Lore talk:Apprentice

Proposed Addition

On this archive from the official bethesda website, it is mentioned that the Apprentice is the Josian Kaid, and Vatasha was the one who came in first. Personally, because we use other bethesda website sources are official and authoritative (such as their timeline), I think this page should be adjusted to specifically refer to Josian in the box and introduction text. However, I understand the potential apprehension around canonizing a Hero name. Would a note be better? Mindtrait0r (talk) 07:18, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

An [nb] note would be better, the website just uses male pronouns so I wouldn't take it as a hard confirmation, but its still important to note. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 22:46, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

The hero being Josian/Vatasha

I take issue with this line: "The identity of the Apprentice's companion is determined by the gender the player chooses in Battlespire; Vatasha Trenelle if playing as a man and Josian Kaid if playing as a woman, suggesting either one of them is the Apprentice." The idea that the two apprentices are always Josian and Vatasha and that we just choose which one becomes the hero is appealing but I don't see the supposed suggestion here. It's not the same situation as something like Pokémon Ruby where there are two appearances to choose between and an NPC takes on the unused one, because in Battlespire we create a custom character who might have nothing in common with Josian/Vatasha besides gender. There's also no default name for the player character (I just checked this). Maybe when you pick female you are Vatasha, or maybe Vatasha then came third in the contest, or maybe she never existed. Neither the game nor any of the other sources imply anything of the sort in my view so I really wanted to rewrite it but I know canonical details of player characters in lore can get controversial. Maybe someone can justify it more clearly to me. Boustrophedon (talk) 00:51, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm in favor of keeping it the way it is. In truth, I think the page should say definitively that the Apprentice is Josian since the 10th Anniversary post confirms that the companion was female. To your credit there isn't anything that directly says that the Apprentice was either Vatasha or Josian, it's just a connection that we decided to make considering those are the two names associated with the two apprentices that ventured into the Battlespire who are canonically of opposite gender. We make this connection partly because of series precedent. You play as a preset character of sorts in Arena, where your character is specified to be named Talin and have an extensive backstory. Although you choose your name in the game, the given name takes priority. Such is sorta the same case here. We see both Vatasha and Josian and although we can choose to make our character different than what we see of the canon character, what we know about the characters takes priority. Mindtrait0r (talk) 01:27, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for replying so quickly. I think I do understand the argument a little better now, though I still disagree. It would be nice to see more people weigh in on this (or has this been discussed before elsewhere?); the article could do with a lot of improvements but I'm reluctant to touch it more without knowing the consensus on this. Boustrophedon (talk) 03:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)