#thora tavin d'tarkanan

[yellowmagicalgirl]

YellowMagicalGirl's Battleship 2024 Fics

Instead of daily posts, I'm just going to give you links to all of them here. Note that you are required to have an AO3 account to view these. (If you don't, and you really like one of the premises, send me an ask and I'll upload the fic to SquidgeWorld so you can read it. I'm just low on spoons right now and don't feel like doing a lot of crossposting.)

I'm gonna sort these alphabetically by fandom and then by date posted. All of these are oneshots.

Eberron

I Don't Mind if You Say This Love is the Last Time (1040 words) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Thora Tavin Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Forced Marriage, Pre-Canon, (more specifically pre-Thora joining the Dark Lanterns), Aromantic, Asexual Character, Aromantic Thora Tavin (Eberron), Asexual Thora Tavin (Eberron), Social Season, debutantes, Angst, Epistolary, Diary/Journal, Title from a Breaking Benjamin Song, (because how could I not use "Diary of Jane" for a diary entry fic) Summary: Before she was a gang leader in Sharn or a superspy in a King's Citadel suicide squad, Thora Tavin was an unhappy debutante.

kiss like real people (849 words) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Thora Tavin/Original Female Character(s) Characters: Thora Tavin, Original Female Character(s), Original Elf Character(s) (Dungeons & Dragons) Additional Tags: Mild Injury, Background Character Death, Mild Dehumanization, Anti-Aberrant Dragonmark Prejudice, Pre-Canon, (Specifically this is set around 990 YK), First Kiss, Kissing to hide from bad guys, Kissing in the Rain, Pre-Relationship, POV Third Person Limited, POV Thora Tavin (Eberron), Title from a Hozier Song, Rated T for swearing, It's the mildest of T ratings but on rereading I realized it was better as a T than a G Summary: When fleeing the Dark Lanterns, sometimes unconventional means of escape need to be taken.

First Kill

Juliette should have considered the tensile strength of the pillow. (635 words) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Calliope Burns/Juliette Fairmont Characters: Calliope Burns (First Kill), Juliette Fairmont Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Soil Scientist, Alternate Universe - Elinor Doesn't Go to Jail (First Kill), (whether or not the Fairmonts are vampires is up to the reader), Domestic Fluff, Pillow Fights, POV Calliope Burns (First Kill), POV Third Person Limited, Recursive fanfic Summary: An expansion upon the pillow fight from "Cal should have asked what a grass filter strip was." (Aka recursive fanfic of a fic I received for Battleship last year.)

Khyber Shards

all the comrades that e'er I had (1175 words) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Daine (Khyber Shards), Background & Cameo Characters Additional Tags: Despair, Drinking to Cope, Grief/Mourning, The Age of Cul'Sir (Khyber Shards), This takes place halfway through the timeskip, Post-Apocalypse, Daine-centric (Khyber Shards), POV Daine (Khyber Shards), Wine, Experimental Style, No Dialogue, Title from The Parting Glass, Title from a Traditional Scottish Song, past canonical character death, Campaign Setting: Eberron (Dungeons & Dragons) Summary: On the thirteenth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Thronehold, Daine mourns.

Your Bones an Effigy to Quixotic Hubris (1939 words) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Stryke Force & Thora Tavin, Daine & Thora Tavin (Khyber Shards) Characters: Thora Tavin (Khyber Shards), Original Stormreach Guard (Khyber Shards), Daine (Khyber Shards), Shade (Khyber Shards), Background & Cameo Characters Additional Tags: Torture, Broken Bones, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Episode: e166 The Maker, Canon Disabled Character, Whump, Despair, Guilt, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, POV Third Person Limited, POV Thora Tavin (Khyber Shards) Summary: Thora was captured when searching Yorrick Amanatu's office. She knows that no one is coming for her.

Sun's Still Shining (776 words) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Shade/Unnadavari "Ari" Smith Characters: Shade (Khyber Shards), Unnadavari "Ari" Smith Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Anti-Aberrant Discrimination, Past Violence, Post-Canon, Romantic Fluff, Rain, Campaign Setting: Eberron (Dungeons & Dragons), Gratituous Potshots at the Ordning, Mild Angst, Established Relationship, marriage superstitions, Last-Minute Wedding Planning, No Beta We Die Like the Warden of Dreadhold, Kitsune no Yomeiri Summary: The morning before Shade and Ari's wedding, it starts to rain.

Leverage

Flower on Your Head (353 words) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alec Hardison & Eliot Spencer, Eliot Spencer & Original Child Character Characters: Eliot Spencer (Leverage), Alec Hardison Additional Tags: Flower Crowns, Implied/Refrenced Prank War Summary: A client gifted Eliot a flower crown.

The Locked Tomb

Dominicus is a Flower that Blooms For Only One Hour (623 words) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Camilla Hect/Dulcinea Septimus/Palamedes Sextus Characters: Dulcinea Septimus, Background & Cameo Characters Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Terminal Illness, Blood, coughing up blood, Pre-Gideon the Ninth (Locked Tomb Series), Post-The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex (Locked Tomb Series), Alternate Universe - All of Summer in a Day Fusion, If only my language arts teachers could see me now, deliberately referencing a short story I hated for the sake of a fanfic competition, Pre-Relationship, Cultural Differences, Epistolary Summary: Dulcinea continues her correspondence with Cam and Pal, and she thinks about the light that comes only once every seven years.

Original Fiction

inky tendrils battering away nail polish (893 words) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Desperate Superhero Whose Life is in Danger/Supervillain He Reluctantly Goes to for Help, Original Superhero/Original Supervillain, Original Male Character/Original Male Character Characters: Original Superhero Character, Original Supervillain Character(s), Original Male Character(s) Additional Tags: Magical Illness, Fever, Respiratory Illness, Superheroes, Supervillains, Pre-Relationship, Enemies to Lovers, Angst, Nail Polish, Soulmates, Noticeably Unwell Character, (Guess which tags were still on the board when I started writing this 😅), POV Original Male Character, POV Third Person, Ambiguous/Open Ending Summary: Marcus can't afford to hide himself from his soulmate any more.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

A Cat-astrophic Away Mission (545 words) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Erica Ortegas, Background & Cameo Characters Additional Tags: Post-Season/Series 02, Animal Transformation, Character as Cat, happy ending implied, My First Work in This Fandom, Hair care Summary: Erica can't help but feel she has the worst luck with away missions.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love ❤️❤️❤️!!

Hi, anon. I know you sent this years ago. Sorry for the wait; I kept on freezing up because how could I choose a favorite; would you ask a parent to pick their favorite child? If you're still there, I hope you enjoy these.

Destiny's Pawn | Tales of Arcadia | Rated M for blood, dissociation, and panic attacks | 19k | Krexie with background ships | Douxie wants to never meet his soulmate. Krel isn't about to go searching for his own soulmate. Despite not realizing the meaning behind the names on their wrists, they meet anyways. | Reccing because this is the longest work I've ever written. It was a labor of love for an at-the-time crackship featuring two characters who had never interacted, and one of those characters didn't have a canon personality yet. This is also the longest fic I've ever written.

But I Don't Look Good in Green (So I Must Surrender to You) | Original Work | Rated G | 1.2k | Court Sorceress/Hedge Witch | Adelina the court sorceress is trying to study before the ball, but Elsy the newly hired hedge witch just has to interrupt Adelina's plans. | Reccing this because I had so much fun while writing this.

A Burning Helm | Khyber Shards | Rated T for referenced mercy killing | 1.4k | Gen | Ari, Shade, Esri, and Pog once more face a dangerous masked enemy. On a different note, Thora is missing. | Reccing this because I started an entire fandom tag through this fic now if only someone else would write for this fandom so I can read a fic for these characters without having to write it first /lighthearted

Juliet Dies in This | Tales of Arcadia | Rated T for death | 9k | Mostly gen, with one jlaire-focused chapter | Claire sealed herself in the Shadow Realm with Morgana in order to save the world. These are five ways her sacrifice is mourned, and one way the events of her life are celebrated. | Reccing this because this is one of the few multichaps I have ever completed instead of spiralling.

Dazzling Jade | Original Work | Rated G | 1.3k | Magical Girl/Dark Magical Girl Rival | As Orchid Dazzler, you fight a ballerina with your rapier. As Julie Flessel, you awkwardly try to flirt with the ballerina in your English class. | Reccing this because this fic made me realize that I actually like second person. Help. Harrow the Ninth rewrote my brain, I think.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Yay I finally have polls!

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Ari: And hopefully before too long, you will be residing in a home with a Storm Lord of Stormreach... Puzzledust: I don't understand. Is this town run by elementals and I just didn't notice? ~ Khyber Shards Episode 126 "We Need to Talk"

Finally getting around to posting some old fanart of Thora as a subtle air elemental because

Repostober

Discord is no longer a good image host for fanart on AO3/SquidgeWorld

[yellowmagicalgirl]

If you like the idea of feeling sad for a tiefling whose crush on a crime boss is never requited, I suggest that you read the Shardrunners series by @pirate-melody

[ID: A chart. On top is the phrase "What's gayer?" On the left side is the phrase "Being gay and actually in a relationship". On the right side are various snippets from the Shardrunners series. Snippets are below the cut.

The first snippet reads

Marianne’s breath caught in her throat. She could feel her heart trying to escape her chest, unwilling to accept what her brain had just determined must be true. Marianne had always assumed this phenomenon was pretend, just something invented for storybooks to make them more appealing, but now, it was the only thing that, in her stunned state, made any sense. This was love at first sight.

The second snippet is an AO3 tag reading "One-Sided Attraction"

The third snippet reads

“I’m thirty-six, and you’re a kid. I’m not going to just throw flowers away if I get them, but that doesn’t mean—” “No, I’m… I’m not a kid. I’m nineteen. I turn twenty in a week!” “I’m still twice your age. What made you think…?” she trailed off. “I had to try!” Marianne blurted.

The fourth snippet reads, "She supposed it was never meant to be."

The fifth and final snippet reads,

“I need you to save the House,” Thora choked out, despite Lucien’s hand on her throat. Marianne had no desire to save House Tarkanan. She knew the rest of the party didn’t, either. She wanted to save Thora.

End ID]

[yellowmagicalgirl]

The Distance of Worlds (Makes A Heart Grow Fonder)

It's been ten years since Thora was in Eberron, and she never expected to see a familiar face ever again.

Happy holidays, @pirate-melody! Remember when you told me about your friend isekai-ing Marianne into his campaign as his character's mediocre mentor? Well, despite knowing nothing about the campaign, I decided to add some Pink Lightning to its premise as a gift for you. I hope you like this!

To literally anyone else: please go read the Shardrunners series. IDK how much sense this will make without prior knowledge.

AO3

It had been ten years, but there were still mornings where Thora expected to wake up in her room in the Tarkanan manor in Sharn, with the morning color change of the everbright lanterlight streaming through her window and highlighting the white orchids on her windowsill. The room she woke up in didn't get morning light, outside lanterns or otherwise. Its primary decoration was a detailed map of an ocean one would never find in all of Eberron or even its planes.

She missed her old room. She missed House Tarkanan, and everyone in it except for Lucien and his most loyal supporters. She even supposed she missed that frustrating tiefling who had gifted those orchids, even though Thora had never intended to grow sentimental about the people she was using to do her dirty work. She had mostly rebuilt her life in a slightly different line of criminal work, but she couldn't replace the people.

Thora blinked away her infelicity, crawled out of bed, and began to get ready. Hard work had gotten her to her precarious position, and she didn't have time to grieve what she had lost.

She took out the loose braids she slept in. After she had bathed, she would tightly braid the right half of her hair against her skull. It was the best way of mimicking the hairstyle she had worn in Sharn without having someone take a razor to her head as they questioned her judgement aloud.

When she had first come to this world, her breastplate had been ruined by a crossbow bolt to the chest. No one understood the meaning of an aberrant dragonmark, which meant that it was useless for intimidation purposes. People were intimidated by the scar on her chest, though. It should have killed her instantly.

It probably had, but no one in this world knew that. Thora could use it to her advantage, leave it on display and let them think she could walk off mortal wounds.

Thora pulled on her current armor, a corset made of dragonhide that covered her midriff but not her chest. Dragons were more common in this world than Eberron, patrolling the seas, raiding ships, and feasting on sailors. One had recently cost Thora one of the ships in her sector of the smuggling network. She had rivals who were eager to take her place if she slipped up. Most of them were more willing to knock her down a peg and become her superior than they were to put a knife in her back or unleash a death curse on the city, but Thora wasn't going to take any chances.

It was late afternoon when a messenger knocked on her door. He was human, young, fifteen at the latest? Then again, it wouldn't have been the first time Thora would have underestimated someone's age.

"Missus Tarkanan?"

"Yes?" Thora answered, terseness creeping into her voice. She wasn't married. The last time she had been close enough to even consider marrying someone had been before the mark had manifested, and that was several lifetimes ago. After that, she had had painfully few suitors. Plus, there was frustrating something about the way this world assumed she had to be married or at least a widow at her age.

"Torth Whiteforce used his one message to contact you." The messanger handed over a piece of parchment, folded in thirds and sealed with a wax stamp bearing the symbol of the local lord. Thora took the parchment, sparing a glance to the letterhead bearing the address of the sheriff's office. Dammit.

Torth worked for her, technically. Or more specifically, he took jobs for the smuggling network, and as the leader of this branch she was his handler. Recently he had gotten himself mixed up with an adventuring party, and now he was in jail with the rest of them. Thora really needed to find a way to get an informant within the sheriff's office, so that she could get them to do her work for her. It hadn't been as difficult back in Sharn, but in Sharn the Watch had been working for criminals for centuries. The port city of Keelster was younger and answered more directly to the local lord. It was harder to find someone to corrupt. Likewise, it had been easy for Thora to put herself in the good graces of Watch Commander Silaena Cazal because Silaena's mother bore an aberrant mark. Here, Thora was an outsider. There were no Dark Lanterns or dragonmarked houses after her. Even though this world had its own vigilante called the Phoenix, the Phoenix wasn't after Thora like the one in Sharn had been.

Here, Thora was an outsider, and there were no immediate enemies or easy alliances to be made.

Thora had been working all day, and she needed to stretch her legs. Maybe she would pay off Torth's bail in exchange for a favor. Maybe she would let him rot there because he was no longer useful. She hoped that Torth would choose to be useful, for both of their sakes.

He didn't, because Thora hadn't been able to offer the choice. Torth's party's bail had been paid already by someone else, according to the clerk. Lovely. She had just wasted her time walking here.

"You're better than this," said a voice that made Thora stop in her tracks.

"Yeah, but we needed that information," said a second voice, sounding like a young man from the neighboring province.

"And yet you still got caught picking the lock. Even I wouldn't have gotten caught breaking and entering until after I had entered," the first voice argued. It was the accent that drew Thora in. Maybe Thora just didn't know every accent there was in this world, but she could've sworn the woman's accent was that of a Thrane.

A very specific Thrane.

As Thora drew closer, she was able to confirm her suspicions. She was older, and a Lichtenburg figure peaked out from under her collar, but the sight of her was unmistakable. "Marianne?"

The tiefling jumped as she finally registered Thora's presence. Her eyes widened in shock as she looked Thora up and down, eyes lingering on the scar on Thora's chest before her face flushed and she looked elsewhere. "Thora? You, I saw, you... you changed your hair."

Suddenly self-conscious, Thora raised her hand to touch the braids on the side of her head. "Well, so did you."

Marianne had grown her hair out. Soft curls framed her face quite nicely. "Yeah, well, I bet you haven't met anyone in the past ten years who know what an undercut is, either."

Ten years. She had been here for ten years, too, and from the sound of it Marianne had also spent the last ten years convinced that she was the only one who had come to this world from Eberron. It was just the two of them.

The two of them, and perhaps the Phoenix, who had managed to avoid crossing paths with either of them. Thora didn't know how many Lucien and Krootag had killed after she and Marianne had died. But that was an issue for later.

For now, though...

"You. You got caught picking a lock?"

Torth rolled his eyes. "No, I wasn't picking the lock. Linace was."

Thora fixed her subordinate with a look that he began to squirm under. "You were still caught. I wonder what else you would get caught doing."

Even Marianne had made her way through a manor full of assassins, thieves, and former spies before being caught snooping. Kids these days just didn't know how to sneak around.

"How long have you been dealing with them?" Marianne asked, vaguely gesturing with the group.

"Torth has been doing jobs for me for a couple years. You?"

"I've been trying to mentor Linace for the past ten."

Thora shot Marianne a commiserating grimace. "Let me buy you a drink." And then, so no one would get the wrong idea, "Do not read into that."

What was she thinking? It had been ten years. Surely even Marianne knew how to get over a crush over the course of a decade. The child with a crush had died in Eberron.

But that didn't mean that Thora wasn't interested in getting to know the new Marianne. She just hoped that Torth wouldn't go starting any rumors.

~

A/N: Yes I did just flip the switch and make Thora the pining one, even if she refuses to admit it. She's lonely, and she thinks too highly of Marianne's ability to get over a crush.

Thora has one of those viking braided fake undercut hairstyles after the timeskip. Marianne has the hairstyle I imagined her having before I saw the reddit post that showed her true appearance.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Ghost White Orchids

Thora receives a potted orchid. Time will tell whether or not she had overreacted.

@pirate-melody just wanted to wish you lots of love today and in years beyond. I wrote a gift for you, and I hope you don’t mind me writing something set in the Shardrunners ‘verse. The fic takes place between Plenty of Time and Meant to Be.

AO3

~

Thora didn’t get gifts of flowers, not anymore. She didn’t receive gifts often in general, and they were always practical items like a new dagger. Thora’s birthday had been eight weeks ago, and a potted white orchid wasn’t something practical. And so, she had immediately expected the worst.

First, she had focused her mark to sense what magic laid within it. She was expecting a time-delayed spell intended to manifest a fireball that would kill her and everyone near her. That, or it was being used to scry on her. Someone wanted to learn her secrets. Maybe it was a lucky guess, since white orchids were a common enough flower, but they had already sent Thora her favorite flower. She wouldn’t allow herself to become more compromised.

Nothing.

There was nothing but a fading Risian enchantment, one intended to keep the flowers in a stasis. The magewright who had enchanted them must have done so very lightly, as to not hurt the orchids with the frost.

So there were no magical traps. That didn’t mean the flowers were safe. Carefully, Thora began to manipulate the pot. She gently traced the contours of the pot, trying to find a hidden button that if pressed would shoot out a poison needle. And then she saw the card. It had fallen between the decorative outer pot and the inner pot that actually held the orchid. Slowly Thora removed it from the pot, careful not to disturb the ghost white petals.

Thora felt herself relax as she read the name of the sender. Marianne was too flirtatious for her - and Thora’s - own good, but she wasn’t a threat. Despite the fact that it had to have been a lucky guess, but Thora still appreciated Marianne’s flower choice. She could have easily just gone for the most common option and gotten roses for Thora instead. Thora wrinkled her nose, remembering the disaster that had occurred the last time someone had given her a rose.

Thora flipped the card over to see if there was a message. There weren’t even any letters, just a semicolon followed by a closing parenthesis.

Thora groaned as she crushed the card in her hand. Another wink. So that was what this was. Another attempt to flirt. Thora probably would have preferred some badly written poetry on the card to a winking face. It was bad enough when she saw a winking face from the younger members of House Tarkanan, those just old enough to be sent on jobs and too young to understand that no, using emoticons was actually worse than not using any sort of encryption on the messages. And Lucien really thought it was a good idea to use House members Marianne’s age and even younger as foot soldiers against the Twelve, when they’d likely be even worse?

It was ironic, really. Marianne was competing for a mark, and yet if she gained an aberrant mark she might want to join the House. And if she joined the House, then Thora would have to make Marianne sit on the sidelines, not living up to the full potential that had allowed her to win, for at least a few years. That, or Thora would have to accept appearing as a hypocrite to the abandoned marked kids she and Fileon kept trying to wrangle. Some days, it felt like she was more of a babysitter than a crime boss.

Maybe she should insist on Lucien spending more time with the kids before he tried to encourage them to fight. Thora bit her lip. Lucian had been having a lot of concerning ideas, lately. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him around the kids, even to teach him a lesson. The very Trials that Thora had met Marianne through had been Lucian’s idea, at first. Thora still wasn’t too sure of the specifics of how he was going to help awaken aberrant marks, just had he had done so twice before. At the time Thora had agreed to the Trials, but now? Now it was too late to turn back, and yet Thora felt uneasy about the whole situation.

And not just because one of the competitors was a kid who kept flirting with her through winks and propositions.

Thora looked down at the orchids, feeling a slight sense of calm as she gazed down at them. They were beautiful, and it had been such a long time since anyone had given her flowers. She was going to keep them, but not so close to the front of the manor. She wanted them to be safe, kept away from the public areas of the House. Thora carried them up the stairs to her bedroom, gently placing the pot of ghost white orchids on the corner of the windowsill. Hopefully they would get enough sunlight there.

~

Author’s Notes

So... I wrote this before you revealed that the Trials would never result in gaining an aberrant mark and were only a trick to get others to do Thora’s dirty work. Um. This is an AU of your fic I guess? 😅 Mainly because I wanted to add a sense of caution to this fic re: Lucien's plans and to contrast them with Marianne's gift.

I acknowledge that it makes little sense for Eberron, whose tech level is roughly set in the 1920′s, to have emoticons which weren’t used until the internet chatrooms of the 1990′s. I thought it was funny for Marianne, and other young adults of Khorvaire, to use emoticons anyways.

The bit about Lucien wanting to use child soldiers comes from my campaign, specifically a plot point that will come about if my players decide to pursue a greater relationship with House Tarkanan than just me occasionally making their contact show up with a plot hook. Thora’s morals are a bit skewed, given that she’s the leader of a group of assassins, but she is heavily against the use of child soldiers. She doesn’t explain her reasoning well enough to the kids of House Tarkanan, though, which has led at least one of them (aka the party’s contact within House Tarkanan) to think that she doesn’t let them do anything cool (just pickpocketing and carrying messages). Meanwhile, the Son of Khyber is scheming to take over the House as part of his quest to exterminate the Twelve, and he’s willing to use the kids (who are desperate to prove their worth after having been abandoned by their families) for this.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

1, 9, and 23 for the weirder asks?

who is/are your comfort character(s)?

Lately Thora Tavin I guess? This applies across the multiverse of different Eberron campaigns, but applies most heavily to my campaign's version of her (AKA what if the former assassin YA protagonist that you were expecting to lead the rebellion became a crime boss 8 years ago and also she's played by Erin Kellyman), @pirate-melody's version of her as seen in the Shardrunners fics, and the Khyber Shards version of her. (Not necessarily in that order)

9. which do you prefer, hot coffee or cold coffee?

Coffee that is so full of sugar, chocolate, milk, and creamer that I don't taste the coffee. Temperature doesn't matter to me in this case.

23. how do you feel about chilly weather?

I prefer it to hot weather, but I am miserable if I'm underdressed. Also lately if its overcast for too long it contributes to my depression.

weirder asks

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Nos. 5 and 6 for your current favorite character for the character asks?

So for context, I'm doing Thora Tavin from the actual play Khyber Shards

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

500 different headcanons popped into my head and I had to sit in mental static until one outshone the others, and that one was...

She was born with brown eyes, and the mindblade she would use was a similar color. Her eyes changed color just moments before her mark manifested, when the moment of panic had her swing wildly at the invisible Thuranni agent.

6: favorite line from this character

It's not a line, it's a monologue from episode 71 that I keep going back to listen to. I bolded my favorite parts (primarily because of the inflection used) but am putting it under a cut for spoilers

"So you understand that these things that you didn't pick, that probably didn't manifest in the most convenient ways they might have at the most convenient times have an affect on people outside your family, and perhaps within your family. Now, that effect is not universally positive, so I would think that you could have a little bit of empathy for someone in a similar situation being a bit untrusting. And considering that Esri just told you that shortly before his return on our first day of school, he was stabbed to death by members of the Aereni Death Guard, you can understand that he's been in a bit of a mood." ("Yeah," interjects Kara.) "You didn't give people a chance, is what you told me about your mark manifesting, Kara. This is a place where we give each other a chance. We're not all good at it, and Esri is not better at it than most. But, just because his mark has a name and a history, and your mark and my mark are unique, it turns out that the right. Well, the wrong people react to his mark much the way people reacted when mine manifested. "When my mark manifested, I saved six lives. And then I lost my job. And was disowned by my family, and expelled from my homeland. And then sent into a trap by my new employers, with the specific goal of killing me. And I pulled all of them out of a situation that would have resulted in their deaths, and I did it at the cost of a dear friend. And at a lot of pain to myself. "Here, we're going to give each other a chance. And maybe a second, and maybe a third. That's what we're going to do here. Esri's not a teacher, but he works here. Works for me. Forge isn't a teacher, but they work here, and I expect you to respect their privacy."

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Every so often, I've been making shitposty Valentine's Day cards involving the Khyber Shards characters. Some of them are more endearing than others, lol. Bonus innuendo-filled cards under the cut.