I really liked Fashav! It made me so sad when he had to get killed off T_T The guy made such an impact despite only being in the game for like 5 mins. I like to believe him and Kotallo became friends during their years as Marshals together, having good conversations and exchanging stories of their cultures and past over a game of Machine Strike or a good drink.
One of my favourite details about Marshal Fashav’s appearance is how sloppily his face paint is applied, like, my dude you’ve spent how many years as a Tenakth Marshal? but your white base layer is still A Mess and doesn’t even go past your ears
Nowhere else is it more clear that Tenakth face and body paint tend to be applied by different people. The paint on his body? Perfect. Pristine. Lines up with his tattoos neatly, will probably not come off for a week. His face? Streaky. Uneven. Probably applied with his fingers in about three seconds flat and drives his fellow Marshals to distraction every single day.
i’m really sad we never found out anything about fashav and avad’s relationship, actually, because avad Very Much never expresses an opinion about him, just polite platitudes, and fashav when told this is just goes “oh yeah, he’s very polite” in the most scornful way? lowkey?
like i get the vibe they did not like one another much and that’s fascinating! because i absolutely buy it! fashav is 100% a carja noble. he joined the military as a commander. he’s good at fighting and enjoys it. he’s a natural leader and despite having joined the tenakth retains a lot of carja attitudes — his diaries are full of slight surprise that the tenakth are not culturally inferior; he spots aloy and varl and is yelling Savage East in two seconds flat, i imagine that before his capture he was just — he was like nozar, he was like any other carja military commander. a snob, a soldier, full of superiority.
and avad is many things but he is not a soldier. fashav joined the military to try and take indirect action to stop jiran, but avad did not. in fact, the guidebook at least tells us avad was always uninterested in martial pursuits, and that’s a huge part of carja and especially carja noble culture. “he’s polite,” fashav says scornfully. avad didn’t do anything direct or obvious to try and stop jiran, at least not that fashav would have seen.
at the same time, though? avad kind of did. he made friends with ersa, a move that paid off in spades. and maybe he wasn’t planning on using her to raise a rebellion… but he sure helped her leave meridian (in the comics, with lots of military information in tow), and sure beelined to her for an alliance. a lot of carja rallied to him very quickly, and marad was feeding him information as he and ersa built up their army. hell, we know that avad spent two years planning, with vanasha’s help and support, to extract itamen from sunfall despite the carja constantly complaining and protesting that he was too weak and cowardly to actually fight the shadow carja. avad does do stuff, he just didn’t do anything that fashav, or the typical carja commander type, would see as acting. he didn’t sign up to fight. he didn’t say anything to jiran’s face.
so the vague animosity makes sense, but then you come around to the third side, which is: fashav wanted to be a diplomat. wanted to try to persuade the carja the tenakth were more than just bloodthirsty raiders and bring actual peace. his diaries talk of his love of books and learning. we know avad is a big reader: the palace is full of books. we know avad had spent his entire reign trying to not just have ceasefires but actively bribe and negotiate with every tribe he can for envoys and open borders and peace. they wanted the same thing! avad would have been incredibly open to fashav’s dream! and it’s just such a shame we never got to see the two of them interact, because they’re just so different and i can absolutely see why they’d be wary of one another, but ultimately they wanted the same things.
okay but like I need Hekarro to have kids because if there aren’t at least three or more toddlers trying to climb him like a jungle gym what’s the point of making him that massive of a man, I’m just saying
