Asteria

The problem is that person is Durance. So now my Watcher is basically represented by Durance. Every supplicant who needs something gets Durance to solve their problem.

"You must be our Imperial Envoy. Better late than never, I say" - this jobber

my guess is wish dot com hugh grant here is the aedyran ambassador and that he has contracted the dreamscourge.

in this screenshot, he looks to be in an area that appears to be infected with fungal dreamscourge spores and mycelia. that, plus his little quote about the envoy being late, makes me think he had a little hallucinatory episode with the soul plague and wandered astray. then our envoy is sent to rescue him shortly after arriving.

carrie patel describes the progression of the dreamscourge as follows:

"No one knows how it spreads, but many have come to recognize and dread the symptoms: first, victims experience confusion, disorientation, and hallucinations. As it worsens, they become unpredictable and erratic in their behavior, as if trapped in a waking nightmare. In the final stage, they turn into violent “Dreamthralls,” their bodies twisted with fungal growths and their minds and souls overtaken by the plague."

one tiny lore tidbit that is fairly obscure, and actually might have a lot to do with the story of avowed is that the emperor's scepter has an adra jewel which stores the souls of past aedyran kings and queens.

this comes into play in a couple of lines with sargamis from the barbarian gamescom footage, when the player and the oracle speculate a bit on just why the emperor would send our envoy in particular.

could the ancient souls in the scepter, y'know the major icon of aedyran heraldry

could the ancient souls have communicated to the emperor that our godlike envoy might have some connection to the living lands. and could that connection go all the way back to the godless and the origin of the two major ethnic groups in aedyr? both the meadow folk and wood elves are said to have originated in the far north.

north, vitally, being the direction in which lies the living lands. was there some calamity that caused the godless to flee and become the far distant ancestors to the aedyrans?

sitting here wondering why i haven't seen this juicy tidbit more in avowed's marketing.

priest of Berath: there's an oddly ambivalent feeling of logic and certainty to being raised by a priest of Berath– you feel foolish for having been scared of dying because it's so obvious to you now that it wasn't your time yet, but you can't quite shake the feeling that you're living on borrowed time. getting healed by a priest of Berath tends to make one feel rather melancholy for a time afterward, leaving even the rowdiest roustabouts contemplative and somber.

priest of Magran: an intense, fiery determination surges up inside you, and you arise eager to face your next challenge head on. you also feel a flash of extreme heat over the wounded area as the priest's magic heals you. sometimes particularly bad wounds healed by a priest of Magran leave behind a shiny, puffy burn scar.

priest of Eothas: the healing comes on slowly, like the rays of the sun as it rises over the horizon. it's just as warm and invigorating as sunlight too, and you wake up from a rez like you might from a beam of sunlight finding you in your warm, cozy bed, peaceful and content, full of hope, feeling grateful for a second chance, another new day– although you can't help but feel just a little bit sad, too.

priest of Wael: bizarre images and phrases flash through your mind as you try to comprehend what's happening to you while you're being healed, and although you're sure they're all connected somehow, you just can't make sense of your own thoughts at all. sometimes when waking from a rez administered by a priest of Wael, you have a striking revelation about something that's been nagging at you in the back of your mind for years, but then you fully come back to yourself– and you can't, for the life of you, remember what it was.

priest of Skaen: hatred and contempt boil up inside you, and you wake with a burning need for revenge against not only those who harmed you, but against anyone who might wield power over you, oftentimes including even the priest who healed you in the first place. sometimes those healed by a priest of Skaen come back to their senses to find themselves literally licking their own wounds, and the taste of blood doesn't leave their mouth for hours.

priest of Rymrgand: the heal is cold, not like ice soothing a welt, but like rubbing alcohol evaporating off of your skin. sometimes instead of knitting the edges of a gaping wound together and revitalizing them, the skin surrounding the wound bloats and festers before withering and falling off, revealing the healed flesh beneath. being raised by a priest of Rymrgand is a harrowing ordeal, for to evade death at the whim of the Beast is to tremble helpless beneath his hoof for a time before he finally snorts and looks away, choosing to savor your soul another day. one tends to wake from a rez chilled to the bone, an oppressive weight on their shoulders and the stench of rot caught deep in the back of their throat.

paladin: fills your mind with thoughts, images, and/or feelings related to the paladin's object of zeal, eg. a Brother of the Five Suns laying hands on you makes the faces of the Ducs Bels flash before your mind's eye, and you feel a burst of awe and respect for the Vailian Republics; being raised by a Bleak Walker has you waking up with a brief but overpowering feeling of cold determination to kill every single person on the battlefield who'd dare raise a hand in violence against you or any other kith.

priest of Ondra: resurrection feels like slowly floating back to the surface from deep, dark waters that are just a little too reluctant to let you go. healing spells leave a lingering numbness in the body part being healed and leave no scars; in fact, things like tattoos, birthmarks and old scars sometimes disappear alongside the wound. your memory of falling in battle/receiving the wound is hazy, to the point where you might doubt whether it happened at all; you do, however, distinctly remember the cold feeling in your chest and the taste of brine in your mouth

But you know those dreams where you are falling from a great height, and just before you splatter on the ground, you wake up?

I think that is how it would feel like to get ressurected by a Priest of Hylea.

"(...) for you it's a mystery"

“Watcher, why did you do what Hylea wanted with the souls instead of what I wanted? Have I not been kind to you?”

“It’s not a phase, Mom! It’s who I truly am!”

Fake Berath Mom Screenshots saga, part 2

returning after a break with aloth corfiser 💜

🌼 clematis - ingenuity

🌸 freesia - trust