Yea Durance is a shitty guy but I still think he and Elehal have the potential to have the most interesting relationship in the entire series: The fire godlike who's nothing like Magran but has still been desperate for her aproval and acknowledgement his whole life and the bitter Magranite priest who arguably had MORE of a connection to her before it was just. taken away after he was no longer useful to her. Both their identities are SO bound up in their goddess and they both feel abandoned by her in different ways and they're both in someway looking for her in each other and it's extremwly fucked up and confusing and Im absolutely obsessed with it.
I'm curious: people with Godlike Watchers or other characters, how do they feel about their whole....situation? Do they have a relationship with their parent deity? Is it a good one? Did their feelings change at all over the course of the games?
Elehal’s relationship with Magran is...complex, to say the least. As a child he used to try to talk to her, by sitting down in front of any fire he could find and telling it about his day in detail. He doesn’t consider her his “mother” in the same way Tekehu thinks of Ondra, but has still spent most of his life trying and hoping to earn her approval. This has been made difficult by the fact that Elehal is perhaps the least aggressive person in all of Eora, but he tries to focus on her other aspects to compensate: blazing new trails, learning from adversity, facing challenges. Fire isn’t only destructive, after all. He spent a lot of time trying to build a relationship with Durance in the first game, excited to finally have someone who could talk to him about Magran, teach him things. It wasn’t a great connection, but it was something. It hurt him more than he likes to admit when he prayed to her in the Council of Stars and Galawain answered instead.
Learning about the true nature of the gods led him to question whether Magran’s approval was something he should even want or care about at all. If the gods were complicit in -- or the source of -- so much of the suffering of the people of Eora, was it better that she apparently didn’t want anything to do with him? In spite of that, he never developed the same disdain or anger that Pallegina felt towards the gods, though he understood where it came from. Mostly he began to feel foolish and ashamed that he did still want Magran’s approval, or at least acknowledgement, despite everything he knew.
Deadfire was particularly rough for him in this regard, with Ondra’s comments about Tekehu a constant reminder that some of the gods were fond of their “children,” cared enough to feel pride or concern over them. Not that anyone could expect anything like affection from the goddess of trials and war, but still..... And meanwhile the gods are more talkative than ever, but Magran still barely looks at him except to remind him that his “value is to the greater good, and the glory of my will.” and that he should hurry up and do his job before she blows a volcano up on him. Thanks, mom. Real glad we had this talk.
I think eventually he’ll manage to make some kind of peace with the relationship, with what he is. The ideals the gods stand for still resonate with him, even if he feels let down by the gods themselves. But there’s probably always going to be a kernel of disappointment and bitterness there, unfortunately.
Woooof it took me so long to decide where I wanted to go with this prompt. I feel pretty alright with how it turned out though, it was a good opportunity to get into Elehal’s feelings about home and the parts of his identity that aren’t about Magran.
93.“This Isn’t Who I Am”
He’d meant what he’d said to Maia, all those many months ago: He was not interested in the power struggles of the trading companies. He had come – been brought, more accurately – back to the Deadfire to chase down a god, not decide the future of nations.
As he’d come to the Dyrwood in search of a handful of stories, no more than that. Sometimes it didn’t matter very much why you had come to a place, once you got there. Sometimes the place decided for you.
Belafa was half-risen on the horizon, tracing its silver path across the waves. From the deck of The Godhammer, docked at Queen’s Berth, Elehal could just make out the shape of the Vallian Trading Company Headquarters, where Director Castol would be asleep, or working late. Unaware that he was about to be ruined, completely and utterly, by what was going to happen tonight, and the lie Elehal was going to tell about it.
Tonight. He thought of the explosive Queen Onekaza had given him, carefully wrapped and sitting quietly beside his arms and armor in his cabin belowdecks. He thought he could feel it, almost, the weight of it, of what it signified.
A future for the Huana. A reminder to the trading companies that the Deadfire was not theirs for the taking.
These were things he should want. These were things he did want. This was a task given to him by his queen; it shouldn’t matter what he wanted. This was his home.
It wasn’t, though. Not anymore.
He’d left. And he had not come back. Not until now.
He’d thought the familiarity of the islands would be comforting. That being among people like the ones he had grown up with, hearing and speaking his native tongue in villages that could have been his own, they were so alike, would have felt … right, somehow. Somehow made the weight of his duty easier to bear.
But the distance was too far. The memories too foreign now, too much of a world he could no longer fully share. Someone else’s memory. Someone else’s childhood. If you think long enough, you do not go home.
And yet.
With a sigh, Elehal lowered his head to rest on his forearms crossed over the ship’s railing. He didn’t, really, have time to be thinking like this. The decision had been made. He needed to go to Ukaizo. He needed Onekaza’s navy and watershapers to get there. He would not have them unless the powderhouse burned. This was beyond nations or loyalties or any personal sense of morality.
Necessary sacrifices. The greater good. Like a god justifying lives cut short in the rubble of an ancient keep, far to the west. You reap but on a smaller scale. The arguments folding in on each other.
Belafa continued it’s steady path through the heavens, clear of the horizon now, set among the stars like white sails against a dark sea. The last muffled footsteps of the crew making their way to their berths faded into silence. Time did not stand still, for anything. Alone now, amid the memories and the ghosts, the irreconcilable guilt and the arguments circling back on themselves, Elehal made them come to a stop, and he accepted the burden of doing so.
Durance: I am here to TEST you, Watcher, not to be your friend.
Elehal: Tell me about Magran, what's it like being her priest? Have you TALKED to her? Do you think she would like me? Your staff is cool where'd you get it? What's it like at Ashfall? Can we go there? Do you think Magran will talk to me if I do a good job stopping Thaos?
Please tell me about Ashen Maw. I will listen to anything about that all day!^^
Of course! This is actually just the thing I posted for the last WIP Wednesday I did, and the 500th time I’ve started trying to write about Elehal’s Awful-Horrible-No-Good-Very-Bad Day(s) at Ashen Maw and immediately after. I swear to god one day I’ll finish this I have it planned out and everything I just need to execute.
He feels it the moment he steps from the skiff onto the jagged black stone of Ashen Maw. A humming in his blood; the stirring of recognition in the part of him that is a god – home-whole-heat-bright-burning-living-alivewholewholeherehurry--
The heat from the molten heart of the volcano reaches up as if in welcome, and Elehal allows himself a moment to close his eyes and breath deeply. The world is brighter here, the world is alive, the stone, the iron, the air itself sings with the memory of its white-hot becoming. It’s almost blinding to his Watcher senses, overwhelming in a way that would be terrifying if it didn’t feel so good. No room for fear beside the rushing sensation of power flowing through him.
He opens his eyes, somewhat reluctantly –welcome-come!-come-little-spark – Looks out over the cliff and the dark, heavy bridge and the hollow corpses of ash to the great spire of adra rising above the magma. At the figure standing beside it, massive even at this distance – trespasser-defiler-violator – one palm pressed against the living stone. Eothas.
Little lost shattered spark. Come home. Whole. Here.
I’m about to end this man’s entire career. Sorry Elehal.
Preferred Weapons: Poleaxes, Quarterstaffs, and Pikes
Notable Physical Traits:
· 7 ft. tall
· Skin has the texture and appearance of hammered bronze
· Carries a lute slung across his back
· Wears primarily warm colors
· Most of his clothing has at least one scorch mark or tiny hole burned into it somewhere, because fire.
Favored Gods: Abydon, Wael - tentatively, Berath, Magran but in a complicated sort of way
Family: An only child, his parents were kuaru craftspeople for a small northern tribe
Fears: unintentionally hurting people while trying to do the right thing, disappointing his friends, also wizards, ironically
Hobbies: Singing, sailing, ruin diving, interviewing people about their local traditional folk songs/ballads, camping, reconstructing ancient Engwithian musical notation, getting chatty with random people in taverns, general music nerd shit
Alignment: Neutral Good with significant Lawful tendencies.
Sins: …Pride? Ambition? Plain old bull-headed stubbornness? Being physically unable to chill the fuck out.
Virtues: Charity, kindness, loyalty and dependability
S/O: Aloth groundbreaking, I know
BFFs: Kana, Tekēhu, Durance in some ways but again it’s complicated
Pre-Game History: Godlike are generally well received among the Huana and the larger Deadfire, and while Elehal did experience his share of –mostly unconscious and unintentional—exclusion for Being Different, he was never feared or reviled by those around him. His village mostly just didn’t know what to actually do with one of Magran’s children, particularly one as disinclined to sit still or stay in one place as Elehal. After wandering off to go “exploring” and getting hurt one too many times, his parents approached the village stormspeaker about taking him on as an apprentice, in the hopes that ballads and legends would satisfy some of his curiosity and sate his wanderlust. It did, to an extent, and it kept him busy and supervised if nothing else. Elehal turned out to have both a good ear and a good memory for music, as well as a nearly obsessive interest in the world beyond the island. He often spent entire days with his teacher, practicing vocal techniques, proper breathing, memorizing phrases, or simply listening to her tell stories, and the two of them developed a very close relationship.
When he came of age and finished his apprenticeship Elehal signed on with the first ship that would take him, eventually working his way from local trading and fishing vessels to larger foreign ships making longer, more exciting voyages. While he had no particular talent for wind or weather shaping, he was a capable and reliable sailor, and his singing boosted morale considerably. His ultimate ambition was to study at the Lore College of Rauatai, but he would need money first, and wanted to have something to show for himself when he arrived. He continued to work as a sailor, but also began to branch out into more land-based adventures and exploration, collecting as much information as he could on the musical traditions of the places he visited as he went. It was during one of these expeditions that he joined up with a particularly ill-fated caravan headed for Gilded Vale, throwing the world’s largest wrench into his plans for the future.
Personality/Demeanor: Elehal is an extremely gregarious and outgoing person, and a lifetime of living and working with a truly astounding variety of people during his sailing years has made him an expert at ingratiating himself with virtually everyone. He is, fundamentally, someone who likes people: talking to them, being around them, listening to them. Also, while he can hold his own in a fight simply by virtue of being Big and On Fire, he’s much better with words than with blades, so he tries to talk his way out of conflicts as much as possible. Many of the Huana cultural values he grew up with have stayed with him as well, a keen sense of civil responsibility and strong belief in cooperation chief among them. People should take responsibility for the well-being of their community and help those around them, dammit. (He would be a huge proponent of housing co-ops and mutual aid programs in a modern AU. Probably belongs to like six volunteer groups.)
He’s also very aware of the fact that he’s very large compared to most kith and also very on fire all the time. He feels things intensely, likes to get up in other people’s business, has a voice that’s loud and carries very well, and can be an overwhelming person to be around, in general. As a result he’s become hypervigilant of both his internal emotional state and how he presents himself to the world, leading to him often coming off as more stoic and reserved than he actually is. He’s particularly cautious in romantic relationships, being near constantly concerned about moving too quickly or coming on too strong.
Partly because of the influence of Magran’s chime and partially because he’s just… Like That, Elehal is loath to ask for help or admit to struggling with anything. He can take care of himself and solve his own problems his own way! Handling things very well thank you! He’s definitely not coming apart under the incredible weight of his own standards and expectations! Sleeping just fine thank you let’s move on!
His fear of wizards stems from the fact that he’s used to being able to easily navigate and steer the course of conversations, except with like, archmages, because he never knows what the fuck they’re thinking or if they’re going to suddenly get tired of talking and decide to turn him into a pig or open a gaping hole full of tentacles under his feet or WHAT. They’re constantly one step ahead of or in a completely different conversation than the one he thinks they’re in and he hates it. Also, they just… always getting up to some whack shit. Don’t trust like that.
This is... rougher than what I’d normally share, but classes have started again so writing time is scarcer now :( And hey, I’m all for transparency when it come to the creative process.
He feels it the moment he steps from the skiff onto the jagged black stone of Ashen Maw. A humming in his blood; the stirring of recognition in the part of him that is a god – home-whole-heat-bright-burning-living-alivewholewholeherehurry--
The heat from the molten heart of the volcano reaches up as if in welcome, and Elehal allows himself a moment to close his eyes and breath deeply. The world is brighter here, the world is alive, the stone, the iron, the air itself sings with the memory of its white-hot becoming. It’s almost blinding to his Watcher senses, overwhelming in a way that would be terrifying if it didn’t feel so good. No room for fear beside the rushing sensation of power flowing through him.
He opens his eyes, somewhat reluctantly –welcome-come!-come-little-spark – Looks out over the cliff and the dark, heavy bridge and the hollow corpses of ash to the great spire of adra rising above the magma. At the figure standing beside it, massive even at this distance – trespasser-defiler-violator – one palm pressed against the living stone. Eothas.
Little lost shattered spark. Come home. Whole. Here.
Me, looking over the outline for the rest of this piece: I’m about to end this man’s whole life career
I will tag... hmmm. @undyingembers & @risualto if they’re feeling up to it!
