On Taskhand Adeen & Essek:
Ok buckle up. I wrote these notes in my phone like 2 months ago while re-listening to c2e90, after doing a re-listen-binge starting from when the Nein decide to pursue Obann in e64.
It kinda only really occurred to me then that while we now know Essek handed the beacons over to the Assembly, the whole Angel-of-Irons-opening-rifts thing was presented as being intertwined with the beacons being given to the Empire... and Essek pinning it on Taskhand Adeen was equally convenient for him and disturbing for everyone else...
and then it was all peace talks and a new beacon and learning that Essek was into shit with the Assembly (and having the Assembly just blatantly LIE repeatedly about their experience with the beacons) and there was so much to process, just... it felt kinda glossed over that the Angel of Irons cult, on its own, was still pretty fucked up with agents on both sides, separate to the beacons. Right?
Like... we’ve now confirmed they were separate things? Like I don’t know that Essek had anything to do with Obann and rifts to the abyss or any of that? So...
Taskhand Adeen did do shady cult shit with Vence? Everybody worried about Essek pinning his actions on an innocent man... Essek doesn’t hide that he thinks he’s a shitty guy so he’s got beef with him for some reason... but also consider that maybe he’s not just some completely undeserving dude on Essek’s petty shitlist?
So I got creative in wildly speculating what might have happened between these two in the Dynasty based on vibes and (albeit questionable) subtext from canon.
Maybe in doing Angel of Irons stuff with Vence, Adeen discovered Essek working with Ludinus.
He used that information to blackmail Essek into doing something (extra work, his Taskhand duties, personal errands?) - and the tiredness in Essek when the Nein meets him is because he’s basically doing both his and Adeen’s jobs or something. (Definitely Essek was also tired from the lying and covering up his own shithead actions but why couldn’t it be both?)
So Essek couldn’t go to the BQ about Adeen without also incriminating himself for dealings in the Empire... and maybe he didn’t understand enough about the cult to bring it up in court, so he just had to take it: until Allura came to call and expressed the severity of the cult to the BQ.
now Essek had a reason to arrest Adeen, and why not also pin the beacons on him since he’d have to modify his memory anyway, to remove the knowledge of Essek’s contacts with the empire... just tweak it so he believed it was himself handing over the beacons.
And the beating it out of him, the show of violence to get the confession, makes so much more sense for Essek to have had a serious desire for vengeance, rather than beating an innocent man just to look the part. Essek’s effectively had a big ol’ role in the war erupting and the loss of many lives, and while at the time he did not care so much as he cared about the information on the beacons he got in return, Essek never behaved as someone who enjoyed being cruel to innocents for the sake of cruelty. But if the Taskhand has been blackmailing and bullying him for 2 years, I could see him having some frustration to get out.
It is, of course, entirely possible (even likely?) that Adeen was just manipulated from the start and never deep in the cult, and his recommendation to assault Rexxentrum at the same time Obann infiltrated the cathedral was just him being influenced by Obann... but what if Adeen was actually fully responsible for his role with Vence and Obann and the rifts and shit?
