The Bargain
Just wanted to chat about the bargain Ae made with Meridia and how it came to be. All the details under the cut to avoid clutter, as usual.
So Summerset happens. There’s a few people who are around for the events: Z is off helping Raz to do ~spy things~ and keep the Isles intact and mostly stays out of Artaeum, Tam is focusing on helping the remains of the Meridian cult there after they’ve been mostly destroyed by the Court of Bedlam, Raewyn is mostly handing around the Psijics and lending her magic to the cause, and Ae is the one going through what would be considered the main story, kind of helping out everywhere. She also ends up being the only one going through the Crystal Tower with Leythen and Darien, and their deaths both hit her very hard. She’d come to respect Leythen a great deal through their time together, and of course she’s had a massive crush on Darien for basically forever.
She withdraws far, far into herself after Nocturnal is defeated, not speaking to anyone unless she has to and not showing any sort of emotion, which is somewhat jarring for everyone after she’d started to be more open recently. And then she goes to the palace to convince the Sapiarchs to defend the tower, and she hears the guards talking about the book. She looks into it, sees what Darien said, and kind of snaps.
She’s not “thrown into a rage” or anything, she just leaves Alinor with the journal and without speaking to anyone, and rides hard to the shrine where they spoke to Meridia earlier. She’s not sure what she’s going to say or even really what she thinks is going to happen - it’s not like Meridia is just going to give up Darien for free.
Ae basically starts by going in there and going “hey wtf you told him he’d be free you lying jerk” and Meridia just... doesn’t care. Using Darien to further her own ends was pretty much her plan all along, not to mention that Meridia doesn’t even really consider him a person. Not to mention that this tiny mortal basically calling her mean is pretty much the least of her concerns at this point.
So Aellai gets a little desperate, and kind of half-threatens, half-begs Meridia to just set him free. Part of the bargain is that she will never mention or try to get revenge for the fact that Meridia got her and nine other soldiers killed, and the other part is that she will drop everything and act as Meridia’s champion one more time if she needs it. She knows that that’s not a smart idea, particularly when she doesn’t think Meridia really likes her, but she’s kind of desperate and it’s the only thing she can think to offer.
Meridia says “hmm yeah okay here he is” and gives her Dawnbreaker. Ae is upset and a little angry, but this is kind of Meridia’s insurance policy. She tells Ae that it’s theoretically possible to pull him from the sword, and maybe if she comes and helps Meridia out enough, she’ll do it for her. There’s a lot of levels to this play: she insures that Ae will hold up her end of the bargain and come to help, she potentially ropes Ae into being her champion and doing her bidding as much as she wants, and she marks a well-known hero as her follower. So kind of a win-win-win for Meridia (not so much for Ae, but what can you do?).
Aellai is determined to find a way to just get to the Colored Rooms and fight her and take Darien back, but we’ll see who wins that fight. (She has a pretty decent track record when it comes to beating up daedra, though.)
More to follow eventually, hope y’all enjoyed listening to me aimlessly ramble about characters.