I saw that Iriel's birthsign is the Tower. When he's invisible, does that make him the SECRET TOWER?!?! Haha, lore jokes! (PS love the story a lot!) (PPS was he dangerously close to zero-summing?)
Haaaah. Trying to remember where I talk much about Ire’s birthsign, actually, I don’t think it’s even in the text at all? And while I like the idea that astrology is Serious Business in TES due to cosmology being magical physics, I’ve not done anything with birthsign-powers, I’m ignoring that. But I think in Summerset, having your horoscope calculated and regularly checked is at least as important as medical checkups. Probably more.
PS: thank you!! and thank you for this ask! I love getting questions!
PPS: Heh. Again, zero-summing isn’t mentioned in HTDC. While some writers do it really well, I think my story’d just get bogged down, if I filled it with explicit TES metaphysical godknowswhat, not to mention I’d have people telling me I was Getting It Wrong.
That said, I may have muttered about Iriel and zero-summing elsewhere. Mainly to fend off any theories that his condition might involve CHIM. Because every discussion of TES lore will eventually involve CHIM, sigh. Anyway, no. He reads a lot of Vehk, but he’s just a twentysomething fuckup who cast chameleon too much. (Whereas Vekh was, um… ok, never mind, moving on.) But, yeah, no. At most, Ire has a milisecond-long flash of borrowed-divine creative inspiration. Even to call what he almost does zero-summing is to cast it too heavily in Lore Terms, it’s far less specific than that. Just closer to to that than to CHIM, I guess.
tl;dr: Any hard-lore theories projected onto silly gay elf fic are done in your own time, and entirely at your own risk. The Management takes no responsibility (but enjoys watching, and wondering what else people will notice and/or invent!)