ofcadash

[ofcadash]

shieldtheself​.

whereas andraste’s face is cold and unchanging, the inquisitor’s is warm with life and, for that, all the more beautiful. the indecision that sat like a stone in his stomach thaws into fondness. ❛ i’m whatever you need of me, be it a strong sword - arm or an ear to bend. ❜

blackwall turns away from the display to face naraka. ❛ my apologies in advance if i burst into flames, ❜ he begins with his smile, as slight as it is, edging toward wry. were they not alone, the blasphemy he’s about to commit would surely merit a scolding from any one of skyhold’s chantry sisters. ❛ the gods can wait, ❜ he says. ❛ and until you’re ready to answer them, know our belief in you is certain. that, inquisitor, you will never need to question. ❜

      THE GODS CAN WAIT. It was a powerful sentiment, more so coming from a believer. Somehow, it managed to weigh in her chest AND lighten the load on her shoulders.

      --- No, not lighten it. The weight was never so heavy as when she was reminded of THEM; everyone. The INQUISITION that had chosen to turn to Naraka for leadership, and the world outside of it turning to her for DELIVERANCE. But it was easier, as Blackwall reminded her she was not carrying it ALONE. The Inquisition leaned on her, yes, but they supported her also.

      That was easy to forget, to misplace in the sea of responsibilities of the HERALD and the INQUISITOR.

      She let the pause between them pass for a moment longer, and another moment after that, before a wry smile of her own twisted at the corners of her lips.

      “Well, I’m glad to see you haven’t COMBUSTED yet. I kind of like you all in one piece like this.”

[ofcadash]

shieldtheself​.

if only she knew the man who truly stands beside her. if only he wasn’t a bloody coward. blackwall takes in the dejected cast of cadash’s eyes and his stomach with indecision.  ❛ … my mother was rivaini–came to the free marches in her early twenties, if i remember correctly, ❜ he says, his voice a rumble inside the quiet of the chantry. ❛ she believed in the natural order. ❜

maker, he hasn’t thought about her in years. blackwall slides his gaze back onto the statue. ❛ my father was a stout andrastian, ❜ and the eyes he inherited from the man, striking against his dark skin, are now lambent with candlelight. ❛ this world is full of gods, inquisitor. our belief feed them. ❜

he hooks his thumbs into his belt. ❛ they’re indebted to listen. ❜

@ofcadash » continued!

      “What if I don’t KNOW if I believe?”

      There were certain undeniable truths for seemingly EVERYONE surrounding the dwarf; the Maker created and abandoned them, Andraste was His wife, and Naraka was Their HERALD. But how can you herald for someone if you didn’t even know if They were real?

      Would the Maker believe in her, if she didn’t believe in Him? Would He even care?

      Staring at the Warden, helpless, Naraka slowly realized the weight she was putting on him and shook her head. “I’m sorry; this is a lot. You didn’t EXACTLY sign up to be a spiritual guide, did you?”

[ofcadash]

CATHERINE OF ARAGON AND EDWARD STAFFORD IN EPISODE 2.05 OF THE SPANISH PRINCESS, ‘PLAGUE’

[ofcadash]

celestiae; a dragon age oc multimuse.

featuring sabine van markham of the mortalitasi, lady aelia cousland, velani the bard, and athella amell the hero of ferelden, amongst others!!

©

[ofcadash]

Has your sense of style changed since you've assumed the role of Inquisitor?

      She gave up on holding on to bits of herself early on. Arguing with everyone who called her HERALD proved tiresome, and trying to explain that she didn’t follow their Maker, fruitless. Protesting didn’t make them see her for who or what she was; nobody would listen. It was easier to lose herself in what they expected of her. To give herself up.

      “My sense of style? Not really, no.” She didn’t think of it as her sense of style changing or shifting; what she thought looked good remained roughly static. But the Legion of the Dead armor is certainly not something she would have worn before, nor the formalwear from Halamshiral. Anything Josephine suggested to her when greeting nobles was as likely to find its place under her feet as on her shoulders. Deep down, buried under fine silks and clanking armor, Naraka Cadash was very much still herself.

      With one exception.

      “Orlesian lace, though... That’s--- very pretty.” 

[ofcadash]

🗣!

meme. // accepting.

NARAKA: My boyfriend is too tall for me to kiss him on the lips. What should I do? MORRIGAN: Punch him in the stomach. Then, when he doubles over in pain, kiss him. DORIAN: Tackle him. VIVIENNE: Dump him. SERA: Kick him in the shin. THOM: No to all of those! Just ask me to lean down!

NARAKA: I would never say this to Solas’s face, but I consider him one of my closest friends and I treasure his presence. BLACKWALL: Why wouldn’t you say that to his face?

BLACKWALL: What’s a thot? SERA: It’s a thoughtful person. [Later at dinner.] NARAKA: Here’s the salt, Blackwall. BLACKWALL: Thank you, my lady. You’re such a thot. SERA: [spits out water]

CASSANDRA: How do Blackwall and Sera usually get out of these messes? NARAKA: They don’t. They just make a bigger mess that cancels the first one out.

NARAKA: He died due to natural causes. THOM: You pushed him out of a tower! NARAKA: Gravity is natural.

[ofcadash]

Send me 🗣️ for incorrect quotes of your muse and mine

[ofcadash]

man trying to imagine naraka after the inquisition w/o solas’s shit is… so hard. trying to imagine what she goes to do, who she becomes. she stops being Naraka Cadash™ to instead become The Inquisitor™ so much that i really think she would have a major identity crisis after the inquisition

she wouldn’t want to go back to the carta—she would need to do something about her brother—but settling down is also Not Her, and even if it was, i don’t know if it’s something she would easily do. especially after seeing all the suffering she would’ve seen throughout the inquisition.

part of me would think that, if she romances thom and he dies w/ the wardens, she at some point just goes down into the deep roads and joins the legion tbh. like at least if she dies that way, then she can take a fuckload of darkspawn with her.

[ofcadash]

friendly reminder naraka feels TREMENDOUS identity issues before, during, and after her time as inquisitor, and she will gravitate towards people who help her feel like a real person with some level of agency

BEFORE the inquisition, she feels like everything she does is solely to survive and therefore none of her choices are truly hers to make. she doesn’t get to do something for the sake of doing something—she has to do it so she can eat or to keep her family safe. even her trip to the conclave

DURING the inquisition, all of her choices have such earth-shattering consequences that she doesn’t feel like ANY of them should really be her decision to make. but beyond that, she feels like she loses herself completely to the title of INQUISITOR. the title, the power, the BEING of the inquisitor is so much MORE than who she is that she feels like she can’t properly fill the persona. naraka cadash was never meant to be the kind of person that would be an INQUISITOR. she’s not important enough, not powerful enough, not… ENOUGH.

AFTER the inquisition, everything she’s fought for is gone. she refuses to go back to the carta where her choices are not her own, she doesn’t have an inquisition to lead anymore, but what’s she supposed to do? who is she supposed to be? who’s left without the carta, without the inquisition?

[ofcadash]

and now for something completely different

bc i get so sad thinking abt naraka judging thom. it was honestly probably the most heart-wrenching thing and fuckening aeron had been so hyped for that moment since i decided naraka was gonna romance “blackwall”

because the sense of betrayal was there, but it wasn’t by any means a driving force for her?? she didn’t want to punish thom for lying to her, she barely wanted to punish him for the crimes he had committed, let alone seek some sort of… personal retribution/vengeance for the fact that he had wronged her somehow??

in the end she struggled so hard to handle it the way the Inquisitor™ should handle it, not because she wanted to exact some sort of revenge against him but because she wanted to pardon him completely, and she knew that would be selfish of her.

she had given nearly every other criminal who had been brought before her either to the party they had wronged or into service with the inquisition, and at the end of the day… she wasn’t the one thom had wronged by claiming to be a warden. it wasn’t her treaties he had used or her name he had stolen, and it aches for her to give him to the wardens because she does know what’s going to happen, but they were the party who was wronged by his actions, from her perspective.

and it kills her. if i was more dramatic i’d say that was the last selfish piece of her that dies right then and it’s when she finishes stepping into the role of Inquisitor™

[ofcadash]

not me drawing parallels between naraka losing herself to being the Inquisitor in what feels like a hopeless bid to be a better person and thom losing himself to being blackwall in what feels like a hopeless bid to be a better person

[ofcadash]

holly: meta abt the events of the ameridan dlc naraka during all of that:

[ofcadash]

send me a topic to write a meta about my muse on

I might write anything from a paragraph to a whopping essay, but send me something you’ve noticed about my characterisation or just something you want to know about my muse and I will write what I can!

[ofcadash]

“All I’ve ever known to be true is a lie.”

meme. // accepting.

      “Does the Chantry teach you all how to be this DRAMATIC, too, or is that just a human thing?”

      She sighed (she seemed to be doing that a lot lately). She didn’t mean to be this rude or uncaring; she was just tired. It was like everyone around her was realizing what she had known all along; the Maker didn’t CHOOSE her. She wasn’t ANDRASTE’S Herald. Neither Chantry figurehead had sent her to be their savior; she was just UNLUCKY.

      “Look, everything you’ve ever known to be true ISN’T a lie.” She thought about reaching out to pat her arm or something, but there was nothing she could REACH from her stature that couldn’t be misconstrued. “Only I am.”

[ofcadash]

"I didn't expect to see you here of all places."

meme. // accepting.

      Naraka glanced over her shoulder at the sound of footsteps approaching, but when she realized it was Blackwall, she turned back to the statue of Andraste. Arms outstretched, face nigh unrecognizable, the original martyr. Is that what she would become? A symbol, the woman underneath lost to the years, if her actions were even remembered at all.

      A martyr. Not a person.

      He knew she didn’t believe, though. Andraste had been real enough, but the Maker? The all-powerful creator of everything who just... abandoned them. Regardless of whether he was real or not, Naraka wasn’t interested in worshipping him.

      “Well,” she sighed, her head dropping as she got up off her knees. “Figured I could use all the help I could get.” But as she looked up into the empty face of the figure before them, helpful wasn’t the feeling she was getting.

      “But I don’t think anyone’s listening.”

[ofcadash]

❝ I guess this is what they call a ‘hostile workplace’. ❞ beth about the deep roads probably

meme.

      The rock and stone closing in from every side must seem like a prison to most surface-folk. It must seem almost hopeless to look up and not see the clear, blue sky, but instead a dank, coarse ceiling. The smell must be suffocating, catching in their lungs and in their throats.

      But underground like this, Naraka only saw and felt the part of her people that she would never be a part of. Their connection to the Stone, their faith in it, their assurance that when they passed, they would return to it... What awaited her on the other side of death’s door?

      She didn’t believe in the Maker. She didn’t follow the Elvish gods. The Stone... it wouldn’t accept her.

      “I guess that’s ONE word for it.” Hostile wouldn’t be her description for it.

      Depressing. Wistful. Solas would probably call it existential.

[ofcadash]

Prince of Egypt starters pt. 1

“Can you hear your people cry?”

“I have nothing I can give but this chance that you may live.”

“I pray we’ll meet again.”

“Be still, love don’t cry.”

“Sleep and remember my last lullaby.”

“I’ll be with you when you dream.”

“You’re safe now, and safe may you stay.”

“You almost killed me!”

“Oh come on, where’s your sense of fun?”

“Admit it, you’ve always looked up to me!”

“You don’t think we’ll get in trouble for this, do you?”

“Have I taught you nothing?”

“Do you understand the task for which your birth has destined you?”

“You will be the morning and evening star.”

“One weak link can break the chain of a mighty dynasty.”

“You will never have to carry a burden.”

“You are rather pathetic.”

“Why is it that every time you start something, I am the one who ends up in trouble?”

“You know what your problem is, ___? You care too much.”

“Your problem is you don’t care at all.”

“I suppose you care a lot more than I do that we’re late for the banquet?”

“Nobody will even notice us coming in.”

“I won’t be given to anyone.”

“You will show the proper respect.”

“I am showing you all the respect you deserve–None.”

“Untie this rope. I demand you set me free.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here, of all places.”

“Now you go too far. You shall be punished.”

“You will regret this night.”

“This is my home.”

“Surely this is all I ever wanted.”

“Is this where you found me?”

“So everything I am is a lie?”

“Fate has turned our little misadventure into a great opportunity.”

“You saw what happened. I just killed a man.”

“I will make it so it never happened.”

“Nothing you can say can change what I’ve done.”

“You will be what I say you are.”

“All I’ve ever known to be true is a lie.”