Primarily at least since Zojja didn't ascend in any of our settings and she's on the council herself, I think she's the councilor Vezz and Rissia deal with instead of Ludo at the start. This being because Ludo. Girl. You were AT the devil's sacrament. You were also helping the Inquest in very much not behind closed doors deals. You and your sister both!
But basically the thought is that Ludo is VERY busily trying to hide her and her sister's dirty laundry while an exasperated Zojja drags Vezz and Rissia out of retirement to send them on An Adventure into the wild unknown.
She's gonna start screaming at some point, though, and they'll probably hear it all the way in Castora.
One of the many collaborative efforts between me and @wall-legion, Tyria-432 is our main setting. Below the cut are several of the most important players on Tyria-432 and some short details about them.
Oaklinna, Knight of the Brother Tree
Aroace, cisgender, she/her
A fifthborn of the Dawn, there's a sort of running joke among those who know her best that Oaklinna woke from the dream before the Pale Tree had the opportunity to give her a lick of sense. She had been given a Wyld Hunt that confused her, at least at first: "you will begin at the ending." While she didn't understand it at the time, she pursued everything that interested her to try to find it, winding up traveling with Trahearne and joining up with the three who would become the Commanders in this setting.
After Trahearne's death at the end of Heart of Thorns, she vanished for a while, too deep in her grief to face any of her friends, taking the remnants of Caladbolg with her. It wasn't until she felt a calling drawing her back to the Maguuma Jungle that she reemerged. Reforging Caladbolg into a greatsword she saw in her dreams, she eventually made her way to the place Trahearne fell, only to find a new tree growing high into the treetops. Ascending into the treetop, she found the Avatar of the Brother Tree: Trahearne himself.
Since then, she's served as his Knight, overseeing new saplings who awaken from the new Dream.
Keeper Vezz, the Blightcaller
Bisexual, cisgender, he/him
A talented necromancer with a tumultuous checkered past, Vezz started out his journey to commander the hard way: by killing everyone in the Inquest facility he was working in and setting everything on fire before fleeing, returning a kidnapped girl from there to her mother before going into hiding. It was while ducking assassins that his old classmate Zojja found him and gave him a tantalizing choice: help her on a little "project" she was working on and she could find people who would help protect him from the Inquest.
He had nothing to lose and everything to gain, after all.
In the end, Vezz agreed, eventually crossing paths with the other three new Commanders and setting out on a journey to stop the threat the Elder Dragons posed to Tyria once and for all.
Along the way, he began to crawl out of the deep despair he'd been in, finding friendship and love and, eventually, coming into his own as a leader and companion. Post-Kralkatorrik, he and now wife Rissia opted to retire for his mental health and to raise their progeny together, moving to a cottage in Applenook.
Qirri of Pazz (or Qirri Tinkerfirst)
Demisexual, cisgender, she/her
The youngest of four daughters and younger sister of one of the commanders, Rissia, Qirri had a pretty rough start in life. Born dangerously premature, which left her with a weakened immune system and underdeveloped lungs, she's had to struggle for most of her life to be taken seriously and to live as her own person outside of the watchful eye of her parents- especially her mother.
Exceptionally bright, she was taken as an apprentice by Zojja when she was eleven and entered college at only twelve.
It was while she was on a forced hiatus from college at age fifteen that her older sister provided her the opportunity to run away from home and finally have an adventure of her own.
During her travels, she would meet Garrus, one of the future commanders, with the charr taking her under his wing - in his mind to keep her safe - and eventually naming her an honorary member of his warband. He was her first real friend outside of her family and Taimi, who she met as Zojja's apprentice. And it was with him that she would unfortunately experience the real horrors Tyria had to offer, managing to keep her head up through all of it.
Eventually she and Taimi would found the Dragonwatch Krewe together, and the two of them are managing the krewe in Cantha helping with the energy crisis to this day.
Agaue Whiptail
Demisexual, cisgender, she/her
The only surviving cub of a former enslaved female charr of the Flame Legion who escaped servitude to a charr logging camp where she had her litter, Agaue grew up with the specter of her sire - a Flame Legion shaman - and the horrors her mother endured hanging over her head. She let her anger and frustration at how others treated her as a result fuel her, and she quickly rose to a position of respect within the Ash Legion, becoming one of Malice's best scouts.
It was due to Malice's trust in her that she found herself assigned to a detail tailing fellow Ash Legionnaire Garrus Firstblood, keeping tabs on his actions as he rose to prominence as one of the commanders of the Pact. Her closeness to him through this eventually developed into a bond she was incredibly uneasy with, causing her to initially react to him with hostility whenever he approached her.
After several rocky meetings, however, they settled into a friendship that blossomed into something greater over time. And after she killed her sire at the All Legions Rally (it eventually being uncovered he was a spy sent to kill Efram besides), he helped clear her to go to her mother Medea with the Olmakhan. And after his retirement, he joined her there, where the two are now raising their first cubs together.
Lady Deshauna Tahir, Pact Marshal
Lesbian, cisgender, she/her
The oldest daughter and second child of the noble Tahir family, a prominent bloodline out of the small refugee founded town of New Hope in Gendarran Fields, Deshauna would not have been in the position she currently stands in had it not been for the (supposed) death of Logan Thackeray in Arah and the later death of her older brother Jelani Tahir in the Maguuma Jungle during Heart of Thorns. Elegant, graceful, kind, and magnanimous to a fault, Deshauna is known for being quite sharp witted and good at handling diplomats and the common folk alike, making her uniquely skilled at handling the rigors of leadership she fell into.
Initially, following Jelani's death, she'd spent months despondent. The two had been incredibly close and his death hit her hard. Some time later, however, she swore she heard his voice in her head, telling her to "get up and walk." For a time after, she fought as a Revenant, channeling the Legendary Soldier Jelani Tahir. Having her brother in her mind was a comfort, even if it was only an echo of him, and helped her in the time to come.
Throughout the events of the story, she would come to meet and romance the norn skaald Eshara Ulvhit. The two were married after Path of Fire, and after the events of SotO left Odetta, Leyya, and Zojja too exhausted to even consider taking on the next disaster, she and Eshara left their adopted children with her parents and went to represent the Pact in the Janthir Wilds.
Leyya of Pruri
Lesbian, trans woman, she/her
The oldest of thirteen total children and the only child born to her parents, Orann and Pruri, one would assume that Leyya had a pretty decent childhood... however that couldn't have been further from the truth. With her father abandoning them when she was still an infant, she was left with a mother who had no real support system but was doing her best. It was how she wound up learning in the progeny class her mother taught for "wards of the council," orphans who needed schooling, and meeting the angry little girl she'd grow up alongside as a best friend and long time crush: Zojja. And she stuck right by her for years.
In Heart of Thorns, however, while Zojja was missing, Leyya wound up possessed by a kryptis named Cepir, one she did her best to keep at bay.
Following the events of Heart of Thorns, Leyya and Zojja decided to leave Rata Sum, taking up residence with Vezz's former associate Odetta Swanheart in Lion's Arch, where they lived for several years until Zojja located some hidden letters Snaff had been writing with a mysterious asura named Uenno and vanished under the cover of night with no clue to where she'd gone.
Eventually, following the events of End of Dragons, Odetta and Leyya were the ones to enter the Horn of Maguuma to encounter the Astral Ward and the citizens of Nayos. Leyya tried to support Zojja, certain she was going to stay there forever, until she wound up getting fully possessed, nearly dying as Odetta, Zojja, and the Ward desperately tried to save her life. While she was saved, it wasn't without consequences, and she was badly injured. She was moved back to Lion's Arch after everything was said and done, with Zojja right by her side.
Important events to note:
All three Order mentors die at Claw Island, as each of the commanders worked with at least one of them.
Logan "dies" in Arah, only to have it later discovered that he'd been saved by a member of the Astral Ward who'd been spying. He accompanies Odetta and Leyya during SotO.
Eir survives HoT, though not without significant cost: she nearly dies to an infection and loses her entire left leg, and her brush with death is what drives Braham to leave in anger. She eventually recovers and carves herself a prosthetic leg.
Zojja does not run away in S3. Instead, she and Leyya leave Rata Sum for Lion's Arch, where they live with Odetta until right before the start of EoD, when Zojja finds Snaff and Uenno's letters.
While Blish does "die" to Kralkatorrik, Qirri decides to steal his backups from the Inquest lab to rebuild him, convinced that it's the best route forward. However, he remembers nothing from after the day he and Gorrik were evacuated from the Inquest and it creates a rift in the krewe until they sort things out.
Aurene's departure to hibernate happens before Gyala Delve. All of the former commanders show up to see her off, and sit right there with her until she leaves.
Zojja also does not stay with the Wizards. While tempted by what Logan has shown her and what she learned from Mabon before his death, she decides she doesn't want to give up who she is for a vague promise of "protecting the world."
Thinking about how in Tyria-432, Eir has a prosthetic leg that she carved herself, similar to this piece but fully jointed and all the way up nearly to her hip.
The carvings are the members of Destiny's Edge, with special care paid to Snaff and Logan's faces, as the carvings are as much a decoration as they are a memorial to the friends they've lost along the way.
It does get edited slightly once JW starts and Logan is confirmed to be very not dead.
Hi! I know you love talking about your blorbos, and I'm still a bit new to your Tyria and how it all splinters off and a+++. I know about Leyya's possession and whatnot, but I'd love it if you could re-cap your EoD + soto adventures! I've pieced bits together, but if you want to blabber all about it I'm sitting here chin-hands ready to listen! <3
So EoD and Gyala Delve are the "last hurrah" for our last unretired commander, my friend @wall-legion's Garrus... as well as for my girl Qirri. So first, I'll talk about Qirri's involvement there.
Qirri is the krewe chief of the Dragonwatch Krewe alongside Taimi, so when Gorrik piped up that there was a "certain someone" he'd worked with in the Inquest she offered to go with him, and Garrus decided to tag along. At the start, things go pretty much like they do originally in EoD... with the exception that Qirri's health is a key concern.
Though Garrus bounced back fairly quickly in the cell, Qirri was in rough shape. The cold, the sea water, everything. She got incredibly sick, and poor Rama had to worry about the extra concern of a potential conflict starting from letting a foreign national die.
Though Qirri recovered, it was a difficult time. She spent most of her time with the krewe, helping Garrus where she could, but with her health still on shaky ground, she was in a tough spot. When she was finally able to go out with him again, it was during the final push to stop Ankka... and it resulted in her having to step out from the last fight completely.
Barely recovered, tired, and so exhausted from seeing so many people die over and over again, she activated JUICE's triage protocol that had originally only meant for her own health emergencies to save Ankka's life.
(Currently, Ankka is still under constant medical observation, and it's still unsure if she'll survive her injuries.)
For our timeline, Aurene actually left to hibernate BEFORE Gyala happened, as we figured otherwise she would've torn the oni to shreds herself. She gave Qirri the rifle she now carries, still referring to her as "little sister" to the last.
During Gyala Delve, however, Qirri was finally able to assist. Probably not for the better, to be fair. During the first encounter with the oni, her breather was cracked, and the haze affected her already weak lungs. She hid it as best she could from Garrus as she and the krewe researched a way to fight back against the oni, despite the krewe's protests and attempts to get her to go back to Seitung to stay with Taimi instead, though the cough she developed from the haze was so severe it damaged her throat, causing her to cough up blood for a time.
Eventually, during the final dinner after they'd sorted everything out, both Garrus and Qirri had something to admit: they were ready to be done. Qirri planned to remain in Cantha with the krewe, with all of them working on the Canthan energy crisis together, and Garrus was returning to Althoma to stay with Agaue for good. It was their first real goodbye, and incredibly emotional for both of them. She'd been at his side, after all, since they met during the personal story. His own little honorary bandmate.
Moving into SotO, the catalyzing events actually start at the beginning of EoD, when Zojja finds a series of letters in a hidden compartment in Snaff's lab, written between him and a mysterious woman named Uenno, mentioning an Isgarren and an "Astral Ward." Desperately curious for anything that might link back to her dearly departed mentor, she left a little before the events leading into EoD, leaving Leyya and @wall-legion's Odetta confused and deeply worried in her wake.
It takes a year for them to finally find a lead - one of the letters that had slipped free and fallen under the bed Leyya had shared with Zojja. While on the hunt, Cerus "sensed" Leyya's visitor and dragged she and Odetta into the Temple of Febe, where they were sure they were going to be killed before Frode and Zojja got them free.
It was a very difficult time there. Logan was the first person they met on the other side, dispelling their original belief that he'd actually died in Arah, learning he'd been rescued by a member of the Ward that had been infiltrating the Pact to track the progress of the four commanders. He and Zojja took over helping Odetta find her way around and learn how to use the Heart of the Obscure while Frode took Leyya to the Rift Hunters to help her learn how to control Cepir in her mind.
It was a pretty tumultuous situation. Zojja had spent her year with the Wizards learning how to unlock deeper magic through training with Mabon. They hadn't been able to fix her injuries or mend her troubled mind, but it gave her some sense of peace. And both Odetta and Leyya were stunned to learn that not only was she considering staying, she was considering their process of ascension- giving away everything she knew to become one of them, free of the worries and memories that had plagued her nearly 40 years.
Leyya did her best to be supportive, and showed as united a front as she could. Whatever Zojja decided she'd be behind her, even if it devastated her on the inside to know that she may be left loving her forever while they never shared any connection again.
It made the grating of her connection to Cepir infinitely worse.
Zojja was conflicted. When she was up there by herself, far away from her worries and connections, it felt like an easier decision to make. But with Odetta and Leyya there, and with a call shared between herself and her apprentices Taimi and Qirri, she wasn't so sure anymore.
Meanwhile, Odetta and Leyya were horrified by the fractals, and Logan was actively keeping Odetta out of one of them (later revealed to be an alternate Kryta with the "true" queen on the throne). Cepir had done a full about-face, to speak, pledging his loyalty to Peitha from his place within Leyya's mind, amusing her greatly. He may have been a lap dog, but a lap dog knows who's not going to hit it.
Upon encountering Mabon possessed, Leyya was hesitant to fight him, worried about how upset Zojja seemed... but they didn't have a choice. Thankfully, due to quick thinking and careful application of the Heart, they manage to keep Mabon alive... though it's clear he's in a precarious situation, taking him fully out of the action at the brink. And after Mabon's near death, despite Dagda's offer for Zojja to immediately accept the ascension process and stay forever, she decides to wait.
She still needed time to think.
The fight against Isgarren is perhaps one of the hardest. Though once he's freed, he reconfirms Odetta as his Wayfinder, making it very clear to Leyya that should she "break," he would gladly bring the whole weight of the Astral Ward down on her head to put her down like a rabid dog. It jarred Leyya badly, further eroding her already deteriorating mental state.
Meanwhile, Zojja was coming to the conclusion, with a bit more clarity to consider, that she really wouldn't be helping Tyria at all if she stayed here, stagnant and stale, trapped forever as she was in that moment without any memories of her life or past. Of her friends, family, loved ones. Of Snaff. And more than that, if they were protecting Tyria, why then had she had to suffer in Maguuma? Why had Logan nearly "died"? Things were starting to not add up.
Still putting off her decision, she decided to travel to Nayos with Odetta, Leyya, and Logan.
During their time in Nayos,, it comes out that Irja is "related" to Cepir, and he's the one to insist that they can trust her, knowing she was as abused as he was under Eparch's rule. She doesn't die immediately, staying with them until they finally encounter Eparch... at which point she desperately tries to plead her case, promising she brought the traitors to him, they never suspected her.
For her loyalty, she's slaughtered in front of them.
As everyone stood horrified and furious, Eparch triggered something in the connection between Leyya and Cepir. Replacing the Eparch meta, Leyya instead gets fully consumed, her physical form altered as she and Cepir both lose control and their friends are forced to fight them to purge Cepir from her and save both their lives.
Leyya, then, must step back before the final push against Eparch. Having lost an eye and nearly lost an arm, she's mostly unconscious as Odetta, Logan, and Zojja press on, and after his defeat and installing Peitha as Nayos's new king (Odetta refusing the "police state" Isgarren attempts to enforce, stating it's just showing his own prejudice), Zojja makes her decision to return to Tyria proper with Odetta and Leyya.
Not for either one of them, not really, though they and her apprentices are part of it. It's more that she's realized all she's been doing since Snaff's death eighteen years ago is run, and all staying in Amnytas and letting them wipe her memories would be doing is letting her run forever, never facing her own grief or making any kind of attempt to get better.
And on top of that, she can't help the people of Tyria if she doesn't remember she cares about them.
In the end, the trio heads back to Lion's Arch, with Leyya and Zojja departing for Cantha a few weeks later.
Thinking about how Zojja became a councilor in our setting and realizing she's got SO many ins in Tyria-432. There's a bunch of reasons FOR those ins, but among the biggest is that both of her apprentices founded an extremely highly renowned krewe helping the commanders literally save the world, and that says LOADS for her skill as a mentor and as a genius. She's a prodigy who taught two prodigies so well that they went on to became The Asura Cantha could rely on.
On top of that, she herself was the apprentice of a man who was once Rata Sum's greatest mind when it came to researching "chaos"/dragon magic, and she's one of the greatest golemancers in recent generations.
When the time comes to make the decision, there's no contest. She's leaps and bounds over anyone else putting their hat in the ring.
(She also actually clearly wants the position, which most other asura up for the seat would most certainly not. Anyone else would gladly give up their spot to someone else, even more so to Zojja herself.)
