#GUILDMASTERS IN DA SAME ROOM!!!

[ask-team-donum]

✨️ Toshi @ The Fire Guildmaster

[The white espeon seems interested] Well, I have to say, to reach guildmaster status and being a leader is quite the feat to achieve, care to share how you got to being a guildmaster?

I am interested in your story in how you got this position. I too am a leader in an organization that works in keeping the peace in our home, so hearing stories about how people become leaders interests me.

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Rules for Asking!!

[thefoxesraven]

Officially requesting some oc rambles or rants!!

:D Okay! Hmmm I'm in a Violetta mood so here are some random facts about my Dragon Born!

When her antlers were first coming in her dad Erraon had to shave her hair down into a buzz so he could pull a soothing salve on her little buds as she'd try to scratch them raw.

Malellen using his magic to keep her room a little but lighter (like a nightlight) is what really caused her to want to practice magic- but she always tells people it was when she saw him use it to light the fire before he'd cook.

Her favorite memory of Gallus is when he would tell her stories of a Princess of Theives when ever she woke up from a nightmare.

She names her first daughter Castire as that was the name of the Princess Theif from Gallus' tales.

Her and Brelyna's wedding rings are ingraved with "Til the end of time" on the inside.

She and Brelyna end up permanently living in Winterhold eventually causing it to flourish once again.

Violetta get's rid if the beast when she settles down to start to raise Castire. Farkas and Vilkas are more then ready to help her complete the task.

She hands the title of Harbinger to Farkas when she settles down in Winterhold: she makes Karliah the guildmaster as she gets more comfortable being a house wife.

Violetta has nightmares of being trapped in Acropha(?) after her journey in following the cult members.

If Violetta was in the DA universe the biggest fear on her DAI tombstone would be "Losing Family."

She is CLINGY while at the same can get very overwhelmed by contact with other people.

She'd do ANYTHING to keep her love one's safe. Her faitle flaw being personal Loyalty.

How she looks!

[soulstealer1987]

Arc 4, Chapter 3

Ziist Grozein

The good news is, Gallus has a pretty good idea of who he is now. The bad news is, he has no idea how he died, or who killed him. Here's to hoping he can figure it out, preferably before it's too late!

Crossposted from AO3. Masterpost is here.

Arc 4: Of Luck and Lies

Arc 4, Chapter 2 ~ Arc 4, Chapter 4

When they arrive, Mercer briefly glances Gallus' way, completely uninterested, as if he’s used to meeting a lot of people he doesn’t give two shits about. Almost instantly, though, he does a double take, recognition painted all over his face as his mouth falls open. For a few, terse moments, he can’t seem to meet Gallus’ eyes, but eventually manages to hold Gallus’ gaze with a confused, borderline angry stare of his own.

“How the fuck are you alive?” He blurts after a moment. Clearly he doesn't recognize him at all.

“Um,” Gallus begins awkwardly and fortunately, it’s then that Brynjolf comes to the rescue.

“He’s not Gallus, boss, though I reacted the same way,” Brynjolf says. “Might be his kid, though. Never knew his da, and he looks about the right age.”

“Gallus didn’t sleep around,” Mercer says flatly. His gaze travels between Gallus and Brynjolf, and then back to Gallus. “But fine. Who are you, then?”

“My name’s Ragnar,” Gallus offers, but Mercer only shakes his head.

“No, I mean who are you. What can you offer to the Guild that we don’t already have?”

Gallus opens his mouth, then closes it. He isn’t sure what to say, and he doubts anyone here would be impressed by his extremely limited magic abilities, so that’s definitely a no.

“He’s got talent, boss,” Brynjolf says. “And with the right training, he could easily become an asset to the Guild.”

Mercer scrutinizes Gallus, then shakes his head.

“Brynjolf, I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

“I’m not a joke!” Gallus bursts out, and remembers too late that Brynjolf had told him to let him do all the talking. Whoops. Too late, now. He takes a deep breath, and continues, “Give me the hardest job you have. I’ll do it. Will you let me in then?”

“You think you can do Goldenglow?” Mercer scoffs.

“Lad-” Brynjolf begins, a warning in his words, and something within Gallus snaps.

“Yes, I can do Goldenglow! I’ll do anything you throw at me.”

“Well,” Mercer says, looking to Brynjolf with an unreadable expression on his face, “you heard him. He can do Goldenglow. And he damn well will do Goldenglow, or I never want to see his face again. I’ll be back tomorrow, and I expect to hear he’s either succeeded or died.” He grabs a bag lying next to his desk, slings it over his shoulder, and heads over to what looks like a ladder heading up and out.

Gallus looks to Brynjolf, sees the horrified expression on his face, and realizes far too late that he might just have screwed up really, really badly.

“What’s Goldenglow?” Gallus asks hesitantly. Brynjolf sighs, and shakes his head.

“Bee farm. You’re better off leaving Riften entirely, lad,” Brynjolf warns. “Our best infiltrator couldn’t get in, and barely made it back alive. Goldenglow is basically suicide.”

Gallus frowns. Fine, then, he thinks. So the odds are against me. Well, I doubt that whoever their best infiltrator is can use Illusion magic, so I’ve got that on my side, at least.

Besides, the alternative is just giving up, and Gallus isn’t going to do that. He can’t just give up, not now. Not when he’s so, so close.

He knows—or at least has a pretty good idea of—who he was, now. He was a thief, apparently, and not just any thief, either. He was the leader of a group of thieves and presumably everyone thought he was dead. Chances are it wasn’t an accident.

If it wasn’t an accident… that’s likely why the Dunmer woman warned him. He’ll figure this out, eventually—he has to. But he has to get into the Thieves Guild first.

“I’m going to do it,” he says, much to Brynjolf’s visible disappointment. “But I’m going to need to know what I’m up against first. How is a bee farm dangerous?”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Brynjolf reluctantly nods. “If I were you, I’d ask Vex, too, although she might take a little convincing to tell you anything.”

“Right. Remind me who Vex is?”

It doesn’t take Gallus long to find himself back in the main room of the Ragged Flagon, with a drink in his hand and a nagging familiarity in the back of his mind that assures him he’s in the right place, even if he doesn’t remember it, or anything. Certain individuals, of course, are more familiar than others. Based on this, it’s quite likely he knew both Brynjolf and Delvin, if not Vex.

As Gallus soon finds, Vex is the light-haired Imperial woman from earlier, and it doesn’t take long for him to discover exactly why they call her that. She certainly lives up to her name. Even so, clearly she has to be at least somewhat competent, otherwise no one would put up with her. It’s also entirely possible that she’s somewhat less verbally abrasive once you’re actually in the Guild.

“Listen, let’s get one thing straight,” Vex takes a sip of her mead, “I don’t like you.”

“Really?” Gallus asks dryly. “I never would have noticed.”

“Keep that sense of humor and that might change,” she replies. “Let’s hope for your sake that Brynjolf’s right about you being a natural at this.”

“He’s good, alright,” Brynjolf says. He offers Gallus a friendly smile, and claps him on the shoulder. “Even if he’s named after a crappy drinking song.”

It occurs to Gallus, suddenly, as he raises his own bottle to his lips, that if his name was actually Ragnar, he’d probably be a bit more offended by comparisons to the song. With that in mind, he lets out a long-suffering sigh, like he’s heard this one far too many times.

“Can we not bring that up,” Gallus mutters into his mead. “It’s not my fault my mother had terrible taste in names.” Never mind that he can’t remember if he even had parents, but nobody needs to know that.

(Well… he must have had parents, once, although it’s anyone’s guess whether they’re still alive or not, or if he’d even cared. If they’d even cared. Briefly, he considers this possibility, but he dismisses it quickly. Unlike the familiarity he feels with the Guild, the concept of parents who would have missed him when he was gone is completely alien.)

(That’s… kind of sad, actually, but he doesn’t dwell on it any longer than that.)

“On the contrary, lad—your mother had exceptional taste in names, if I do say so myself.”

It takes Gallus a bit to realize that Brynjolf is joking, but when he does, he grins and nods.

“Right,” Gallus says. “So… Goldenglow. How screwed am I?”

“Very,” Delvin says quite seriously. “If our little Vex couldn’t get in-”

“Call me that again,” Vex cuts in, “and you’ll have a lot more to worry about than your fetching curse.”

“What, Bryn can call you that and I can’t?”

“Bryn hasn’t been trying to get into my pants—unsuccessfully, I might add—for the past decade. It’s high time you grew a pair, Delvin.”

This, of course, sparks a bit of an argument between the senior members of the Guild. By that, Gallus means that it’s mostly between Delvin and Vex, with Brynjolf watching from the sidelines with a vaguely amused look in his eyes. At any other time, Gallus would be paying more attention to their argument, except there’s something he can’t quite get out of his head. Sure, Vex had only mentioned it offhandedly, but…

“The Guild’s cursed?” Gallus asks Brynjolf.

“Depends who you ask, lad,” Brynjolf shrugs, and gulps down some of his mead before speaking again. “Certainly seems like it sometimes. It started around the time Gallus died, and only got worse as time went on. These days, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong.”

“That… does sound like a curse.”

“Delvin swears up and down that it is. I try not to think too hard about it, but… well. Let’s hope that you’ve got the skill to take on Goldenglow, lad, because we could sure use it. When our luck’s this bad…”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Gallus says, because he highly doubts Brynjolf would appreciate him admitting that most of what he’s managed to do thus far did involve luck. After a moment, he takes the opportunity to continue, “You keep mentioning someone named Gallus. Who was he?”

“As I said already, he was our Guildmaster, and one of the best thieves I’ve ever known. It’s a damn shame what happened to him.”

Gallus tries not to sound too eager when he asks, “What happened to him?”

What happened to… me?

Brynjolf looks at him strangely, and for long enough that Gallus begins to worry he’s asked too much too soon, before he smiles sadly and finishes his bottle.

“Told you, he was murdered. Now—we’re thieves, sure, so we don’t have a lot of rules. The only real rules here are, don’t kill unless you’ve got no choice, and you never, ever betray your guildmates. His killer broke both of those by killing him.”

“Who was his killer?”

Gallus isn’t able to keep his interest out of his words this time, and Brynjolf squints at him suspiciously before being interrupted by none other than Vex. Taking a seat on the table between two people is certainly one way to break up a conversation.

“Nobody you’d know,” Vex says firmly, “and you’ve got a job to do, don’t you?”

Gallus takes the hint. He drains his drink before standing and moving to leave.

“Hold your horses, lad,” Brynjolf says before he can leave. “Normally you wouldn’t get this until after you’re in, but on a job like Goldenglow, I’d say you need it.”

“Need what?” Gallus asks.

Brynjolf nods to a Redguard woman having a drink at the bar, her back to him, and calls, “Hey, Tonilia! Can you get the new lad outfitted before he goes?”

“Sure I can,” Tonilia says dryly, “although I hope for your sake that he’ll be paying for it up front. I don’t need another new kid putting it on his tab and then disappearing off the face of Nirn within a month.”

Gallus visibly pales, although he’s not entirely sure why. Brynjolf takes one look at him and says, “I’ll cover it, lass. He can pay me back later.”

[the-jade-goblin]

Then we find people he doesn’t know - a DA ficlet

Based on this post by @blood-magic featuring my own OCs

The ravens had been sent; across Thedas they were black marks in the sky, silent and foreboding.

Somewhere, in Antiva; a Crow picked up the message. The raven cawed at him like an old friend, and he opened the window to let the raven rest at the table after such a long journey. He recognised the Inquisition’s seal as he broke open the letter.

“News?”

He turned to his wife, recently returned from her own travels. She was braiding their daughter’s hair as she sat obediently at the table, feeding the raven a piece of biscuit. He wordlessly passed the letter to her.

Lori looked at the letter long and hard. She glanced up, at the Warden’s armour hanging on the wall, the armour of the Crows Guildmaster hanging beside it. She locked her jaw in position firmly, a gesture Zevran was intimately familiar with; determination. The same face she’d made before she picked up the sword to slay the Archdemon so many years ago.

“Rin, pack your things sweetie. We’re travelling somewhere.” Lori said.

The young girl sprang up, excitement in her eyes. “Okay mama! Where are we going?”

Lori smiled. “You’ll see. Go and get your things now,”

As Rin ran off to her room, Lori quickly scribbled a return message for the raven to take back. The raven received it gratefully, and flew out the window to make the return journey, to Skyhold. Lori stood at the widow beside Zevran, watching the raven fly off.

“Thedas doesn’t seem to be able to go a decade without some world-threatening event happening, does it?” she commented.

Zevran hummed in agreement. “No mi amor, it would seem not. And into the fire we go once again.”

Lori grinned, and turned back to their armour on the wall. “Well then, let’s get going, shall we? I think the world has missed us, don’t you?”

Zevran chuckled. “Ah my dear Warden, I do believe you are right.”

The Keep was strangely silent in the cold hours of the early morning, most of the inhabitants were still abed, but the Warden-Commander was up, relieving Velanna of her post. Sigrun saw the bird before anyone else; her eyes were often trained towards the sky. 

A cry rang out at the sight of the messenger bird, and the Warden-Commander turned. She held up her arm, and let the raven land on it. She and Velanna shared a look, before Faralyn removed the letter from the bird.

Her eyes scanned the contents briefly, before she sighed and rolled her eyes.

“And I just got home.” She muttered. “The world just does love keeping me busy doesn’t it?”

“What is it Commander?” Sigrun asked.

“Wake up Nate Sigrun, and get Oghren. We’ve got some travelling to do.” Lyn replied.

“And just where are we going Commander?” Velanna asked, her eyebrow raised.

“Apparently, to save the world.” Lyn took the Warden’s seal and tied it to the bird’s foot before releasing it back into the sky. “It appears we’re needed.”

 Marianne had her eyes trained to notice sudden movements by now; one had to when one lived on the run, even after she’d settled down it remained hard for her instinct to calm down.

Little Bethany noticed the bird too, and she pointed up from where she sat on her mother’s hip. Marianne had to put her down to receive the bird, and grew wary at the Inquisition’s seal. If this ended up being anything like the last time, she’d have to ‘accidentally’ lose the message in a river.

“What is it?” Fenris emerged from the house, still carrying a sleeping Malcolm. The red ribbon he’d once worn around his wrist now served to tie his hair back; it had grown longer in the past few years and Mari certainly didn’t mind the benefits of that.

“Skyhold.” Was all she said to turn Fenris’ face into a scowl.

“Tell them no. You’ve given them enough,”

“I don’t think it’s as simple as that this time.” Mari replied, going over the letter again. “This is big Fenris. Really big.”

“How big?”

“Put it this way. We’re gonna have to call in the old gang.” Mari said dryly.

Fenris gave a half-hearted groan that made Mari smile.

“We’ll swing by Kirkwall on our way, yeah? I’m sure Varric won’t be missed too much, and it’ll be good to see Merrill again.”

“You know when I said that you led me to strange places Marianne, it wasn’t a challenge to lead me to more.”

Mari laughed, and accepted the paper and quill Fenris brought out to her. She dashed off a couple of notes to old friends, and gave them to the bird.

“Bethany love, we’re going on a holiday.” She said to her little girl, the spitting image of herself.

“Really? Where?” Bethany cried.

“To where I was born. You’re going to see Fereldan. Go and pack something warm, it’s cold in Fereldan.”

“Okay!” Bethany ran inside in excitement, and Fenris shook his head.

“Here we go again.” He sighed.

“Come now Fenris, did you ever see us settling down completely?” Mari smirked. “We’d get bored.”

Fenris chuckled. “I suppose you’re right.”

The skies were grey and stormy when Skyhold received its guests. The Inquisitor stood at her war table, glancing around at her advisors when the bird flew in and landed on Leliana’s arm. She nodded.

“They’ve gathered Inquisitor.” She said.

Halani nodded. “Show them in.”

“Maker save us.” Cullen muttered.