#Esma de Riva

[thesummerstorms]

11 or 35 for the Rook story time asks!

35. Crow!Rook’s graduation from Fledgling to Assassin.

This turned out like... ten times longer than I originally anticipated, so I apologize in advance.

The contract had been an unusually bloody affair, but that was typical of a graduation. No Crow worth the name was just handed the title after all, especially not in Esma de Riva's House.

For all that the Fifth Talon was milder on her Fledglings than some of the stories she'd heard from the older mage compradi - in so much as milder meant not wasting an investment unnecessarily, not starving them outside of training or punishment, not being House Arainai- the woman did like her tests.

To Esma, Crows were only as good as their worst, their weakest moments, and that went double for Mages. Arsinoë couldn't help but wonder if that philosophy had been handed down from the Talon's Chantry-Cleric mother... but she absolutely knew better than to ask, even just to Viago.

It was fine. She was fine. Her arm and fingers and ribs all itched and ached where the potion was achingly slow at knitting the bone back together, but it was fine. It was over.

Admittedly, she wished Esma kept more than one proper spirit healer on the books, the way most of the Talons' Houses did, someone to put that skittering wisp hovering just in earshot to work, but-

But no, she didn't wish that. How many times had Viago told her?

It was Esma's very distrust for mages and the resulting lack of mage recruits over the years that had kept her ... well, not safe. No Crow or Mage was ever safe. But it gave her an advantage, an edge the other fledglings didn't have, to be needed. A mage was an expensive investment.

Bile stung at the back of her throat at the thought. Her stomach twisted, even as she tried to hold back the empty heaving. Pain lanced her chest again, so sharp that the beams of the infirmary rafters above her cot disappeared in a blur of new tears.

It would be fine. The physician Esma had deigned to bring once everything was over had said as much. He hadn't been a spirit healer, and he hadn't bothered to give her pain killers or talk to her directly, but he had done that. Looked at her with dark, dispassionate eyes and promised Esma there would be no loss of function once the potions had run their course.

Of course not. Esma didn't like needless waste. Something she credited to her merchant prince father when entertaining guests.

If anything, Arsinoë almost thought she had seen the Talon scowling when the physician prodded at the long deep cuts down her cheek, the one curving from her collar bone down between the valley of her breasts. She wouldn't have believed it but-

Facial scars are too easy to recognize.

It would bring her value down on a Contract. Lucky then, that she was a mage, a lightning-wielder, not a seductress or a spy.

None of this would have happened if-

Arsinoë swallowed again, blinked her eyes in an attempt to clear them, and wished that wisp would go away and stop with its odd little noises. She wanted to yell, try to scare it off... but it was already so hard to catch her breath. Besides, no one could find out that she heard or saw the damn thing so clearly after years of pretending otherwise.

So the job had been bloody, especially for someone whose best teacher was primarily a poisoner. Just her, a mage's stiletto, and a last minute contract on a target who seemed all too aware someone would be coming.

But she had managed. More than managed. No one had seen so much as a bloody footprint when she slipped back out from the dead man's chambers and back into Salle's side streets.

Maybe if she had been a duelist or a poisoner, that's where it would have ended. Arsinoë had never asked Viago, and he wouldn't have been able to tell her.

But Arsinoë was a mage. There was always another test for a mage. Stupid of her to forget that, even in a moment of victory. Stupid of her to trust one of Esma's men.

The torturer had reminded her of that while they worked, their voice neither condemning or sympathetic.

A mage was a risk like no other kind of Crow. How would a client take it if some Crow listened too carefully to the whispers from beyond the Veil, whether it be in a moment of greed or pain or terror? How would the Crows ever recover their reputation if a Crow, from any House, could be made an abomination from something as mundane as agony?

The Fifth Talon had to be sure.

And Arsinoë, who had more practice that she would ever confess at ignoring the whispers of interested spirits, who had survived a Circle where Templars went readily with their hands already at their blades... Arsinoë had endured. Because she had to.

A mage would always be tested. Even her mother, an Apostate with more hatred for the Chantry than anyone Arsinoë had met before or since, had told her as much. A mage had to keep control.

Arsinoë had kept control.

That meant something, even now with the room still spinning from pain and from the mix of potions and poisons and antidotes that had been poured down her throat. The small brand on her hip proved it, marked her as a Harrowed Crow, a sign of protection if you could find the right Templar for the House to bribe.

Maybe in the morning she would even be happy about it. But it was hard to feel much now beyond the aches and the nausea and the silence of the otherwise empty room, broken only by that damn wisp.

Her eyes blurred again, and then her mind. Just the quiet and the pain and the occasional flash of interest-hurt-worry from the wisp. Viago would have scolded her if he hadn't been off on a Contract, but Arsinoë found she was too tired to care about whatever someone might try to do to her now.

It felt like hours later, maybe longer, when the clinking of glass vials finally drew her attention back the present. The physician back with more potions? But he had said she'd been given all the tonics she could safely consume for the time being. If not him then-

Maker. Just leave me alone. Please.

She groaned, and the noises at her bedside stopped. A shadow fell across the back of her closed eyelids, followed a second later by a touch to her bandaged cheek that was just a little too firm for comfort.

"Arsinoë?"

That sounded like Viago. Was she hallucinating Viago's voice now? She had thought being off in the Free Marches would at least keep him from lecturing her.

"Arsinoë." Definitely Viago. He sounded pissed, as usual, though the hand that stayed pressed against her face was new. "Arsinoë de Riva, stop pretending to sleep and tell me what that moron has been giving you."

That sounded like an order, so after a moment of deep resentment for the command, she forced her eyes back open, taking in the scene in bits and pieces. A blue leather glove at the edge of her vision. Weak sunlight through the high windows. A slight blur over the world, no matter where she looked. Everything had fallen quiet again, waiting for her reply.

And yes. There was Viago.

"Did..." her voice felt stuck in her throat, her mouth dry, "Did you scare off the wisp?"

"The wisp?" Viago's scowl deepened, and abruptly he drew his hand back, reaching for whatever he had been working on before she caught his attention. "Never mind, don't tell me, I don't want to know."

He waited a moment for her to argue. When she didn't, he added, "You're feverish. I suppose there's no point in asking what you remember about the viscosity of the tinctures you were given, is there?"

She thought about it for half a second, trying, but the mixtures she had been given kept slipping from her mind. She had something more important to tell him, didn't she? Something he needed to know more?

"Vi, I-"

I'm a Crow, she should have said. I passed. Whatever happens, I'll die as Crow.

She should have said, I graduated.

What came out was "Vi.. I'm safe."

Her voice came out all wrong, too weak at the ends, almost questioning, but she needed him to know. Whatever happened next, she would die as a Crow, and an Antivan, and not just an Apostate.

Viago's face scrunched up strangely. For a moment it looked like he was going to reach over and poke at her again, but his hand only rose and fell back to his side.

"Yes..." He said softly. "Yes, I'm watching the exits. And I'll fix this."

That wasn't what she had meant, but Viago was strange at the best of times. She let it go, closing her eyes as he began his familiar prattle about reagents and the comparative virtues of embrium versus arbor's blessing versus elf root, letting the words wash over her in waves.

[thesummerstorms]

I'm not sure that this is the version I'll ultimately go with.

But I have a decently set idea for the previous Fifth Talon, who I've named Esma de Riva (born Esmerelda Domatila Altimari). Basically, she was the illegitimate daughter of a locally powerful Chantry figure in Salle and one of the Merchant Princes who was given to the Crows when her mother's influence began to decline and she became politically inconvenient.

She was much more of a Traditionalist than Viago, with a weird love/hate for the Chantry and it's laws. She's part of the reason House de Riva had fewer mages than the other Talon Houses, which inadvertently made Arsinoë a much more valuable investment when she finally had to have and bring a new one in.

But the part I'm considering is having her give Arsinoë to Viago and then in general treating his ascension and eventual coup as a kind of assisted suicide.

She didn't just roll over and give it to him. He had to claw his way to it, had to earn it.

But I generally have Viago as taking over around the time of Inquisition. By that point, Esma frankly didn't want to live through the world changing further from what she knew. She didn't have an heir or a lover or a confidant. She didn't care about the things the absurd wealth of a Talon could buy and her power was increasingly being spent just to keep power.

Fighting Viago the day he killed her was the most alive she had felt in years.

[thesummerstorms]

This is all partially inspired by ofcrowsanddragon's post here as well as the backtory I have for my Rook.

But I really love the idea that the Antivan Chantry is just different enough, given their history with the Antivan Crows, that explicitly Antivan children aren't allowed to be brought to Circles outside of Antiva in the days Pre-Inquisition.

The Crows play this off as benevolence; Antiva's children remain protected in Antiva due to their influence. The Crows have killed one corrupt Knight-Commander before after his undue slaughter of innocent mages; how much better to have Antiva's children remain in Antivan Circles under the Crows' protective wings.

The nobles and merchant princes are willing to buy into this to an extent. After all, sometimes the Antivan children in the Circle in fact are the children of the Antivan noblility, and once they hear about Kirkwall or Rivain, enough of them are concerned about their blood to embrace this decree.

In fact, the law here is also driven by economics and politics. Select, powerful Antivan nobles and merchant princes whose children aren't in the Circle still maintain access to mages with a particularly nationalist view point and a better understanding of how shadowy Antivan politics can be.

Sometimes full Enchanters can be released from the Circle to help with the shipping business, the money to hire them undercutting prices for Rivaini weather mages and healers and the like and feeding back into the Circle coffers while allowing the Enchanters enough of a sense of freedom to keep them more content than elsewhere.

And if, from time to time, in just the right circumstances, a particularly promising child with no name but the right potential mysteriously disappears from the Circle's roster and emerges an Antivan Crow-

well, no, they didn't, and also you'd best watch your back, even if you are a Templar. After all, coin rules Antiva, and the Merchant Princes give coin to both the Chantry and the Crows.

That doesn't mean some of the southern or more religious or political Templars don't notice and resent this, to the point of trying to undercut it.

An Antivan noble's child, or a merchant prince's child, or even the child of a common merchant, will always find their way to Antiva City or one of its satellite facilities.

But a street child? An elven child? The child of apostates? If the Templars catch them without fanfare, without any one important having reason to notice, they'll often be sent South and to one of the harsher Circles at that, to receive the "better discipline" that they must surely be in need of rather than place them in the "permissiveness" of an Antivan Circle.

To an extent, this is done in secret by Chantry loyalists, but sometimes the Talons know and turn a blind eye if the child isn't particularly important, isn't likely to turn a fuss, and isn't part of too large a pattern of defiance. It's a delicate balance, a dance between what each side of the Powers that Be will and won't allow without breaking into conflict.

That's what happened with Arsinoë de Riva, my Rook, although it was complicated by the fact that her mother was in fact an Apostate running an intelligence network through Antiva.

Arsinoë marked just one child too many who had disappeared down South, however. The Antivan Crow who had come to kill the Templar Arsinoë stabbed heard her speaking the language, took into account the said stabbing, and was offended on Antiva's behalf because clearly Arsinoë shouldn't have been taken away.

The Talon who ended up buying her life service from that Crow's House, Esma de Riva, felt the same way and sent Viago to deliver a reminder to certain key chantry figures.

He took Arsinoë with him when he went.

[thesummerstorms]

I kind of am toying with the idea of the previous two Talons of House de Riva disapproving in general of Mages ( *because Andraste*) so historically there have been fewer mages in the House than was possible even under older/tighter Chantry restrictions.

Not none. Magic is too useful in the end. But fewer.

When the Fifth Talon Esma de Riva was getting older, she ended up having to somewhat change her mind out of pragmatism, leading to her buying Arsinoë de Riva off a lesser House.

But there was a considerable amount of time near the end her life in the early days of Viago's post coup transition where Arsinoë was basically being consulted as a magical jack-of-all-trades by older members of the House who had sided with Viago but were used to Esma's way of doing things.

She was ready to tear her hair out. Like she did end up accumulating a magical grab bag of tricks, but she was trying so hard to get people to understand that magic has specialities and some of these requests needed a specialist, not the first spell blade you saw!

Viago settled the matter by sending her to work a contract with an escaped former Senior Enchanter from Ghislain who wanted some political enemies and troublesome Chantry authorities taken out while he hid in the Free Marches. She posed as his assistant, killed the bastards off, etc, and he condescended to teach her more advanced magical theory.

This also did Viago the favor of keeping her out of the way of some of the early days attempt at vengeance for Viago's coup, keeping her away from the Mage Rebellion/ Templar War (which he was legitimately afraid she would be angry enough to become ensnared in after her former Circle was Anulled), and then keep her away from the Inquisition.

She's not exactly sure what happened in the many months she was gone, but when she returned, all but the worst offenders seemed to figure out that *she* was a specialist. Also, that you didn't ask a spell blade with a subspecialty in storm magic (and possibly a second undecided non-combat minor speciality) to set your wards, take down wards, spirit heal people, curse them, examine enchantments, and electrify things all in the same week.

[thesummerstorms]

I think Arsinoë got like, the bare minimum crash course on the "seduction" side of the whole Crow thing. Not charming a mark in general, but specifically the "seduction" side.

The official reasons were always that

a) She had too many visible/notable scars from her time as an Apostate and in the Circle (?). A few could have been played off as part of a "dashing rogue" persona. But especially as a woman, the scars on her face and neck of all places stood out too much for any of the normal ingénue  or even fem fatale roles.

b) House de Riva was notoriously short on mages due to a legacy of choices made by the current Talon and her predecessors which is why Arsinoë was purchased to begin with. While mages could do the whole seduction bit, resources were short enough that it would be a waste to cross-train their most promising mage Fledgling into roles others could fill.

Beneath those official roles though... Arsinoë was terrible at it. She's somewhere along the aro/ace spectrum, and even if she didn't know that as a teenager, knowing the mechanics of sex and romance did not make her understand it well enough to understand how it would relate to herself in those contexts.

Having Viago de Riva, the extremely buttoned up, socially awkward, hyper-paranoid poisoner, as her mentor did not help in that regard at all.

It could very easily have been held as a mark against her, but she could wear other kinds of roles well enough to get by and again, House de Riva didn't need another silver-tongued charmer. They needed a Mage. And even if Arsinoë didn't let herself show a propensity for spirit healing, her magic was still strong in other capacities.

Ultimately the then Talon, Esma de Riva, just made a disgusted noise and told the relevant trainers that punishing and cutting away at a hammer for its refusal to be a knife would only ruin both weapons.

Arsinoë's training was adjusted accordingly, which was something of a relief to both her and Viago, though the latter would never admit it.

(When he finally made his coup, he did make a point of taking one or two of the more...overzealous teachers down with Esma, even though their loyalty might have been bought.)

[thesummerstorms]

I went to clean up my Rook questionnaire document that I'm using for character building, decided it would be easier to just retype at this point, and then somehow ended up with two divergent versions of how Arsinoë ended up stabbing a Templar and ending up with the Crows instead of just one

Now I can't decide and I still haven't gotten past question 5.

So... No promises this is binding (if anyone even sees it) but which do you think works better?

Option One: Arsinoë was turned in by one of her mother's friends who at the time was taking care of her. She was taken to the Circle in Antiva City, where she was often beaten and punished for being “sullen” and “rebellious”.

When she was twelve, a Templar who had attacked one of the older girls was drunk and alone on watch in the Chantry. He had often made comments about Arsinoë being fated to become Tranquil due to her defiant nature. Despite not liking the older girl, she was angry that nothing worse had happened than "an investigation" and tired of living in the Circle where she couldn't see the sky.

She stabbed the Templar and attempted to murder him, though a Smite threw off her strength and her aim.

An Antivan Crow disguised as a Chantry Sister had been contracted to kill the same Templar for political reasons. She killed the Templar, bribed the other on Guard duty, and took Arsinoë with her.

The Crow was from a cuchillo house allied with House de Riva, and Esma de Riva stepped in to claim the new Fledge, forgiving the other Head of House’s debt from a recent hand of cards in exchange. Esma de Riva then gave her to Viago to train, supposedly as a test.

Option Two: Arsinoë was twelve and restless when Filomena, her mother's friend, betrayed her. She was taken on the road with two Templars, who she knew only as “Gaspari” and “Notaro”, with the intent that she be brought to the Circle in Antiva City.

The woman, Gaspari, was a strange mix of harsh and sympathetic, and was the one who hid Arsinoë’s name. She offered to let Arsinoë spread Filomena’s ashes, let her read the terrible Chantry moralist novels she carried, and made sure Arsinoë was fed. She also did nothing to protect Arsinoë from Notaro.

Notaro vacillated between trying to seem kind and indulgent and threatening Arsinoë with future Tranquility if she didn’t stop her rebelliousness. Notaro would offer her sweets in one evening, and beat her for “trying to run” in another. The drunker he got, the more he would leer at Gaspari and threaten Arsinoë.

Arsinoë attempted to ambush and kill Notaro a few days out from Antiva City either after he had hurt her or knowing that once she entered the Circle she wouldn't make it out. She was badly injured and suffering from a Smite, but managed to stab him.

She was interrupted when Viago, on a Contract, stepped in and ended Notaro’s life.

Gaspari apparently knew about the contract because she calmly offered to let Viago take Arsinoë in exchange for a discount. Arsinoë doesn’t know exactly what happened after, as she passed out, but when she woke, she was a Crow compradi in House de Riva, andEsma de Riva announced she was in Viago’s care.

---

I feel like One is more stereotypical for me because all my protagonists except Hawke were at some point Circle mages who hates the Circle. It's also less realistic because she was successfully taken out of the Circle. But it's less common for a de Riva, I think? Her relationship with Viago is always more ambiguous here because he didn't choose her.

Whereas version Two 's relationship with Viago is a lot more common for a de Riva, but their relationship is based on a moment where he decided to keep her. Still ambiguous in whether he regrets it. But also the stabbing and escape are more plausible. She never saw the inside of a Circle, but the sense of "I won't be broken, even by this" determination is less.