"Every Strand" author commentary pt. 4

[allekha]

Chapter 12:
Pretty much everything in this chapter was not in my original outline. The idea for both of the scenes with Ulmis came to me so strongly, though, and they felt like they fit right in with the family themes, so in they went. (This fic has done a lot of expanding while I write it.) I was happy that people seemed to like them!

The order that the Dagoth brothers hold Ulmis is their birth order from oldest to youngest for this fic.

Voryn expects to have much the same reaction, so he's surprised when he instead finds himself drawn to look at her.
I liked the idea that actually meeting his new niece does not make Voryn change his mind at all about not wanting any kids of his own (awkward position as it may be for a hereditary political leader), but maybe softens him on the uncle idea some.

Uthol's eyes widen when he unfolds the paper to find books – not advice books or the usual tales one might read around the hearth, but children's books for when the baby has grown. They are a rare sight, given that books are expensive enough that most families would hesitate to hand one to a child still learning to read off a slate.
I went back and forth a little about this since children's books are, on the historical scale, a pretty recent invention... but I mean, so is printing in general, and modern-day Morrowind has a book with pictures and a religious children's book, so I decided it didn't feel off for the setting.

One, a slender volume, is a lovely poem about a child preparing for bed by cleaning up, saying good-night to the ancestors, and looking out at the moons.
It's probably called Goodnight Moons.

She even meets with local laborers who have found themselves deeply in debt bondage, whose debts are repaid in one fell swoop while she admonishes them to take proper advantage of their new freedom and avoid future entrapment in loans.
Of course, life may not be quite so simple as that in the longer term for the poor.

There, they had needed to secure the marshmerrow crop for use in healing potions and for making water safe in areas where clean sources were hard to come by.
The idea of marshmarrow (with saltrice) being used to purify water comes from Goodall's AFFresh mod, which I recommend playing.

The ceremony was one of my favorite scenes to write. It's not particularly based on anything in canon.

He absently touches her round little cheek with a finger and knows that while he will be happy to give her back to her parents after the ceremony, he would pull out his torturous potion recipes if anyone dares curse her.
It's not something I've experienced myself, but I do know a few people who have had a bunch of protective instincts they didn't know they had kick in when they had to hold a baby in an emergency situation, even if they were not fans of kids. Brains are weird!

Muckthaw is also not particularly based on anything in canon. But when I was first trying to figure out the political background part of the fic, leaders playing important roles in ceremonies (especially religious ones) came up, so the general idea was on the backburner. And I admit it is amusing to make the leader of your house ceremonially harvest... muck.

Additionally, I must ask you, since it seems to be so important – what the hell is Muckthaw?
(and from next chapter) as everyone knows nobles are wont to do, having some man he picked out from the crowd brought to him to fuck.
Much of the dialogue in this fic - and to some extent the narrative voice - is stylized after the way the First Era characters speak in the game. But sometimes dropping the formality makes for a nice contrast.

If he has cut himself off from them, and he is content to surround himself with his living friends and finds them guidance enough, and to spend his worship on the Three instead, there must be a reason. But it seems like a lonely thing. Voryn can't imagine what it might be like.
This contrast between them was something that developed on its own as I was writing the story - I didn't set out intending to have them be foils in terms of religious experience, where Voryn (surrounded by a bunch of family) gets more out of ancestor worship and doesn't personally connect with the Three, while Nerevar (not so surrounded by blood-family in this fic) doesn't particularly participate in ancestor worship but has a strong connection with Azura.

Chapter 13:
On the altar, the offering goes up in flames, emitting a vaguely purple smoke as it burns
Various elements have different flame colors... but I think I just picked a color for this. Maybe muck has a lot of potassium?

I didn't consciously intend this, but I realized when I went back to edit that the first part has Nerevar dressed up in a Dagoth get-up, while the second has Voryn in Nerevar's colors.

and since Nerevar appears to enjoy his telekinesis spells so much, he uses one to tug the glass out of his hand again. Nerevar lets him reclaim the drink.
I liked the mental image of Nerevar scooping up the drink and Voryn using magic to tell him he gets his own.

For one thing, everywhere I've ever been in Resdayn, the priests give basic healing blessings on festival days without asking for donations.
Free or half-price healings are in the description for several of the holidays in Arena/Daggerfall.

"There are many rooms in our house," Voryn murmurs, some old line of poetry by one of his ancestors.
This one, of course, is a simplified line from one of Dagoth Ur's dreams.

His voice is so low it couldn't carry any further than Voryn's ears.
Side note, but I've noticed while editing this fic that I keep describing how quietly and intimately people (particularly Nerevar and Voryn lol) are talking to each other, to the point where I've had to edit some of them out 😅

As mentioned in the fic notes, Voryn's robe was heavily inspired by this picture, which I found while searching for blue+gold looking for something to spark a mental image. The cording was inspired by the teal robe in game (the one everyone steals off Tarhiel's body) because if you squint, the butterfly-shaped decorations could be cording? IDK.

Some people are harsh towards women. I saw it for myself when I became my mother's retainer.
This was something else I went back and forth about. The TES games are not super consistent about how much sexism there is - and especially how much is 'in universe' as opposed to coming from the writers. Is the fact that every faction leader in Morrowind is a man and that, for example, the Hlaalu and Redoran use terms like 'brother' and 'father' as official ranks supposed to indicate that Vvardenfall still has sexism, or was it just the writers not thinking about the subject in 2002? But there are a few comments that are clearly meant to be in-universe, so I ultimately kept this line in. (Plus the usual 'things might have changed over thousands of years'). Not like our world got rid of all gender discrimination by having female gods or political leaders, either.

They're a symbol of the Dagoth family in particular. His ancestors learned to brew comberry properly and how to refine the wine into brandy
All based on Endus giving you some. The scarabs are cool, but I wanted a little variety for the clothing descriptions.

Chapter 14:
This chapter got revised more than usual, since I received several comments on the previous one expressing confusion about what Nerevar was thinking. While nobody sounded upset (and to very clear, I appreciated the comments!), I realized that maybe it wasn't as easy to understand on the side of the readers as opposed to mine. I also considered that with the way the story has been expanding as I write, the original pacing I had in mind might not work as well when part of the story went from two chapters to five, and so things like Nerevar's thoughts remaining mysterious might get frustrating or make the slowburn feel like it's not going anywhere. Of course, I couldn't just stick in a nice clarifying conversation at this point in the story, but I did go through and add hints/change dialogue to try to both make it more clear why Nerevar is acting the way he is and also push the romantic arc forward a bit more.

For all his magical talents, Almalexia is better at restoration than he is
Voryn didn't have room for every magical skill in his main skill list, okay, he needed the spying and diplomacy skills in there.

"Councilor Dagoth Mirani," he says, remembering her name with no pause despite how they've hardly spoken in the past
Having a good memory for names is a good political skill to have.

Voryn having a high degree of control and refinement over his spells (and Nerevar being impressed by that) was another one of those ideas that developed kind of on its own during the writing of the story.

The whole rooftop scene was another favorite to write. The idea of them getting so close to what they want under the beautiful, spell-enhanced glow of stars but not quite there, while Voryn tries to tempt Nerevar despite knowing that it would hurt Almalexia, only for it to end in Voryn starting to lose patience with the game.

and he makes Ulmis smile with the same kind of tiny sparkling illusions that he remembers his parents producing for Araynys and Tureynul as babies.
This was inspired by a cute scene in an old favorite game of mine.

The conversation between Voryn and Nerevar by the lake definitely got the most revisions from its earliest version to try to hit the right balance of subtle but not so subtle that it was difficult to make out what Nerevar was feeling.

Voryn knowing from personal experience that even someone as devoted as Relmyna is liable to let their arm drop
Probably not quite in the same way as it happens in Nozaki-kun lol. The together umbrella can definitely be a bit tricky!

Chapter 15

More's the pity that he apparently doesn't keep a journal that Voryn could have looked through already.
Sanvedren didn't have the decency to leave a nice quest-relevant diary out 😔

I don't have a lot of commentary for this chapter, lol.

decided to fell the mushroom of their anger
I'm not entirely happy with this one, but I was trying to come up with an equivalent of "bury the hatchet".

He knows that Nerevar is going to reach for his hair long before it happens. Has shifted it over his shoulder to make it easier. And Nerevar takes his head off his hand, drops it to the chair back, and then moves it into the strands.
Fellow writers, you ever have one of those paragraphs where you have to work to not reuse the same word multiple times? This was one of those for me.