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Fifty Shades of Mierda. Okay, actually forty. There are more in the text, they just aren't voiced.

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I'm sorry for briefly dragging Reddit across your dash, this is for my sister who doesn't use Reddit, but DOES use Tumblr and AO3. Usernames removed to protect the no-longer-innocent.

@wincestielfttfwin <3

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Harding: Are you sure you and Rook aren't moving too fast? I mean, you're sketching your wedding invite. Emmrich: This is not a wedding invitation. It is a first draft design of our matching tombstones. Harding: ... my mistake.

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Solas to Lucanis swap

All my DATV gifs

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Poor Emmrich. I’ve had a headcanon that (especially with Rook’s Chaos Gremlin energy) Rook and Lucanis wind up being the sort of “fun aunt and uncle” to Manfred, “load him up with sugar and sent him home to dad”-style. That includes encouraging his little imagination, and letting him pretend to be a rad little Crow when Emmrich isn’t looking. Sorry, Professor. Your kid’s too cute, it was bound to happen 🤣♥️

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Imagining Lucanis brooding in Rook's room while they're stuck in the Fade prison the same way he does with Neve's room if he's romancing her and she gets taken at Tearstone.

And THEN, you get the dialogue from Davrin that Assan missed you while you were gone, and he tells you that Assan would prowl around your room and sleep on your couch.

So, it wouldn't be that far of a jump to imagine Assan keeping Lucanis company and pulling him out of his brooding, or Assan and Lucanis both falling asleep together on Rook's couch, because Lucanis doesn't want to move Assan and Assan somehow knows that Lucanis hasn't slept in like 4 days and desperately needs it, so he curls up on top of him.

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t-shirt that says ‘I’D RATHER BE DEBASING A CHASTE AND VIRTUOUS KNIGHT RIGHT NOW.’

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Rook: Dock Town's never short on nightlife, is it?

Neve: It's when the streets are most alive. And when I'm likely working.

Lucanis: The nightlife was always more Illario's thing. He said I should get out more. Fulfilling Crow contracts didn't count.

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Hey, Lucanis, buddy... how did you figure out so fast that Harding might have become a people pleaser, because once upon a time she was a small, defenceless child who learned that it was safer to act as agreeable as possible in order to avoid abuse? Why did it make so much sense to you? How did it click for you so easily, huh? HUH??? To reiterate Harding's question: "Where did that come from?"

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Two similar Lucanis interactions regarding getting some air / stretching his legs (w/ Neve & Harding)

Neve first;

Neve: Getting some air? Lucanis: Is the air out here different than what's inside? Neve: In the Fade? Not likely. But we get the illusion. Lucanis: I don't think I find that relaxing. Neve: (Chuckles) Yeah. Me neither.

Now Harding;

Harding: Stretching the legs? Lucanis: I'm not trapped underwater anymore. Everything is stretching my legs.

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For years, he'd hated her. Caterina's cruelty was her way of making sure that he was prepared for this life--that he survived.

Catherynn M. Valente / Notes on The State of Virginia II, Safiya Sinclair / Circe, Madeline Miller / The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Stephen Adly Guirgis / Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin / The Wigmaker Job, Courtney Woods / Screenshots from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (Bioware)

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in The Wigmaker Job and to a lesser extent Veilguard we get a great deal of exposition/clues into how painfully observant Lucanis is. part of him being a top tier assassin is his ability to be hyperaware of everything going on around him and interpreting what that information means correctly, because if he gets it wrong he can die. so i don’t personally really think he was ever truly unaware that Rook was flirting or interested in him. i think instead his denial/avoidance about it stems from the fact that he feels like he is tricking Rook into thinking he’s someone deserving of love. he knows that they are interested in him, he just thinks they shouldn’t be, and wouldn’t want to be if they knew the “real him”

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A Flimsy Excuse?

Lucanis blames Spite for wanting company at Caterina’s funeral planning.

Lucanis: Rook. Do you have a minute?

Rook: Of course. Something wrong?

Lucanis: Teia wants to meet.

Rook: That doesn't sound like a bad thing.

Lucanis: She wants to plan Caterina's funeral.

Rook: Oh. Right.

Lucanis: If you don't mind, I... could use some backup. In case Spite gets out of hand.

Rook: Let's not keep Teia waiting.

o()xxxx[{::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::> <::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::}]xxxx()o

"If you don't mind, I... could use some backup. In case Spite gets out of hand."

While we're aware from Lucanis's logbook entries that Spite does occasionally seize control from Lucanis, Rook hasn't seen that yet. Spite hasn't made a break for the eluvian room, he hasn't tried to kill Illario... As far as we're aware, he's provided a helpful hand on quests and annoyed Lucanis with his commentary. It... sort of feels more like a reason for Lucanis to ask Rook to come with him. He knows someone among the Crows betrayed him and he's going to funeral planning for his grandmother, half of his remaining family. When we rescued him from the Ossuary, did you hear how he echoed Caterina's name when Rook explained she'd sent him?

Despite everything she put him through as a child, he loved his grandma and is dealing with having lost her without ever getting a chance to say goodbye or to thank her for never stopping looking for him. Now, he's got to walk into a den on of familiar assassins, knowing at least one of them tried to have him killed and possibly had a hand in her death as well. He's asked Rook for help before and Rook delivered (breaking the blood vial, killing Calivan) and he's seen them fight. Who better to stand alongside him and have his back while he tries to grieve and plan a funeral for the person who raised him?

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Letter from Illario

Cousin. Not his name. Illario does that a lot and I think there’s a reason for that. Impersonal yet intimate, at an arm’s distance yet with that arm is still reaching for him, Illario is asserting the familial connection and drawing on Lucanis's family loyalty as something he knows he can rely on to control him with.

Illario jumps straight to implying unreliability; he deliberately points to Lucanis's fractured control of Spite before rudely wafting a hand at Lucanis's memory, implying that might be flawed as well.

Having tied himself to Lucanis's trauma from his capture and their supposed shared loss of Caterina in the previous paragraph, Illario isn't content with that and decides to drive the point further home in this one like the guilty fuck he is. He appeals to their shared history, using nostalgia and a shared memory to make Lucanis feel like shit. "You had more control drunk than you do over that demon, you aren’t yourself anymore" is the message he's trying to drive home (with a side of "stay the fuck away"). I guess we know Lucanis wasn't kidding when he said Illario was a slick talker.

Sorry, but for the sake of the family is such a dirty kick in the teeth. Who's left? It was the three of them and Caterina's supposed to be dead, so who the fuck is he talking about? House Dellamorte has Crows to its name, but they don’t bear the house name, nor are they family. Yet Illario invokes 'family' to make it personal.

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Lucanis's Logbook - All 5 Entries

These were my favorite Codex entries to find, they're a great snapshot of Lucanis and Spite's changing relationship as they grew.

Entry 1

Entry 2

Entry 3

Entry 4

Entry 5

Text of all five below, for your easy reference ♡

Entry 1

Lucanis's Logbook, 1

Dawn:

Exercises

Breakfast

Mid-morning:

Weapon maintenance

Inventory

Midday:

Meeting with Neve and Harding (Solas and blighted gods)

Midday meal

Late afternoon:

Exercises

Meeting with Bellara

Evening:

Supper preparations

Correspondence with Crows

Nearing midnight:

Study

Every hour seems accounted for, but it is difficult to know for certain. There was no day or night in the Ossuary. Now, at this Lighthouse, the sky offers little hint to the true time in the world.

Entry 2

Lucanis's Logbook, 2

Dawn:

Exercises

Breakfast

Mid-morning:

Weapon maintenance

Meeting with Neve, Harding, and Bellara (possible movement from gods)

Midday:

Midday meal

Search library

Late after— (the handwriting abruptly alters:)

a PEACE

cut from the ALL

golden stranded weaves

PROTECTION CAGE

keep them OUT keep me IN

(Drawn below is a decagonal diagram of perfectly even, intersecting geometric lines.)

Entry 3

Lucanis's Logbook, 3

scentsing the BEYOND rememburnings from before when one was infinity not a small shade not a SHARP hooked claw in a gut

takemeouttakemeoutletmeout

riiiiiiiip

(The handwriting abruptly alters:)

When did this start? I drifted off. It was after I spoke to Harding. He can't have been here long. The candle was out, but not much lower than when I lit it. It may still be evening. Or he blew it out and it's been hours.

I'll ask Emmrich of Neve for an estimate of the time.

Entry 4

Lucanis's Logbook, 4

Late afternoon:

Exercises

Discussion with Taash (Crows)

Evening:

Inventory with Bellara

Supper preparations

Bellara has ambitious plans for future meals at the Lighthouse, which she leaves to the two of us. I've been tasked with suggesting substitutions where ingredients are not available. Some of her own suggestions are rather inventive and would create a balanced flavor profile. Viago speaks often on the art of masking certain tastes.

Perhaps I should set up a meeting so they can compare notes; perhaps enemies of House De Riva won't last much longer.

Nearing midnight:

- Reading

If l have lost an hour this night, it is only to Rook. But lost is wrong. It is an hour found. An hour more clear than any other.

Entry 5

Lucanis's Logbook, 5 toes wiggle

when he drinks the brew a small shade and a wounded spirit sitting

there is STILL

we are still

Drawn below is a decagonal diagram of perfectly even, intersecting geometric lines.

Additional lines extend past the central diagram and reach the edges of the page.

there is an INFINITE there is a SHELTER

there is a STORM outside the center

The handwriting abruptly alters:

Spite says he went nowhere and it has only been an hour or two. His measurement of time seem more accurate than the others here. So, to resume...

Late Evening:

- Exercises

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Chantry Magisters arguing about slavery

Pavus is our beloved Dorian Pavus (who rescues us from the First Warden in our first encounter with him), now a leader of the Shadow Dragons and formerly a co-founder of the Lucerni, along with Maevaris Tillani.

Paired with what we know about the Black Divine and his seething hatred for slavery, is it really any wonder that Ashur put a mask on and helped found the Shadow Dragons?

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Notes on the Imperial Chantry

See also; Chantry Magisters arguing about slavery