#and rachel doesn't take a force of inquisition soldiers to go put The Fear Of Rachel into a whole dalish clan

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I just discovered your fics and THE DRAGON AGE ANIMORPHS OH MY GOD I NEED A MILLION WORDS OF THAT AU PLEASE TELL ME EVERYTHING

THAT AU IS ONE OF THE LEAST POPULAR FICS I’VE EVER WRITTEN AND IT’S A SHAME BECAUSE I’M ACTUALLY VERY CLEVER.

Anyway, Jake is a Seeker who joined the Order young, for appropriately righteous reasons, and got word just before his vigil that his beloved older brother had grown distant in his absence, had joined a cult order of apostate mages and stopped speaking to the family.  He went into his vigil conflicted about the possibility of having to face Tom, someday--or that his cousin the Templar might do it while he wasn’t there--and wound up using the time to think a lot about what it meant to be a Seeker, and what his purpose was, and what it meant to have a duty.  The Spirit of Duty that touched him made him a spectacular Right Hand of the Divine, and an even better leader of the Inquisition.

Rachel’s a Templar, who joined to take some of the burden off her mother and ensure a better life for her sisters.  She’s not a true believer in the religious sense, but she was sold very thoroughly on her job, and when the Harrowing of a childhood friend went badly and took Rachel and the mage, Melissa, with it, Rachel got--vicious.  She scared everyone, including herself, before she managed to pull herself back.  She’s not proud of how things went down in Kirkwall, and doesn’t trust the Chantry anymore, but she’s been a Templar her entire life and didn’t see a way out.  When her cousin offered some kind of redemption, as the commander of an Inquisition, she grabbed the chance with both hands and didn’t look back.  Rachel idly considers feeling guilty, when she notices how attached she’s gotten to their mage Herald, but--the world is ending!  If now’s not the time to kiss herself a handsome elf with sad eyes and a tendency toward giving people static shocks, when IS the time!

Cassie is a diplomat, not born to the Great Game but phenomenally talented at it anyway.  She’s known for being uncommonly nice, so nice that plenty of people don’t even notice that they’re signing their riches away.  She started the political circuit to help fund her parents’ work (Cassie also gets drafted with some frequency into the research work of the Inquisition), but the Great Game is essentially a lobster trap--lots of ways in, not many ways out.  With the Inquisition, she feels like she’s making a difference, not just playing at it.  Also, the Seeker is--charming.  Very charming, even though he fumbles all his fine speeches around her.  She certainly does not think about that while getting them invitations to Halamshiral, though, and no one would dare suggest it.  She’s the only person who doesn’t go on missions--not because she can’t fight, but because she’s so godforsaken busy.

Marco picked up the nickname Seahawk ages ago, or so he’ll tell everyone--it’s because he fits in anywhere, see?  He thinks they call them osprey out here in the South, but they pop up all over Thedas under one name or another.  The perfect spy, with a charming smile and a quick tongue and a self-effacing sense of humor.  Easy to get along with, easy to forget.  It’s a survival skill, when you’re trying to survive in Ferelden as the visibly Tevene son of a disgraced Magistrix.  He and Jake worked as Left and Right Hand, respectively, for years before the death of the Divine, with a carefully managed policy of ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.  It makes it--difficult, for both of them, when they start running the Inquisition and Jake starts trying to reign Marco’s more ruthless tendencies in.  Marco’s personal quest, featuring the opportunity to harden or soften him, involves rescuing his mother from the Venatori or killing her outright, of course.

Ax is a wayward Qunari, of course, bright-eyed and ready to rumble.  He’s not a mercenary so much as a cadet displaced from his troop, which was annihilated by a Venatori attack along with his previous Karasten, his commander, who Ax grew up with and worshiped like a brother.  The Inquisition is essentially the couch he’s crashing on, until they find a way to get him back to his people, and if he gets to hit some things in the meantime, all the better.  Ax is a true believer in the Qun, who barely concedes to have his Qun name shortened by the others, of course he is, he is loyal to his people, these outsiders just don’t understand, but--

But, of course, Karasten always said the same thing, even after his long absence from the Qun when he was presumed dead.  And then, of course, he hears the Herald describe the Qunari who dragged him out of the Fade at the cost of his own life, and it sounds like Karasten, it has to be Karasten, but he gave the Herald a name that Ax has never heard, a decidedly un-Qunari name, and then--and then they find evidence that his Karasten was not doing battle all that time after all.  That he, perhaps, fell in love with a Dalish woman and adopted a son before being forced back to the Qun against his will.  And that he might have been hoping to pull his brother out as well, before he died saving the son he’d lost.  Ultimately Ax chooses the Inquisition, after meeting his brother’s shade in the Fade.  He lets Karasten--he lets Elfangor give him a new name, and keeps it forever.

And Tobias, of course, is the Herald.  He didn’t even need to be at the Conclave.  He was turned out of his clan and had hoped, a little recklessly, a little suicidally, that bringing information from the Conclave would win him entry to some clan, somewhere that wasn’t a Circle with their rules and their cruelty.  Now he has a green mark on his hand and the weight of an Inquisition on his shoulders, worshiping him as a Herald of a Maker he doesn’t even believe in.  But he believes in the cause--who couldn’t, with the Commander saying serious things about protecting people and kicking these demons off their world--and he can’t get rid of the mark, so...  All right, then.  He’ll do it.