#aellai darrell

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Incorrect Quotes 28/?

Aellai: What's your number? I'm making a group chat for the project.

Darien: It's ten.

Darien: I'm 10/10 when it comes to hotness.

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OC Angst and Fluff Week, Day 1

i’ve decided to give this a shot!!! don’t think i’ll get to all the days, but i did today! thank you to the wonderful @indoril-nerevar-mora for running this!!! everything under the cut as always!

Day 1: Hiding an Injury

    It was done. Angof the Gravesinger was defeated, the blight upon Glenumbra ended. Aellai tried not to stumble out of the portal Raewyn had conjured to bring them out of the catacombs they had killed him in. Maybe that hit she’d taken when one of the Gravesinger’s vines had flung her into the wall was more serious than she had initially thought. 

    Not that it mattered. There were soldiers in that battle who had suffered far more severe injuries than she had and not enough healers to go around. She’d take one of the health potions in her pack when she got to her tent and sleep it off. Of course, when she sighed in relief a moment later as the last portal from the catacombs closed, everyone having come back alive if not intact, she realized it might not be that simple. 

    Aellai tried to be subtle about carefully maneuvering away from the rejoicing crowd, and most of them were too happily drunk on victory to notice at all. Rae saw her sneaking away, but Ae shook her head when the Imperial moved to follow, and though the concern didn’t quite leave her eyes, she stayed. Aellai was glad for it - her friend deserved a moment to relax and enjoy their victory without needing to worry. Her steps, now that the adrenaline rush of battle had faded, were painful as she walked away from the warmth of the mass of people. Aellai gritted her teeth and put a hand to her side through the gap in her armor very carefully. Her breath came out in a hiss as her ribs flared in pain. 

    She could have laughed at the situation, but that would have just made everything hurt worse. Ae ran her fingers down her ribs, counting the ones that burned at that slight pressure. At least three of them were broken, and another three or four were probably cracked, which would explain why it hurt to breathe. She resisted the urge to sigh, knowing how badly that would hurt, and tried to walk faster to the tent and the healing potion that awaited her there. It wouldn’t be strong enough to completely fix the damage, but it would hopefully dull the pain enough to let her sleep through the night and speak to a healer in the morning, after all of the serious cases had been dealt with. 

    A sudden hand on her shoulder jolted her from her thoughts, and her blade was in hand and leveled at her unknown assailant before she could think as years of training made themselves known. (It hurt, but Aellai kept her face as carefully blank as she could.) Darien put both of his hands up as his expression became amused. “Jumpy tonight?” 

    Stowing her sword while trying not to agitate her ribs was awkward at best. “Apologies,” she said, but the word was quieter and hurt more than she would have hoped. Gods, she wanted that healing potion. 

    He must have noticed something off about her tone, or maybe the coolness she felt around her face was the inevitable sheen of sweat that accompanied a bad injury. “Are you all right?” he asked, stepping closer and moving as if to press a hand to her forehead. 

    Aellai matched his step with one of her own backward. He didn’t need to be worrying about her - he ought to be sitting around the fire with the others, basking in their success. She was fine, or she would be in the morning, and she would only feel guilty if this insignificant injury kept him from enjoying the festivities he had rightly earned. “I’m fine.” She winced internally at the words - at how stilted the tone had been. 

    Darien closed the gap between them much more deliberately this time. “Don’t give me that.” He frowned as he pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. “Mara’s ass, Ae. You’re cold and clammy.” His frown deepened as he looked from her forehead to make eye contact with her. She resisted the overwhelming urge to break it in shame, knowing that would be as good as admitting something was wrong. “What happened?” 

    She took his wrist and moved it from her forehead as gently as she could. Akatosh, moving was becoming increasingly painful, and lifting her arms above her shoulders made her head swim. “I’m just feeling ill. It’s nothing serious.” Her face had softened at his concern, but it hardened as speaking, too, became more difficult and she tried to keep her voice steady. 

    Darien appeared completely unconvinced. He maintained eye contact with her for another few moments, but when Ae didn’t relent, he glanced up like he was hoping for divine assistance. “You’ll thank me for this in the morning,” he said as he pressed his free hand none too gently into her side. 

    Somehow, the lucky bastard had managed to guess exactly what was wrong, and she hissed at the contact, partially in pain and partially in surprise. Darien raised one eyebrow at her, practically smug. Aellai was certain that she was scowling as well as she was able, but it was hard to tell when everything was a mess of pain and blurring colors. “Now, the part you’ll actually thank me for - I’m taking you to the healers.”

    She barely had the presence of mind to protest. “I’m going to take a healing potion. I’ll be fine.” It was impossible to know if the sentence had come out coherently or not, and blackness was creeping into her vision, but damned if she would lose this argument while she was still conscious. 

    Darien looked at her like she was spouting gibberish. It was very likely warranted. He spoke, but all she could hear now was blood pounding in her ears. Maybe she ought to thank him when she came to - if only for being there to catch her when she passed out, she thought as the world went to black. 

Aellai woke the next morning on a cot in the healer’s tent, ribs aching but no longer blindingly painful, and Darien smirking at her. It took every bit of willpower and carefully honed self-discipline she had not to roll over and groan in exasperation. The urge subsided, and she sighed. (The action, she noticed, was much less painful than it had been last night. At least, she really, really hoped she’d only been out for the rest of the night.) “I suppose I do owe you my thanks,” she said finally. 

“Don’t sound pleased or anything,” he retorted, but his voice was fond. He leaned forward in the chair by her cot and brushed her bangs out of her face. “I wish you would have been honest with me,” he murmured, not meeting her eyes. 

Aellai, exhausted despite her sleep and unusually daring, threaded her fingers with his before he pulled his hand away. “I didn’t want you to worry,” she admitted, quietly, staring at their hands so that she didn’t have to see the expression on his face. 

“Idiot,” he said, but the word was gentle, and when he squeezed her hand in his, she knew everything was going to be all right.

-

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!!!

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Incorrect Quotes 23/?

Molag Bal: So I stole your soul last month, and-

Aellai: No refunds.

Molag Bal: But it's making me sad!

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The Hooded Figure Theory

Just kind of wanted to talk about this cause it ends up being a fairly important part of Ae’s story. So I ran across this theory recently that purports that the Hooded Figure who gives you the first main quest is the Groundskeeper. And having played through the main quest again pretty recently, I’m pretty convinced. (At the very least, I like the theory enough that I’m going to integrate it into my canon.)

Longpost under the cut. (Really longpost, I got a little carried away. Yikes.)

First:

The Hooded Figure. And:

The Groundskeeper. (I pulled these off of Google Images for comparison purposes only and would like to replace them with my own screenshots at some point so that I know graphics settings are consistent, but here they are for now.)

Not only are they both Breton women, but a lot about their faces is the same. They have the same chin, the same eyebrows, extremely close facial structures, etc. But the most convincing thing for me was the way that they both speak. They both use the same distinctive cadence when they talk, and I found it fairly noticeable. (Hooded Figure, Groundskeeper.) Of course, you speak to them so far apart that this was something I overlooked during my first playthrough, but after someone pointed it out... let’s just say I’m convinced they’re the same person.

So what does this mean? Meridia sent the Vestige to their death. Now, as much as I want a chance to punch her in game, I don’t think this was done maliciously. I think she sought out someone to be her champion, and she knew that the Vestige had pretty good odds of being able to handle being Soul Shriven without going feral, and was a good enough fighter to take on Molag Bal (albeing with the help of the Amulet of Kings) and win. So she decided to stack the deck in her favor and use you as a tool to knock the Lord of Schemes down a peg. And it worked! Still a little fucked up, but I guess you can’t necessarily fight fair when it comes to dealing with a guy who calls himself the “Lord of Brutality”.

That’s honestly one of the most interesting things about Meridia’s character to me. She doesn’t necessarily seem to be good or evil, at least not in a way that makes sense to the denizens of Nirn. But she will do whatever it takes to win. Whether that’s manipulating people into doing what she wants (see Darien at the end of Summerset and the journal where he says she promised him freedom) or even (accidentally?) killing her one of her most devoted followers due to collateral damage (iirc, Dynar dies as a side effect of the Light of Meridia and not being in the ‘safe zone’, correct me if I’m mistaken).

But how does this figure into Ae’s story? I’ve taken some liberties with the Hooded Figure quest to make it fit more neatly into who she is as a character, but the basic gist of it is this: she is, at this point, a lieutenant in the Lion Guard with her own squad of ten people. They, being run by someone who Emeric happens to be fond of (he spoils Ae a little bit), have several unique functions, and one of them is to help the people of High Rock where they need it. So when they’re stopped in Daggerfall for a bit and this woman tells Ae that she’s been hearing about strange disappearances of people in the forests near Camlorn, she takes the squad and goes, even if she’s a little suspicious of this woman, particularly after she gives this info and then just portals away.

They all die. They run right into a Worm Cult ambush, and all ten of them end up sacrificed. So Aellai watches nine of the people closest to her die, and then turn into husks in Coldharbour, and she figures out that she was set up, so she swears that she will bring that woman to justice for doing this. The Hooded Figure, and bringing her to justice, almost becomes an obsession for her while she’s trapped in Coldharbour before Lyris helps her break out. So imagine her horror when she gets back to Daggerfall and starts asking around about this woman and no one else has ever seen her. Letting go of that drive for vengeance is hard, but she makes graves for the rest of her squadron and begins to come to peace with it. After all, there’s a lot of people out there who need her help right now, and a lot of different murder cults running around. However, while the DC MQ stuff takes the forefront, she never forgets about that woman.

Eventually, Aellai makes it back to Coldharbour and finds the Hollow City, and then she meets the Groundskeeper. It takes her a while to figure it out, but eventually she realizes why this woman seems so familiar to her when she’s certain she’s never met her before. This is the woman who sent her entire squad to die, who she’s sworn vengeance upon. She kind of keeps this information to herself because she’s not sure what to do with it; the Groundskeeper is helping them now, and even if Ae knows she isn’t what she seems, she’s not sure if she could convince anyone else of that - not to mention that now that she’s figured out this woman is more than a simple cultist, she isn’t sure exactly what she is yet.

And then she puts the pieces together after talking to the people she meets in Coldharbour and realizes that the Groundskeeper is Meridia a little bit before the reveal. And she definitely can’t say anything after that. They need Meridia’s help to fight Molag Bal, not to mention that so many people in the Hollow City still worship her and she probably couldn’t fight her successfully as it is. So vengeance waits another day.

All of this gets forgotten about for a while, during which she’s busy searching for Darien/general hero business in a few different places. And then Summerset happens. She’s almost willing to forgive Meridia if she lets Darien go free, but then she doesn’t. He has to sacrifice himself, and then she finds the journal, and she lowkey flips. Aellai marches right back into the shrine by Shimmerene and just kind of starts half-arguing, half-begging her. One of the things that she swears, among others, in exchange for Darien’s freedom, is that she will never mention the fact that she knows that Meridia got her friends killed or try to take revenge for it.

That deal definitely doesn’t end up the way that she wanted it, but I’ll talk more about that later, this is super super long as it is.

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Incorrect Quotes 3/?

Darien: This forest is old. Very old.

Aellai: Darien, I know you think you're helping, but please be quiet.

Darien: I don't think I'm helping.

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Give it up for the character insults! Pick whoever, but I want many! XD

OH BOY

thank you so much for this i’m going to enjoy it. i got a little carried away.

i apologize in advance if these are uh not good i think i’m a lot funnier than i actually am. i have also given up on. actual sentences and grammar.

also apologize for the fact that some of these aren’t really insults. but they are fun! :D

Aellai Darrell - idiot. i mean. idiot. please stop throwing yourself face first into everything that wants to kill you. i mean really. just. absolute dumbass.

Raewyn Corellius - has no friends, just daedra. no wonder her moms sent her far, far away.

Evelyne Antonius - honestly these jokes just write themselves. literally a drunk necromancer. i don’t even need to say anything.

Ziapiel - tiny. so tiny. could squash her like a bug. that’s a really terrifying image. needs horns to be taller than anyone else. still shorter. shrimp.

Larandel - a THOT. also a Dres so there’s that. which is an insult in and of itself. please don’t tell her i told you. i will die.

Tamera Light-Bringer - a literal fanatic. hears strange voices and unquestioningly follows them. unironically likes meridia. has never heard of a brush.

Lyra Darrell - feral goblin. cares more about keeping her hair nice than the fate of the world, probably.

Mizuki - even more of a feral goblin. literally the unluckiest person alive. afraid of water. who the fuck is afraid of water.

Damiana - i don’t even know if it’s possible to insult her. smears blood on her face like an absolute sociopath. absolute biohazard. unstable.

Alvena - stuck-up. which is ironic for an altmer who worships a mortal god. terrible taste in other people.

Astraia - hopeless. probably couldn’t find her way out of a box. desperately needs help.

Altaire - also a thot. doesn’t know what shame is. would do anything (one?) for like... half a septim. reckless. please get standards.

Adelaide Darrell - needs to learn how to say no to people. would get pushed around by a limp noodle.

Zenaide - absolute dumbass. literal poster child for dumb jock. why the fuck would you consume hist sap. why would you think that was a good idea.

Emylynn - beats people to death with a stick. please see a therapist. pretty please.

Aralyn - the most feral goblin of all. seems to think biting is socially acceptable. afraid of 99.9999% of people. the coward.

Jaede - ?????????????? speaks for itself tbh. needs to stop playing golf with skulls.

Ashe - when you try your best but you don’t succeed. would probably blow herself up accidentally.

Zanthe - absolute ditz. couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag. really, really bad taste in romantic partners.

Asenath - small and angry. teeny tiny. possibly having serious hallucinations. absolutely no clue what she’s doing. has never flexed her ‘decent person’ muscle.

thank you so much for this it was a ton of fun!!! hope you enjoyed reading at least a little bit, even if i’m not as funny as i’d like to be :’)

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Incorrect Quotes 1/?

Aellai: I'm fine, honest.

Darien: You literally just got impaled. Through the heart.

Aellai: And?

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The band was playing, so I did as any person would and danced. I love the community in this game, everyone’s great.