mistswalker

[mistswalker]

quick yawn c:

im trying to limit these to only be worked on for 1 hour so i can practice without wasting too much time :'3 so theyre made to be a bit messy

#CUTE

[mistswalker]

Beam¹ makes Mourynn² wear P.P.E. while Sieran isn't looking

¹ Tyria's #1 lab safety enjoyer ² @manasurge 's OC

[mistswalker]

Some doodles of Mórg’s Mesmer ‘Charr disguise’, the excellently “nobody-will-ever-guess-this” Morgan Glimmerclaw!

He makes himself very tall, to the chagrin of the tall people in his life.

#Oh yay!! Another mesmer who does this!! #I love the art style too

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People who hate Zhou Yao are so funny like sorry game-boys but you are fucked in the head. That's my best friend Yao. Your friendly neighborhood agender engineer. And they think I'm cute. And a keeper. You have an ugly heart if you dislike them, not joking. Me I have a beautiful soul and I could kiss Yao if I so chose. And I do. Muuuuuah!

[mistswalker]

Each dragon deathbed map serving as a magical whalefall, the way that each dragon's corpse serves to feed the ecosystem in which it perished for decades, maybe centuries to come. The way Kralkatorrik’s body at Dragonfall will be picked apart by the Unending Ocean and maybe hundreds of years from now he'll just be scattered bones. The way Mordremoth’s body will feed the jungle for generations. The growth and resurgence of life from death. Nobody touch me I'm feeling things.

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This started out as a 'respectable' idea, but Mordrem Lieutenant Malyck had other plans. Into the side blog it goes!

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Heart of Thorns: Headcanon Edition.

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i thought id talked to every NPC in lab cliffs, then flew out to a distant tall boulder just for fun and found THIS GUY

first of all, i wonder what he means by ‘responded to mordremoth’s call’? i wonder if he went full evil and then managed to get a hold of himself?

and to still hear mordremoth’s voice in one mind so many years later, that must suck.

[mistswalker]

I am sorry to report I still have the "Mordrem Lieutenant Malyck corrupting a captive Trahearne" headcanon still infesting my mind.

#holy fucking shit #OP im in love

[mistswalker]

griffon flight interlude. still have not decided on a name for her but the personality is solidifying

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Arah. :)

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There we go!

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Mostly catching up on work these days so let me share another wonderful commission I had the joy to work on for @obloquars on twitter!

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Here's another piece from the other day. I like Faehrnem a normal amount 👍

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why does the potion of nightmare court slaying look like the recipe for a Very Potent health smoothie

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If Isgarren has to wear glasses, how come he's a Seer?

Bro's a Seern't

#Jsksldlolfllflfplf

[mistswalker]

I'm having some rambly thoughts about Isgarren and Commander because I feel so many certain kinds of ways over this dialogue

Isgarren: You brought the world to the brink of ruin. Do you realize, if you hadn't killed Zhaitan... <Character name>: Do you not see what the Elder Dragons destroyed with every cycle? The lives they ruined. <Character name>: You didn't witness the terror they wrought firsthand. You hid.

Because of this dialogue.

Mabon: Isgarren is fearful of intervening with the dragons. When Sidony stopped him that night... Mabon: Mm. I remember that morning, I think. Flickers of sunrise... The carnage, revealed. Zhaitan's call. Mabon: Thankful that I don't remember the loss. I feel it, but I don't remember their faces... Should I? Mabon: Isgarren possesses an...urgency that I can't place yet. We are too weak to fight a dragon, he says, yet we fortify... Mabon: It's as if he's both wounded and killing time... Maybe I'm projecting.

And the dialogue when you talk to Isgarren himself:

"We didn't age well. And we lived a very difficult experience... Of all my thousands of years of self-reflection, I barely spent my adolescence among them. I parted from the horde after..." >...After? "We once tried to fell the dragons. The Elder Races of Tyria. The Seer doyen, Sidony, cried for war. But...just before we were to aid the mursaat in their attack on Zhaitan... Sidony decided against." "The mursaat never forgave us, and I empathized with that. They were turned to bone scraps and bile... But they would hunt us for thousands of years after. A few hundred of them, for all of us."

Just... the Commander is right to feel like Isgarren was just allowing the world below to rot and suffer at the hands of the Elder Dragons; but the Commander also doesn't know Isgarren's history. And Isgarren very much has seen the terror the dragons brought.

Isgarren wanted to go after the Mursaat and Forgotten, to help them when they faced Zhaitan. And he was made to stand down. His dialogue implies that he left the Seers not long after Zhaitan completely destroyed those who actually went to face him.

He must have known. He must have seen, because he describes it in a visceral way when he needn't have to. He knew the aftermath of this dragon tearing apart two powerful races, culling them to fractions of what they were.

And it scared him.

The fact that Mabon uses the word 'wounded' to describe what he thinks Isgarren comes across as, makes me think Isgarren was carrying a lot of guilt. Maybe not for himself, per-se, but in a vein similar to Mabon's own thoughts of Sidony:

Mabon: I was reading about Sidony in the archive—leader of the Seers during the rise against the dragons. Mabon: When he decided to pull back from the assault on Zhaitan... I wonder if he knew the consequences that would evoke? Mabon: Even if that choice was likely the wiser one... We still feel the ripples of that decision. Mabon: Most likely, we'd be dead. Maybe the mursaat wouldn't have fled, though. The Seers wouldn't have declared war.

It could have been Isgarren was feeling wounded over the fact that, perhaps, if the Seers had gone through with it, the outcome could have been different. Maybe less would have died. Maybe Zhaitan would have been killed. It wasn't likely, but it was a possibility.

And instead what they have at that point is every mursaat still alive thirsty for his blood, and likely Mabon's too, for betrayal. What they still have is an Elder Dragon that's shown them what happens when you try to fight back.

And at some point, he must have learned that the Elder Dragons were necessary to be kept alive for the magical balance of Tyria. And I think, like the Commander did, like everyone else did, it took a lot to digest and grasp.

So then they're at a point where, yeah, maybe the Ward and the Wizards might have been able to taken down the Elder Dragons... but they couldn't. They shouldn't.

And Isgarren is so old, thousands of years, that of course it was going to affect his perception of life. Mortal life, in particular. The world below could be torn apart by the dragons, but it would shape into something new. That had to be the way of things, and they had to accept that. As long as the world kept on going, that's what matters.

Focus on the outside threats, while the world remakes itself from the inside. It's the lot they have, no choice but pragmatism. Saving the world from the Elder Dragons would mean ripping it apart at the seams. The world had to suffer in order for itself to continue to exist.

So, while the Commander is justified in finding this mentality horrific, in being upset and outraged that someone so powerful never intervened in the suffering of those below, they are fundamentally wrong that Isgarren has never seen what the dragons have done to the people of Tyria.

Because, ironically, if Isgarren never had, then none of this would have existed.

If the elder races had not chosen to confront Zhaitan, the Mursaat would not have been nearly wiped out. The tensions with the Seers would not have built. The war would have never happened. Isgarren wouldn't have left the Seers. He wouldn't have met Mabon, or at least their relationship would never have been what it became in reality. He likely wouldn't have had the drive to conceptualise the Wizards and the Astral Ward.

Zhaitan's destruction, as it always would throughout history, molded so much of the world. And its impact on Isgarren led him to where he is now.

So I think, this is a time when the Commander is, albeit not without reason, the unfair party. Assuming that Isgarren does not comprehend the suffering of those below. But that's because that's what would make sense to them; they can't fathom leaving people to hurt, especially if they understand the pain themselves. And if Isgarren is supposed to be a hero, is supposed to care for Tyria and want to protect it, but ignores the biggest threat it has looming over them, then he must not actually understand the gravity of the situation.

When really, Isgarren's life has been shaped by their destruction, learned that it was a necessary evil, and has had thousands of years to come to terms with it.