Fionn @ Faerûn

My in-universe explanation for why my OC who's from the Forgotten Realms has a Quenya name is that it's a rare dialect of Elvish that his mother speaks, and his birth name was in that dialect so when he transitioned and picked a new name he wanted to still honor that!

As for why I picked it—I've just always loved outerspace and the stars, and almost anytime I made OCs in the past (none of which I ever got very attached to before getting obsessed with Elenion lol, oops) they had celestial names and aesthetics. My online nickname being Starlight goes all the way back to when I played neopets as a kid and made my username "sweetystar100"... so of course I was going to do the same with Elenion. Though as much as I love LOTR, my original plan actually wasn't to just yoink something from Tolkien. I remember I tried looking at actual D&D Elvish names first, then trying out some name generators, then just coming up with something original, but I didn't like anything I found or thought of. So I opened up Elfdict (Tolkien Elvish dictionary), started looking for words with celestial meanings, and soon decided Elenion sounded pretty as a name. At first I thought people who recognized it as being from LOTR might think it was silly, but now I don't care anymore because it is pretty and I love it.

His birth name, of course, is his deadname that he hasn't used since he was around 12 or 13 (he physically transitioned when he was nearly 14, but he knew he was trans before then). I know what it is but I don't really want to reveal it unless/until I need to use it in a fic. I still wanna talk about it, and if someone guesses it based on this post that's fine, so I'll just share this: it means "singer". His parents only meant for it to represent their shared love of music, but later it started to feel like he was named for what he was good at and what everyone expected him to do—which also sucked because he hated his voice back then... so, he renamed himself for the stars that he loved and looked to for guidance.

And as for "Silverdew"… I genuinely do not remember where I got that from (probably a random Elven surname generator or something) and it really wasn't supposed to mean anything. It was just supposed to sound elegant and pretty lol, sorry. But I do like that it evokes something delicate, ephemeral, and naturally beautiful—ordinary dew made luminous when the light catches it. And "silver dew" makes me think of moon and starlight reflected on the earth below, so it feels a bit more grounded in comparison to his first name. Elenion looks upward toward the stars, and Silverdew is the light they cast on the world beneath.

(Imo it also happens to sound pretty nice when combined with Gale's last name to make "Silverdew-Dekarios", so that's a fun unintended bonus.)

...And that's the end of my very lengthy ramble on my beloved OC's name! I hope this all makes sense and wasn't too obnoxiously long, lol.

The dividers used in this post are by @uzmacchiato!

No pressure tagging: @elceewunjo @burnt-by-marigolds @ignistigator @taras-toe-beans @ranger-jahen @springofstarlight @selunitejeanne @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream @mogruith @missfortunetherogue @pavusprince @thepoisonjackal and anyone else who sees this and wants to do it!

The emperor took her form because Elenion used to be very close with her before his father died. But after his death, Elenion blamed himself and became convinced that his mother must secretly blame him too. So he left home, started gradually distancing himself from her over the years and wrote and visited less and less frequently, until by the time of the game they've hardly spoken in years.

But he still remembers her lullabies and her favorite things to make for breakfast and associates those things with comfort. He wants to see her again but he's afraid to reach out. And then, she appears in his dreams, claiming that she's been protecting him.

On my first playthrough, I had no idea what was truly going on or what to think about the dream guardian, so I as the player kept going back and forth on if I trusted them and later decided to include that in Elenion's own characterization—because I realized that, if the Emperor was pretending to be his mother, it'd make perfect sense.

Elenion wants to believe that, somehow, their mother must have known they were in trouble and found a way to protect them. That she still loves them enough to do so.

But she wouldn't. They failed their father and abandoned their mother, why would she protect them? This must be some kind of trick, or even just a very vivid dream. Believing otherwise is just childish and pathetic.

They go back and forth constantly between trusting the dream guardian a little too much, recoiling from them completely, and suspecting that they're being manipulated while being so desperate for comfort that they don't want to believe it.

Finding out that a mind flayer was using the illusion of his mother's love and comfort to manipulate him immediately makes Elenion feel horrified and repulsed—at the Emperor, of course, but also at himself for at least partially falling for it.

For Briala, there are a lot of things about her story I'd like to revisit and flesh out more and the dream guardian is one of them. I don't even remember what I made hers look like, but if I had to guess they're probably just a random hot elf woman or something. Again, I hate that there's seemingly zero way to change the dream guardian's appearance with mods. But if I literally ever finish her run, I might do another one with her someday, and then I'd make her guardian someone from her past as well—most likely either her sister Lily, who similarly to Elenion she has a strained relationship with but deeply loves and wants to reconcile with. Or one of the Lathanderite monks that took her into their monastery after the leader of her old mercenary group betrayed her, because she would immediately associate them with inner peace, wisdom, and guidance and be tempted to trust them. Actually, now that I'm writing this out I'm leaning towards that second option. Either way she'd be absolutely pissed and wanting to kill the Emperor with her bare hands when she finds out the truth, though.

Bonus: in my Gale origin run, I wanted to make myself sad so I did this!

I was about to say that lore-wise I have no idea why the Emperor would take the form of someone who, in this universe, Gale has never met. But I actually just realized... I do know! Gale and Elenion's canon story is literally that ever since the first time Gale remembers seeing the renowned Elenion Silverdew perform at the Yawning Portal he had wanted to speak to them, so he kept seeking them out at their performances in Waterdeep but he missed his chance to talk to them every single time. The last time he saw them was at the Blackstaff Ball several years before the start of the game, and that performance left him more captivated than all the others combined but Elenion still managed to slip away from the crowd before he could speak to them.