Avallac'h

❛We are the same as you... Because we equally believe that we are better than others❜

new portrait of one of my fav characters✧ :-゜・．

Outfit of Avallac'h for chapter 18. 💎

Elves love to dress up, and I love creating outfits for them. :D

Intellectual dominance.

Inspired by this post. Accordingly, it was done in its own way.

He didn’t even deign to reply. He passed her by unceremoniously and walked off along the avenue of statues.

‘Or you, perhaps?’ she yelled. ‘If you want I’ll give myself to you! Well?

Won’t you sacrifice yourself? I mean, they say I’ve got Lara’s eyes!’

He was in front of her in two paces. His hands shot towards her neck like snakes and squeezed like steel pincers. She understood that if he’d wanted to, he could have throttled her like a fledgling.

He let her go. He leaned over and looked into her eyes from close up.

When we talk about Ciri, we don't talk much about her own latent ability to see/predict the future, and what it could imply. It's Sunday morning; time for a tea cup theory sesh.

So, coming off Dune - a clear influence on some storylines and characters in the Witcher - could Ciri's capacity for prescience (foresight, prophecy, visions) have blocked her choices and actions from being accurately predicted and seen by someone like Avallac'h who - as an Aen Saevherne - otherwise has abilities almost identical to Kwisatz Haderach?

Was Ciri's escape from Tir ná Lia a certainty or a probability?

It's noted in Dune, how prescients are more or less blind to the movements of other figures with foresight, because people with oracular powers act on the information from the future and actively alter the future this way (disrupting the ability of other prescients to accurately predict the future). They stand "outside" the vision in lieu of an inherent ability to introduce variance in it.

A clairvoyant can't even necessarily see the definite future, but they can see Time so totally (the "when" is not a place), all its possibilities included, that they can create the future; matching, at that, with their goals. They are like ultra-heavy bodies in a field, warping it around themselves. However, if there are those standing outside of the vision, then dictating the future is not entirely possible, for there will always be unknown agentic elements that can turn the tides.

Ciri would be such an element in Avallac'h's and the prescient elves' prophecies and vision of time eternal.

I am pointing to this lore crossover, because let's face it, the Bene Gesserit and later Leto II's breeding programmes are exactly the kind of thing that was done in regard to Hen Ichaer, the Elder Blood, among elves. Breed prescient beings capable of seeing the past, present, and future (i.e. time total; the now) AND moving themselves in time and space (that's the Aen Saevherne) AND from time to time get a Chosen One for whom it's possible to open the Great Gate of Time (that's Lara's would-be child or Ciri's children). Secondly, Ciri, the child of destiny and hope, is so because of a kind of 'uncertainty field' that surrounds her -> she is, arguably, the most agentic, free will-questing character in the tale. The story ends up being about (ensuring) her ability to choose - to doom, to save, to act as she wills regardless of her parentage, powerful actors' manipulations, or the world's expectations.

(Sure, The Witcher is reeeeeaalllly loose with its causal structure (things go the way they go because magic aka "the will of the author, who plays within folklore tropes and story analogues", mostly); it has nothing on Dune in this regard. We can have a classical mechanics Ciri, a quantum-Ciri, or a magical/literary-Ciri. But the ambiguity allows for crossover-theories like this one, so that's fine by me.)

At Tir ná Lia, Ciri has visions of a future where things unfold without her interference: Yennefer drowns, Geralt freezes to death. It's not conscious foretelling, it's inherent to her thanks to her genes. Genes of elven Sages, who see past, present & future - total time.

Considering the aim of the Golden Path then, an analogy: one hypothetical result of the mutations introduced into Elder Blood via mixing human genes with elven ones results in Laplace's demons (Sages) creating a mutation in their own genotype down the road that even the demons themselves can no longer predict.

Making Ciri a Child of Hope in the sense of a truly free, indeterminant wild card, the nature of whom enables uncertainty in the outcomes of the fates of others connected to her choices. Because she herself remains elusive to actors who've a hand in tracing the blueprint of the universe, an act which in itself creates a future that cannot be avoided. The mutant Ciri is a genuine child surprise.

"A universe of surprises is what I pray for!" - Leto II

Analogously to Dune, where the end goal of the Golden Path is for humanity to be rendered undetectable by prescient beings and given a chance to survive by remaining outside of the constraints of a deterministic universe. By, what looks like, evolving a free will.

Eredin: Bringer of Death

Painting process↓↓↓

this might be a bit controversial but the Good Guys wouldn’t stand a chance against the Wild Hunt under 100% fair circumstances - as in not taking out Imlerith while he was under the influence and not battle-ready, teaming up on Caranthir or forming an alliance with Eredin’s literal viceroy. also here is a little parallel that summs up both side’s attitude pretty well imo

(dont get me wrong i am not trying to shit on the Good Guys for literally fighting for their lives, i just think that the way the Red Riders never fight dirty goes underappreciated)

Concept art of Lara Dorren aep Shiadhal.

eredin recieves fanart.

Elven sorcerer.