#deep dive into lore now

[3gremlins]

me: i care less about dragon age now, it's been almost decade, i am tired.

*a few crumbs of dragon age news*

THE BEACONS ARE LIT! GONDOR THEDAS CALLS FOR AID DISCOURSE!

[euniysu]

you would not believe what i got back into again >W<

charms are up in my shop!

[raayllum]

IMAGE ID: wordswdragons: like aaravos was either laurelion or he killed laurelion i feel it in my bell aaron ehasz: The dragon scale amulet that Claudia stole from the storm spire connects to Laurelion

So many questions

[quitefair]

Dragon Age Lore Breakdown: Gereon Alexius

Started working on my accursed DA fic again, and the research rabbit hole led me down the In Hushed Whispers path. And I found out a bunch of things about this dude that I realised I never knew before.

Anyway, ramble under the cut.

Before he became a Magister, Gereon Alexius was first and foremost, a researcher of magic. One that was trying to push the boundaries of what magic could do, particularly in the field of ‘traveling through and controlling both time and physical space’.

His research partner (and eventual wife) was Livia Arida, a researcher who focused specifically on the Veil.

Gereon’s father, Magister Alexius, was your typical Tevinter upper class dude – focused on power and bloodlines and image. House Alexius wished Gereon focused less on the theoretical and more on magic with practical uses.

Gereon's father thus gave up his post as Magister to his nerdy ass son in the hopes that he would become more invested in politics like he himself was.

Instead, Magister Gereon used his position to ‘became a tireless champion of education, criticizing his peers for pouring the Imperium's funds into the war with the Qunari at the expense of the Circle and demanding better schooling and institutions of higher learning for the Soporati.'

His codex entry is more telling of his backstory and character than anything he's displayed in game lmao.

He continued his research in a diminished capacity, and subsequently married his long-time sweetheart and research partner Livia Arida. He also took a position as professor of thaumaturgy at the Minrathous Circle.

[They use the word ‘thamaturgy’ here very liberally, and I’ve not seen this anywhere else in my Dragon Age research. We all know the DND connotations, but I would like to take the meaning of the term as ‘boundary breaking magical research’, since that’s what Gereon is known for. Like idk the Thedosian equivalent of fringe science.]

[[This also assumes a scientific hierarchy within the study of magic within Imperium society, which I doubt they will explore in DA4, but gods that would be so fucking fascinating.]]

Anyway, Gereon and Livia had a son, Felix. Despite both his parents being mages, and particularly gifted ones at that, Felix was a very weak mage, one that could only cast very simple spells and with great effort.

Gereon’s father saw Felix as a weak link, described him as ‘just barely more than a Soporati’. Because of this, he tried to have Felix assassinated. Typical Magister behaviour.

Livia, being absolutely… livid (yeah I went there lmao), intercepted the assassin, and in turn, fucking had Gereon’s father assassinated instead. This ensured Felix's safety and secured Gereon as head of House Alexius.

Anyway, if it wasn’t clear how much Livia and Gereon loved Felix, you should know by now. Since he couldn't learn much magic, they brought in tutors from all fields – history, art, music, literature, etc, ensuring that anything the boy could study was offered to him on a silver platter.

And although Felix wasn’t a powerful mage, he seemed to have inherited his parents’ analytical minds, and therefore was a gifted mathematician. Recognising this, his parents sent him to study at the University of Orlais.

In the meantime, both Gereon and Livia continued their boundary breaking research. At this point, they decided to take on assistants and apprentices, since they could not involve their son in their research.

While Livia took on ‘half dozen of the most promising young students of the Fade and the Veil throughout the Imperium’, Gereon chose only one apprentice.

You know who it was.

So they continued their research – with Gereon and Dorian focusing on breaking the boundaries of magic itself, while Livia and her apprentices sought to determine the effects of such magic on the Veil. Kind of like an unstoppable force vs immovable object situation.

[There's also what I can only assume is an artist's rendition of their notes in The World of Thedas 2, which is... well.]

[The description included: Careful study is paid to the eyes of the nug. Based on the drawings and a limited deciphering of the text, the author seems all but obsessed with understanding what animals see and how this might differ from our own perception of reality.]

[[Edit: apparently the images above aren't from Gereon's notes, but from a book called Grim Anatomy. Dissecting this book is a whole nother post so we'll leave it at that.]]

They were apparently super close to a breakthrough. But we can’t have nice things in Thedas, can’t we?

In 9:38 Dragon, Gereon and Livia travelled to Orlais to visit Felix. As the family travelled back to Minrathous (or Hossberg - Dragon Age is never consistent with the lore), they were attacked by hurlocks. For some reason, Gereon wasn’t with his wife and son when this happened.

Livia is killed and Felix is tainted.

Gereon is obviously filled with survivors guilt, the grief of losing his wife, and the fear of now losing his son to the taint. He stopped caring for anything other than his son’s health, and this affected his relationship with his research, and by extension, Dorian.

This led to an argument over how distant and strange Gereon was becoming, and eventually Dorian parted ways with Gereon.

In the gap between this and the events of Inquisition, Gereon is now part of the Venatori. It can be assumed that the reason he joined was because of promises made that the Elder One can save Felix from death.

[We can probably extrapolate that Gereon somehow understands that Corypheus is a darkspawn, and so that adds to the weight of his belief that Corypheus can cure Felix.]

It is this time and space bending research that is the foundation of In Hushed Whispers.

Once Gereon is defeated, you can judge him in Skyhold. If you decide to take him in as an agent, he can continue his research for the Inquisition. (Though canonically all it yields is this amulet. Which isn't even unique, you can get it in random loot drops anywhere. Sad.)

[batsplat]

*falls to my knees* valentino read agassi's book omg

[dizaryswrites]

uh oh I discovered a new band that reminds me of my angsty teen years time to listen on repeat

[inkykeiji]

Clari! Might I ask who all you selfship with? 👀 And what the vibes of each ship is?

marq!!! ◟( ˃̶͈◡ ˂̶͈ )◞ ohhh my gosh what a FUN question okay okay SO

⋆₊˚⊹♡ DARI - dabi x clari

the biggest, most prominent and by far most important self ship i have <333 i love him to absolute death and beyond. our vibe is like,,, sugary sweet bratty little ‘good’ girl x majorly fucked up drug-addicted bad boy. we’re extremely possessive, extremely obsessive, and extremely unhealthy. we take the word co-dependent to a new fucking level. that kind of toxic, all-consuming, endlessly insatiable love where we hurt each other but we love each other too much to leave; it’s more than just an addiction, it’s a need on a chemical level, it’s like we’re each missing something only the other has. and even though our love is crazy and chaotic and toxic as hell it’s still real in the truest, purest form of absolute obsession. we are also fiercely protective over one another. i have a dari tag here and a dari tag here c:

⋆₊˚⊹♡ MIKRI / MANRI - mikey x clari [bonten timeline]

mikey is my beloved Daddy and i am his precious little princess. we’re both bratty little sugar fiends who enjoy being doted on—which is great, because i worship him like he’s my lord and saviour and he takes care of me like i’m a piece of him; something that came from him and belongs to him. he is my Strong Scary Yakuza Man and i am his Delicate Dainty Little Baby <3 he is my physical strength and i am his emotional strength. i have a lil write up about how we met n stuff here!

⋆₊˚⊹♡ VLARI - vox x clari

this one’s kinda weird because like,,, he has a television for a head BUT i am so in love with him. our vibe is a lil difficult to explain because he’s technically my boss, and he technically owns my soul; he plucked me off the streets of hell and molded me into his sweet lil star, his precious little moneymaker, and everything i do in the public eye (and in private too, tbh) must be fully vetted and approved by him. our whole aesthetic centers around class, extravagance, and perfectionism. it’s also very 1950s nuclear family breadwinner man housewife woman. we have a son named vander (van for short!) <3

i also selfship with sukuna but we don’t have a name!! the vibe is basically pet gf x owner bf LMAO. and then i have a million selfships with other tokrev boys (esp kazutora + sanzu + rindou!) but the three selfships above are like, my main main ones <3

[visionkept]

Fuck it I'm officially making Tomoya the reincarnation of Taka.mine the Mists.plitter cause the parallels are getting too heavy to consider them "coincidental".

[ardenigh]

started playing halo infinite,

anyway here is my spartan! his name is tycho and he may have a resting poker face but he will not hesitate to engage in Silly

[cakeinthevoid]

if you're willing to share, id love to hear about your OC flange gusset cowboy extraordinaire (i actually just acquired a few cowboy OCs myself recently)

Oh you have opened the floodgates, but I don't even know where to start... I hope my rambling below will make sense haha...

Flange Gusset, Cowboy Extraordinaire!

...and the closest thing West Hinge has to an engineer.

Flange became an 'official' cowboy as a teenager, about 15 years old, but growing up on the ranch in the budding city of West Hinge, he's been training all his life for it. Genuinely, he's one of the most cowyboy cowboys who ever cowboyed. West Hinge knows his name—often as Gus, or, nowadays, Mr. Gusset, which he always tries to wave off. Everyone knows that he's a dependable lad. He works hard and is always there to help—and he's your guy if you every need a cheap repair or a little thingamajig to make life a little easier.

Family:

His mom is Mexican, so he had plenty of Vaquero stories from her side of the family. While she's proud of the man her Flan Cake (her sweet nickname for Flange <3) became, she will always worry about his safety as a cowboy. She knows the life is hard. Flange sees his mother as the kindest and most generous person in the world, and aspires to be like her.

His dad was an american farmer who didn't raise no quitter!!! He taught him the importance of true courage and loyalty. Flange worked the fields and did repairs around town with his dad growing up, which is where a lot of his most practical skills came from. Flange feels like he could never replace his dad as head of the house. He misses his dad.

He's the oldest sibling, so he knew he needed to get a job asap to help provide for his family. "Inventor" wasn't exactly a career path he could dedicate himself to, so he took up ranching and cattle herding—he took to it like a duck to water! (There's a reason he's one of if not THE top cowboy in the town at his early 20s).

Cowboy Life:

Flange started working for ranch owner Mr. Lewis at 15, doing your typical beginner cowpoke chores. His skills and talents weren't going unnoticed though, and he was quickly rising the ranks, joining the older cowboys on round ups and cattle drives. The other cowboys on the payroll are some of his closest friends.

Cowboying around gives him enough quiet nights during travel and time off to pursue his not-so-secret passion: inventing. He’s come up with plenty of doodads to improve the lives in West Hinge—in addition to doing repairs n stuff. He treasures his simple yet purposeful life, but privately wishes to do good on a greater scale, to invent something truly marvelous… but right now, he has a job to do. 

So he does what he can. He’s no doctor, but he tries to help in other ways. He respects the trades and rolls his eyes at big business. Down right pisses him off when those mega-ranches try to scam or buy out the hardworking little guys.

He adheres to his own cowboy code, which is everything in the unwritten Code of the West and more. He scowls at those who taint the cowboy name, but he won't go picking fights unless the situation is truly dire. He also truly don’t mind most outlaws, unless they’re one of the ransacking and killing types. He would much rather everyone get along and sing by the fire, but he isn't naive.

He's run into enough outlaws and wicked cowboys to know better.

Fun facts!

Flange's #1 horse is a beige and white spotted cutting horse named Chico! He's the cowboy who can ride him best, and thus does the cattle cutting. He's prevented his fair share of stampedes, to say the least.

Flange is scary good at poker. The man never gambles, and seems to hardly know what is going on, but he's never had a bad loss.

Flange can play the harmonica, banjo, and guitar. He's real shit at piano though.

Flange is scared of being well and truly alone. He's also irked by wasps.

~ ~ ~

Oh man this was fun. Yes I got a little carried away and there is still so much I could go on about (realizing I barely spoke on his engineering endeavors) but AAA thank you for this ask <33 I hope you enjoyed

AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[strunmah-mah]

Batman/Santa Clause: Silent Knight

Bruce being trained by Santa in his pre-batman training arc is extremely dumb and stupid.

But I forgive it an account of how much fun the rest of the issue is. I love a Santa that feels like he's been pulled out of DnD campaign. And it really feels like the writer is having fun with their Santa lore.

[raayllum]

I'm really wondering about the order of events we learn of in "The Midnight Star" (MS) poem if only because some pieces of language aren't quite meshing with what we've previously known / potentially assumed

Elarion, trembling seed, lay down to earth in icy night, and in the cold her roots took hold defying winter’s deathly bite. Elarion, fading bloom, afraid to wilt and dim and die, she searched the dark for but a spark and caught the dragons’ hungry eye.

We know Elarion was an early human settlement that eventually became the biggest in ancient Xadia (TOX). We know that this is happening prior to the stars leaving thanks to a later stanza. Moreover, this stanza indicates that the city was drawing the attention of the dragons, which is also hinted at in Ripples, "It happened long ago, when humans had only just learned to hold fire in their hands without burning. They nurtured their precious primal flames secretly—in the dark of night, beneath shadows and shrouds—as cultivating its glow drew the eyes and ire of monsters".

However, Elarion suffering and struggling to hold on doesn't quite make sense if it already had primal magic... unless the first stanza condenses these events, i.e. "she searched the dark for a spark" ("that secret becomes a spark, the tiniest flicker of a primal source inside you") and that's why the city initially caught negative attention from the dragons. But even then, that contradicts statements from Ripples, in which:

"he did not know the stars as I know them. He did not know their arrogance, how they had rejoiced to look down upon their newborn sea. Where once they’d watched errant flames burn with pride and undeserved power, there was now only stillness"

the Startouch / First Elves are the ones who — seemingly — cast Aaravos out and create the sea as an initial punishment for humanity because "humanity had been given something they were never meant to have."

But MS doubles down that it's the dragons threatening the city, and that humans are still assuming the First Elves might help them, only for the stars to refuse and leave:

Elarion, frightened waif, reached bone-white branches to the night, the stars she asked their light to cast and stop the dragons’ fiery might. Elarion, unworthy whelp, Wept as the stars turned black the sky, They donned their masks They turned their backs, And left Elarion to die.

So Elarion/humans have been given primal magic by someone, who is probably Leola, a unicorn who may or may also be a startouch elf even though the First Elves disapproved (TOX, book 1: novelization). This makes the other First Elves angry and also seems to anger the dragons. When Elarion asks for protection from the First Elves against the dragons, they're ignored/abandoned.

This is, however, where MS starts to get tricky.

Elarion, dying husk, did wilt and whimper in the dark, ‘till the last star Reached from afar His touch: a blaze, a gift, a spark.

Again, we see a spark, which has most been referred to in reference to primal magic, even seemingly earlier on in the poem. We also see gift, which seems like a blatant reference to dark magic: "So he gave us magic!" (4x07) and "Lay [the staff] down? But it was a gift" (3x01). We can also read it into this section from the Puzzle House in which Claudia quite explicitly uses magic that isn't primal, either:

He said it came from "a spark of fun" instead of primal sources, or...

And Kpp'Ar is a dark mage, and so is Claudia (in-training at this point), so it'd be within reason to assume this is some form of dark magic residue. But if it is... why not just call it that? Why make the distinction?

I think we can conclusively say there were at least two gifts given to humanity — the first was primal magic, and this seems to be more concrete. The second, assumedly, was dark magic at least in some form. But what if it was also more than that? I've talked before that as the Key of Aaravos seemingly functions now, it'd be most useful to a dark mage for categorizing spell parts/ingredients. The premonition dreams and weird blood connections between Star (Deep?) and dark magic are well known by now, even just looking at the sheer weirdness of whatever the fuck is going on with Ziard-Viren's relic staff.

The Midnight Star poem also does not help us much in figuring out the distinction between them, at least not at first glance.

Elarion, searing white, Embraced the great one’s night-black flame. And when she bowed, Her faith avowed, He whispered, “Aaravos,” his name.

Here, we get the dark-light motif pretty plainly. Fire fits with the primal flames that we're pretty sure humanity already had at this point, but we're not 100% sure. "Searing white" seems to match up with Aaravos' key, which could both relate to primal, dark, and deep magic all pretty easily.

And giving humans deep magic isn't necessarily all bad. Elarion is called "a beautiful white city" nestled in the mountains (Tales of Xadia). Leola's Last Wish star is a beautiful guiding light. This is probably the closest to a straightforward "this is when humans got primal magic or deep magic ('good' variant)" we can read into the poem, except...

It's immediately troubled by this implication and the following stanza (said connection between 2x06 and TOX found by @its-leethee).

The process marks its wielder, too: years of dark magic leave mages with pale complexions, bruise-like blemishes across the body, and blackened eyes. For better or for worse, dark magic became the key that unlocked a place of power in Xadia for all of humanity.

The closing stanza of the poem is why we all thought dark magic post-S2, for obvious reasons:

Elarion, black-eyed child, her twisted roots spread deep and far, The humans’ might sparked by the light of Aaravos, her midnight star.

Black eyes are found in dark magic use, twisted roots don't have a particularly good connotation, and we know thanks to S1 and S3 that many humans considered dark magic to make them powerful and level the playing field. Thus, the timeline would look something like this:

Elarion / humans eventually found primal magic (thanks to Leola + potentially others like Aaravos)

This drew the anger of the Stars/First elves and the dragons

Elarion asks the stars for help against the dragons, but they leave/reject it

Aaravos gives the humans deep magic (or something along those lines) through his cube ("searing white") which may or may not contain his chest piece / a quasar diamond

Through the cube, humans discovered/developed dark magic, thus "unlocking a place of great power"

[nerdlebirdle]

Someone give me the strength to finish Hollow Knight. I wanna follow the tag here but im STRUGGLING on the final boss... and dont want NO SPOILERS on it.

I have avoided it soo long

I just want to finish it i love the game so much but like that final boss is KICKING MY ASS

[constellationclarke]

Ok I was so invested in the setting up of the beginning of the movie with the narration and the shots of the riots and police and capulets vs montagues framing and the introductory shots of characters reminiscent of how the plays are published with a list of characters before you start reading and getting thrown into the guys rapping in the car that my brain shortcircuited and actually now I've decided I need to read the play (technically reread but I was 12 the first time so it barely counts) so I can really let this seep into my brain and give me brain worms because I'm already buzzing going into overdrive wanting to analyse everything

[charliesfuckery]

Help why am I back in my Dan and Phil, FNAF lore, Hunger Games era. Please it’s like like I’m 14 again except now I’m 23 and I pay rent.

[rivilu]

might just commit to making this blog multifandom because if I dont talk about spiderverse more i will EXPLODE