#audden

[sylvaridreams]

Audden the Silent

I'm working on drawing little headshots of each character I've put on artfight.... but there are still so many more left to do. _(´ཀ`」 ∠)

[sylvaridreams]

They'd never let you see him if they knew...

Inoxiam/Audden, "Forbidden" for ockissweek 2025

from the timeline where they're both Nightmare Courtiers

[sylvaridreams]

I don't have a good caption or anything I just wanted to put them side by side. Audden and Inoxiam for Telkaverse where they're both in the Court; Audden is the Harbinger of Nightmare and Inoxiam is his keeper (who has long since forgotten about his Whispers assignment and true identity.) 😌

[sylvaridreams]

wake up 4 hours early, manage a loose sketch, do nothing else 😌👍

[sylvaridreams]

He feels like a bruised fruit. His skin feels like it will slough off, all the flesh to follow, and the juice will pour out of him into a sticky heap of rot, and all that’s left will be the hollow pit. They reject his presence. They are right to do so. He is a pariah and they are right to make him one, it is only just, it is only fair, after all that he’s done. He used to count the people that he hurt. Not intentionally. Never hoping the number would increase. But it did. One. One more. One more.

Rotten on Ao3

[sylvaridreams]

Audden (The Silent)

A "Soundless" sylvari -- not truly Soundless in that he doesn't exercise any mental wards to disconnect from the Dream. Rather, he awoke without any connection to the Pale Tree or to his race as a whole. Though aware enough at the time he awoke to understand his own personhood, he entered life without any of the collective memories of the sylvari race, or any of the social or emotional bonds that a Dreamer would wake with.

He was incredibly naive a first, even for a sapling, having to learn each new concept for the first time like a child rather than knowing the basics when he woke. The Firstborn and other sylvari tried to study and understand him, to unravel what he could be and what his existence meant for their people. The end? A new beginning? Audden struggled to connect with anyone, being prodded and monitored like a rat in a cage. As kind and polite as they were, the other sylvari still treated him as an anomaly, an "other." He grew to view the Grove as nothing more than a beautiful prison, and quickly became frustrated with sylvari society, the Grove, and the Pale tree who claimed to care for him, despite there clearly being no bond between them at all. He felt no love for her, and no love from her. He knew he was wrong, out of place, too different from anyone to be happy-- like a cuckoo egg left in a sparrow nest to be raised by strangers, he grew to fear the idea that he wasn't sylvari at all, but something planted there. A parasite, left to feed on resources not meant for him and grow. He worried that he could belong to the Nightmare he'd heard about, that his true nature must be something twisted and evil. Or perhaps he was something even worse, something that would wipe out these kind, well-intentioned people who seemed to want so badly to help him connect with their world.

He wanted nothing more than to run from the Grove, but feared that doing so would allow the Court to find and take him. Eventually, too miserable to remain in one place any longer, having Ventari's teachings drilled into him and told his nature, he ran away, creeping out of the Grove and fleeing to the south. He managed to evade Courtiers for a time, but was ultimately too naive to make it far and stay out of trouble.

Lychen of the Pale Sentinels picked him up. Audden couldn't trust him at first, not as another sylvari, another of "their" mother's children, or perhaps a Courtier -- it is often hard, upon meeting Lychen, to tell if he's a good person to put your faith into or not. Lychen earned his trust through sheer disinterest, and Audden was eventually willing to travel with him to the Sentinels' headquarters and go before Lacrimosen. Lala saw in him an opportunity to further the reach of their organization, as well as something to strive for--but Lychen warned him that Audden had already spent his life being studied, and that such lab-rat treatment was the reason he'd run away; treating him as any kind of anomaly was certain to drive him off. He further suggested that since Audden was, in a big way, untouched by the Dream or the Nightmare, leaving him be and watching from afar would be a better course of action to see how an uninfluenced Sylvari might develop-- a sort of control experiment.

So, at this time, he resides in the Sentinels' HQ castle, training to become one of their snipers and devouring their vast library. As many of the Sentinels are Soundless, and as the castle has become a sort of refuge for Soundless sylvari specifically, he's managed to make a couple of friends naturally, just by virtue of studying the same topics or being naturally bad at the same drills. Lacrimosen is still watching him, but he also holds Audden in high regard, and Audden seems to recognize this.

[sylvaridreams]

hey. don't cry. AUDDEN THE SILENT JUMPSCARE.

[sylvaridreams]

and also Audden (the Silent)