#it ain't skyrim

[ashthehermit]

Harry Potter & shallow worldbuilding

I probably shouldn't wade into these waters, but once again, I am demonstrating that my self-preservation instincts are poor, and that my family refuse to listen to my rants anymore. [TW: Harry Potter and all that entails].

I was a little confused when I saw the trailer for Hogwarts Legacy (source of ire for me, and many many other people).  I had thought that it was supposed to be set in Victorian England, but honestly, it looked a lot like it was still set in the 1990s (or the early 2000s, the films never came down on exact dates).  Perhaps this is because the movies - upon which all subsequent media has based its design - relied heavily on Victorian and early 20th century design elements.  Think Hogwarts' gothic architecture; the ministry's early London Underground tiles; and the entire interior of Grimmauld Place.  This wasn't in any way a bad thing.  Harry Potter, as a story, made good on a sense of whimsy and old British aesthetics.  The wizarding world, having no need of technology, would not modernise its aesthetics at the same rate as the non-magical world.  It was a design choice that was of great consternation to my mother.  We went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, she whispered to me 'why do they have wheelie suitcases?  I thought this was set in the 1930s?'

It makes me wonder now, why doesn't the world in Hogwarts Legacy look much different to its predecessor?  I suppose that they are wearing vaguely Victorian clothes, but shouldn't we be looking at some 1700s aesthetics, or is the wizarding world caught in a perpetual loop of Victoriana?

Truth is, the Harry Potter universe has fallen foul of the problem that irks most fantasy universes once they are analysed for too long.  It isn't logically coherent.  Like the history of Westeros, the history of the wizarding world repeats itself perpetually, never looking or behaving especially differently.  In a series of children's books that were focused on the life of one teen, the cracks didn't show.  Sure, Voldemort was in power twice, and before him there was Grindelwald (for all intents and purposes, Voldemort but European).

J.K. Rowling's world building is fine for what it was in the beginning (again, the life of one teen in Britain), or as fine as it could be.  The world was not greatly expansive, but it didn't need to be.  The best parts of it were whimsical and extensions of the cheerier side of Britain.  There was the Knight bus, a purple routemaster.  The entrance to the Ministry of Magic was inside a red phone box, one of the great symbols of British tourism.  The primary setting was a boarding school.  One of the most popular elements is the house system, which is just a more complicated extension of your average school house system.  It is touted as a categorisation of identity, but it obeys all the rules of school houses.  Siblings going into different houses is rare (to the point that it's only mentioned once) because family groups always go into the same house (unless your school just doesn't care about houses).  The bigotry in the series is also British by design.  It ends up being a simplified version of classism, that features more in subtext than text.  This being said, there isn't a great deal of specificity in the world building.  I still don't know where Hermione's home town is.  I only know that her parents are dentists and they like to ski.  Where does Malfoy live, apart from in a manor that has peacocks in the garden?  These are the kind of flaws you notice when you have analysed the story for as long as I have.

The worldbuilding gets thinner the more expansive it gets.  The students from Beauxbatons are more or less French stereotypes, Fleur especially.  Durmstrang is the same, but Bulgarian.  Much has already been said on Rowling's shallow naming conventions (Cho Chang, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and now Sirona Ryan).  Without the crutch of something being British and vaguely quaint, the world loses all of its charm, and all of its logic.

Fantastic Beasts, for some reason, begins in 1920s New York.  Most of the richness of the setting is achieved by production design rather than the script (incidentally, flashbacks set in Hogwarts still manage to look like it's the early 2000s).  Conflict in the story is wrought from an American government that is more anti-muggle than the British equivalent.  If it is allegorical in any way, I do not understand it.  But let's not pretend Rowling's allegory has ever been any good.  Claims that Lupin's lycanthropy was a metaphor for HIV and AIDs only serve to lessen the character.  At best, it's an allegory for general prejudice.  The assertion that Lupin, at the age of six, was attacked by Greyback with the express intention of passing on AIDs, is well, it's dicey.  Rowling might have intended to create an allegory for stigma around 'blood-borne conditions', but failed to consider the extra baggage that that allegory might entail.  

The same is true for Fantastic Beasts, where the nonsense is turned up to twenty.  There's a group of muggles who somehow know about the existence of magic.  They name themselves after Salem, despite the Salem witch trials being appropriate for neither this setting nor this geographic region.  Any commentary on the nature of the Salem witch trials is hardly a commentary on the nature of America at large, but rather a commentary on a single Puritan colony.  Rowling takes pieces of Native American culture for her lore, with no understanding of the cultural legacy at play.

It gets even weirder in the sequels, which zip through countries so fast there's barely any time for worldbuilding.  There's a circus!  Why!  I don't know.

For no reason at all, there's a deer that chooses the outcome of an election.  In a baffling moment, Grindelwald (as played by font of virtue, Johnny Depp) tells a group of wizards that they have to kill muggles because they are going to start a world war.  He is wizarding Hitler, and that isn't a subtle analogy.  In that same scene, Queenie Goldstein, a character heavily coded as Jewish, joins wizard Hitler because he promises her that she will be able to marry her muggle beau.  The man that just gave a speech about killing muggles, is apparently all for marriage equality!  By all means, it doesn't make any sense.  It’s far from being respectful either.

There are of course attempts to make the wizarding world more diverse in Fantastic Beasts, but without any attempt to make these characters more genuine.  There's an Asian woman, but she's Voldemort's snake and she's going to be beheaded by Neville in a few decades.  The second film has Zoe Kravitz!  Yay!  But she's part of a needlessly convoluted tale in which a powerful white man hypnotises a black woman to be his wife, and then she dies?  I don't know what to make of that.  It's not good representation, and by gum it isn't good storytelling!  The Fantastic Beasts trilogy has all the perspective of Emily in Paris.

Hogwarts Legacy can hardly improve upon this worldbuilding, because it comes from an unstable foundation.  I might have been more understanding had the game been set in say, not Hogwarts, or even a Hogwarts that was fundamentally different from the Hogwarts that we already know.  The worldbuilding remains as shallow as it ever was, and with all the bigotry retained.  Of course, the main story is based on a piece of anti-semitic folklore, expanded upon in the books, and even more so in the game.  The problem being that Hogwarts Legacy can only make sales based on nostalgia.  It can't be that different from the world of the novels, because no one is bold enough to alter the world and alienate people who want nothing more than to experience their childhoods all over again.  As such, the shallow worldbuilding is laid bare over and over again, to the point that it is no longer a setting in service of a series of novels.  It now has to be a real, coherent world, which it fails at.  We have to examine the nature of Hogwarts houses, and the mechanics of time turners (thank you Cursed Child), and the reasons why house elves don't want their freedom.  

They'll never get freedom anyhow, because Hermione's attempts at activism are used for comedy.  The world at the end of Deathly Hallows is not greatly different to the world at the beginning.  Voldemort is dead, but we are not assured of any big changes.  The world returns to what it was.  For all that The Legend of Korra may not have lived up to its predecessor, it made an effective attempt at showing that the world had been altered by the actions of our heroes.  In the Cursed Child, nothing is different.  The story spends all of its time looking to the past and imagining increasingly unlikely alternate timelines (Cedric turns evil?  Ron marries Padma Patil?).  Hogwarts Legacy does not set up the world of Harry Potter, nor does it fundamentally alter it.  The status quo is preserved.  Like Westeros, it cannot change. The new game does nothing with the world, and acts in its detriment.  Anyhow, it’s not a good work of fantasy.  J.K. Rowling loves the status quo.   That much is evident.  Don’t buy this game!  Support trans people instead.

[dawns-beauty]

Skyrim Mods PSA:

If you ever see the CreationClub's Nordic Jewelry reuploaded to the Nexus or one called "Traditional Marriage", report them.

Basically, a Nexus-alternative that hosts bigoted, disgusting mods reposts them with links to their website for the purpose of advertising/trolling.

Hit the Report Abuse button, then "I believe this mod is breaking the rules" then

For Nordic Jewelry, report Stolen Content and list the website it's stolen from as bethesda.net

For Traditional Marriage, report Inappropriate Content -> Abusive Content -> then explain that it removes gay marriage opportunities (which is against the ToS)

[existentialdoge]

Cicero will krump with you, Listener!

[dynamite124]

You know how cats (and sometimes people) bite to show affection? Yeah how would Taliesin react to just getting nommed on (Khajiit and non Khajiit reactions if you are okay with answering that bit? If not that's alright!)

Khajiit: *nom*

Taliesin: Oh, aren't you just precious! (arm continues to bleed)

[mareenavee]

An Illusion of Competence

Hehehe. SURPRISE! Happy early birthday, @kookaburra1701! Chaos weekend here, and I channeled that energy into a chaos thief Orc, Luzrah gro-Shar. She's amazing, and I love her. Thank you for the brainwyrm! She didn't even have a tag, you know lol that's how much of a shell she was. We love a good shell NPC! I can't wait to see what you do with her in your fic universe!!!!!!! 🤩

without further ado:

An Illusion of Competence

Shit. No. This couldn’t be right! How could they possibly have found her already? Who would even think to go looking for her in this hellhole slum of the city, anyway? Damn it, but if she didn’t get out of this, Vex was going to be so pissed off at her for royally screwing up this job over almost nothing—you know, just like the last one. She couldn’t help herself—the opportunity was right there, and who cared if pickpocketing wasn’t supposed to be the task at hand? The Guild needed the gold desperately, didn’t it? Ugh. Distractions aplenty, unfortunately.

Luzrah gro-Shar snuck around the corner of the Grey Quarter, pulling the hood of her cloak up to cover her very obvious flame-red hair, trying and failing to blend in with a passing crowd of Dunmer. No matter where she went, she didn’t quite fit in, so this was nothing new. She was taller and stronger than most Nords, for one, and green, for another—which caused all kinds of people to stare at her in open disgust. That, and she was a bard, more or less. Or—she could be, given practice. She carried a lute around and everything. It wasn’t what Orcs were known for, generally speaking—she’d only ever met one other who also happened to be a bard, and he was…yeah, he was not a good singer, to put it bluntly. She could at least carry a tune in a bucket, but the bucket was, technically, rusty and full of holes—you can take that as you will. It certainly said a lot more about her thin cover story the closer anyone looked, but now was not the time for worrying over that—it had served its purpose perfectly fine. That is, until now.

She sighed as the sound of the guards clattering along in their Stormcloak blues echoed off of the ancient stone walls. Windhelm, as unforgiving and cold as ever, was nothing but a patch of clear ice over here in the Grey Quarter. Figures. Luzrah wasn’t any stranger to the weather this far north, but she was not dressed for this kind of sport. She struggled to keep her balance as she slid down a slight incline in boots made more for trudging through mud in the Strongholds rather than through all this abysmal weather. Malacath’s toenails, but she wished these imbecile guards would give up already! Her legs ached as she turned a corner and then another, ending up in the market outside of the Alchemist’s shop, mind racing and looking for an escape route. Did they need a bard? It was possible. If she slowed down and acted natural, maybe it would—no. Nope, it wasn’t—she’d tried that in Candlehearth, where it made sense at least, and look where it got her. You’d think she’d learn to work around the misfortune by now, but of course not, otherwise she wouldn’t be in this mess. She could, at least, attempt to lose them. As far as she’d known, they hadn’t seen her face yet.-> Read the rest on AO3!

[the-indoor-kites]

Soleil doesn't usually pay any mind to what goes on outside my lap, but sometimes in Baldur's Gate there is an Animal

[strigital]

girl help he is manifesting again

[kagedbird]

Continuation from this

Allora: Please just go grab some supplies from the stores. I'll be fine.

Kaidan: I don't want to leave you alone with him-

Allora: I'll be fine. I know you're getting annoyed with him. Go cool off for a bit. Take a break. Sell off our junk, get some ale and food.

Kaidan: I ain't going to rest much with you being alone with him.

Allora: *stares deadpan* Go. This is no longer up for debate.

Inigo: *claps Kaidan's shoulder* Come friend, let us go. I do not know about you, but I could certainly use more arrows.

Kaidan: *sighs* ...Fine. But one thing.

Allora: Yes?

Kaidan: Keep the horn close. I'll be listening for it. Any instance of you feeling unsafe... please. Use it.

Allora: *smiles softly and takes out the horn he gave her, settling it on her belt in arms reach with a loose leather strip* Okay. Better?

Kaidan: *cups the back of her head, nodding* Aye. Be safe. We'll be back around noon.

Allora: Okay. Have fun you three!

Lucien: *waves* I'll be sure to keep an eye on them both.

Allora: *waves until they're gone, sighing and turning to Taliesin* ...Come on. We're going back to camp.

Taliesin: Not going to yank me by my restraints today?

Allora: You're a big boy. You can walk on your own. And if you think you can escape before I shoot you in the legs... by all means, try.

Taliesin: *chuckles, following along* You're quite ferocious. Required for the job of Dragonborn, I'm sure.

Allora: *doesn't respond, keeping her eyes and ears peeled for dangers on the way back to camp*

Taliesin: So, are you going to interrogate me now that we're alone? Frighten me for Thalmor secrets? Hurt me in horrendous ways and heal them before your associates know what cruelties you're capable of?

Allora: *gives him a discomforted glance before pushing the brush hiding the entrance to the camp aside* ...No. I just wanted to talk.

Taliesin: *surprised as she motions for him to sit next to the fire, taking a seat* Talk? Just talk? My, you are an oddity.

Allora: *sits down close by but gives him plenty of space* Because I don't want people to be hurt in a world that's all ready hurting?

Taliesin: Because you saw me committing murder and haven't taken justice for them.

Allora: I'm taking my own kind of justice. Harm should not equal harm. It should equal taking responsibility. I do regret one thing since taking you in.

Taliesin: And what's that?

Allora: I should have made you bury them. That was your responsibility. But... I was so... upset. I didn't want them to feel more violated, I guess, by letting you touch them more. I promised them on their graves that I would make amends for them. So I'm doing that. I would like to ask you questions.

Taliesin: ...Ask them, I suppose. You planned on doing it, and I am quite curious.

Allora: Why did you follow those orders?... You made it sound like you didn't want to.

Taliesin: You've never been in a position to do something you didn't want to, clearly.

Allora: I have, and it's not up to you to debate my life. I'm not the one who murdered innocents. Why did you kill them?

Taliesin: It is the duty of the Thalmor to dispose of those who worship the false god Talos. My superiors gave me a job. It is not about what my thoughts or feelings are on the matter.

Allora: ...Why do the Thalmor want to kill Talos worshippers?

Taliesin: You truly don't know? You look to be of age... have you been living under a rock?

Allora: I know about the Concordat. White-Gold Tower. I just want to know why elves- why this group of elves hate him so much. Humor me.

Taliesin: ...*leans back a bit to stretch before sighing* You may know of the Concordat but the hatred spreads far more than just spite for a human Emperor. He was content once, you know. To rule alongside us, despite knowing his prophecy of ruling all of Tamriel.

Allora: ...

Taliesin: But when time came, and he was offered power that no one could feasibly handle, much less a man. He used power of a stolen god to achieve brutality, conquest, and many Altmer who are still alive from that time lived during his reign of terror. The ultimatum of living a life under his iron clad fist or becoming a time-wound in the sea is not something you easily choose between. Many are bitter, understandably. Especially with how men raise their spawn, giving them only select bits and pieces of information of a history of such a heinous individual... Allora: *inclines her chin* I understand that.

Taliesin: Do you?

Allora: Of course. The tales of history only ever align with the victor. Never those who suffered during it. I can see why they'd be so pissed off. What did you mean that he used the power of a stolen god though?

Taliesin: I'm afraid I don't know all the details, but from what I've learned, Tiber Septim was given the power of the Numidium from the false god Vivec.

Allora: Numidium? Vivec? I haven't heard of them before.

Taliesin: My question of you having lived under a rock must be true, given how defensive you were earlier.

Allora: All right, wise ass. Tell me more. Please.

Taliesin: ...Very well. Might I have a drink first? I'm quite parched.

Allora: *gives a faint smile* Sure.

[garrus-appreciation]

Trying to free up some space so here are some OLD Skyrim screenshots I found

[thequeenofthewinter]

Storm for the dragon's ask! :D

Hi Mem <3 :) A storm you say? A storm(cloak) you shall have.

As he is agitatedly pacing the floor, Ulfric’s footsteps echo with loud, resounding thuds. How could everyone be so incompetent? His blood boils to the point where his face feels hot, and he cannot think clearly. All his thoughts are just a jumble of red static. He violently slams his fists onto the table in the War Room, sending the pawns on the map scattering in every which way.

“Where is she?” His voice trembles at a timbre he thought impossible. It shakes the stone foundations of the Palace with his thu’um. The few trusted advisors who were called to help with this delicate matter all look at each other in complete stunned silence. They have never before seen their Jarl this angry. If he doesn’t calm down soon, he’ll bring the whole Palace down around them.

“Well, is someone going to answer my question, or are you all going to stand there like fucking idiots? Where in Oblivion is she?” He asks again, his hands fisting his hair as he storms off to stare out the window behind him.

“We don’t know, but—” Galmar begins; however, he is not allowed to finish his sentence.

“That is not good enough!” He spins quickly turning to his friend, his blood-shot eyes filled with a tumultuous rage. “I want answers now. I will find whoever is responsible for taking her and have their head on a Talos-damned silver platter.”

It has been all Galmar can do over the last few weeks to try to comfort his oldest friend, promising that Dahlia will come back soon or that she has only been distracted with another task. However, Ulfric will have none of it. He has completely destroyed his own room every night for the past fortnight, only for the servants to pick it up the next morning and have him do it again the very next day. Galmar cannot possibly fathom the amount of pain the man is in. He has never in his life seen him act this way.

“I will send more scouts out to see where her trail left off and ask if any of the couriers have spotted her. They’re rather good at that kind of work.” The General offers trying to pacify him.

“At last, something useful.” Ulfric responds tersely. “And fetch Brelyna again while you are at it. I don’t care if she says she has not the faintest idea as to where Dahlia is. The mage has to have some answers or some vague notion of what happened. She was the last person to see her.” He turns to look at Galmar, his gaze finally giving away the true reason for his anger: desperation.

“Don’t worry. We will find her, Ulfric.” His oldest friend tells him before bowing and hastily walking out of the room.

“And as for the rest of you,” he addresses the remaining Stormcloak officers, “I want you to go to every house and knock on every door. Talk to everyone and see if they have seen or heard anything about her. No person and no house is to be left off of the list.” He tells them with the sharp edge of a threat in his tone. “If I find otherwise, you will answer directly to me.”

The rest of the group wastes no time on enacting Ulfric’s demand, filing out of the room quickly to avoid any more of his ire.

[uwuthrad]

Hi I made a thing

Inspired by @nerevar-quote-and-star suffering for our sins by a writing a no-doubt deeply cathartic fic about a Bishop/LDB/Ulfric “love” triangle, I finished writing this thing yesterday evening, wherein Bishop gets very, very dead.

I meant for it to be silly and funny, but it’s Bishop so it got slightly dark and stalkerish. Please don’t take any of this too seriously.

On Tirdas, Onmund woke up to the full weight of Brelyna Maryon dropping onto his stomach.

His recollection of the following events was, unsurprisingly, rather confused, though Onmund did remember lurching upright, wheezing something about being under attack, then his right buttock being pricked rather sharply by a mean set of claws, Brelyna laughing, and finding himself belatedly throwing a sheet over J’zargo very naked, very present body.

"Um", Onmund said, which was about as eloquent as you were ever likely to get out of him, if he was completely honest with himself.

J’zargo’s claws dug deeper into his backside, and he winced.

"Yes, yes", Brelyna waived airily, "you and J’zargo’s very secret, very illicit love affair that nobody knows anything about. That’s not important right now." She paused, possibly for dramatic effect, though was it dramatized was the need for Onmund to cast a healing spell somewhere Colette could never see. Brelyna leaned forward, like a child sharing a secret: "Léonie’s here! And she has a man with her!"

Onmund raised his eyebrows - both of them, because he never quite got the hand of raising just the one, no matter how long he spent practicing in the mirror. Even the digging in his arse took on a bit of a doubtful quality. The Archmage might spend a fair bit of time running about, but she was around on an almost-weekly basis, so he didn’t quite get how her coming might warrant such an exuberant reaction first thing in the morning.

And as for "a man"…Léonie was almost always accompanied, and often by that short blond scholar from Cyrodiil, the one whose talking speed always made Onmund feel dizzy. Perfectly good company, though, once you got an ale into him, just to mellow him out a bit.

Onmund was kind of wishing for an ale right at the moment too, no matter that he’d barely even begun to wake up. "What’s with the man, then?", he asked, hazarding a guess.

Brelyna bounced on the mattress, which had some painful subterranean results and made Onmund wonder if he could get away with pretending the scars were from a sabercat. "He’s- it’s- oh, you’ve got to see it to believe it!" She bounced off and away, launching herself at the door with a vivacity she only ever exuded in the midst of a mugwort tea-induced high. "Just- get dressed, hurry, and, oh, go tell J’zargo to do the same and join us in the Hall of the Elements! Trust me", she said, which made Onmund lean back on some deeply ingrained self-preservation instinct, "this is gonna be great."

In true Brelyna fashion, it turned out the exact opposite.

Onmund would be willing to admit, under oath, that his first impression of the man they called Bishop was ever-so-slightly marred by the fact that he had his breeches stuffed full of cotton on the right-hand side and a snippy sort-of-lover on the left one. It had taken them months to work up to this, he mourned, and now J’zargo was refusing to even look his way.

So. Bishop.

He was, indeed, a man. (Brelyna got that right, at least, Onmund thought a little snippily, and then immediately felt bad about it. None of this was Brelyna’s fault. Well. Almost none of this.) A Nord, though on the shorter and slighter side, with about the right number of limbs and other appendages. Nothing wrong with him at first glance, except for the fact that his hair had clearly been carefully styled to look unstyled - Onmund’d know, he’d lived with a Khajiit for years now - using some strange shiny substance that had to be some sort of slime.

But truly, the mind-boggling fact about the man was that he… hovered. Over Léonie.

Over Léonie, who was, well, herself - resplendent, an old poem whispered at the back of Onmund’s mind, each day growing closer to something one might only call divine - but wearing her polite little bureaucrat’s smile, perfectly even and serene even as her eyes danced with magic and mischief.

Onmund knew that smile very well. She had worn it, too, in Labyrinthian, down into the guts of the ancient city that had swallowed a generation of their predecessors, and when Morokei had grumbled, one with the walls, You will never leave this tomb.

She had smiled as she had answered in kind, voice soft and melodic and resonant through the soles of Onmund’s feet: I beg your pardon, but on that matter we must agree to disagree.

Today, she smiled at Onmund’s baffled and wary face, an invitation to share in on a joke, and this was when Onmund knew Brelyna was wrong: this was going to be awful. He was going to come along anyway.

 Léonie was held off from explaining until they were all seated on a boat headed for Windhelm, though Bishop, by nature, it seemed, beggared all explanation.

"This is Bishop", she said, nodding to the man across her on the boat. She had wedged herself firmly between Brelyna and J’zargo on one bench, leaving Onmund and Bishop to awkwardly share another. It was awkward for Onmund, in any case. Bishop was crossing and uncrossing his arms at an alarming rate, huffing and puffing like a fire struggling to kindle.

Onmund eyed the rather small and shabby seafaring vessel they were all currently squeezed on, and discreetly cast a waterwalking spell on himself. It might be spring everywhere else, but the Sea of Ghosts followed her own rules, which were generally pretty chilly.

"Yeah", Bishop interjected, before Léonie could add anything further. "And who are you sorry lot, huh?"

Léonie made a half-shrugging, sort of "see what I mean?" gesture. "Those", she said, very slowly, as if explaining to a child, "are respected scholars of the College of Winterhold, and my former classmates besides." A pause, where she tilted her head very slightly, stilling, bringing to Onmund’s mind the effigy of the old owl god for a moment, with its forever-face of serene stone. "They are all dear friends of mine."

From Bishop’s reaction to those words, you might as well have thought they were curses. "You- Ladyship, you would count those poncy robe-wearing wizards as your friends? Are you out of your mind?"

From Onmund’s place on the boat, he had the perfect vantage point to see J’zargo’s mouth drop ever-so-slightly open in shocked offense while Léonie only nodded thoughtfully, seemingly unsurprised. Brelyna mouthed the word Ladyship to herself, and Onmund experienced a nauseating flashback to the days where he would "borrow" his sister Sala’s romance novels to read in secret.

He was not ashamed of the fact that he had liked them now, wasn’t ashamed of liking romance now, even if it involved rather fewer roses and quite a bit more explosive substances than expected, but still. He tried imagining calling anyone "Ladyship" outside of, well, a countess or something, and almost crawled out of his skin in reflexive cringe.

"Oh, get this", Léonie added, then turned to address Bishop: "I am married. To a woman. Who, incidentally, happens to be a thousand-years-old vampire you’re very lucky is currently off to visit her mother in the Soul Cairn, or you would be short a pair of testicles and I a pair of eardrums."

Bishop leaned back - there was no other word for it - strutting his stuff. "You mean to tell you’d like to have a threesome? You’re the only woman for me now, wench. I’m not interested in what any other female has to offer."

Léonie spread her hands open on her lap. "You see it now", she said, bypassing Bishop’s contribution entirely. "First I believed this man to be cursed, and in search for a remedy I took him to every temple and healer I knew. I took him to the Temple of Kynareth in Whiterun, and Danica Pure-Spring had him stand under the Gildergreen’s dusky shadow as she performed every cleansing rite she knew. She found nothing, so to the Temple of the Eight in Solitude we went, where the priests had him recite the prayers to each of the gods while attempting to cure him. This was no good either, so I tracked down the former priestess of Talos in Windhelm and convinced her to attempt helping him as well, though it was for naught. I left him in the care of the priests of Mara in Riften for seven days and seven nights - though, by this point, it was mostly because I needed to go get seriously drunk - and on the eighth day, I found him at the foot of my bed, waiting."

Onmund shivered. Léonie smiled thinly.

"I am not a little ashamed to admit I reacted violently. But I was startled, and the spell flew before I could stop it." She paused there, thoughtful. "You know me for what I am. The spell I used is one that felled dragons. Yet… on this man, it had no effect."

They, all in unison, turned to the subject of the conversation. He preened. "You know I can handle anything you throw at me, sweetness", he boasted.

"Quite", Léonie said dryly, while Brelyna mimicked throwing up over the side of the boat. Or maybe not mimicking at all, come to think of it. That’d be fair enough, honestly.

"I shall spare you the rest of our tour of Skyrim’s finest healers, priests and curse-breakers", Léonie waved. "Just know that I went as far as to sail all the way back to Solstheim to seek the Skald’s ancient wisdom, sought out the council of the Greybeards, and called upon a reformed daedric priest. All agreed: no curse, no ill was laid on this man, except perhaps for the one of ordinary dullness. But it was the last of these council who gave me this lead I am now pursuing: that Bishop here might not be cursed, but instead be the curse himself."

The…curse? winked at them. "Tough love with this one, ey", it leered.

Brelyna leaned forward, all eager interest - of the scientific, dissecting kind. "You think he’s a dremora? Sent by someone to torment you?"

"It’s possible", Léonie shrugged. "I did mightily piss off Hermaeus Mora with that Solstheim business, and you know how he holds a grudge."

Onmund did not, in fact, know, nor did he ever wish to.

"Oh, and there was Vaermina that one time, though that was a long time ago - anyway. Dremora are more Mehrunes Dagon’s realm - he might be mad at me as well, come to think of it, with that whole business with the razor-"

Onmund always liked talking with Léonie, he reflected, not just because she was good company, but also because she always reminded him that he was, in fact, quite content with his quiet little life as a scholar and his cozy little reading nook and his drinks with the colleagues on Loredas, none of which ever involved any daedric prince whatsoever.

"Right, the main problem with the dremora theory, mostly, is that I’ve tried every scrying technique and detection spell I know, and he shows up as human on every one. I’ve tested spells that might strip off a disguise - oh, please don’t-"

"Sweetheart, you know you don’t need any spell to make me strip for you", Bishop purred.

Léonie closed her eyes, briefly, visibly gathering her strength. "So", she continued through gritted teeth, "he’s either the work of something extremely skilled in illusion, or he’s genuinely a human man who has been cursed with cursing me." She opened her eyes again, a brilliant, dangerous tiger-green. "And whatever has him attached to me doesn’t allow me to lose his tail, reason with him, get rid of him or otherwise dispose of him", she ground out very quickly.

J’zargo perked up, the conversation back on familiar ground. "Has this one tried-"

"Yes", Léonie answered flatly. "I have tried. Everything. Every spell I know. I have had skilled warriors try to crush his skull, stab him in the chest, and pincushioning him with arrows. It all bounced off."

Silence. Léonie cleared her throat, suddenly looking bashful. "I hope you don’t think that.. Power’s getting to my head or something like that. I only tried all this after I was pretty sure it wouldn't do anything, and even then I’m… I’m just so tired."

Léonie suddenly looked alarmingly close to crying, which made Brelyna and Onmund - both equally helpless with emotional people - exchange a panicked look. J’zargo actually took the time to roll his eyes at them before enveloping Léonie in a side embrace that Onmund knew for a fact was sinfully comfy. Khajiit fur, man. You don’t get anything else like it.

"This one has been better than any of those who sit on this boat could claim to be", he rumbled chidingly. "This one has tried to help the other one, but she cannot; perhaps it is nobody can. But if this one cannot soothe his hurt, then it is time to stop him from causing her more pointless suffering. Together, we will solve this. Of this there is no doubt."

Onmund politely looked away when he heard her sniffle, giving her the illusion of privacy, only for his gaze to land on an entirely too-still statue beside him.

He raised his brows at Brelyna, who shrugged, unrepentant. "He looked about to cause a snit about J’zargo touching her", she sniffed, and showed off the gleaming paralysis rune on her palm. "It was that or throw him into the sea."

 They arrived at Windhelm a couple minutes before Brelyna’s spell wore off, something Onmund felt reluctantly impressed by. He took great pleasure into rolling the man onto the shore like a barrel of mead.

The plan, Léonie had told them once her tears had dried, was to try and pawn him off to whatever entity would take him.

Alright, so perhaps Léonie had put it in slightly more elegant terms, but Onmund’s mind had sorted through the bit where she went "Boethiah owes me one, sorta, so I was hoping-" and gotten pretty stuck there.

They climbed a mountain. A small mountain, Léonie had claimed, at the top of which sat the shrine to Boethiah. Something she just happened to know. J’zargo and Onmund retreated to a safe distance while Brelyna (a dark elf and therefore culturally insane) and Léonie (functionally a dragon trapped into a human body and therefore bound to go insane eventually) lead the way up the path to the daedric shrine they were about to sacrifice a guy to.

This, Onmund reflected, this was why when people asked what Léonie was like, he always blanked out and said: You had to be there.

And really, you had to be there.

Bishop trudged along even further behind, painfully and confusedly, but to his inquiry as to whether they should just carry him, Léonie had just told him he’d find his way to her eventually. It was, as she said, inevitable.

They broke for lunch on the steps of the shrine, watching the black dot of Bishop grow, indeed, inexorably bigger.

"What happened here?", Onmund asked, upon seeing the remnants of what was clearly a long-abandoned encampment.

"Boethiah challenged her cultists to a fight to the death with me", Léonie said simply.

"Ah", Onmund said. "I assume they lost?"

Léonie tilted her head thoughtfully, regarding him with that serene, faraway expression she sometimes wore when she looked at something far past you. "They fought to the death in the name of their god", she finally replied, simply. "I don’t think they would have seen it as losing."

"Right", Onmund muttered, and carefully didn’t ask any further questions.

 "Well, Ladyship, this was quite a trek!", Bishop exclaimed, theatrically puffing out great breaths. He seemed to expect some sort of response to this. Possibly one of fawning admiration.

Léonie slammed the butt of her staff into the ground and hauled herself up. "Bishop", she said, very carefully. "I’m now going to try to kill you and bind your soul to a daedric lord. If that sounds at all unpleasant to you, please feel free to express it in words or gestures, or, if impossible, by turning around and leaving."

Bishop laughed. "Is this what it’s all about? My, my, I didn’t realize you were into these kinds of things, m’lady."

Léonie breathed out through her nose, audibly counting to ten. "Bishop, I am not playing a game. I am not joking."

He leered. "Oh, I know", he purred. "I’m all yours, wench."

Léonie looked heavenwards. "Let it be known", she called out, "that I tried everything."

The whole coterie of them trudged up the stairs, Bishop looking spectacularly unconcerned with the audience considering he seemed persuaded he was about to have some particularly kinky sex, but whatever. Not Onmund’s problem right about now. Or really, ever.

"This is the Pillar of Sacrifice", Léonie declared dully. "If you touch it, it will bind you and only I will have the power to release you. Which I will not do."

"Well-prepared, aren’t we, wench?" With one last uncomprehendingly victorious glance at both Onmund and J’zargo, he strutted up to the pillar and touched it.

It glowed blue. It did, indeed, bind him.

"Now I’m going to stab you with this ceremonial dagger", Léonie recited in a monotone, vaguely waving a wicked-looking blade. "Any objections?"

"Hit me with it, babe", Bishop replied.

So she did.

 "This is the grossest suit of flesh I have ever inhabited", the strangely double-honed voice of what was apparently Boethiah declared grandly.

Just don’t think about it, Onmund. Just don’t.

"Tell me about it", Léonie muttered. She leaned her cheek against the graceful metal curve of the Staff of Magnus, eyes half-closed, looking more like a hungover student than someone facing down a daedric prince.

Don’t think about it, Onmund. Spare yourself.

Boethiah-as-Bishop sneered. "This is against the spirit of the agreement."

"Your whole sphere is acting against the spirit of the agreement", Léonie shot back sleepily. "If anything, I thought you’d be proud."

"Being proud has nothing to with being satisfied", the avatar of Boethiah currently wearing the corpse of Léonie’s stalker snarled.

That’s a new sentence if there ever was one, Onmund thought deliriously, and then promptly shut off that line of reasoning too.

Léonie shrugged. "Tough luck." She rolled her shoulders, straightening. She started counting off points off her fingers. "Person who trusted me, followed me willingly - even knowingly! - killed them in cold blood with the appropriate tool at the appropriate location…." She grinned up at the Daedra, swinging the staff around so it rested across her shoulders, leaning her elbows on it like she was carrying a frigging yoke. "So, you owe me something, Boethiah."

The spirit of Boethiah seemed to hesitate, then give in to some baser instinct and stomp its foot. Hard.

"I am not Clavicus Vile", it sneered once the ground had stopped shuddering, "to be bargained with, mortal!"

"And I am no mortal", Léonie replied, evenly, serenely, and for a moment the curve of her arms had the chilling grace of a dragon wing, opening to take flight. "But your words bind you, Boethiah, prince of plots, He-Who Destroys and She-Who-Erases, and here on your sanctified ground, with your sanctified blade, at your holy word, I have done the worst thing that I will ever do, and like the fire burns the ground, so must your deed follow your decree." She smiled thinly. "I am alive because this one is dead."

"Indeed", Boethiah murmured. "Fine. Have my artifact, be my champion, sow chaos and discord wherever you go, we all know you’ll do whatever you want anyway. I still think it’s against the rules that the thing you really want is also the thing you’re giving me-"

"Oh, just take him away, will you?"

When what used to be Bishop turned into ash and started to blow away with the western wind, Léonie sat down on her arse, like a child, and, like a child, wept.

Over the huddle formed by their covenant of four, three to shield the fourth from relief and sorrow intermingled, J’zargo’s clawed hand found Onmund’s, and held on tight.

[totally-not-deacon]

Man, who knew some fun little polls would lead to half of tesblr tearing each other's faces off lmao. And here I just thought they were silly little things we could use to cheer on our blorbos.

[syntheticcouriersix]

Finally getting back around to working on Fennorian’s armor. I am trying to make it as close to what it should be, while adding on some personal flairs. Hopefully it turns out good in the end. I also have no clue how to add smp or physics to the clothing, so that’ll need someone else’s touch. I mean, I have the options to add HIMBO sliders, buuuuttttt.... honestly I feel a little too lazy to convert it from vanilla sliders. Also blender is unnecessarily too much with it’s menus. Good god just let me put this thing there without having to find it under eleven menu tabs.

[motherofcats666]

Of all the stupid times for the fugitive to run up and give me a weapon, he picked one of the worst possible ones this time: at Korvanjund right as Hadvar was about to talk to me. WE WERE ABOUT TO HAVE A MOMENT, GOD FUCKING DAMMIT I'M SO MAD.

[dynamite124]

okay i must ask this too is the dragonborn his therapy person?

Pretty much! The player is the first person in years that he can lower his defenses around and be himself!

[anotherclassicpretence]

Why is Skyrim on the today page. What happened.