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now hear me out. this can be played off to the andrastians, as some sort of incredibly unhinged divorce/custody battle between the maker and andraste, and the herald of andraste is like... their child caught in the dispute and siding with their mom (involuntarily. bc she's literally controlling them) 😭

actually i need to forcibly self-review my tags for a minute:

this would've been SO neat if it happened in da4? think of it this way:

there are all these small heretical cults that have been around in the chantry for ages - after the chaos of the the breach, people start getting more into them. some of them have a "the maker is going to Literally Return and smite evildoers" type of ideology. as the black city's seals weaken, this cult starts getting funky little dream visions + the locations of highly powerful ~maker blessed~ (they're just elven) artifacts that they use.

solas, frantically, is trying to tear the veil, reach the black city, and reclose it again but better, before the blight and evanuris fully leak out and doom thedas. he arrives at the black city, and... immediately falls into Regret Jail. for 2 reasons:

he did not notice that flemythal was playing him the whole time, and actually wanted elgar'nan released so she could kill him herself and take his power. she interferes with his ritual to get this done, and the veil remains relatively intact.

the evanuris got "woken up" when the magisters first entered the black city, and had not been idle - knowing that solas is the Regrets Georg of the pantheon, they built a regret jail in there to immediately catch him, bc they knew he'd have to come back eventually.

now, thedas is faced with: incredible tumult. "the maker" is literally creating eclipses and frying people with his glorious radiance, people actually like him bc there was a coincidental outbreak of really creatively fucked up monsters, that his priests easily destroyed when no one else could. also andraste(?) (it's flemythal) seems to be angry at him and is raising a rival force.

the chantry is in shambles; the official stance of the divine is that this is all fake and a test of faith bc none of it is making any sense. and the maker is not supposed to be publicly divorcing andraste and setting entire towns on fire and looking unsettlingly blighted. but, no one is really listening to that lmao.

meanwhile, the remaining old god cult supporters in tevinter are Mad about this. so is the qun, actually. rare unifying factor? do you want to ally with either of these people against elgar'nan and ghilan'nain? that's ✨grey morality✨. the dalish are also not happy about this - many of them were already on solas' agents faction, but the remainder are like "this is disgusting. i hate it here. our lord elgar'nan, the stern but respectful patriarch, would NEVER stand for this chantry bullshit >:(".

also meanwhile, solas is banging on the walls of his regret jail and trying to get his agents to somehow salvage this situation. his ancient elven lieutentant, reva, is there and she's hot and mean.

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thinking again about that jhepler bsn post where she said friendship anders = happier = more manic = worse person while rivalry anders = suffering = more depressive = better person

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couldn't sleep so it's meme time :')

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actually this could be so wild if it's alongside a really low-approval, brutal, chantry stooge type of inquisitor worldstate, haha. like fully "ally with templars, kill the sentinel elves, kill the wisdom spirit, screw over the dalish whenever possible, gaspard on the throne, embrace the herald of andraste concept" type of situation.

like yeah. no WONDER the inquisition found nothing of use in the 10 years they were hunting for solas. they were busy becoming a new branch of the chantry. they're not going to find any useful info on the heretical elven gods or the blight or the ancient magisters - that's not maker-honouring! they end up descending rapidly into corruption within years, and had zero possible leads except for "send varric and his single random protege to intercept solas, i guess?" which doesn't work.

and then it turns out the protege is both really incompetent, and not taking the issue very seriously, while the inquisition itself struggles and fails to protect southern thedas from the enormous amounts of blight and chaos being loosed on it.

anyway smash cut to like 200 years later, when some poor dumbass in this severely post-apocalyptic, earthquake/blight/war/demons/undead ravaged landscape of thedas, is once again trying to access the black city. to see if they can dredge out the rumoured last remaining person with the required magical knowledge to fix things. third time's the charm(?)

i feel like you could make a Truly Harrowing Grimdark fic out of veilguard if you actually just. take the offscreen events seriously, and retain the previous stuff like "blight is incurable" and "elves are oppressed" and "evanuris are unkillable through any means found in millennia, even when they kill each other" and "the black city is already 2 steps away from breaking open, and it's inherently tied to the veil"

so then it's really like:

rook interferes with the ritual, releases 2 evanuris and the blight into thedas. multiple countries begin collapsing under darkspawn and famine. i think even orzammar goes quiet? i don't agree with the "oh ferelden got blighted and it was fine!" argument, bc this is now like 3 countries over a huge geographical area, and it's said that famine is looming and the survivors are few enough to fit into individual cities. that's REALLY bad.

everyone is now aware that the cause of this is the Evil Elven Gods, from their religion already banned by the chantry, but that elves were known to practice in secret. retaliation begins. all the elves in thedas are now seen as suspect at best, and responsible for this at worst.

rook's team is busy having coffee, organizing a book club, and cooking for each other cutely. occasionally bickering with solas, but not asking him any useful questions about this whole trainwreck, or about what his plan actually was, before.

tevinter and the antivan crows remain powerful through everything - tevinter is now completely unchecked, bc no other part of southern thedas would be able to repel their influence. tevinter practices mass slavery of elves, and the antivan crows do as well, in a slightly different way, in that they bank on elves being considered attractive and good honeypots for assassinations. and that's not good, because...

it's revealed that not only did the Evil Elven Gods cause all this recent carnage, they also invented the blight! this is a huge W for tevinter. their greatest national embarrassment can now be pinned on their ancient enemy. they immediately argue that the original magisters were actually just being brainwashed by the Evil Gods, and actually, thedas is SO lucky that tevinter destroyed arlathan. it was an evil place worshipping evil gods!

elves across thedas are, presumably, facing violently forced conversion to andrastianism at best, or massascres, exile, and enslavement at worst. in this trying time, at least they have. uhhh. bellara's white guilt to help advocate for them, as she said maybe they shouldn't be trusted after all? oh ok. well if the elves themselves say they can't be trusted...

in most people's eyes, this immediately reframes the entire chant of light. if shartan was an elf, and he wanted to give his people a nation where they could worship Evil Elven Gods... how could he have been truly allied with andraste? did HE betray her, actually? is this why the dales never helped with the blight and deserved to be destroyed?

harding discovers and reconnects to the titans - concludes that, despite being alive and sapient and having their literal blood being mined out of their bodies by their estranged children, their time is over. presumably, they stay comatose and in eternal suffering until uhhh. idk. either the dwarves run out of lyrium or the titans lash out into mass earthquakes when they reach their limit(?). who knows!

you can prop up a regime of... immortal mages in nevarra. having mages with immortality went super well for the elves, no problems. imagine if, say, the chantry was destabilized and these immortal mages no longer have anything to fear from anybody else? surely they wouldn't take power forever. haha. don't worry, these ones are really nice, they're just into uhhh. summoning spirits into corpses to create huge labour forces. and they're goth.

meanwhile, the Evil Elven Gods have been killed! yay! but actually, are they going to stay dead...? all the evanuris ganged up together to kill mythal, and she survived for millennia. they would've certainly known about her dragon and tried to kill it, too - if they failed after that, that means they're truly unkillable in some way. solas was trying to kill these guys for however many centuries - if it was as simple as "boss fight the dragon and then the evanuris" he would've done that instead of some galaxy brain reality-altering stuff that knocked him into a coma?

so, they're gone for now. luckily the blight and the veil can be held up! by one guy who's uhhh. in eternal solitary confinement, watching the last of his people get hunted down by the chantry. and he's not really immortal. and tevinter may be gunning for him anyway, and they now have enough slaves to access huge amounts of blood to reach the black city again. and the veil thins by itself whenever there's anything like "war" or "suffering" so... it's about to turn into swiss cheese.

anyway, what if dragon age was about a young witch in a fully post apocalyptic setting, looking for unblighted food and water while dodging rival warlords and tevinter slavers, and elves have become reclusive and nearly extinct, and the veil is so thin, and the black city is so close, that it can actually be seen in the sky like a portent of doom. also there are book clubs still.

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exactly!! you see the vision. i think it could also be like this, with the various chantry splinter groups all beefing with each other:

actually i need to forcibly self-review my tags for a minute:

this would've been SO neat if it happened in da4? think of it this way:

there are all these small heretical cults that have been around in the chantry for ages - after the chaos of the the breach, people start getting more into them. some of them have a "the maker is going to Literally Return and smite evildoers" type of ideology. as the black city's seals weaken, this cult starts getting funky little dream visions + the locations of highly powerful ~maker blessed~ (they're just elven) artifacts that they use.

solas, frantically, is trying to tear the veil, reach the black city, and reclose it again but better, before the blight and evanuris fully leak out and doom thedas. he arrives at the black city, and... immediately falls into Regret Jail. for 2 reasons:

he did not notice that flemythal was playing him the whole time, and actually wanted elgar'nan released so she could kill him herself and take his power. she interferes with his ritual to get this done, and the veil remains relatively intact.

the evanuris got "woken up" when the magisters first entered the black city, and had not been idle - knowing that solas is the Regrets Georg of the pantheon, they built a regret jail in there to immediately catch him, bc they knew he'd have to come back eventually.

now, thedas is faced with: incredible tumult. "the maker" is literally creating eclipses and frying people with his glorious radiance, people actually like him bc there was a coincidental outbreak of really creatively fucked up monsters, that his priests easily destroyed when no one else could. also andraste(?) (it's flemythal) seems to be angry at him and is raising a rival force.

the chantry is in shambles; the official stance of the divine is that this is all fake and a test of faith bc none of it is making any sense. and the maker is not supposed to be publicly divorcing andraste and setting entire towns on fire and looking unsettlingly blighted. but, no one is really listening to that lmao.

meanwhile, the remaining old god cult supporters in tevinter are Mad about this. so is the qun, actually. rare unifying factor? do you want to ally with either of these people against elgar'nan and ghilan'nain? that's ✨grey morality✨. the dalish are also not happy about this - many of them were already on solas' agents faction, but the remainder are like "this is disgusting. i hate it here. our lord elgar'nan, the stern but respectful patriarch, would NEVER stand for this chantry bullshit >:(".

also meanwhile, solas is banging on the walls of his regret jail and trying to get his agents to somehow salvage this situation. his ancient elven lieutentant, reva, is there and she's hot and mean.

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We with @buriedknight got wrecked by early Corypheus concept art so they asked me to make a tribute (it broke me)

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if we could speak with lobsters and understand each other I think they might be able to share some really good wisdom as such a long-lived species.

but then I realized. the problem with such a plan

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List of Mass Effect-related headcanons and minute lore discoveries

I’ve had an influx of followers lately, so I’m just going to make an adequate index listing all my “interesting” posts - therefore not every post I made on Mass Effect is included. This will make navigation easier than going through my “mass effect” tag.

Update : Goddess, I have so many.

On Mass Effect 3

Characters :

Aleena/Aria T'Loak (and related characters) :

"Aleena" and Wrex (Addendum)

Garrus Vakarian (and related characters) :

A conversation with rawliverandcigarettes and sunrisexara on Garrus and the justification of violence (Warning : Garrus-critical)

Jacob Taylor (and related characters) :

What could have been (in conversation with rawliverandcigarettes and catgirlthecrazy)

Liara T’Soni (and related characters) :

Dates of birth of Liara and her family, as exactly as possible.

Wrex (and related characters) :

"Aleena" and Wrex (Addendum)

The galaxy's ditziest socialite, a.k.a. Aish Ashland :

Birthday

Bernard Plim (and related characters) :

Having fun

Races :

Asari :

Extreme possible lifespan of asari

Broad strokes of asari history pre-spaceflight

Unwarranted headcanons about the Athame Doctrine

Asari don’t celebrate birthdays

Biotics in asari culture and history

Political structures and principles of the Asari Republics (with dr-jekyl) (General addendum) (Addendum #1 on the judiciaries) (Addendum #2 on the judiciaries) (Addendum on diplomacy, intelligence and the military) (Addendum on the e-democracy forums)

Speculation on the early asari/salarian diplomatic and commercial relationship (featuring the absence of artificial intelligences)

Batarians :

A conversation with amorphousturtle on the possible use of abducted slaves in the Batarian Hegemony as a deterrent to alien invasions

On the depiction of batarians (reacting to rawliverandcigarettes's thoughts on the Arrival DLC)

Elcor :

A small headcanon on the elcor in a larger post from dr-ladybird on the salarians

Geth : see “Quarians and geth”

Hanar :

How do hanar sit down ? (with hardwitchhologram)

Humans :

Settling the first human worlds - and remember those aliens on Alpha Centauri ?

Religions in the 22nd century

Krogan :

List of the social positions in krogan groups

Political situation of Clan Urdnot pre-2183 CE

Talking about the exact nature of ryncol (with dr-ladybird)

Krogan timekeeping

Protheans :

Prothean civilization and the Metacon War

Quarians and geth :

The quarian calendar and quarian history

Chronology of the Morning War and the years that came before

Geth and pronouns

Rachni :

Rachni and memories that are not their own (with persephinae and rackofages)

Salarians :

Salarians had chinampas

Salarians, haplodiploidy and eusociality

Salarians have ossicones

Salarians have Jane Austen-style balls

Speculation on the early asari/salarian diplomatic and commercial relationship (featuring the absence of artificial intelligences)

Turians :

Turian citizenship tiers

Turian agnominal facial markings

Volus :

Masterpost on everything canon about the volus

What do volus breathe ?

Volus don’t have marble on Irune

Vorcha :

The biology of the vorcha

Yahg :

What the fuck did the ancestral yahg hunted to need to form packs ?

Artificial Intelligences :

Speculation on the early asari/salarian diplomatic and commercial relationship (featuring the absence of artificial intelligences)

Starships :

Differences between an Everest-class dreadnought and a Kilimanjaro-class one

crapeaucrapeau’s Spectacular Headcanon Cornucopia of Actually Maybe Trying to Make FTL work, or : I Do Not Understand Relativity But I Thought I Could Give It A Shot Anyway Watch Me Crash And Burn

Mass relays :

Where was the Mu Relay originally ? (Ask to actual astronomer lhs3020b)

Planets and places :

Omega’s foundation year

The ecosystem of Tarith

Palaven, its moons and its seas (with vigilantsycamore)

Galactic culture and comparative biology  :

Timekeeping, calendars and holidays in the Milky Way galaxy

Which aliens can naturally see in the ultraviolet ? Which can’t ?

Qualms with dates of galactic history

The uses of palladium in the galactic economy

Enthusiastically, It’s the Arts

Futuristics in the Milky Way galaxy

Extranet memes

Animals and plants :

The varren and the adhi

Obscure fauna from the Milky Way galaxy

Flora of the Milky Way galaxy

Organizations :

Reflections on why the Citadel Council had such an unusual behavior with the Systems Alliance… playing favorites (with a-krogan-skald-and-bearsark)

History :

Please consider the G2HGE series (below)

Speculation on the early asari/salarian diplomatic and commercial relationship (featuring the absence of artificial intelligences)

A conversation with dr-jekyl on the possible chronology of the Reaper War

Influences of Mass Effect :

Mass Effect and The Matrix (with stoic-unicorn and rawliverandcigarettes)

Cop shows and Mass Effect : see "Mass Effect, police brutality [etc]" (below)

Interpretations of Mass Effect :

The Future of Mass Effect (i.e. I react to the 2020 ME5 teaser by making an essay on how "the future" is depicted in Mass Effect and talking about possible ways I would be interested in seeing the farther future depicted in ME5)

Mass Effect, police brutality and other police-committed crimes (starting off rawliverandcigarettes)

…what is going onnnnn ? (I have my first real conversation with rawliverandcigarettes)

POST SERIES

Galactic Geography and History of Galactic Exploration (G2HGE) :

Post 0 : Presentation and Purpose

Post 1 : Methodology and general lamentation over the incoherent state of the lore.

Post 2a : Oldest canon date for activity in every single cluster

Post 2b : Organization and Visualization of the above

Post 3 : The oversized impact of the asari, and a surprising amount of stuff to discover.

Post 4 : The Problem with the Galaxy Maps

Post 5a : The Regions of the Milky Way : Overview and Council Space

Post 5b : The Regions of the Milky Way : The Terminus Systems

Post 5c : The Regions of the Milky Way : The Attican Traverse and Earth Systems Alliance Space

Post 5d : The Regions of the Milky Way : The Nemean Abyss and the Perseus Veil

Post 5e : The Regions of the Milky Way : The Skyllian Verge (and lots of talk about the cold war between the batarians and the Alliance)

[To be continued…]

Compulsive Probing (a series on the names of the planets in every race's home system, with assorted headcanons) :

Introduction & the planets in the asari home system and other asari-named planets

The planets in the salarian home system and other salarian-named planets

[To be continued…]

Earth's nations by 2183 : What are the nations of Earth by the time ME1 rolls in ? What references do we find in canon ?

Part 1 : The United North American States (Canada, the USA, Mexico)

Part 2 : Addendum on the UNAS, the rest of Central America and South America

[To be continued…]

Done on April 28, 2020, in the days of the plague.

Last updated as of January 16, 2024

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Headcanon Wednesday : Hanar Rejuvenation

(Yeah, I know it's Thursday, but yesterday a big storm fucked up my Internet connection.)

A little-known ability of the hanar is what is best termed as rejuvenation : if they are starved, gravely injured, or otherwise dying but not dying too fast (e.g. not depressurization, not infectious disease, not being eaten by animals, not a bullet to the face, etc), adult hanar will regress into a filter-feeding, non-sapient polyp. The polyp will then undergo maturation and development into an adult hanar at the normal rate. The subsequent adult has no memories of what is effectively their previous "life" and is considered an entirely different person. Depending on hanar cultures, this renewed individual may be entitled to the same Face Name, but never to the same Soul Name.

While the concept may sound appealing to non-hanar, the hanar themselves definitely do not see the appeal. Culturally and legally, rejuvenation is considered a form of death, as hanar basically transform into something much smaller and far less neurologically complex than their adult forms, shedding most of their memories as they do so : in other words, they lose their souls. Rejuvenation isn't reincarnation so much as what hanar also call reanimation, a new soul in the same body.

Some "Enkindling" sects consider this obscene and worse than a quick death of the body, and euthanize hanar who have started their rejuvenation ; an even smaller minority wait for the regression to be complete before eating the polyp live in an act of ritual cannibalism. Most of hanar society, however, regards the process much like non-hanar regard the more benign neurodegenerative disorders in older relatives : a slow fading out of the self, and a quiet death. Depending on cultural expectations, personal beliefs and relationship with the rejuvenated individual, the polyp may be released in the wild, planted in a pot to eventually adopt the subsequent medusae, or donated to baby groves.

A motif in hanar art and real life, though not the most prevalent one, is that of a long chain of individuals taking care of each other rejuvenation after rejuvenation. A very famous and very old poem, The Diachronics, starts with two lovers, Swims Against The Tide and Leaps Above The Cresting Waves, whose perfect bliss is interrupted, as with all love stories, by their separation in death : Swims Against The Tide is rejuvenated, but Leaps Above The Cresting Waves vows to take care of the infant medusa like the child it and Swims Against The Tide never had. For the next few millennia, one of the pair becomes the other's parent before dying and rejuvenating and being raised by their adult child, each permutation showing different facets of love and devotion, and different kinds of relationships. The Diachronics ends with both hanar being separated and rejuvenated almost simultaneously, only to fall in love as adults, knowing nothing of their past lives.

(This post is brought to you by Fucked Up Jellyfish Facts. I usually avoid basing hanar on Cnidaria, but in my ongoing quest to make hanar Weird, this was too good to resist.)

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hey. if solas considered people in thedas as seeming like tranquil when he woke up, and saw them as somehow different to how pre-veil people were

do you think, on a high approval inquisitor who took the well, he'd actually get extra freaked out? bc he started off seeing this person as barely alive and nearly an automaton. and now they DO show whatever 6th sense magical signifiers of thought and emotion he's used to perceiving. but that's a really bad sign, bc that means the well's magic is fully capable of overriding their entire consciousness and changing them even when it's not actively in "use".

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Knowing you exist fills me with delight. :)

this is very sweet, thank you ;v;

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Winged Prophets.

a selection of mothmen. some deliver their warnings more gently than others.

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please participate in the evil elven elections and justify your choices in the tags, we must preserve the sanctity of arlathan democracy 🫡

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i wonder which scene they are all reading 👀 i did it to distract myself a bit from the story - imagining that they are all alive and doing well and that's all just a filmmaking, while they are - just actors

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A Dream of Teeth

gouache, 3.5"x5.5"

a little painting, for a little fic

She holds him trammelled with one small hand. Her other arm is insubstantial below the elbow, not quite gone here in the Fade but still not whole. She always was stronger than he assumed, and her trials and his manipulations have honed her to a killing edge. He was a fool to approach her. He cannot retreat.