning: ambiguously sad ending, but there’s a tiny glimmer of hope if you squint.

Summary:

Sometimes the loveliest lies are what we whisper to ourselves when we look into the dark.

[thedragonagelesbian]

I really want someone to go down in this fight just so we can end with going to the blooming grove to bring them back

(Preferably it will be kingsley bc thats just fucking funny)

[teawyrm]

The sun is shining and frost is finally out of the forecast, so it's potato Nein time once again!

This year we have the mess of Magic Molly I that I've been cultivating from the measly 6 seed potatoes I got a few years ago, plus two small bags of Purple Magic I bought earlier this year. (One bag was stored in my unheated back entry and the other accidentally stored in my kitchen, to very different I-should-have-planted-these-earlier results.)

These two fabulous purple folk are now planted, a bit too densely, in several grow bags. I'll need to buy more for next year! The blue tub is awaiting some Beauregard sweet potatoes, which I should be able to buy seedlings for shortly.

[essektheylyss]

I have been grumpy with my Essek voice while writing this week so I'm watching the last supercut and honestly it's so funny that Essek somehow ended up with the highest number of eyes of the Nein except for Beau and Caleb despite not even having been present when the book was first foisted on them, because he got targeted that many times by the Somnovem eyes during the last fight.

[sky-scribbles]

I'm very emotional about Essek quoting Caduceus, because Caduceus said that to Trent. Essek was very much not there. Which means that Cad has said that to Essek on some completely separate occasion! Maybe a moment in the Blooming Grove, Essek quietly gardening, telling Caduceus that he's been so content, lately. And he can't help but feel guilty for that.

And Cad just putting a hand on his shoulder and telling him it's okay. Carrying the pain constantly isn't going to make him any better or more moral. Pain doesn't make people. Love makes people.

[orcelito]

Accidentally watched, um. A lot more of the episode. I now have 3 hours left. I just couldn't stop during the battle!!!! And then there was all the stuff afterwards and then suddenly it was my definite bedtime when I MEANT to go to bed like 3 hours ago. Whoops

[neinofthem]

so when trent threatens essek in the m9 reunion it really wasn't just a 'well essek's still on the run so we don't see him very often trent could be bluffing about knowing where he is we can't be sure' because well. caleb does know where essek is. he's in their house. with their laboratory and vegetable garden and paintings of them on the walls. that's what he's thinking about when trent says that he can get to essek and he can hurt essek and he can take essek away. so yeah basically in retrospect i am not doing so well

[shdowgast]

and now i will be forever thinking about the fact that both caleb and essek didn't know what home was for so long. and now they live in a "comfortable and homey" place with a garden, shared laboratory, tea and cookies. there are jester sketches all over the walls. memories of the nein in almost every corner. pictures of their friends and adventures. i'm SO NORMAL about this.