#korone givyn

[getvalentined]

Despite everything, it's still you.

[madgod-of-kvatch]

Someone on reddit asked how Korone is "so pretty" (their words, not mine!) even though she's a dunmer and, first off, there are plenty of extremely attractive dunmer in TES? I don't know what that's about. With regard to player characters, I think people are just impatient. Like, no, her model doesn't look exactly how I draw her, but she's pretty close.

I play on PS5, there are no mods involved to make her look like this. If I did have mods, I'd only modify colors a bit? I'd like to plug in a custom texture for her eyes to make her sclera the right color—I couldn't pass up the irises in that eye type, but in my head her sclera is the same dark red as the rest of her race—and fix the issue where black hair doesn't actually show as black on player characters, because her hair is supposed to gradiate from silver to black.

I don't have her sliders saved, and I wouldn't share them even if I did, but she's literally "just" the result of over an hour in the character creator. I think everyone insisting that Oblivion Remastered doesn't allow players to to make good-looking characters should spend a year learning to make them in vanilla Sims 4.

EDIT TO ADD: Also, to be completely clear, I think Korone looks good primarily because the goal in designing her was not to make The Most Beautiful Woman In The World, but rather to create someone who I found attractive and looked like a person. She doesn't have the smoothest complexion option, her face is more lined than a lot of people would opt for when trying to make a "pretty" character, but the fact of the matter is that hallmarks of youth are not factors in attractiveness. She would not look as good as she does if I went with those options, because she'd look more artificial, and that's a big part of why characters don't look "good." The key is to make a character who looks like a person, and to take your time doing it.

[getvalentined]

Around the end of the Third Era, artistic renditions of Sheogorath ceased to portray the Madgod as a man of presumably Colovian heritage, and instead presented a Dunmer woman, going so far as to feature particular phenotypical details specific to so-called Ashlanders. Some modern scholars theorize this change is related to the fall of Baar Dau, which some Dunmeri traditions state was flung at Vivec City by Sheogorath in a fit of pique. Given that Sheogorath was considered one corner of the Tribunal's 'House of Troubles,' the idea of the Madgod's image being recast as a member of a population in clear opposition and then-recently impacted in a very literal sense by the Prince's alleged past actions would certainly be thematically intriguing, and would also align well with the idea presented in texts on the House of Troubles stating that Sheogorath represents the distrust and suspicion of other races toward the Dunmer.

Unfortunately, this theory is easily disproven. The earliest renditions of the Daedric Prince of Madness as a female of clear Dunmeri descent predate the Red Year by a non-negligible term, instead coinciding quite distinctly with the Oblivion Crisis. An unknown author's writings on Sheogorath, indisputably dated to some point between the Third Era's final year and the Fourth Era's first, offer the earliest insight into this transformation: "…when the egg in which the Mad Star had been swaddled burst in the heat of the fires of Oblivion, She emerged, a high-headed hatchling, a bruised butterfly with a bastinade, Sheogorath anew."

Regardless of the reason, assuming there exists a reason that would be comprehensible to a sane scholar in the first place, the vast majority of Sheogorath's portrayals and descriptions today—and literally every single one presented since the Oblivion Crisis—align with this newer image.

— Excerpt from "The Changing Face of Madness" by Archmage Nym Dragonrend, College of Winterhold, 4E 205

[madgod-of-kvatch]

Thinking about how I write/portray Madgod Korone and I think the most important thing is that she's a physical manifestation of letting the intrusive thoughts win. She's not "insane" in the way that the original Sheogorath was portrayed, with implications of limited reality contact (which doesn't make sense to me in the context of a god of madness anyway) and a complete lack of logic (which makes perfect sense for how he came into being in the first place), but more like someone whose thought process has no "low" setting. She has no limiter and everything she thinks is automatically parsed as valid and accurate and correct because she's a god so she gets to decide what that means.

In the interim, when she's still settling into it, she can tell that this is "wrong," that she should be able to put a filter on her words and actions, but over time she loses that capacity, and eventually stops even contemplating it in the first place. Anything that any part of her wants to do, she's going to do, unless some other part of her (or Haskill) can come up with a reason very quickly as to why she shouldn't.

Her existence as Sheogorath is a big adventure in affecting the world around her in extremely noticeable ways, born from the fact that her choices and intentions wound up meaning basically nothing in the Oblivion Crisis. She didn't let herself move fast enough to stop Martin from sacrificing himself, even though there were parts of her that wanted to tackle him to the ground the moment he started his goodbye. Past that, people were going to remember her how they wanted to remember her, not how she actually was. They were going to apply their own assumptions to her motivations no matter what. They were never going to see her as herself, so why did she ever bother keeping so much of that self locked up where nobody could see it?

Korone got to Kvatch and jumped headlong into an Oblivion Gate with basically no hesitation, because the worst that would happen is that she died and nobody else was doing anything about it. After she lost everyone in Kvatch, she joined the Fighters' Guild to learn how to better operate with a group, in the hopes of that never happening again, and wound up in a conspiracy with her superior officer that led her to chugging a bottle of Extract Of Tree God Tortured To Insanity and eventually massacring the people responsible for sourcing said Extract, one of which was a former colleague. She then took everything of value from their bodies and their headquarters, every piece of armor and jewelry, every book and bottle of wine, and sold it all to buy herself a house across the square from the Fighters' Guild headquarters—because the irony of it tasted too good to pass up.

She's very much not mentally stable, but maybe she never really was. The difference is that she kept a lid on it before. After taking the role of Sheogorath, she doesn't do that anymore, and as a result she's more herself than she's ever been.

That includes going, "What if I dug up the ghost of one of Martin's crazy predecessors and fixed his brain so he can pass on to a different plane and Martin can meet more of the family he never knew? It'll be a little gift from me to him! Wherever he is!" Unfortunately, it also includes things like, "You looked at me with what I think was distaste and I didn't like it, so I'm going to turn all your bones into cartilage. It will last for the next seventeen seconds, or until the screaming gets annoying, whichever comes first. It's fine because I'll feel better afterward."

[madgod-of-kvatch]

The Fourth Corner [WIP]

Another 1400 words from this fic: in which Modryn finally asks questions that put his guildmaster's back to the wall, and finds out what happened when she went to investigate the strange happenings in Niben Bay.

Korone let out a low huff of distaste. “You know he’s dead, right?”

“Vivec?”

“Along with the other two,” she confirmed, and the confidence in her assertion took Modryn slightly off-guard. Korone might have been an Ashlander, and as such never worshiped the Tribunal, but no one knew exactly what had happened between them and the Nerevarine just a half-dozen years prior. With the disappearance of all related parties, Nerevarine included, there was no way to find out.

Nonetheless, Korone sounded certain in a way that spoke of something more objective than faith—or a lack thereof.

“I’ve heard the rumors,” he conceded. “Not sure I believe them. As I’ve said before, I don’t know how you’d kill a god.”

“I guess that means they weren’t gods, then.”

There it was—the opening he needed, the gap in her defenses. Modryn pulled his arm away from his eyes, turning his head just enough to look at her again. “And what about you?”

Korone blinked down at him, a disarmed sort of surprise flashing over her features. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, then set her jaw and averted her eyes, the furrow at her brow deepening. She brought her knees up closer to her chest, circling them with her arms, and sat in silence for a long second before she spoke again. “What do you think?”

“I think something happened to you when you went to investigate that rumor in Bravil,” he stated.

“Nothing happened in Bravil,” she declared, echoing a sentiment she’d repeated too many times since that investigation. Now that Modryn knew to look for it, the omission gaped open before him like a fissure into the Void itself.

“I don’t think it happened in Bravil,” he countered. “Niben Bay is the sea. It borders the county of Bravil, but it’s not in Bravil any more than the Abecean Sea is in Anvil.”

Korone’s expression tightened, head dropping lower, and Modryn knew then that he had her. He probably would have felt more vindicated by that fact if she didn’t look so ashamed, if he couldn’t read the fear in her eyes; as it was, he felt a low pang of guilt for putting her back to the wall like this. He trusted his guildmaster, regardless of her recent evasiveness and despite whatever it was she’d done to save him in the ruin.

He reminded himself that she needed to trust him back.

“There was…a door to Oblivion,” she said quietly, almost too quietly to hear. “In Niben Bay.”

“An Oblivion Gate?”

“A door,” she repeated. “Nothing came out except the island, and that was just to give visitors a place to stand when they knocked and asked to be let through—I didn’t understand it at the time, but I couldn’t very well leave it as it was. I’ve closed enough Oblivion Gates, I thought I knew what do to. I went in. Of course I did.” Amused disdain flashed over her face for a split second, almost too quickly to read, a rueful smile just barely tugging at the corners of her lips before she caught herself and the expression was replaced instead with a mournful frustration.

That flicker of emotion—what about that needed to be held back? Why did she seem so upset to have let it seep through enough to show in her face?

“On the other side of the door, I met Haskill.”

Modryn pushed himself back up quick enough that it made his head throb all over again. “The fetcher in silk.”

Korone gave him an incredulous look. “What in the world do you have against Haskill?”

“He speaks like a pompous ratbag,” he declared. “Like you don’t know anything and he’s the only authority on everything he’s ever said. ‘My Lord’ this and ‘My Lord’ that, but it sounds like he’s calling you an idiot.”

Her shoulders trembled with a poorly-stifled chuckle. “That’s just how he talks, it’s fine,” she said, her apparent but incomprehensible fondness brightening the red of her eyes. “He’s a…I think the simplest word would be assistant? But that isn’t right. He was my—” She stopped, squinting in thought and looking away again. “Haskill is My chamberlain.”

The air pulsed when she spoke, that single claiming word deep and consuming, stronger than ownership, than possession, than anything for which Modryn had a word in any language. As if the Breton were a work of art which Korone created from dust, an object that couldn’t exist without her.

“Chamberlains usually serve royalty,” Modryn pointed out, trying not to come off as hesitant in spite of his growing trepidation.

“It’s the word he used when we met,” she stated. “It’s not up to Me what he calls himself. Except when it is, I suppose, but that would be a lot of trouble. You could call Me Ann Marie and it wouldn’t make it My name. Regardless, he lives in My—oh, I shouldn’t—he lives in my—My—my—” She broke off and closed her eyes again, jaw clenched and expression tight, breathing slowly as she pulled herself together.

Again, the slip and the struggle. Whatever happened, it was a fight to keep its effect on her in check.

“I have a lot to learn,” she continued, more slowly, voice measured and once again kept on the lower end of her natural register. “Haskill has been there almost from the start, so he’s really the only one that can help—but I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? I went through the door, and Haskill was there. We spoke, he explained that his lord needed a champion. The door would stay open until he found one.”

Dread welled up in Modryn’s chest. “Master, you didn’t.”

“I’m the Hero of Kvatch. I close Oblivion Gates.” She said it like sealing off gaps between planes of existence was the simplest thing in the world. “It’s what I’m best at, or at least it was before, and I’m still the best at it. This was different, but so was the Great Gate at Bruma.”

“So you swore yourself into the service of—”

Korone’s voice was firm. “I’ve done trials and favors for Daedric Princes before—Peryite, Azura, Nocturnal. I didn’t think it would be terribly different.”

“But it was.” Modryn didn’t bother asking, because he could see with his own eyes that it was different, because she was different as a result.

“The realm was under attack,” she argued. “He wanted a champion for a worthy reason, but that never would have been enough. He realized before long that what he needed was a protégé. An apprentice.” She hesitated, but only for a breath. “A replacement.”

“Korone—”

“And I thought…if Martin did it, so could I.”

“Are you out of your mind?!”

She blinked at him, and her carefully controlled expression shattered into hysterical laughter. Her eyes grew wide and almost frenzied, a wash of gold rippling out from her pupils as they tightened into slits once more, although the color didn't persist, reverting to red almost as quickly as it changed in the first place.

She sprung to her feet, light as a dancer. “Yes!” She exclaimed. “That’s the point! Mods, haven’t you figured it out?”

“Korone—”

“That's not Me!” She bellowed, hands fisted at her sides, raised slightly in frustration as she bent at the waist to lean in closer. “You wanted to know so badly, you made your demands and asked your questions so you could back Me into a corner—and isn't that just perfect? A Corner in a corner!”

Her voice grew increasingly frantic, ragged and desperate and thick, her face flushed dark as whatever it was she'd done to herself—or allowed to be done—fought to hold control and push the emotional outburst to new heights. She kept laughing, the arrhythmic stuttering tugging hard at Modryn’s sternum, the power rolling off her trying to pull him into this moment of hysteria with her.

He reached up and grabbed her arms at the wrists, and the laughter broke off with a gasp.

“Korone,” he repeated, firm but quiet.

“That's not Me,” she repeated, although this time it was more of a whimper.

She sunk down onto her knees on the bedroll and hung her head, Modryn still firmly holding her arms, her breathing slowing as the mania slowly abated.

“Mods,” she choked out, now herself again, “that's not me.”

[madgod-of-kvatch]

(After) The Fourth Corner [WIP]

“Baar Dau,” he said. “Was that…did you…?”

“Baar Dau fell because Vivec is dead,” she said plainly, sounding eerily like her old self in her distaste toward the most public-facing member of the old Tribunal. All three had long since been accepted as false gods at best or unrepentant and entirely mortal murderers at worst, but her candid disdain was still unique.

Modryn nodded. “I know, but it was…” He paused to breathe. “Some stories say it was…thrown. By Sheogorath.”

“Maybe it was,” she replied. “But it wasn’t Me. It may have been the He before Me, but I don’t remember it if it was.”

The furrow at his brown deepened. “Do you remember…other things he did?”

She nodded easily. “Of course I do. Walls can’t speak, but they have no choice but to listen, and My realm is full of walls. The realm was He before I was Me, but the walls are the same, so I’ve heard it all.”

“And you’ve…never heard anything…about Baar Dau?” His breath was shorter now, words coming out more labored as his heartbeat quickened in apprehension.

It wouldn’t be entirely out of character for Korone to publicize her feelings about the Tribunal’s largest monument to vanity, the city named after Vivec himself—and it wouldn't be impossible, or even unlikely, for Sheogorath to take more extreme action if the opportunity presented itself. Sheogorath was affectionate and endearing, funny and charming to a fault, but also haughty, petty, brutal, and incapable of being wrong when acting within the expansive sphere of influence that fell under the Madgod.

The woman lounging on Modryn’s bed—dressed up in the burnt orange of unfired clay and the rich purple of freshly tanned netch leather, vest veined like butterfly wings and sleeves ruffled like peony blossoms, who appeared from nowhere at the end of his life to offer admission into a plane of insanity—was entirely Sheogorath.

She went quiet for a minute, scrutinizing his face, then spoke more clearly than she had since before she left in the first place. “I didn’t kill your family in Vvardenfell,” she promised. “It wasn’t Me that threw the moon.”

[madgod-of-kvatch]

WIP WIP WIP

[getvalentined]

I absolutely am not trying to use this TES Fic I'm Not Writing to talk shit about the Tribunal, but that's apparently what's happening. Presumably what I get for making my Hero of Kvatch not only be a Dunmer, but an Ashlander who actually becomes a god (Sheogorath) at the end of her storyline.

The funniest part of this is that I've never played Morrowind, but my sister has, and we've both gone so deep into the lore we occasionally have borderline-theological debates about it. The fact that I've only experienced it secondhand makes Korone's repeated gripes as I'm writing feel kinda like "I've only had the Tribunal for ten minutes, but if NOTHING happens to them, I'm killing everyone in this room, and then killing Vivec twice more for good measure."