#secondborn

[secrets-and-shadow]

Malyck is no one. He comes from no where. On one hand, I am sorry for him. He has no roots. On the other, I am envious. He can become whatever he chooses. I hope he chooses well. – Excerpt from “The Nightmare Harbinger” by Amaranda the Lonesome  (Source: The official Guild Wars 2 wiki)

Weekend progress for The Harbinger's Path, my GW2 fan comic where Trahearne discovers one possibility for what could have happened to Malyck. Above is a small WIP preview from the prologue.

I have always loved this final line from Amaranda the Lonesome's book about Malyck. I remember when I first read it (I believe several months before HoT's launch), my mind was lit ablaze with speculations for what might have happened to him, and what we might find out when we saw him again in the expansion. Months and months of excited speculation and theories to ponder!

(At the time, it was generally accepted there was a high chance we'd see the character again in this expansion, and find out what happened to him after his sylvari personal story arc.)

It was a lot of fun attempting to transcribe this line to New Krytan! I have done this once or twice before in past GW2-related projects (it might have even been partial transcriptions of this same line), but never one this long. It took me a while to write every letter, but it was satisfying to do! I tried my best, but there might be errors.

To those knowledgeable, please feel free to mention any corrections you might have for my New Krytan. ;)

Archive post on my "Landy Sketchblog": https://landylachs.com/sketchblog/2025/04/the-harbingers-path-panel-preview-april-13-2025/

[melabea]

men/secondborn!

species flags for men/secondborn/etc (lord of the rings)!

for anon!

symbol from here (link)!

tagging; @radiomogai, @daybreakflags, @specieschive, & @seasulfur!

[nekhcore]

what if i just started posting all my toxic t4t yaoi here. what then. is this anything

[moved-to-rohavon]

'Then Tuor marvelling saw that on the wall behind the throne were hung a shield and a great hauberk, and a helm and a long sword in a sheath. The hauberk shone as it were wrought of silver untarnished, and the sunbeam gilded it with sparks of gold. But the shield was of a shape strange to Tuor's eyes, for it was long and tapering; and it's field was blue, in the midst of it was wrought an emblem of a white swan's wing. Then Tuor spoke, and his voice rang as a challenge in the roof: "By this token I will take these arms unto myself, and upon myself whatsoever doom they bear."'

-The Unfinished Tales, of Tuor and his coming to Gondolin.

[queer-as-used-by-tolkien]

Which College Was Blish a Member of?

Taimi says she "knew Blish from college." Even the wiki - which has a VERY firm stance on 'speculation' - agrees that this means Blish was a member of the College of Synergetics.

I have a different proposal.

When we met Taimi back in S1, there were two older asura keeping eyes on her: Zojja, and a Dynamics asura named Vorpp. This is the Vorpp who did experiments on the Secondborn (including Canach) from Caithe's memory seeds in S2, but we didn't know that at the time.

THING OF NOTE: Vorpp (he's on the wiki as Emissary Vorpp but ahaha there's like zero things there) does portal things. I dug around some maze-like wiki pages and discovered that he's the one who reverse-engineered some of Scarlet's portals so we could find her lair and beat her up in one of the S1 missions. There's a whole achievement (and, notably, as far as I can tell, he's the first one to have come up with a communicator device like Taimi's - obviously inferior, but still).

But. This is very obvious evidence that portals is a field of Dynamics. Which only makes sense, because asura gates were created and are maintained by the College of Dynamics.

My POINT HERE is this: Taimi was still hanging around and involved with Vorpp of Dynamics even though she was a member of Synergetics.

And Vorpp's field of expertise is portals. And also very Inquest-like experiments on Secondborn sylvari.

Utter and rock-solid and extremely true headcanon: this is how Taimi knows Blish.

Blish is a portal specialist. Taimi "knows Blish from college." Blish is a member of the Inquest.

We all assume that Blish was Synergetics because Taimi knew him in college. But that's not necessarily true!! My 100% headcanon is that Vorpp was Blish's college mentor before Blish went off and joined the Inquest. Vorpp's experiments on Secondborn likely happened before Blish was even born (that was in 1302 and Taimi was born in 1313, so if they're anywhere near each other in age...) but Vorpp's tastes and morals likely remained the same, which would help explain why Blish and Gorrik were so 'eh' about being in the Inquest (my other headcanon is that they only joined looking for something to help Blish, but they didn't have to be so casual about it - this would explain that).

I feel like I need to obsessively defend this headcanon, simply because the wiki definitively says Blish was Synergetics. But that's derived SOLELY from the fact that Taimi says she knew him in college, but she never specifies which college.

Dear Brain, please stop holding the word of the wiki as golden when you help edit that thing and you know full well what the source of Blish's 'Synergetics' tag is!

[elfwines]

The gold of your hair is my desire for ever

unknown, but sounds a lot like Éomer and Lothíriel

[isheamiable2008]

When you start reading a series and the first couple of books are great, but then you get to the last book and are like WTF is even happening

[studiobythegrove]

Cadeyrn, Secondborn and the Creator of the Nightmare Court