#ameridan

[levikra]

First Inquisitor Ameridan

[kattysouza]

“In His Shadow”

Any other male Lavellan players get big sad with this reveal? I've been very frustrated with my art lately so trying out more quick painting processes.  

[feykrorovaan]

✨Elves✨

[hannedraws]

swtor doodle/ wip dump for the soul

[mogwaei]

~First Inquisitor Ameridan~

[dalishious]

Ameridan mentions in one of his memories that he had a spirit companion. But WoTv1 says that modern Dalish elves avoid interacting with spirits.

I’m wondering if something changed between the time of the Dales independence and current period for the Dalish, or if Ameridan went against common practice.

[archofx]

It's so sad how Ameridan has been there alone 800 years, and how it has been forgotten the facts that he was a mage and an elf.

I wonder if in Dreadwolf our inquisitor would be required to do a sacrifice like Ameridan's.

[shaken-veil]

Happy Dragon Age Day! 

[bushelofmuses]

Local ancient elf dad tired, a muddy disaster, and ready to spoil people as an apology for being MIA, more at eleven

[lost-in-thedas]

For what is worth

Short ficlet about Athrahel’s confused feelings after he met Ameridan.

Hakkon was dead. Like eight hundred years ago, the Inquisition had once again put an end to the threat of yet another Arch-dragon, which would probably have engulfed Thedas if only for the bravery of its heroes.

The Inquisitor had survived. So had the Mages, the Warriors, Dwarves, Elves and Humans, Nobles and commoners, His friends, who accompanied him.

Back at the camp, the taste of victory was drowned in songs and ale. Athrahel, meanwhile, had retired to his tent.

"I'm exhausted," he had said. "I need to rest, alone" and he insisted to this last word, his gaze particularly keen on Dorian.

Nothing surprising. Eliminating an Arch-Dragon after fighting an entire horde of Avvar fanatics had not been easy. Yet defeating Corypheus and his lyrium dragon hadn't stopped him from celebrating on his return to Skyhold. There was something else. Something not worth mentioning.

From the moment people start looking at you as a hero, the less you are of a person. You become a symbol.

Ameridan knew this burden. As they stood face to face in the Old Temple in the Frostback Basin, the two inquisitors silently shared a sense of kinship that no one could possibly understand. For a few minutes, Athrahel no longer felt alone, and yet so fast, Ameridan was already gone forever, crushed by the weight of eight centuries spent frozen in time.

Since the moment he has become a symbol, even more, since he was chosen to be the Inquisitor, Athrahel had learnt to burry his true feelings. To smile, when he felt like shouting. To curtsy, when he wished to set everything in fire, has he been a Mage. Oh! Dirthamen knows he’d probably have been sent to penance, his body swinging on the gallows in Val Royeaux’s main square, had he shared the depths of his real thoughts with the Nobles and Rulers at the Winter Palace !

Athrahel had never wished to be the Inquisitor, nor had he ever accepted the title of "Herald of Andraste". If it hadn't been for the mark that placed the fate of the world in the palm of his hand, he would have fled to his clan at the first opportunity. And yet, he had become accustomed to this burden. At times, he even enjoyed it.

True, Halamshiral was still in the hands of the Humans, but he had given power to the Elves when he had supported Briala, now Duchess of the Dales. Leliana was the new Divine. The Mage circles had been disbanded, the Mage College refounded. Southern Thedas... seemed to be taking a new turn.

Alongside this, there was also dear friends he met along the way. Most of all, the love of his life. So many unique and wonderful people he would’ve never met, may the Keeper never sent him to the conclave. Athrahel had no regrets. And the future, he believed, looked brighter than ever.

Until today.

What will be left of him, a hundred years from now? Four hundred years from now? Eight hundred years from now? Will he still be remembered as an Elf, a Dalish heretic Elf, who triumphed over the Magister of the Dark Spawns? Or will he be portrayed as an Andrastian Human warrior, whose name a family of opportunistic noblemen took over? Will Dorian, and the rest of the people who helped him, be erased too ?

Will the future members of his clan have to fight so that history remembers that he bore the name of Lavellan?

Will the fate of the Elves be even worse than it is now? Will the Mages still be free?

In the end, what if everything he'd thought he'd accomplished had been for nothing? Maybe Vivienne was right. Maybe no one can truly change the world, after all. And that it had been naive, pretentious of him, to believe otherwise.

Nothing and no one can predict the future. The past, however, can still be restored.

Ameridan was a Mage. An Elven Mage, who once sacrificed everything he held dear, including his own life in order to save the world. And Athrahel will make sure the truth will be spread throughout Thedas.

Athrahel always remained humble. He had taken the Inquisition beyond himself, acting honestly under the name of the order he was entrusted to lead. He hadn't acted alone, after all. The Inquisition owed its success to the efforts of hundreds of people, each adding, to their level, their own contribution.

Still, he refused to let his identity be erased, as had been that of Shartan, Ameridan and all the Elves who had been unjustly left out of history.

Back in the Frostback Mountains, Dalish banners will henceforth adorn the walls of Skyhold.

[levikra]

✦ First Inquisitor Ameridan

A little sneak peak of my illustration for the Dragon Age zine ! Extremely proud of myself and happy for the opportunity to participate in a project of one of my favorite universes✨

[lairofdragonagelore]

DLC: Jaws of Hakkon -  Frostback Basin, Frozen Gate

The gate remains frozen, even at the height of summer. A piece of ice chiseled from the whole remained unmelted in a bucket of warm water, even withstanding the heat of burning embers. I have never seen such magic. Our Avvar guide, Ragnar, will tell me nothing about what lies beyond the frozen wall. I have exhausted all possibilities and shall have to accept that I will never pass beyond that gate.

[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore ]

At the bridge in front of the frozen gate, the codex The Frozen Gate is triggered, where we are informed that this ice is magical and strong to the point that nothing melts it. This explains why the hakkonites have armour and weapons made of ice. This particular ice is extremely strong. And due to the hint given in the Elvhen Tomb, the game suggests us to relate the entity trapped in the Elvhen Tomb with Hakkon trapped now inside the citadel.

The frozen Gates  was the entrance to a citadel which, apparently, was meant to replace Minrathous when these Tevinters considered that the Empire had fallen [due to the First Blight] according to Tevinter Inscription.

Nobody knows how the Tevinter disappeared, the only two unreliable leads are the Ice-troll tale, which claims that the troll was responsible of this, and according to Kenric [who doesn’t explain why or how he reached this conclusion], the Tevinter entered the gates and never left.

The gate is encrusted on the rock of the mountain. In front of it there is a diapason-like trail artefact that we have seen in Razikale’s Reach it carries arcane energy, or Fade energy from Razikale’s Reach to this point. When we shoot the ice with it, it breaks it a bit of, making possible to cross the door. This shows that only two magics are able to move and destroy this ice: Tevinter magic using these devices, and Hakkonite mages, which knows the “mystery of Winter” [later will be explained, in combination with callbacks to Elvhen Tomb]

The gates are decorated with classical tevinter dragon-gargoyles, and a banner of Koth, which must have been a recent addition since the fortress is under control of the hakkonites. From this side, the door is blocked by the ice, but on the other side, we can see it;

The curious thing is that here, for first time in the game [so far I can tell], we find this peculiar door that has a strong similarity to the Grey Warden symbol of two griffons in a Tevinter style, which has an interesting resemblance to a dragon extending its wings or rising [like Kirkwall/Emerius’ symbol]. I only saw this door design in the concept art of the doors of tevinter ruins, but the symbol is peculiar, specially if we take into account that strange similar symbols have appeared before in Hinterlands: The Unknown Ruin [Mihris]

Inside the gates we find a crater where part of the Tevinter structure is falling apart, and a colossus is crying water. Solas perceives that inside the crater there is a lot of magic coming. I’m not sure if he is perceiving Ameridan's power, or the Hakkonites [trying to release Hakkon] or Hakkon himself. 

Due to the vegetation growing around the ruins, we can suspect the crater was done by the time these Tevinter were established here. Maybe the hypothesis of them disappearing inside this ruin is not wrong.  Maybe they disappeared in the blast of whatever caused this crater.

Here we find another Colossus in the game, the third one, with two spikes in his head which is the main difference with the other two, placed in Hissing Wastes: scattered objects and ruins and in Western Approach: Coracavus;  Front Corridor and South Entrance. For more details read those posts.

As we can see the Tevinter structure has spiky pyramids along its bridge, which is a style we saw already in The Uncharted Abyss,  Forgotten Caverns, in a smaller scale and with extra claws. Once again, it could mean a mere reuse of asset [very likely when it comes to DLCs] or a way to express that these two cultures had some exchange of some kind in ancient times.

Apparently, inside this fortress, we find a Temple of Razikale. The only hint about this is that the game names this door as an old temple, and considering the Razikale theme in all this DLC, it's just obvious to assume this is Razikale's temple.

Inside the temple, we see that the cold doesn't subside.  We find corridors and chambers covered in snow. This makes us suspect that the entity of Hakkon is responsible of this cold. 

In similar style to Coracavus or the Still Ruin, this place has typical Tevinter decorations, with that curious spiky sun, the rhomboid face of what looks like a dragon or an archon, and columns of serpent-dragons eating one after the other. These design will be seen in detail in the post Tevinter Design and Style.

We find more typical Tevinter gargoyles

and a scroll-library.

As a curious element, we find this owl statue which is found in the elven ruins in Trespasser, as well as the War table chamber of Skyhold or in its basement where we find the library of Skyhold.

There are ferelden rugs,

Ram for sieges,

and this object I didn't see before in the game: It looks like a big cup or cylinder decorated with a chained serpent-dragon, and some arrows crossing its wings. It's not clear because it's a complicated shape to follow on a cylinder and in a dark room. I would love to see the game file texture of it with better quality.

We also find these coffins with that lid I called Razikale Ceremony . We see here that they are meant to be used as coffins since we see a skeleton getting out of it.

Part of the chamber is collapsed, probably because Hakkon. I assume this just because the presence of stalagmites on the broken and falling apart 

As we explore the different chambers, we find pieces of the past of how Ameridan entered here with his companions. Thanks to Pages near an Old Campfire we can conclude some things:

 Colette’s theory about the statue of Haron and Orinna in Nigel’s Point seems to have some confirmation with this codex.

This wall of ice, which seems to be caused by the presence of Hakkon himself, can be manipulated by hakkonites. This suggests that the hakkonites learnt “the mystery of winter”, some kind of particular ice magic related to Hakkon [which is related to the Elvhen Tomb too].

Ameridan does a comparison claiming that Hakkon trapped inside this dragon has  similar destruction power than the Archdemon Dumat.

I always feel conflicted when I see banners [in this case, Inquisition banners] in places where they should not be. It confuses me about how much detail in these environments should be taken into account. They could have placed avvar or chasind banners, as a way to show how the hakkonites took control over this citadel.... why the Inquisition’s?

We find these artefacts once more that we could not guess its function in Coracavus. They seems to be always on desks, and in this place, we can have a better guess at their functionality: it may be a device that allows the creation or reading of Veilfire runes.  Along the temple we find Journal of Gurd Harofsen, which basically says:

Gurd Harofsen left his original hold and had a mercenary life for a while. While in Redcliff, he heard the news of his hold being attacked by darkspawn.  Blighted bodies are not touched by the birds in their aerial burials so he knows his people won’t find peace. 

This makes him swear against the Lady of the Skies and Korth, for not sending a warning to them. He loses faith in his main gods.

Apparently Gurd knows of a tale that says that Hakkon was lost to the Avvar because he was “stolen by lowlanders”, and then he speaks of the ancient Hakkonites. He implies that the hakkonites bounded the god into the flesh of a dragon, and this one was stolen by Ameridan.

They found Hakkon inside the fortress. Apparently, Gurd’s mages could manage to work the ice on the entrance a bit to give enough time for the hakkonites to enter. He says that his mages were blessed by “Silent Hakkon”. 

Strangely, Hakkonite mages can’t understand Ameridan’s time magic. It’s hard to guess what we can infer from this, since Avvar mages are so in contact with spirits that I thought it was almost natural for them to understands elven magic, specially rift-magic.

Since Gurd and his hakkonites can’t break Ameridan’s magic, they plan to bind hakkon into another beast: potentially the bear of Stone-Bear Hold.

By the end, Gurd decides to willingly bind Hakkon to himself. [A narrative gesture of taking godhood for himself]

Thanks to Cole we confirm that the Dragon is possessed by Hakkon. Part of the Hakkon's shape can be seen sometimes, crafted with this green energy that always gives the idea of Fade essence. The figure overlaps the dragon.

During the exploration of these chambers, we can hear a song by Gurd Harofsen, which seems to be part of the ritual to draw Hakkon into himself. 

Sing the song of savage Hakkon, born in battle, bloody bladed.

Wintersbreath to wrack the lowlands, cold to cut and kill the hated.

Meet the might of Mountain-Father, crush the creed of Korth the Callow.

Leave the Lady lost and lonely, scour the skies of spirits sallow!

Gurd Harofsen, called The Cutter, wyvern-slayer, lowland-bane

Begs of Hakkon, bring his body bloody blessings, cold and pain!

We find boxes with the symbol of Hakkon/fulmenos in some places.

Finally, we find  Gurd. It’s not clear for me why he is like a Revenant. Probably a reuse of assets to show he has endured a process to let Hakkon take his body. 

Once Gurd is defeated, we can talk to Ameridan, interesting things to keep listed:

He is wearing Dirthamen's vallaslin.

He is casting a strong magic that stops time, but unlike in the The Still Ruin, there is no “hole” in the space. 

We confirm what we had suspected all over the DLC: he was a good friend of Drakon, he was a hunter of demons, Telana was the love of his life.

Apparently, Ameridan bind himself to Hakkon and make both stop in time. I don’t think we have seen any similar magic of this kind in the series, even though we saw two time magics already: Alexius’ necklace and the magic in the Still Ruin. 

But as we saw in the The Ruin Still, time can be stopped, but it catches up with the living creatures: Ameridan turns into ashes instantly when he stops the spell.

So, Hakkon is free, and we go to fight him at the south of the map

At the end, once we kill the dragon, we can see that the spirit of Hakkon is released, and has a dragon shape in Fade-like effects.

[jessicamarianasocs]

[feykrorovaan]

✨Ameridan✨

[deilmo]

Dunno if I'll ever get around to drawing it so here's my idea if it ever inspires someone

Two drawings, a diptyque.

One of Ameridan and his companions in Jaws of Hakkon, having a good time, goofing ect.

The other drawing, same thing, but with the modern day Inquisitor and their companions.

One titled "the more thing changes..." the other "...the more they stay the same"

[crackinglamb]

Chapters: 129/? Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age - All Media Types Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Solas (Dragon Age)/Original Female Character(s) Characters: Solas|Fen'Harel, Rogue Inquisitor, Varric Tethras, Cassandra Pentaghast, Vivienne (Dragon Age), Sera (Dragon Age), Gereon Alexius, Dorian Pavus, The Iron Bull (Dragon Age), Blackwall (Dragon Age), Leliana (Dragon Age), Cullen Rutherford, Josephine Montilyet, Lace Harding, Cole (Dragon Age), Sky Watcher (Dragon Age), Wisdom (Dragon Age), Female Hawke (Dragon Age), Male Mahariel (Dragon Age), Morrigan (Dragon Age), Ameridan (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Modern Girl in Thedas, not a self-insert, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Diary/Journal, Alcohol, Swearing, Snark, Pining, Emotional Slow Burn, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends With Benefits To Lovers, Solas Being Solas (Dragon Age), Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Additional Characters to Be Added As They Show Up, NOW WITH VISUALS Series: Part 1 of Wicked Things Summary:

Imogen McLean is glad she's played the series before. She's read the novels, she's flipped through the comics. She knows what's going to happen. She's got secrets to spill and canon to break. Now if she could just keep her hands off the Dread Wolf, this might all go a bit easier. Besides, he's got plans of his own. He's not the staying kind, and she knows better than to get attached.

You hear that, Thedas? She's not going to get attached. She's not.

 Beta'd by Iron_Angel. NSFW will be marked with **. Updates on Wednesdays.

*This fic now has embedded images. More will be added as I take/receive them. Most chapters have something in them, some have several. Screenshots were taken by me, any art is credited to its artist.*

Chapter 129 - Waking Wounded

“So, where do we stand?” Imogen asked, getting right down to business.

Josephine immediately put aside the paperwork in front of her and crossed the study to a laid out tea service.  She poured a cup for Imogen, adding a splash of something that was not milk, given the sound of a decanter clinking.  By the time she brought it to her, Imogen had settled herself into a comfortable chair as carefully as she could so she didn't get it muddy.

“The Du Paraquettes are in line to return to their noble position,” Leliana said, fondly scowling at  the Ambassador.  “Josie was quite insistent that we do this the 'right' way.”

“And so we should,” the woman in question asserted.  “There is no call for further violence.  There is only the meeting with Minister Bellise remaining.  She will be hosting a party at her estate at the end of this week.  Your arrival is timely.”

“And you've been busy without me, it seems.”