((Skyrim OC and sidebar image by moonsbreath. Because of the influx of people, I can't make a follow prompt right away like I used to, but if you'd like to RP, let me know!))
There are some who say that The Morrigan was a powerful Breton Witch Queen that helped her people in their rebellion against the elves. They says she was as ruthless as she was beautiful and no elf wanted to see her face looking to them with eyes of heavy judgement. Always she was followed by a flock of crows and ravens that pick off the dead in the battle field and pluck out the eyes of her enemies. Her magic was unmatched even by the most skilled of elven magisters and she lay down proof that human mages were a force to be reckoned with. She was the prime and beautiful example of the upper limits and possibilities of Breton magic.
Currach is an insomniac, and even before his rebirth as a Briarheart, had much trouble sleeping. While he often made a point to remedy this through a bit of drink before bed, this habit stopped since his transformation. Since then, he has somewhat of an aversion to alcohol, and only barely sips it through special occasions.
tchy:
Cs are always hard. Always. There is no K in Irish. There are Cs making hard sounds, and Ss making soft sounds. However, if an S is next to an I or an E, it (almost always) sounds like SH. This is why Siobhán is anglicized as “Chevon.”
There are no Js in Irish either. A word with GE on the end ends with “ga.” Sometimes slender Ds slur into something like a J sound, but don’t freak out, that happens in English too.
The same thing happens with slender Ts. Sometimes they are more like our CH sound. But that also happens in English. Partly this is because English is weird and spells things terribly inconsistently but also this is because we are delightfully lazy with our mouths.
BH! BH is sometimes a W and sometimes a V. It is actually pretty intuitive most of the time which one it is! If it merges into a vowel that makes you open your mouth (the broad vowels, surprise surprise! A, O, and U), it is a W; otherwise it is probably a V. MH is much the same, but the W/V sounds are a bit softer.
DH, you can usually count on sounding like a Y. GH is sometimes like a Y and sometimes more like a mix between the G sound and an Irish CH. DH does that too, but not as much, and I’ve always found DH/GH pretty intuitive as well. Remember that broad/slender distinction.
TH and SH both sound like H. The TH one is a bit softer.
PH sounds like F. I think we got that from Irish.
If it ever seems like there are too many consonants strung in a row (after you’ve taken out the extraneous Hs), it’s probably because there is! You know how “Dublin” in an Irish accent sounds a bit like “Dubbalin?” Little half-consonants like that are a feature of Irish as well. You can just sort of slide an extra little sound in there. Remember though that some things that look like really solid consonants may not actually be! Y and W can be blurred pretty seamlessly into whatever vowel is nearest. This is why Medhbh is anglicized as “Maeve” and not as “Mayev.”
Vowel clusters tend to happen a lot in Irish. Largely that’s because of the broad/slender distinction—you have to have a way to mark whether a consonant is broad or slender, so you do that by making sure it’s got a padding of either broad or slender vowels (Is and Es are always slender, As, Os, and Us are always broad). Most of the time multiple vowels in a string can be kind of slid together. Once you get over the weirdness of trying to squish three vowels into one or one and a half syllables, these clusters are actually pretty intuitive as well! The UA in “tuatha,” for example, sounds mostly like “wa.”
The one vowel cluster that will seriously trip you up, though, is AO. AO sounds like “ee.” I know, it’s weird. You’ll get used to it. Just remember that Caoimhe is pronounced “Keeva” and you’ll be fine.
Disclaimer: I am not a native Irish speaker! I am not even particularly good at it yet, though I am trying to improve. Also these are just general guidelines, and will not apply either perfectly or all the time. This is just a rambly written lesson for English speakers who are really confused by all those extra Hs and want to make sense of this name they are staring at. I am not an authority on this! Do not take me as one.
HI THIS IS NECESSARY SORRY LEMME JSUT PUT THIS HERE))
Rémi loves meeting people and making friends, and will often try and make friends with those who would rather do him harm. But there is always a certain level of distance between him and everyone else, and he will occasionally feel it.
What I mean is, Rémi will sometimes feel as if there is something separating him from all the other people he calls his friends. Something that is impenetrable and vast. He can’t put a name to it, but he feels as if a barrier exists.
What that barrier is, in all reality, is two things. One is his childishness. As it is rare for children to form deep and true friendships with adults, Rémi has the same trouble.
Another is his state of undeath. It’s very very hard for Rémi to think of himself as being dead, or undead. But he doesn’t feel the wind, he doesn’t bleed, he can’t sweat and he doesn’t tire. There are just certain things he cannot experience, and cannot understand, and it’s much like never really being on the same level as everyone else.
He’s different, and there are times when he feels this so acutely that he grows upset. The only one who can understand this feeling is Currach, another Briarheart.
Rémi is not alive, so what will it be like when he dies?
((Reblogging because this also applies to Currach’s death as well :3))
After a Briarheart awakens from the ritual, newly undead and with barely any memories at all, they are given an explanation by the hagravens, so they may avoid panic. They are told of their home, their purpose, and their family.
However, since a Briarheart’s memory is so fragile immediately after waking up, they are none the wiser to the information being given to them. Most often, they do not remember anything about themselves, as the ritual is a ‘rebirthing’ of sorts. The hagravens then tell them their name, and it is very rarely the one they had before.
It is tradition to rename Briarhearts after parts of a ship or a boat, indicating that together, they are an unstoppable armada.
Rémi and Currach have such names.
Briarhearts are said to be imbued with a soul of vengeance when they are reborn, and consequently gain an insatiable bloodlust when they have not killed for a long period of time.
Currach is no exception, but he does not embrace the strength and aggression that many others of his kind easily embrace, and strives to keep himself under control. While he may never admit it, he does, on some occasions, snap. His “abstinence”, shall we say, from violence makes his relapses even more concentrated, resulting in a berserk rage where he kills everything in sight.
((This was my finals paper for my English 102 class. There were two rules for this paper:
1. It had to be a research paper.
2. It couldn’t be under eight pages, and couldn’t exceed ten.
I took advantage of my English professor’s rather nerdy nature, and when I emailed him my proposal document, I am 100% sure he squeed on the other side of the computer. He sure typed like he did :) Despite how excited I was to do this, studying for other finals procrastination gave me 3 days to finish it.
And so this happened. I know a few of you were looking forward to seeing it, so here it is! As usual, I have provided a GoogleDoc for those who have problems seeing it, or you can click on the “read more”. I couldn’t be as eloquent and thorough as I would have liked (as I was even typing it up on it the day it was due), but I think this is a good preview of only the tip of the iceberg of ideas I had. :)))
((Also known as Headcanon 10! This is somewhat of an OOC post in some places, so bear with me!
The portrait Sigrun requested from King Madanach was in part because an avid researcher of the Forsworn culture wanted to depict the truth about the Reachmen from his own experience living with them for a time in Bruca’s Leap. He promised Sigrun a manuscript of this book to send to Madanach (kinginrags.tumblr.com) so that he may read it over for accuracy.
It is also my massive (and I mean massive) headcanon on Forsworn culture (Etienne Arouet, a Breton, speaks for me, but even he presents his own beliefs on the matter and unless there is an OOC post directly from me, it’s in his character). It is somewhat lengthy, so I put it under a “read more”. I suggest you click this and then copy paste the content into Word, or check out my GoogleDoc copy of it, as I understand my layout font can be very small.
As usual, a headcanon is something that is canonical in my head. You are free to dispute it or even completely disagree with it; even adopt aspects of it, if you wish.
There are a few categories that you can use CTRL+F to find if you don’t want to read the entire thing. The categories are as follows:))
• Preface
• Reach Names
• Reach Ancestry
• The Forsworn Cause
• Reach Dialect
• Reach Holidays
• Reach Customs
• The Old Gods
• The Old Ways
• Reach Magic
• The King of the Reach
• End
Currach has complete heterochromia; one eye is a slate gray-blue, while the other’s a bright hazel.
He does not like the attention his eyes bring, and it is often why, if he’s not wearing his headdress, he has a tendency to look down or away. In fact, Currach dislikes most anything that diverts excess attention to him, and will go to great lengths to avoid these situations.
