#problemcule

bowyn/rhys: lazy hedonistic con artist/actor x brooding nightmare court splinter faction leader. meetcute: bowyn tried to mug him on the lionroad by pretending to be a wounded traveller in need of assistance, but, being a nightmare courtier, rhys did not give a shit

bowyn ends up following him around and giving him advice on why nmc recruitment is so bad post-HoT (gleaming nuggets of wisdom like "you're worse than evil or hated, you know. you're POLITICAL" and "you just need to lean into the sex of it all"). eventually they fall in love and bowyn agrees to settle in with rhys' faction of the court, though they firmly maintain that they're not interested in actually participating. (this is kind of not true. bowyn really loves sitting at rhys' side during big important court meetings and leaning over to crow "they're lyyyyiiiiiiiing" and shit like that.)

callas/lisk: hysterically vain nightmare tyrant x completely unhinged attack dog. callas is the count of malice, head of the spies/undercover agents of joy's end (and later more camps as she extends her reach); lisk is the captain of joy's end's vanguard and she is slobberingly obsessed with callas. callas is also glyndwr's ex.

at first callas is just using her, but they end up pretty quickly getting mutually obsessed and lisk's passion for nightmare ends up sparking callas into activity again -- she had reached a point where she was pretty much "tenured" and didn't care about actually doing anything in service of the court anymore (why would she WORK when she can just lay around eating grapes and ordering people around instead?), but with the two of them riling each other up like barking dogs callas becomes a threat again.

sigvas/sorcha/tarahnis/rue, aka The Problemcule: deeply unstable unstable party drug synthesiser x mean meathead x nice (?) meathead x creepy cheerfully submissive squire. all four of these idiot lesbians are desperately in love with lisk, but lisk only has eyes for callas. they are all messily fucking each other instead as a weird substitute.

(i don't have art of rue + tarahnis yet bc my wife and i made them literally This Week but here's a hasty cap, tara left rue right:)

sorcha is one of the vanguard hounds, first under leurent (count of blood from the twilight arbor dungeon) but then transferred to be under callas when she takes the vanguard from him, which sorcha is pissed about. she is a dickhead popular-girl jock who cares about very little aside from showing off and getting lisk's attention. sigvas and tarahnis are archers under rhys' command. sigvas, as mentioned, is an alchemist, prone to attempts at game-of-thrones manipulation way beyond their actual social ability and completely at the mercy of their own wildly fluctuating self-esteem. tarahnis is a relatively easy-going thorn hound trainer who is way more chill and friendly than you would reasonably expect a nightmare courtier to be. rue is the weird little himejoshi who follows them all around taking care of weapon maintenance and polishing their armor and breathing really loudly while watching the first three flirt with each other and never daring to imagine they could actually Participate in all of this mess (but then they do)

when the nmc schism happens in the power vacuum created after HoT (in which rhys breaks off to try to form a more logical, less mindlessly violent version of the court, and callas breaks off to try to form a version of the court that is literally worse in every possible way, and they both try to kill each other absolutely dead over it), things are going to get so gnarly in here for these four.

cadair/maelduin: fated valiants with entwined dreams, destined to protect each other... but maelduin awakens two years before cadair does, with barely any real information about him.

all their info is pretty much in these images -- we still haven't developed them much yet!!! but i loev them.

naoise/gann: beautiful gladiator with a completely empty skull x slimy nightmare court slacker. (listen we love nmc x non-nmc and are just going to keep doing it until we run out of ideas)

naoise just has enough brainpower to swing a sword and not much else. they are death incarnate in the pit and literally the stupidest person you've ever met in your life outside of it. gann is a nightmare courtier in name only -- he does not give a single shit about the ideology and is mostly just entrenched as a criminal career choice. he was originally sent off to convert naoise to nightmare, but ended up so charmed by them that now he just travels around with them while mailing back increasingly implausible explanations for why it's taking so long. now he has fallen entirely in love with them for real. oops

oh shit i forgot. gann is also glyndwr's ex

alan/glyn: what it says on the tin! co-commanders + best friends, but their romantic relationship is doomed by the narrative (and by canach).

(you know what glyn looks like.)

alan is the hero of tyria, the poster boy of the vigil, the champion of aurene; he shoulders all the responsibility and social weight that glyndwr has adeptly shadowstepped his way out of. he's also the first person glyndwr ever actually opens up to, outside of callas (BAD, many many years ago) and clooney (helped glyn escape the court, was his first relationship after callas and it was pretty weird and rocky, this was also still many many years ago). he's a safe bastion for glyn and whether he intends to or not, he teaches glyndwr a lot about kindness and patience in a way glyn may have never come around to on his own.

they're really deeply in love, but in the end glyndwr just isn't right for alan (and also, frankly, is not a good enough partner for him). glyndwr's hostility and callousness, which alan could initially brush off as quirks or at least see balanced out by the good parts of him, are too persistent and are improving too slowly. with everything else on his plate, alan can't put up with glyndwr's (increasingly glaring) issues on top of it all, and it comes to a head in HoT, where their relationship breaks down entirely and alan ends it.

i also somehow have NO SHIP ART OF THEM which is absolutely insane all things considered.

alan/clooney: alan's endgame ship! clooney is glyn's ex-boyfriend/current plug/go-to criminal contact, a secondborn who makes his living as a pirate and lives by the philosophy that as a sylvari his real duty to the dream is to have as much fun as possible to counterbalance all the horror and pain that inevitably makes it in through the world. that sounds like an elaborate excuse to be a hedonist but he takes it extremely seriously.

they meet during LWS3; alan is so exhausted and worn out by HoT (and also, frankly, by dumping glyndwr) that he can't take his pact duties anymore. glyndwr points him to clooney as a way to be discreetly smuggled away for as long as he needs. they get pulled back in pretty quickly, before alan can have a REAL vacation, but the two of them still hit it off REALLY well and end up getting very close... :3c