#oc: Ilyavanthra

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Happy pride to the complicated marital status of my gay altmer who wants to destroy the world and my bi bosmer who has spent her whole life protecting it

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Been working on a basic height chart for all my TES characters, so here are my dysfunctional babies (and here’s to hoping tumblr doesn’t kill the image quality, but if it does, just click on it to see it better.)

From left to right, we have Ilyavanthra, Evelynn, Morganne, Delilah, Taka-Xil and Jacken.

More info on these guys under the cut!

Ilyavanthra Atyreni is my resident villain, a Thalmor superior who thinks she’s god and refuses to acknowledge the Divines out of spite— which won’t go down well with the rest of the Thalmor, but that’s fine, she’s got big plans for them along with the rest of the world. The pivotal point for her was when she went missing, lost her legs under mysterious circumstances, came back wrong, refused to elaborate. After that she began frantically planning some kind of ultimate design and built new legs as proof of her efficiency. She’s positively obsessed with the Dwemer, their ideologies and methods and studied them for a large part of her life. At some point she was married to Evelynn, but their relationship is… difficult. All in all, giant scary lesbian Altmer with religious trauma and one hell of a god complex about to make it everyone else’s problem.

Evelynn is my favourite child, she’s my Bosmer Vestige and has lived for a very long time after the events of ESO, in which she has spent the years going from outright saving the day to falling into the background and preferring to work on the preservation of Tamriel from behind the scenes, as she knows no other purpose. Super complicated bisexual disaster love life, let me tell you about it, sheesh. She’s been around to help put down Mannimarco whenever he pops up, but has been running from Molag Bal and the looming feeling of impending doom he carries— little does she know she’s in a rat trap. Because of her extended life, her mind has far outgrown her body and by the time the fourth era rolls around, she’s less than all there, susceptible to any forced that would wish to control her (she’s also the character I put through the Vicn Trilogy, because putting her back in Coldharbour sounded like the worlds sickest joke.) I love female characters who have been put through extreme tribulations and come out of it little bit off the rails RAHHH!!

Morganne is my Imperial Dragonborn who remembers absolutely nothing prior to the carriage ride except her name. She fulfils her destiny in not only slaying Alduin but also taking up the role of Konahrik, which only strengthens her power as Dovahkiin. But what does it mean about you if you managed to destroy the destroyer of worlds? Does that not make you just as, if not more, dangerous? Perhaps. She’s still young and pretty naive but by god, is she as stubborn as a dragon should be, and keeps doing impulsive dumb shit she gets in trouble with everyone for. She refuses to kill Paarthurnax, who she ends up considering her father figure, refuses to kill any more dragons considering it ‘kinslaying’, as well as arguing that she believes Odahviing and Durnehviir to be her most loyal brothers, and instead of killing him at the summit of Apocrypha, releases Miraak and keeps him on a leash. They hate each other’s guts (code for they are deeply in love and cannot resist one another but both won’t make the first move out of pride)

That tiny lass is Delilah, a Breton with big dreams of being a sorceress but unfortunately also sucks at magic. See that staff she’s holding? She doesn’t know how to use it aside from thwacking people. She does however have a mass aptitude for Restoration locked away, she just has to figure out how to harness it, because without control, her emotions dictate her powers in miraculous ways, even resulting in resurrecting the dead. See that big fella beside her? He’s proof of that. Also, don’t let her baby face fool you. She’ll bite your ankles and she has a thing for monster boys.

The big fella in question is named Taka-Xil, and oh boy, does he run on pure spite. He’s not had a very good start to life, despite being born under the Hist, he seemingly had no connection to it whatsoever and couldn’t properly read the social cues of his kin or fully understand them. For that reason, he was deemed soulless, and no matter how much sap he consumed he couldn’t connect to the Hist— the amount he drank only made his scales much tougher, his tongue golden and his height drastically taller than by Argonian standards. So he runs off to join the Dark Brotherhood and developed a great deal of reverence for Sithis. He becomes Listener and lets out all that steam on contracts, until he meets Delilah, who teaches him that being soft is just as important as being strong. She’s the only one he sees any light in and he adores her. Big gruff guy soft for sunshine girl plus dramatic height difference trope here.

Lastly, we have my most experimental OC, the wonderfully unhinged Jacken Archanymia, the very last Cyrodiilic bird person. He’s been alive all these years due to a curse bestowed upon him by Peryite, and has since dedicated his life to creating the cure to everything. Yes, everything. Beginning with his own terrible affliction. He’s a brilliant alchemist and doctor, and regardless of how spooky his attire is and how… rotten he is beneath it, he’s very charming and animated, and does his very best to act gentlemanly. Just don’t get too close or you might get sick. That mask is more for your protection than his.

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2, 7, 10 for the asks to spread love <3

Tell us why you love one of your OCs or an obscure canon character (link to any fics/art you have featuring them!) 

Oh my god I have to pick ONE??? This is so unbelievably difficult because my OCs mean so very much to me and have an unreasonable amount of depth that caters to me and my philosophies and beliefs BUT I’m going to tell you why I love my verse’s villain, Ilya. Putting this ask under the cut because I’m about to go off on a tangent and I don’t want to clutter anyone’s dash.

Small recap of her character: She’s my rather scary Thalmor OC with giant mechanical legs. She has the world’s biggest god complex and refuses to give the Divines even an ounce of her belief of their godhood and instead just sees them as powerful spirits. Obsessed with the Dwemer’s work as well and decided fuck it, fuck you all, I’m going to become god. All around issue and she’s proud of it.

And I love her so much because although she is evil, she has the depth to invoke sympathy. She is brilliant, wicked, invincible and vulnerable all at the same time. She’s an amalgamation of hatred and love. She has so many flaws and I love her for it. She has this warped perception of divinity and through her corrupted force she may just actually obtain it against all the odds of fate.

Ilya has no destiny. No real role. She was never meant to be free from the shackles of a meaningless fate. So she took it for herself by brute force and she forced that future for herself.

While brutal and cruel, she is perhaps one of my most helpless characters. I’m unsure who wins the battle of emotional turmoil between her and Eve, my Vestige who has far outlived her life expectancy and purpose but is too afraid to die, but Ilya is, beneath the sturdy carapace of ambition and spite, a victim.

The narrative of her life can be summed up by a quote I heard recently that I absolutely adore, “godhood is a lot like girlhood, begging to be believed”, and it struck me that maybe the heretical tyrant who wants the world only wants this because she was denied everything else in her life; including belief.

Ilya is recognised for her genius in the Thalmor, she’s a superior by every right, but in the grand scheme of things, because of her difficulty to cooperate and stay submissive to a cause that isn’t her own, is likely intended to be cast away as soon as her potential has been used. She knows this, though, and so doesn’t plan on either trusting them nor aligning her beliefs with theirs. She has bigger plans than what they have in store for her.

Why? Why not just submit to the protection of cluster and aid them in their own plans for some kind of mimicry of ascension, would it not be easier?

It’s not about easy. Above all, it’s about being believed.

To put it simply: nobody believes in Ilyavanthra. Nobody holds her with the highest regard. She’s a problem, albeit a very intelligent one and a valuable asset. They do not see her, but her skills to be used as an expendable tool. She wants to be believed so badly, worshipped above everybody else, because she is starved from the lack of attention she grew into the twisted mindset of believing she deserved above all else. She’s gone mad from it.

If Ilya believes that cruelty and suffering is the key to divinity, then it is only because she has the ego to believe that she has suffered the most.

On a lighter note, her goal in the meantime, while she prepares for the first act of her schemes, is to be as much of a problem as possible. For fun. Also because the childlike necessity for attention still lives within her. That’s what makes her so fun to write, honestly.

Also, she’s super gay.

A popular fandom opinion that you agree with

Delphine sucks, sorry, I’m not killing Paarthurnax, BUT I’m going to go into that for a second because I am an advocate for female characters who are generally hated. Delphine is unbearable and I’m glad that she is. She’s stubborn and egotistical and she’s obviously good at what she does (her dossier entails that she took down an entire assassination squad) and I say let her be.

However, what makes her irredeemable is because I think she’s dumb for going against what she preaches in saying that the Blades serve the Dragonborn and then she turns around and says lol no I’m not doing anything for you until you do what I want.

A popular character you actually really like and why

Popular characters in the Elder Scrolls fandom have to be categorised in whether it’s popular by regular internet standards or by tumblr standards. Say, everyone knows Paarthurnax, but for a character like Teldryn it’s more so the tumblr fandom that knows him well. So I guess I’m gonna go by tesblr standards here.

I’m glad I got asked this and especially by you because of your brilliant recent art, but I really adore Fennorian and I really didn’t think I would! I was super late to the ESO train and all I’d see about it was Fenn this, Fenn that, and I couldn’t quite get it at first. Then I played the DLCs he’s a part of and, well… that’s my angel baby. He’s so endearing it hurts. Failure husband.