#worldcanons

After tons of brainstorming and workshopping over the last few months, I've FINALLY updated Lorene's abilities! Consider this a "canon point update" for this OC!

The reasoning? Lorene's soul is drawing power from a source that most other Elves don't: the soul of a goddess. The amulet around his neck is a piece of Polaris, Goddess of the North Star. It stands to reason that this little aspect of him would change a lot of other aspects. In short: he now has access to majyk he has the genetic potential for, but would probably have never manifested had his fate been different.

The TL;DR of the changes:

The range of his Telepathy is longer. His telepathy is otherwise the same; I kept most of the wording I had in the old version of his app, just reorganized and expanded / clarified a bunch of stuff.

Telekinesis has been added!

Foresight has been added!

So basically, when Lorene is fully unlocked, he'll be able to do everything his famous (and famously powerful) father, Dair, is capable of!

No one could ever escape the preconceived notions ingrained by one's upbringing.

Lorene had traveled throughout the Multiverse. He had been a military officer, an enlisted warrior, a captive, a criminal, a paragon. He had been lifted up and loved; he had been beaten down and humbled. He had made friends with and fallen in love with people who challenged his worldviews, and he welcomed it. He had a deep and abiding love for learning and experiencing new things.

But he was also a Prince, raised in a Royal Keep, and the background processes that drove his brain--his instincts, his knee-jerk reactions, his first inclinations--would forever be governed by that.

For example, when Lorene saw a person who carried themselves with a noble bearing--straight-spined, deliberate in every movement, attentive to themselves and to others, gracious and graceful--his brain immediately coded that person as nobility or royalty. His background instincts immediately decided whatever this person is doing, they belong here. They're noble, after all, and a noble belongs in any room they walk into.

That was why when Lorene passed Camilla on the street, at first, he didn't give her a second glance. He didn't wonder about her purple hair or her strange armor, because she was clearly nobility, and whatever she was doing, she had a right to do it.

He didn't wonder about the gigantic undead wyvern trundling along at her side. He didn't even register the creature until he had already passed her and made it about ten feet away.

That's how long it took for his conscious mind to catch up, and ping that that could be a demon.

The Elven Prince let out an incomprehensible squawk--something accented in Norelantic--and spun, facing the winged zombie-creature. He didn't have any weapons on him--all he'd had when dropped into Spirale was a wooden sword (and wasn't that an insult to the one destined to be High General!), and since that wasn't going to do any good in a pinch, he'd left it at home. All he had were his fists, his wits, and about an hour's worth of telepathy remaining for the day.

Not that telepathy had ever helped him fight demons. Terrestrial demons--'demon' lowercase, not 'Demon' capital; Demons were Underworld Net gods, and were to be treated with the same respect as any other god. But terrestrial demons were monsters, beasts that could take any kind of bizarre forms. They were broken-off pieces of the damaged Aether left over from the ancient Cataclysm. Telepathy didn't work on them because they were beings of Madness; their thoughts didn't follow logical patterns, if they had thoughts at all. And Lorene knew all of this because the tundras in his home country were riddled with the cursed things.

So Camilla watched a jumpy 5'11" Elven warrior square up against her wyvern with nothing but his fists, his ears pinned back against his head in fright.

Outside of Ionia, however, the feeling is far different.

When Vivec still stood as the religious and artistic center of Morrowind, the high angled walls of Vivec were canvasses for religious murals.

Large and colorful, each canton had its own style of murals, as well as different messages. The Temple Canton, for example, largely depicted hieroglypic dramatizations of the Saints’ trials and stories, especially those surrounding the Warrior Poet Vivec. While murals in the Hlaalu Canton would be aesthetically pleasing, displaying the frivolities of wealth, art for art’s sake.

bosmer have ears that go STRAIGHT OUT and are usually pretty far from the head and look more “animalistic” or wild

Hand-fasting

Oftentimes in the Highland territory that was Rowan’s homeland, fairs and ceremonies would be held which allowed young men and women to come together and choose a companion whom they would live with for a year and a day. This was known as a “trial marriage” of sorts, in which both parties could eventually discern whether they wanted to officially marry each other and spend their lives together. 

At a hand-fasting ceremony, it was custom for Highlander boys to cut two small strips of tartan from their own kilt, while the girls’ fathers would do the same with theirs. Two bracelets would then be made by sewing the boy’s tartan to the father’s, and during the ceremony itself, each partner would take one another’s hands while a single strip of the connected tartan was laced around them. 

Afterward, both strips would be tied around each partner’s wrist and worn from day to day, but could be removed and worn on a different part of the body, such as the ankle, the forearm, or the neck. For girls, these tartan bracelets were often tied into a bow, and for boys, they were very commonly tied near the hilt of their swords. 

If both parties decided they were not pleased or happy at any point in their year of hand-fasting, they would undergo another ceremony in which both tartan bracelets would be cut in half and burned over a fire - a tradition which symbolized the importance of letting go and beginning anew. If both partners reached the final day of their hand-fasting trial and decided they wished to be married instead, each bracelet would be removed and tied together into one large bow, which would then be placed with freshly cut boughs of heather in the center of the mantle of their new wedding home. 

Many noble Highland families observed the hand-fasting tradition, but never hosted their ceremonies for the common folk in order to ensure their bloodline would remain purely of nobility.

Wedding Traditions

In terms of dress, bridegrooms would wear a more formal variation of Highland garb on the day of their wedding, often in the style of the great kilt, but with the sash pulled over the right arm instead of leaving it free. Brides would wear a wedding dress that was made either completely of the groom’s tartan, or primarily white with that very same tartan somehow incorporated into the garment, from simple bows pinned over the heart of the dress all the way to intricate full-blown designs. 

The night before the wedding, a foot-washing ceremony would often take place, in which the bride would sit down upon a stool and have her feet washed and cleaned by her unmarried female friends. It was believed that a ring from another happily married man would be placed within the tub of water, and whoever found that ring would be destined as the next woman to get married. For the grooms, this process was different - instead of having their feet washed, they would sit in a tub of water while their legs were smeared with ash, grease, and soot, which was superstitiously believed to ward off evil spirits. 

When leaving the house, it was customary for both the bride and the groom to put their right foot forward upon exiting the threshold, as it was considered a gesture of good luck. Sometimes, a gold coin would be placed at the bottom of the bride’s shoe, also for the purpose of bringing good fortune and wealth to her future. On their separate ways to the ceremony, both the bride and the groom would be followed by family and friends, and either one or both of them would be accompanied by a band of pipers, fiddlers, and men beating their drums.

During the wedding, it was a common sight to see fresh sprigs of white heather decorating the kirk (or church), as the flower symbolized purity and good tidings to come. The ceremony itself consisted of not only the common vows, but also the Gaelic blood-vows, in which the wrist of the bride and groom would be slit open, their wounds pressed together, and their wrists tied with a single strip of fabric (more often than not a piece of tartan from the kilt of the groom), and then, one after another, they would speak these words:

Is tu fuil ‘o mo chuislean, is tu cnaimh de mo chnaimh. Is leatsa mo bhodhaig, chum gum bi sinn ‘n ar n-aon. Is leatsa m’anam gus an criochnaich ar saoghal.

When converted to Tamrielic, these vows translate as follows:

You are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone. I give you my body, that we two might be one. I give you my spirit, 'til our life shall be done.

Once these blood-vows were spoken, they were allowed to complete the wedding ceremony with a kiss. Afterward, a party was usually held, in which the pipers, fiddlers, and drummers would break into song and urge the attendees to dance. As whiskey was many a Highlander’s favorite beverage, there was no shortage of alcohol at these events. At some point, the party-goers would all join together to perform a reel, a traditional dance more commonly performed among nobles and royalty. At noble weddings, many types of reels were danced, and were performed more frequently than at commoner weddings. 

When the new married couple departed the venue, the groom would reach into his sporran and throw handfuls of coins all over the ground for the children to hurry and gather for themselves - this tradition was known as a “Scramble”, and was believed to bring possible wealth and fortune to all those in the area. They would then climb onto the groom’s horse - brought to the ceremony by a friend - and ride off towards their new home.

On the second day after the wedding, a “Creeling” would be held, in which the married couple and their friends would assemble in a field with a basket full of heavy stones. The basket would be picked up by a man other than the groom, and he was tasked with carrying it all the way across the field until one of the women came to kiss him, thus relieving him of his burden and allowing him to pass the basket onto another man, and then the process would begin again. This process repeated until all of the men, save for the groom, had carried the basket of stones. 

“‘What’s with them’? I am. And they are with me, as they are for every member of Mephala’s faithful. They provide us with silks for clothing, ingredients for poisons, and protection against the endless droves of minor insects. In exchange, we interpret their signs and enact their Mother’s will. These spiders are Mephala’s true messengers, we clergy but the humble interpreters.  Every temple to the Webspinner has their own colony, though the species and diversity therein differ from region to region. Here in Tear, our colony’s main population is largely orb-weavers. We also have more poisonous varieties mixed in for the creating of poisons for the use of the Morag Tong and other Temple patrons.“ Through the course of explaining the spiders’ roles,  Arvenesa can’t help but let the imperious mask slip from her face. She leans in closer, hands coming unclasped, and her wide eyes crinkle with joy as she waxes eloquent. That is, until she gets to the end of her monologue and is left with the second half of the question. The shift is faster than a chameleon changing colors. 

In Dunmeri culture, setting someone on fire comes with slightly less extreme connotations than in other cultures. Due to their naturally high fire resistance, the flames of a regular fire spell damage little more than the victim's clothes and ego. It wouldn't be entirely wrong to compare it to the  Bretic/Imperial custom of dumping a beverage on someone to express intense displeasure with them. Most are aware that using this custom on outlanders will get them arrested, but that doesn't help the baffled guards as two Dunmer who were flinging gouts of fire at each other one minute suddenly make up and go back to drinking the next.