Occtis Tachonis and the Protective Shell of Helplessness
Occtis is an interesting character on many levels, but one I want to look at today is how he’s ended up crafting himself a protective persona. To be clear, I don’t think this was entirely intentional. I think that his circumstances and life made this a logical tact to take in order to protect himself. Alex described him as small, despite his average height. Occtis has a small voice, softer and higher and more awkward than the other people around him. He has a small presence. He exudes anxiety wherever he goes. And while I do think the anxiety is absolutely a core part of him, I think it has also been cultivated.
Occtis grew up in what can only be described as a negligent and likely outright abusive environment. He was the one without sorcerous ability, the kid every other kid could take their frustrations out on, likely with little to no consequence. He noted that Frons had always been terrible to him. He seems to have no one in his family he remembers fondly.
Without magic to protect him, or physical strength, I think Occtis instinctively tried to turn his weakness into armor. He made himself even smaller, infantalized himself to a degree that he hoped it felt bad to pick on him, rather than rewarding. And I think that the armor of helpless awkwardness, of smallness, followed him to the Penteveral, where suddenly he was a different sort of outcast. Rather than being the youngest, the useless, the failure of the bloodline, he was the weird boy obsessed with death. He was the scion of a noble house in an academic setting largely made up of people who came from nothing and had crafted their own way up, and saw him as an interloper who didn’t need the Penteveral the way they did. And they were right and wrong. He desperately needed the Penteveral, but he didn’t need it in the same way. He didn’t need a way up out of poverty or to climb the ladder of power and respect; he needed a way through to becoming someone he actually wanted to be, which is a very different and likely isolating trajectory. We know Murray hated him, which is no surprise. She tends to hate nobility on principle, and I also think that she could tell that whatever he was doing was as much an act as it was himself. He deliberately made himself seem like less of a threat, which made her perceive him as more of one.
He is twenty years old, but acts younger. Seems younger. Keeps getting mistaken for a kid. Gets maternal attention and pity and grief wherever he goes, but rarely respect. Rarely acknowledgement of an equal footing. I think in part that’s why he holds Thimble up as his best friend. I think Thimble, herself tiny by nature, is sort of who he wishes he could be: a massive presence despite her size, bold and dangerous and clever. He makes himself small to not threaten or draw attention. She makes herself larger to show everyone she’s a force to be reckoned with.
And that leads us to the last two episodes. Two episodes ago, Julien—likely in bad faith, because most of what he does with Occtis is probably in bad faith—more or less accused Occtis of faking it. He asked him directly what lay beneath the softness, and called it a persona directly.
And Occtis didn’t deny it. Instead, he smiled and said that the apple never fell too far from the tree. Every now and then—this instance, but also the first instance in which Aranessa discussed the magic of his family, and their castle in death—a cold calm descends over Occtis. There is a chilly smile, a joy in the nature of himself as a creature of death. Even if his feelings for his family are painful and mostly bad, his feelings for their domain, for the work he spent his entire time at the Penteveral crafting himself to be a part of, seems to be fully positive.
He loves the power of death, the feel of it, the nature of it. He tinkers with it as a necromancer in ways his family could never approach. They are shadow sorcerers, but he studies death. He looks at the roots of it, the feel of it, and then he recrafts it in new ways. He draws strength from death in a way that would feel alien to his family members, but also feels like he is almost striving for and occasionally reaching the ideal of what they could be.
And that is not a sweet or soft thing. Death is not sweet or soft. But it can still be gentle. It can be quiet, but relentless and consuming. And that is who Occtis is when he actually zeroes in and forgets to be scared. And through that, I do think he is going to find ways to love what he is now, much as he hates the way he had to get there. He just has to shatter that armor of helplessness first.
We saw the first real crack in that armor last episode when he intimidated the elven druid, his shadow growing long and freezing the water around him. In that moment he was not only very much a member of his family, but overtly and powerfully a unique sort of undead. And Thaisha instinctively recoiled from that. I think Thaisha has been able to rationalize her part in raising him from the dead by the fact that he was just a helpless kid, and her friend, and so she could frame guiding him off the path as something good.
But if he’s not just a helpless kid? If he’s truly something new, but also something old, growing into himself in a way that is both authentic to Occtis and in a way that he might never have been able to achieve in life? What then? What is he, if he’s starting to stop being the boy she thought she knew?
I’m really looking forward to Thaisha grappling with this, both as a druid seeing the unnatural thing she has created becoming more dangerous, but also someone with a maternal instinct toward a boy who is growing up into someone she could not have anticipated. How does she square that circle? Can she square it? How does their relationship necessarily change because of this? I can’t wait to see her explore her faith, her beliefs, and what they mean in the face of this new person and her actions that helped make him.
And I am really interested to see how Julien plays into this. Of all the party, he’s the only one who, through being an asshole, doesn’t coddle Occtis. He still treats him as lesser, but he does that to literally everyone except Aranessa and to a lesser extent Vaelus. But he is the one who actually called out the persona, and if it does start to crack and a more confident, powerful man emerges?
I honestly sort of think Julien would be into that. He had no problem with Occtis confronting the druid. They made a surprisingly effective team on the battlefield, and seemed to be able to communicate quickly and effectively when Julien was in the zone and Occtis forgot to be terrified and stormed up to stop Enmity from regenerating her health. I think Julien, of all people, may be the person who really understands this new Occtis as an equal. They are both disappointing sons, and both forced through circumstance to remake themselves in the crucible of this journey. They are both struggling with identities that have been completely shattered. They have both lost so much, and are the youngest members of the group.
They have shared goals, even if Julien is still trying to keep Occtis classified in his head as just another Tachonis. Julien was so angry that Occtis got brought back, that he got to be the miracle instead of all the other people slaughtered in the Palazzo Davinos. But I think now he’s seeing the flip-side. This new existence is a miracle, but also a curse, and Occtis may be the only person—through the experiences of his entire life—equipped to really grapple with and eventually come out embracing this second chance at a new and very altered existence. I really want to see them have an actual conversation for the first time since Occtis’ death. I want to see Julien step in as the first person who treats Occtis not as a son or a miracle or as Something New, but as an equal.
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