#telmon things

Okay so Ekates was essentially an NPC character written entirely for purpose of just… background shit right? Something to give my initial handful of characters (Joster, Yamina, and Diemos) something to I could build off of, and then later, Telmon. In a sense, she’s sort of like this group’s Vriska I guess. Only with less potentially redeemable qualities. Which I suppose would be the mark of a bad character were she not based entirely on my own abuser. #coping woooo

And to really understand the gravity of the things Ekates did/caused, there are a few basic like...ties I guess to lay out.

So Joster and Yamina were moirails from 4 to 6 1/2 sweeps old. Ekates Joster and Yamina were friends from around 4 1/2 to 6 sweeps (5 to 7 1/2 for Ekates), and Ekates and Joster engaged in a sort of rivalry for the duration of their friendship.Telmon and Ekates were moirails, and Ekates introduced Telmon to Joster and the two became fast friends.Diemos was mostly unrelated to the party on the whole until Joster introduced him and his moirail to the group, and he and Joster shared mutual flushed feelings for the duration of their friendship but never pursued it.

Now that that’s all out of the way, onto the real grit of it. Most of what Ekates did was done specifically to Joster, the object of her hate and eventual pitch advances.

Now, Joster’s and Ekates’ rivalry was already unhealthy from the get-go. It was largely based in what Ekates wanted to do and what she was good at, rarely ever anything Joster particularly enjoyed. Keeping in mind that at the time of their rivalry, Joster wasn’t the nerdy little bookkeeper we know and love now, but more like a snooty little gremlin with a baseball bat, and that Ekates was easily twice his size. She would often force him into physical fights with her and other trials of endurance just to say that she beat him, often causing him bodily harm and rarely bothering to console him afterwards. During their rivalry, Joster only once beat her fairly, after outwitting her during a particularly nasty game. It was after this that Ekates decided he was worth pursuing in black romance, and their rivalry became much more intense for Joster, until she finally cornered him about their potential pitch romance.

Now by this point, Joster is 6 sweeps old and is coming to realize that his relationship with Ekates isn’t healthy (he had a little help realizing this from Telmon and Diemos), and that their rivalry could kill him if he pursues anything more serious with her. So naturally, when she cornered him, he rejected her advances, stating that he wasn’t really interested much in quadrants outside of pale. Ekates, having grown possessive of Joster and her relationship with him, decides ‘Hey, y’know what? Murder is the only option here. If I can’t have him no one can’, and attempts to kill him, permanently damaging his horns and leaving him with a large number of permanent scars. 

It is worth mention that during their rivalry, Telmon would often have to intervene, to keep Ekates from maiming Joster less in interest of keeping his moirail under control and more to keep his friend from dying. It was Telmon who saved Joster’s life in the end, and Ekates, enraged that her own moirail would choose Joster’s side, lashed out and effectively blinded him in his left eye, ending their relationship.

Ekates fled, leaving Joster in shambles, injured, scared out of his wits, and unable to continue the things he once loved. Now severely depressed, shaken, and feeling like he couldn’t trust even his friends, he turned to his moirail for support only to find her woefully unequipped to handle such a high stress position so suddenly. This caused their relationship to become strained, as Joster could not rely on Yamina to fulfill her duties as his moirail, and the two drifted further and further apart until Joster finally ended the relationship.

From that point on Joster mainly relied on Telmon for emotional support, and the two engaged in a pseudo-pale friendship to fill the holes left in Ekates’ wake.

As for Diemos, he had maintained a mostly casual relationship with the group outside of Joster, and after the fall out he and Joster agreed that for the time being they wouldn’t pursue any romantic feelings either might have. His moirail left him during this time for reasons I haven’t solidly decided yet, although it had a great deal to do with Ekates and the games she liked to play with people.

Fast forwarding three sweeps, Ekates begins stalking Joster in an attempt to either rekindle old flames or to enact revenge for causing her to lose her moirail, whose betrayal she never really forgave. She stalked him for months, taunting him online and leaving things around his hive to scare him. Eventually, she confronted him, intending to kill him this time to get back at Telmon, who Joster remains close with. Joster, having taken a personal oath to never commit any act of direct violence, refused to fight back against her until he was certain that he would not survive the encounter. Joster ended up killing Ekates in self defense, something that has conflicted him since, and was traumatizing for him. 

Telmon himself was relieved to hear of Ekates’ death, and even let his and Joster’s mutual friend Cintra take her horns for her collection, under the condition that she was never to tell Joster of them.

BUT ya. 

TDLR version, Ekates: