#casca shadowstorm

[kerra-and-company]

Storm Warband: Dynamics

(tagging @vampiricsheep for your interest :) )

The Storm Warband consists of six members: Ari Stormshield (legionnaire), Casca Shadowstorm, Brook Splitstorm, Pol Stormheart, Lifa Stormstrike, and Weylon Stormblade. This is me attempting to summarize their relationships with each other and how they change over the years.

Image transcripts and explanations under the cut if you're curious!

Cubs (top left image)

Transcript

Casca-Brook (best friends): Close to the point of codependency

Brook-Pol (friends): Understand each other well

Casca-Pol (friends): Constantly fighting to protect each other

Brook-Ari (friends): Validate each other's magic

Casca-Ari (friends): Take turns being "leader"

Brook-Lifa (enemies): Avoidance

Brook-Weylon (enemies): Avoidance

Ari-Pol (best friends): Group caretakers who take care of each other

Casca-Lifa (enemies): Active and enduring hatred

Casca-Weylon (enemies): Hatred here, too, though slightly less so

Pol-Lifa (enemies): "Easy" target and bullying victim

Pol-Weylon (enemies): Confused frustration and dislike

Ari-Lifa (enemies): Openly disdainful of each other

Ari-Weylon (enemies): Dislike and frustration

Lifa-Weylon (best friends): The only other person who's worthwhile

Explanation/Context

As cubs, Casca, Brook, Pol, and Ari all bonded closely and more quickly due to being "outside the norm" for charr in some way. Casca used and loved her magic, which, although a military asset, was seen as slightly strange. Brook had magic that the fahrar didn't understand (namely burgeoning revenant abilities). Ari was inclined towards guardian magic and chose to train as a guardian. Pol hated fighting and combat despite being large and theoretically dangerous even as a cub.

Lifa and Weylon bonded as well, but they took to bullying the other four in various ways. Lifa's dam/mother was well-known in the Ash Legion but stuck to the letter of what charr are supposed to do and didn't really interact with Lifa at all as she grew up. Lifa nonetheless felt like she should follow in her mother's footsteps, and her desire to succeed came with several chips on her shoulder. Weylon's sire/father was almost as well-known--at first for similar reasons to Lifa's mother, but then for challenging his legionnaire to single combat and losing dramatically, violently, and quickly. Weylon wanted to do better than that.

The bullying became worse when the six were assigned to work together in the fahrar. Lifa tended to lead the bullying, but Weylon more than willingly went along with it. Pol didn't understand why they cared so much about hurting him; Brook dealt with the whole thing by avoiding them as much as possible; Casca developed a fierce hatred for both Lifa and Weylon; and, Ari held onto as much of her pride as she could and tried to return the energy if not the insults.

The dynamic shifted when Ari saved both Lifa and Weylon from a storm and a group of Ascalonian ghosts, forcing them to think a little more about what they were doing and eventually leading the six of them to become a pretty solid warband.

Young Adults (top right image)

Transcript

Casca-Brook (romantic partners): Nearly inseparable

Brook-Pol (friends): Problem-solvers (intimidation [Brook] vs persuasion [Pol])

Casca-Pol (friends): How can we cause controlled chaos this week

Brook-Ari (friends): Secrets investigation team

Casca-Ari (friends): You [Casca] come up with a prank and I'll [Ari] get you out of trouble

Brook-Lifa (neutral/positive): Awkward, but they're both trying

Brook-Weylon (friends): I [Brook] trust you [Weylon] enough to confide in you who I am

Ari-Pol (best friends): We still take care of each other as responsibility gets heavier

Casca-Lifa (neutral/positive): On better ground, learning to spar together

Casca-Weylon (neutral/positive): Better terms, but rule-breaker [Casca] vs rule-follower [Weylon]; they don't click well

Pol-Lifa (friends): Both fans of devourers [Pol's ranger pet is a devourer]

Pol-Weylon (best friends): Can talk for hours about anything and everything

Ari-Lifa (friends): Leader [Ari] and lieutenant [Lifa]

Ari-Weylon (friends): Sparring partners, mutual respect

Lifa-Weylon (romantic partners): I like who you've grown up to be

Explanation/Context

This map is years later once they're all working as a team. Brook and Casca are romantically involved, as are Lifa and Weylon. The effects of the split when they were cubs are absolutely still present, but they all consider themselves at least friendly with each other at this point, if not close.

Additional context for a few of the points:

Brook and Ari are one of the best stealth teams out of the whole warband, though all of them are trained in both espionage and stealth.

Weylon was the first person Brook talked to about their gender identity and pronouns.

Lifa came to be something like Ari's second-in-command, though it was never anything official. They trusted each other a great deal, especially in combat situations.

Post-Betrayal (bottom left image)

Transcript

Casca-Brook (separated by distance [unwillingly]): Desperately hoping the other is still alive, but believing it less and less as time goes on

Brook-Pol (separated by [Pol's] death): Grief

Casca-Pol (separated by [Pol's] death): Grief

Brook-Ari (separated by distance [unwillingly]): Imprisoned [Brook] vs trying to free them [Ari]

Casca-Ari (separated by distance [unwillingly]): Imprisoned [Casca] vs trying to free her [Ari]

Brook-Lifa (complicated): Each hopes the other is all right, but not focused on them

Brook-Weylon (hatred): [Brook] Would kill him [Weylon] in a heartbeat

Ari-Pol (separated by [Pol's] death): Grief and guilt (as the leader of the team)

Casca-Lifa (complicated): Misses her and doesn't [can apply to both Casca and Lifa on either side]

Casca-Weylon (hatred): [Casca] Would kill him [Weylon] in a heartbeat

Pol-Lifa (separated by [Pol's] death): Grief

Pol-Weylon (separated by [Pol's] death): Grief and guilt (as [Weylon is] the one responsible for Pol's death)

Ari-Lifa (complicated): Mixed-up blame and grief and confusion; not on good terms

Ari-Weylon (hatred): [Weylon's] Betrayal and the one blamed for it [Ari]

Lifa-Weylon (exes): I don't know who you are now

Explanation/Context

Weylon, convinced by a Flame Legion shaman/recruiter that the best thing for both himself and his warband would be for them to join Flame, betrays the other five. The resulting conflict leaves Pol dead, Brook and Casca captured by Flame and separated, and Ari and Lifa to figure out what to do about it. (The map describes their relationships with each other shortly after that point, though I go on to describe more of what happens afterwards below.)

Ari immediately starts speaking to whatever higher-ups in the Citadel she can to try and gain support to go after Brook and Casca. But shortly after she starts doing so, Lifa--grieving for both her dead friend and the partner she thought she had--ends up blaming Ari for everything that happened. She goes off on her own and refuses to help Ari get the others back, convinced that they're gone permanently. She eventually joins a new warband, then another when the first is lost.

Ari is unable to gain support alone and instead heads to Lion's Arch, aiming to see if the Order of Whispers can provide better support. By the time she is able to join and become a full member, it's been over a year, but the Order agrees to help. They find that neither Brook nor Casca remains held by Flame--a lone warband found the location they were being held during a patrol and raided. In the confusion, Casca managed to free herself and ran into the patrol on her way out. The Order doesn't know what happened to Brook. Ashamed and upset, Ari does not go to see Casca and instead stays with the Order, determining to at the very least be useful there. Casca, for her part, does not return to the Legions and instead begins to take on mercenary work, believing Brook to almost certainly be dead.

Brook, however, is not dead, and escaped in the confusion as well. They were found by no one and, in turn believing Casca to be most likely dead, decide to head as far away as they possibly can. They eventually end up in the Sandswept Isles and make a home with the Olmakhan.

Weylon stays with the Flame Legion, some of his confidence shattered by everything that's happened (not least by Pol's death). He continues to follow the ideology of his mentor, even recruiting others himself, but becomes progressively more and more disillusioned. When Gaheron is killed five years later, Weylon in turn kills the shaman who recruited him to Flame, deciding that he'll find some sort of way to be better than he's been.

Current (bottom right image)

Transcript

Casca-Brook (romantic partners): Found each other and we stay together

Brook-Pol (friends): Trying to figure out the world again, in touch regularly

Casca-Pol (friends): Rebuilding the past friendship they had

Brook-Ari (friends): We're different now and learning how we're still the same

Casca-Ari (friends): You [Ari] blamed yourself, but I [Casca] never blamed you

Brook-Lifa (dislike): [Brook] Can't stand her [Lifa's] decisions

Brook-Weylon (hatred): [Brook] Can't stand him [Weylon] but shows it by avoidance [much as they tried to do when they were younger]

Ari-Pol (best friends): Welcome back, I missed you, I love you, I'm sorry [can be read from either of their perspectives]

Casca-Lifa (dislike): You [Lifa] went the wrong goddamn direction

Casca-Weylon (hatred): [Casca] Still wants to kill him [Weylon]

Pol-Lifa (complicated): Grown a lot in different directions, not on stellar terms now

Pol-Weylon (dislike): I [Pol] can't hate you [Weylon], but you're certainly not my friend

Ari-Lifa (hatred): You [Lifa] blamed me [Ari] and went on to do worse. Fuck you.

Ari-Weylon (complicated): Your fault or my fault, we don't know where to go from here

Lifa-Weylon (complicated): One of us [Weylon] spent years fighting propaganda after betraying his friends and the other one [Lifa] got taken in by entirely different* propaganda

*There are similarities between the two propaganda sources, but my point here was simply that one's Flame Legion (in Weylon's case) and one was Bangar and the Dominion (for Lifa).

The state of everyone's relationships post-Icebrood-Saga!

Ari stayed with the Order of Whispers and then with the Pact as an airship pilot, ending up meeting an asura named Cio who became a close friend and later her girlfriend as well.

Casca's mercenary work led to her working closely with the Pact, and she traveled to the Sandswept Isles with them during LWS4, where she--much to both of their shock and joy--is reunited with Brook.

Pol wandered the Mists as a spirit for years, having adventures of his own before joining the ghost army that assists the Pact in Dragonfall. Thanks to a human necromancer named Minei, he ends up restored to something along the lines of corporeal and begins to rebuild his relationship with some of his 'bandmates (as well as rediscover exactly what he wants his "life" to be).

Weylon joins Efram Greetsglory in working towards a new future for Flame, but he still very much firmly believes that there is no truly making up for the things he's done. When he runs into Casca and Brook in Drizzlewood, Casca attacks him, and he would have let her kill him. She's stopped by Commander Kerra of the Pact, who's doing her best to keep peace amongst those fighting the Dominion. Weylon avoids both Brook (for the most part) and Casca after that, but later makes an effort to talk to/know Ari, which is immensely awkward and tense and still in progress.

Lifa, in turning away from the Storm Warband, turns full-on into the Legions instead, priming her to latch onto and follow Bangar when he emerges as a prominent figure. She considers herself someone he's mentored and is proud of it, though Bangar himself truly doesn't care much about her and sees her as a tool, if anything. She ends up facing Brook, Casca, and Ari in combat in Drizzlewood, and later fights as part of the Frost Legion in Dragonstorm. She survives, though badly injured from battle and the abrupt loss of Jormag's ice, and has to find her own way forward from there.

There are a lot more details not included, and if anyone actually read this whole thing, then thank you, haha--and feel free to ask me about any of the information here!

[brightwingedbat]

for the ask game, anyone’s thoughts on ryland (and/or my kiddo casca, maybe), if you’d like? :) @kerra-and-company

I'll do Marcus for Ryland. While Marcus has a lot of disappointment and anger at everything Ryland has done, I think in the end he's just really sad about it all. As a man who changed from probably being someone like Ryland used to be, to a charr of care and understanding, it hurts to see Ryland go through what he did.

Not to mention Marcus being a father close to his cubs, that final scene between Rytlock and Ryland was heartrending for him. Ultimately he wishes that he could have gotten Ryland to stop and listen, truly listen. But he knows how the charr are, and some just won't do that.

---

As for Casca, I think something interesting would be my charr Pyraxus, an ex-flame, ex-ash, New Flame charr.

He'd feel upset, if not even guilt for what she went through there when captured. Ever since he left Flame he's been fighting against them, trying to stop what they do to female charr, perhaps even make openings for them to escape too. The fact she went through that means to him that he hasn't done enough to stop Flame.

He'd be much gladdened hearing that she escapes and lives her own new life away from the legions. He wouldn't blame her for wanting to leave, the only reason he stays is for more chances to fight back.

He also knows that after rejoining the New Flame, he may lose respect from her, but that doesn't matter because at least she's away from the wrongs of Flame and the Legions overall. He doesn't do what he does for respect, he does it because it's what is right to him.

[kerra-and-company]

Currently thinking about how Casca, after escaping from the Flame Legion, literally decides to be happy out of spite.

She thinks her partner is dead. One of her best friends betrayed her. Another one died in front of her. The remaining two are a) actively ignoring any memory of her 'bandmates and supporting a system Casca hates, and b) AWOL, from what little Casca's able to find out.

Casca herself has spent a while (still messing with the timeline, but at minimum a year) imprisoned by the Flame Legion, with a long list of trauma from that. She has no desire to try to forge a new place in the Citadel and deal with that battle for recognition again.

So, upon getting free from her prison and having nowhere to go, she decides to say fuck you to the people who thought of her as dangerous or disposable or brainless or a plaything by thriving solo, in whatever form that ends up taking. (One of those is compiling a report on everything she knows about Flame Legion weak points and all but dropping it onto Malice's desk. That's the last time she sets foot in the Citadel.)

She takes on odd jobs. She becomes something of a contractor for the Priory, then the Pact--not a soldier. (Never a soldier again.) She makes new friends, and they're not the same as her warband, but she does love them. And slowly, slowly, it stops being "I'm going to thrive because fuck you" and starts becoming "this is genuinely making me happy and I want to keep this."

It's still Casca, though. She's not a person to ever fully let go of spite, or grudges, or the past. It's never erased or papered over.

And then, years later, she finds her partner again, on a mission halfway across the world. They thought she was dead, too, but turns out neither of them are. She's in shock and thrilled and still half-disbelieving, and it might as well be a miracle (if she believed in those). It's an empty place inside of her suddenly not being empty.

But Casca now is fully realizing and remembering what she lost, again. And she is happy. She is incredibly happy.

But she's also furious.

[kerra-and-company]

Happy Valentine's Day, folks! :)

Have a couple of pairs of mine, who are victims of my first attempt at editing couples together. (Cio and Ari are the two in the left-hand image, with Casca and Brook on the right!)

[kerra-and-company]

📂📂📂Here's three for you too!

Thanks a bunch!! :D

📂 - Casca has absolutely stabbed at least one person in a bar before because they were flirting with her and didn't stop when she said she wasn't interested, and she then fully proceeded to pull a Han Solo and tip the barkeep for the mess while walking out. (Notably, she wasn't aiming to kill them, but she really doesn't know what happened to them after she left.)

📂 - There are aurora-borealis-like phenomena in several different parts of Tyria. Some are caused by the same thing those in our world are caused by (particle collisions in the atmosphere), while some of them have more to do with the ley lines and the inherent magic flow in the world. All the changes relating to said magic flow in the last decade have absolutely impacted those phenomena's color, location, and frequency. There's a whole host of scientific papers on the subject and half of them are badly out of date.

📂 - Technically in game, as far as I know, Tyria has no ambient squirrels running around (though someone references them in dialogue at least once). However, as far as I'm concerned, Tyria absolutely has squirrels, and they have an absolutely huge range of color variation. There's a huge range of squirrel types even in the average suburban neighborhood in our world (grays and browns and reds), and there's different types that live in the rocks by the ocean--child!me was fascinated by the spotted squirrels I saw. And even in our world, we have squirrels that look like this:

(Yes, those are real squirrels, I swear--they're Malabar giant squirrels.) Anyways. Tyria has Very Cool Squirrels and I will die on this hill xD

[kerra-and-company]

Ship question Love #1 for splitshadow, please!

Sure sure!! :D Thanks a bunch!

1. Who said “I love you” first?

Brook, in a very teenager-overanalyzing-things way. They realized it abruptly in the middle of a conversation they were having with Casca about something they absolutely cannot remember now* and proceeded to bluescreen for a solid thirty seconds--during which they were doing way too much thinking about secrets and truth and what you do with that in Relationships (TM)**. After said thirty seconds (which involved Casca asking them various versions of "are you okay"), they did indeed just basically blurt it out xD

(*It was a conversation about the best way to get Casca's whetstone back from their primus.)

(**Downsides to following Kormir and being a teenage charr trying very hard to make their own path--you might overthink stuff like this! Though immense props to them for the fact that their overthinking took a solid thirty seconds and that was it.)

[kerra-and-company]

Casca, how did it feel when you found Brook with the Olmakhan? What was your first reaction to seeing them again, how did they react on seeing you again?

Casca runs a hand through her hair, pushing it back where it'd flopped forward a bit, and smiles, a little off-kilter. "How'd it feel? Like I'd ended up in a good dream for once. Weird."

She meets your eyes and says in a very conversational tone, "I thought I'd died, actually. Wasn't much like Brook had described the Mists, but it was the only thing that made sense. They'd been dead for years, or so I thought. Where the hell else would I find them?"

She pauses and clears her throat. "But. You know. Not a dream, actually. The best thing that ever happened to me, but not a dream.

"And as for them..." The smile comes back, but softer. "I'd say they looked like they saw a ghost, but we'd both seen ghosts before. That's not the face you make when you see one."

[kerra-and-company]

I'm curious what Casca's thoughts are on the New Flame Imperator, Efram Greetsglory.

Absolutely, sure sure!! :D

If Efram were in almost any other position, Casca would like the guy and respect him. He reminds her of Ari a bit. As it is, she's almost more wary of him because she'd otherwise be inclined to trust him.

Casca got herself out of imprisonment/captivity with Flame after three years. Didn't have any help from anyone, just made plans and had a decent dose of luck. She knows others suffered like she did (Brook, for one, though it was in a different manner), but she has no reason to have any faith that there's been meaningful change made. Sure, maybe Efram's better than Gaheron on a first glance, but that's about all she's confident of, and that's a low-ass bar to clear.

I guess the gist of Casca's thoughts on Efram Greetsglory are "I sure hope you're doing good things, even though I don't and can't fully believe that's true, but regardless of whether you are or not, I'm staying the fuck away from you and your legion."