#ysamyne

Ysamyne: god of storms and choppy seas, mist filled woods and the spaces in between, lightning, long journeys, adventures, fury, fiendish puzzles, and the cawing of crows at dawn, who rewards those with determination, who endure the longest of nights. (often depicted with in the storm and the seas, with a knife and a compass, lightning striking behind her)

Nargazzut: god of mists and mysteries, god of sunsets, god of music and all the colours. god of beauty, as glimpsed through another eye. god of many faces and perspectives. god of wrong turns and paths untaken. god of spells and witchcraft. god of unknown fortunes and fates witheld. (often depicted with a lute and a half-mask, at twilight)

Revas: god of hunts, god of hearth and heart. god of the autumn leaves and the crisp breeze at the seasons fall, of autumn changed to winter. god of the reward after toil. the harvest god. god of love, unspoken, unconditional. god of the ends of difficult journeys. god of travellers looking for a home. (often depicted with a torch, offered outward, on an autumnal night)

12. candles

He had expected the witch-thief’s hidden rooms to contain materials for profane rituals: daedric runes, strange powders, human remains, wax candles lit in the night.

What he hadn’t expected was clutter. Not clutter in the twee, painted tea sets and matching handkerchiefs, sense of the word, but just piles of random stuff. Unwashed paintbrushes, bronze forks - but no knives or spoons, torn pages from a rather mediocre recipe book, a ceremonial plate that seemed to resemble Clavicus Vile in an oddly lewd position if you squinted enough, and miniture clay sculptures that resembled small animals - beetles usually, although there were a few dragonflies in the mix.

- Ysamyne, who was, until Moragesh, my tallest character, is probably the character with least chill, with the worst temper and one of the most dramatic characters - if not

- Kasmei is probably my most capable warrior (up there with Rosariah) and is a small skinny beanpole looking thing. Very deceptive. Extremely skilled and uses that perception of being a runt to her disadvantage.

- Narga and Moragesh are both beefy orc ladies who spent time in the army but their passions lie elsewhere - Narga wanted to be a musician and a mage, and left the army because she felt she was being both exploited and causing misery, and Moragesh wants to be a smith, more than a soldier, but continues to fight the Thalmor out of a sense of obligation (they need soldiers and leaders more, it turns out).

- Bthemetz is my shortest character and is absolutely fine with her height, which is the perfect height for kissing her wife's neck as far as she is concerned. Kagrenac asked her early on if she wanted her chassis to be a different size - she said no. I think she gets a kick out of being able to lift her wife despite being shorter. (By just under two inches, Kagrenac reminds her, not that it stops Bthemetz).

- Rosariah was named for her Breton grandmother who she takes after in three aspects: her slightly pointed ears, her curiousity about magic, and her short height. I think she hated being shorter on average as a kid because it marked her out as a little different - thankfully nothing ill ever came of that. I think as an adult she has come to accept those differences.

🏡Describe your OCs ideal house! Give us a tour around! What’s their garden like? Their bedroom? Kitchen? Where is it and how many people live there?

Lots of twisting corridors and twirling staircases in a half-rubble half-ruin covered in moss that seem impossibly confusing and strange but it all opens up, if you find the secret key, to this cosy little house, filled with alchemy recipes and runestones and potions and witches’ gear, with a little cauldron at the heart of it. It’s extremely homely. The kitchen/living space are one with the cauldron, with seating in case guests come around - she’s got one sideroom with a hammock and a chest full of clothes stuff in, and another bigger sideroom which is a giant library, with a big old walnut desk, very fancy.

💎Does your OC collect anything? Is there a reason? When did they start and is it beginning to turn into a little bit of a hoarding issue? What do they do with their collection?

Yeah. Since her mother died, she dabbled in shoplifting and pickpocketing and likes to swipe weird crockery, odd trinkets, strage little pieces of homeware - things that stand out but nothing someone would sorely miss, mainly because it makes her laugh and she likes to find something absurd in the mundane, because Ysamyne was largely not brought up in society, and sometimes not even on Nirn, so what is mundane to you seems a little absurd to her. She leaves it in a hidey-hole she has in Imperial city, a little den in an abandoned house few would check to look.

💕How is your OC like with physical affection? What are their boundries? Do they enjoy being touched or is that a no-go? Is there any reason behind this?

sorry for missing this last night!!

wanted to talk about ysamyne as sheogorath for a bit. ysamyne as an OC is almost 2 years old at this point (baby!!! love her!!!!) and she’s evolved a lot over time and as i have learnt more about the games (i had a post-oblivion story planned for her before i played shivering isles and having to throw that out. was painful) and i have changed my tune on where she stands as sheogorath

to begin: ysamyne was raised around daedra, with knowledge of the daedra, and also, resenting the daedra. her bio parents were former daedric cultists who died in a failed revolt; her adoptive parent was a comrade and a lapsed daedric cultist and taught ysamyne a lot of daedric magic that wasn’t intended to be shared with outsiders. when her mother died, ysamyne began selling illegal necromancy scrolls on the black market in vivec; this led to the mythic dawn trying to recruit her. ysamyne since the beginning has had her life surrounded by daedric cults, by lives who have been warped to fit the whims of  daedric princes, is keenly aware of how daedric princes use mortals like pawns in a much grander game.

she does not like the daedra. at all. yes, she is a witch who practises “dark” magic - summoning, conjuration, weird rituals - but that does not mean she has to like the daedra. after meeting martin - who was of a similar background, at least, as far as daedra are concerned - she makes it her mission to destroy them all.

when i made ysamyne i had no intention of her actually ever going back to the daedra. shivering isles frustrated me a lot because it didn’t fit with the character arc i had in mind. i first wanted to just, retcon it completely. i then made a compromise - shivering isles happened but ysamyne backed out midway through the mantling process and started a rebellion against sheogorath in his realm. she defeated jyggalag through revealing all his logica contradictions: he was an order’s vision of chaos, and was a tyrant who didn’t belong on the isles, he was never sheogorath, nor could he ever be. and that was that. and ysamyne would spend the rest of her life trying to trick and thwart daedric princes in a similar fashion - outsmarting them, outwitting them, proving them wrong, seeding dissent, and so on. a particular favourite story of mine is how she got caught trespassing in nocturnal’s realm, but managed to win a bet with nocturnal through befriending the fickle blackfeather court, who guided her out of a forest in on a starless night - and thus she is allowed to trespass nocturnal’s woods in the witching hours of the night (hence her association with crows).

but i’ve come around on her being sheogorath. partially because there’s no satsifying ending for an arc where she is trying to outwit daedric princes until the end of time. partially because that behaviour is very sheogorath - although she’d never admit it, at first.

i think most events happen in the same way - but it better explains how ysamyne was able to take the city of vivec and place it in her realm to guard it from the effects of the red year. i think what happens is that she remains much the same - a determined meddler with forces beyond her reckoning, who takes joy in angering gods, who during those first years on the isles took pains to look out for the lost, the outcast, those on the outside - and sheogorath grows into her shoes as much as she grows into the role over time. a long time - over centuries, likely. mantling is described as “walk like them until they walk like you” and what happens is that last statement, too. sheogorath is no longer a prince in a palace but a wanderer on the road who sees a man trying to pull down a mountain with a tiny little pickaxe, or sees a woman trying to make beautiful music with a broken instrument, and goes “me too, buddy”. the isles are the place where you go when you get truly lost, and sheogorath is not its ruler and is not your jailer, but a kindred spirit who understands what it is to be utterly lost. and why. and for what kind of reasons. and will accompny you until you can find your way again.

Narga is the OC I change my mind about the most. The arc she goes through is about recovery from the brink - from the lowest of lows - and thriving in spite of suffering, being brave despite being terrified. So in a lot of ways I find it difficult to know what comes after. Because ultimately I want her to be happy - she is the softest of my OCs, the warmest to people, with a genuine love and enthusiasm about the world, but she is afraid of making permanent connections with others, keeps distance, doesn't keep in touch, and constantly wanders. This is one of my own flaws and longest battles so I find it difficult to reconcile that flaw with a happy ending.

I have several AUs though

The standard story is that she simply wanders as a travelling musician after being effectively made immortal by the trials of the nerevarine. She does good deeds while she travels and helps passing villagers but never lingers. She runs into ysamyne more than once as they're both interested in arcane oddities and develop a respect for each other, a strange rivalry, and maybe some tension, but it never goes anywhere because their meetings are so fleeting.

There's one AU where she and vivec become close and instead of a few letters after her enraged post-red mountain battle in vivec's temple, there are in fact many, and she accompanies them to Akavir where they spend their final days travelling, singing, sharing poems and stories.

There's an AU where she trains Revas in magic for a time before disappearing mysteriously and he tracks her down 50 years later to find she hasn't aged a moment

There's an AU where she rallies a lot of drifting orcs and ex-legionnaires against the thalmor and builds a fortress city in the mountains, a new orsinium. This is very wishful thinking and or is like... 300 years of character development down the line after she stops drifting and realises she wants to commit to something. This also plays into nerevar parallels despite absolutely not being the true nerevarine.

There's an erased memory AU where she requests to vivec that they reshape the world so she never suffered so much and rewrites things as to make Narga arrive mysteriously into the psijics order and get adopted by them. And we flash back to Narga in 2E500~ where she's a brilliant psijics monk. But traces of the past still linger - she's still lost her arm from the dagoth ur fight, for example. Also ysamyne is there, ironically as a belligerent member of the mages guild who managed to sail to arteum one time and sneaks into her room with contraband from outside and takes of adventure. They fall utterly in love unaware of the fact that it almost happened before, circumstances preventing them.