how to d sappear completely

“You can’t just leave the guar leather,” the Ashlander had insisted. “It’s wasteful and disrespectful!”

I'm sorry, I know this is a dramatic and pivotal point in the narrative, but we've triggered a made-up animal husbandry rant, because guar are serious business. A herd-based tribe like the Ahemmusa will structure all their movements around the good of the herd: moving across the best grazing lands for most of the year, then heading somewhere warm and safe for the critically important breeding season. There, you hatch your clutches of eggs, and decide which are worth raising, and which are khett: runts, too weak to survive. And you hope that you have enough viable young, because those guar are key to the tribe's survival. As they grow, you'll assign them purposes: strong ones to keep with the herd for breeding next year, and for cheese and cargo in the meantime, maybe even riding, if they have good legs and temperament. The rest are raised for meat and hides, and are slaughtered one by one, throughout the year. Upon hatching, guar imprint on their herders, and will follow them anywhere with no need to rope them (though others might!), and will stand quietly even as the herder cuts their throats. Guar leather is a core material, used for everything from yurts and banners, to bags, clothing and armour. If asked, most Ashlanders will happily tell you the history of the guarskins they are wearing, who they came from, and whether or not they were a good guar.

As outcasts, Mashti and Julan didn't have a herd, but as a teenager, Julan was once given a khett to raise, when he begged it from Sen, who was about to kill it. He called it Pelagius, and managed to keep it alive for over a year, despite it being a blind runt with brain damage and constant seizures. There wasn't much leather from it, but Julan did get a pair of guarskin pants out of Pelly, which he now regrets - should've made a bag, or a quiver! He's grown out of the pants, and can't wear them now without threatening to break them apart entirely, but he still has them in a chest, at his mother's. Guar are family.

Anyway. Wild guar are not necessarily free guar (I assume they're hard to tame, if you don't rear them yourself), but a dead wild guar is still free guar leather! And Julan's current pair of guarskin pants were shredded by clannfear, and despite his attempts at repair, are not in fantastic shape.

the succession of carefully skinned animal corpses guided him back along the grey foyadas until he was once again before the arched gate to Red Mountain.

This is so stupid. How many skinned guar would you need, in order to leave a trail? Are we sure Julan doesn't collapse on Red Mountain due to the sheer weight of the couple dozen guarskins in his inventory?

“Oh, it’s you!” The cheery Buoyant Armiger waved to him from her guard post. “Didn’t expect to see you back here. You just missed your Ashlander friend, though.”

This nameless Buoyant Armiger appeared briefly earlier, to heckle Julan. She's here to be an anti-Sister Llathyno, and really confuse Iriel about the Temple view on homosexuality.

She laughed. “Oh, ignore those musty old priests. I’m a Buoyant Armiger! Knight of Vehk! We’re all gay for Lord Vivec, it’s practically the entire point! Haven’t you read Sermon Twenty-Four?”

Sermon 24:

But before he could even get within sword-span of the monster, a trio of lower houses had trapped Horde Mountain in a net of doubtful doctrine. When they saw their lord, the Velothi cheered. 'We are happy to serve you and win!' they said. Vivec smiled at those brave souls around him and summoned celebration demons to cleave unto the victors. There was a great display of love and duty around the netted monster, and Vivec was at the center with a headdress made of mating bones. He laughed and told mystical jokes and made the heads of the three houses marry and become a new order. 'You shall forever be now my Buoyant Armigers,' he said. Then Vivec pierced Horde Mountain with Muatra and made of it all a big bag of bones. At the touch of his right hand the net became right scripture and he threw it all northeasterly. The contents spread out like sugar-glows and Vivec and the Buoyant Armigers ran under it laughing.

Buoyant Armigers are an elite troop of warriors, exclusively dedicated to Vivec, modelling themselves on his warrior-poet image. The quote above implies the origin of the order, mythically at least, was a post-battle orgy around a captured monster.

Earlier, the strange combination of Vivec's poetic homoerotica and the Temple clergy's overt homophobia caused Iriel to deride them as hypocrites, but could something else be going on, here? What if, when Vivec claims that spear biting is a forbidden ritual, he isn't saying "do as I say, not as I do", he's telling you it's a privilege, and if you want it, you gotta git gud?

Many acts are forbidden to the Dunmer people at large, because their wholesale adoption would disrupt the regular order of society. Lies, for example, or murder and betrayal. But these can also be holy acts. The "good Daedra" Boethiah rules over treason, deceit and betrayal. Murder is sacred, under the holy auspices of Mephala, but only for the licensed Morag Tong assassin. For Dunmer, these actions are not anathema in and of themselves, in fact they may sometimes be necessary. But they must be kept in their place.

What if homosexual acts were viewed similarly? Subversive behaviour that goes against the social majority view is permissible for gods: they know what they're doing. Vivec can put his spear (or Molag Bal's) wherever he wants. As companions of Vivec, the Buoyant Armigers' role contains echoes of his holy nature, but that's ok, because it's a strictly boundaried and defined state, kept secret by oaths and initiation ritual. The Buoyant Armigers were formed in an explosion of divine love and duty. To love one another, and to love Vivec, regardless of gender, is part of that duty. Entry into that state is to level up physically, spiritually and sexually. They've earned it. They're allowed to suck cock, they've got the sexual equivalent of diplomatic immunity. They're not an unqualified gutterfag like you, Iriel, they're trained professionals.

Iriel will later refer dismissively to this theological framework as "the Temple make you join the army to be gay".

“To be honest, it’s a lot more symbolic these days than it used to be. He doesn’t go among us in person any more, ever since… well.

It's a close-kept secret that the Tribunal have lost access to the Heart of Lorkhan, the source of their continued divinity. But out of everyone on Vvardenfell, the most likely to know would be the Armigers, the mortals most intimate with Vivec, some of whom might have accompanied him in his forays onto Red Mountain, both successful and not.

“Since you’re a woman, wouldn’t you be straight for Vivec?”

The Armigers are male dominated, but female Armigers certainly exist. If I'd made the Armiger a man, Iriel would have thought he understood the situation, but I want to make sure he realises it's more complicated than that.

“Ah! That’s where you’d be wrong! Lord Vivec is the union of male and female, the magic hermaphrodite, the martial axiom, the sex-death of language and unique in all the middle world! Mephala was his Anticipation! He is all genders and none, and I promise you… whoever or whatever you are, when you’re with Vivec, it’s always completely gay. Both ways. All possible ways. Many impossible ways, too.” She grinned wildly, and swung her spear back and forth. “Completely. Gay.” Ire backed away slowly, feeling for the gate switch behind him.

Obviously I am failing to resist the temptation to get Silly with this, purely because it's fun to discombobulate Iriel. He doesn't know how to handle someone trying to out-gay him, especially not a woman, and especially not in this paradoxical, nonsensical way. 

Iriel hasn't paid attention to Vivec's gender, since he was only cherry-picking bits of the Lessons for (ahem) specific things, and Vehk uses male pronouns, there. Ire wasn't reading closely or thoroughly enough to register much nuance. He'll raise an eyebrow, later, though, when Viatrix says of her meeting with Vivec, "She was beautiful".

Behind the Armiger's deliberate silliness, I think it's less that close encounters with Vivec are "always completely gay", and more that Vivec's gender presentation shifts to mirror yours, in an idealised sort of way. Whether that's an erotic experience depends on a lot of things, not least where you fall on the "would you fuck your clone?" spectrum*.

(* The LOTR version was the first version of the meme that came up in the tumblr search, but if anyone has a TES one, feel free to submit. Yes, I know which answer would be given by each major HTDC character. Iriel is obvious, and gets no points for identification.)

Moving on. Iriel runs up the mountain, immediately gets into trouble and needs to be rescued.

He screamed, and it clung to him, pinning his arms and dragging him to his knees. Wailing and gurgling, it stared up at him beseechingly, eyes crusted and desperate.

Iriel's seen someone like this already -  the body of Danar Uvelas, in Vivec. So he's aware this isn't a beast or Daedra, just a person who caught the wrong disease. While corprus victims can be violent, in moments of blind, confused frenzy, what if sometimes they're lumbering towards you in sheer desperation, seeking help?

“I thought you might… need… help.” Ire said weakly.

Julan looked distracted and sounded exasperated. “You can’t help me with this,” he said. “Look at you, you’re not even wearing armour, and that stalker was right on top of you. You’re going to catch corprus if you stay out here.”

Iriel's looking less like a rescuer and more like a liability every moment. Except that Iriel is right, because without him there, Julan will end up dead. Julan may be able to swing a sword at things, but he doesn't have the temperament to handle a solo mission into such dangerous territory. That's not a criticism - I don't think many people would. Later, Ire's become even more defenceless, having lost most of his magic, but he's still the only thing keeping Julan together, because heroism is about more than physical strength.

I was full of shit, and I’m sorry. You do realise I ran all the way from Ald'ruhn, don’t you?”

This is an excellent and heartfelt apology, probably the most honourable thing Ire's done for chapters and chapters. Shame it has such an unappreciative audience.

Raising his shield to ward off the worst of the ash, Julan steered Iriel into a slightly more sheltered area of the mountain. Once there, he stared in confusion. “But… why?”

Julan's not used to apologies, especially not genuine ones. Ans the one time he gets one, it's when he no longer has any use for it, and has no idea what he's supposed to do with it. He's done playing at friendship, now, he's busy.

“Because I’m worried about you!” Ire said vehemently. “I’m scared you’re going to get yourself killed!”

Given Ire's behaviour lately, it's understandable if this sounds fake to Julan. And true, this isn't pure altruism on Iriel's part, a lot of it's terror of being saddled with another mountain of guilt. But Ire's also realised that Julan's kindness was genuine, that they had moments of real connection, in the brief moments that Ire's neuroses weren't eating him alive, and Ire's been a colossal shitbag to him. Whether or not Julan really needs help, Ire can't stand the thought of leaving things on such a sour note, knowing he threw a friendship away for no good reason.

Julan resheathed his sword with diffident precision. “Look, that’s all very touching, but there’s no need. I’m ready for this, now.”

Thing is, Julan's had a day or so alone, now, during which he's had time to really entrench himself in mission-mode. Mission-mode is necessary, because otherwise the paralysing fear takes over, and that's no use. So: mission-mode. Mission-mode involves shutting down all emotion and logic, and replacing it with two things, held in constant tension: delusions of grandeur and suicidal ideation. 

The delusions are the hero fantasies his mother raised him on, that he pretends to himself that he believes. These are the surface thoughts he allows himself, the phrases he repeats until they feel as true as he can get them.

The wanting to die comes from the part of him that knows it's a lie, that he's not a great hero, but doesn't care. It doesn't matter that he won't succeed, because he has no future anyway, and dying for his people feels like the most productive thing he has left. He can't let these thoughts surface, so he batters them down with the heroism, but it's all still there, bubbling under. He keeps it there, because it's a useful weapon against the paralysing fear. If his survival instinct starts gaining the upper hand, he can remind it that he doesn't deserve to live.

What this adds up to is the most godawful martyr complex you've ever seen in your life. And now he's got it all unpacked and set up, the last thing he needs is Iriel, coming in and messing everything up.

“Then… I’m going to Dagoth Ur’s citadel.” Ire blinked. “You’re what? Why?” “To hunt him down, and kill him.”

I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds stupid. Stop making him explain his total lack of a real plan out loud! This is why he doesn't like talking about it!“No!” Julan shouted, “You don’t need to get anything straight, because you don’t know the first thing about it!”

NO EXPLANATIONS NO PLANS ONLY MISSION. stop talking stop talking no rationality can be allowed to penetrate MISSION MODE

Julan threw up an ash-covered gauntlet. “What are you going to do? You’re a scholar. The most danger you’re used to is papercuts! This is serious, Iriel.”

Stop trying to get in on the serious business of martyrdom, Ire, you're ruining it! Now Julan has to distract himself trying to protect you, or else you'll die first and beat him to the martyrdom, and he doesn't wanna share!

Julan might have argued further, but his eyes were elsewhere, head making sharp, sudden moves. He winced. “Fine. Whatever. I need to… get this done.

He was doing this before, back at Ghostgate. Is there something physical about being on Red Mountain, or is just that his mission is focused here, so the stress is magnified?

Next chapter, up the mountain proper. I wanted to call a whole bunch of chapters after colours, but in the end I only managed red and green.

The sky was an open wound, pouring down red torrents of ash. Iriel’s boots were full of it, and he could barely see.

Most of this is unchanged from the mod, because even though it was a nightmare to script, and breaks the moment someone installs a terrain-change mod (or for no reason at all - this is Morrowind), I still think it's a fun trick to force the player into such an extreme situation. Ask them to do something obviously stupid for the sake of this guy they hardly know! Red Mountain is genuinely horrific and disorienting to navigate. It's the end-game zone, your character is probably wildly underleveled for the enemies here, and could easily end up dead. You also have no control over Julan and no idea how far he's going to push this crazy thing he's apparently determined to do. 

Julan was pulling ahead again, and Ire was about to shout to him, when Julan turned first, irritation on his face. “Look, I can’t hear what you’re saying when you whisper like that!”

...and then he starts hearing voices.

“Daedra are resistant to most metals,” Iriel shouted. “but this one has elemental resistance too! We need an enchanted weapon, or a spell it’s weak to!” Julan, frantically parrying claws with his shield, didn’t seem to hear him.

I know this whole business with the Hunger is stupid as hell, but LISTEN: I had to. Because this is what happened in my game! Usually, I try to write a story, not a gameplay record. I try to ignore the silly realities of Video Game Logic and focus on what works best for the narrative. But this was so ridiculous, I had to include it.

Remember that steel longsword Julan had, last chapter? I'd equipped that on him to replace that shitty chitin shortsword he starts with, with the fleabite of a fire spell. What I had forgotten is that it doesn't matter how much more damage a steel weapon does, it's going to do zero damage against creatures that are resistant to unenchanted weapons. It's fine, I thought, he has destruction spells too.

Guess what's the one creature in the entire game that's 100% resistant to normal weapons, AND 100% resistant to fire, frost, shock and poison? Guess what we immediately ran into on Red Mountain?

And I realised: Julan's not in follow mode, right now. I have no way to stop him from attacking this Hunger, despite the fact he can't damage it. He won't follow me if I teleport, and I can't change his equipment. He's just going to keep fighting it until it kills him. Which is honestly an extremely appropriate Julan situation for him to perish in, but I was hoping this story might be longer.

Ire had no spells or weapons that could damage the Hunger either, only paralysis, which was just prolonging the inevitable. Sure, I could have console-killed the Hunger, but I didn't want to play Iriel's game like that. I was trying, in my pedantic little way, to keep it real.

It was actually even more convoluted, ingame. I at least allowed story-Ire the mercy of finding a filled soulgem at the Shrine of Pride, since that's the standard offering for that shrine, so it's plausible. Actually, I only had an empty gem, so I had to enter the mine, find a pickaxe, soultrap some random nix-hound I found in there, and successfully enchant the fucking pickaxe! Which was thankfully the easy part, since Ire's skill wasn't terrible, and you can only put, like, one enchantment point into a goddamn pickaxe. But then I had to get back to Julan and save him from his endless battle, before he ran out of health!

Oh, and then manage to kill the damn Daedra, with a weapon Ire had no skill in, that only did a couple of points of damage per strike, while exhausted and wearing no armour. Which took forever, plus a million health potions, so be glad I streamlined that part, in the fic.

Long story short, we were all so traumatised by the experience, that I had to include it in the story, regardless of whether that was a good idea.

Julan doubled over in pain, oblivious to Iriel. “Nnnngh! No! I am NOT… Get OUT!! Aaaggh! Stop it, you s'wit!!” He raised his head, stared blankly into the storm, then suddenly howled and clawed at his ears so hard his nails left marks in the skin. “No!! That’s NOT true! That’s not why I’m… unngh… I am Indoril Nerevar reborn, and you will not… Aagh!”

Two kinds of reader reactions to this line, A:

cottoncandy_dreams: "OH SHIIIIIT!!! I thought Julan might be thinking he was the Nerevarine but aaaaaaaa"

and B:

HopeStoryteller: "...is this something I'd know about if I played Morrowind?"

I want to thank every reader in the B category for their perseverance, honestly. I can't imagine trying to read this fic without knowledge of the Morrowind main quest.

I also want to thank the readers in the A category, because yesss, you get it. One of my aims with the Julan mod was to make the main quest feel fresh again, add some new spice and conflict. The point of Morrowind is that your character is (well, possibly, it's Complicated) the reincarnation of someone called Indoril Nerevar. So the veteran player, hearing this line, is meant to be going, "wait, what? he thinks he's ME?"

Iriel, of course, is in the B category.

He screamed, convulsed, and then, as Ire watched helplessly, his eyes rolled back and he fell unconscious into the ash.

Aaaand, that's it, we're out. Julan can take a turn being the character to pass out at the end of the chapter. As I said, I prefer to leave the source of the voices in Julan's head ambiguous - or whether there even was a source, beyond his own hyper-pressurised brain. I will note, though, that Julan's reaction implies the voices were mocking and insulting him. Which... if we're trying to use that to decide between his own subconscious, Dagoth Ur and Julan's deadbeat dad? Doesn't really narrow it down, does it?

“Sweet Alma, lad, do stop all this fussing.” Ulmiso Maloren, the Ghostgate healer, rinsed her sponge in searing water, and brought it once more across Iriel’s naked back. “I can’t heal it until I’ve cleaned all this ash out of it, can I? You’d end up with blight under the skin, and a nasty infection.

Back at Ghostgate, and Ire's voicing his low tolerance for physical pain. I will cut him some slack, given he's just been through hell, where he was extremely brave and resourceful, and is now entitled to fall apart a bit.

I assume that healing with Restoration is based on speeding up the natural regenerative processes of the body, convincing it to heal faster. So your basic healing spell isn't going to remove debris from a wound or reset a displaced bone; you better do that before you try to heal the flesh, or you're making trouble for yourself. Throw in a few Cure Blight spells, as the equivalent of antibiotics.

Pain relieving spells would be a separate thing - possibly an Illusion spell, since it's about removing the perception of pain? A local anaesthetic done with some combination of Calm spells and carefully targeted Paralyse spells on the nerves?

Anyway, I'm sure Ulmiso could cast one on Iriel if she wanted to, but doesn't, for the same reason they don't give you a full anaesthetic to clean a wound in real life: it's a waste of time and resources, this is a minor treatment, you are honestly being a huge baby.

“It’ll probably scar, you know,” she tutted. “Serves you right for leaving it so long untreated.

labskeever had some really cool thoughts about magical healing and scarring:

"one of my made-up bits of TES lore is that wounds healed by magic are almost guaranteed to scar, and usually in far worse ways than if they healed on their own. it creates consequences for waving one’s hand to get rid of an injury. sure, you could fix it now, but it will be ugly and pain you forever, whereas with bedrest and mild potions you have a chance of full recovery."

I really like this, and kinda wish I'd done it this way around in HTDC. Julan later talks about Ashlander scarification techniques, which involve letting something heal slowly to ensure scarring, so magic isn't allowed. Which could easily be changed to: magic is used in order to ensure scarring. But then you'd probably have to make it extra painful through other means, because stringing out the suffering is part of the point - these are Dunmer we're talking about.

“I’ve examined him, and there’s nothing physically wrong with him. He keeps babbling nonsense, but I think he’s just exhausted.

Now, why might Julan be exhausted, Ire? Maybe his behaviour on the mountain was less about his dad or the devil, and was all down to sleep deprivation-induced psychosis. It's all making sense, now - irritability, mania, hallucinations - all symptoms of lack of sleep!

Iriel scurried barefoot across the stone floor, and crouched down by his friend’s bed.

His friend! Despite everything - because of everything! - Iriel's clear on that, now. Before, he couldn't handle the fact that Julan had seen him at his worst, full of rage and irrationality, lashing out blindly, failing at everything he attempts. But now he's seen Julan in more or less the same position. They're no longer teacher and student, or patient and babysitter. They're just a pair of fuck-ups, trying to keep each other sane, and Iriel can work with that - that sounds like friendship to him, and he's right.

“Shhh, don’t move,” said Iriel. “Let me try a spell.” He gently placed his hands on Julan’s temples, and tried to focus his limited healing abilities through his fingertips. “Does that help?” “Aah… yeah, a bit.

See, he's feeling so amicable, he's even managing some minor healing! That, or Julan's just trying to be polite about whether it's working.

I called HTDC a story about visibility, but it's also a story about healing. Iriel is bad at it, and he needs to get better at it, because magic is a metaphor for how you believe you can affect the world. So. Listen to the professionals, Ire! Clean the ash out, first! Of, like, Julan's brain or whatever we're doing, here, metaphorically or otherwise.

But it was just like my dreams, except… the voices were different. Clearer. I could hear what they were saying.” Not at all sure he was going to like the answer, Ire asked, “What were they saying?” Julan didn’t seem to like the answer either, breaking eye contact and muttering: “Oh… I don’t know. Not much. It’s not important.

Lots of ash in the brain, for sure. He doesn't really hint at what this is about until much, much later:

Want to know a secret? I used to wonder if Dagoth Ur was right, if maybe the Nerevarine was supposed to join him, not defeat him. Return the tools that were entrusted to him by Nerevar, and then stolen from him by the Tribunal. I mean, that makes sense, right? In a Bal Molagmer sort of way.” His tone was light, but an increased tension beneath Ire’s fingers betrayed the shame of the admission. “That’s not why I thought it, though,” he added, his voice dulling. “I was angry, bitter. I thought any change for Morrowind would be better than living under the Empire’s thumb, beneath the mockery of false gods.

I wasn't deliberately trying to echo anything about young men being targeted by toxic right-wing nationalist grifters, but it's hard not to see the parallels now, innit? Plenty of Dunmer joined the Sixth House, there was clearly something that appealed to a certain type of person, beyond the all-you-can-eat tumours buffet. Julan doesn't want to be that type of person, and doesn't think that's the sort of hero he wants to be, but part of him kinda gets it.

What matters is, I failed again at my mission. I’m still not ready. Maybe I’ll never be ready.” He sighed like a falling tree. “Ai… I guess I should go back home and herd guar. Seems it’s all I’m fit for.”

I totally stole "Ai..." from Symmachus in The Real Barenziah. Or, wait, since he's read it, did Julan steal it for himself? Whichever one of us stole it, it just sounds like a good grim, brooding Dunmer thing to say.

"Sighed like a falling tree" is a godawful simile, though, I am slapping past-me on the wrist. Have you ever heard a tree fall? All screeching and cracking! Squirrels everywhere!

Iriel chewed his lip, struggling to think of something encouraging. “Herding guar actually sounds rather difficult,” he said at last.“I imagine it requires a lot of observation skills, patience, and… um… animal husbandry, and…” He felt Julan’s glare before even seeing it.

Iriel may not be beating the autism allegations, here, but I have to defend him - he's right! Guar-herding is a rewarding life that requires skill, perception and empathy! Julan assumes he's being insulted, and that Iriel's "well, actually" implies he's not even good enough to herd guar, but Iriel means the opposite: that being "fit for" herding guar isn't an insult.

But Julan doesn't want to herd guar, he wants to be a hero and save his people, or he wants to be a righteous martyr. And he also knows that "his people" wouldn't let him touch their precious guar with a bargepole, so even his attempt at self-deprecation is an unattainable fantasy.

Julan's always chasing the wrong dreams - he'd make a fantastic guar herd. He'd love it.

I mean, I’ve been very impressed by your physical, um…” don’t say anything weird, Ire “…prowess, by which I mean…” keep your eyes up, that’s right “…your skills. With weapons. As in, you know, using them. On people.” ok, good, I think we got through that.

The running joke in this scene of Iriel wrestling with his terror of being Predatory Gay, and completely failing to act normal as a result. He's determined to level up his Male Friendship, and that means pretending he can't tell other men have bodies, however implausible this seems. The correct response, of course, would be to roll his eyes and tell Julan to "pull the fucking sheet up" at the beginning of the conversation, but Ire needs more skillpoints for that. (At even higher level, he can attempt the move Sottilde demonstrated for him earlier, of telling him off for being unfairly naked in plain sight when he doesn't swing that way!)

“Uhh… Thanks.” Julan looked slightly nonplussed, but attempted a smile anyway.

In an earlier commentary, I said: "as far as Julan is aware, people treating you badly is just how relationships are. He does not have what you would call a regular baseline for comparison”.

In response to that, sinilakki asked: "How does kindness feel like to Julan when this is the starting point? Does it feel fake (like the notion of Iriel having friends)? Inherently suspicious?"

This is hard to answer, because it encompasses a whole range of behaviours and reactions, like... it depends. Julan is suspicious of people he doesn't know well, as they often subject him to mockery and scorn. Flattering words from strangers may be assumed sarcastic until proven otherwise, but provided he thinks you're legit? He does have social skills, far more than Iriel. He can take a compliment, give and receive basic courtesy, chat up  random farmers in the tavern about their guar until they buy him drinks.

With those he cares about, he has a high tolerance for mistreatment in that he'll excuse, justify and forgive it easily, but he'll still notice it, and probably complain. Perhaps what I should have said was: Julan is used to a high degree of emotional volatility in his relationships.  In his experience, anger, frustration and confusion is the price you pay for being close to people, but he's also aware of the benefits.

Notwithstanding any of this, it's understandable that Julan is having trouble parsing Iriel's stilted compliments delivered while staring fixedly at a point two feet above Julan's left ear.

“But if you’re not in an immediate hurry, I could still do with help exploring another Dwemer ruin. I was reading about one that’s in the middle of the Molag Amur ashlands. There are some interesting things in Edwinna’s notes that I want to act on before she does.”

Julan leapt at the proposed distraction.

expended-sleeper replied to my commentary on ch31:

""If you don't intervene, Julan will get himself killed." This part kinda blew my mind. Of course you save him from the Clannfears, but it somehow never occurred to me that you also save him by agreeing to let him tag along with you. Kinda recontextualizes the whole relationship between Ire/Julan or Player/Julan -- you're not just doing this guy a favor, you're putting yourself between him and his certain death long enough to give him time to find a context where he isn't doomed to go on a one-man suicide mission to kill the devil."

It takes SO little to get Julan to avoid his mission, any excuse at all will do. And it takes SO little to get him to become best friends/fall in love with you, any tiny amount of affection will do. Because on an unconscious level, he's so desperate to find a new emotional context for himself, a role, a relationship, a bearable way of existing in the world that isn't the single one he thinks he has.

Iriel could always sense this edge of desperation in Julan's friendship. He was always wary of committing to it, and has tried to escape it multiple times. It's less about Julan and more about him and his ability to live up to it. He knew it was bound to get messy, and he was absolutely right. People are messy. Iriel has at least realised that this particular messy person is his friend, and if he can't commit to that - to understand what that means, and act on it - he doesn't have a hope of learning to live with himself.

Playlist pick: I'm Sorry by Voltaire. Iriel does a lot of apologising. Sometimes it's just the panicked, automatic reflex of his childhood, but these days he has plenty of real things to apologise for, too.

So, we're at the point in the mod where Julan resolves to head back to Red Mountain, but we have a problem. The mod narrative assumes the player is basically well-meaning, and has trained Julan faithfully until he decides, in a moment of endorphin-crazed self-confidence, that he has the strength to complete his mission.

In this story, Iriel has been wildly negligent as a magic tutor, has taught Julan little except how to be sad and get high, has endangered, insulted and abandoned him, and is currently trying to destroy him both physically and psychologically.

It was clear that for Julan's motivation, we would need to apply leverage from the other end of the emotional spectrum.

Enough torturing the puppy, Iriel. Time to kick it hard enough that it finally runs away.

“Are you sure going to Ald'ruhn isn’t a bad idea for you?”

A perfectly reasonable question that Iriel's in no state to take reasonably. He's been working himself into a roiling mass of self-hating frustration for days, creating exactly the right conditions for him to relapse into skooma hell, the second Julan's back is turned. Julan might not understand exactly what's going on with Ire, but his instincts are on point. Iriel knows he's right, too, thus why he's angry.

“You were the one who insisted on walking,” Julan reminded him. “Sheogorath knows I didn’t want to. Between your ridiculous demands and the dreams, I’ve barely slept in two days.” He rubbed his forehead. “We could have been there ages ago if you’d let me use Intervention. Or if you’d swallow your damn pride and grovel to the Mages’ Guild.”

He's also figured out that Iriel is doing this on purpose, and it's starting to feel personal. Julan has been steadfast in his refusal to receive the "fuck off" messages Iriel's been broadcasting, but even he can be pushed too far. Not by physical hardship, though. Ire's gonna have to get meaner.

“Terribly dangerous habit that, knowing people.”

More things Iriel says in the belief he's making a sarcastic "joke", and not describing one of the core pillars of his neurotic edifice. “You, Helende, Caius, Habasi… all of you. You think I’m weak, that I can’t do anything for myself.”

“Iriel, twice in the last two days, you’ve begged me to do something for you because you couldn’t–”

“AND I’M SICK OF IT!!!” He was startled by the intensity of his sudden emotion.

Sunderlorn commented: "Part of me quietly loves Iriel being terrible, because it's like a misstep towards sticking up for himself, asserting himself, being himself around other people. But it's still a fucking misstep because he only seems to be able to do it around people who care. (Oh, and skooma addicts sometimes.)"

On the rare occasions that Iriel completely, visibly, loses his temper, you have to understand that it has never in his life appeared to have the slightest effect. Any time he became angry, he was ignored by his parents, the Sapiarchs, the prison guards, and events continued as if Ire's outburst hadn't happened.

I'm thinking about how anger is seen as feminine and/or infantile when it's ineffectual because the person expressing it is "weak". They have no force to back up that anger, thus rendering it ridiculous - appealing, even! ("you're cute when you're angry"). Iriel, having always been made to feel this way, still feels trapped in this childish mode. He's not capable of imposing his will on the world, only throwing a meaningless tantrum. His hands may be unsafe, but they're also weak - they can inflict superficial pain, but not actually change anything.  That's why he normally shuts down, instead, and internalises his anger: it's safer, and has the same non-result. The fact he's expressing his anger, here, becomes an ironic sort of compliment. For all that Iriel never allows Julan to receive the coveted "safe hands" label, he still feels comfortable venting his anger on him, sensing that Julan will simply absorb it.

“You’re right! I don’t! But I stuck around anyway, because, yes, I thought you needed someone.”

And Julan will absorb it. Because while he has a short temper about many topics, this particular type of interaction is very familiar to him. He's been managing someone vulnerable but volatile his entire life, trying to defuse her paranoid rages, while ensuring she doesn't starve to death, or set her yurt on fire. Feeling trapped, but ultimately responsible, because his mother has nobody else in the world. He finally escaped, but immediately got sucked into another caretaker role, with Iriel. 

Sucked in, or sought out? Does a part of Julan enjoy caring for someone, to maintain his self esteem, even if it's unhealthy and abusive? Sure, maybe there's an element of that, but don't go overboard fixating on it. Because that seems like an incredibly bad faith way to characterise someone's caring impulses, not to mention a cruel and cynical way to hold their shitty childhood against them. Nevertheless, it's a conclusion that Iriel will easily jump to, later, because the alternative is to believe that someone cared about him for normal reasons.

“Well, I don’t!” said Ire, folding his arms and looking away, to where the Ghostfence glowed blue in the distance. “What happened to that ridiculous secret mission you were going on about, when we met? Wasn’t it supposed to be terribly important, or something? Or did you forget about that, once you’d found an easy way to keep yourself in booze and Nord girls?”

Now that the dam has broken, Ire's just ranting, throwing all his various resentments at Julan, still assuming none of it will have much effect. Bringing in the Ghostgate mission purely because it's in his line of sight, and he's picking up any weapon he can find.

He glanced at Julan’s face, and immediately wished he hadn’t

And stumbles across the one that does critical damage: guilt.

For Julan, to borrow a phrase from Pratchett, "personal isn't the same as important". He files everything into these two categories in his head. "Mission to Save His People" goes into "important", and virtually everything else goes into "personal". But making decisions against this metric is a recipe for constant failure, because it's a ridiculous metric. He's always veering between the two, choosing based on current guilt levels, weighed against all his other temptation levels: curiosity, fear, adrenaline, libido, alcohol, love, friendship, survival instincts - normal feelings and desires that he thinks he's not allowed to have, because that's all "personal". His mission is the only thing that matters, therefore everything else is a selfish distraction.

Honestly, tripping his guilt is a way more in-character way to motivate Julan back to Red Mountain than the random moment of manic self-confidence you get in the mod. Should I add it as an alternate route? Would any players even want to descend to Iriel's level of dickish behaviour?

A silt strider slerried in the distance.

I apologise for my cheap impulse to deflate scenes of high drama with stupid made up silt strider verbs.

“You’re right,” came Julan’s eventual reply, in a far more emotionless voice than Ire had expected.

Julan has good emotional instincts, which is why he has learned to shut them down completely when he needs to force himself to do something that goes against them, something "important". Don't worry about him when he's yelling at you, worry when he gets all distant, formal, and dead behind the eyes.

“I wasgetting distracted from my sacred mission. I guess… I’d been on my own for so long, I got caught up in having a friend, someone to talk to. I’d convinced myself you needed me, but… maybe I was just running away, again. What I have to do… it’s more important than what I want, or what you need.”

Sure, the jabs about booze and Nord girls hurt, but those aren't even the biggest rocks in the landslide of guilt that Ire's just triggered onto Julan. For Julan, helping Ire when he was supposed to be off saving Morrowind was, in his view, selfish. His mission is terrifying, and he has no idea how to complete it. Protecting Iriel has been something he knows how to do, so he's been clinging to it, indulging the need to feel needed. He was pretending to himself that it was important, because he wanted so badly for it to be. But now he's realised his own self-deception, he can't allow himself to do it any longer. Only one thing is important.

“Don’t give me that sword!” he said, as Julan discarded a steel longblade they had picked up in Caldera. “I know I paid for it, but what use would I have for such a thing?” After a moment’s consideration, Julan shrugged, and replaced it at his belt.

But if, hypothetically, it were possible for a second thing to be important? Some Daedra being fully immune to non-enchanted weapons would be a really good second thing.

He stood, and nodded formally to Ire. “Thank you for reminding me of my obligations. And thank you for the training. I’ve learned a lot from you about magic. Good luck with the Dwemer. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. It’s extremely unlikely we’ll meet again, so… Farewell.”

Contrast their parting in chapter 143, where Iriel also pushes Julan to leave him, and is blind-sided by Julan's unexpected compliance. In both scenes, Julan's decision to leave comes immediately after a revelation he has about Iriel, though our lack of a Julan-POV mean it's necessarily obscured, and in neither scene does Iriel understand what happened.

The realisation is a good and important one, being, in essence: "Iriel is way more fucked up than I thought, he's making everything worse on purpose, and nothing I do is going to get him to stop." By the time of 143, Julan is finally, properly, internalising this realisation, and acting on it in a positive way, by breaking up with Iriel to go do crossfit with Orcs.

In THIS chapter, he's only just beginning to discern the shape of this thought about Iriel when he gets hammered flat by guilt. The result is that while he still leaves Iriel, he does it in a stupid, negative, unhealthy way, and amid all the angsty confusion, his revelation about Iriel's capacity for self-sabotage slips out of his grip for another hundred chapters.

Well. That didn’t take much, did it?

Iriel's somewhat shell-shocked impulse to categorise Julan's response as irrational and out of nowhere, instead of, like... two days of deliberate torture overdue. Because Iriel didn't expect to get what he wanted. Because his anger is weak, feminine and ineffectual, right? Nothing he does has any real effect! Except that, suddenly, it has.

Ire didn’t stay to watch him go. He headed straight for Ald'ruhn, walking fast 

For better or worse, Ire's alone again. Alone to do whatever he likes! A mixture of relief and horror, because, of course, he knows exactly what that is. Drugs!

didn’t see Julan turn and look back at the empty ash where he had been, before moving on.

The last gasp of Julan's emotional instincts, right as he crushes them into the box of things he's not going to think about, because they're telling him exactly what just happened: Iriel's self-destructive impulses detonated hard enough to trigger Julan's own. He thought he could save himself by saving Iriel, but that was a brief delusion. They're both fucked now, and he knows it.

Iriel sat in a corner of the Rat in the Pot, being right about things.

Unless.

This scene was some real character-on-a-knife-edge stuff, and Iriel could have gone either way. If he'd got himself high immediately, it'd all be over, so hooray for the contrarian impulse inspiring him to defy everyone assuming he'd relapse. It won't last forever. But it's been a few hours, and he's still only drinking wine, so perhaps there's a chance.

It’s for the best. I can’t deal with other people, and other people can’t deal with me. It’s unfair to expect anyone to put up with me. It was for his own good. He chanted them like the words of a spell to ward off the army of nasty thoughts creeping underneath the door of his mind, all wearing variations on the same uniform: you’re a horrible person and you’ve made a horrible mistake.

Things are rapidly deteriorating, however.

He’ll be fine. I’m sure he was just being over-dramatic with all that rubbish about never meeting again. Whatever he’s doing, he’ll do it better without me. It’s nothing to do with me, anyway. You said that about Rabinna.

I have my own problems. I only have the energy to take care of myself right now. You know who you sound like, don’t you? Look who doesn’t need skooma to still be an asshole.

Do you want to have drugs, or do you want to have morals? You wouldn't think that "do you want to become Tsiya?" would be a hard choice for Ire, but it's very tempting to stop giving a fuck about anything. Drugs are easy, and morals are hard work.

He finished his wine, and debated getting more, or whether that was a bad idea

It's kind of funny that he's drinking. That's the Julan solution to bad thoughts, and while it doesn't really work for him, at least it's not the Iriel solution to bad thoughts, which makes it an upgrade! Except for the fact that it doesn't work.

You know what would really make all these thoughts go away, don’t you? Lirielle probably has some. Then you could fall right back to the beginning again, right back to rock bottom! And prove them all right about you, that you have no willpower, and you can’t take care of yourself!

I mean… proving that you’re a weak, useless waste of flesh would, in a way, be the ultimate way to prove yourself right. You’ve known it all along, after all.

And there it is, the fundamental problem of addiction and self-hate, why it's more complicated than Rat Park, once shame is involved. Self-harm doesn't always look like people cutting themselves, sometimes it looks like someone's "an idiot" who can't stop losing their job, taking their violent ex back, falling off the wagon again, disappointing all their friends and family. Addicts can relapse as deliberate self-sabotage, because rock bottom is what they feel they deserve. In a weird, twisted way, rock bottom can be the only place some people feel safe. It is very, very, very hard to break out of this cycle, once you're in it. Iriel's not inexorably trapped in it yet, but the choice he makes here is going to be critical.

Iriel has to make the very belated adult-brain realisation that his actions matter. That he has an effect on other people, and therefore a responsibility towards them. That he can try to fix his mistakes, not just drown in guilt. Most people learn this in their teens, but circumstances have meant Ire's a late developer. He is fighting it off as hard as he can, because it hurts. Whether he fails or succeeds, all of it hurts so much (and he doesn't like to hurt), but what he hasn't realised is that it's become a matter of personal survival. If he can't do it, or if he tries, but gets overwhelmed by the pain, then he's totally screwed. I'm not going to be telling his story any more, because the only character he'll be developing into is a dead junkie in an Ald'ruhn basement. If not now, then within the next few months or years. Julan will be dead a lot sooner.

Iriel looked up from his table just in time to meet Anarenen’s eyes, as they fell upon him, and froze there. His expression told Iriel that even without leaving a confession, Anarenen knew full well who had stolen from him. And that seeing Iriel now was causing him an incalculable amount of pain, betrayal and sorrow.

In a last-ditch attempt to get through to Iriel, we are going to zap him with 1000 volts of maximum strength Consequences of His Actions, direct to the heart.

You did that to him. He showed you nothing but kindness, and that’s how you repaid him. Like you repay everyone who ever tries to be kind to you, because you can’t stand how it makes you feel.

It's a high-risk treatment, since if the patient is unable to successfully metabolise such a high dose of Someone Else's Pain, it could result in a toxic guilt overload and uncontrolled spiralling.

“Fuck that.” The other denizens of the Rat in the Pot glanced up from their drinks, as the quiet High Elf in the corner began talking to himself out loud.

Oh, thank god, he's entered Fuckosis. Chances of survival are now vastly elevated. 

“Fuck this.” They observed with interest as he stood up, and, with great deliberation and considerable effort, overturned the table. “Fuck you,” he said to the bar at large. He was crying.

Sometimes you want a character to have a huge emotional meltdown, but don't actually want to narrate all the messy details of it from the inside, so you write the reactions of other people watching them from a distance, instead. God knows, we're hardly averse to sitting through Iriel's meltdowns together with him, but I liked the effect of doing it this way, just at the very end, here.

Iriel slowly and doggedly flipping the table still makes me laugh. I picture it as a QTE, where he has to mash the X button for like, half an hour. Much later, he'll realise that telekinesis renders this move far more effective.

“FUCK EVERYTHING!!!”

This is a classic, perhaps the classic Iriel fuck-it moment, where it's so agonisingly awful to remain in his current situation, that he chooses the most extreme thing to do, because it promises change. It isn't always the sensible course of action, in fact sometimes it's wildly self-destructive. There's no logic, no rationale, no plan. It's wildly out-of-character, because that's his whole aim: to escape his own character. It's pure, unfiltered "I DON'T WANT TO BE THIS KIND OF ANIMAL ANY MORE".

Iriel ran up the stairs, through the door of the tavern, out of the city, and onto the road to Ghostgate.

But today, it's the right thing to do.

Playlist pick: The Desperate Things You Made Me Do by The Magnetic Fields.

Opening with one of the most brutally sad lyrics ever written, this is a song about the agony of trying to save someone who doesn't want to be saved. It's less a love song, and more a song about watching your love turn into hate, in the face of the realisation that the other person will always care more about self-destruction than about you. 

The fact that I think it's a ship song is a red flag so huge you could cut it up and make curtains for a children's hospital.

We're not at that stage, yet, but it still works platonically here. It'll work romantically later, too, and it'll be all the more horrible for it. Notice how the viewpoint character changes, based on who's being most self-destructive, at any given moment. Who's the chair, and who's kicking them away.