Palin

• How did you choose their name?

So Dragon Age Inquisition. I immediately thought of the Spanish Inquisition sketch from Monty Python and I thought it’d be fun to name my DAI characters after members of Monty Python or at least references from it. Michael Palin was the guy who played the Cardinal in that sketch but I didn’t think Michael was really a good name for a Qunari. Ergo, Palin Adaar.

ESO!Kleskizhae

• In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts?

I can’t remember if I planned for him to be Direnni from the start (especially since I didn’t name him Kleskizhae Direnni) but like, I couldn’t’ve invented a better noble family for him to come from. His ancestors invented alchemy, conjuration, feudalism and the entire Breton race and they live in a tower that’s the oldest thing in the entire world, even older than every single rock because it’s the lab where the gods invented rocks. They’ve got like, a million curses because of things they themselves did but also all the witches they pissed off and still that’s not the thing that’s slowing them down. The massive peasant revolt in High Rock slowed them down. Also like, just general degeneracy and deciding that they’d rather get their brains blown out by magic crystals than get the guillotine so the Bretons can have High Rock if they want that’s fine. 

• What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story? 

The Three Banners War shouldn’t be happening because the three Alliances would probably be best working together and putting all three of their monarchs on the throne and we should all stop the whole war and conquest thing because it hurts more than it helps except in the most desperate circumstances. 

Also I spend way too much of my ESO game time just sitting by bards and listening to the songs. 

• If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be? 

Kleskizhae has an inordinately high opinion of himself, but he also has an inordinately high opinion of everyone else. He believes in raising everyone around him up to the high level of excellence and perfection that he is at, and that wouldn’t be so hard because they’re already there, they just need to BELIEVE IN THYSELF. A lot of his charm comes out of him bringing you into a magical, glorious world with him where we’re all figures of great import and legend. If he were more cynical he could use this to be a really good con artist, but he actually believes in you so he’s more of an inspirational speaker that’s not after your money the way most of them are.

There’s a few differences between SWTOR!Kleskizhae, ESO!Kleskizhae and GW2!Klejskizae that I need to make a whole venn diagram out of, but here’s one of them. SWTOR!Kleskizhae was briefly educated in appreciating classical Sith poetry as part of being a cultured member of high Sith society and shouts bad poetry about battle, passion and astronomical phenomena. ESO!Kleskizhae has read and studied how to write poetry quite a bit, both as a youth and an adult even while on the road adventuring, and he writes bawdy tavern songs and beautiful, lyrical love poetry in semi-archaic language in about equal measure. GW!Klejskizae is a professional skaald who apprenticed under a couple other skaalds and considers his artistic work as important if not more important to saving the world than his swording work, is mostly fluent in oral traditions and writes like, prose Eddas about great heroic feats of history, himself, people he likes and also works of propaganda.

Jiira

• Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind?

So all of my TES characters exist together in one big, messy universe, interacting with each other and all that.

So when Skyrim was announced, I had planned to play the daughter of one of my Morrowind characters, Ijiir. He was a Khajiit who made it big in House Telvanni and the Imperial Cult and was about as secretly super ruthless and power-hungry whilst openly deferential and polite as you’d imagine from that kind of person. The Blades were looking for someone they could install into Telvanni affairs to give them intel and when Ijiir volunteered, they assumed he’d die pretty much immediately and let him do it because he didn’t know enough to spill too many secrets and he knew enough magic that he could probably not just end up thrown into slavery. No one expected him to be as good at it as he was, not even himself, really. He just wanted to leave the monastery in Elswyer and end slavery and didn’t realize that he had the right set of talent, non-intrusiveness and showing up at the right time and hooking up with the right people to end up Archmagister.

During his rise to power he had a brief sexual relationship with a Wood Elf maid in Tel Mora, who moved to Valenwood after he did some important quest for her and she promised to name her firstborn after him. This was supposed to be when Jiira was conceived, but then it turned out that Skyrim takes place 200 years after Oblivion and also huge things happened with the Aldmeri Dominion and everything and I wanted Jiira not to remember any time when Valenwood wasn’t run by the Thalmor and also I don’t think she’s actually half-Khajiit so I decided that she was named after him and she says that he’s her father, but that in reality, her real father was a shitty Bosmer of little note who left her mother shortly after she was born because he wasn’t ready to have kids.

Then I decided that guy was Mankar Camoran’s third child, who left his dad’s cult because he didn’t really buy into it and that he was too much of a coward to be a dad and that this made him waaaaaay too much of a coward to stick with assassinating the Emperor and having the entire damn world after his ass for that. So he lived when his father and siblings didn’t and no one ever learned about it, but like, he wasn’t a good guy. He was just not as bad a guy as he could’ve been.

• What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story? 

I mean there’s a reason that my third Elder Scrolls game in I made a character who is basically a fangirl of all my other characters and also of all the other lores. And I kinda agree with her that what people think is true is also extremely important and exerts a force all its own, but I’m a little less metaphysical about it and a whole helluva lot more pissed off about it.

Also I like archery and when I get the chance to shoot, she’s the character I feel most like out of all the archers I’ve got.

• How far past the canon events that take place in their world have you extended their story, if at all? 

I learned my lesson about planning too far in advance after the Infernal City blew up all of Morrowind and then Skyrim took place 200 goddamn years in the future, so I don’t have a really solid answer until TES VI and/or VII. 

I know that her plan is to go back to Valenwood with an army and a couple of dragons to make her claim on the Camoran throne and toss the Dominion out by any means necessary, but preferably super cool and badass ones. At some point she’s gonna have to go on a real bad vision quest to come to terms with the fact that she’s a Camoran via Mankar and her grandpa almost blew up the whole world, and also at some point she’s gonna put her support behind a Silvenar and Green Lady and the Dominion is gonna support a different Silvenar and Green Lady and they’ll accuse each other of murdering the last ones and then there’ll be a whole anti-Silvenar and anti-Green Lady situation and that could be fun.

Also she has three children with Marcurio. Her eldest daughter will take after her dad and become a MASTER WIZARD and with her twins, one will go off to join the Graybeards and the other will take her place as a Nightingale and none of them will ever hear her speak because by that point her voice will be so powerful that her whispers will level mountains.

But eh, anything can happen.