#Dellamorte : of/from Death

[incoherentchanting]

this shit is so funny

[cheaploafs]

i may have snapped

[grimelven]

pov: rook is the blue message

(based on vibes)

Warden’s POV | Hawke’s POV | Inquisitor’s POV

[rsenak]

It's incredibly funny to me how I'll be there drawing them being cute while plotting various bad things in their future. These crows cannot catch a break

[kabsey]

For the Veilguard prompts if you are in the spirit....

"This is just what I needed, thank you"

Location-Treviso

Thank you for the prompt! <3 Please enjoy some post-Veilguard, pre-living-together Rook de Riva x Lucanis (+ Spite).

-------

Sprawled in an armchair before a crackling fire, wineglass in one hand, latest entry in the series Bellara had gotten her hooked on in the other, Rook had just gotten to the first really juicy bit when someone knocked on her door. She looked to the heavens and muttered a curse before setting aside both book and wineglass and pushing to her feet.

"I swear to the Maker, Viago, if you're about to launch into another rant about the new governor..."

She yanked open the door—and frowned in confusion. No one was there. She stuck her head into the hall, and Viago's door at the far end was shut. She eased the door closed again and was ready to chalk it up to a stray cat outside when she heard the knock again.

Coming from her balcony.

As her brain began an immediate inventory of every exit in the room, she slid silently to her vanity to retrieve a dagger. Attackers didn't usually bother to knock, but it could have been a distraction. She kept to the shadows as she made her way across the room to the balcony. Instead of parting the curtains that covered the glass double doors, she crept to the outside of the doorframe to lift one edge of the fabric.

And startled back when glowing violet eyes stared straight at her.

"Mythal's tits," she breathed as she tossed her dagger to her nightstand.

She yanked the curtains open and unlocked the door. Spite strode in without a moment's hesitation.

"You didn't want to use the front door?" Rook asked as she closed the doors behind him.

When she turned to face him, Spite was frowning. "Why? Would I? You're. Up here."

Rook laughed. "Can't really argue with that." She regarded him with a shake of her head and her hands on her hips. "Lucanis go to bed early?"

"No. Lucanis is. Awake."

Her smile twitched toward a frown. That meant Lucanis was allowing Spite full control. Maybe Spite had pestered him and he had given in or they had reached some kind of trade wherein Spite got to spend the evening with Rook in exchange for something Lucanis wanted. But something about Spite's scowl made an uneasy feeling stir in her belly.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"Yes!" Spite declared. "He's being. Stupid! And it's. Annoying!"

"Stupid how?"

Spite began to pace the short distance between the foot of her bed and the armchair, wings fluttering in agitation.

"He wants to. See you. He thinks you. Won't want to. See him."

"Well, that is stupid," Rook replied. "I always want to see him."

Spite turned to her as his arms flailed in an exasperated gesture. "That's what! I said!" His eyes narrowed as his scowl deepened. "He says. He would be. Bad company."

"I would be bad company" sounded like Lucanis speak for "I'm going to hide away and brood so I'm not a burden to others."

"Did something happen today?" Rook asked. "Something that's bothering him?"

"Yes."

Rook waited for him to elaborate, but as long seconds passed, she huffed and rolled her eyes a little.

"And do you know what that something was?" she prompted.

Spite shook his head. "I. Wasn't there. And he. Won't say. Hiding it away. The private place. I'm not supposed. To look."

She knew Lucanis and Spite had been discussing creating some boundaries between them, and she was impressed Spite was taking those discussions so seriously.

"That's good of you, Spite," she noted, and Spite preened with a wide smile. "Is that what this is about? Something's bothering him but he doesn't want to talk about it?"

Before Spite could answer (since the question wasn't really for him), she took a step toward him.

"Lucanis, we don't have to do anything you don't want to do. We can just sit and read by the fire. Or have a glass of wine out on the balcony."

"He wants you. To hold him."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Spite's face screwed up in vexation. His eyelids fluttered, and when they opened again, Lucanis gazed back at her.

"That's enough, Spite," he sighed, but it sounded weary rather than irritated. "I apologize," he said to Rook. "I should not have let him come here."

"I'm glad he did," Rook said. She closed the space between them and put her arms around his neck. She pressed a soft kiss to his lips and then looked up at him. "And I'd love to hold you. Is that what you want?"

His expression as he gazed back at her was a heartbreaking combination of desperate longing and a bone-deep fear—of rejection, of vulnerability, perhaps of something he didn't fully understand. But then he swallowed hard and nodded.

She trailed her hands down his arms until she could take his hands in hers and lead him to the bed. She guided him to sit on the edge and knelt down briefly to remove his boots. Then she climbed onto the mattress, settled herself comfortably in the center, and opened her arms.

After another moment's hesitation, he crawled toward her. He lay at her side, and when her arms came around his shoulders, he stretched one of his across her waist and let his head rest on her chest. He stayed stiff for the first minute or two, despite the fact that they had curled into each like this several times on her tiny chaise at the Lighthouse. Some things had seemed easier when the world was ending. Insecurities and self-consciousness evaporated in the face of mad gods. But now they were back in Treviso, back in the rough shape of their old lives, the lives they'd lived before they knew each other. They were still learning how to make those lives fit together.

But slowly, bit by bit, Lucanis's tension melted away. When he was soft and pliant against her, she turned her head to press a kiss to his hair.

"Thank you," he murmured into the stillness that had descended around them.

"My pleasure," she murmured back. "I mean it. We could watch paint dry and I'd have a good time if I was with you."

He huffed a quiet laugh. "I'd hope we can do better than that. But I'll keep the basic sentiment in mind."

"Good."

[vaguely-concerned]

rye in the sheltered glade with evka and antoine after destroying the blight eruption with unholy amounts of alchemical fire, looking Directly at lucanis studying a flower as it emerges undaunted from the thousand year horrors of the blight with all the guileless wonder and fascination of a little boy: yeah that's uh. wow. that is beautiful actually. this kind of does change everything doesn't it

[the-rebel-archivist]

39 ILLARIO AND AMADIS THIS ISN'T SPIRITS

This one's for you, not-spirits, and it is glorious. It changed my whole canon and I've never been happier. While Illario languishes in the crow prison of Velabanchel, Amadis finds herself in her own prison in the fade. Their reunion is very Antivan - dramatic, violent, and passionate. The crow mating rituals are intricate.

Prompt: A kiss because time's run out

Amadis de Riva / Illario Dellamorte | 3446 words

Seven steps. That was how many it took to cross the dark, dank cell Illario had been confined in all these weeks. Nine if he took very small steps. Five if he took very large ones or if he walked to the raised wooden pallet that might be called a bed, not that he granted it the honour of that name. Once he had managed to make it in six perfect steps, heel against the starting wall, toes against the end, and had spent the next few hours replicating it. But seven, seven was comfortable.

The steps took a little longer today, weighted by the blossoming bruises over his abdomen that forced a wince from him with each movement. He had discovered very quickly that a little light treason wasn’t appreciated by the crows of Velabanchel. Still, he wouldn’t want anyone to think that he’d lost his edge while in prison and so he paced, took whatever exercise he could, and tried to keep his mind occupied the way his training had conditioned him to.

The way he’d unwittingly forced Lucanis to live for a year. Would he be as sane after his own year had passed?

Illario shook his head to clear it. That was not a useful thought. File it down.

Heavy steps thudded against the flagstones of the hall outside of his cell door and from a distance torches on the wall were lit one by one, gradually spilling warm light into the room that had previously only been lit by a narrow slit of the moon reflecting off the sea below the prison’s cliff. One set of noisy, wide-set footsteps, the night guard’s, he knew by now… and one lighter, one barely imperceptible, whispers kissing the floor, but footsteps that would rouse him from sleep even if he were dead.

He was conscious then of his stained clothing and unwashed hair that hung limply about his face, deprived as he was of his hair tie for fear that he’d use it as a makeshift garrotte. He probably would have. He smoothed his hair back as best he could and leaned as nonchalantly as his aching body would allow against one salt-brined wall, crossing his arms in front of himself.

The flame from the torchlight appearing beyond the bars of his cell door burned his eyes, now attuned to the darkness, and so his first view of the figure that haunted his dreams was glimpsed through squinted eyelids, his careful attempt at composure hindered by his need to shield his eyes with his hand.

With the sharp scrape of metal on metal the door creaked open and in she stepped, skirting around the broad-shouldered guard like liquid metal and giving him a small nod.

“Ten minutes,” the guard growled, locking the door behind her and seating the torch in its bracket in the hallway. Ten minutes in which he was at her mercy, ten in which he could speak his last words.

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Only he and his true jailor remained, his beautiful, infuriating jailor, who stood glaring daggers at him but who stood when she should have been dead.

“You’re brave to come alone again, and without bars between us this time,” he said in what would in any other situation have been a drawled implicit threat but which emerged from his mouth neutered and toothless. 

Amadis stepped toward him with those stealthy feet, those quiet killer’s footfalls that he knew too well. Anyone else with her dark hair, dark eyes, and dark leathers might have blended in to the gloom but not her, never her. Her black curls glowed in the halo of the torchlight and shadows traced her form like lovers’ hands while his own seemed suddenly empty.

“Has your ability to threaten atrophied so much already?” she asked with a sarcastic narrow of her eyebrows at his verbal gracelessness, tucking her hair behind her shoulder and exposing her neck with a dare nestled deep in the blackness of her eyes.

Oh, but the bait was tempting. Off the top of his head he could list ten different ways to crush a windpipe, all of which required his skin to make contact with hers and in which he would hold her again for a few glorious seconds as the life drained from her body.

He put his hands down at his sides and stretched them open to clear the thought.

“You left me here to die, Adi. You left me to the damp and the rats and the humiliation. I could kill you now. I should kill you now.” He took a step, biting back the grimace from the weakness of his wounded flesh, channeling it into the fire-flash of anger. “They told me you were gone,” he said accusingly, drawing himself up to his full height before her. “You were dead and it was not me who did it.”

“And that’s what matters, is it?” she asked with a scornful twist of her mouth.

“Yes!” Exasperated, he kept from resisting the offered throat and framed it with his hand, ignoring the thrill that ran down his arm from the contact point of their flesh. “Of course it matters! No matter how far I go you dog my steps, and you left me.”

“Oh, well I’m so very sorry that I inconvenienced you by not dying at your hand,” she sneered, looking up and daring him to tighten his grip. His fingers flexed; he considered, and then felt a flush of satisfaction as her eyes widened when he shifted his grip to the side of her face. The curls at the back of her neck were threaded through his fingers, her cheek cupped and held insistently.

“You don’t understand, you were dead. For weeks you were dead.” 

When she was gone from this world he had learned what it meant to live where she was not. Their last meetings had been marked by antipathy - not indifference but passion, chaos and emotion and hatred all intermingled with the knowledge that there would be a next encounter. And then there was not. There never would be. 

But she had returned from the dead. 

“What does it matter to you, Illario?” she asked bitterly, taking his hand to lift it away from her and letting go like it was some diseased, distasteful thing. “What makes this time so different from the last time you pointed a blade at my neck?”

She wiped every trace of his hand from her body as she spoke and his stomach turned that she would be so repulsed by him.

“It does matter. It did matter. I never told you.”

“Is there anything you could possibly tell me that I don’t already know?” She asked with her dagger-sharp tongue, heedless of the jagged wounds she left behind. “That you betrayed your own family to death and torture, failed and failed again no matter what traitorous heights you set your sights on? You betrayed me but I knew what you were when I took you into my bed.” 

Pausing, she looked away and felt her next words in her mouth before giving voice to them, testing the shape of them. When she spoke again the sound was raw and cracked. “I would have forgiven you for that. I won’t for Antiva. I can only be glad that you failed like you failed at everything else. You keep failing over and over.” 

“Stop it,” he said quietly, an echo of a parentless boy four feet tall and eight years old. “Stop it. They’re already ripping out my nails, isn’t that enough for you?” He gestured toward her with the left hand pinky finger that barely stung now. “They made me what I am, like they did you. The difference between us is that I am twice defeated by my House and you are the victor.”

She had no answer, only a long exhale as she broke her gaze to look away at the floor in the corner of his cell and blinked a few times in quick succession. “Your justifications will leave you bound up in knots,” she said wearily. When she looked back there was an uncertain, nearly pleading look in her eyes that he didn’t recognize. She didn’t look at him that way. She simply did not. Where his suave confidence ended, hers began, not… this. Not the questioning vulnerability that he saw now.

“If you don’t tell me we can forget I was here. We can pretend that we will never wound each other again and I will forget you,” she said, and her pleading eyes begged for silence.

“Even if you could, I could not.”

Illario took a breath in and held it for one, two, three paces-lengths. He willed the prison to open up and swallow him. To swallow them both. Then, exhaling softly, he slipped his hand to the back of her neck and leaned close to her, looking down into those deep, dark eyes that had bewitched him with their passion and spark so long before he knew how to feel. 

“Please,” he said quietly, and he could have sworn that for the briefest of seconds she leaned in to his hand before nodding, resigned to her fate.

“Amadis, I didn’t know until you were gone that a world without you in it would feel like the stars had gone out.” 

They froze in time, interlocked and unmoving for what seemed like minutes, hours, millennia. She blinked; he imitated the motion. Her chest rose and fell with a breath; his did the same. Her skin was warm to the touch, burning his damp-chilled fingers, and since she seemed to permit his hand to linger he pushed his luck and ran his thumb under her jaw. Her eyelids fluttered closed, scrunched together once, and then reopened.

“You would try to kill me and then tell me what, that you love me?” The sound of her voice came out low and scratched, edged by bitter and false amusement.

“Yes- no. I don’t know. Love is too shallow a word. Love is supposed to be kind but this rends me open and leaves me raw. They say love is patient but this is a hungry thing that wants to eat me whole. Every second I spend here I curse your name and every second I know that there is no one else I would wish to curse for an eternity.”

It was embarrassing, exposing his vitals to her when she could execute him on the spot and the other crows would thank her. He was conscious again of the dirt and dried blood on his skin, the odour of his unwashed body, and the clothing that had not stood up to the rigours of being the prison’s punching bag. He was also painfully, sharply aware that despite all of that she had not pulled away from him.

“You are three betrayals too late, mio caro,” she told him, but told him softly, nearly wistfully, as she removed his hand from her face - but allowed her fingers to rest for just a moment over his before letting go. 

A pit of lead grew in his stomach but he smiled through it; if that smile was cruel it was only to himself for allowing himself to believe even for a moment that he might be someone’s first choice. He thought he had crushed that hope long ago but she had coaxed it out of him, dug it up where it lay buried and exposed it to the light while he screamed, all without her ever knowing. If the prison collapsed into the sea at that moment it would have been a true mercy, a miracle sparing him the need to debase himself further. 

“Nothing would have changed, even if you had known,” she said. She knew him, knew his inner workings, knew him as well as she knew her own hands. And he knew that on that night in the opera house had things gone differently he would have seen her dead himself even had he known his feelings, but at least as she gasped her last it would have been his face she saw before her eyes went dark. 

“No, it wouldn’t have. You would still have chosen my cousin’s side.”

“Then how can you love me?”

“If it was possible not to, I wouldn’t,” he said with an acerbic huff through his nose. “You’re asking me how I’m able to keep my heart beating. I could sooner stop that than I could destroy this beast that wants to devour me. Did you know that when you walk into a room everything around you glows? Are you aware of the effort it takes to numb myself when you put your hand on my skin and set it on fire? I wish I didn’t know, but I do now.”

With a deftness that made his aching limbs scream he put one hand on her waist and the other around her back, slipping his fingers into the back of her waistband and searching for the hidden pocket where he was certain her dagger would sit. The guards would have taken her weapons, but that single needle-thin blade was one she would have been loath to give up - and he was right, it was there, the finely made hilt sliding easily out into his palm. 

Amadis drew back, a warning in her glance as she caught his wrist at an awkward angle, but loosened her grasp when he knelt down on the cold stone of the prison floor.

On his knees in front of her he slowly, unthreateningly, brought the dagger close. Like any assassin, he knew the exact position and depth of his heart; the little blade would be enough. He pointed the tip directly over that spot and pressed the weapon into her grip, curling his fingers over hers on the handle.

All she had to do was press down. 

“I spilled your blood once. Take mine, it’s yours.”

It had to be her. Not this place, not these people who cared nothing about his fate except to hope he suffered. Not even his cousin, the playmate and rival he’d followed after his whole life but who had never truly understood him. Not even the grandmother who’d withheld her approval to the last.

Her. The one person who looked at him and never flinched.

Amadis rolled the handle softly in her fingers, tightening and loosening her hold on it as she considered. Her face was unreadable, a conflux of emotions that he was too focused to untangle. The rhythm of his heartbeat pounded in his ears and yet he could not count them by step-lengths of breath while he waited for her answer.

She set her mouth, bit the corner of her bottom lip, and pushed the razor-sharp point forward. He inhaled sharply as his skin broke; yet another red stain spread over the threads of his shirt, fresh and bright against the old splotches of brown, and she stared down at him intensely. 

“Do not lie to me again.”

“Not to you.”

With a sharp inhale and something akin to a sob she pulled her dagger back and wiped the tip against her side before seating it back in her waistband. He said nothing and moved only to let his hands fall in front of him.

“Void take you, Illario Dellamorte,” she said as she sunk both hands into his horrible, prison-filthy hair and smoothed it behind his ears. A quick twist and his neck would crack; it wouldn’t be so bad, it would be quick. His head was tilted back, the eye contact between them unbreakable. 

“You said that I didn’t understand, but I was dead and you weren’t there. Some terrible, rotten fragment of your soul is lodged inside of mine and will not come loose.” Her eyes flashed with an intensity incongruous with the delicacy with which she brushed away the wispy hairs over his ear with her thumb and then knelt down at his level.

“One day I may yet end your life. Until then I demand all of you.”

All of… nothing. A man with no House, no family, no reputation except that of a traitor. A man battered and bruised and broken, the skills beaten into him left to fall into decay and disuse all these weeks. Not an assassin of House Dellamorte. Only a man.

“Even now, when I am this?”

“Especially now,” she said, and she kissed him and the cold, salty cell above the sea came alive with warmth. Her lips were soft where his were cracked and broken but they met hungrily, her arms curling around his neck, his hands grasping at her upper back and pulling her tightly against him.

“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you,” she whispered in between kisses.

“Good,” he said with a wicked smile against her lips. “I haven’t forgiven you either.”

In the hall, the heavy footsteps of the guard thudded against the stones. It was twenty steps for him usually, though Illario had missed their beginning. Amadis moved away from him and began to untangle herself; it would be embarrassing, after all, to be found in such a compromising position with a would-be enemy of the state.

Naturally then, he did not let her go, no matter how she glared.

“You will be the death of me,” she huffed, but there was no bite to the words. 

“Is that a promise?” he asked, a smile growing on his face when she laughed against his mouth. 

“Yes, it is.”

Leaning forward, their foreheads met and they knelt in silence for three step-lengths, their eyes closed, their hearts beating in unison.

“Your death belongs to me, Adi.”

“And yours to me.”

They whispered; it seemed wrong to speak out loud or permit anyone else to hear such a vow. It was for them alone. The footsteps in the hallway grew louder as the guard approached nearer and nearer but neither of them could find it in them to give notice to it.

He kissed her once more, deeply, unheeding of the clatter of dense iron keys rapping at the cell door, filing the smell of her and the feel of her in his arms away deep within his mind. The rapping became more and more insistent, less easy to ignore, and Amadis broke first, loosening her hold around his neck and stroking his cheek.

“You have to let me go.”

“Oh.” It had been so easy to forget when she was in his arms that she would leave. Even the return of the guard had not quite driven it home that in a moment she would disappear and he would be left alone to his days of step counting and nights on the wooden plank he continued to refuse to call a bed, existing at the whim of his guards. 

They had allowed him a few minutes’ hope only to destroy it again as some new torture in a long string of cruel and unusual new ways to cause suffering. Frankly he would have preferred the honesty of the rack.

“Right,” he said distantly, holding his side as he brought himself to his feet and stood against the back wall, bile gathering at the back of his throat.

File it down. File it all down. Make it useful.

Useful for what? Useful for whom? Not for him, not anymore.

He hadn’t seen Amadis get up in his haze of despair but she was standing too, her clothing smoothed out and mouth wiped clean, all trace of him gone from her person. She nodded to the guard. Half of him longed to watch her disappear down the hall until she was no more, to imprint the image of her in his mind to remember in the empty days to come, while another half hoped to forget everything in the last few minutes for his own sanity.

He jumped when he heard her voice again and blinked uncomprehendingly at her where she stood facing him in the open doorway.

“I asked if you were coming.”

“Coming where?” he asked stupidly.

“To fight with us rather than against us.”

With a smile that lit the entire cell she reached out to him, her palm upturned and open. Still unsure, he glanced between her and the guard, a stolid gentleman who gave him nothing back in response to his nonverbal inquiry but who also didn’t seem inclined to stop him. Going where? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t here, and it was with her, and it was a start.

He took the outstretched hand and they stepped forward together.

[grad-writes]

snippets from Rookie 59

Rook and Illario engage in a friendly sparring match.

They threw themselves into the fight with renewed vigour. Their audience roared their approval, with louder and louder calls for their favoured to win—interspersed with Viago's own biting remarks. There was a brightness to Illario's eyes, Rook thought as she spun around him, that there wasn't usually when he sparred. He was used to fighting his cousin. Rook was a new challenge.

The tight sparring circle and the vulnerability of the crowd limited the both of them—Illario couldn't throw his knives and Rook couldn't use half her spells. To compensate, Illario was forced to use more of his skills in hand-to-hand combat, and Rook had to get… creative.

The Fledgelings hollered when Rook froze Illario's foot to the ground—a smirk on her face as she danced away from the swing of his sword. He dropped to a crouch to smash the ice with his pommel, then reached out and yanked her ankle out from beneath her. She fell on her ass with an undignified yelp. But when he stepped forward to try and press his advantage, he was met abruptly with his own reflection—a swift ice wall erected between him and Rook. He smashed it again with huff.

They chased and caught, darted and spun—they played in a way Rook didn't usually get to when fighting. At one point, she sent disorientating little sparks of lightning to crackle by his ears. At another, Illario smacked her mage orb with the flat of his sword to send it flying into the depths of the crowd. (Timetri Cantori had leapt like a bird to catch it and toss it back into the ring). In response, Rook surrounded him entirely in an ice barricade, too thick for him to break—until he was forced to climb over it rather ungainly to escape. When she tried to slip by him, snorting with laughter, he snatched the tail of her tunic and tugged sharply. She fell on her ass for the sixth time, which made him grin—even if he was completely dusted in ice shards.

"Enough!" Emmeline finally called an end to the match. "Your techniques are becoming juvenile."

Illario lowered his sword as the crowd burst into applause and loud cheers and complaints. He inclined his head politely towards Emmeline and Viago, then turned to offer Rook a hand. She grabbed it—but kicked his legs out from under him instead.

His knees hit the ground and he ended up sprawled beside her. "Real mature, Rook," he complained with a groan.

She just laughed breathlessly. 

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[inquisimer]

Hi! I have a question if you would like to answer: what made you want for Arlow and Lucanis to be best friends prior to the events of the game? Like what was the moment where you went „that would be a great idea“ and why?

Ahh yes, thank you for asking!! I am always happy to talk about them (:

Short answer: I'm a sucker for friends-to-lovers, especially with some kind of mess or drama in between.

Long answer:

Before Veilguard dropped, I was being so careful to not let myself get out of hand building a Rook, because even though I like to bend canon, I also like to know what the canon sandbox is before I do that. I wanted to know the backstories, the faction vibes, and the relationship/quest beats before I got my heart set on an OC. At the same time, I was battling the overwhelming urge to immerse myself in character building because I was so hyped. So, as a compromise (and this is the "moment" I would say), I let myself pick exactly one (1) thing about my Rook: she knows how Lucanis takes his coffee and he trusts her to make it for him.

(which became infinitely funnier once it dropped that crow!Rook was a de Riva, because of the poison angle. serendipity, lol)

Having read the short story The Wake, I knew that there would be some fuckery regarding Lucanis being "dead" (and I was already planning to romance him after reading Tevinter Nights). I wanted to give him and Arlow enough of a relationship history that his death would mean more to her than just "ah shit, the First Talon's grandson got got", but I didn't want that history to be romantic, because I wanted to watch the romance arc play out in game.

So, best friends. And with how intense Lucanis is about his platonic relationships with all of the Veilguard, I'm really glad for that choice - I think it suits both of them, and the stories I want to tell for them (:

Thank you again for asking!! Kicking my feet and twirling my hair whenever I get to talk about them 💜💜

[thegeminisage]

jesus christ i just had to unfollow two different people for passing around YET ANOTHER a "lucanis isn't demi his romance is INCOMPLETE" post. you know both statements can be true, right? right??

like i am not out here to defend veilguard's writing because it is obviously a disaster in so many ways (tho i do think we could all stand to remember most of that is on corporate meddling and not the devs/writers), but at the same time, lucanis has a voiced line of dialogue IN THE GAME about not understanding attraction. an obscure line, yes, but it's not just something mary kirby made up on twitter to defend bioware (and why would she do that anyway after they fucked her over). lucanis can be demi AND the writing for his romance can be incomplete. both are possible. but if you're using bad writing as bulletproof evidence that he CAAAN'T be demi maybe you should shut the fuck up, ask yourself why it matters so much to you for him not to be ace, and quit ruining everyone else's good fucking time

[woodlandeelf]

Just had the thought that a Crow Rook would probably have been important enough to be at Lucanis’s funeral, unless the shit with the Antaam went down and they were exiled before Lucanis “died”? Which then begs the question, what did Lucanis think about the Antaam fuckup? Did he ever talk about the Antaam fuck up with a Crow Rook? If he was still around, he would have been privy to Caterina and the other Talons’s rage about it (and Viago’s swift response to make sure Caterina doesn’t have Rook executed).

It makes sense then that Rook got exiled before Lucanis “died” bc they think he’s alive when Neve suggests recruiting him. But then, again, WHAT DOES LUCANIS THINK ABOUT CROW ROOK’S FUCKUP WITH THE ANTAAM????

[rsenak]

in fun and exciting news i had 4 painkillers and started working on the calien death chart. and i got a good chunk down but then i reached the 'viago eventually becomes the next king (through totally legal means)' point and now im lost in the sauce. that thing gets so complicated from there on. branching paths everywhere. is caterina still alive? yes/no. if yes, does she approve? yes/no. if no, whats next? whats the state of the alliance between house de riva, cantori and dellamorte (now that antiva is free of the antaam)? how does that affect this? how many buckets of blood are we going to shed and whose? (the fact it could all go down on a minimal bloodshed "good" route and it could also go down on a horrible "we are imploding antiva from the inside in the process" route bc i can picture and work out the logic for both. head in hands help)

and all this just to figure out the events when and where calien could potentially die

[rookanis-de-riva]

do you think he even realized he had been Betrayed at first?

even when Rook is rescuing him, he still insists he originally had a contract on Calivan, as if that's why he was here. and he has to complete the contract--he can still work!

so how long did he try to convince himself that no, this is still according to plan, no one sold him out, and if--hypothetically--a certain someone who would be the only one to know the details of his contract DID tell the Venatori which ship to target, then clearly that is just. part of the contract itself.

he's in the Ossuary now, where Calivan is, so that was ... helpful. he was helping. maybe Illario really thought he was helping. he didn't expect the ship to go down. he didn't know the details of the Ossuary. he didn't know what Zara was doing or the blood vault or the demons--

really, if you think about it, this is Lucanis's fault. if he had been good enough to break out immediately, to kill Calivan right away, Zara would have never gotten her claws into him

HE was complacent. HE was overconfident. HE slipped up. this is all HIS fault because it cannot possibly be Illario's fault scheme betrayal

illario wouldn't do that he didn't know he would leAVE HIM HERE

Thinking about how confident Lucanis must’ve been at first that he was going to get out of the Ossuary when he first got there……………..

[vaguely-concerned]

there's this... idea/concept that keeps swirling around in my head of rook going down lethally injured in combat. and spite and lucanis as one voice going 'no. nope. nah. quite simply nuh-uh' but like on a level that reverberates through the real world and the fade because of their soul Situation, so when they wrap rook up in wings and arms and cradle them against them to just -- hold rook's soul in place in their body until emmrich can arrive with the emergency spirit healing of all time to anchor them safely back in the world of the living without the need for spite life support... it actually somehow works, and they're safe and awake and still breathing against lucanis' chest by the end of it all.

it's definitely a one-time trick lucanis has no fucking clue how he even pulled off afterwards, once the 'I can see the weave of the world' flow state has faded, and no one has any good explanation for how it could even be possible, outside of the fact that no spirit and person have ever been so completely and cleanly unified to one purpose before lol. but with rook still walking about safe and sound and already cracking bad jokes, i don't think anyone would particularly care

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Most Antivan Crows do not live long enough to experience a midlife crisis

The Crows supply their ranks generally from orphans, illegitimate or abandoned children, children purchased from slavery, whore houses and other similar sources. Some are born into the Crows already, but those would be a very small minority, for reasons explained below.

Lucanis mentions that Crow training involves a lot of acrobacy. After a brief search, sports with similar physical requirements such as gymnastics, ballet and martial arts have the ideal starting age in the range of 4-10 years, 15 at the latest, when the children's joints are still flexible (and their minds can be easily manipulated). Zevran is canonically stated to have been taken at the age of 7.

Crow training is intense and brutal, involving straight up torture as tests of pain tolerance. From the 18 fledglings of House Arainai taken in the same year as Zevran, only two survived to the end of their training (World of Thedas Vol. 2). Training with real weapons, harsh punishment, possibly the Spartan custom of underfeeding the children and driving them to stealing food for themselves to encourage learning stealth and resourcefulness, and very likely killing any who try to run away, all these are very likely factors for the high death rate among fledglings.

If the average age of newest Crow fledglings is 6, they might be ready for promotion to the rank of Assassin very well as early as the age of 14-15. This is where the second meat grinder starts, these new Crows will already have plenty experience, but the first solo contracts will still likely take many of them, either killed by their targets, by their Masters for failing the contract, or by themselves to avoid the pain and humiliation of returning to their Masters unsuccessful. This period might likely have the highest suicide rates in general, as the new Crows are still relatively emotionaly vulnerable but old enough to comprehend their position in the world and the weight of their actions.

Promotion to the rank of Assassin also certainly brings great benefits that only increase as the Crow's career progresses and their contracts bring them more coin. The comforts and opulence of Antiva are for them to take, and someone who has grown up only knowing hunger and pain will certainly not hold back. Alcohol, drugs, sex, all the addictions and diseases will surely take the lives of many Crows.

An Assassin's career begins early and ends early. To use sports and dance once again, most porfessional gymnasts and ballet dancers retire between the ages of 25 and 35 as their physical capabilities decline. Those who have survived this long will be granted the rank of Master and oversee the distribution of contracts and the training of fledglings, and will participate in actual assassinations much less. This is also where one might strive to become a Grandmaster or even a Talon. At this point, a Crow will have enough prominence within the organization that they might become a target themselves. Only the most skilled, well-connected and ruthless Crows will continue to rise and, most importantly, continue to live.

If a presumed average number of fledglings per House is around 20, 2-3 will make it to Assassin. In one Assassin's 20 years long career, that would make only about 50 new Assassins out of 400 fledglings. Probably only about a half of those will make it to 35. Even fewer will make it to 50. Out of 400 children bought or stolen from the streets.

Caterina Dellamorte is over 70 years old.

[marcell-arts]

POV: you pass the Dellamortes and the de Rivas at the Opera

for the first talon ceremony in my fic Rookie

had fun with the clothes for this one!! notes on my thoughts for House Crests and symbols below the cut

(this is all headcanon)

On House Dellamorte One of the oldest Crow Houses with roots in nobility, House Dellamorte is unique in favouring a single bloodline for their guildmasters. They are famous for breeding particularly skilled assassins, as well as enduring several violent political upheavals throughout history. Their main colours are purple and silver on a sombre black. Their crest and symbols are: the bone-white Crow's Skull, the Black Feather, and the Lily, symbolising death and rebirth.

Lucanis and Illario are both equally in contention for First Talon in this story, and so wear matching outfits for the Opera. Their clothing is inspired by noble knights with an Antivan flair, and of course their own personal style.

On House de Riva A relatively new Crow House, House de Riva originates from a sea-faring merchant guild, and is named for the shore from which they make their riches. They are known for their swift but steady rise in power, wealth and reputation, as well as being politically savvy. Their main colours are ocean blue and gold on deep navy. Their crest and symbols are: the navigational North Star over a sea of Waves, and the Tear of the widow left behind.

Viago reflects a more military/navy style of uniform as a hint of his royal patronage - but still refined and elegant, as is his taste. Rook wears the inverse of his colours to match, with bold colours but in a simple cut, as she has no real status or history yet to boast of.