#but then they just. do that??? disregarding the whole Dwarven Lore there???

[rowan-guerrins]

hey how in the fuck are there two durins at once.

[livayl]

A slightly more in depth OC thingy.

So I have realized that my characters on here are still a little pale and devoid of background. I have had the whole world, stories and lore in my head for years but was not sure how much character information is too much or too distracting. 

I have been really happy and surprised to find out that my stories are actually liked. Thank you so very much!

I´ll just add some things under the cut. Feel free to ask me if you want to know more about them/the world. :)

This is the non-sneeze version but still, please only re-blog it to other fetish blogs, thank you.   Warnings for: A mention of characters who don´t get along too well with their family. Also a brief portrait of “high elven culture” that shows their elitist way of thinking. Mention of death. 

Lillandlian is a white deer Centaur druid who decided to walk away from his kin and family because they actually did avoid and antagonize him for his magic to a point where he became scared of interacting with humanoid creatures. He decided to flee to a place called “the ashen woods”. This is a feral, barren place where a monstrous fire dragon is rumored to roam, hence the name. But Lillandlian is closely connected to all of natures creations, even the magical ones, and thus was able to live there in relative peace. He missed out on the ongoing war until he one day found the badly wounded Orc Shokhrakka more dead than alive, chased by one of the many forest-beasts. He was scared badly because Shokhrakka is a prime specimen of an Orc: Really big, heavy muscled with protruding tusks, many piercings adorning his ears and nose and quite intimidating. Despite that, the Centaur still helped him by warding of the attackers. Lillandlian then took him deeper into the forest and basically nursed him back to life. That´s when he was first told about the war and that it had actually reached Lillandlians so called home. Shokhrakka also told him that he was a soldier who, on that past day, was wounded by creatures that seemingly consisted of elementary magic and shadows. Those novel creatures had started to appear all over, fear and violence it their wake. This did amplify the Orcs distrust of magic. Both new friends did not find any other survivors, only death and other threats. In order to find some answers and because of the nearing, ever growing dread they decided to flee and search for a solution together but are hunted/endangered by both those “new” foes and the different alliances who view their friendship as forbidden. (Orcs and Centaurs are on different sides in this war, so to speak)

In human years Lillandlian  would be in his early 30s. Shokhrakka somewhere around his late 30s.

Amaziah is a high elf. In this worlds context that means she is a pure-blooded, noble descendant from the former world ruling, mighty ancient elves. This comes with a strong, almost naturally existing ability to wield magic and the guarded knowledge of ancient speech. It also means to be a part of a quickly dwindling sub-race, since their culture does stupidly forbid mingling with other races, same sex relationships (no chance for offspring) and close contact to “ordinary elves”. Which are all that are unable to use magic or have otherwise disregarded the mentioned rules. Amaziah was ruthlessly raised to be an inexorable battle mage, an ability she used to finally break free from her power-hungry family. It ended with her being in charge of a big castle, having carved out the title of Archmage and a wish for change. Her regimen had started not too long before the magical foes first appeared.  Amaziah also owns a wyvern named bitey-bite. 

Marya is an elf that nobility would classify as “ordinary”. She is the daughter of a former high born mother who fell in love with a half- elven lumberjack. Due to committing the crime of mingling with a peasant her mother was heavily punished by elven nobility. Stripped of all her birthrights, family bonds and belongings she became a shunned outcast. But pursuing her unusual love had also its benefits for it gifted her with a warm, caring husband, a much freer and happier live that was crowned by a daughter.

But her pregnancy was a difficult one and all elven healers that could have helped still avoided her and thus deflected the couples pleas for help. Maryas mother then died by giving birth to her own daughter. Leaving the little baby with only the loving but still grieving father. She grew up in a small workers village close to dwarven mines and a vast forest. She had a happy youth that was still overshadowed by the longing for love and acceptance that at one point had turned to open rejection for high-elf culture and nobility.  Due to the way she grew up Marya had never learned how to read and write properly but became highly proficient in Alchemy and working with dwarven runes. Before the outbreak of war she had been known as a well respected and helpful alchemist that never turned down a request for aid.

When Marya is conscripted she is 24 years old, later in time this varies from 24 to 27. Amaziah is 33 when both first meet. This does vary from 33 to 36 years dependent on the timeline. All compared to a human lifespan of course. ;)

Note: I do not, under no circumstances ever, support any kind of racism or fascistic tendencies. The whole “elven nobility” portrayed here does not get my approval, neither in my fantasy setting nor would it in real life. 

[feynites]

What do you think of half elves in the DA universe?

This has come up before!

In essence, I think it’s a creative misstep to handle them the way that canon does. If they didn’t want visibly mixed race characters, for whatever reason, then they should have just made the two groups reproductively incompatible. That would have locked elven wardens out of conceiving Kieran with Morrigan, but honestly DA:O does not shy away from a certain degree of unfairness if it suits the world-building - elven, dwarven, and mage wardens also can’t marry Alistair and sit on the throne, either.

Instead, what they did was walk right into an allegorical mess. That happens sometimes, when you’re writing fantasy and you’re paying more attention to your fantastical world-building than you are to the real-life scenarios which this stuff is drawn from. Because going ‘people who are mixed race can only actually belong to one half of their heritage’ is tied in with a ton of terrible real life ideology. It’s a concept that, in and of itself, is bad, regardless of whether it’s being applied to fantastical races or not. Though at least by being fantasy, there is a degree of separation that means it’s, at least, not targeting specific races or racial combinations that actually exist.

Small mercies.

But it’s sort of like the ‘mages are dangerous and therefore the templars aren’t totally wrong’ approach to the narrative. The problem is that in real life, any time someone has gone ‘mixed race people only belong to one half of their heritage’, or ‘these people are just inherently dangerous and need to be locked away from moral and upstanding folk’, they have been among the worst of humanity. That kind of thinking is terrible, and attempts to justify it in fiction will always create really uncomfortable parallels to real life propaganda and instances of terrible violence. It’s not the same as just directly telling a story where real life groups are maligned, but it’s still relying on the same kinds of thought processes that defend real life hatreds.

So basically, I prefer the idea that Thedosian society, being the font of ignorance and hatred that it can be, is entirely wrong about the particulars of elven heritage and genetics. Because that changes things from being ‘the story is built so that this very bad idea is Irrefutable Truth’ into ‘this is just more in-world bullshit’. So what actually happens in Thedas is, if you have rounded ears, people decide you’re human. If you have pointed ears, they decide you’re an elf. They don’t think the two can be mixed because they have a very limited understanding of biology, and are judging solely by appearances. Rounded ears are a genetically dominant trait, so they’re much more likely to occur, and elves are widely hated, so babies born with unexpectedly pointed ears thanks to recessive genes are either disposed of in some tragic way, or else altered or encouraged to disguise their ear tips. Mixed race babies born with rounded ears in alienages have the opportunity to go and assimilate into human society, to try and make a better living. And it’s less common among the Dalish, because they by and large try and avoid contact with humans.

Although human-looking children spotted among the Dalish could also account for stories of the Dalish stealing babies.

(Also, to disclaim, I am aware that statements have been made to the tune of ‘being an elf is not linked to genetics’. There is, apparently, some lore connected to this, presumably to do with magic. This does not make the overall concept less bad, and it also, from what little info has been provided, doesn’t make any sense. That could change come DA4, but I personally can’t see any way for this whole idea to escape the root problems it has. So I’m mostly hoping that they just ditch it. I love a lot of DA’s world-building, but this and a few other elements are things that I consider bad ideas.)

(Also, also, fandom needs to leave people alone when they decide to disregard this bit of canon. People cherry pick their canon all the time, and for things that are much less inherently offensive than a bit of throw-away racial purity world-building. The point of transformative works is to transform them, after all, and some people like to transform them by taking part of canon they hate and slam-dunking it into the nearest trash bin.)