dragonagedreaming

[dragonagedreaming]

thinking about the cage for gods quest and a rook that might be too lost in regret to make it out on their own (a la inner demons) and the team having to figure out not only how to tear open the fade but go through the layers of their rook’s psyche as challenges to finally find them frightened and alone and bring them home while experiencing every horrible thing that’s ever happened to them that they never told anyone about along the way. something something keeping your distance as a leader only for your team to witness every horrible broken part of you and rescue you anyway. if you even care.

(edit i’m reading all your tags and to everyone saying they want to write this as a fic i’m on my hands and knees begging you to to tag me if you do)

[dragonagedreaming]

"can you explain this gap in your resume" i lay in dark and dreaming sleep while countless wars and ages passed; i woke still weak a year before i joined you

[dragonagedreaming]

so my first veilguard playthrough i picked coffee as Rook's favorite drink because 1) i do like coffee and 2) i'm an agreeable bitch, but picking tea or hot chocolate is soooo much better and for two completely different reasons like— TEA: lucanis ACTIVELY is like "EUUGHH" when you choose this which is SO funny. like we BARELY know each other and he's basically like: "alright you ill-bred tasteless freak, i'll get you some boring ass herb water."

and THEN this makes his unique gift of an antivan tea set all the more amusing because instead of it just, not making sense, its like "HERE'S A FANCY ANTIVAN TEA SET BITCH" and he's like "for me?" and we're like "YEAH it's for you. EDUCATE YOURSELF. 😎🍵"

and then its so SO much sweeter when he actually makes you a whole dinner and dessert based around a drink that he probably spent the whole game researching???? my heart.......my sweet acts-of-service-ass boyfriend.......i love him

HOT CHOCOLATE: first off i love rook as a hot choccie ass bitch. but also its so sweet when he's like "oh yeah, I really liked that as a kid actually" and then later in a banter with emmrich when you learn that lucanis basically learned to cook solely because he really fucking loved churros and wanted to learn how to make them????? UHGHhhhhh......my heaort........and then he makes them for us, probably the first silly little recipe he ever mastered..........ouuuuuugghhh...........

send help i'm experiencing emotions about a beverages and a fake man

[dragonagedreaming]

sometimes i play around with the headcanon that the companions did ask Rook to join book club or to go camping or to hang out or any of the various things they do together - but Solas obscured it/erased it/controlled Rook's responses, in order to make sure Rook would feel more and more isolated and full of regret. eventually, after being turned down enough, he didn't even have to do anything anymore - they just assumed Rook didn't have the time or desire.

(very quick and dirty/cruddy comic to illustrate an idea, like most of my comics are lmao)

[dragonagedreaming]

Saw a shit post and wanted Solas to say it to motivate me. That's it.

[dragonagedreaming]

So funny that Emmrich, Emmrich of all people, got scammed while buying magic items in Minrathous, so he decides to take the law into his own hands, and...

... he proceeds to haunt the shit out of the scammer while pretending to know nothing about it.

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Zevran: So, err….is it Lord Loghain? Loghain: I am no longer a teyrn, nor even a knight. Address me without a title, as you would any other Grey Warden. Zevran: So just Loghain, then? Loghain: Correct. What's on your mind? Zevran: You know who I am, yes? I was one of the Crows you hired to kill the Grey Wardens. Loghain: I thought you looked familiar. Zevran: Well, I just wanted to report that I failed my mission, Loghain. Loghain: You don't say. Zevran: I'm terribly broken up over it. Loghain: Hmm. Well thank you kindly for informing me.

[dragonagedreaming]

Arlen is always getting into something..

(Vanerberries - a berry that halla find sweet but can causes paralysis, hallucinations and cramps if people eat it -Dragon Age wiki)

Mahanon belongs to evansketchbook

[dragonagedreaming]

thinking about the time between haven falling and the inquisitor reuniting with the others rn. inquisition leadership is in shambles; the advisors are directionless, constantly arguing with each other, and they do so openly. many are dead or missing. countless more are injured. hopelessness is a looming force now that they've lost their home and their herald. they can do nothing but aimlessly wander the cold, hoping the next day does not bring down another strike of the dragon or the reappearance of corypheus and his army.

all of this to say ☝️ it's very fun to think about fiona and vivienne during this time. with the inquisition so directionless, they are the remaining leadership for the mages within it. yet again, it is their responsibility to ensure the mages under their care are kept safe. i need to see them at each other's throats and also bonding over it rn

[dragonagedreaming]

Trespasser Dream Slides - Fade Dreaming and Continued Connection

The Trespasser dream slides for a romanced Lavellan mark a subtle but interesting divergence in the story of Lavellan and Solas, in that not every player who romanced these two gets these slides - depending on choices.

If Lavellan ends their relationship with anger or finality, vowing to stop Solas no matter the cost, even if it means killing him - these dreams never appear. And I think that detail is brilliant. The story is using the absence of these dreams as a narrative device, one that, to me, actually reflects how the Fade responds to emotions. So when Lavellan emotionally disconnects from Solas, when she severs the bond and chooses to carry nothing of him forward, the Fade has nothing to echo and Solas never appears, honouring her choice. The absence of these dreams in this path becomes the story’s way of saying this relationship is indeed over.

But for the Lavellan who holds hope, who vows to save him from himself and his own destruction, who has expressed her love clearly to Solas - the dreams do come. This narrative path reflects the choices of a player who's decided that their bond endures.

And through these dreams, the game shows how these two people continue to affect each other, be drawn to each other even across distance and years.

The Dreams 

What keeps drawing my attention to these slides is they never confirm whose dreams they are.

“Lavellan sometimes came awake from dreams in which her lover watched her sadly from across an endless distance”

It doesn’t say her dreams, or that she dreamed of Solas, nor does it deny they may be his. And I appreciate how that ambiguity again mirrors the nature of the Fade, leaving open the possibility that these dreams belong to either of them, or to both.

The dreams could originate with Lavellan, stirred by hope and belief, with Solas drawn into them by her emotional presence in the Fade. They could originate with Solas subconsciously pulling her into his dreams, revealing his own hidden ache for her. Or it could be a mutual convergence - neither initiating, but both arriving, called into the same dreamscape by the strength of their bond. These slides allow for all of these possibilities in it's refusal to define the source.

What's interesting is that Solas is always withdrawing from them. When Lavellan reaches for him he doesn’t speak, doesn’t approach - he vanishes. It suggests that he’s not drawn to her to control or watch her possessively in dreams, but allows himself to be near her, pulling back before any contact is made.

Remember, Solas himself confessed to Lavellan she draws him away from the Fade. It's logical to assume then that she draws him in the Fade as well. Because Inquisitor Lavellan is still Fade Walking.

Lavellan - Fade Walker

What we know for certain is that the Inquisitor has demonstrated the ability to find Solas in the Fade before. In the Haven dream sequence, the Inquisitor locates him while sleeping. After they wake, Solas expresses surprise that they were able to find him and that he changed the setting to Haven once they did. At the time, it’s assumed that the Anchor is what allows the Inquisitor to remain conscious and lucid within the Fade. But that may not be entirely true, the Trespasser dream slides complicate that assumption because at that point in the story, the Anchor is gone and yet:

“Still she searched, and dreamed, and waited, for a way to change the Dread Wolf’s heart.”

The way “dreamed” is used here - alongside verbs like searched and waited - positions it as an act in itself. It implies that Lavellan isn't just sleeping, but actively entering the Fade to dream and seek. Here, dreamed carries intention, movement and purpose.

Whether she communes with spirits, follows the traces he’s left behind, or navigates the remnants of memories, we aren’t told. But the phrasing highly suggests that Lavellan is looking for answers, information, ways to change the Dread Wolf's heart while in the Fade. (Which continues to support my theory that the Inquisitor has been forever altered by the Anchor.)

Do the Dreams Continue?

We’re never told that the dreams end - and the use of the plural dreams reinforces the sense that the tension between Lavellan and Solas remains unresolved. It suggests an ongoing, quiet pull that continues to draw them to one another. Perhaps unconsciously, they return to that shared space again and again, a connection that spills forward into Veilguard.

Maybe that ongoing pull is why Lavellan receives the wolf statuette, why she can tell Rook she still loves Solas, and why Solas, close to his goal of reshaping the world, stops to write her a letter. It even colours the way he speaks of her to Rook - “She is a good woman.” Not was, not someone I once knew: she exists for him in the present because their dreams keep finding their way to each other.

For the story, eight years separate Trespasser and Veilguard. For us as players, that’s a long time - but for them, if their dreams still connect them, still reach across the Fade? That distance may not be felt at all. Time moves differently in memory, and even more so in the Fade. Their last shared dream with each other could have come the night before the ritual, close enough to stir old feelings and sharpen Solas’ need to send those final words to his vhenan.

[dragonagedreaming]

If we think about Dragon Age 2 through the lens of it being told by Varric then maybe it makes sense tou can't romance him, because even if you did, that'd be the one story he wouldn't want to tell the world, especially not in an interrogation.

But if you fuck everyone else? That's the worlds business now.

[dragonagedreaming]

"Buy good strangling cords? In this economy?" Says the man that makes crazy money killing people, whose family owns a huge, luxurious villa with a guest house and an opera house, the favourite grandson of a prominent mafia boss.

Seriously, though. Employed, financially conscious, well-off king that buys his own groceries, cooks, knits, and makes his own killing tools to save on expenses? Love to see it.

[dragonagedreaming]

In my world-state, Lucanis seems to be exclusively de Riva-sexual, which is amazing to me. Can you imagine if he ever sees them in a lab together? Like Teia comes over to Viago’s townhouse and finds Lucanis in the back garden flushed and sweating.

Teia: Lucanis? Are you all right?

Lucanis: (swallows heavily) I was in the lab…

Teia: Mierda! Did you touch anything? Inhale anything?

Lucanis: No. No, I was just… watching Rook and Viago work.

Teia: Okaaaay…

Lucanis: (put his head in his hands) They were so competent. It was so hot.

Teia: Ah. (sits down next to him and pats his back) Were there formulas?

Lucanis: There were formulas!

[dragonagedreaming]

[dragonagedreaming]

Our favorite little wingman

[dragonagedreaming]

the grey wardens being rat bastards is literally my favorite part of the order this isn't a joke. i love it so much. an order of legendary knights who act as the sole protectors of their continent against an existential threat, and they're literally trained to not care about anything else but stopping that threat. it's so heghghgrhhghh

[dragonagedreaming]

Some facts (with spoilers from DATV) that we learned today about Dragon Age companions:

Lucanis' writer intended him to be panromantic and demisexual.

Emmrich was said to be in his early 50s before, but this info was from earlier in the writing. His writer sees him from somewhere between his mid 50s and early 60s at most.

wardens don't hear the calling anymore (although they still have the blight. the effects are just lesser). this applies to: alistair, anders, oghren, sigrun, nathaniel, velanna and davrin, and potentially bethany, carver, loghain, thom rainier and rook (and our HOF and any warden character): [link 1, 2]

They would have wanted Fenris to appear in Veilguard (maybe as a companion?) [link 1, 2]

the dreadwolf works alone. he doesn't have agents anymore [link]

(epler deactivated his bsky account so i dont have the exact words or screenshots, but he clarified a few hours ago that solas never liked working with others, and that especially with everything related to the rebellion he grew to dislike it. the inquisition gave him a little of that interest back, and his agents helped him with the dagger, but after a while he decided to go back to work alone)

some by weekes, from their writing notes:

"1) Taash never uses commas. (In dialogue or in codex entries that they've written, unless quoting someone else.)

2) In Veilguard, Solas never gives direct orders. (Barring maybe "think" or "remember".)"

some others by feketekuty, emmrich's writer, about him:

his favorite icecream flavor is rum raisin, he probably goes to perfumers that have set up shop in nevarra city around the necropolis, he'd probably speaks/understands Tevene, he'd probably be into classical music but also he'd enjoy a concerto or an organ recital. or even a a bold new orlesian opera if he's feeling daring (she keeps answering questions, and she also spoke about the "age gap" thing w older rooks in this thread)

and here is an old post w facts abt bellara fun facts :]

happy da day!