#all my aus r: amelia loves her daughter elizabeth so much (i am beating up ken behind a dumpster)

[milfyclaus]

VERSE: SHE TELLS THE TALES BUT IS NEVER PART OF THEM. SHE WATCHES AND REMAINS ABOVE WHAT SHE SEES. an insane dragon a.ge au.

in which: a. comstock is a very tired bard, a single mom who works two jobs, who loves her kid and never stops, with gentle hands and the heart of a fighter. she’s a survivor (and elizabeth is the eldritch angsty teenager we all know and love).

the basics.

name: amelia comstock; formerly nostrand born: in the 4th month on the 31st day, 9:03 dragon age: anywhere from 27 during the events of origins to 41 during the events of trespasser.  nationality: fereldan titles: lady comstock, lady of the forge, lady of amaranthine, lady of the mines. occupation: minor noblewoman (bannorn) of the amaranthine region; purveying over the silverite mines. later arms supplier to kirkwall’s templar sect, eventually arms-master to the inquisition. class: rogue; long-range. specialization: bard marital status: widowed as of 9:30; formerly married to andrastian cult leader zachary hale comstock. children: elizabeth comstock; born in the late summer of 9:22. extras: only child of the prior bann and his lady wife - orphaned at 16. head of a rather large and squabbling family.

a brief timeline of events.

pre origins: amelia is the head of the nostrand family, a minor noble family of the amaranthine region that oversees the expansion and collection of the silverite mines that they use in their forges to create stunning metalworks - blades, arrows, daggers - of the finest quality that is then sent to templar orders and standing armies in ferelden and orlais. though a minor family, they are exceedingly wealthy and decently connected.  though now respected by the nobility, amelia’s teenage years after her father, the late bann, passed away in 9:19 were tumultuous ones - soured and tainted by a string of rumoured flings and affairs after an arranged marriage with an arl’s son fell through, facing rumours that the two had been less than chaste towards each other while still engaged; leaving the teenager furious and ostracized. isolated, she meets a lowborn preacher - zachary hale comstock - taking his newly formed cultists on a pilgrimage through the wending wood, and enthralled by his talk of redemption and second chances, she becomes a member and pledges herself to him; eventually becoming his wife in 9:21.

a note on this andrastian cult: zachary and his followers preach that the world has been tainted by the blight and the maker has abandoned thedas; in order to bring the maker back, the world must be cleansed in fire. zachary’s second chances are nothing more than a death cult with plans to purge thedas using the power of the fade to ‘reset’ the waking world to a state before the blight, and destroying any ability of the blight to return through a similar cleansing in the fade. nobody will probably survive this. zachary claims to be a prophet and has decreed that his child will be the weapon to do this; the one to ignite the world.

zachary is desperate for amelia to produce an heir to his cause as soon as possible - when almost a year passes with no sign of pregnancy, he blames her for their failings. amelia has an emotional and physical affair with a sellsword booker dewitt (a ferelden mercenary) and falls pregnant. she gives birth to elizabeth in 9:22 after an extremely complicated pregnancy and is left weakened by it; surviving only through the use of blood magic courtesy of mage robert lutece. elizabeth is hailed by the cultists, now living within the walls of amelias estate, as their saviour. 

despite her ties to this cult, amelia is a personable noblewoman who has become locally renowned for her generosity and kindness alongside her oratory skills - she aims to exemplify the love that the maker and andraste hold for all of thedas and its creations. however, when it is realised by amelia and her innermost circle (rosalind; rift mage, robert; blood mage, and zachary) that elizabeth is indeed a mage in 9:26, amelia withdraws from the public in order to protect her daughter from not only the templars and chantry, but from zachary himself; with ever more friction forming between the so called prophet and his ‘subservient’ wife, who has learnt more and more of what he intends to do to thedas, and has begun to work against him and his goals.

origins/awakening: the blight breaks out in 9:30 in ferelden; with rumblings of a sentient darkspawn experimenting on their silverite mine workers, leading the mines to be abandoned as a solution to the problem until it is solved. elizabeth’s powers become unstable during this period; and she is haunted by the voice of the architect in her dreams. amelia finds out what zachary intends to use elizabeth for in the near future when the time is right. furious, a fight breaks out between the two, and he attempts to strangle amelia to death. she, however, manages to hit him over the head with a rock carving, and continues to do so until he is (mostly) dead. with most of the estate already evacuated, amelia packs up what she can for herself and elizabeth, and leaves zachary and the estate for the darkspawn. they survive on their own for a few months, before joining a group of refugees that are heading to safety in the free marches. amelia does not appear as an npc in origins/awakening. the warden may gather some notes and diary entries left in her offices which the architect has claimed as its own detailing a worried mother’s observations on her child, who is very clearly a powerful mage; as well as the dreams her child has been having. the mines and estate remain abandoned even after the blight is stopped and the darkspawn are pushed back.

dragon age 2: amelia and elizabeth arrive in kirkwall in 9:31 dragon, seeking to get as far away from the cult they abandoned and with amelia wishing for elizabeth to gain some sort of normalcy despite things, and is able to employ another apostate to train elizabeth in secret, stabilising her powers for the time being while they set up roots in hightown. as a show of good faith, amelia donates a sizeable amount of gold to kirkwall’s templar order, and in 9:32, cements a deal with knight-commander meredith stannard (@idolbound) to provide them with discounted arms as tensions rise as a result of the qunari compound at the docks. while many nobles and the wealthy of hightown are not concerned with lowtown, amelia finds that she cannot quite shake the teachings the cult had drummed in to her for over a decade, and is one of the very few - if not only - nobles in hightown that can be found in lowtown - either offering courier, foundering, smithing, or metalwork employment to its residents, or distributing gold to them as well. she is one of the few that will attempt to table improvements for both lowtown and darktown and take them to the viscount.

as tensions rise in kirkwall, amelia and elizabeth are once again faced with the prospect of abandoning their home for somewhere safer, though neither know where that could be. in 9:37, kirkwall’s chantry is blown up, and the mage rebellion starts alongside the mage-templar war; halting any progress on leaving kirkwall. elizabeth and amelia stay to help rebuild kirkwall until the breach is opened in 9:41. da2 sidequest: beware of false prophets. hawke will be contacted by one of amelia’s servants who will request for hawke and their party to meet with them in lowtown at night - once the party arrives, amelia reveals herself and explains that the cult she and elizabeth have escaped from has heard rumours that they are in kirkwall and surviving members are now hunting for them - namely elizabeth; and knows they will stop at nothing until they take elizabeth from her. she promises to pay hawke handsomely if they do her the service of deterring these cultists. there are three courses of action - hawke may give up amelia and elizabeth’s location to these cultists who are searching for their holy mother and messiah, hawke may lie and send them to the far corners of thedas to search, or hawke may kill these cultists outright. 

inquisition: elizabeth, entranced by the control of the breach and drawing parallels to her own powers, requests that amelia take leave of kirkwall to join the inqusition, or elizabeth, tired of being shut away, will go alone. afraid to lose her daughter, amelia agrees; and the two leave for skyhold after the mage-templar war is ended, and make their way to haven. once there, amelia offers her services as both a noble bard and overseer of excellent weaponry to the inquisitions forces; serving as an important diplomatic connection as well as supplying the inquisitions forges with raw material from her mines to be forged into weaponry, becoming its arms-master. elizabeth, now in skyhold, is able to be trained officially as a rift mage, and begins to explore the depths of her powers. the two will stay on as inquisition agents after the events of trespasser, regardless of the inquisition being “disbanded” or “slimmed down”, continuing to work for the greater good.

dai loyalty quest: sins of the mother. amelia’s approval - while not a finicky thing - can be difficult to obtain given her own wavering beliefs and loyalties. she disproves of conscripting the mages, strongly approves of offering them a full alliance; strongly disproves of disbanding the templar order, approves of preserving the order, and disproves of recruiting them - she is generally approving of pro mage decisions given elizabeth; and strongly approves any positive chantry related options. once her approval is high enough, her questline opens up - concerning elizabeth’s origins and powers. the inquisitor can return to amelia’s long abandoned estate; discovering amelia’s diaries and zachary’s paperwork (along with his corpse, lol) and gains insight into what occured within amaranthine. the inquisitor can choose to bring amelia to judgment for her killing of her husband - or choose to let it lie. blessed be the child. if the inquisitor chooses to let it lie, the second half of her loyalty quest begins - elizabeth, growing ever confident in her powers, faces a crossroads both within and without. the inquisitor can either harden her; creating a very powerful human weapon within inquisition - albeit one that lacks empathy and has little care for others around her; but her abilities remain unstable and she is at a high risk of becoming an abomination. a softened elizabeth is much more confident in her abilities; stabilised and in tune with her connection to the fade and all those who dream in it. 

on elizabeth.

not gonna lie this was a point of contention for me given that the depth and enormity of her powers is based off of wanda maximoff and she can create new realities jut by thinking about them and is generally an op time god so with that in mind - 

elizabeth is a mage; and not just any mage, but a dreamer. she is able to enter the fade at will and is particularly sensitive to demons alongside her intense connection to the fade. she is able to shape it to her will when in the fade (including the ability to create new sections of it), and is able to pull others through with her. in addition, elizabeth can open unstable ‘doors’ into the fade, and in areas where she stays for prolonged times, reality will begin to ‘warp’ as the veil weakens around her. the longer she stays in an area, the more she can bend the merging of the fade and the waking world to her will; and things will begin to change - small things, at first; perhaps gardens where there were none, or roses where there was once lavender. but this weakening of the veil is dangerous, and eventually demons will attempt to come through using elizabeth’s dreams. elizabeth, for all intents and purposes, is always veering on becoming an abomination.

much like in the canon of bsi, elizabeth is, unfortunately, an experiment. this connection to the fade is a result of fellow rift mages rosalind and robert lutece’s (twin mages; with rosalind being a rift mage and robert being a blood mage) interference in regards to the andrastian cult and its wish to reset thedas to a time before the first blight. experimenting with equally unstable fade magic, zachary and rosalind brought an infant elizabeth into the fade, for only a moment. faced with hostile demons after a moment of exploration, they attempt to cross back over into the waking world of thedas, only for elizabeth to lose her pinkie in the fade, forever altering her connection with it. 

amelia, obviously, would never send elizabeth to a circle - she is her only child and the most important thing in her life. though her wealth has given her the means to pay gold and coin to apostate rift mages to train elizabeth, though until the fifth blight, elizabeth is trained by rosalind and robert. elizabeth grows up secluded in her mother’s estate, tucked away from her family and prying eyes until the blight forces them to relocate and they end up in kirkwall - where she is still kept away from others in order to not only protect elizabeth from the templars, but to keep her from any who may seek to use her powers for their own gain. once they are able to leave and inquistion starts, the two will go to skyhold where elizabeth will (hopefully) receive the training she needs to stablise her powers while experiencing ‘freedom’ for the first time in her life.

given the fact she has received training elizabeth is able to control her powers - to a degree; but she is still, for the most part, a child; and fear and anger can get the better of her; and her dreams terrify her. sometimes, things happen; mistakes are made - and the truth is elizabeth does not even know the limits or depths of her powers as of yet.

on zachary.

i hate him and he’s dead. <3