very miscellaneous temur musings cause we're in that sort of mood today
in terms of his relationship with the scions, i think he's... closer to them now, but was probably a lot less so for a good chunk of the plot. he gets recruited from them in arr sure but he's not the Warrior Of Light, and then the delightful dinner happens and the scions are basically gone for a good while. i think he does meet estinien a few times early on (some amount of dragoon quest stiff is canon) and probably eventually gets roped into the road trip with him and ysayle. it being just temur between the other two's polar opposites is kinda funny to me.
we really don't want to have to write alphinaud but the problem is that either writing him out entirely produces problems (what happens to the things he's directly involved with, eg the crystal braves?) and we can't figure out a good way to write him out partway so for now we've just kind of been keeping him off screen but we feel like we really need some kind of proper solution there.
right anyways we kinda wanted to figure out where he and the other scions/major npcs stand with each other. sorting these by groups in roughly chronological order:
the early days (~arr): i think y'shtola was the one to recruit him in gridania (we started in limsa and still partially associate her with that) and he was quite wary. random catgirl wizard in the woods inviting him to her unsupervised paramilitary group he's going to be somewhat on his guard. i don't think he was particularly friends with any of them up to this point, although he probably trusted them more.
dravania road trip (hw): so the scions are basically gone now. temur has already kicked estinien's ass and now is stuck on a road trip with him and ysayle and it is not a comfortable time all around. he probably also sympathises with the dragons more; having both lived in ishgard and with dragons as neighbours in loth ast vath, he knows which of the two treated him with more respect. eventually the scions come back together but it takes a while to really rebuild.
othard road trip: alisaie shows up! i forget exactly when but it's by this point at least. i think that her being the youngest of the scions (especially if alphinaud is ambiguously not around) adds an interesting way to read her competitive streak with the wol in canon. she also doesn't really have to worry about temur having a martyr complex the way the in game wol does so things are probably a little more chill between the two of them. i think that she deserves to also join in on the steppe arc alongside lyse and yugiri and also i guess hien is there. i think when temur heads back home it's on his own because he's expecting to not really be leaving again, marriage and all. we know how that goes for him though lol. oh right also estinien helps out with the orn khai stuff which i guess is presumably in here somewhere but that's definitely when temur's respect for him gets cemented. guy's had character development he can respect that.
shadowbringers era: ok we haven't talked about urianger yet because we forgot about post hw but we're putting her here. i think that they probably were on more amiable terms (at least somewhat) and that got shaken by the post hw stuff. but her being part of the exarch's deception was definitely pretty damning when he finds out about that later given his feelings about that. actually maybe we should write that some time... oh right also there's ryne we were not as attached to her admittedly but i think she would get along with temur pretty well. both out of being able to somewhat commiserate with each other's predicaments and just in general.
void crew (post-ew) (skipping over ew cause we're still not sure about how the later half of it goes for him): ok so it goes without saying that zero, or more precisely memoria, fucking terrifies him on an existential level. that being said i think he and zero click pretty well even if they don't always see eye to eye (cough cough shards of each other they both have that flat affect swag). this is also probably where he gets a lot closer to y'shtola and estinien, as well as vrtra.
tournament arc (early dawntrail): i think his relationship with most of the scions is pretty well settled by this point, although erenville is worth throwing in here because i think they get along well and the (unfortunately cut brief) shaaloani trip was a nice break for both of them. he also likes wuk lamat although they do kind of have very different outlooks in some ways. he really respects her optimism though.
we feel like we had other things to say but we kinda forget now. uhm. there's definitely major chunks of the story we wanna think about how it goes differently for him: heavensward, the threat of primals early on, a lot of endwalker really, and the later portion of dawntrail especially with living memory. also various side things (still need to write that reaper bit, if any raids other than pandæmonium are canon, etc). we will add onto this or just make another post if we remember what else we were going to say ok bye now i love you
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