#Gorim’s kid can be there too if they want

[the-dragon-folk]

in my head lives a 22 years post the start of origins team that’s late 20s/early 30s something Connor Guerrin baby sitting a small pack of twenty-somethings, consisting of at least Ser Jory’s cringefail warrior daughter (obviously), obligatory secretive mage Kieran, and idk maybe Oghren’s kid’s in there and it reads your save file and names em after your warden

[othercat2]

Ulgo and Monsters

So I can’t help but imagine the Ulgo in Eddings Belgariad/Mallorean as a race of Steve Irwins. My evidence for this is mostly that when he heard that Belgarath and company killed one of the Eldrak (who too be fair had a grudge against Belgarath and wanted to kill him, eat him, and give the leftovers to his hyenas.) the Gorim was extremely sad and disappointed that Belgarath killed it.

It is not hard at all to imagine that any Ulgo who heard about what happened being disappointed with Belgarath.

So it’s pretty clear the Ulgo love their horrible former kindred in faith. (Also, the monsters are a pretty good deterrent to outside invaders. Ulgo are kinda insular.) It is not hard for me to imagine the Ulgo who do all the resource collection also being in charge of keeping an eye on the monster populations to both study them and also conserve them/keep the monsters from preying on each other too much.

(This thought also mostly comes from the conversation with the Gorim where he notes that there aren’t many Eldrak, pointing to a current knowledge of the species.)

Imagine little Ulgo kids who are as excited about monsters as real-world kids are excited about dinosaurs. (Algroths have venom sacs in their claw beds! Eldraks are capable of human speech! The major troll populations are in Cherek!) Little kids who can quote All The Facts about their favorite monsters. Older kids training for surface resource collection and monster research. Adult scholars out in the field studying unicorns or the monster that can’t be seen. Adult resource collectors whose job it is to persuade Algroths to find somewhere else to hunt.

I can also imagine, post the Mallorean, the link between Maragor and Ulgoland leading to young Ulgo scholars who want to research and study the monsters that are outside Ulgoland. Much to the bemusement of the people whose lands they’re visiting. Gleeful scholars eager to learn how the Borune Dryads adapted to living among humans. (Followed by lectures on the dangers of sugar addiction, since sugar makes Dryads high.) Scholars heading out into the wild to do a census on the troll populations and not looking very scholarly at all because they’re armed to the teeth. (Self defense only, the Cherek guides quickly learn. Any deaths result in funerals, whether monster or human.) Scholars visiting Tolnedran and Melcene universities, tisking over volumes of (incorrect) natural history. Scholars bitching and ranting about the “tragic loss” of the last dragon.

[theharellan]

RP POSITIVITY MEME

DAY 14: FREE DAY!

so this whole week i’ve kept myself from mentioning joly when possible. i promo joly on my dash every day. my very existence is a joly promo. it was mostly a way to make sure that i gave other people attention, and also b/c i saw the last day was a free day and wanted to use it to write about how much i love joly’s characters.

if it weren’t for joly i doubt i’d still be here. that’s not to say that i didn’t love rping solas beyond what i have with joly, but after my hiatus it was the desire to rp with joly again that really brought me back. and i’m so thankful for that b/c it’s allowed me to meet ppl like merc and lisa and kae, ppl who either weren’t around or i didn’t know before. also just when i was having a rough time last year and whenever i’ve had a rough time since then joly’s been there for me. they’re a really special person, who deserves even more kind words written about them than their characters do. but if i keep going i’ll probably make myself cry.

suffice to say if you like my blog, then you have joly to thank. not just for me being here, but how their ocs have shaped my solas. i cannot recommend joly’s blogs enough. they don’t have as much time as they did to write, but it doesn’t make them any less dedicated to their characters as someone who posts a dozen things a day.

before i get to their actual blogs, i want to talk about the npcs or characters that no longer have rp blogs.

first, deshanna. i’ve loved how they made a mother who is flawed and sympathetic, and who i don’t feel 100% good about solas disliking her in modern. it’s my secret desire to be able to rp in a thread where she’s npc’d one day, either in modern or batb. next, layne. what a piece of shit. i don’t know TOO much about layne, and i’m in this position where i want to know more but also i dread it. hoping one day solas and mio can shank him. and then, june. june had a blog (and may again one day??) and he was a fuckin hermit mamma’s boy that was too boring for fen to want to have anything to do with. joly’s recently been toying with some ideas for his character that i think only strengthen what they have, and i’m excited.

@ancientimpudence -

mio is petty. mio is mean. mio is stand-offish. mio is loyal. mio is driven. mio is honest. i love mio.

if you want a character who is flawed and not always nice, you’ll love mio. they’re a really good example of how you can make a character not always be a very pleasant person, but still get plenty of rp mileage off of them and develop meaningful relationships. how two characters’ relationship can somehow be incredibly deep and yet broken. i love what joly and i have built for mio and solas, two ancient friends who aren’t always the best friends.

i could really talk about about their relationship. solas goes through a period where he becomes very empathetic and in-tune with the problems of everyone around him, but mio’s somehow always escape him. i love the gap, and i love how it’s both not his fault b/c mio hides how they feel, but also he needs to do better by them. i love how mio wants what’s best for solas and their cause, while simultaneously suggesting things that actually wouldn’t be best for solas, because mio isn’t omnipotent and is also, to an extent, still trying to keep solas as he was.

i love how mio doesn’t like ian but is still there to help him. i love how mio expresses themself in ways not everyone understands. i love how modern mio has purse dogs and brings vher food b/c they spent all weekend playing the sims.

and vher / mio?? one of those ships that just kinda happened. one of the best things about talking to joly about characters is how often two just kinda cling to one another. vher is aro and can’t return the romantic feelings mio feels for them (and open enough to be accepting when mio finds romantic love elsewhere) but they still care for mio so much. everything about mio that i listed above, even the petty and vain stuff, vher loves. also sometims vher decides they wanna kiss mio and i can only imagine what it does to the poor child.

basically, what i’m getting at here is, joly lets mio be flawed but also shows how those flaws can still lead to positive interactions. joly lets mio be unadmirable at times, but still likeable and lovable. joly introduced some extra diversity in background to the rebellion and i’m eternally thankful tbh.

@betterthanmaps​ -

harding is one of those characters everyone adores, and so it makes sense that joly, one of the most adorable ppl on the planet, chose to write her. i love seeing characters with stable and normal backstories. harding is just such a steady influence, and i’ve loved seeing her contrasted with the sad backstories most canons and ocs possess. which i wanna be clear isn’t a criticism of sad backstories! i merely mean that it’s also nice seeing variety. not everyone has had a past that has made them cruel or kind, some people were raised by caring parents and lived simple lives until they heard the call to adventure. those people are just as interesting and worthy of telling stories about.

joly’s harding reminds me somewhat of tolkien’s hobbits, i suppose, now that i’m writing this out. and they’re some of my fave characters in literature. only w/ harding we also get fun dragon age dwarfy lore-- someone who is as un-dwarfy as varric but not quite so loud about it and we get actual queer representation.

@spiritualjourneys​ - 

i adore spirits? i do not adore how the fandom treats spirits. things like treating human cole as superior to spirit cole, rather than a person making different choices, both paths making them happy, even if one is for reasons we can’t all understand. pinning everything wrong with anders in da2 on justice. assuming lord woolsey, an innocent spirit-ram who has done nothing but help, has always been a rage demon (even tho the ways in which he has been shown to help the family that adopted him aren’t typical rage-related qualities) but ANYWAY.

the point is, spirits are given something of a raw deal by the fandom and are almost always judged by their ability to conform to human standards. joly’s spirit multi is fuckin fantastic and making spirits different and complex and alien, while also familiar and very much people rather than set pieces in the stories of others. though all of them started out as npcs created by either joly (love, sincerity), myself (joy), or bioware (wisdom) it took joly no time at all to establish their stories. love and joy especially...

what i appreciate about love is the path they took to get where they are. how they weren’t always love, how they focus upon a specific kind of love, how they can’t always see when love is best working past. though i’ve only just started rping peace, i’m in love (get it) with the dynamic the two of them have formed. how they balance one another out and keep one another from straying too far into their own interests, and thereby corrupting themselves. it’s a dynamic that i wasn’t expecting at all when i made peace as an au to my zenyatta blog, but i think that’s the amazing thing about writing with joly. something falls into place and then it grabs you and the idea just won’t let go.

and as for joy, it’s probably the least developed of the spirits, having no form that’s recognisably alive nevermind a person. but it demonstrates well, i think, how “humanity” in elvhenan wasn’t defined by shape. when solas says he dislikes when people see him as just a pair of pointed ears, and that he doesn’t necessarily identify much with modern elves, the idea is expressing multiple things. one of them, i think, is that being an elf sometimes meant being a physical body with pointed ears, but sometimes you could just be bubbles and you’d still be considered a valid member of elvhen society. joy doesn’t exist as we do. joy forgets, joy prefers to never touch the earth, and it exists in a state of cycles to keep itself from becoming something like despair. joly depicts the beauty and the drawbacks of existing in this state and i’m just??? so glad they decided to write joy. b/c they do it more justice than i ever could.

@paragoninexile -

tam’s new blog isn’t fully set up but i wanna talk about her anyway. tam is a good hero and a good person, and in many ways sort of made to be a hero. when i found out about tam i was rly excited simply b/c she was very much like my warden, only with so much more care and thought put into her that now she’s basically replaced my canon warden in my heart.

i think my favourite thing about tam is how much of a front she puts up for everyone. crowning bhelen, even if it meant the death of another father figure. recruiting loghain, even if it meant losing her friend or possibly lover. it shows that even neutral good heroes still have to make decisions that could be considered ruthlessly practical. bhelen is not necessarily the better choice morally, especially not as an aeducan (especially especially not as an aeducan who doesn’t kill trian). i imagine tam knows that crowning him will have dire consequences not just for harrowmont, but the entire harrowmont line. she does it anyway, not because she wants to, but because for orzammar it’s the best choice.

i’ve loved finally having a chance to write one of my fave dragon age ships: gorim/aeducan. i have a weakness for ships who have been together since they were only young, and the progression they take in the au is so good?? being able to find freedom for their love in a life that is literally killing tamar, and the reason they only get 12 or so happy years together rather than 50. but tam is so good that i’m honestly proud to be able to give her those twelve years with gorim. one day i’m gonna make joly hurt w/ thoughts about the kid gorim adopts after tam dies and who he tells them all about. 8)

@cadashsmash -

cadri i think was the first joly character i interacted with, though i believe i remember ian from way way back when i tried rping merrill and couldn’t quite get a foothold like i did with solas and thora.

i’m in love with dwarves u all should know this, so ofc i’m in love with cadri. i love how rough around the edges she is, how she tries to do the right thing, and how doing so can lead to some messed up shit like killing abelas. the work joly’s done with reaver lore is perfect, working with how dirty and raw the specialisation is without making it too hardcore for an inquisitor to ever hope to specialise in it (stop assuming all reavers are cannibals fandom smh). one of my fave threads on thora continues to be the post-battle thread where both are recovering from the drawbacks of their own specialisations and clash because of them. it’s just a really unique idea that is what makes writing with joly so... rounded? like i’m never just writing one thing with joly. they push me as a writer in the best possible way.

overall cadri is just a rly excellent character who, like tam and harding, do credit to dwarves that the series doesn’t always. i’ve loved exploring how differently her and thora react to their position in life, i’ve loved seeing cadri’s anger or indifference towards dwarven society. it’s so valid and realistic and good. i’ve loved exploring the specific ways in which she bucks the presumptions solas has about dwarves, how even in universes where she’s not inquisitor her individuality is still nothing he expects from her kind and how she changes him anyway. i also will always be fond of this being their friendship song.

cadri: hey solas, what d’you call a flower before it opens? solas: a bud. cadri: I LOVE IT WHEN YOU CALL ME BUD. solas: UGHH.

@dalishfreckles -

it’s really hard to not write a post just about ian, honestly. all of joly’s characters are special to me, but i won’t deny ian is my favourite and has a very important place in my heart. if i were to truthfully answer those top 5 fave characters questions, ian would be on there no question.

as someone who goes through some of the same struggles as ian, he’s inspirational. seeing him struggle to keep surviving, to keep loving, to keep helping even when everything inside him is screaming to stop. i love seeing him make mistakes, honest ones or ones born of anxiety. b/c anxiety is more than just hating yourself or having trouble talking to people, although that is very real. sometimes anxiety can cause you to project some really terrible things onto people, things that aren’t really fair to them.

when i see ian doing things like... projecting his own feelings of worthlessness onto solas, assuming he must think the same rather than giving solas a chance to explain? it’s realistic, and it’s not good. it’s trying to pull people into the same destructive game you do to yourself. it’s also realistic, esp since in the thread i’m referring to solas fucked up and has shit to apologise for. idk, it’s just really comforting to see ian pull the same shit that i do, but knowing he’s still a good person and that i love him is an act of self love.

ian’s an important character for so many reasons, that i could probably write a 20 page thesis on him and his development / how much he means to me. i’m proud of him so much. i’m proud when he finds the strength to tease solas, i’m proud when he stands up for himself, even when he’s standing up against the people he loves. especially when, tbh. how as he grows he can see inara’s faults but doesn’t hate her for them, and tries to help her, when he’s under no obligation to. how he still tries to connect with solas after solas coldly brushes him off the first time ian admonishes him. and i love how joly shows it’s not easy. none of it is. and that ian has to keep choosing to be good, it makes everything he does that much more meaningful.

finally, ian isn’t a hero, necessarily. he’s not the sort of person people tell stories about, which is one reason i love the solas/ian pairing so much. it’s really all about the person for solas, and ian is just so much about what solas loves about people. it’s not always about battles and heroes, sometimes it’s just about a person who has the patience and love in them to make a tree grow in the middle of a desert alienage. sometimes the most wonderful things about people are the little, radical things they do for themselves and those they love rather than how they change the world.

this has gotten to be very long, and probably rambling, but to be fair to me this is like two weeks of joly-positivity i’ve been holding in.

i’ll probably be doing one more free day tomorrow, even if today is the last day, just to do a v general positive post for those i follow. but i wanted to take at least one day to credit the person who has inspired me with their words and characters. like. this was just their characters? i didn’t even get a chance to go into the ways joly’s prose shines, how it’s descriptive and yet never difficult to comprehend. how many different types of plots they’re here for.

but to make a long story short, joly is an incredibly talented writer. i’ve said this before, but i can look back on things i’ve written years ago with joly and still like what i wrote (as well as what they wrote but that should go w/o saying), which is a rare feeling, simply b/c joly lets me access the best writer in me. we often here in the rpc use “muse” as a shorthand for “character we write that inspires us” and i’ve found it a difficult word to rly use-- simply b/c joly and their characters are as much my muses as my own characters. at least in the sense that thinking about them inspires me to write.

tl;dr- pls follow and write with joly. b/c the only thing i love as much as writing with joly is reading what they write with other people.

[distractthegoddess]

For DWC: “You’re…magnificent.” Any pairing of your choice!

Dazed and Amused

Characters: Alistair and Khalda Aeducan

Words: ~1200

Rating: Teen for swears

For @nilesdaughter and @dadrunkwriting

He’d never seen anything like her before. He’d fought briefly with some of the seasoned Grey Wardens after he’d done the Joining, but none fought with Khalda’s level of grace and power. Spinning shield blows and a well-honed sword that slid from darkspawn to darkspawn like they were no sturdier than butter. He hadn’t been paying enough attention when they’d been in the forest gathering the blood for the Joining. He was much too focused on making sure Jory’s sword hit home with a darkspawn and not him. The man could fight with the two-handed weapon with ease, but it was clear he was not used to allies in his vicinity.

But now, as he watched her kick a Hurlock off her sword he wonders how he could have missed this. Her inky black ponytail whipping behind her, miraculously clean of blood, and her shield breaking the neck of a second enemy. She turns to him now and he feels his heart stop when his eyes find hers. She runs toward him and for a wild moment, he thinks she’s going to leap into his arms and kiss him. ‘Duncan wouldn’t approve.’ he thinks deliriously.

Instead of her lips, he finds himself being shoved to the ground as she leaps past him to drive her boot dagger into the throat of a genlock that had come up behind him. Tainted blood shoots from the wound, coating her hair as she flinches away from the spray. A glob slaps him across the cheek and he’s thrown from whatever reverie had taken hold of him.

Sweet Maker, he’d only killed two. The tower guard had fared much better and Alistair was supposed to be a Grey Warden damn it.

“What in the ancestor’s angry asshole was that?!” She was yelling at him. That’s fair. “Are you a warrior or aren’t you? You know that as Grey Wardens, we’re supposed to actually kill the darkspawn and not offer them ourselves as a feast? Because whatever the hell you were doing, it very much looked like the latter. Is this why they need two wardens to light the beacon? Because I need to babysit you?”

Ouch. Harsh. But she did literally just save his ass, so maybe he’ll just swallow the indignation for the moment. “Sorry, I just-”

Her expression softens a fraction. “Did you get dazed by an emissary? Same thing happened to Gorim the first time we went to the Deep Roads together.” She offers her hand to help him up.

Alistair was pretty sure that Gorim’s daze was for the exact same reason as his, regardless of what Khalda thought. He takes her hand, grateful that she’s not trying to ferret out the real reason behind his stupor. “Who’s Gorim?”

And like a switch had been flicked, her face fell back to its stony expression. She pauses before answering, “Someone from a past life.” Without waiting to see if he was following, she marches to the door of the Tower.

He jogs to catch up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to dredge up a painful memory.”

“It’s moot now and we’ve got a tower to clear.” Her tone doesn’t exactly leave room for argument. She slams open the entrance door with a resounding crash.

“So not going for stealth then?” He hears the guard behind him chuckle, but Khalda moves on without acknowledging him.

She doesn’t utter another word as they fight to the top. He manages to avoid another Aeducan-induced episode. There was one close call when she used a convenient ballista to impale a darkspawn and let out a giggle when it flew into the wall. A giggle. Damn, she’s bloodthirsty. What did it say about him that he found that charming? Best not dwell.

Bursting into the top floor of the tower, they find themselves stopped short by an ogre. A very very large ogre.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Khalda says incredulously.

“How’d it fit up the staircase?” the mage wonders aloud.

“Do you want us to ask?” Alistair asks, grinning in spite of the hellish situation.

The mage is spared answering by the mountainous darkspawn taking notice of them. It screams out a battle cry and charges.

Khalda screams one back and takes off in a flash, shield at the ready.

“She’s a mite terrifying, isn’t she?” the guard asks as they charge together following her.

Alistair can’t fight the dopey grin he feels spread across his face. “Yeah.”

Any further conversation is stalled by the raging monster. There’s a moment of panic when the ogre, apparently annoyed by the energy balls being fired at it by the mage, decides to take the matter in hand, literally and scoops up the frantic man. His screams turn to gurgles and Khalda leaps into action, slamming her shield onto every inch of the beast she can reach. When this fails to free him, she rears back with her sword and stabs it through its most vulnerable area.

It roars in fury and drops the mage. He falls in a heap and the guard rushes to his side. Alistair can see his back moving with stuttering breaths. He’s alive, good. He turns his attention back to the ogre and Khalda.

She bangs her sword against her shield in an attempt to keep his attention. Alistair rather thought that was pointless since she’d stabbed it through it’s nether-bits. Chances are she had its undivided attention. Did darkspawn even have… that… business? I’ll have to ask Duncan. He’ll know. He tries not to imagine his commander’s reaction to that particular line of questioning. He shakes his head. You’re in a battle. Focus.

It charges her and he feels his breath catch in his throat when it reaches down for her. He runs after it, but he needn’t have bothered. When it reaches out to her, she dives under its arm and slices a decent sized chunk out of its thigh. The ogre screams again and falls to its knees. Alistair stops short when she sprints around it and lunges up its chest. Her dagger sinks deep in the fleshy chest and her momentum forces the ogre to its back. One boot braces against its chin and her sword sinks home through the temple before it can even think about reacting.

The dying gurgle is surprisingly soft coming out of its mouth. After its thick arms fall to the stone, there’s a long moment of silence, broken by the disquieting slurping sound of Khalda’s sword being freed from the darkspawn skull.

She hops down grinning and looks to Alistair. She must see something odd on his face though because her smile falters into a look of confusion.

“You’re… magnificent.” he breathes. She surprises him by blushing. He’d have thought her unflappable. Like before though, her guard is only down for a moment.

“Come on. The beacon is over here.”