((Oops. Can someone put a morning ban on me from the forums in effect until after 8am? This is what always happens. :( ))
Hellblazer - No, I understand what you are getting at, but think it's pretty as stated, that a devout follower of Ilsare would have a hard time meshing the core of the skaldic traditions with what she's all about. It has nothing to do with birthplace, though people from the north are more intimately familiar with the practice and their deity is awesome for skalds anyway, nor is it about the RL practices of the skald. But there's a lot of room under the devout tag, you know?
Like, when Acacea was a lot lower leveled, there were still seemingly infinite branches of places she could go - I like low leveled characters because they still have so many things left open to them and you never quite know where they're going to end up. She had encounters with the intelligence branch and was a likely candidate for the MAS. She almost went Shadowdancer, not in the manner of the shady darkness obsessed people but in the kind of way of a performer dancing in and out of sight on the borders of light and shadow, the only hint of her presence being the sound of bells chiming as she disappeared... sort of thing.
It also looked like she might go skald at some point. For a long time she almost exclusively used curse song, not bard song, and a lot of her so-called charm was in her attempting to take down and tear apart enemies a great deal larger than her. She didn't have the barbarian part, but she wasn't of northern traditions, just a tough runt with a bigger voice than outward appearances might show. (For those wondering where all that food goes in a tiny thing or why she doesn't knock herself out running around all the time...she has 16 CON now! That's where it goes!)
Anyway, she used a lot of discord in her abilities, not in lack of skill but in purposeful targeting of enemy ears to make them fumble or cause them pain. The ilsarians didn't like her to practice (in joking or seriousness, usually the former trying to be 'scary' or 'fierce') near their garden, because while it was useful, and perhaps even on its way to becoming skilled, it was not beautiful. It really had nothing to do with it, and there was a teeny bit of miff about shattering the harmony of the temple with some dissonant vocal acrobatics.
I like Dorand because he's a god of functional beauty. That's not to say elves don't like their things to function, but it is not the function itself that is necessarily beautiful to them. As Fuller's quote goes, "When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." I always thought it was appropriate to the god of the crafts, regardless of what craft it is, as long as you are creating something. Dwarves don't often make things to be pretty, but there are masterwork dwarven pieces that are beautiful... kind of approaching it from the opposite direction.
Rambling, right? Cool, it's 6AM, cut me some slack... Anyway. I think what I was getting at was that I have a hard time seeing a skald being as anyone whose goals mimic that of the Ilsarians. I think the followers are often misrepresented as being empty headed and shallow, which is not the case - all faiths have their best and worsts and stereotypes and should all be OOC assumed to have more layers than appearances show - but their path just starts at the opposite end of a skald's. What is the goal and purpose of the skald, when you get right down to it? To wreak havoc and destruction with his voice. To any observer that appreciates someone who is a master of their craft, a skald too is a beautiful thing, as a weapon master in mid-combat is a deadly beautiful sight. But is that the goal or purpose of either of them? To be beautiful, in love of things that please and inspire the senses to better the soul, etc? To praise the elven muse and bring love and harmony? I think no. Tough nut to crack.
It is not an unsurmountable barrier of course, for those who aren't clerics. Yes, having it in the deity field implies a degree of devotion beyond mere lip service, whatever form it may take, but the devotion goes from self up, with no connection at the other end. There is no grace to fall from, no goddess to withdraw her hand. It is more likely that one might strive to master it in a way pleasing to Ilsare, and on the road to doing so, just slip further and further away from Her even while still considering himself devoted, until at some point in life he just kind of realizes that his road forked somewhere back there.
So the only question left to me is a more general one - how malleable is the vision of prestige classes? Base classes can, in my opinion, be done a thousand different ways and serve any purpose with imagination, but PrC's seem focused towards a more singular path. How much can you bend them before you break them? A bard can fill a thousand roles in various cultures, but can a skald? Could one write a bard sub who, later in life, became so exquisitely skilled in his beautiful music that he could not only inspire his allies to the heights of bravery, but also rend an enemy to his very death, while still playing with the endless nuances of aesthetic harmonies?
It almost sounds rhetorical, though it wasn't originally. I don't think the PrCs bend as far as base classes do, even though I would be the last to not desire imagination in their pursuit. I think the skaldic traditions on Layo remain an art that can be approached from several different angles... but with the same general purpose - wreaking destruction with a more primal form of sound. I actually have a hard time imagining ANY elven (or dark elven) skald, just because both races seem so proud of a more refined beauty, even if one is of the more dark and sinister variety :) It's not prevented, just kind of, hmm...something to think about.
(FYI, because I've seen how OOC answers in threads somehow end up as in game stereotypes aimed to make things look ridiculous... I don't think Ilsarians necessarily hate skalds, I just think that they're not skalds, that they just follow different principles of life. Of course some stuck up elves that also worship Ilsare would consider most to be unrefined brutes, but that's different. :P Key word, stuck up!)