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felassan · 4 years

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Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 1

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler played DAO, specifically the mage Origin. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, or personal accessibility reasons). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into DA2 and DAI. Some of it is info which is known having been out there already, some of it is new, and all of it imo was really interesting! It leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

Note on how future streams in this series are going to work: The streams are going to be every Friday night. Most likely, every week, they’re going to play DAO. Every second week it will be Liam and DG and they’ll be doing more of this developer commentary style/way of doing things, talking about how the game was made as they play through, covering quirks and quibbles etc. Every other week, it will be Liam and a guest playing a different campaign in DAO, and Liam will be talking with them about how DA changed their lives or led them into game development, to get other peoples’ thoughts on the series (as it’s now been like 10 years). Some of these guests we may know, some we won’t. When other DA devs are brought on, it’ll be in the DG sessions. They hope to have PW and Karin Weekes on at some point. Sometime they hope to have an episode where they spend the whole time going through the lore.

(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

DAO’s development actually finished up around April 2009. They then put it on ice for around six months before release. Human Noble is DG’s favorite Origin. It’s one of the ones he wrote. He also wrote the Dalish Origin as well (Tamlen is his doing ;__;). DAO’s temp name during development was Chronicles. DG has never played any of the DA games after they were released. He played them pre-release loads of times, when they were half-broken or incomplete etc. This stream is his first time seeing everything played after completion.

NWN: Hordes of the Underdark was the first game where DG was a/the lead writer, in charge of other writers, as opposed to a senior writer. It was pretty well-received. In the fall of 2003, BW were just finishing up HotU when James Ohlen came to DG to talk. BW had been having issues during the development of NWN with the IP holder for D&D Wizards of the Coast, so they were interested in starting their own IPs that they would have ownership over (and also for financial reasons). JO said to DG that one of these new IPs would be fantasy and one would be sci-fi. He knew that DG was more fantasy-oriented, and so asked DG if he wanted to take this on. DG was down, and the first thing to figure out was what that fantasy IP was going to be.

JO gave DG an atlas of European history, which he still has, and said that he wanted him to make a fantasy world that is reminiscent of medieval Europe and reminiscent of D&D - “make it like D&D but not, file off the serial numbers really well”. This worked for DG because he was pretty familiar with D&D and there were also lots of things that he didn’t like about it and wanted to change. So DG went off and for the next six months worked on creating a setting, beginning with documentation and the map. This was kinda strange because they had no idea at that time what their story would be. JO was very interested in having a “genetically evil” enemy in the setting (like an equivalent to orcs). DG wasn’t a big fan of this and his initial go at the setting omitted this (i.e. darkspawn were not a thing) and was a lot more realistic. JO insisted on adding them later on.

This period of development wasn’t actually a good process. There were other people who were working on the project who were designing the combat side. Looking back, DG feels that they should have put their heads together a lot sooner. The combat designers had various ideas for various prestige classes and subclasses, and DG would be like “these are nowhere in the setting [lore]”. He tried his best to add a few of them after the fact, which is why we see things like DA’s version of the bard archetype. The combat designers and artists originally had a vision in mind of a game that was much more along the lines of the type of fantasy you’d find in the Conan the Barbarian world - bare-chested barbarians, sorceresses that show a lot of skin, a grimdark world with barbarian hordes. They were just assuming that’s what it was going to be. At this point in time DG had never thought, “Oh, maybe I’m responsible for communicating my ideas to them” - he’d never done this role before and was just told to go create the world. He created world-building documentation and would send out emails saying “I’m making this documentation, please go ahead and take a look”, not learning until later on that nobody outside of the writing team really likes reading such documentation. He learned tricks later on like making the docs more accessible, less dense and wordy, and overall easier to peruse.

There was no real ‘vision holder’ for DA. Mass Effect did a much better job of that. Casey Hudson was the project director and the vision holder for ME, and he had the power to enforce a set vision of what was and was not ME. ME therefore ended up having a bit more of a coherent vision. DG was in essence the vision holder for DA, but he didn’t really have the authority to enforce it on the artists. The DA teams ended up spending a good 3.5 - 4 years of the ~6 years of DAO dev time going in circles, not exactly sure what they were going to make, the various people working on it having different ideas of what ‘kind’ of fantasy they were going to make. The writing team were leaning towards LoTR; the artists were leaning towards Conan; at one point one of the project directors was leaning towards a point-and-click Diablo-style action adventure; and nobody was overriding anybody else.

The fans who hang out on the forums and in similar places have a very different idea about what kind of game they like and want to play versus the telemetry BW get from the public in general. As an example, fans on the forums tend towards playing non-humans and feeling that playing as a human is boring. Forum-polls reflected that, but BW’s general public-telemetry shows that around 75-80% of the playerbase played a human in DAO. Elves were at 15% and dwarves 5%. In contrast, in the core/forum-based fanbase, the human figure dropped down to 30%.

DG originally wanted Zevran to be a gay romance (he has talked about this before). He asked JO if he could do that pretty early on, thinking of Jade Empire which had same-gender romance options which were really popular. BW were surprised about that, and DG had no idea that the JE team were going to do this. For DAO, he had an idea for an assassin character. He had been reading about how the CIA and KGB would often recruit gay men to be their assassins, as they didn’t tend to have family ties. DG thought this was really interesting. JO was cool with the idea on a conceptual level, but thought that the work that would end up going into it would be better served if those characters could be romanced by both male and female PCs. Zevran and Leliana weren’t intended to be bi, they were “bi out of convenience”, but at the time these sorts of things (representation and such) didn’t enter into the equation as much as it does today. DG wrote Zevran in his head as being romanceable by men.

DG would ask the hair artists, “Why all the mullets?”, because he never understood that, and he’d get “a sort of shrug response”, and an indication that “it’s easier to model, I guess?” Having hair which is loose, in the face, in locks, coming over the shoulders etc wasn’t really supported at this point by the tech or the engine. Hence, they ended up with like five different versions of mullets. On the subject of the engine, for the first half of development they were using an upgraded version of the Aurora engine from NWN, and it was not good. Several years in they decided to switch. Trent Oster was in charge at the time of making a new proprietary BW engine. At the time it wasn’t ready yet, but the DA team decided to grab it, use it and hammer it into the DA engine. That engine had “so many little weird quirks”, like lighting on skin not working properly and looking bad, and one of the issues was hair. It was supposed to be BW’s proprietary engine but it really wasn’t optimized for RPGs and didn’t include a dialogue system. They had to custom-build the conversation system. (At the time Trent didn’t think BW should be doing RPGs anymore, which is a whole other story of its own). DG recalls programmers complaining about things in the engine that weren’t ready for ‘prime-time’. Even compared to games released concurrently, DAO’s graphics were a bit dated.

For the worldbuilding, they had an internal wiki and they kept everything on there. They ended up with a lot of legacy documentation on there very quickly. Eventually they solved this by hiring an editor whose sole job it was to wrangle the documentation. DG started work on the setting in the same manner in which he’d embark on starting a homebrew - ‘so like, first, here’s a map, oh, I like this name, vague ideas, a paragraph on each major nation, a rough timeline of the history, expanding, and it just growing from there’. After about six months, they brought on other writers, and by then he had around 50 pages of documentation. This 50 pages was a minute amount compared to the amount they had generated at the time of release. Originally, they weren’t sure where in the world specifically the story would take place, so DG made sure to seed potential and brewing conflicts throughout Thedas. They settled quite quickly on the new Blight starting in Ferelden. Once they established that, the writers went to town on taking Ferelden specifically and blowing it up detail-wise. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of the dwarves and Orzammar. Mary Kirby was on Fereldan customs and traditions.

The first version of the setting was more grounded in realism, almost like a post-fantasy. The dragons and griffons were extinct and a lot of the things that were thought to be fantastical were thought to be over with. During development, they started clawing these things back. They brought back dragons because the game was named Dragon Age (lol). DG was approached like, “Hey, we named the game DA, can you bring back dragons and weave them into the story more powerfully?” Wynne’s writer Sheryl Chee had a bit of an obsession with griffons and was often like ‘omg, griffons :D’, and this is the origin of Wynne’s dialogue with the Warden about griffons.

KotOR was the first time BW had tried to do a game that was fully voiced-over. For KotOR, BW sent the work of casting, direction and so on down to another studio in California called Technicolor. BW had little say in the process then and when they got it back, “it was what it was”. By the time they got to DA and the first ME, BW had a good system down for recording and VO had become an important thing in games at the time. BW are really one of the premieres for this, a lot of actors really like acting on BW games as they get a lot of space to act where they wouldn’t normally be able to do so otherwise. DG has learned a lot from Caroline Livingstone on how to encourage the best performance out of an actor. For DAO, DG worked together with the various lead designers and Caroline to decide on the auditions, casting etc. This was one of DG’s favorite things to do.

Gideon Emery as Fenris, GDL as Solas and Eve Myles as Merrill were times where DG had written the character and then went to Caroline and said “I have an actor in mind for them, can you check it out?” These were specific times where he was able to secure the actor he wanted. This didn’t always work out, for example there are times when actors aren’t interested or have no time due to scheduling conflicts or were too expensive etc. Eve and GDL were DG’s roommate Cori’s idea. Cori was a big fan of Torchwood/the actors from Torchwood, and worked as an editor at BW for a long time. Gideon was DG’s idea after playing FF12. For DAO, DG didn’t have any specific ideas in terms of actors. Casting Morrigan was the longest, most drawn out process.

The Circle went through a whooole process during worldbuilding. Initially, mages in the game weren’t supposed to have any “fighting magic”. The restrictions were originally such that in the lore, they didn’t teach mages that. Mages weren’t taught any magic that could kill people, only ‘indirect’ forms of magic that could support others. However, [during what sounds like] playtesting it was asked “Why can’t I cast a fireball? I just want to cast a fireball”, so the writers had to go back and rework how magic in the lore worked completely.

Flemeth was originally going to be voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, and she was totally on-board, but unfortunately because of DAO’s development delays, she was unable to attend the new recording time as she had a conflict in her schedule (she was filming House of Sand and Fog). Shoreh was quite disappointed about this and her family had been so excited that she was going to be in a video game. When the movie was finished, Shoreh came back to BW and let them know that she was still available, and this is how she ended up in ME2. For a while they were trying to find an actress with an accent that authentically mirrored Shoreh’s. Out of the blue around this time, Claudia Black’s agent sent BW an audition tape of her. At the time Claudia hadn’t done any games but wanted to get into it. The tape was of Claudia doing a beat poet rendition of Baby Got Back. DG still has this tape. DG was a big fan of Farscape and on listening to the tape, it clicked right away in his head that Claudia would be perfect for Morrigan.

The Fade ended up being a big irritation for the writers. They wanted the PC to be able to assume different forms and such while in there. A lot of this stuff proved too difficult for the combat designers to work out, and so it ended up getting changed a lot. They had a hard time coming up with gameplay that could work in the Fade. The mage Origin is DG’s least favorite of the Origin stories, as he’s really dubious about the Fade section in it. It didn’t work out like how they had pictured it in their heads. By the time they got to DAI, that’s when the Fade really looks like how the writers first described/envisioned it. By this point the artists were more keen to give it a more specific feel. DAO was made at a time when ‘brown is realistic’ was a prevailing thing in games dev.

The experience of a mage in the world isn’t represented or conveyed very well to the player when the player is a mage. The experience of the player when they’re playing a mage or have a mage in their party doesn’t really match up with how the world lore tells them how dangerous mages can be - for example, how they can lose control and so on, we never really have an example of a PC mage struggling with being taken over by a demon. This was originally supposed to be a subplot in DA2 for mage Hawkes, in one of the last cuts. In Act 2, mage Hawke was originally slowly being tricked by a demon in their head that they thought was real, only to realize at the last minute. Mouse the Pride demon in the mage Origin is the only time in the entire series that they really ever properly demonstrated how demons can fuck with [PC] mages. Also, PC templars were originally supposed to have a permanent lyrium addiction that they needed to ‘feed’, but this was scrapped as the system designers weren’t keen on it and felt that it was essentially handicapping the player.

Mages were originally also not supposed to be able to deal with pure lyrium (it would ‘overload’ them). There is a plot where mage PCs run around touching lyrium nodes to refill their mana bars. On this DG was like “Wtf is this?” The designers said that it works, and DG said “but it flies in the face of the lore”. This instance is an example of how the DA team was working where the various departments (writers, artists, designers etc) all had their own ideas about how the game and its world would work and never overrode each other (see above). DG feels that DAO is a little contradictory in that way. It’s only after the game came out that a lot of the people on the team really “bought into” what they’d put forward. This got easier as they went on, with people involved buying then into the things that make Dragon Age, Dragon Age. At one point, not everyone on the team was even aware of those things.

DG relates that originally, they would ask the artists, “Ok, can we get a village?” and said village once created would be quite generic and non-specific to DA. The writers would try to relate how things are in the DA world and list things that would be found in a village like this specific to the DA world, and the artists either didn’t read it or had their own ideas (DG isn’t sure which), and nobody was around to tell them not to do that and that they should do it differently. Everyone having their own ideas like this is why we ended up getting something that is this sort of “cobbled together half-Conan half-LotR mish-mash”, and after a while this sort of became DA’s “thing”.

Initially, BW had concepts drawn up for a lot more different creatures. After they went in circles for those years and consequently ran out of time to do all the models, they had to cut these concepts down more and more. Demons were among the ones that were the first to go (this is why we have situations like a bereskarn as the Sloth Demon in the mage Origin). The original concepts for things like spirits of Valor and Sloth demons were really good. Early on, JO made a list of D&D creatures that he liked. He picked the ones that they were thinking of doing, sent them to DG and said to make a “DA version of this”. For example, D&D succubi essentially became Desire Demons. Desire Demons were originally patterned off Sandman, neither male nor female yet really alluring, acting more like a genie and trying to ferret out mortals’ inner desires (which are not necessarily sexual in nature), without being overtly sexual. The artists’ version came back and that was basically the model seen in-game. The writers were like “What is this, this is nothing like the description?” and the artists responded that on the list from JO, it was included, in that you had to click on “succubus” to get to the Desire Demon description, so they had just read “succubus” and done their version of a succubus. The artists did loads of great work, but this was one of the instances were DG was like “???” By then, it was too late to change it. The writers were able to encourage them to make Desire Demons a little more fearsome, so that made it in at least.

The mage Origin was one of the more contentious Origin stories. It had like 4 different versions written of it over time. It was often the case that BW would hire someone, and writing an Origin story was their first test. Three different writers came in and wrote a version of the mage Origin and those versions just didn’t work. Finally they passed it to Sheryl Chee and she wrote it. The Origins were the parts of the game in general that were written/rewritten the most often. There were several others that got written that they discarded.

Duncan was slated for death from Day 1. When DG writes a story, the thing he does first is pick out the big emotional beats that he wants, such as deaths. He decides these ahead of time and the stuff in-between comes later and is more often changed. Oghren was also originally supposed to die, but this ended up getting cut. DG related a story of how Oghren came to be: At the time, there was a phase JO went through when he thought everything had a formula that it could be done by. One of these ‘creative forumulas’ was that all such IPs had a two-word name that they’re known by, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Dragonlance (being Dragon-Lance). This is how ‘DA’ and ‘ME’ came to be. One of the formulas he wanted to implement was how to distill the ‘comedy character’, like Minsc or HK-47. These characters were very popular with the fans and JO was certain that there was a way to figure this out to create one for DA. At the time, DG argued with him a lot about this. JO insisted it could be done. DG was originally supposed to write this character but ended up not doing so. JO came up with a list of comedic archetypes and had DG write a blurb about what kind of character each could be. These were then sent out to the team who voted on which was their favorite. This process eventually resulted in an archetype basically called ‘The Buffoon’ (think Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, the kind of guy people laugh at because he’s such an oaf).

At this point ‘The Buffoon’ wasn’t named or made a dwarf yet. JO came to DG to write him, but DG said there was a problem which is that he hates this archetype. Homer and Peter are characters that he despises. DG is a professional writer, but this was comedy (outside of his areas of strength), and he felt the best he would be able to do is write a character who makes fun of this archetype and lampshade that. Comedy is something that has to come from within the writer. Oghren was given to someone else, and he ended up getting rewritten again anyway. By the time they were working on Awakening, DAO had not yet come out, and the assumption prior to the game going out was that Oghren was still going to be the most popular character from among the followers. The comedic character that ended up being the most popular along these lines was Alistair, which was interesting as he wasn’t intended as a comedic character, “so shows what we know”. DG was dubious that Oghren was going to be popular, because “he was kind of pathetic, honestly”, but that was the thinking at the time. Thinking he would be well-loved is why he was in Awakening.

On Alistair, any character DG writes is going to be sarcastic. At the time DG had made it a sort of personal challenge to recreate Joss Whedon’s dialogue patterns in his characters. Alistair was a sort of mish-mash of Xander from Buffy and maybe Mal from Firefly. DG wanted to see if he could do it, so Alistair was kind of quippy and self-deprecating. DG never really considered this to be Alistair’s main personality feature, but when other writers wrote him, they often had him doing this, as they liked the trait so much, and so this is how Alistair ended up as he did.

On dwarves, the dwarves being cut off from the Fade is very much baked into who the dwarves are as a race. There’s a specific reason why. This has been hinted at so far and it’s likely to come up in the future. DG had various ideas for some things that he wanted to include with the races or the way the world works etc. Some of them ended up never happening or some are mentioned only as part of the lore (templar lyrium addiction never coming up in gameplay is an example of this). Dwarven history and the nature of the dwarves is one of the things that survived pretty well though. DG calls Jennifer Hepler “mistress of the dwarves” and says that she did a really detailed, amazing breakdown of their history. After Jennifer left it was Mary Kirby, and DG feels that they did a good job of maintaining how dwarves were, in terms of both how they’re often presented in fantasy and yet also quite different in DA. Orzammar is one of DG’s favorite plots all together. You can really tell that Jennifer Hepler really enjoyed the dwarves and brought a lot of love to that plot.

DG draws a distinction between DA fans and the unpleasant people who harassed Jennifer Hepler.

They managed to keep the Tranquil in. There was a while there where they were going to be cut. At the same time, DG regrets that they couldn’t solve the making of the player more aware of how mages are dangerous, thing. Players could make a cogent argument like “they’re not that dangerous, look at me [mage PC]” and the writers were like “well... yeah, that is fair”. It was a case of showing one thing and the player experience of it being another. DG feels that this made the templars come off worse than they are. DG feels that they are being massively unfair and too extreme in their approach to the problem, but the problem itself is a real thing. He feels that there’s some merit/truth in the argument that mages are oppressed, but he looks at it more like an issue like gun control rather than as treatment of oppressed people, saying that we don’t have an example in real life of oppressed people who can explode into demons and cast fireballs and so on.

There are some funny pronunciations that worked their way into DA, and the reason for a lot of them is as follows: the writers had to create a pronunciation guide for VO, because otherwise you end up with a lot of inconsistencies. (Some did still slip through). The guide was online, and if you clicked on a word, an audio file for it would play. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of this and did a great job, but has a really strong NY accent, and in some cases the ‘NY-ness’ of her pronunciation endearingly worked itself into things (the way Arlathan is sometimes said is an example of where this happened sometimes).

Sometimes the writers trying to communicate the “hotness” of a character to the artists didn’t go smoothly. The writers would sometimes say things like, ok, this character is a romance, they need to be hot, and the designs would come back looking “like Burt Reynolds”, and the writers would be like “???” And then a character that wasn’t particularly intended to be hot, as in that wasn’t mentioned at all in the descriptions of them, would come back “accidentally hot”, and the writers would be like “Why couldn’t you have done this when we were asking for a character that was meant to be hot”, and the artists would be like “What?? He’s not hot”. And this became a thing (lmao - this discussion was prompted by DG being asked “Was Duncan meant to be that hot?”, for context). Some of the artists were so paranoid about their [in]ability to judge actually-hot characters that when it was time to pick an appearance, like for Alistair, they gathered up all the women at BioWare, and DG (“resident gay”) into a room to show them an array of faces and bodies like “Is this hot? Is this hot?” DG and co would sit there like, “How can you not tell? Is this a straight man thing?!” Anyways, this is why oftentimes we ended up with characters who are accidentally hot.

Over time, the writers realized that the way they communicated to artists needed to be managed better. The words they would use would have different connotations to them the writers, than what they did to the artists. For example, for Anders’ design in DA2, he was supposed to be “a little haggard”. When DG thinks of haggard, he thinks ‘a little tired, mussed hair, looking like you’ve been through some shit’. But the artists based on that produced concepts with super sunken cheeks, looking like he’d been terribly starved. The writers needed to develop a specific vocabulary for communicating with the artists, as artists think in terms of how something looks, but writers are thinking in terms of what the character “is”. Anders’ description talked about his history a lot, and the one visual-type word that jumped out was “haggard” due to its visual connotations. “A lot it came down to the writers being up their/our own asses.”

When they got to DAI, they had figured out that the way to get best results on this front was /not/ to have the writer go off and develop a long description and pre-conceived notion of what the character looked like in their head. In such scenarios artists don’t feel that they have much to contribute to the process or an ability to put their own stamp on who this character is and make them interesting to them (the best, most interesting characters are when people at all stages of the pipeline properly get to feed into it). They learned that the better solution was to bring the artists in earlier, and to give them little blurbs, and not name the character but give them an ‘archetype’-sort of ‘name’. For example, Dorian was “the rockstar mage”, “cool”, “Freddie Mercury”. The writers wouldn’t be sure that a particular concept would ‘hit’, so at this stage they would offer an array of options and sit the artist down and walk them through the concepts. The artists would then provide a bunch of sketches and it would go back and forth, with both taking part in the character creation process together. For the first two games, the writers were “really hogging” this process to themselves. They got better at not doing this and better at communicating with the artists by DAI.

There were a lot of arguments about how mages in DAO had a lot of specific lore words like “Harrowing”, “phylactery”, “Rite of Tranquility” etc. There was concern that this would be too confusing for players to understand and that it was too complicated. DG says that thankfully he put his foot down and pushed for this stuff to be kept. A lot of fans assume that as lead writer DG had all this influence, way more influence than he could possibly exert on a team. He wasn’t even a lead, he was a sub-lead, under a lead designer. He only had so much say. If the lead designer or lead artist wanted to do something differently, often there was not much he could do. Hence he had to pick his battles carefully, choose the important ones to fight. The mage vocabulary thing was one of these.

Templar Greagoir’s name is pronounced “Gregor” and it comes from a place in Alberta near where DG lived.

Codex entries are usually one of the last things that get done in a project like this, and so all of that kind of textual lore comes in super late and is super punchy as by then the writers have written so much and are exhausted. They had to find a way to make this process cute or interesting or fun for themselves, which is why a lot of entries are quite fun to read. Sometimes a writer would make a joke for banter [irl], and it would end up making it into an entry.

Only Morrigan and Duncan got unique body models in DAO. The companions all have custom-morphed heads but not custom-morphed bodies (Morrigan not included here). This is why every model has a necklace or a collar right at the point where they had to be attached to be a body. These sometimes used assets that couldn’t be used by the PC but were not unique to that character. Duncan probably got a unique model because he was in a lot of marketing/promotional material. Qunari were originally conceived as having horns.

Most people didn’t even finish DAO once (public telemetry again here), only approximately 20-25% actually did. The devs try not to read too much into this kind of thing, but the telemetry does tell them where a lot of people stop playing the game permanently (they call these “drop-off points”). One of these points in DAO is the Fade during Broken Circle. Sometimes when people interpret this data they involve self-serving biases, but it was generally accepted that the Fade there was too long, too complex, not interesting enough, etc. [source]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

#dragon age #bioware #morrigan #solas #video games #queen of my heart #mass effect #lgbtq #jade empire #fenris #the Fenaissance #alistair theirin #lul #fav warden

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johaerys-writes · 3 years

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Fic Writer’s Round Up: 2020

I was tagged by wonderful friendos @in-arlathan, @noire-pandora, @faerieavalon, @pinkfadespirit, @tevivinter, and @serial-chillr! Thank you so much, it was so interesting to see what you've been up to this year <3

2020 was a ride from start to finish and I considered not doing this at first because frankly, I wasn't particularly happy with my output this year, but I decided to give it a go and I was pleasantly surprised! This year has had a lot of ups and downs for me and there were plenty of times when I had a hard time putting words on the page, while others I couldn't stop. I've written primarily for Dragon Age and The Song of Achilles, and a little bit of Castlevania. In the below breakdown I've included all the fics I’ve written solo, both my published stuff as well as those that I plan on publishing in the near future (for my lengthier works, I’ve only included the chapters written in 2020):

Aran belongs to @oftachancer!

I don't know if you noticed the ~50k words of deleted stuff, but that was an entire arc that I wrote for A World With You, but decided it wasn't good enough so I scrapped and rewrote it. Those long gaps between updates this year? Yeah. That was it. I normally don't include deleted scenes in my overall wordcount but I decided to add this out of spite because it was a lot of hard work and it may or may not have had me sobbing into my coffee once or twice. Anyway. MOVING ON.

I also co-wrote A LOT with my friendo @oftachancer this year! It all started with a Modern AU one-shot of Aran and Tristan as college roommates, which then derailed into an epic adventure of about 250,000 words (placeholder title: Never Let Me Go) as well as a prequel of about 180,000 words of the boys before they went to college, which is currently being published on AO3 (Playground Love). We also published a smutty one-shot for Kinktober (Tea and Corsets). I love those boys so much, and I’m excited to write more of them. I have also co-written a few scenes for the Band!AU @oftachancer and @midnightprelude have been working on, which has been so much fun and I look forward to writing more! So, total wordcount for co-written stuff is approximately 445,000 words, not including a couple one-shots that we’ve written and posted on Tumblr and I’m too lazy to track down now, or others that haven’t been published yet but will soon!

New Things I Tried This Year:

Co-writing two massive, novel length fics was definitely a first, I had a lot of fun world-building with @oftachancer, and it gave me the opportunity to develop some of my OCs that had been lurking in my mind for a really long time. I also started writing for a new fandom, TSOA, and that has definitely been a highlight in my year. I grew up reading the Iliad and ancient greek myths, and to see them brought to life was very rewarding. It has also been a lot of fun finding ways to integrate ancient greek lore in my works, I really love it!

Fic I spent the most time on: A World With You, although Playground Love and Never Let Me Go are close seconds!

Fic I spent the least time on: To Build A Home. I wrote it in only a couple sittings after finishing Season 3 of Castlevania because I had so many feels! Chapters 1 and 2 of High-Flying Birds were also written on my phone in less than an hour, because again I was overwhelmed with feels after finishing The Song of Achilles.

Favourite things I wrote: I am really proud of everything I’ve written this year, especially since it was such a stressful year and writing gave me a much needed escape! But I'm going to choose a few highlights, purely based on the satisfaction they gave me while writing, and how often I've gone back to reread them (does anyone else do that?? Lol): Viper in Tall Grass, because I enjoyed the heck out of writing in the Witcher Universe. Chapter 2: Thorn, from High Flying Birds, which was one of those scenes that practically wrote themselves and I still like the way it turned out. Lastly, Chapter 28: The Prodigal Son and Chapter 29: In Water Waist Deep from AWWY. They were both really challenging to write but in the end they were worth it and I personally feel it’s some of my best writing yet. I always get emotional when I go back to reread them.

Favourite Things I Read: I’ve read a lot of published fiction this year, but not near as much fanfiction as I would have liked! I mentioned some of the fics I’m currently reading and loving in this post, but I’m going to make a more detailed fic rec post soon, so keep an eye out for that!

Writing Goals for next year: My primary goals for 2021 are to finish AWWY and High-Flying Birds so I can start working on some projects I’ve been wanting to post forever, but apart from that, I have no goals other than to have fun writing, and perhaps participate in more fic exchanges and challenges!

This post is terribly long (I’m usually rather quiet unless someone asks me to talk about my fics, and then I can’t shut up lol), but I want to thank every single person that has liked, reblogged and commented on my work, you guys are the best and there’s nothing like a comment or a thoughtful tag to make me want to create more!

I also want to give a special shoutout to @solas-disapproves, @in-arlathan, @midnightprelude, @tessa1972 and @oftachancer for being the lovely, inspiring people that they are, and for gifting me with wonderful fanart or fanfic this year that made me want to melt in a puddle, as well as to @tenmeooo-thefangirltrash for translating High Flying Birds to Vietnamese! (Check it out here) Thank you all so much, your friendship and support has meant the world to me ;w;

I’m sure that everyone has done this already, but I’m still going to tag @pikapeppa, @schoute, @schattengerissen, @zuendwinkel, @elveny, @fandomn00blr, @dafan7711, @dalish-rogue, @jeannedarcprice, @nug-juggler, @kittimau and @lavellanvibes for art or writing, because I always love seeing what you’ve been up to! If you’ve made it to the end of this humongous post, please consider yourself tagged, and tag me back so I can see your work too!

CHEERS, AND ON TO 2021!! <3

#fic roundup #dragon age #dorian pavus x trevelyan #pavelyan #the song of achilles #patrochilles #tsoa #castlevania #trevor x sypha #dragon age fanfiction #johaerys writes

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thedinanshiral · 3 years

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My personal DA4 wishlist + thoughts

I’ve been teasing this post for a couple of weeks over at Twitter, i’m the worst! But anyway, since game journalism has decided to confirm, once again, that the next Dragon Age game will be set in Tevinter like that’s breaking news, now’s as good a time as ever to write all this down.

Locations: Tevinter, clearly. It’s been pretty much a given since the end of Trespasser in 2015, with that scene where the Inquisitor stabs a map on a table directly on Tevinter as they promise to go after Solas to stop him. But also concept art and several stories from Tevinter Nights heavily imply Antiva, Nevarra, the Anderfells, and maybe Rivain. For those of you who don’t know your Thedosian Geography 101, that’s basically Northern Thedas. And it makes sense, since so far for three games straight we’ve been first stuck in Ferelden, then the coast of the Free Marches, and later the rest of Southern Thedas. We’ve never been North, only heard of it. So in DA4 i’m sure we will finally be able to visit.

Characters: If we’re going to Tevinter, we must meet Dorian again, maybe meet Maevaris Tilani as well (previously only seen in comics), judging from the latest comics series, i’m hoping for Fenris too. And going by the latest teaser trailer, we might see Varric again. As for characters that so far we have no news of, i’d like to see Cole, the Iron Bull, and if by any chance BioWare feels like blessing us with a Hawke/Fenris reunion i might just die happy. I’d also very much like to see the Inquisitor, but more on that later.

Companions: considering concept art and the latest teaser trailer, plus Tevinter Nights stories and new characters, we have an interesting repertoire of new potential companions. A Tevinter mage, an ancient elf (like a temple guardian) or a dalish elf (like Strife), a Nevarran mortalitasi or spirit, Antivan Crows, Lords of Fortune (new faction, kind of like treasure hunters), Qunari lady, maybe an alchemist or shapeshifter, Grey Wardens (possibly a dwarf), a liberated or escaped slave, a Siccari (Tevinter spies/assassins)..even past agents of the Inquisition could return.

Plot: We know Solas wants to take down the Veil. We know there’s two archdemons left, and Grey Wardens are regaining some spotlight in concept art lately. We might have to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously and be strategic about it. Solas might even unleash a double Blight just to keep us distracted while he focus on his own goal, who knows. But many other things are happenig in the margins and all over the place. The Qunari Antaam is having a crisis with some of its members supposedly going rogue, the order they’re so proud of is breaking up, and the whole of Northern Thedas is facing an imminent threat of invasion. Tevinter is still dealing with remnants of the Venatori and might soon be dealing with a slaves rebellion and/or a political and social reform (Magisters Dorian and Maeveris have been working wirh the Lucerni, a group aiming to restore and redeem Tevinter). The Antivan Crows -the de facto rulers of Antiva - may be dealing with a succession crisis, as their First Talon, a powerful feared and respected but old lady, might not be around for much longer and seems her chosen heir has died before his time. Meanwhile in the Anderfells nobody’s heard anything from the Grey Wardens’ HQ at Weisshaupt since the end of Inquisition, and as told in the novel Last Flight, the sudden reappearance of griffons may have had something to do with that radio silence. So you see, get ready for another +100 hours long game because BW has plenty of stuff to keep us busy with. But in short, DA4 seems will be about primarily searching, finding, and dealing with Solas. Regardless of what you decided at the Exalted Council in Trespasser, the Inquisition or what’s left of it is most likely the group orchestrating that mission. As it was so clearly stated then, they need new people Solas doesn’t know so he can’t foresee their actions, so it’s possible the DA4 protagonist is a new agent or a third party hired to do what the Inner circle can’t due to their familiarity with Solas in the past. But at the same time -and this is assuming we get to find Solas in this game - i definitely think the Inquisitor could easily show up again. No, losing an arm doens’t mean they’ve retired forever, prosthetics do exist in Thedas, a world where you can combine dwarven craftmanship with enchantments, seriously, i don’t ever want to hear “but they lost an arm” ever again as an excuse to write them out. And no, marrying Cullen or joining the Red Jennys is no impediment to join the “Stop Solas” Squad; the end of Trespasser means something, mainly that this is personal. Be it they loved them as lovers, as friends or ended up hating his guts for using and betraying them, the Inquisitor’s relationship with Solas makes this very personal, and so having any other character do that face off would cheapen all of it, all that bittersweet angsty development and expectations of either revenge or closure. That moment should happen between those two. It adds a ton of motivation due to their past historyas well, something a new protagonist would lack entirely. My personal best hope is for a sort of dual protagonist thing, say we play new protagonist for most of the game but a selected missions or scenes where we play as the Inquisitor once again and take over for key and heart-wrenching dialogue options. My second best hope is for the Inquisitor to show up as playable for the moment we catch up with Solas. My third and final best hope is for the inquisitor to be a sort of advisor but more like new protagonist’s boss/employer to whom they report back to and get new missions from. The Inquisitor can be stuck in meetings for the most part of it, i just want to know they’re there, behind a door, super busy but there. A cameo like Hawke’s in Inquisition is the bare miminum i can take, anyhting less than that like a mention in a sidequest description or a footnote in a codex entry would be a total injustice.

Romances: I’m open for pretty much anything, as any good BW fan would be. But i’d like romances to feel more alive in the sense that they don’t abruptly get stuck once you exhaust all related quests and dialogue options. As much as my Adaar liked that spank from the Iron Bull, that it was the only thing they could share after their romance was locked was a bit..meh. I liked Dorian’s tho, because his gave one the option to talk a bit, go for a walk, gossip, and sure, it all happened off-screen, and there were limited possibilities, but it was nice and made their relationship feel a bit more real, like they had more to it than kissing and stuff. It happens in most games, once you secure a romanceable companion suddenly you run out of things to do and share with them, and you get stuck with the same 3 lines of dialogue over and over again. There should be a way of solving that.

Side quests: i’m ok with fetch quests initially as it is a good way of forcing the player to go out and explore huge maps, but i’d also like the fetching to have some meaning other than checking things off a list. I want to explore many ruins, and -can’t believe i’m actually saying this- i want a Fade quest. Wait! I know what you’re thinking but don’t kill me just yet, here’s my idea: what if we could visit the Fade at certain locations to witness memories or meet with spirits and recollect information on Solas, his past, his present? Both to understand him better (keep in mind we’ll most likely get a new protagonist who isn’t familiar with him like we are as players) and try to locate him or predict his next move. It would be i think i great way of having visions of Arlathan in its golden age, maybe seeing some of the other Evanuris, how they interacted with each other and with the elves in their service, what really happened ...i just want that sweet, sweet lore, i need it.

Technical stuff: ok, graphics will be amazing for sure, but i also would really really like: better, more varied and longer hairstyles, PLEASE. Body sliders, it’s damn time we get them. Mounts that actually make a difference! Let staves blades make damage in combat, I’M BEGGING HERE. Combined classes, MAGICAL ROGUES! A homebase we can fix up/build on/redecorate as fully as possible (Skyhold was great and i love it to pieces but why were those walls NEVER repaired????) . More casual outfit options, idk i love to dress up my characters, maybe some transmog? A day/night cycle and please i would love to see Thedas’ second moon, also weather variations depending on the region. Yes, i’m ambitious.

Gameplay: i’d like more AI options for companions, but not quite like in DAO, that was too much and i rarely used it. I’m curious how they’ll do combat this time but i know for sure i don’t want the kind of combat that has me going almost frame by frame pausing at every second, it’s annoying for me. I want large areas like in DAI but with a bit more stuff to see and do although one of my favourite maps is the Hissing Wastes so i won’t complain if we get a literal desert but i’d also like it to have secrets hidden around, make me work to find and solve them, i love exploring, i jump and click on EVERYTHING like i’m still a kid playing Monkey Island. A companion in concept art seems to be holding what looks like some form of rifle, so i’m curious how they’d incorporate that in the game. I know Tevinter has the magics and dwarves have the skill, a firearm is totally within the possibilities in-game without breaking any lore; also super curious what sort of skill trees Crows or Lords of Fortune could have, are they rogues, or warriors, or both??

So far, that’s what i got in my head.Well, most of it anyways, i may have missed something but this post has to end somewhere lol

What’s in your head? Feel free to share! Have you been thinking on how you’ll create your next protagonist? All i can think of is magical rogues and that glowing bow was all the hype i needed.

#Dragon Age #Dragon Age 4 #Tevinter #da4 wishlist #DA4

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viviae · 3 years

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can you like. tell me a little about dragon age. seeing your posts about it has got me interested in playing but i have little to no clue what it actually is

Boy can I explain nonny <3 This is a bit long so strap in and im sorry

Dragon Age is (currently) a three game series composed of Dragon Age: Origins (PS3, Xbox 360/Xbox One, PC), Dragon Age: II (PS3, Xbox 360/Xbox One, PC), and Dragon Age: Inquisition (PS4, Xbox One, PC) and its really unique because of its selling point that your actions impact the games as you progress. Like if you kill one character in one game they’ll stay dead through the rest of the series which makes you feel lived in the story and that your actions matter. Dragon Age is also an RPG so a roleplaying game kind of along the same lines of DnD where you get to make and play your own character. And yes there are romances and you can be gay.

The First Game of the series is Dragon Age: Origins where you choose from a selection of six unique (technically seven) origins or backgrounds for your character. You can be anywhere from a human noble or a Dalish elf, the unique elven culture in Dragon Age of nomadic clans dedicating to reclaiming their past. But eventually, from the events in your origin, you wind up a member of a secretive and elite order known as the Grey Wardens whose duty is to protect the world from the Blight.

The Blight is this spread of a horrible disease known as the Taint but is characterized by the presence of Darkspawn, a kind of zombie like creature who exists only to destroy the world. Grey Wardens take the heavy duty of protecting the world from the Blight, which have nearly wiped all of humanity multiple times, at all costs. And currently the country of Ferelden is under going a blight and due to events you wind up the only Grey Warden with your companion Alistair to save the world and reunite Ferelden which had fallen under a civil war.

Along Origins you meet many interesting characters. Alistair is your friendly co-warden who has a mysterious parentage that he hides under his happy go lucky attitude. In contrast to Alistair is the witch Morrigan who is your favorite goth swamp queen who would insult you and you thank her. In addition you meet your chaotic bi rogues Zevran and Leliana. Leliana is a nun who is on the run and hiding from a dark past and she is suspiciously good at murder. And Zevran is not at all hiding his aptitude for murder as an Assassin for hire who tried and failed to kill you but who can ignore that charming bastard?

Dragon Age II follows a much smaller story of a Ferelden refuge who had escaped from the Blight to the city of Kirkwall named Hawke. Unlike in origins where you get to pick your background 2 limits you to Hawke but fear not, Hawke is a loveable bastard and you can still customize them. Throughout DA2 you get to experience all the delights Kirkwall has to offer: Demons, crime, corrupt cops, and fighting your way to survive in this city and make a name for yourself.

Where Origins sets the stage for the world DA2 you are the actor in that play - literally the game is divided into 3 acts that take place over a span of 7 years. DA2′s main conflict is the argument of Mages vs Templars, as in DA’s lore while there are those who are born with magic they are forced to live in prisons policed by the Templar order and the church. You explore the more political arguments of; are the Templars right in their fears of magic as Kirkwall is filled to the brim with corrupt mages or do Mages deserve the chance to live and prove themselves freely from their prisons.

Your romancable companions in DA2 are all bisexuals as the true theme of DA2 is: be gay do crime. You have the foils of Anders: the runaway mage who fled from the prisons the mages are housed in and is determined to bring mages to freedom, and Fenris: the runaway escaped slave who curses magic for only inflicting pain and suffering in his life and wants his warnings to be heard about the dangers magic bring. In addition you also have Merrill, your cute but terrifying Dalish mage who would probably murder you with a cute smile and then go oops. And of course, my pirate wife Isabela, who lives a life free from commitment and is dedicated to the idea everyone should have a good time no matter the cost. Also while not romancable Hawke’s bff Varric deserves every ounce of praise he gets as never before has the energy of “two idiots sharing a braincell” ever been so well adapted.

Then finally we reach Inquisition. After the events of DA2 it triggers a full on war between the Mages and Templars that is destroying the land and causing severe damage that neither side can handle anymore. Desperate for an end to the conflict the Divine (err... fantasy pope) calls for a meeting on both sides... only for the entire thing to literally explode. Killing everyone present and causing a hole in the sky which now means demons are raining like cats and dogs you are the only one to survive. In Inquisition you can once again return to pick between unique backgrounds like in Origins but you don’t get to play through those backgrounds sadly.

You now possess something on your left hand which gives you the ability to patch up the hole in the sky that is pissing demons and due to being the only survivor everyone is incredibly confused about you. Eventually the Inquisition is formed around you, the character they are calling the Herald of Andraste (Andraste is fantasy Jesus) due to your ability to seal the holes. The mystery unfolds as over the course of the game you learn what caused the explosion, how you are connected, and what exactly the mark on your hand is.

DAI has the largest numbers of romance options so I’m gonna give a quick bullet point list for them all

Iron Bull (Pansexual, All Races): A Qunari (think Tiefling but big and beefy) mercenary who is far more clever than he lets on, as well as being the rope top dom of your dreams. Literally! Bull’s romance is a really healthy bdsm relationship if you are interested its very well done

Josephine (Bisexual, All Races): Your loveable ambassador and advisor for the inquisition. She is a workaholic noble who is a tried and true classic romance. Sweep her off her feet and duel for her hand all while navigating the nobility

Dorian (Gay, All Races): The flamboyant pariah rock star mage, he demands attention whenever he walks into the room. Although he wants to be all talk and no emotions make no mistake he is making puppy eyes at you the entire time and gets deeply offended if you say he is. Also not going to lie Dorian is the best piece of gay male rep in gaming history.

Cassandra (Male-only, all Races): Your stern warrior wife who is all serious no funny business... expect she is a bleeding heart romantic who reads horrible smut for fun. You wish to COURT HER?? I mean... if you want 👉👈 she won’t say no...

Blackwall (Female-only, All Races): Your weird dilf who wants desperately to prove himself every step of the way and help people. He is a constable for the Grey Wardens, but all the details on him seem murky... Ah well I’m sure its nothing, the Grey Wardens are a secretive order after all.

Sera (Lesbian, All Races): My wild child, monster chugging, beer guzzling, arrow shooting lesbian. Sera is here for a fun time and not a serious one, she’ll always make sure to keep you humble and ensure you aren’t getting to big for your breeches.

Cullen (Female-Only, Human and Elf only): Cullen’s the Inquisition’s commander who oohh boy is steeped in a lot of trauma. Cullen’s actually a character you get to know through out the series and see just all the horrible nonsense he’s been through. But he is your tragic self loathing... he isn’t princely but he is your adorkable charming

Solas (Female-Only, Elf Only): The humble apostate who joins the Inquisition out of curiosity of the breech, he is an expert on what the hell is going on with that hole in the sky. However, he holds a wisdom that goes far deeper than your typical apostate. Smooth talking and refined he carries a heavy cloud over him.

I left out a lot and all the nonsense with books and what have you but this is the easiest overview of the series I can offer. It’s main selling points is the deep story and characters throughout the games. And of course who doesn’t love the ability to make and roleplay your own character as a bonus? The games are bit of a flawed gem and Origins in my ugly child but they are truly a delight if you are interested

#eren.txt #eren.asks #anonymous #long post #not putting this under a readmore im sorry #im just lazy #i can answer more questions if you have them #Anonymous

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onbanksofadragonriver · 4 years

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Varric x Merrill thoughts

This is a rarepair ship I’ve believed in ever since I saw this fabulous art a few years ago, and the fic “Perfume Shop” (in Russian) has been a major inspiration too. And then recently, @hollyand-writes got me to air my headcanons and to actually get down to writing for this ship, so here we are.

I’ll go by points, but it’s not my goal to somehow attempt to prove that this ship is or should be canon. They’re my headcanons: Don’t like, don’t ship. Also, I haven’t played DA2 in a few years, and have never played any of the DLCs, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt. All dialogue with no specifically indicated source is from the wiki.

Buckle in, this is long!

@geekalogian, @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold ♥

>> Amazing banter

All the companions get frustrated by Merrill’s silly questions, though I believe half of them are actually only asked as a joke. They try to explain it or avoid the question, or sigh about Merrill’s naivete. Fenris is downright hostile to her, and Anders tends to get preachy. Aveline treats her like a child sometimes. Isabela is protective and friendly, but sometimes she sounds a bit condescending and impatient with Merrill’s innocence.

But Varric, he gets her. He gets her silly jokes and just rolls with it, and their dialogues are a pleasure to listen to. It’s with Varric that her somewhat straight-faced, silly humour really shines, because he’s the only one to play along: about frolicking in the woods, and his resemblance to Hahren Paivel, and Bianca having a pretty name, or how his family is like fleas, or Darktown rats following the mage/templar mess, etc. He never brings up her naivete or makes her feel inadequate or as if she’s missed some context. And they’re both so relaxed around each other it’s like Varric has unlocked a whole new dimension to Merrill.

>> Protecting her freedom. The ball of twine and taking care of the gangs.

I’ve seen meta on how Varric paying off the thugs is him infantilizing Merrill, but he does this for Anders too. It’s his way of caring about people. And also, if you see Merrill’s reaction in case Hawke doesn’t let her have the arulin’holm, you’ll see that she’s perfectly capable of realising when people are coddling her, and letting them know — in no uncertain terms — when that kind of meddling is unwelcome. (see also: Varric and his product deliveries below)

I also like to think that half of the reason “nothing ever happens” when she wanders around at night is because Merrill is a badass mage perfectly capable of taking care of herself. One of her default starting spells is rock armour, and when Hawke meets her, she admits to having fought before, and having done so alone. She’s certainly capable or recognising the stupidity and danger Sister Petrice is walking in as she wanders around Lowtown, and that’s in broad daylight.

Also, I’m thinking Varric must have put that protection in place after news of some incidents reached his ears, because it’s not something he does by default to other party members who’re new to Kirkwall. So perhaps it is, or was necessary at some point. On the other hand, perhaps Merrill is totally taking care of herself, and the thugs are not even trying to attack her, they’re just enjoying ripping off Varric :P

I like to think that the Viscount’s gardens were an honest mistake and Merrill did cut down on wandering there after Varric’s comment.

The ball of twine is interesting. Her closest friends in the gang seem to be Hawke, Isabela and Varric, but only Varric actually gives her a tool enabling her to find her way around the confusing human city. I don’t know what others did. Did they expect Merrill to just stay in the Alienage if there was nobody to accompany her around the city? Or did they expect her to find her own way through trial and error? Varric gives her a weird, but apparently functional tool for navigating the city until she learns her own way.

And the common motif between ensuring safe streets, an access to gardens and the ball of twine, is how Varric is safeguarding Merrill’s freedom. She’s Dalish, used to living under open sky, travelling from place to place. She’s used to green, growing things and wandering about as she pleases. And she’s used to doing magic freely and in ways that she herself believes appropriate. Now she’s stuck in a barely hospitable alienage of a city with a strong templar and slaver presence, and Varric doesn’t have the heart to scold her and limit her freedom even more.

Considering Varric is part of the ascendant group in Merchant Guild, who believe in leaving behind Orzammar’s strict caste system and traditions and embracing surface life instead, looks like Merrill’s freedom speaks to something deep in Varric’s own beliefs and values, nonchalant as he seems.

>> Trying to take care of her. Delivering produce.

This gives me feels. First, Varric noticed that something was off. Maybe he missed her showing up at the Hanged Man, maybe he went to visit her. Either way, he noticed that she wasn’t going out, not even to the market. It’s funny to imagine Varric standing in the market scratching his head about what actually goes into food preparation, but more probably he initially just threw some money at the problem, sending someone shopping for her. And then he checked up and saw she’s still not going out. And then he tries to talk her into going for a walk, to get fresh air.

And again this is something I’ve read as coddling and infantilizing, but — when Merrill is clearly not in a mood for teasing, she rebukes him politely: “I’m not a plant, Varric.” She’s not harsh as in case with Hawke and arulin’holm. When Varric leaves, she admits: “Varric is... very sweet. Frequently infuriating and a terrible busybody, but sweet.”

Which at first read as... Merrill not reciprocating Varric’s feelings for her? But on a second thought: what if Merrill is the oblivious one? Not only to Varric’s caring but about her own feelings for him? What if she never considered Varric romantically because she always thought she’d end up with a Dalish partner, and then she becomes friends with Hawke and starts opening up to the idea that what if she takes a human lover? And falling in love with a dwarf has not even crossed her mind yet? (Look lower, queen.)

Because when Merrill cares, she helps people: waters their plants or repairs ancient artifacts. Part of her potentially falling in love with Hawke is due to how they help her, how they have her back. Varric and Merrill have the same love language. I choose to think of it as a mystery, why Merrill is not canonically head over heels for Varric. Maybe she’s so used to his confident, handsome self boasting about all the female attention he gets that she thinks she’s out of his league and has friendzoned herself :P

Additionally, I believe “sweet” and “infuriating” is something that the gang could equally attribute to Merrill herself. Pot calling kettle black? :D

>> Opinions on magic

Varric largely doesn’t have an opinion on Merrill being a mage, a blood mage, or whatever. He’s not afraid, because he has other, more pressing concerns, like Merchant’s Guild breathing down his neck and sending assassins, and when he does mention Merrill’s blood magic being “evil” it sounds like a rehearsed thing that might cause him headache due to other people getting their knickers in a twist over it.

He does acknowledge he’s distrustful of letting “dangerous people run amok” if Hawke sides with the mages in the end of DA2, but apparently he trusts Merrill enough that she knows what she’s doing and leaves it at that. He’s just sick of the whole mage/templar drama.

>> Mutual interest in what they do.

Merrill is interested in what he does for a living, while he tries to keep her out of trouble that would come from her knowing too much. And Varric is pondering why Eluvian is a mirror, and not some other piece of furniture. Not judging each other, just — curious. Showing they are in each other’s thoughts. And I won’t go into details here, because @hollyand-writes has, like, ALL the receipts where Varric thinks about Merrill in DAI, but he does — a lot :) He knows her interest in history and lore, knows that news of ancient elves keeping slaves would upset her, knows she would have liked to see the Dales. He seems to be missing her a lot...

>> Priority.

LOOK at the sequence he mentions his friends in, Merrill is No.1, while Hawke is almost an afterthought :D

Merrill: How do you do it, living in the city without picking a side? Doesn't it matter to you? Varric: Of course it does. That's why I don't take sides. Merrill: That doesn't make any sense. Varric: I've got you and Aveline, Fenris and Anders. Hawke. Isabela. I've got friends in the Circle and drinking buddies in the templars. All of them matter.

And who’s the first person that comes to Merrill’s mind when Hawke calls her pretty? Varric! :D [X]

>> Comfort in storytelling.

Yeah, Merrill says somewhere later that she wouldn’t have made a good Keeper because she’s not good with people, but she did receive all the requisite education. She studied lore and elven legends and history, as much as is left of it anyway, and I believe that storytelling, thriving on stories, is something that she and Varric both have in common.

Maybe she’s too shy to tell her own stories, but she’s definitely enjoying Varric’s and looking for consolation in his stories when things get rough.

Merrill: Varric, how does the story end? Varric: Which story, Daisy? Merrill: The big one. With us and Hawke, the mages and templars. Everything. Varric: You want to know before it happens? You're not worried about spoiling the surprise? Merrill: I might not see it end. Varric: You have to stick with us if you want to find out how it turns out, Daisy.

Merrill: Tell me a story, Varric. Varric: Right now? I don't think we have time, Daisy. Merrill: Maybe a very short story, then? Please? Varric: Fine. "When the cards turned, he lost." Merrill: Oh. Did it have to be so sad?

Merrill: (passing the Hanged Man): "Do you think there's time for Varric to tell us a story while we're here?"

Merrill: I hope we win. Varric will make it a good story, I'm sure.

>> Conclusions & Future

The thing that gets me the most is how good and kind they are to each other. It’s in their teasing, their jokes, the way Varric takes care of Merrill. I love Merrill’s confidence in Varric’s storytelling talent, and I like to think Varric finds Merrill’s confident tinkering with the mirror at least a little bit hot, even if he doesn’t understand magic (Bianca is/was a brilliant engineer, and I think Varric has a bit of a competence kink :D)

I also enjoy thinking of them both as slightly out of touch with emotions: Varric ignoring his own, and Merrill oblivious to his. I like to think of what happens when Merrill realises Varric loves her: because she’s open and honest in her affections, and it would be awesome to see Varric taken by that storm. To see him openly fall for someone so different, at a first glance, but also familiar: a knowledgeable storyteller, confident in her abilities, believing in free will and freedom.

I see them moving on together: Merrill learning to let go of the disappointment that is the unfinished eluvian, and Varric learning to let go of his lingering feelings for Bianca. Yes, the past is important for Merrill, while Varric wants to live in the moment, but the point of knowing the past, for Merrill, is to be able to move forward, and Varric certainly knows his family’s past, so I don’t see any disagreements there. If anything, Varric’s resources and connections can help Merrill get her hands on more artefacts and ancient tomes, letting her continue on her path in some other way.

It’s interesting to imagine their life together. After DAI, Varric pours his own funds into various infrastructure projects until he ends up the Viscount of Kirkwall, and Merrill is in Kirkwall too, helping the city elves. Somehow, it feels logical that at least some of those projects would be new elf housing and improvements to the alienage.

Would they get married? Probably, because I think it would be important to Merrill, and also probably because it might be a better way to protect her, a rumoured/known blood mage, from the Chantry than if she was just the Viscount’s mistress. On the other hand, knowing Varric and his cousin Elmand, and his spy network, and his tendency to successfully evade the Merchant Guild messengers [X], it’s equally possible he’d whip up a completely fake story about how his beloved Merrill is a hatter, and leave it at that. Probably he couldn’t even be found in the Keep, instead preferring to hide out in the Hanged Man or in his wife’s house in the alienage :D

Because, in the end, I think they both enjoy doing their respective Things very much, whether it’s helping elves or writing books, and they let each other do it selflessly, even if maybe it means they can’t live together. (Because can you imagine a Viscomtesse Merrill having to host a ball? Dealing with Hightown nobles? No, I don’t think Varric would ever ask such a sacrifice of her.) But they live close, and help and support each other, and, in short, I think they’d be awesome :)

#dragon age #dragon age meta #varric x merrill #merrill #varric #this is my tiny OTP #feel free to add your own headcanons #ship and let ship!

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glacierbash · 3 years

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ok, now i gotta ask you about some characters. how about leliana and/or junia?

Aha... Nuns /j But starting with Lelianaaaaa

(under a read more because it got LONG specifically my points on Junia because holy fuck she makes me go feral I could talk about her for AGES oh my god)

How I feel about this character: Oh she's definitely one of, if not my favorite character. Though I played inquisition first and didn't have as much of a chance to get invested in her with my first playthrough (though I abandonded it because I messed up lots of stuff-) after I played again, she became one of my favorites in Inquisition. I adored the way she was open about supporting the mages, and after playing through origins, it really solidified my feelings about her. I played through Origins romancing her (because i am a stupid lesbian) and honestly, the way you were able to educate her about elven issues (i forget if it was dalish or not, and I haven't done a Surana playthrough yet) and the fact that she was receptive was mwah. Plus, her voice is amazing and I could fall asleep to it :') I Care Her

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Any ocs really! Surprisingly, I don't put too much thought into ships with DA, but really I like most!

My non-romantic OTP for this character: of course josephine and Leliana, I adore how they get along and just. Good Friends. I also have a new Tabris in mind who would probably romance Zevran, and while I don't have *much* in the way of ideas, I think they'd get along dfjdffd

My unpopular opinion about this character: Oh, I don't know what opinions about Leliana *are* unpopular. I try to stay away from the DA fandom, save for little bits here and there. I don't think I particularly *have* any? I mean, I do go for hardening in origins, softening in inquisition, but that's just me.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon: Yeah, being able to marry the warden (if possible) and telling Cullen off. There are just... *so* many situations where I wish she would, but specifically about mage issues.

And now for Junia,,, How I feel about this character: DFHSDFJGMGAOUGH.... GOD I love her with all my heart there are not enough words for me to describe how much i love this stupid little battle nun oh my god, her barks make me sob, her design is Cool, and god even just in game there have been so many times where she's saved my ass MWAH i love her. Her backstory just makes me cry, and everytime i'm like "i'm feeling too good i need to be knocked down a notch" i go read her barks and sob UGH. God I love her so much I almost always have her on a party like. If not for her healing it's because seeing her makes me go :]]]

All the people I ship romantically with this character: PARA... PLAGUE DOCTOR... THEY CAN HOLD HANDS. AS A TREAT. PERHAPS EVEN.. KISS.. I don't even know why I ended up loving this one so much i was just like. doing the first dungeon with the usual suspects and I just went "wow :)" and started thinking about them and BOOM they're in love now sorry <3 besides that, I also enjoy her with Boudica, Damian, THOUGH I do like Audrey/Para/Junia. They all have two hands. It works out. A circle, you see.

My non romantic OTP for this character: Oughhhh this is a weird one, but her and Audrey. At least with the way I like to write the characters, Audrey being able to help Junia just loosen up and realize "hey we're all gonna fucking die here at least have a bit of fun you Idiot" and Junia helping Audrey uhh ya know not be such an ass. My other weird little thing is Baldwin and Junia, as I just. I really don't have a reason why, other than I feel they might get along and Junia would probably enjoy being friends with somebody she can. I dunno. Rely on. I could go more into that but ijust like them getting along

My unpopular opinion about this character: hngngng I might have several? 1: I don't. really enjoy her with Reynauld, but *honestly* that's because I don't like Reynauld too much as a character? He's interesting, don't get me wrong, but I'm not super invested in him and I really just kinda... pass him by. And of course that's weird bc I'm fine with her and Damian, but I just feel that relationship would have a bit more. I really don't know. Substance? It's just not my cup of tea. And also I don't LOOOVE the "oh haha horny nun" jokes, like. Of course they're fine to make! And of course, being the game it is, characters will most likely be reduced down to a character trait or two, but it's just. Tired? Worn out? There's more to her than the fact that just that. But also, I make those jokes too! Just feel like that shouldn't be her entire personality. Make the jokes you wanna make and maybe i'm just too sensitive, idk! there's just a bit more to her than Horny:tm:

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon: * shakes tin can * lore? Spare lore please? I don't want to have to comb her barks for just a smidge of understanding I want to KNOW what happened to her please just spare the loreee,, and also I WISH we could've had specific in character conversationsss like. I wanna hear her and paracelsus interact! God, I wanna see her and /Audrey/ interact, please redhook come on im begging you i just want them to talk even if they don't get along it won't do anything enemies to friends (to lovers) come here i'll s rank their relationshiips i'll d

#god leliana looks so bare compared to Junia but that's just because Junia makes my brain rot #she's probably one of my favorite characters of all time GOD i adore her #I really should replay Origins I just. Don't wanna go to the deep roads again. oh my god #im fine with the like. fade i actually like the fade but GOD i hate the deep roadsssssssss #actually fuck it after i hunt some monsters tonight i'll make a new origins save. Maybe even try a mage..#thank you for the ask btw!#answered ask #not tagging the fandoms because oh i don't wanna risk it #especially me not loving the certain jokes..

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warwaged-archive · 4 years

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm. tagged by: @theharellan ty so much! tagging: if you read this entire post I’m tagging you

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. Velanna is minor enough there isn’t a lot of talk about her either way (and I get it, given she’s a dlc character from Origins it’s understandable not as many people even know her), but I definitely see more dislike towards her than appreciation.

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. Honestly do not know! I have seen Debates about her personality and actions, but I don’t recall seeing people comment on her looks.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. Not particularly as far as I’ve seen, though I haven’t seen people say she’s weak either. Tbf given her introduction has you investigating murders that no one seems to think were caused by a single person and she literally turns a forest against those who pass through it, I think it’s hard to deny she is strong, though.

Are they underrated? YES! / NO / IDK. Like I said, there’s very little talk about her at all, and very little appreciation. Velanna deserves more love c’:

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO. She isn’t relevant for the story of any of the main games, given she isn’t even in any of them askdjfnskndf She is relevant to Awakening’s story, given she causes some trouble on the road to Amaranthine, and that’s how you meet her. You can kill her on that encounter, though, so for the rest of it she’s not essential (but killing her is boring guys why would you)

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. In a way, since she’s causing some of the problems the Warden-Commander has to solve. Other than that, it truly depends on how you play it.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. Nope. Just a Dalish gal who became a Grey Warden.

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. I lean towards neutral because Velanna isn’t a widely discussed character either way, but I would say it leans towards bad. Many people dislike her actions, and many more dislike her for her harsh ways towards the PC in the beginning (a non-dalish PC, that is). Velanna is very opinionated and angry and a lot of people seem to think that makes her annoying. A bad take imo but I think that’s pretty obvious dkfasndkfjanskdfjn

How strictly do you follow canon? — For the most part I follow it, only expanding it for what we haven’t seen and filling the blanks.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — I don’t know how to sell her to others so I will just talk a bit about what made her interesting to me. When you meet her, she’s so angry she’s been terrorizing the road and nearby villages so much people don’t even know what (what, not who) is responsible for the bloodshed. If you don’t bother to get to know her, it’s easy to think she’s just the anger, but if you do, eventually you learn a lot that might not justify her actions but makes them understandable, and that she’s so much more than Angry™. Velanna cares so much! For the Dalish, and preserving their magic and culture; for her clan, in spite of the fact her sister was the only friend she ever had; for her Keeper, even though they parted on bad terms; for Seranni, even after she chooses to leave with the Darkspawn instead of leaving with her. She’s outspoken and a great defender of her people, but not in a blind or arrogant way, and not in a way that causes her to inherently resent humans (it’s not history that causes that, but her own experience with having humans act violent against her clan and prefer to destroy the land to drive them away than attempt peaceful coexistence). She’s not driven by personal retribution, but by a relentless pursuit of justice that indeed is twisted into something more akin to vengeance. She acts on anger but she learns to be better. She’s been an outcast all her life, well before becoming the only Dalish in her group of Wardens, and she learned to be harsh to defend herself. She’s not easy to love, but she’s capable of loving deeply, and her loyalty to those dear to her is unwavering. She can be harsh because she’s so used to keeping people away in self defense, even if she’s lonely, even if it’s clear all it takes to get past that is treating her with kindness and respect. Velanna has a good heart, but that doesn’t mean she’s only capable of good.

In game, her growth depends on the PC of course, but the way I see it (and write her) there is no reason why her connections to other characters, such as Sigrun and Nathaniel, wouldn’t be just as important for it. They allow her to see beyond her anger, to move past her resent, and to stop judging people as if they were all equally bad. She goes from someone terrorizing humans in a forest and nearby road to someone who selflessly stands to defend them, even should it cost her own life. She goes from joining the Wardens as a means to finding her sister to actually taking on the role and its duties, not just as in fighting the darkspawn, but in being a protector.

And the way she values history, but not just the actual facts, the tales and legends and culture, how she understands their place as something of great importance definitely helped a lot in endearing her to me. According to Velanna, "Stories connect us to our past. They shape a people in profound ways. Without them, we are lost.” and I think about that a lot you know? It really gets to me c’:

Also she’s an awesome powerful mage who could and has killed a man (uh many men actually) but who blushes and stutters if you call her pretty because what are compliments she is not prepared to deal with those

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — Velanna killed people so she’s evil and deserves no forgiveness ever (which isn’t always similarly applied to other characters BUT ANYWAYS). She’s angry and mean towards the protagonist and because of that she’s not cool. She’s whining about the Dalish all the time too so she’s just annoying. Also I never tried to talk to her and often don’t even leave her alive after the Wending Wood. aidsnfkajsdnfkjn seriously though, I can see why people might not like her, as she isn’t made to be likable initially and you gotta get past that to get to the more interesting bits. Velanna is indeed very much tied to her Dalish background, as it is not only her culture and origin, but also a great motivator for her actions, and often even the means through which you get to know her, so if you’re not interested in the Dalish I guess she wouldn’t be an interesting character (but imo, it’s only natural her culture is so important to who she is, given her background and her own feelings about her people. she’s so proud of her heritage, even if being part of that people makes her a target for no other reason than prejudice. even then, she’s so proud of it and so ready to fight for and defend her people and speak and stand for them! I just love her a lot but ok I realize I should be talking about why people might not like her so let’s get back to that). She’s not funny, she’s not friendly, and she’s actually rather angry and outspoken, and I feel like that ends up pushing her to the more ‘controversial’ side instead of being part of the popular or likable characters.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — Literally just played Awakening and ended up like OH I WANNA WRITE ONE OF THEM and I wasn’t sure about who. It wasn’t clear to me, at least, so I ended up thinking about them and at first I was like hm maybe Nathaniel, but it didn’t feel right even though he was the first one I thought I wanted to write. So I thought about Velanna, and the more I thought about her the more invested I became so I was like yeah that’s the one and added her here aksjdnfkjasndf

The first thing that got me really invested in her while playing was the conversation you have with her when you gift her the diary. I just really love her talking about the Dalish and preserving what they have and how important and meaningful stories are. That said, the moment I met her in the Wending Wood I immediately wanted to get to know her.

I’m just a big fan of elves in case you guys haven’t noticed yet asksjnfsjkdnfkdjfn

What keeps your inspiration going? — replaying DA, but specially Awakening, Dragon Age content in general, discussing her with others (talking about my muses is always very helpful to me in that sense), and honestly, others being interested on her too. Discussions about the Dalish or headcanons or other people discussing Dragon Age and their respective characters also help my motivation too tbh! I’m always the slowest to answer to anything, but that’s just how I always am. Those are all things that keep my love for her alive, and thus great part of my inspiration for her.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO / I TRY!

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO / SORT OF? when the inspiration hits I literally cannot shut up

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO. I’m usually more about them 5 page headcanons and threads and ask answers than drabbles

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO. she lives in my head rent free (as do most if not all of my muses tbh askdfnaksdf)

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF?

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Depends but not usually askndfkajs

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO / SORTA.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal? — Depends on what that criticism is and if I asked for it? aksjdfnkjfn I do ask about my portrayals sometimes, and in that case I’m open to constructive criticism --- if there’s something you think I could do better and you can explain why in a nice way, I’ll definitely listen (though I may disagree, so there’s that). But if it comes down to rudeness or ‘you’re not writing her like I think she is’ then well that’s not my problem, I write her how I understand and interpret her.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — I LOVE THEM! Send me questions about my muses literally any time I absolutely love them!!

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — Depends, again. I’m not against discussing it, hearing what other people have to say and why they disagree (and if they say they disagree, I’d probably want to know why), but ultimately, again, it’s my portrayal so it might just be a case of seeing things differently. Like I said, I don’t mind discussing it, though.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — As to this, I just honestly expect people to act the same way I act when I disagree with someone’s portrayal, which is just moving on with my life and not interacting kasjafksdnfjk

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — Depends. They don’t have to like the character, but if it influences IC interactions or if it’s just people who hate a character getting off of bashing them through IC interactions even if it doesn’t make sense that’s a no for me. I don’t like seeing people hating on characters I love, but people are free to do post what they will. If there’s a tag and I can block it that’s fine by me, if it isn’t tagged I’m likely to unfollow.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — If it’s done politely I don’t mind. English is not my first language and learning about errors is a way to improve, to me.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — I think? For the most part? I do tend to get defensive over characters I love and asks that aren’t clear in tone and come across not so nicely (OOC asks, I mean), but other than that I think I’m pretty chill? Idk though you guys tell me aksnkajdsfnkjan

#* muse: velanna / STORYTELLER.#* out of character: the mun / THAT GLOOMY GIRL WHO SIGHS A LOT?#dash games tag tbd.#this was very fun tbh #thanks for tagging <3 #sorry for taking forever aksjndfkjasdnf

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5lazarus · 4 years

Note

ooooh, can you write something for 'I thought we were family,' from the angsty prompt list, please? Any pairing/fandom <3

:) this is the sequel to the hug prompt you sent me, which I posted here. hope you like it. It’s companion-focused, so hopefully doesn’t break too much individual lore.

Anders isn’t well enough to move in the morning. It is frankly a miracle he managed to leave that coffin at all. Aveline and Fenris stick close to his bedroll. Aveline has a working knowledge of battlefield triage from her time in Cailan’s army--Hawke’s heart twists, remembering Carver--and Fenris is devoted, as always. Varric, Isabela, and Hawke confer and decide that waiting a day may actually help them. Sebastian would assume they would try to stay on the move, and this cave is hard to find. Then the sky breaks open and it begins to rain. That decides matters. They are to stay put. They need the rest. “I’m bored,” Isabela says. “I’m bored and I’m horny and I’m mad. Someone entertain me. Do a little dance.” She looks at Varric. “No,” he says. “At least, not this early in the day. Get me liquored up first.” Isabela stretches invitingly., consciously enjoying how everyone cannot help but look at her. “You’re no fun.” Aveline sighs. Anders is still not awake. The Smite was worse than the sword-wound. His connection with Justice makes any interruption from the Fade dangerous. Hawke is worried. They say, “Alright, Aveline?” “No,” Aveline says. “I’ve fought with mages before, but I’ve never seen one hurt like this. I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m not a trained healer, and the only person who would know what to do is currently in a coma. Not to mention he blew up the Chantry and the templars set fire to half of Kirkwall. So, no. I’m not alright, Hawke.” Everyone is silent for a moment. The rain patters down, and thunder shivers the shelter. Dog pads over and sits next to Hawke, demanding to be pet. They scratch him and wonder what the fuck they have to say. Merrill speaks into the awkwardness, “Felandaris might help. I’ll check the stocks.” She conjures a light and heads towards the back of the shelter, which is outfitted with shelves. Whoever kept it prepared for trouble. Hawke gets up and follows her. “Do you know what this place is?” Hawke says quietly. Merrill ignores them, picking up jars and inspecting them. She’s nervous. Her hands are shaking. She is still dealing with magical exhaustion from the battle of Kirkwall. Perhaps that will be how the Chantry will write it, Hawke thinks: the Battle of Kirkwall, which its Champion lost. Merrill stares fixedly at the containers. “I can’t answer that, Hawke. I--you’re my heart, my home, but this isn’t yours. This is my people’s, my love. Not as sacrosanct as the eluvian, but close. And Fenris should not have brought us here. Not even for Anders. Not without the Keepers’ permission.” She sniffs a jar and grins. Holding it out to them, she chirps, “Found it! This will wake him up. Or cause him to hallucinate. Or both.” She smiles at them uncertainly, but Hawke is even more annoyed. They walk away, shaking their head. The cave system is fascinating, massive, well-stocked, and highly-decorated. It is obviously carefully maintained. There is enough food, medicine, and bedrolls to supply a small traveling party for weeks. The wall paintings make Hawke suspect that it is Dalish, but that does not explain why Fenris would know about it, and why Anders might be an exception. “Not even for Anders”--how much have they all been keeping from him? Hawke wants to know. Bethany is sitting at the mouth of the cave, watching the rain. Dog sits by her, ever watchful. Hawke stops to take in the scene. Malcolm Hawke had predicted this sort of life for them, however much Leandra tried to change it. In the end money couldn’t save them. Hawke sighs. They thought Kirkwall would be different, but they’d fucked that up too. “Hey, sister,” Hawke says. “You know what the fuck is going on?” They settle next to her. Dog throws his full weight into their lap, and Hawke winces, patting his belly. “You need to lay off the mabari crunch, boy. Though I suppose there won’t be much of that on the road.” Bethany keeps her face averted. “How’s Anders?” “No one’s going to answer my questions, then,” Hawke says instead. “I’ll trade you an answer for a morning.” Bethany gets up and heads back to the back of the cave, leaving Hawke alone with the mabari. Hawke rolls their eyes: that answers that, then. “Right,” they say. “Just have to force it out of them, then. Nothing else to do, with this rain.” Then they hear shouting, and they perk up. Trouble is easier to handle than tension. Hawke can handle trouble. Tension just drives them up the walls. They bound to the back of the cave eagerly, Dog at their heels. The scene that confronts them is bizarre. Fenris is straddling a glowing Anders, carefully avoiding his wound, but pinching his nose. Aveline is holding down his shoulders, and Merrill is trying to force a drink down his throat. Varric and Isabela look up from their card game to gawk. “Heh,” Hawke says. “Justice can’t handle a taste of his own medicine.” Bethany groans. Merrill gets the concoction down Anders’ throat and he stops glowing. He falls back heavily, and Aveline and Merrill pull away as Fenris closes his eyes, pained, and climbs off of him. He’s very tender with him. He kisses Anders’ forehead and wipes away the sweat and spilled medicine from his face. “Cute,” Hawke says. “Now that Anders is less of a ‘blowing himself up’ risk, want to explain how you know about this place? What the Underground is, exactly?” “Hawke,” Fenris tries, but Hawke puts up a hand. “No. You’ve been working with the mage underground, haven’t you. And this,” they gesture to the space around them, “is somehow connected with this. Elves and mages all working together in happy harmony. And you didn’t tell me. None of you did. As if this isn’t my fight, too. As if I didn’t cover up for your shit in Kirkwall, as much as I could.” “It isn’t your fight,” Bethany says quietly. “Like fuck it is!” Hawke snaps. “I thought we were family. All of us. I can understand you keeping Varric out of it, and Isabela hates having opinions--” “Hey!” Isabela protests. “Actually, wait, that’s true. Carry on.” Hawke brushes their hair out of their face, exasperated. “Right. And I really don’t understand how Aveline handles all this conflict of interest--” “I don’t,” Aveline says shortly. “Not like you’ve ever asked, but I don’t.” Hawke decides they are going to address that later. Right now they want to mad at Fenris, Bethany, and Merrill, and it is easier to focus on one thing at a time. “Nice. Not like you’ve ever told me, but that’s not the point. The point is--this is my fucking fight. My father was a mage. Bethany--you’re the only other Hawke left! You’re my family. Merrill, you too, Fenris, Anders--all of you! If there was an underground I would’ve liked to be part of it! We could’ve leveraged the Amell name! There was only so much I could do through the nobility, you could’ve used my money--” Fenris says, “Stop acting as if you are the hero of every story, and we are just your companions. I have my life and struggle, and you do not need to be at the center of every battle.” “That’s not fair,” Hawke says. Fenris gets up. “You have no idea what happens to the elves in Darktown. Kelder is one of the petty monsters we must face. Did you think because you struck him down, you freed the alienage of their human plague?” Fenris has a tendency for melodrama when he’s angry. Hawke has always admired it. Right now, though, they’re insulted. “No,” they say, “but--” “Kirkwall’s at the center of the slave trade. You know this, we’ve fought enough of the Blind Men and the Carta. So we organized an underground. I am not the only self-freed man in Kirkwall, nor will I be the last. But to make sure I am not the last, we needed to keep it on a need-to-know basis, Hawke! And you did not need to know!” Hawke, abashed, steps back. They know they have misstepped. Fenris is angry, face twisted in a scowl, fist clenched. He is standing like a bristling watchdog over Anders, who is still asleep. Aveline looks at them sourly. “I tipped you off for a reason, Hawke,” she says. “I didn’t think you needed everything spelled out.” “Oh, not you too,” Hawke responds. “I got us to Kirkwall, can’t I get a little credit? And really, Aveline, out of all of us, you have no place to talk. You set off the Arishok! You didn’t even bother investigating the rape of that poor girl--” “You have no idea of what I’ve tried to do,” Aveline snarls. “Or what I have failed to do. Back off, Hawke. I’m tired. I don’t want to have this conversation.” “I think we should,” Bethany says carefully, “perhaps all take a second to breathe.” Varric chuckles. “Let them be, Sunshine.” He waves a hand of cards at her. “We’ll deal you in. Stay out of it.” Hawke blinks. They’re pretty sure those are contradictory instructions, but Bethany makes sense of it and sits down with him and Isabela. Isabela puts her arm around her: more things Hawke, apparently, doesn’t need to know about. Fenris sits back down, still scowling. He presses two fingers to Anders’ neck again, checking his pulse. Aveline sighs. “You know that does no good.” “Leave me alone. Hawke has a point.” “Oh, come off it,” Aveline says. “I’m tired of everyone’s moral superiority. As if any of you are a paragon of virtue. You blew up a chantry, for Andraste’s sake.” Hawke pauses. “I mean, that was all Anders. He didn’t tell me what the sela petrae and the drakestone were for…” Aveline huffs. “Aided and abetted blowing up a chantry, then.” She throws her hands. “And you didn’t think to ask? You didn’t think, as the Champion of Kirkwall, you could’ve reigned in this madness? Reasoned with Meredith? Petitioned the Divine?” Hawke narrows their eyes. “The Divine wants to bring an Exalted March on the city, Aveline,” they say. “The Left Hand told us that much. And if Isabela couldn’t convince her otherwise, I don’t know what you think I could’ve done. And don’t change the subject. You fucked with the Qunari. If you hadn’t set off the Arishok, the Viscount wouldn’t have been killed, and Meredith wouldn’t have been able to put Kirkwall under martial law. The mages wouldn’t have been backed into the corner, she wouldn’t have had enough evidence to call for a Rite, and we could’ve….” Hawke sighs. Could have, would have, should have: it does not matter much, and Kirkwall was a gaatlock barrel, waiting for the fuse. “Are you done?” Aveline says acidly. “You really overestimate my influence, if you think I could’ve convinced the Viscount to order an internal investigation of the guard’s wrongdoing. I lost my position! ‘Captain of the guard’--they pulled me off fieldwork as soon as they could, and had me pushing paper where I could do no good. I was an administrator. I tried. What would you have me do? It would’ve been worse if I left. At least I was leaving a paper trail!” “You should have left,” Fenris says. “You were complicit in everything that happened, too. You could have done more.” “Fenris,” Aveline says evenly. “Go fuck yourself.” She gets up and strides past the card game, planting herself at the mouth of the cave. It is still raining, and it is still a long way down. No one can climb that alone. She stands there, back to everyone. “Well,” Varric says. “Go fish.”

#ask #catabasis #dragon age #dragon age 2 #da2 #dragon age fanfic #fanfic #hawke #aveline #fenris #merrill #bethany #varric #anders #musetta3

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dalishious · 5 years

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This conversation is one of the best demonstrations of Lukas Kristjanson’s fundamental lack of understanding of established lore on City Elves. And general asininity.

#LowElfEsteem is a series on Sera’s romance with an elven mage, discussing both the well and poorly done aspects of her writing, while also examining her character on a deeper level.

The first half of this part isn't so bad, because at least I can understand the intent of it being to follow up with Sera’s “hope you’re not too elfy” comment in her introduction scene with what she means.

Lavellan: I’m just interested in talking to an elf like me.

Sera: Mmm, don’t think so.

Lavellan: Why not?

Sera: Well, maybe you’re all right. But most elves are too... elfy.

Sera: Like that Solas, right? “Never be as good as we were.” Well, who’s we? I’m just fine.

Because hearing this for the first time, it’s a moment of realization of her current mindset. What is especially telling is her insistence, “I’m just fine.” It’s completely unprompted; the Inquisitor instead says the exact opposite, saying Sera is an elf like her. But Sera’s instinctive reaction is to challenge this, like it’s a bad thing to be an elf, and she is not like that. This is the first time we really see a glimpse of her internalized racism.

What makes it fall flat though, is using Solas as a comparison. Solas, who also says that elves are wrong, who also separates himself from the elves of current time, going as far as to say he doesn’t see himself as an elf. To me, this is just another illustration of how it’s negatively impacting to not have any elves in DA:I who are actually happy to be elves. DA:I could really have benefited from a Zevran, a Velanna, a Merrill.

Where the conversation to end here, I would have even been a little impressed with Kristjanson. But it doesn’t, and the second half, the one dictated by player dialogue choices, is a mess of a Bad Take from an ignorant white man.

Lavellan: I think there’s more to it than that. A few thousand years more.

Sera: Hey, someone wants to be angry about old debts, be angry. Be a terror that never lets an enemy forget.

Sera: But if you’re digging it up so you can wear it, that’s just weird.

Sera: I mean, you Dalish don’t really know. You have stories, but that’s all they are.

Sera: It’s all fancy dress, not history.

It’s actually quite astounding how many white people see ethnic minorities as “choosing” to be offended, and therefore it’s our problem, not theirs for being offensive in the first place. I can honestly tell you I do not know a single native person who is angry to “wear it.” We’re angry because genocide never ended for us, and it feels like no one cares. And in the exact same way, this piece is completely dismissive of the ongoing persecution elves face, as if it’s all old “stories” and “history.” It’s not even in the slightest.

While I suppose it’s possible that Sera is just regurgitating things she’s heard from humans, to me this reads more like her being used as a mouthpiece for someone who doesn’t actually have a single clue what he’s talking about. :)

Lavellan: There’s nothing to learn from any of that history?

Sera: Yes. “Don’t do that.”

Sera: What? “We” lost so bad, there was nothing left.

Sera: You figure out what they wore on their deathbed, you wear it. Waste of time.

Again, just like the above option, this one treats elven culture as if it’s all a thing of the past. As if the Dalish and City Elves don’t have a thriving culture in present time, despite all attempts at total assimilation by the Chantry. “There was nothing left?” This is plain not true. Yes, much of it was stolen, but not all. And what was preserved has morphed into living cultures of present day.

[Sidenote: Now I can’t stop thinking about how much this piece sounds like that white nationalist I had in my inbox; “strong nations won wars and conquered weak ones and that’s okay” adsgklahdlsaf fucking christ on toast]

This last one is the one I hate most of all:

Lavellan: There’s a lot of tradition there. Should it just be thrown away?

Sera: Your great-grandfather’s dead, why aren’t you dead? You’re throwing away tradition.

Lavellan: That makes sense to you?

Sera: None of it does in the city. That’s why I’m not “like an elf.”

Ignoring how that is the most ridiculous, nonsensical argument I’ve ever heard--and contrary to popular opinion, Sera is not actually really nonsensical, so no, I do not consider this to be in-character but instead just a fucking absolute moron at the helm--CITY ELVES ARE NO LESS ELVEN THAN DALISH ELVES, AND THEY HAVE THEIR OWN CULTURE AND TRADITIONS TOO.

For FUCK sake Kristjanson, we had a whole damn Origin in DA:O dedicated to showing this! Hell, one of the first things Duncan says in the narrative voice over is “despite these hardships, Denerim’s elves are a strong people who take pride in their close community.” And this is in fact it’s of the same alienage Sera is originally from!

There are even some City Elves who still believe in the traditional elven gods, against Chantry law. Hell, we meet three of them in Inquisition!

“Sylaise bless you... or the Maker... or whoever. It doesn’t matter. Just thank you” --The elven man from the quest Shallow Breaths

“You are Dalish? My Senna and I, we kept to the old ways as we could, though I know we are as children to you.” --The elven man from he quest Flowers for Senna

And the elven woman in the quest Agrarian Apostate? The ring the templars stole from her husband is an “Old Dalish Promise Ring.”

To say that city elves are not “elfy” is wrong. And to say that the reason Sera’s internal racism is because she’s a City Elf and not a Dalish elf is wrong. City elves are elves, just like Dalish elves are elves. They’re just different. And while yes there are some Dalish Elves who see City Elves as being not really elves, and some City Elves who see Dalish Elves as not being really elves, this doesn’t stop them from helping each other out, nor is it the viewpoint of everyone. The whole idea subtracts from the real core of Sera’s issues; those from being raised by a human noble.

#sera #dragon age #dai #bioware nemesis #meta #low elf esteem

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first-hunter · 4 years

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Long ago I was going to make a longer post about the halla bc it's an interesting topic in the lore, but the entries in the codex and what we see in-game seem to be contradicting a lot. I really like your depictions of elven harts (your art is very cool, I love the composition of your pieces). It seems to me that if the Dalish had the harts they wouldn't need other draft animals. Do halla have a different role in your personal canon than in-game? What do you think about them in general?

yes !!! :D thanks for asking !!!!!

I know it is contradictory and elves were supposed to be riding halla since Origins. I’m not even sure why they changed it tbh? Lol but playing Inquisition really had me falling in love with the hart.

I kinda parse it (in my head) like this: the halla are sacred in Dalish cultures, so they wouldn’t be doing much “menial” work, thus not meant for everyday riding. Maybe the elves might ride them in special occasions. For example, there’s mentions of halla guiding elves to important places. As of Inquisition, though, it’s kinda hard to imagine anyone riding them because of how small they are now…so maybe they just follow them?

Halla are more like “icons” to me. The Dalish keep them and take care of them and herd them, but they don’t seem to have much “use” other than being companions and sometimes-guides. It’s probably just a tradition. There’s mention of halla pulling aravels too, so that might be their main function and symbolic of the periods in which halla actually “guided” elves regularly. I don’t think they would just let the halla pull them wherever they wanted in current times, however. That would be silly.

A lot of nomadic cultures herd animals for their milk or other produce so maybe there’s that too. Though I really don’t think they’d be eating them unless one of them died naturally. Idk there’s a lot of clan variation so maybe some clans are more open to the idea than others.

I like the idea that other races, or even other, rival clans, might steal or kill another clan’s halla to demoralize them. (credit 2 @thewolfandthehunter for that idea LOL)

So, harts are more viable for the everyday work like riding and hunting and carrying prey and even battle since halla seem much too delicate for all of that, besides being sacred and all.

I know Eirik personally views halla as glorified goats, though he likes them as animals and he recognizes how important they are to the culture n stuff.

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felassan · 3 years

Text

Thoughts on Dark Fortress #3

(This post is under a cut due to spoilers.)

There’s a lot I thought/wanna say about this final issue, to the point that it’s hard to know where to start!

The cover art is.. beautiful. The symbolic allusion between Shirallas and the dragon (his draconic-y claws, the semblance of a broken collar falling off in the same way, the fire) 👌 On the whole, lined up side-by-side the three covers of Dark Fortress feel really thematically cohesive. Shirallas’ and the dragon’s claws echo Tractus’ sharp metal gauntlet, and as well as the similarities between the dragon and Shirallas, both Tractus and the dragon have a circle of weapons, and the patterning encircles Tractus’ neck and wrists like the collars and shackles. Y’know, like you can just really tell the cover artist planned ahead and put a lot of thought into how the 3 cover arts would ‘flow’ from one to the other, blending elements between them.

I posted some of my fav panels here.

I knew he was my boy but Shirallas’ backstory broke my heart ( ´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥` ) the first panel is so bleak and heart-wrenching. the burning aravel parts.. another Dalish clan met a terrible fate.

I wonder if his clan wandered Tevinter like Clan Oranavra? it makes me wonder if Shirallas and Fenris met in Tevinter. It’s nice to see that another clan took him in. And if Shirallas is a name he took, not his original name, I assume it has a special meaning, maybe to do with his quest for justice/vengeance. Shiral means journey, “allas” is found in vallas, which means set, as in the sun. The “vallas” in vallasdahlen (life-trees, planted in remembrance of those who dedicated their lives to the Dales) means life. in many ways the sun and life are the same thing, and there’s the obvious connection to Elgar’nan, eldest of the sun. So journey/quest - sun/life? Like since the loss of his clan he’s on a journey/quest for the rest of his life to get justice/vengeance, which are attributes of the sun god Elgar’nan? that became his life’s purpose and his direction of ‘travel’ ever since his loss, what he dedicated his life to since then. :’(

Elgara vallas, da'len. ( ´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥` )

This is our first look at the vallaslin application process, no? what Shirallas is saying in this panel is the Song to Elgar’nan. it’s interesting, in that that prayer kind of resembles what happened, or almost happened, in this issue. a fortress shaken, fire, winged death (a dragon), pretenders to power, “strike the usurpers” (“Red Wraith, dispose of my enemies, kill the traitorous mage”). pretty cool right?

⬇️ me two months ago, look at the tags in red brackets.

oh my son.. Dalish father roams, and the Dalish son won’t survive the fight ( ´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥` )

the panel where Fenris and Shirallas shake hands ;; to which experience is Fenris speaking of, I wonder? once upon a time he saw Anders almost lose himself in his own quest for Justice/Vengeance for the mages.

Parallels between Shirallas succeeding in proving himself to Nenealeus and when Fenris succeeded in proving himself to Danarius all those years ago - compare. ;__; an elf surrounded by bodies of people he’d killed to prove himself, and a horrible Magister telling him “well done”.

I love the design of the sword and its use as a ‘divider’ on the first page splitting up the panels is both smart and beautiful. even here there’s pink light around it, the dragon’s fire

overall I wasn’t expecting this issue to begin with flashbacks to Shirallas’ past and backstory, so this whole page caught me off-guard

omg look at the red lyrium ‘veins’ under Shirallas’ skin. when he emerges from the sarcophagus that is a very cool picture of his face

Nenealeus has been taking beard-styling advice/trends from the dwarves

check out the sword crackling and reforming as Shirallas makes contact with it. is the red lyrium under his skin moving in this scene?

in the panel of Vaea running away from the dragon, it’s nice that as she runs Fenris is still behind facing the dragon, to protect her

gorgeous background in the panel with Marquette, and his expression is one of Regret for what he just did and for his part in all this. the dawning realization that I’ve Fucked Up Big Time

as Nenealeus’ weapon is a sword, does he have some Knight Enchanter-adjacent skills (I don’t expect the actual KE artform is exclusive to southern Circles only)? it’s a physical item ofc, not a summoned one. staffs are infused with lyrium to provide a conduit for a mage’s power. so then, mages can channel power through other [presumably similarly-infused] weapons too, not just mage staves/staff-like magic implements or their bare hands

given the color of Nenealeus’ magic and the fact that the dragon was under the control of his magic, it now makes sense to me why the dragon’s fire is that color! o:

Marius is badass (nice touch that his shoulder is smoking pink with the effects of one of Nenealeus’ magic attacks here) and the four panels where everyone’s grim and determined, facing off against each other and Venatori goons made me feel quite emotional. Aaron is Team Dad.. it’s nice to see him having a friendship / paternal moment with Francesca both acknowledging her pain and power while also giving her a pep talk. You can tell when he says too “We all need to do whatever we can in this moment” that he’s talking about himself too and may already be thinking one or some of them aren’t going to make it out of there

Francesca GO OFF!! she’s so powerful, and it’s really cool every time seeing her plant magic in action. it puts in perspective how powerful Velanna would have been with her similar skills (skills like Thornblades), and I enjoy the contrast of the fire in the background and the blue/green of Fran’s magic in action

Fenris is so cool-headed in high-octane combat situations, quickly taking stock, assessing and realizing the odds then coming up with a plan. the look on Vaea’s face when she’s like >:( wtf u can’t just leave is cute

cool pulled-back bird’s eye shot of the Fortress

Karasten continuing with the sass about Tevinter even during a siege

Fenris speaking Qunlat! I love that they brought this lore fact into play and had him make use of this skill, it’s a neat reminder of Fenris’ exchange with the Arishok if you take him into the compound in DA2. in the opening-up the gates scene, Vaea’s worried about letting the Qunari in and going to the Qunari (from her expression), but she trusts Fenris and his judgement enough to open the gate and see what happens

I like that Tessa’s bolts are fletched the blue of her accent color

chills at the panel where Shirallas is walking out of the flames advancing on Aaron. Ser Aaron, who never retreats, not at Ostagar, not now ;__;

the battle-scenes are beautiful, fast-paced and gory, chaotic and colorful, like it would feel to be there

Fenris then puts himself between Aaron and Shirallas. I could hear “I will deal with this Red Wraith” in my head

Autumn can look so scary. a true mabari warrior! when she leapt towards Shirallas I was Stressed for her safety despite knowing rationally that they wouldn’t kill their dog!

the horizontal combat splash page is awesome

CLEVER GIRL Autumn. she and Fenris are in sync in this sequence.

Shirallas serving super saiyan vibes with the bulk, strength, hair

Fenris bargaining for Fran’s life and then trusting her to use her magic as part of the attack on the Red Wraith

lmao Ser Aaron

smart thinking Fran

Aaron praising her ;__;

Marius was straight-up prepared to die to stop Nenealeus ;__; poor Tessa in this exchange

the face-melting scene 👌

“Ah, Marius... I knew it would come down to the two of us”: this panel is just really cool? Nenealeus looks almost congenial here, which makes him seem all the more colder and more dangerous. and the burning bodies strongly remind me of the bodies at the start of Inquisition which are at the ‘blast point’ of the Breach at the Conclave

when Marius and Vaea’s eyes meet and they formulate the backup plan 👌

nice to see ‘staff’-less magic in action. Nenealeus is clearly a very powerful mage. when he’s frying Marius he has Star Wars Palpatine and force lightning vibes

OH VAEA... you did it, but my heart hurts that she had to kill someone for the first time, even though it was foreshadowed by her discussion with Marius in a earlier issue. & Nenealeus’ look of surprise as he dies says it all

it’s a serious moment but Marius now looks like a cat that stuck its paw in a socket hh

when Nenealeus is doubled over dead, it’s a great panel- the white background taking us out of the chaos that’s going on all-around for just a moment, showing the seriousness of what’s just transpired for Vaea and the realization of it setting in. a pause, the shock. & it’s nice to see Marius being soft with someone other than Calpernia or Tessa

but despite what’s just happened Vaea is still Vaea, she’s concerned about life and immediately wants to save the dragon. I like the part where panels of Vaea and Fran ‘face’ each other as they have this discussion, a lot.

in the moment that it takes off, does the dragon realize Vaea is responsible for saving its life? the ‘eye’ panel feels like an acknowledgement from it, or between the two

Fran’s magic destroying and sinking the sarcophagus into the ground reminds me of what in-world lore says happened to Arlathan, in a way

omg they have to stop Shirallas before he gets over 9000

do you think when Aaron says “We cannot retreat” he’s thinking of Loghain’s retreat at Ostagar?

at this point btw I’m pleasantly surprised that Marius survives, I had sort of expected him to die in this issue

oh Marquette, curiosity killed the cat dontcha know

new lore just dropped: the Red Wraith is able to heal from any wound, which is notable, and he and the sword have a.. symbiotic relationship? with each other. “He feeds energy to the sword from the red lyrium in his veins. And in turn, the sword heals his wounds.” What are the lore implications of this? Just what is red lyrium capable of?

Paragon Branka reference! and later on a Black Marsh reference

:’( As soon as Aaron launched into his story at this point my stress levels went through the roof and I knew it was Time. and then - well. you know :’((( Aaron had death flags in previous issues, so I was logically prepared and not surprised by the occurrence (this isn’t a bad thing btw), but I still wasn’t EMOTIONALLY PREPARED

mfw

nooooooooo.... It was at this point everyone that I burst into tears.. i have never Ugly Cried at a comic before so that was a new experience.. It’s hard to put my feelings about this into words bc rly it just straight-up destroyed me, u know.. Vaea’s “Don’t leave me”, Aaron’s tears when he knows the deed is done, his pendant.. surely the resemblance between the way he looks on this cover and the way he looks in the panel when he’s falling and Vaea is shouting “Aaron!” is intentional. i’m just destroyed okay

On the next page, holes in Shirallas’ shirt where his wounds were before they healed is a nice touch. Autumn’s bite here must surely be shattering the bone in his lower leg. then as if i wasn’t in enough pain already - being separated from the weapon, did that bring Shirallas back to himself for a while? His “Friend?” and the look in his eyes when he looks up at Fenris is so pitiful :’( for a moment just before the end he’s the boy in the wood surrounded by his burning clan again. RIP Shirallas son, we barely knew ye but I loved u :’(((

Having Marquette escape is a smart choice, it means there’s someone still kicking around Thedas who knows what happened here and what went down. maybe we seek him out in the next game when trying to follow up on the plot-thread of the idol/red lyrium/its capabilities/Venatori/Qunari? anyway, can’t help but admire, in a fashion anyway, someone who dips out to save their own skin, and his attempted grift when he’s talking to Tractus x)

we hadn’t seen the last of Tractus indeed. there he is! “This is me, crying over our loss” - he’s such an edgy boi

THE IDOL

“Oh, you mean this idol?” feels like they’re breaking the fourth wall and deliberately teasing us x)

when Fenris says “[stay clear of it] Red lyrium can do things with your mind” I wonder if he’s thinking of his experiences with things like Bartrand and Meredith

started to cry again at the final Aaron scenes ok.. when it pans back to Vaea and Autumn on the shore with the dying Aaron, they look so small and lonely set against the backdrop of the gray rock, windy shore, jagged outcrops. it’s a beautifully poignant and incredibly forlorn backdrop for this scene. Autumn in these panels, and again the parallel between Aaron lying here and him on that cover page.. ;; the whole scene is raw and gutwrenching. even in death Aaron was thinking about Vaea, apologizing that she had to take a life, outlining his hopes that she continues to have a positive future and doesn’t descend into any kind of darkness. the fact that all this time he’s carried around a letter addressed to King Alistair in his pocket, to recommend that Vaea be knighted, the fact that he’s crying too, the pendant, the tenderness between them, how proud Aaron is of Vaea, the fact that he goes out telling a story and smiling because he’s so proud of her, here at the end Aaron is filled with pride and looks at peace.. i can’t ( ok i cried again on this re-read when writing this post, Dad Stuff is the ultimate way to get me ok.. don’t look at me _(°:з」∠)_ )

Vaea IS more than worthy. I’m so glad someone recognizes that and sees it in her. King Alistair WOULD knight her, and there’s a beautiful poetry in that fact as the son of an elf. there’s also something poetic in that, if Vaea becomes the first elven knight of Ferelden, well it echoes the Emerald Knights of old in a way. that’s beautiful. I’m very proud of Vaea.

Here we see another parallel - when Francesca is comforting a crying Vaea as her father figure passes away, it directly echoes when Vaea comforted Francesca when she was crying after her own father died.

Aaron’s hometown of Portsmouth is a real place in England

I’m happy to see Fran and Autumn continuing to travel with Vaea, and Fenris continuing to keep his promise to Aaron to keep Vaea safe, and that Cassé is now Fran’s horse (that’s a lovely touch considering she healed him in Blue Wraith, a full-circle moment)

Fenris is right, they were family. soft supportive Fenris, with emotional intelligence ;; (and he of all people knows about Found Family)

the last panel of Vaea crying is beautiful too, the sun is rising in the east after the terrible night they’ve had, and the ‘faded’ rectangles is a great style/composition choice

even Cassé the horse looks sad

the scene of Fran and Vaea riding double with Fenris smiling in the background is super cute, and I love that the last we see of the party is them honoring Ser Aaron by telling stories like he did, of his exploits. I hope they always tell stories of Ser Aaron ;;

I’m glad Tessa made it out okay, she’ll be able to return to Charter. 💜 I was a bit worried this wouldn’t be the case

the last page DBKGRRGRKRKGREKF

Pour one out for Ser Aaron Hawthorne of Portsmouth, Knight of Ferelden.

---

A recap on wider plot-points

The Qunari Antaam have taken control of Castellum Tenebris, and Neromenian has fallen to their advance.

The sarcophagus is broken and has been buried deep in the ground. Francesca asserts that it won’t be found.

The Inquisition agents retrieved the broken shards of the weapon, and are going to take its remains to the shadow Inquisition.

Tractus Danarius is alive and in possession of the idol, or was at the timepoint of this comic. He wants to use it to impress the Venatori remnants so that he can rejoin them. Marquette thinks, or said that he thinks (could easily be a bluff or his lack of knowledge about it compared to someone like Solas), that it doesn’t work anymore. (I’m leaning towards it does still work, otherwise why would Solas be interested in it?)

Solas, in what looks kinda like his most recent DA4 trailer gear, was watching the events of this series/arc the whole time and knows what happened. He knows Tractus has the idol. None of the people in this comic plot are “People Solas doesn’t know”. And it seems that he is able to use eluvians to watch people.

There’s a chance that Tractus Danarius is the mage in Tevinter Nights, from Dread Wolf Take You - the mage from House Danarius who went with some slaves to Nevarra to use the idol to perform a ritual with the Mortalitasi. That mage wanted to change the world to help fight the Antaam’s invasion. In the tale at least, he used the idol, a rift opened, the Dread Wolf popped out and killed him. At the time of that ritual the idol was still working.

+ some new lore -

the Red Wraith was able to heal from any wound, which is notable, and he and the sword the idol created had a.. symbiotic relationship? with each other. “He feeds energy to the sword from the red lyrium in his veins. And in turn, the sword heals his wounds.” What are the lore implications of this? Just what is red lyrium capable of?

eluvians can be used to watch people. not just to communicate over long distances or as portals between places

Lastly I don’t know what to do with myself anymore as this is the end of a long-running DA arc and was the final piece of [currently-known about] new canon Dragon Age content that we’ll get.

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dark fortress spoilers #dark fortress spoiler #dragon age #bioware #fenris #spoilers #spoiler #dragon age: dark fortress spoilers #dragon age: dark fortress spoiler #the Fenaissance #feels #gpoy

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tropicoola · 5 years

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Character backstory and explanation for one of my main inquisitors under the cut. Will feature images.

So I wanted to write about one of my main inquisitors, this is Levant Lavellan. She’s not really a Lavellan, because she was adopted into the clan when she was exiled from her home to the west.

She’s a teenage inquisitor (16 when Inquisition starts and 20 when Trespasser ends) and a descendant of Ghilan’nain’s mutated slaves who escaped slavery before the fall of Arlathan/Elvhenan. It’s been referenced in the game that Ghilan’nain would create creatures and even experimented on her own followers/slaves so this was where I took the idea from, I suspected that there were at least some failed attempts. Anyways, eventually the slaves grew fed up with how they were treated and attempted to flee. Fortunately (or unfortunately) Fen’harel had heard of this and wanted to help them, so he did but they were terrified. Having heard the terrifying stories of him. In addition, they were afraid they would no longer be treated as Elvhen for how beastly they looked and the fact that they were no longer immortal due to their mixed bloodline. So when Fen’harel was not looking, they escaped him and fled to the west over the Hunterhorn Mountains.

It was a mass exodus of grand peril, for the journey was filled with monsters, dark jungles, chilling mountains, scorching deserts, and, for the most part, uncharted territory. A normal Elvhen would have died, however they were no normal Elvhen. For they carried animalistic traits. For having the blood of animals and beasts, they had claws that could help them climb, some had wings, others had gills, others had fur that kept them warm, and most had unnatural colored skin (green, blue, silver, etc) that helped hide them from predators. Despite their different powers, there was one thing they all had in common - a deep tie to the nature that surrounded them. These people were almost entirely cut off from the Fade and instead they turned to the Earth beneath, but not to the Titans. They paid close attention to the sun, the stars, the winds, and all the creatures that crawled on the crust of the world. They did not talk to animals, but they understood that animals knew the way through these places the best and so they listened to them, followed them, and eventually found a clearing far from monsters and even farther from Elvhenan. It was here where they built their first settlement, living in peace with the animals. Eventually the settlement turned into an Empire and they dubbed it ‘Neo-Arlathan’ and closed its gates from foreigners for a very long time. Ever since, paying respects to natures and having beastly roots have become an intrinsic part of their culture.

I made art of what Neo-Arlathan would look like and although it is by no means as beautiful or intricate like Arlathan, it does have a charm of it’s own. Much of it and the people - I have taken inspiration from myths and legends of Faeries and their courts, their politics, and their appearances. Here are examples of the kind of aesthetic it would have: x, x, x, and x, x, x, x. The last four are mainly to point out how beastly they can look and yes, some do look exactly like that (also follow the artist!! they deserve a lot of love!! i admire them a lot).

(Pictured above, Levant with her claws coming out during Trespasser - a sign she is slowly maturing into whatever form she’ll be in as an adult)

In much of Faerie lore, the Fae are depicted as having pointed ears and dressed in clothes woven from insects (butterfly wings, moth wings, etc) and plants. They are known to be tricksters and volatile when even the slightest bit offended, their politics are commonly divided into two - the seelie and unseelie court. The first being filled with kinder Fae and the latter with more malevolent ones. Levant belongs to the latter, specifically the Autumn court. I won’t get into too much about this but if you think human politics is complicated, Fae politics is ten times more. Taking inspiration from this, the court Levant is in has a High Power (the king or queen) and needs an advisor because of how dangerous the politics are. Levant was studying to be the next advisor and was close to becoming one until a dispute between her and the High Power caused her to get exiled.

In short, the High Powers (plural because the others in different courts were involved) wanted to 1) destroy any remnant of Arlathan/Elvhenan and 2) rename Neo-Arlathan under the basis of ‘why should we keep records of our abusers? let us burn it and move ahead’. Levant was extremely against this, especially because she was a scholar who was very interested in her people’s past. She even started a rebellion with her colleagues but that was stopped fast by the ones in charge, although her colleagues were allowed still in the Empire - because she was their leader she was sentenced to be exiled into Thedas under the basis of ‘if she loved Elvhenan so much, she can live there for the rest of her damn life’.

Distraught and alone in Thedas, she was surprised to find.... well... a lot of things (racist things, war things, apparently Elvhenan was dead things, and did you know about the Fade? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF THE FADE things). She literally did not understand anything, that was until she met the Dalish - until she met clan Lavellan. They were literally everything she could have hoped for. Unlike her people, they cared for what was left of Arlathan and Elvhenan. They also worshipped the Evanuris/Creators, unlike her people who saw them as slave keeping monsters (Levant is a rebel, at this point she’s everything against her people). This, in retrospect, is incredibly funny for me. Because she has been fed nothing but the truth since she was born, ‘Evanuris bad, they keep slaves’ ‘We have actual records of them being bad’ ‘Why do you think we look like this, Levant’ and Levant’s just ‘(in Dorian’s mocking voice) tRiTE pROPagANDA’.

Anyways, although Levant wanted to share what she knew from her home she knew they wouldn’t believe (after meeting with other Dalish that didn’t really agree prior to clan Lavellan). She simply went along with the ‘City Elf who wants to be Dalish’ and she was in (reminder that she was 14 when she was exiled into Thedas)! She became a hunter and was much loved, and she loved everyone back just as much. Yet over time, it seemed like her secrets could not be kept for long. Eventually it got out, drama ensued, and after so much time trying to be Dalish - something she was not, Levant felt something in her broke. She knew she would never be Dalish, never be like them, so she refused her Vallaslin and told them she had to leave - she needed to see Thedas and find out where she really belonged. Her clan forgave her over time and advised her to be careful, for an unmarked elf meant something - usually easier prey for slavers. Understanding this, Levant made it routine to draw her Vallaslin on every morning with a special ink and wash it off every night. She chose Mythal and clung to her religion of the Creators like a child to their mother’s skirts, praying she’d find her place.

She just never imagined it would be the inquisition.

Now since we know how inquisition plays out, here are just a few tidbits:

Nobody believes her at first (typical)

Until they find her notes and books she took with her from the Empire (at which point Solas is ??????? ???????? SHE KNOWS ?????????)

Solas’ reactions are the funniest because while she sees him as a mentor and eventually a father figure he is almost constantly on the verge of ‘she has so much potential’ or ‘i need to get the fuck out of here’

Also it’s funny to see him going absolutely crazy at the fact she’s like ‘yeah my people said the evanuris were bad and they kept slaves and vallaslin r slave markings but they’re really not’ and he’s like (in a croaked voice) ‘oh??? who said so?’ ‘the dalish’ (in an even more croaked voice) ‘and you believe them?’ ‘i swear by the creators’ (cue solas’ inner monologue going absolute bonkers) IT’S LIKE SHE’S HITTING ALL THE MARKS BUT SHE KEEPS MISSING THEM AT THE SAME TIME???

‘oh but my people said fen’harel was bad’ ‘at least your people and the dalish have one thing in common’ ‘right?’ ‘.... yes’

which only makes the ending of inquisition and trespasser hurt even more

finding out that her people were right and Levant has been playing ‘know-it-all’ for the past 6 years of her life, that the creators really were bad, that mythal is in a form of a human woman, and that a man she considered her father figure and mentor was the dread wolf? who tried to help her people but they refused him? and now he wants to destroy the world?

her troubles with identity (inquisitor? levant? a lavellan? elvhen? an elf? a fae? a beast? a person? an imposter? a fool?), religion (who to believe, the maker? the creators? the earth and beasts, as her people do?), family issues, and culture.

culture because she suddenly finds it unfair that her people got off this train wreck of a history before the fall, how many lives were spared because they left early. how grateful and horrified she might have been when she saw the shattered library, heard the voices of the distant brethren of her ancestors.

standing before solas at the end and wondering if she should just go home, beg for a place in her court, wait for the world to end - what hope did thedas have? after having her heart shattered like that?

were her people right? was burning anything they had of arlathan/elvhenan justified? were her emotions just stupid, insensitive of the truth of it all? were her people being prideful and haughty as usual, or was there an act of kindness and progress in it? what if they were right? what if they really should just move on? should she move on as well?

god knows if she doesn’t, she might end up like Solas.

but like... despite that i feel like she’d still come to believe what the dalish believe. sort of caught in between her leaving thedas to go back home or just fully 100% acknowledging herself as a lavellan or just being a silent and distant protector of the dalish

yknow, like a wolf (considering she’ll grow to have a wolf and lion-like appearance)

like a neo-fen’harel.

O SHIT I LIKE THAT!!!!!

anyways sorry for all the word vomit but this is what i have on levant so far!

also cool tidbit: instead of Solas offering Abelas another place in the world, it’s Levant who offers him the secret to getting to the Empire in the west. After a lot of talking, he takes it and leaves.

#dragon age #levant lavellan #JDFSJSADNJLKSDJN BE WARNED THERE'S A LOT UNDERNEATH THE CUT #I COULDVE ADDED MORE BUT ID RATHER NOT JDKSFNA

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sulevinblade · 5 years

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DA Question

Tagged by: nobody, I just wanted to play

Tagging: @gremlinquisitor because I haven’t seen you do it yet

01) Favorite game of the series?

Inquisition, hands down.

02) How did you discover Dragon Age?

Fun story, I first played Origins somewhere between seven and nine years and never got my Brosca out of Orzammar. It was on PC and I just couldn’t get used to the controls. Then I made a friend who is a hardcore Bioware fan. Xe got me invested in Mass Effect first and I marathoned all three games (almost, I haven’t actually finished me3) then got stubborn and refused to play Dragon Age, but xe sent me Origins and I had no reason not to at that point. I still held out till this past summer, but once I started I never looked back.

03) How many times you’ve played the games?

I’m on my second Origins playthough, DA2 only once so far, and uhhhh technically I’ve only finished DAI once but I have three other playthroughs I intend to see through to the end.

04) Favorite race to play as?

I love dwarves, oh my god. There was never a question that my first Warden would be a dwarf, and I only waited as long as I did for a dwarf in Inquisition because I don’t like the Cadash origin. Bring back my Orzammar dwarves!

05) Favorite class?

Warrior, always. I have a couple of mages and enjoy them, but I am a warrior player at heart always, my first protag will always be a warrior, and I tend to love warrior characters too.

06) Do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions each time?

So far in Origins, my choices have been largely the same, though I think I’ll try to save Conner this time. I have a Hawke right now who I’m trying to play as red but it’s SO HARD, I just like being nice to people and making friends! So far many of my Inquisition choices have been the same, except for romances, but Varevas is going to drink from the Well where Ghilanel let Morrigan do it, Astoria’s going to conscript the templars where both of them recruited the mages, Varevas will disband the Inquisition while Ghilanel kept it going, there are a lot of changes coming when I get time to play through stuff.

07) Go-to adventuring group?

Origins is always Alistair, Zevran, and Wynne, no matter how hard I try to make myself mix it up. I was warned about DA2 so I changed it up for maximum friendship but if I had my way, it would’ve been Jonah, Aveline, Anders, and Fenris or Varric. Three guards and a healer meant leaving a lot of chests unopened so I tried to bring Varric along when I could. Ghilanel’s go to was Solas, Dorian, and Varric, and so far Varevas’ has been Dorian, Sera, and either Bull or Blackwall.

08) Which of your characters did you put the most thought into?

Ghilanel has the most time and creativity invested in her at this point. I didn’t put much thought into any of them going in beyond appearance and who I wanted to romance (though Ghilanel was originally going to be a Cullen or Blackwall romance, fucking egg ruins everything) but Ghilanel grew and grew as I played and thought about her. Leohta, Jonah, and Varevas all have a lot to offer, but in terms of being developed and able to support a story of their own, it’s definitely Ghil.

09) Favorite romance?

Dorian, oh man. I just swoon, he’s perfect.

10) Have you read any of the comics/books?

I’ve read almost all of the comics (I’m halfway through Knight Errant) and I have many of the books but haven’t actually started any of them yet.

11) If you read them, which was your favorite book?

I enjoyed Magekiller a LOT!

12) Favorite DLCs?

Descent. The Wellspring is possibly the most beautiful environment in any of the games, I almost cried when my party got there, and everything leading up to that was also visually stunning as well as exactly the kind of lore I live for. It also features my beautiful wife Valta and her perfect husband Renn which is just a bonus. I will say, though, Jaws of Hakkon could easily surpass it if they’d like, put out a novelization of Ameridan’s Inquisition. Trespasser was incredible too but sadly I was spoiled and that took a lot of the fun out of the end of it.

13) Things that annoy you.

Little things like not being able to swim and not hearing banter when you’re on a mount. Bigger things like the fact that in order to make an informed decision about Orlais (as a player) you have to have read an entire other novel because the game doesn’t give you the information you need, even if it’s also not necessarily things your character would know. All the sort of stock things, like Cassandra not being bi (among other characters but she’s the one that makes me the most angry), Bioware whitewashing their own characters, no dwarf romances. Not even touching on fandom stuff.

14) Orlais or Ferelden?

Ferelden always.

15) Templars or mages?

Templars, to be contrary (by which I mean I have Opinions about this and while in general I side with mages in all things, I still say Templars).

16) If you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one?

I only really have one complete world state right now, with Leohta romancing Alistair and putting Anora alone on the throne, and Jonah romancing Anders and running away with him at the end of the game, but within that Ghilanel is the Inquisitor with Varevas as her clan’s First who survives the Conclave with her; Astoria as a rebel mage who joins up before even considering going to Redcliffe because her nephew is the Inquisitor; and Leohta attending the Conclave undercover as a Carta member and trying to maintain that cover after Haven.

17) What did you name your pets? (mabari, summoned animals, mounts, etc)

Leohta and Jonah both named their mabaris Leon, and Buian named hers Taz.

18) Have you installed any mods?

PS player, no mods here

19) Did your Warden want to become a Grey Warden?

It beat the alternative. Die in the Deep Roads now, or die in the Deep Roads later. Leohta chose later.

20) Hawke’s personality?

Blue as the summer sky over Lothering, Jonah is a pure child.

21) Did you make matching armor for your companions in Inquisition?

Only for their love interests; Ghilanel and Solas were all green and gold until the breakup, then she dyed her armour deep red. Varevas and Dorian are white and red. Leohta’s all warden armour, just like Alistair. Astoria would match Bull if Bull wore more clothing...

22) If your character(s) could go back in time to change one thing, what would they change?

Leohta would’ve been more careful with Zevran’s heart to avoid having to dump him right before the final battle.

Jonah would’ve investigated the alleged serial killings sooner, to possibly save his mother.

Ghilanel would’ve worked harder to make something of herself before the Inquisition knowing she’d need it later.

Varevas would’ve... I dunno. Probably flirted harder with Cullen, he’s hilarious when he’s all out of sorts over it.

23) Do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon?

I’m sure I do but I can’t think of any just now, which is odd.

24) Who did you leave in the Fade?

JONAH BABY I’M SORRY I DIDN’T KNOW so from now on it’s gonna be Stroud

25) Favorite mount?

Ghilanel liked the Royal Sixteen and Varevas loves his Dalish All-bred but in general I don’t bother with them, I like the banter more than getting around faster.

#meme #gremlinquisitor

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rhenal · 6 years

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To the Void with the Void

Few things in Dragon Age lore bother me quite as much as the Void. It appears just about everywhere, in every faith, but what any one teaching says about what it actually IS never seems to be consistent - even in the same set of teachings.

Come with me on this journey, as I go through the Dragon Age Wiki page on the Void and follow every single cite note to the source - and look through those cited sources as well.

It starts with a brief summary, then goes into Chantry beliefs, because of course that comes first. It lists some verses from the chant.

All that the Maker has wrought is in His hand Beloved and precious to Him. Where the Maker has turned His face away, Is a Void in all things; In the world, in the Fade, In the hearts and minds of men.

Passing out of the world, in that Void shall they wander; O unrepentant, faithless, treacherous, They who are judged and found wanting Shall know forever the loss of the Maker's love. Only Our Lady shall weep for them.

—Canticle of Threnodies, 12:5

So... the void is both a vague emptiness in everything the Maker doesn’t like and the Andrastian version of Hell? Right. How conveniently vague. It never says ‘the Void’ though, just ‘a Void’.

Next follows some extrapolations. Since I know that fanon and canon tend to intermingle a lot in small, subtle and insidious ways, I shall stick as close to the source material - and only the source material - as the wiki and the rest of my resources will allow for, while mostly ignoring the wiki-specific text. So. Let’s follow the cite notes, in order.

The first one refers to a conversation with Sebastian in DA II. I don’t have that DLC, because I think that guy is kind of an arse and not worth my money, and after over an hour of searching both the wiki and youtube, I have not found this conversation, so I’m gonna drop that trail for now.

Second cite note also refers to a Sebastian conversation, but this is one I can actually find. It’s a banter conversation between him and Isabela.

Isabela: So, I've never understood why the Chantry says if you're good, you'll be taken up to the Maker's side. Sebastian: Those who die with the sins cleansed from their souls will walk beside the Maker in eternity. Isabela: That doesn't sound fun! Isabela: If they really want people to be good, shouldn't they offer an afterlife with... lakes of wine and a dozen naked virgins? Sebastian: Anyone who wants that will be going to the Void. Isabela: Sounds like that's where all the good parties will be.

So, Andrasian hell. K. Still doesn’t tell me anything useful.

Next few cite notes are grouped up. These unfortunately refer to books that I do not have access to at the moment - World of Thedas vol. 1 and the Dragon Age Origins official game guide - so I’ll simply settle for sharing the statement on the wiki.

The sinners are lost, endlessly wandering the Fade or even returning to the "ether" (the primeval matter of the Fade) from which they were made.

So, conflating the Void and the Fade now, are we? The next sentence references the Canticle of Threnodies, saying that it says that the Void is a place within the Fade. Time to check out what’s available of that Canticle myself...

Huh. Oh, that’s a lot. Yet after reading it all, the only mention of the Void I could find is in 12:5 above. “Where the Maker has turned His face away, Is a Void in all things; In the world, in the Fade, In the hearts and minds of men.” I think that can be interpreted in a lot of ways. It doesn’t quite say “The Void is a place in the fade” to me. It just says that there is an emptiness - a Void - in everything that the Maker found fault in. And he certainly found fault in the Fade, according to earlier verses in that very same Canticle. I don’t know, but this instance seems more figurative to me. Maybe I’m wrong.

Moving on. Up next is another Chantry verse.

Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls. From these emerald waters doth life begin anew. Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you. In my arms lies Eternity.

—Canticle of Andraste, 14:11

I can’t help but notice how ‘abyss’ isn’t capitalised in this verse. I checked in game - it’s not capitalised there either.

This verse bothers me. When reading further into the codex entry of “Here Lies the Abyss”, there is some musings by Revered Mother Juliette accompanying the verse. They read as follows:

Chantry sisters have long debated this section of the Chant of Light. It is tempting to assume that the "well of all souls" is a literal well, but such imagery appears nowhere in Andraste's other works. An examination from Threnodies 1:4 yields clues:

From the waters of the Fade you made the world. As the Fade had been fluid, so was the world fixed.

It is possible—even likely—that the "emerald waters" Andraste refers to are the substance of the Fade, which began as an "ocean of dreams" (Threnodies 1:1) and was reduced to a well—bottomless but limited in scope—by the Maker's creation of our world.

Is Andraste urging the listener to come to the Fade? Should we take "From these emerald waters doth life begin anew," as literal evidence of reincarnation—or even of life after death, as the Cult of Spirits suggests—or as a figurative benediction indicating that the Maker is the source of all life, and in finding His embrace for Eternity, we will only be returning our souls from whence they came?

Vague, is it not? Juliette seems as confused as I am.

Now, I remember when The Descent came out. When seeing The Wellspring at the end of that story, a lot of think-pieces popped up in the Meta community about how it looked an awful lot like what Andraste might have been describing in that Canticle of hers. Note how, in the Wiki page for the above-mentioned codex entry, there is a trivia section with a quoted passage from The Calling?

"It’s where Andraste goes to speak to the Maker for the first time. It’s where she convinces him to forgive mankind. It was supposed to be this beautiful temple deep under the earth surrounded by emerald waters."

Interesting, no?

If anything, it seems safe to say that The Chant doesn’t seem very interesting in defining just what either the Void or this abyss is in the first place, and anything further simply seem to be interpretations by various Chantry people, which is hardly a reliable source of anything.

Continuing down the Wiki page on the Void, we have the Elven beliefs section. Something something The Forgotten Ones dwell there - the cite note leads us to Codex Entry: Elven God Andruil. Well. Not beliefs of modern elves, then, since this entry is found in the temple of Mythal, but that’s splitting hairs.

One day Andruil grew tired of hunting mortal men and beasts. She began stalking The Forgotten Ones, wicked things that thrive in the abyss. Yet even a god should not linger there, and each time she entered the Void, Andruil suffered longer and longer periods of madness after returning.

Andruil put on armor made of the Void, and all forgot her true face. She made weapons of darkness, and plague ate her lands. She howled things meant to be forgotten, and the other gods became fearful Andruil would hunt them in turn. So Mythal spread rumors of a monstrous creature and took the form of a great serpent, waiting for Andruil at the base of a mountain.

When Andruil came, Mythal sprang on the hunter. They fought for three day and nights, Andruil slashing deep gouges in the serpent's hide. But Mythal's magic sapped Andruil's strength, and stole her knowledge of how to find the Void. After this, the great hunter could never make her way back to the abyss, and peace returned.

—Translated from ancient elven found in the Arbor Wilds, source unverified

Here is a much more clear distinction of the Void as an actual, tangible thing. Abyss is still not being capitalised, though. Abyss speaks to me of something deep down below. And the ancient Elves were actively encouraged to seek the deepest parts of the Fade, as seen in Codex Entry: Vir Dirthara: The Deepest Fade.

The pages of this book—memory?—are instructions on how to reach the deepest parts of the Fade, realms so far removed they're unmarked by Dreamers:

"Epiphany requires a mind smooth as mirror glass, still as stone. Put aside ten years for practice, and the next hundred for searching. What others have learned will ease your journey. Those who never manifested outside the Fade will find it easier to find its stillest roots, but it is rare the compulsion overtakes our brethren of the air."

Andruil roaming the Void was considered a bad thing by the Elves, yet seeking the deepest parts of the Fade was encouraged. That says to me that they are not the same. That says to me that the Void is not found in the Fade.

The Andruil codex entry also says that “all forgot her true face” and that because of her actions, “plague ate her lands”. The idea that it was Andruil who caused the Blight has been around for a long time. This codex entry is the source of that theory. So far, I am inclined to agree that it certainly sounds like that may be the case. So. Quite possibly, according to this tale, if this plague is indeed the blight, it can be concluded that the Blight came from the Void.

However, that is a whole lot of conditions. A lot of ‘if’s.

Next up, there’s talk about the legends of Fen’Harel and The Great Betrayal - which we know for certain fact by now is a lot more complicated than the legends make it out to be. However, I don’t remember there being any mention of the Void or an abyss - or even the Forgotten Ones - being mentioned in our conversation with Solas in Trespasser. Sometimes I wonder if the Forgotten Ones are just a trail that Bioware wants to drop, but then I remember that their most explicit appearance in all the games so far is as recently as Jaws of Hakkon. Well. Back on track.

The cite notes here only lead me to Arlathan: Part two and the Dread Wolf codex entry - both tellings of the Dalish legend, which tells me nothing new. The Forgotten Ones were allegedly trapped in the abyss. Might be good to point out that these legends also appear to imply that the Forgotten Ones came from the abyss, or at least that it was their home. “[...]if only the Forgotten Ones would return to the abyss for a time.“

Hmm. The Void wiki entry next says that The World of Thedas includes accounts of the Evanuris being trapped in the Eternal City. I thought that was just a theory. I really need to get that book. Clear some things up.

On to the next cite note, which leads me to the codex entry Elgar’nan: God of Vengeance. Another Dalish account, but this one brings up something interesting that I’ve not paid attention to before.

The sun, looking down upon the fruitful land, saw the joy that Elgar'nan took in her works and grew jealous. Out of spite, he shone his face full upon all the creatures the earth had created, and burned them all to ashes. The land cracked and split from bitterness and pain, and cried salt tears for the loss of all she had wrought. The pool of tears cried for the land became the ocean, and the cracks in her body the first rivers and streams.

Elgar'nan was furious at what his father had done and vowed vengeance. He lifted himself into the sky and wrestled the sun, determined to defeat him. They fought for an eternity, and eventually the sun grew weak, while Elgar'nan's rage was unabated. Eventually Elgar'nan threw the sun down from the sky and buried him in a deep abyss created by the land's sorrow.

A deep crack in the earth - a crack referrenced to as an abyss no less - created by the Sun’s rage.

Perhaps, this instead is a reference to the war in which the Evanuris were generals. The war that enabled their ascent to presumed godhood. And this chasm was opened by the battles waged in this war.

My mind wanders to The Abyssal Reach in the Western Approach. You know the one - the ginormous black chasm? The one that you fall into during Here Lies the Abyss?

The Wiki entry on the Western Approach says that “This area was the site of a major battle during the Second Blight. The darkspawn swarmed out of the great chasm to the south named the Abyssal Rift and corrupted the land beyond recovery.” Note that it doesn’t say is that the chasm was created during the Second Blight. It would appear that it was already there.

I’m thinking that this chasm is the same as the one referenced in Elgar’nan’s legend.

Although - nothing about this says that this chasm and the Void is the same thing. But I suspect that they may be connected.

Continuing down the Void wiki page, all that’s left is the cult of the Empty Ones - who worshiped the blight - as well as a fairly lengthy trivia section. Nothing I find here is new. The Empty ones say the Darkspawn came from the Void and that the Void is a place of nothingness. General mentions of a hungry, yawning void - which doesn’t really say anything because that’s a pretty general turn of phrase. The Staff of the Void’s description talks about a void as an absence of something, which once again sounds more like a turn of phrase than anything substantial.

There is always the Anvil of the Void - the thing that the Dwarves used to forge Golems. Since it essentially functioned by transferring the soul of a dwarf into that of the Golem, it could imply that the Void is somehow related to souls - or at least Dwarven souls - which would support the verse from the Canticle of Andraste mentioned before. But then, we also know that Elven souls come from the Fade - or at least that is what is implied, considering their close kinship with Spirits before the Veil.

And there is still the whole thing about where we have absolutely no idea where the Humans even came from in the first place...

So far, I’ve seen a lot of fairly interesting thinking points - but absolutely nothing that would really lead to any real consensus to what the Void even is - IF it even is. I can’t help but feel that despite the frequent use of the terms Void and abyss in both Elven and Chantry lore, none of these references are similar enough - or substantive enough - for me to be able to be able to safely conclude that the Void even is a special place or thing at all. It sounds to me like metaphorical speech far more often than it does anything else. A metaphor for deep underground or something. The Deep Roads. I don’t know.

But then I remember The Descent again. The Wellspring. The ‘lake’ that seemed almost like a sky. The Dwarf legend of the king who dug so deep down that he and his entire thaig “fell into the sky”. It makes me wonder...

In the end, all I feel I can really conclude for myself is that whatever it is, the Abyss is mostly deep below, and the Fade is mostly up above. I don’t think they are the same. Also that the Blight probably comes from the Void in one way or another.

But honestly, any more than that, the lore just doesn’t seem to converge into anything substantial anywhere. There is simply far too little to go on to make any solid conclusions, and what little lore there is appear to go into different places more often than not. We can assume, we can theorise, we can extrapolate - but what real lore there actually is tells us surprisingly little.

If anyone has any thoughts about this that are more coherent than mine, I’d love to hear them, because it feels like I’m thinking in circles.

#dragon age meta #dragon age inquisition #dragon age 2 #dragon age origins #the void #This post took me four hours to make #My brain feels kinda mushy #I'm tired #I should go to sleep

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