APPLICATION | RYSLIG
Jan. 24th, 2021 10:23 amOOC INFORMATION
Name: Stanwick
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Stanwick
Are You Over 18?: yeah
Other Characters: Wilhuff Tarkin (Arachne)![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_carrion_spike
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Sheogorath
Age: Old as balls, can’t even guess, he’s a god. At the very least we know his existence probably happens AFTER time is created. So there’s that.
Canon: The Elder Scrolls
Canon Point: 4th Era, Skyrim, post The Mind Of Madness quest
Character Information: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Sheogorath
Personality:
(CW: light talk of suicide, substance abuse, gore, eye trauma)
"I am a part of you, little mortal. I am a shadow in your subconscious, a blemish on your fragile little psyche. You know me. You just don't know it.”
-Sheogorath, Skyrim
—————
Within the world of the Elder Scrolls, mainstream religion divides gods into two categories: Aedra and Daedra. Our Ancestors and Not Our Ancestors. The Aedra took part in the creation of the world and are generally revered for the sacrifices it took to do so, as it left them severely weakened. However, the Daedra did not offer aid with the world’s construction, and so have retained their full power.
The greatest of the Daedra, the Princes, enjoy meddling in the affairs of mortals. While not necessarily evil (being inherently above mortal perceptions of morality) their spheres of influence are wild and darker, with many cultures depicting them as inherently malicious, untrustworthy, and self serving.
Long ago, (so long as to almost be forgotten entirely) there was Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order, a force in the realms of Oblivion rapidly growing so powerful that the other Princes felt they had no choice but to convene together and strike him down.
However, as Daedra cannot truly die an alternative solution was needed to contain his power.
They cursed him to live on as Sheogorath, the Mad God, an affront to his obsessive vision of perfect order. The curse would be lifted momentarily, once every era. So, in rage Jyggalag would return to retake his realm in a process called the Greymarch to destroy everything built by Sheogorath, inevitably leaving him to rebuild.
_______________________
"Daedra are the embodiment of change. Change and permanency. I'm no different, except in the ways that I am."
-Sheogorath, Oblivion: The Shivering Isles
_______________________
The Old Man With A Cane. The Mad Star. The Skooma Cat. The Sithis Shaped Hole In The World. One of the Four Corners of the House of Troubles. The Comforter Of Men. Lord Of The Never-There.
As a God, Sheogorath’s domain broadly encompasses: mental illness, neurological disability, addiction, creativity, and he is sometimes credited with the existence of free will and emotion itself.
He is madness, both an abstract presence within the mind of every being in the mortal plane of Mundus, and a being with his own will. He is both the senseless, thoughtless hand of chaos and a calculating trickster with unknowable motives and goals of his own design.
He’s an outcast among his fellow Princes, a trickster among tricksters. He bests them at their own domains with backwards cunning and, sometimes, by doing nothing at all. He relishes in humiliating them and sticking his nose in their affairs. Sometimes even intruding on their summonings and driving their followers to madness.
_______________________
Wry without equal, Sheogorath holds in his realm giggling loons, flamboyant auteurs, and craven mutilators. The Mad Prince will ply profitless bargains and promote senseless bloodshed for nothing more than the joy of another's confusion, tragedy, or rage.
-XVI Accords of Madness, Volume VI
He’s often played a malicious role in Tamriel’s history, being responsible for many tragedies and senseless acts of violence upon the mortal realm. Perhaps most well known is the destruction of the isle of Vvardenfell. According to the Tribunal Temple, long ago he threw down a meteor upon the city of Vivec. It’s progression was halted by Vivec’s power, but when their power failed it resumed its path, the collision destroying the city and setting off the eruption of Red Mountain.
The Tribunal Temple claimed his motive was outrage, that he saw the city, and its living god as a mockery of the heavens. But as it is with so many things we’ll never truly know why Sheogorath does what he does. Some have claimed he was simply bored.
Naturally, worship of Sheogorath is taboo (if not outright outlawed) throughout Tamriel. Bargains made with him are often unpredictable, the outcome usually resting entirely on whatever whim is driving him at the moment.
______________________
Sheogorath took hold of the petulant woman and ripped her asunder. From her tendons he made lutes. From her skull and arm bones he made a drum. From her bones he made flutes. He presented these gifts to the mortals, and thus Music was born.
-Myths Of Sheogorath
[His first thought is that he’s blind again.]
[Except he is not blind.]
[He is deaf.]
[No.]
[He is alone. He has been torn, again. Like he was torn before, bloody, screaming and kicking from the void by golden hands.]
[There had been rain then. There is no rain now. No rain to cool his face with soft caresses.]
(He doesn’t know which him remembered that. One older than he himself is, the youngest voice in a cacophony of screams and drums.)
[He blinks. He’s still here. He closes his eyes. He’s still here. Reality does not twist between his fingers or yield to his biting at the air. But the sand crunches between his teeth. Ew!]
[He spits ungracefully into the sand. Eugh.]
[All tethers cut, it’s only him in the noise, one voice climbing above the others to speak in a deceptively chipper voice, with just the slightest hint of a razor’s edge of oncoming hysteria.]
“Well! If this isn’t a fine kettle of fish!”
[What is he doing on this beach, all dressed in heavy skin and flesh? Where are they? His people? The little pieces of him swimming around in the big bright ocean of the world?]
[He was supposed to be going home and for the first time in thirty years that’s where he truly wants to be. He’s scared, he realizes, he’s scared. His joints pop and ache. He climbs to his feet- doesn’t hop up, doesn’t float up, but he staggers without his cane. And he blinks out at the sea with fuzzy eyes.]
“No...no, no...nono-“
[Touching at his face, feeling coarse sand stuck to his fingers dragging across flesh.]
“Mortal again! I hate being mortal!” [And his blood is rushing and his heart is pounding and he has to remember to breathe now. The earth under his feet sways, not because he wills it but because he’s the one who’s unsteady, gripping at his head, pulling at his hair. It hurts. It hurts when he pulls, if he pulls hard enough it’ll bleed, come out in chunks- that’s what mortals do, they bleed.]
“Excuse me?” [A nervous, cautious voice.]
[Speaking of mortal there’s one coming up behind him now. It’s a boring one. A man. It’s talking at him and he’s supposed to respond with meat noises, he can’t even feel it or it’s little man-thoughts rattling around in it’s head.]
“Blah blah are you okay blah blah pamphlets blah blah city blah.”
[He’s in such a foul mood he’d love nothing more than to rip this man’s guts out for...nothing, really. For his mood. Because he can. Except he can’t. Because the hands he’s wearing are small and weak- and oh dear, as a mortal he forgot just how short he is.]
[He stubbornly stands on his tiptoes and nearly loses his footing in the sand.]
“Whoa there!” [Says the mortal steadying him.]
[He could scream at the indignity, he could bite this man’s face bloody for having the nerve to touch him and assume his intent wasn’t to fall back down and flop uselessly in the sand again.]
[He picks screaming.]
Name: Stanwick
Contact:
Are You Over 18?: yeah
Other Characters: Wilhuff Tarkin (Arachne)
the_carrion_spike CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Sheogorath
Age: Old as balls, can’t even guess, he’s a god. At the very least we know his existence probably happens AFTER time is created. So there’s that.
Canon: The Elder Scrolls
Canon Point: 4th Era, Skyrim, post The Mind Of Madness quest
Character Information: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Sheogorath
Personality:
(CW: light talk of suicide, substance abuse, gore, eye trauma)
"I am a part of you, little mortal. I am a shadow in your subconscious, a blemish on your fragile little psyche. You know me. You just don't know it.”
-Sheogorath, Skyrim
—————
Within the world of the Elder Scrolls, mainstream religion divides gods into two categories: Aedra and Daedra. Our Ancestors and Not Our Ancestors. The Aedra took part in the creation of the world and are generally revered for the sacrifices it took to do so, as it left them severely weakened. However, the Daedra did not offer aid with the world’s construction, and so have retained their full power.
The greatest of the Daedra, the Princes, enjoy meddling in the affairs of mortals. While not necessarily evil (being inherently above mortal perceptions of morality) their spheres of influence are wild and darker, with many cultures depicting them as inherently malicious, untrustworthy, and self serving.
Long ago, (so long as to almost be forgotten entirely) there was Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order, a force in the realms of Oblivion rapidly growing so powerful that the other Princes felt they had no choice but to convene together and strike him down.
However, as Daedra cannot truly die an alternative solution was needed to contain his power.
They cursed him to live on as Sheogorath, the Mad God, an affront to his obsessive vision of perfect order. The curse would be lifted momentarily, once every era. So, in rage Jyggalag would return to retake his realm in a process called the Greymarch to destroy everything built by Sheogorath, inevitably leaving him to rebuild.
_______________________
"Daedra are the embodiment of change. Change and permanency. I'm no different, except in the ways that I am."
-Sheogorath, Oblivion: The Shivering Isles
_______________________
The Old Man With A Cane. The Mad Star. The Skooma Cat. The Sithis Shaped Hole In The World. One of the Four Corners of the House of Troubles. The Comforter Of Men. Lord Of The Never-There.
As a God, Sheogorath’s domain broadly encompasses: mental illness, neurological disability, addiction, creativity, and he is sometimes credited with the existence of free will and emotion itself.
He is madness, both an abstract presence within the mind of every being in the mortal plane of Mundus, and a being with his own will. He is both the senseless, thoughtless hand of chaos and a calculating trickster with unknowable motives and goals of his own design.
He’s an outcast among his fellow Princes, a trickster among tricksters. He bests them at their own domains with backwards cunning and, sometimes, by doing nothing at all. He relishes in humiliating them and sticking his nose in their affairs. Sometimes even intruding on their summonings and driving their followers to madness.
_______________________
Wry without equal, Sheogorath holds in his realm giggling loons, flamboyant auteurs, and craven mutilators. The Mad Prince will ply profitless bargains and promote senseless bloodshed for nothing more than the joy of another's confusion, tragedy, or rage.
-XVI Accords of Madness, Volume VI
_______________________
He’s often played a malicious role in Tamriel’s history, being responsible for many tragedies and senseless acts of violence upon the mortal realm. Perhaps most well known is the destruction of the isle of Vvardenfell. According to the Tribunal Temple, long ago he threw down a meteor upon the city of Vivec. It’s progression was halted by Vivec’s power, but when their power failed it resumed its path, the collision destroying the city and setting off the eruption of Red Mountain.
The Tribunal Temple claimed his motive was outrage, that he saw the city, and its living god as a mockery of the heavens. But as it is with so many things we’ll never truly know why Sheogorath does what he does. Some have claimed he was simply bored.
Naturally, worship of Sheogorath is taboo (if not outright outlawed) throughout Tamriel. Bargains made with him are often unpredictable, the outcome usually resting entirely on whatever whim is driving him at the moment.
______________________
Sheogorath took hold of the petulant woman and ripped her asunder. From her tendons he made lutes. From her skull and arm bones he made a drum. From her bones he made flutes. He presented these gifts to the mortals, and thus Music was born.
-Myths Of Sheogorath
_______________________
He is a lonely god, a creature doomed to destroy himself and what he loves in a never ending cycle. Haskill, his chamberlain, is his only constant, staying with him through the Greymarches and helping him keep his realm in relative order.
He possesses a unique relationship with the mortal plane. While his fellow Princes must wait until their summoning days to be contacted by their followers, Sheogorath may be contacted at any time during storms.
(When the summoning days of his brethren fall upon such days their followers decline opening communication with Oblivion, in fear that he’ll arrive instead.)
He is the patron of creatives. He gifted mortals the first musical instruments. He’s the muse of fringe artists and scientists alike, like Relmyna Verenim, a necromancer of sorts who dedicates herself to the sadistic study of the ‘sixth element,’ flesh. Together they created the Gatekeeper, a monstrous patchwork giant that guards the doors to Sheogorath’s realm, the Shivering Isles.
He is a lonely god, a creature doomed to destroy himself and what he loves in a never ending cycle. Haskill, his chamberlain, is his only constant, staying with him through the Greymarches and helping him keep his realm in relative order.
He possesses a unique relationship with the mortal plane. While his fellow Princes must wait until their summoning days to be contacted by their followers, Sheogorath may be contacted at any time during storms.
(When the summoning days of his brethren fall upon such days their followers decline opening communication with Oblivion, in fear that he’ll arrive instead.)
He is the patron of creatives. He gifted mortals the first musical instruments. He’s the muse of fringe artists and scientists alike, like Relmyna Verenim, a necromancer of sorts who dedicates herself to the sadistic study of the ‘sixth element,’ flesh. Together they created the Gatekeeper, a monstrous patchwork giant that guards the doors to Sheogorath’s realm, the Shivering Isles.
_______________________
“For Our Lord Sheogorath, without Whom all Thought would be linear and all Feeling would be fleeting.”
-The Blessings Of Sheogorath
“For Our Lord Sheogorath, without Whom all Thought would be linear and all Feeling would be fleeting.”
-The Blessings Of Sheogorath
_______________________
Each Prince has a realm in Oblivion, or it may be more correct to say that each Prince is a realm in Oblivion. They are one and the same.
Within his realm of the Shivering Isles his followers are offered freedom that would not be accessible to them in Tamriel. There are no asylums in the Isles and his people are left to more or less govern themselves and see to their own needs. He even allows a faction of fanatics to preach that he’s nothing more than an imposter, sitting on the throne of an absent god.
They are however still subject to his erratic whims and discipline. Suicide carries a heavy punishment in the Isles for ‘defying Sheogorath’s will,’ the restless souls of the departed are confined to the Hill Of Suicides, only able to rest once their remains have been recovered.
Yet for all the examples of Sheogorath’s gleeful rampant cruelty and divine wrath, at the end of the Shivering Isles’ questline he orders that his mortal Champion flee, to spare them both the pain of their death. He mourns the loss of his realm and his people, knowing that when he resurrects he will come back to a dead world.
Sheogorath is a god who dies screaming. In front of you, the Champion, the player.
He had tasked his Champion with the impossible, stopping the Third Era’s Greymarch. By temporarily putting them on his throne to fight Jyggalag in his place.
But time runs out, the Champion is frantically moving against an incoming invasion force, and amidst the Isles’ citizens defecting to swear fealty to Jyggalag in fear it all comes crashing down.
Each Prince has a realm in Oblivion, or it may be more correct to say that each Prince is a realm in Oblivion. They are one and the same.
Within his realm of the Shivering Isles his followers are offered freedom that would not be accessible to them in Tamriel. There are no asylums in the Isles and his people are left to more or less govern themselves and see to their own needs. He even allows a faction of fanatics to preach that he’s nothing more than an imposter, sitting on the throne of an absent god.
They are however still subject to his erratic whims and discipline. Suicide carries a heavy punishment in the Isles for ‘defying Sheogorath’s will,’ the restless souls of the departed are confined to the Hill Of Suicides, only able to rest once their remains have been recovered.
Yet for all the examples of Sheogorath’s gleeful rampant cruelty and divine wrath, at the end of the Shivering Isles’ questline he orders that his mortal Champion flee, to spare them both the pain of their death. He mourns the loss of his realm and his people, knowing that when he resurrects he will come back to a dead world.
Sheogorath is a god who dies screaming. In front of you, the Champion, the player.
He had tasked his Champion with the impossible, stopping the Third Era’s Greymarch. By temporarily putting them on his throne to fight Jyggalag in his place.
But time runs out, the Champion is frantically moving against an incoming invasion force, and amidst the Isles’ citizens defecting to swear fealty to Jyggalag in fear it all comes crashing down.
_______________________
"What happens is what always has happened -- what always will happen. I crumble, I fade, the Realm dies. And you with it. Flee while you can, mortal. When we next meet I will not know you, and I will slay you like the others."
[When you tell him you haven't failed, you'll put a smile on his face:]
"Optimism! How adorable! I love it! Even at the end, you make me laugh.
I'm lying.
That wasn't funny at all. No matter. Soon you and everyone else will be dead, and I will be left a mad god, ruler of a dead realm. Again."
-Sheogorath, Oblivion: The Shivering Isles
"What happens is what always has happened -- what always will happen. I crumble, I fade, the Realm dies. And you with it. Flee while you can, mortal. When we next meet I will not know you, and I will slay you like the others."
[When you tell him you haven't failed, you'll put a smile on his face:]
"Optimism! How adorable! I love it! Even at the end, you make me laugh.
I'm lying.
That wasn't funny at all. No matter. Soon you and everyone else will be dead, and I will be left a mad god, ruler of a dead realm. Again."
-Sheogorath, Oblivion: The Shivering Isles
_______________________
And so he dies again, becoming Jyggalag. The Champion remains, continuing to race against time to take the steps to fill Sheogorath’s role as lord of the realm in name before Jyggalag can gather himself to attack the palace in full force.
The staff, Sheogorath’s trademark cane had to be reconstructed, as the one he intended to give his Champion died with him. It’s a grisly process, involving an eye being gouged out of an unwilling head and the Champion fighting their own murderous reflection to the death, undergoing a symbolic murder of the self.
(Just hero stuff, you know.)
So the staff is made. The Champion defeats Jyggalag in combat. The two are now severed. Jyggalag walks away into Oblivion. And the Champion is now Sheogorath.
The cycle is broken and the future is unclear.
_______________________
“I'm a mad god. The Mad God, actually. It's a family title. Gets passed down from me to myself every few thousand years.”
-Sheogorath, Skyrim
And so he dies again, becoming Jyggalag. The Champion remains, continuing to race against time to take the steps to fill Sheogorath’s role as lord of the realm in name before Jyggalag can gather himself to attack the palace in full force.
The staff, Sheogorath’s trademark cane had to be reconstructed, as the one he intended to give his Champion died with him. It’s a grisly process, involving an eye being gouged out of an unwilling head and the Champion fighting their own murderous reflection to the death, undergoing a symbolic murder of the self.
(Just hero stuff, you know.)
So the staff is made. The Champion defeats Jyggalag in combat. The two are now severed. Jyggalag walks away into Oblivion. And the Champion is now Sheogorath.
The cycle is broken and the future is unclear.
_______________________
“I'm a mad god. The Mad God, actually. It's a family title. Gets passed down from me to myself every few thousand years.”
-Sheogorath, Skyrim
_______________________
But they are not the first mortal to take up the mantle of the Madgod. As the former Champion says up there, it’s a title passed down from mortal-turned-god to the next as part of the Greymarch Cycle. This Third Era Champion was not Sheogorath’s first Champion. But they were the only to succeed and as a result now face the unthinkable: eternity.
It would be a daunting prospect for anyone. Especially one tricked into the role.
200 years pass. The Third Era died with Martin Septim. The Fourth Era has brought civil war (and also dragons) to the province of Skyrim.
When we meet the new Sheogorath in Skyrim, it becomes apparent that he’s not adjusting well to godhood. He’s neglected his realm for decades, and as a result civil war has broken out among his people there. Instead of intervening he hides away in the mind of a ghost and waxes poetic about his days as the mortal Champion.
His living quarters are hardly fitting for a god, or any mortal for that matter. He’s been squatting in the filthy abandoned wing of a royal palace, once the home of one of his most favorite subjects, so he can commune with his ghost. The dust shows evidence that he hasn’t left his little corner for years, a corner that contains a large quantity of alcohol, a simple bed roll, and a pot with a potato in it.
You could say it’s a depression nest. Fit for a god.
This ‘vacation’ is interrupted by the Dragonborn, who’s come to intervene on behalf of one of his priests. The Madgod agrees to return on the grounds that the Dragonborn entertain him. They do so, and so they part on good terms, with Sheogorath awarding them a powerful artifact.
At his pull point he has just said his farewell to them and poofed out of sight.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Outcast
Erratic
Sadistic
Depressed
Manic
Artistic
Mischievous
Spiteful
Aloof
Curious
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits!
Opt-Outs: arachne (Tarkin) simulacrum, vampire, naga, slime, nymph
Roleplay Sample:
Ryslig's TDM
+But they are not the first mortal to take up the mantle of the Madgod. As the former Champion says up there, it’s a title passed down from mortal-turned-god to the next as part of the Greymarch Cycle. This Third Era Champion was not Sheogorath’s first Champion. But they were the only to succeed and as a result now face the unthinkable: eternity.
It would be a daunting prospect for anyone. Especially one tricked into the role.
200 years pass. The Third Era died with Martin Septim. The Fourth Era has brought civil war (and also dragons) to the province of Skyrim.
When we meet the new Sheogorath in Skyrim, it becomes apparent that he’s not adjusting well to godhood. He’s neglected his realm for decades, and as a result civil war has broken out among his people there. Instead of intervening he hides away in the mind of a ghost and waxes poetic about his days as the mortal Champion.
His living quarters are hardly fitting for a god, or any mortal for that matter. He’s been squatting in the filthy abandoned wing of a royal palace, once the home of one of his most favorite subjects, so he can commune with his ghost. The dust shows evidence that he hasn’t left his little corner for years, a corner that contains a large quantity of alcohol, a simple bed roll, and a pot with a potato in it.
You could say it’s a depression nest. Fit for a god.
This ‘vacation’ is interrupted by the Dragonborn, who’s come to intervene on behalf of one of his priests. The Madgod agrees to return on the grounds that the Dragonborn entertain him. They do so, and so they part on good terms, with Sheogorath awarding them a powerful artifact.
At his pull point he has just said his farewell to them and poofed out of sight.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Outcast
Erratic
Sadistic
Depressed
Manic
Artistic
Mischievous
Spiteful
Aloof
Curious
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits!
Opt-Outs: arachne (Tarkin) simulacrum, vampire, naga, slime, nymph
Roleplay Sample:
Ryslig's TDM
[His first thought is that he’s blind again.]
[Except he is not blind.]
[He is deaf.]
[No.]
[He is alone. He has been torn, again. Like he was torn before, bloody, screaming and kicking from the void by golden hands.]
[There had been rain then. There is no rain now. No rain to cool his face with soft caresses.]
(He doesn’t know which him remembered that. One older than he himself is, the youngest voice in a cacophony of screams and drums.)
[He blinks. He’s still here. He closes his eyes. He’s still here. Reality does not twist between his fingers or yield to his biting at the air. But the sand crunches between his teeth. Ew!]
[He spits ungracefully into the sand. Eugh.]
[All tethers cut, it’s only him in the noise, one voice climbing above the others to speak in a deceptively chipper voice, with just the slightest hint of a razor’s edge of oncoming hysteria.]
“Well! If this isn’t a fine kettle of fish!”
[What is he doing on this beach, all dressed in heavy skin and flesh? Where are they? His people? The little pieces of him swimming around in the big bright ocean of the world?]
[He was supposed to be going home and for the first time in thirty years that’s where he truly wants to be. He’s scared, he realizes, he’s scared. His joints pop and ache. He climbs to his feet- doesn’t hop up, doesn’t float up, but he staggers without his cane. And he blinks out at the sea with fuzzy eyes.]
“No...no, no...nono-“
[Touching at his face, feeling coarse sand stuck to his fingers dragging across flesh.]
“Mortal again! I hate being mortal!” [And his blood is rushing and his heart is pounding and he has to remember to breathe now. The earth under his feet sways, not because he wills it but because he’s the one who’s unsteady, gripping at his head, pulling at his hair. It hurts. It hurts when he pulls, if he pulls hard enough it’ll bleed, come out in chunks- that’s what mortals do, they bleed.]
“Excuse me?” [A nervous, cautious voice.]
[Speaking of mortal there’s one coming up behind him now. It’s a boring one. A man. It’s talking at him and he’s supposed to respond with meat noises, he can’t even feel it or it’s little man-thoughts rattling around in it’s head.]
“Blah blah are you okay blah blah pamphlets blah blah city blah.”
[He’s in such a foul mood he’d love nothing more than to rip this man’s guts out for...nothing, really. For his mood. Because he can. Except he can’t. Because the hands he’s wearing are small and weak- and oh dear, as a mortal he forgot just how short he is.]
[He stubbornly stands on his tiptoes and nearly loses his footing in the sand.]
“Whoa there!” [Says the mortal steadying him.]
[He could scream at the indignity, he could bite this man’s face bloody for having the nerve to touch him and assume his intent wasn’t to fall back down and flop uselessly in the sand again.]
[He picks screaming.]