No but like, I love just how tragic Dragon Age elves are. Yeah, yeah, it's a subversion of the usual elven interpretations of the graceful, fae-like species — BUT IT'S ALSO NOT!

They WERE like that thousands of years ago. They had a thriving, beautiful civilization where they were treated fairly, with decent gods, where they could live happily. Right?

That's also not true. Elvhenan was just as flawed, if not more, than the current Thedas of the games. Slavery was still there, so many social injustices, and the very vallaslin they wear in worship of their deities were the binding blood tattoos of said slaves.

But the Dalish have also reclaimed vallaslin, however unintentionally, into not only something to worship their deities, but a symbol of their fight, their people, who they are. Thing is, Dalish aren't exactly looked upon kindly — they're considered feral, savage, or just rumors. Myth. Any elf in the city is treated as lesser by the larger populace, and the Dalish are scrambling to discover/recover an ancient history they'll never understand without help from those in that ancient history. Long after Elvhenan fall, they're still looking for the last remnants of a home no one remembers.

Then, THEN, someone from that time reawakens after a millenia. Old, tired, worn, the one who felled the very gods they worship. Turns out he isn't the worst of them, far from it, but not worthy of worship either

That's good, though. Right? Surely he'll see the injustice brought upon them and hel-

Oh, wait, his goal to bring back the world he destroyed will result in the deaths of this current world? He considers everyone in this world a mistake, the elves nothing more than a reflection's reflection of the people he lost. Lesser. Stupid. Wild. Funny coming from a wolf, isn't it

The death of these people is only an inconvenience, like breaking a few eggs-

I know which egg I want to break

-or maybe the Inquisitor makes him think "Oh shit oh no, these are people too." That doesn't stop him, though. He's still going to tear down the Veil, probably resulting in the deaths of a significant portion of the population, if not everyone. Maybe he won't succeed in the future, I don't fucking know how DA4 is going to go down, but he's got elves from all over leaving to assist him.

If he's open about what he's doing the Dread Wolf doesn't lie, he misdirects, he evades, he poisons his tongue with honey, but he doesn't lie then that means these elves would prefer probably DYING. If he's not open about it, then they're being tricked. Played for a fool. Either way they lose.

The Dalish fought tooth and nail for their freedom, for the chance to find a new home and recover their culture and history long buried. They get a lot wrong, but fuck you, it's theirs, they've reclaimed it FUCK OFF SOLAS DON'T LOOK DOWN ON THEM FOR THIS, THEY'RE GOING TO BE ANNOYED IF YOU TELL THEM "hey you're wrong about the history you've work tirelessly to discover and maintain lol" AND LOOK DOWN ON THEM BECAUSE OF THEIR MISINTERPRETATION! Dumb fucking egg oml

Anyway I love the elves in Dragon Age and I love the tragedy of everything, but maybe slow down on that Bioware?? My heart can only take so much

to find yourself gazing through the looking glass at the people you are supposed to find belonging in, and feel alienated and even rejected by the people who are supposed to be your home--it hurts. Like, not to be overdramatic but i know this hurt, to a certain extent, i tried not to think about it too much cause it doesn’t matter, and not to rant about something unimportant again but...you know i just notice why im so attached to both noldor elves from tolkien’s universe and the elves from dragon age universe....it’s cause their stories embody diaspora experience. i have to say my diaspora experience doesn’t resemble what diaspora means in its original meanings, and my hurt honestly isn’t that big of a deal compare to what real hurt is other diaspora groups live through, but like, what im saying is that there is a reason bioware writers tried to parallel jewish/romanian/indigenous people’s experience with the experience of their fictional race of elves. of course they have done so quite poorly, these whites were trying to parallel this fictional race to three different nuanced ethnic/cultural experiences, and obviously that did not work out well when they were trying to impose this extremely generalized experience on a fictional race. And to be a fun police but it’s always questionable when people try to impose real marginalized and/or racialize groups’ experiences on fictional races, it’s always coming too close to exploiting real pain for entertainment instead of shining light on real issues.  i digress. Anyways, i have to say dragon age elves, specifically the dalish elves, resemble a simplified and perhaps semi-mystified version (yeah, not good) of the extremely nuanced indigenous experience in north america, but the recurring theme of loss of home, and the experience of living in “exile”--seeking the life your people had or could have had which has been “stolen” from you? i do think these themes comes from silmarillion and specifically noldor elves’ story (i mean, not to state the painfully obvious here, but dragon age elves are rebranded tolkien elves, probably more so than any other elves from other stories but im not going into all the other evidences right now). And it’s what makes noldor elves’ story so...sympathetic? to me? at least? Noldor elves are literally exiles ( they are specifically exiled from Holy Lands but i don’t really want to delve into what real world narrative that could have parallel because tolkien is catholic and im not jewish). Everything the noldors have done? they have done to ultimately seek justice for a life that’s stolen from them, it seems that they waged war on an unfathomable evil for the sake of three jewels, but it was never really about shiny stones. The jewels literally embodied the light that used to nurture the life that is stolen from them, the stones embody the bliss and comfort of a stolen home. And in a desire of carving out their own justice and their own fate outside the influence of deceiving gods, they have lost their innocence. And it was where their tragedy begins and ends.  Diaspora, in its original meaning, is inherently tragic. It means to be in exile, to be rejected from home. And noldor elves’ story embody all the tragic connotation of diaspora. And i suppose, for better or worse, dragon age writers just took that and decide to shape it into a parallel to indigenous experience? But the thing about noldor elves that make me like them more than dragon age elves is that, while i feel for both of these fictional races because of their deeply human experiences, at the end of the day noldor elves’ stories don’t resemble any specific marginalized groups’ experiences. They have their own story, and that story does not exploit real pain--at least as far as i can understand it. their pain is deeply reletable and it makes them sympathetic but the story itself is not bordering exploitative? 

a fading world

Something that I think people tend to miss about LoTR is that it’s post-apocalyptic.

In the War of Wrath at the end of the Silmarillion, large swaths of Middle-Earth (the parts that are called Beleriand) are utterly destroyed. (here’s a map of that; we have no idea of the Southern coastline, or how much area south of Beleriand was destroyed in the War of Wrath.)

In the Akallabêth, the island country of Númenor (at the time, the major population center of men and the hub for civilization and invention) is sunk. It was more than twice the size of the UK in terms of physical size, and with a population easily numbering in the millions; if you accept the early canon of The Lost Road, they had just invented steel-plated ships (equivalent to the early 1800s of our world), and directly after their sinking invent some form of airship (blimps were invented in the mid-1800s of our world, and airplanes in approximately 1900, which coincide with this estimate), putting them only one or two hundred years away from inventions such as plastic, machine guns, movies, robots, radio, nuclear bombs, and the internet. For reference, The Hobbit--with all its pre-industrial charm and its battles fought with sword, bow, and axe--takes place just over three thousand years later.

The world is changed. It has changed physically: Beleriand and Númenor are no more. Its people have changed: the Entwives are gone, the Petty-Dwarves are gone, the Elves are fading and leaving for Valinor, the Ents are falling asleep, the Dwarf population is declining, the Hobbits are fated to slowly disappear over the course of the next age. Even height and lifespan have decreased, just as the magic in the world has: Thingol, who was created rather than born, was likely around eight feet tall; Galadriel, who was born in the First Age, was 6’4; Legolas, born in the Second or Third Age, was shorter than both Aragorn (6’6”) and Boromir (6’4”). The first King of Númenor lived to be 500; Tar-Vanimeldë, third queen and sixteenth ruler, lived to be 360; their heir, Aragorn, lived to be 210, and is noted for his long life. This slow diminishing can be seen in everything from swords (ancient swords are valued in combat much more than newer weapons, even though the opposite makes more intuitive sense, as weapons can acquire damage through use, implying that older swords were made better or have other qualities that make them superior; it is noted in FotR that only swords from the Elder Days glow in the presence of orcs, implying that bladesmiths have decreased in ability, knowledge, or both) to trees (Telperion, which gave out a light brighter than the sun or moon, is the direct ancestor of the White Tree of Gondor). In all things, the trajectory is the same: once, the world was great; now, it is not, and it is shrinking all the time.

Perhaps the most poignant example of this for me is the Song of Durin, sung by Gimli as the Fellowship passes through Moria. He describes a glorious kingdom, lit by lamps of crystal, with floors and ceilings of silver and gold, with magic carved into every door, occupied by craftsmen and bards alike--as they walk through its stony ruins in the dark. The world was young, the song starts, and the next stanza begins with The world was fair; the last stanza, on the other hand, starts with The world is grey. Khazad-dûm, the place the song is about, is renamed Moria, meaning literally ‘black pit’. This is the message: Once, the world was beautiful and young. Now it is old and dark. Stars that once were “as gems” are now “sunken”. Gondolin has fallen; Nargothrond has fallen; Doriath has fallen; Nogrod and Belegost have fallen; Eregion has fallen; Moria has fallen; Erebor has fallen; Minas Ithil has fallen--honestly, it would be faster to list the cities in the legendarium that don’t fall than to list the ones that do. The greatest city of the Third Age, Minas Tirith, is dwindling, but its name means simply “Watchtower”--when it was built, it was not a capital or a great city, just a place for guards to keep watch.

Looking at the world in order, the heroes that are focused on grow--both physically and narratively--smaller and smaller, with less and less power: we move from focusing on Eru Himself in the Aindulindalë to the Ainur in the Valaquenta, and then the High Elves of the Silmarillion, the Númenorean Men of the Akallabêth, the hobbits in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. We go from focusing on God and his angels to focusing on immortal kings and princesses with songs of magic to focusing on more ‘ordinary’ human kings and queens, until finally we arrive at the story of a middle-aged villager with no special abilities to speak of.

Even evil has decreased. The Sauron we see in Lord of the Rings is the bodiless shadow of the Sauron of the First Age--who is still but a servant to the greater evil, Morgoth, that drives the plot of the Silmarillion. Smaug is the last of the dragons.

In the Silmarillion, wars were won by beings near-godlike in power, sinking continents into the ocean and damaging the moon. In Lord of the Rings, war is won by a young man, armed only with a dagger, a friend, and a staggering amount of hope. The narratives of the world are changing from grand epics to personal stories of individuals, and the shining past is forgotten, or remembered only as story or song.

This isn’t necessarily good or bad inherently. (Well, except the fall of Númenor. The fall of Númenor was a terrible tragedy. But that’s material for a different post.) Lots of evil in Middle-Earth comes from people trying too hard to hold on to a past that has disappeared; lots of goodness comes from the small, dirty hands of a gardener. But it’s important, when looking at Middle-Earth in comparison with other fantasy settings, to remember: this is not a world full of wonder and magic on its rise. This is a world where grandeur is slowly but surely dying.

Voltron/Dragon Rider AU - History and World Building

In a far off galaxy (no, this is not Star Wars), there are three planets that share an orbital area around a single star.

The first planet, and smallest of the three, is Altea, home of the Alteans, or as they're known to others races, the immortal and magic-wielding elves. But these designations are generally formed in ignorance. While "magic" does exist, the Alteans have evolved to understand how it works and formed an alchemy of science around its existence. Their magic is fueled by quintessence, or the life force of all living things. Magic aside, they're also developed astronomically as well, and discover that there are two other planets that orbit their star that could feasibly support life. And so they develop an alchemaic technique that will allow them to travel from one to the other.

The first planet they travel to is Daibazaal, the largest in their two neighbors. It's there that they find other intelligent life—the nomadic, carnivorous people that call themselves the Galra. Though the Galra pride themselves on their warrior ways, they eventually come to understand where the elves came from, and so the two races slowly begin to work together, the Alteans traveling from one tribe to another, teaching the Galra what they know until, hundreds of years later, the Galra are as advanced and united as the Alteans, albeit without the ability to use magic, as only the elves seem to be capable of that feat.

Which allows the Alteans to set their sights on the third of their neighbors—Terra—without Galra interference. From the high council back on Altea, the elves decide to send a new team to finally investigate the remaining planet. Which is where they discover a third race of intelligent life, the Humans. Like the Galra, their lack of magical connection provides them short lifespans, but they're hard working and further ahead technologically than the Galra were at first contact. Which actually proves to make things more difficult for the Alteans. While the elves could help shape and form the civilizations of the Galra, despite inherent differences in their customs, the humans have already formed civilizations. Unlike the Alteans, however, who naturally valued peace, the humans use their societies to fight amongst themselves in great wars—a development the Alteans prided themselves on being able to prevent within the Galra civilization.

Hundreds of cities, thousands of troops—the humans were a strong and powerful force, and most who the Alteans spoke with had more interest in their own ends than any of the Altean prompts at world peace.

Though their lifestyles seemed chaotic to the elves, the humans were not completely without their merits. The elves, who prided themselves on having a deep understanding of both animals and nature, were fascinated not only with the humans' ability to domesticate wild animals, but to utilize them in a way that served the humans (who were omnivorous) in a fashion besides a food source (something the Alteans were strictly against, but had come to accept was necessary to other races, like the Galra). Most Altean animals, like the elves themselves, were magical and impossible to tame, let alone domesticate. But humans used oxen to pull and dogs to guard and cats to hunt and horses to ride. But the most fascinating of their domestications were the dragons. Amongst their most elite warriors, the humans had dragon riders—the masters of great beasts that soared through the sky with a regality that none could match.

The bronze-scaled dragons of Terra reminded the elves greatly of a similar beast from their own planet. The most magical beast that existed more as an ethereal silhouette than anything physical. The Altean alchemists were so interested that they began to research the similarities between the two, striking up alliances with the dragon riders and their lords, who were interested in learning how to harness Altean magic for themselves. After hundreds of year of research, these endeavors eventually ended in the creation of the Colored Dragon Eggs (The High Dragons, The Rainbow Dragons, they have many names). While the dragons that humans domesticated were similar to horses in their intelligence, the Alteans couldn't know for sure what would hatch from the eight colored eggs that had been born from their magic: White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and Black. And though they practiced all the same hatching protocols the humans had generations of knowledge in, the eggs didn't hatch.

The Alteans slowly lost hope that their experiments would be a success, and so the colored eggs were eventually forgotten—stored away and left to the dust.

Meanwhile, the Galra had progressed enough technologically to form tighter alliances with the planet-hopping Alteans. So while the humans were still considered difficult to manage (if not impossible), the Galra had been formed into the perfect allies. So perfect they seemed—again, despite cultural differences—that the elves soon began to bring Galra into their dealings on Terra.

The Galran society had always functioned in a hierarchy. Animals were for consumption and though all Galra were equal in the sense that they were above the animals, there was a class system that they seemed to naturally align themselves with. And at the top of this class system, the Alteans had always resided, at least in the psyches of those who knew no different. And so the humans—who refused to bend to the "superior" Alteans, who continued to fight amongst themselves for no logical reason—were baffling to the Galra.

But they also planted the seeds of new ideas. Gradually, the Galra began to resent their elven overlords. Humans viewed themselves as equal to the elves, and so began to look down on the Galra as well. But through these ideas, the Galra began to question their own positions. The Alteans—with new ideas of greed and power also inspired by the humans—began to treat their underlings poorly, those who spent generations away from the Altean home world most guilty. Their lack of consideration for life and lack of respect for magic slowly stripped away at their long lives. The Galra began to grow restless, and at the promptings of human friends, started rebelling on Terra. The news of this spread to Daibazaal, slowly inspiring the other Galra as well.

Until tensions were so high that the Alteans feared war would break out—something unheard of in the long history between the Galra and the elves. And so, taking an example from their human allies, they tightened their shackles on the Galra. But this only made the Galra more resentful.

A young rebel of high birth named Zarkon began to lead the resistance on Terra. Though he was married to an Altean, he won his people over, as well as many humans who were looking for any leader besides their corrupt lords and the failing dragon riders. Though he tended to leave the human kingdoms intact, Zarkon began to push the elves—many who had lived on Terra hundreds of years and for multiple generations—from human lands.

And it was through his alchemist wife that he discovered the discarded High Dragon Eggs. They were buried away, cold and alone, but Zarkon felt himself drawn to them nonetheless. And upon touching one, the egg suddenly began to crack with life.

Soon, a dragon was finally born from the egg. But this was like no simple-minded human dragon. It's thoughts and yearnings were connected to Zarkon, an instantaneous bond formed between them that no alchemy could explain.

The dragon grew and Zarkon became the first Galra to become a dragon rider, his dragon the first of such a dazzling color and the first to possess a magic all its own. With a dragon on his side, he was able to gather the feeble minded lords of Terra and what remained of the dragon riders to his side, making it possible to finally overthrow the Alteans from Terra. Before his wife opened a pathway to Daibazaal and Zarkon marched his armies—human, galra, and elf alike—across his home world, banishing the Alteans back to their own planet.

Much unrest and tragedy resulted from the rebellion, but the council of elves was still full of wisdom and they feared the anger residing in both the galra and humans. They presented a treaty instead, one that was able to please the humans and galra, which inspired peace to return.

Zarkon was put on the Galra throne, and through the influence of his magical dragon, he was given long-life. Life he swore to use as a means to uplift the broken and oppressed, and banish those who sought to hurt. Many gathered to his cause—galra, human, and elf alike--and soon the other seven eggs—which had never displayed any reaction previous—began to hatch to riders. Their magical abilities gave those they chose long life, as well as other gifts, and for many eons, Zarkon and his riders kept peace across the three planets.

But in the waning long-lives of the elves and advent of the High Dragon Riders’ immortality, they began to become gods in the eyes of the common folk. Alfor, rider of the red dragon and inherited ruler of Altea (having inherited more and more power, despite objections on his side, as the council succumbed to age and died) saw the fault in this mindset and warned the other riders that they were becoming outdated with the wants of their people. But Zarkon disagreed, feeling that all people, no matter the generation, always felt the same waves of feelings and that through their continued rule, they would assure that no unrest arose.

Despite their differing opinions, Alfor and Zarkon continued to fly together, but Alfor began to notice a change in his friend as the decades passed. In Honerva too, Zarkon’s wife and one of the few elves left whose connection to magic was strong enough to grant them exponentially long lives. They both began to lose focus, becoming more interested in alchemy and quintessence research than the needs and wants of the people. It was too little too late that Alfor realized they'd both succumbed to quintessence poisoning and addiction. It was an old Altean ailment that those who practiced too much alchemy too often and at too high a volume would sometimes suffer from. Alfor tried to help them, tried to warn them of their ailment, but they did not heed him. It was only once Honerva fell ill that Alfor thought Zarkon saw reason.

Zarkon gathered the riders together in one place on the pretense of needing help to rid himself and his wife of their addictions. But it was a trap. Three riders and their dragons fell to his blade that day. The others managed to escape, but not before realizing Zarkon’s intentions. In order to help Honerva, he needed an insurmountable amount of quintessence to open a portal to the astral plane. Riders and their dragons could easily provide that life force. He managed to open the portal, but Alfor feared what would happen once it closed, seeing as he could only imagine it would need to be opened again to satisfy Zarkon and Honerva's need—even if that was centuries down the line. He took advantage of the vulnerability presented when Zarkon went to the other realm. He used his own magic to zap Zarkon's dragon of its quintessence, killing its physical body, before then doing the same to the remaining riders. He repeated the process with his own dragon as well, despite his heartache, and reformed the quintessence into new eggs, which he then sent away to be hidden.

Zarkon flew into a rage upon learning what had been done. So severe was his anger that he nearly destroyed the Galran civilization in search of those who had betrayed him. And when he didn't find them on the desolated Daibazaal, he spurred Honerva to create a path to Altea, where he effectively destroyed the elven civilization and murdered King Alfor. Soon, the rest of the remaining riders met the same end. Yet Zarkon knew that the dragons’ quintessence had only been hidden away—that much power couldn't just disappear without notice (the astral portal hadn't exactly been small, after all), and so his new goal became an obsession—find the dragons, wherever they were. When he couldn't find them on Daibazaal or Altea, he moved his search to Terra, effectively destroying the civilizations there as well with his loyal galra armies.

The dragon riders, which had become strong again in the advent of the High Riders, tried to fight back, but they fell to the sheer number of the Galra. Cities on all three planets were burned to the ground, millions killed, unknowable amounts of knowledge lost. Civilization was not only destroyed, but pushed backward under Zarkon's iron-fist rule.

The elves retreated into their woods, keeping low profiles as their planet overgrew with animals and foliage. Soon, elves were nothing more than fairytales—something none truly believed existed. The humans, though they lived in bitter resentment of the Galra, also swore fealty to them if only to save their skins, and so became all but slaves to their constant overlords.

The worlds, it seemed, had come to a standstill, while Zarkon—ever ageless—continued his never-ending search for the dragons Alfor had taken from him.

Thousands of years passed. The humans grew restless, as they always did, and their rebellions were led by copper and bronze flocks of dragons. The elves remained silent.

A human prisoner—a dragon rider—tries to escape a galra prison. He goes to find his dragon, but it's long been murdered for whatever price its hide and bones could provide.

He finds a claw in the dragon room, one he knows belonged to his dragon.

And it is there that he sees it, the shiny black stone that had been rolled into a corner. Seemingly unimportant, yet he feels himself drawn to it.

He lays a hand on its surface.

A single crack appears beneath his palm.

A planet away, a princess suddenly opens her eyes after thousands of years of enchanted sleep.

Let me know what you guys think! I’ll be posting character outlines and dragon outlines soon too :D

NAME: Strider (Corridav “Dave” Strider) LEVEL: 77 RACE: Altmer / Aspect of Auri-El AGE: 26 BIRTHDAY: 3 Evening Star, 4E 175 BIRTHSIGN: The Thief HOMETOWN: Sunborn, Isle of Summerset, Alinor CURRENT RESIDENCE: Jorrvaskr, Whiterun, Whiterun Hold, Skyrim OCCUPATION: Harbinger of the Companions

                                                      SPELLS

CONJURATION:

Bound Sword Soul Trap Flaming Familiar

DESTRUCTION:

Flames Firebolt Fireball

RESTORATION:

Healing

                                                   BACKGROUND

Auri-El is the soul of Anui-El, who, in turn, is the soul of Anu the Everything. In his only known moment of weakness, he agreed to take his part in the creation of the mortal plane, that act which forever sundered the Elves from the spirit worlds of eternity.

Under the name of Corridav, taking the form of an albino Altmer, the avatar of Auri-El was born in the same year that the White-Gold Concordant was ratified, into an era of relative peace between the Aldmeri Dominion and the Third Septim Empire. Before his third year, his father spirited him away from what had once been called the Summerset Isles, posing as his “elder brother” whilst walking across the whole of Tamriel; through Valenwood, Cyrodiil, and finally Skyrim they walked, until the two Altmer known as the Striders were known through the entirety of the world. Through cold, rain, and storm, the pair trekked, not stopping until they arrived in Whiterun. Auri-El’s brother immediately brought them to the doorstep of Jorrvaskr, imploring entry and membership to the Companions of Ysgramor.

For years, the boy trained, to the point that even fellow Companions believed the elder pushed his “sibling” too far, but their advice fell on deaf ears. No matter how close to death Auri-El was driven, still he resisted the call of mortality. When at last the eldest of the pair joined the Circle, accepting the scourge of lycanthropy into his blood, he led his son into the Underforge, forcing him to take communion in lupine blood, turning him, too, into a werewolf.

Reckless as he was, it was not long until Auri-El’s father fell in battle, leaving the young son, newly made a werewolf, alone in the hall of the Companions. He took the name that they had been dubbed on their travels as his own, becoming known simply as Strider. Kodlak Whitemane, Harbinger of the Companions, took Strider under his wing; the young mad had the ferocity, independence, conscientiousness, and fiery heart of every member of the Circle, making him a perfect disciple and heir to the Harbinger name. For years he learned from Kodlak, and for years alongside his Harbinger he searched for a cure against Hircine’s blood.

There came a day when a member of the Circle, Skjor, became too blinded with anger. He invaded a camp of werewolf hunters called the Silver Hand, dying to their sterling blades. Not long after, the Silver Hand found the gall to attack Jorrvaskr itself, and in their attack, Kodlak was caught, falling against hunters who could not fathom the strength of soul that they had stolen. The Companions moved promptly to eradicate them, removing them from Skyrim once and for all, so never again would such a tragedy befall their hall. But the damage was done -- Kodlak had died yet a werewolf, and his heir apparent was Strider.

The mortal-guised Aedra’s first act as advisor of the Companions was to fulfill Kodlak’s dying wish and cleanse his soul. To the tomb of the first Harbinger the Companions went, and under Ysgramor’s crypt, Kodlak’s spirit was freed of Hircine’s grip. The Companions left forged anew, the Skyforge above their hall burning brighter than it had in centuries.

Now, Strider leads from Jorrvaskr and from the battlefield, protecting each hold as though it were his own whilst dragons rain death from the skies. There is word that the World-Eater has returned, that time itself has begun to unravel from the Throat of the World. Nirn is becoming undone. On the wind there come whispers of a Dragonborn. But whispers do not win wars. The Companions do.

Due to being the aspect of a god (or the ghost of one), Strider is effectively immortal, though he is susceptible to the same weakness that dragons have to Elder Scrolls.

As he is a rather young incarnation of the God of Time, Strider has little control over his mastery of time, and indeed remains entirely unaware of it, though he uses it subconsciously when focusing with a bow (Steady Hand perk) or blocking an attack (Quick Reflexes perk).

At the height of his strength, Strider would be capable of causing a Dragon Break, as he carries the essence of Akatosh, the Nordic variation of Auri-El.

Though he is incapable of Thu’um at this early stage of godhood, as an aspect of Auri-El and Akatosh, Strider holds a Dragon Soul. If killed by the Last Dragonborn, they would absorb his soul into their own, much as they do with other dragons.

Despite being eventually capable of Thu’um and holding a Dragon Soul, Strider is not a Dragonborn. He merely has the inherent ability to learn Thu’um through meditation, as the Greybeards do. He does not have the soul-siphoning abilities associated with being Dovahkiin.