#estra

FINALLY got all these fuckers done. accompanying au post and refs to follow... eventually

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Can’t wait for sky island fall, y’all! ✨🍂🪂

"On autumn I'm psychic fire, spring grass psychic and summer water psychic"

[@angelgcxs]

Having listened to the Fragmentary Passage episode and then the Dessa lore vignette, I have some ideas for Maeri’s potential title. Kai (sp?) makes sense as the goddess of sacrifice. She was a sacrifice to Fenrir; she sacrificed her mortality; her friends sacrificed themselves for her; she sacrificed her vessels (kind of, idk, i’m not sure on that one, but from the journal we know she felt it was a sacrifice). She helped Dessa sacrifice her father to become the new Flame.  Now, I can see Maeri inheriting Kai’s title, because Maeri is also a sacrifice and someone who has sacrificed. She was meant to be a sacrifice so that Kai could live and keep Estra safe. She has consistently offered to sacrifice her needs for others. However, I think there is a better title.  The Survivor.  Perhaps in Kat’s lore there is already someone using that title, but it truly fits Maeri.  Her life began when she should have been sacrificed to become a vessel for Kai, but instead her own self survived.  She survived being raised by Torva, being isolated, being unable to communicate and purposely silenced.  She survived the discovery that her closest attendants had betrayed her.  She survived having her godly powers bound for so long and exerting the power to keep Estra in the sky for 16 years.  She survived the fall of Estra, she survived almost drowning in the sea. She survived the discovery that she is not Kai and that she is Torva’s child. She has survived poison and stabbings and overexerting her power and she has survived being an unnamed god.  The other names I would suggest for her would be The Protector, The Healer, but I’m certain those titles would be taken. But if Kai was The Sacrifice (or Sacrificer?) then Maeri could surely be the Survivor. Both could have either title- Kai survived being left as a sacrifice, meeting the other beast gods, the burning of the world, becoming a god, losing her immortality and losing her friends. But in the Dessa episode, Kai named herself the god of sacrifice.  Maeri should be the god of survivors. She is already the goddess of the Estran survivors, of the guardians who have survived so much. She inspires that in them. If you look back to when Maeri tried to release them from their service and they all insisted they needed her, it seems very fitting. They felt that they would not survive without her- not in the sense that she physically defends them, but in the sense that she gave them a reason to keep surviving, inspiration to survive.  I don’t know. I’m probably very wrong, but I have a lot of theories and thoughts about Dames & Dragons and no one to talk to them about. So... I have to put them somewhere.  Every time they talk about a title for Maeri, it’s obvious there are dozens of options. Maeri is a vibrant and complex character. She could also be the god of Resilience, or Stubbornness, or Hope. Of love, friendship, Protection, loss, bravery, kindness. Except they most likely already have gods, and they don’t fit her in the way that Kai fits “sacrifice”.  (Hope is one which I have been leaning towards a lot in my imaginings, but I have a more concrete example for Survivor).  I also had the theory that the beings in Corbin’s dream weren’t Kai & Torva but the Forces of Talia (sp?) and Rael (sp?). If those are the right ones. But the A Fragmentary Passage episode seems to contradict that theory.  I love this podcast so damn much.

Listen to it here!