#phora | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

flycasual · 5 months

Text

First obnoxious OC post coming in hot (and dedicated to @sadetanssija, for your reading pleasure when you have time my dear) is the one and only: Phora. My love, my heart, my murder child.

This is going to be so long I am not sorry.

As I've mentioned previously, Phora is pretty much how I befriended my fiancé(e). I went to start RPing in the elder scrolls online after dropping out of the swtor RP community for like a year, rolled up my little street urchin that I had vaguely conceived of in Skyrim, and started putting her in situations. As one does. One of those first Situations I tried to put her in wound up being completely ignored by everyone both IC and OOC because everyone had gotten drunk (both IC and OOC, we were in voice chat). Everyone, that is, except one character and one person. Enter Forvyth Deravyn, and enter Ray. We fast became best friends after that, this was sometime in 2015, and we've not stopped writing together since.

So our journey begins in High Rock with my scrawny, malnourished little street urchin, 16 years old, stealing some money off of some drunk Imperial soldiers. Particularly the Centurion. As I said, none of them notice. Except the Centurion's Dunmer accountant. So Phora runs off, thinking she's gotten away with her really rather subpar pickpocketing, to use the money to buy the first warm meal she's had in a while. But before she can get far, she is cornered by this intimidating looking man with bright red eyes.

She's fucked, she thinks. This guy caught her. He's going to turn her in to the guards, or to the soldiers, and who knew what would happen then. She'd never been caught before, never been quite that bold before. Only he doesn't turn her in. He pulls her aside, chides her for relying on something like pickpocketing when she clearly doesn't have the talent for it, and offers her help. He didn't care that she'd stolen from Tyrrean Vanarius. He'd stolen from Tyrrean Vanarius. (Honestly, to this day we joke about how stealing from Tyrrean Vanarius was a rite of passage in the ESO EU RP community. He's very robbable.) But if she was going to steal, she should do better. Take things less easily missed, more easily misplaced, and be more cautious about it. In the future she was to bring those things to him, and he would pay her for them. Much safer for her, and much more stable than anything she'd had in her life. She agreed to try this, got her warm meal, and scampered off into the night. They do this little song and dance for a time. Phora collects small things people won't search for and brings them to Forvyth, Forvyth gives her a little money. Eventually Forvyth starts feeling like a real friend, the first person in the world to take a moment and show her some kindness, to help her. She hangs around him even when there is nothing for them to trade. At this point Ray informs me that if I want to, they have a really interesting plot we could take Phora down with Forvyth, but it will be rough. It will be sad. There's more to this than it seems. I of course say fuck yes. Thus begins the whirlwind story of Forvyth and Phora, to this day my favorite RP duo.

After a while Forvyth begins to "open up" to Phora. One day he comes to her and tells her the story of the lucky old lady and her children, and their god. This god, he explains, is the reason he has a family, and if she wanted, Phora could be part of that family too. A family was all Phora had ever wanted, with all of her being. She did not want to be alone. She wanted to belong and be loved. So, despite what would be asked of her, she agreed. The way Forvyth explained it had made it sound almost understandable. Sithis was their father, after all, and a father that missed his children. He only asked that some be returned to him sooner. She went with him, did what was asked of her, and joined the Dark Brotherhood. As a result, publicly, Forvyth basically adopted her and she went to live with him in his home in Wayrest.

It never fully sat right with her, but the Brotherhood gave her what she'd been desperate for all her life. Now she had friends, had a family, had a home. She convinced herself, deluded herself, that murdering people for the Dark Brotherhood was excusable, acceptable, because it was for Sithis, and he was god, and she was just sending their souls home. But it didn't stop her from asking questions of her new brothers and sisters, like what happens to the people we send to the Void? Are they happy? Are they at peace, at home? They never had satisfying answers for her.

(Art by @sbeep)

Forvyth was different in the Sanctuary. Colder, quieter. Not the man she thought she knew. When he requested to personally train her, the others were shocked he'd even spoken. But train her he did, and over time she became a fairly good assassin, and despite everything, grew to see Forvyth truly as her father. He taught her more than to kill. Taught her to read and write. To act, to put on a front. Some of it he taught unintentionally. In the end, despite this big family she'd sold her soul to gain, only he ever really felt like it. Even with him now colder and more distant, she loved him. She'd do anything for him. Which was why she felt so abandoned, so lost, when one day while she was out on a contract he disappeared. She returned to an empty home and a letter explaining his absence. Apologizing.

My Dear Daughter Phora. His intentions all along had been to destroy the Brotherhood, and he'd wanted help. An ally inside. That was what she'd been meant to be, that was all, but he couldn't do it to her. It was too late for him, but she could still leave and live the life he could not. Wherever life may take you next, may it be a brighter place than here.

-Forvyth Sailen

Only it was too late for her too. He was her family. Her only family. If he did this, they'd kill him, and she couldn't let that happen. She stayed as long as she could, hoping to find him before the Brotherhood could, or at the very least to be there when he struck and help him. But they knew he was a traitor, and as much as she played at feeling betrayed by him too, she knew they suspected her. How could they not? Eventually she ran.

Now here is where things begin to change, due to the nature of ever shifting MMO RP. The original plan was for Forvyth to die (Ray basically made him to be a boss), I figured Phora would die with him, or not long after, and that would be that. But like, we got attached, the group we were doing DB RP with partly fizzled out, so we kept them, and we changed things.

Forvyth tried to stay away for Phora's good, but he couldn't, and Phora wouldn't have let him. He would come back and then leave, and she would search for him. This took place over years. He would try to protect her from afar, feeling guilty for doing to her basically what had been done to him. When he was gone she ended up in other Situations, found new friends. One was a vigilante who taught her to be more than an assassin, how to truly fight, and defend others so she might be able to help her father like she wanted. When they parted ways she ended up working on a ship for a while, with some Totally Not Pirates, and found herself back in the Brotherhood's sights while there. She always tried to find that feeling of family, tried at least once to do what Forvyth asked and leave him behind. She came close, made friends that she loves very dearly, but she's never found family anywhere but with him. They would, both of them, do absolutely anything for each other.

We have since stopped doing MMO RP, but we still do Elder Scrolls RP exclusively with each other. We just have our own little Tamriel in our pockets where we write whatever the fuck we want and in it these two are together again. Phora's determined to see it stay that way this time and Forvyth is finally beginning to accept that pushing her away doesn't make her safer, and it doesn't make him feel better. He can't take back turning her into this, and without him she might have been dead anyway. They have a dysfunctional little family with Forvyth's "friend" (he doesn't really do friends) Drahyr/Dryra, and a small pool of allies, but importantly they have each other and they will keep fighting until they succeed or the Brotherhood kills them.

Phora is, as one might expect, intensely and fiercely loyal, but only to a select few. Once upon a time she was a bit of a prankster, though she's partially lost sight of that in the face of all that has happened to her. It's still in there though, deep down. She also does not share food. She's been food insecure most of her life so if she shares her food with you she likes and trusts you.

There she is, my favoritest little murder child and the reason I am so attached to the "reluctant guy adopts scruffy kid and becomes the shittest dad" trope. Forvyth and Phora reign supreme in my heart forever. This is also how I was generally introduced to Elder Scrolls lore properly, I'd never fully played any of the games and so Ray showed me the world through the Dark Brotherhood of all things so I am hilariously attached to the murder cult.

#tesblr #dark brotherhood #tes online #the dark brotherhood #tes oc #Phora #I could talk about her forever I didn't even get into her relationships with Edward or Bleeds or Aeironn #or the fact that for a while she dated the daughter of that Centurion she stole from lmao #art that isn't tagged is by me btw

8 notes · View notes