#and they are more like a crow collecting lore pearls

[jadzio]

Well when you can’t commit to one ship, why not take them all. I really love them

fishstick and cherrybomb are my comfort ships just pure fluff away from angst

while boomstick and riv x hunter are just ripe with angst potential to me

like spearmaster not being able to full understand and express their emotions due to the way they were raised, meeting a very emotionally driven arti and learning all this stuff, while helping arti heal from their scav hatred and grief, tho they aren’t the best at this emotion stuff and they can’t express themselves well or it’s hard due to their design and arti has such a hard time understanding them tho they know they mean well and in this essay i will...

[carabas]

So I’ve just finished reading the Dragon Age Tevinter Nights anthology, and short reaction: enjoyably hit and miss right up until that final extremely thorough direct hit, thank you Patrick Weekes.

Much, much longer version:

1. I don’t know how reasonable it is to try to extrapolate about what’s going to be in the next game based on a random short story collection, but hey, the novels that came out before DAI were about the mage rebellion, the Orlesian civil war, and eluvians, so.

So things I’m now expecting to see in the next game, aside from the Tevinter-Qunari conflict and Solas of course: Nevarran necromancy, Antivan Crows, Wardens who are struggling with decimated numbers after DAO and DAI (would be the perfect time for Razikale and Lusacan to both wake up at once really), and the Lords of Fortune, a never-before-mentioned Rivaini treasure hunting organization which appeared in I think three different stories here. 

Plus a few stories were very much signalling This Specific New Character Will Be Showing Up Again, whether in the games or elsewhere; I'll be shocked if Lucanis the “Demon,” reluctant heir apparent of the Antivan Crows who just got into a cliffhanger conflict with a Tevinter magister, doesn’t have more to do.

2. THERE IS A MAP, there is a great big fantasy map surrounded by nifty little illustrative details to poke at.

There’s a label reading “White Spire,” not in Val Royeaux, but on a mountain beyond the Arlathan Forest. Is that an error or is there really a White Spire mountain? If not an error, has it always been named that or is that new, possibly a new center for the mages after the war, after the original Spire fell? At no point is either Spire mentioned in this book aside from this map.

Lots of astrological sun and moon patterns prominently featured around the edges. Is that one moon chart depicting moon phases or an eclipse? Is it too conspiracy theory of me to be counting the nine dark moons (or spheres? like in that DA4 idol illustration’s seven slots?) on the dragon’s wing? Probably. Or are those spheres a reference to the second moon that never seems to actually be visible, is that missing moon actually deliberate. 

Most of the astrological charts are fairly straightforwardly showing sun/moon phases but what is the crowned figure in the one on the lower right meant to represent? The Maker? What’s going on with the horizontal lines passing through it/behind it? The two moons beneath it - is that an illustration of the moon in two phases or being separated into two (metaphorical moon in that case, presumably), do those horizontal lines also indicate separation, do I need to move on from the astrological depictions here, definitely.

Love the big horseshoe crab sea monster.

3. Patrick Weekes’s first story in the collection: halla shapeshifting! An elf named Strife who I fully expected to be revealed as an agent of Fen’harel mimicking ancient elven names like Sorrow and Pride, though I was wrong - would it be charming or just annoyingly unsubtle if that became a thing among his agents. An ancient forest guardian with lyrium blades who hunts magic in a way that struck me an awful lot like a forest-themed equivalent of a golem, though I may be wildly off base with that one.

4. Nevarran necromancy story. An odd bit of the chant to highlight for a funeral: “And the Maker, clad in the majesty of the sky, set foot to earth, and at His touch all warring ceased.” I continue to squint suspiciously at overlaps between Maker and elven god imagery. Also, evidently mortalitasi believe that when someone dies, an inhuman spirit is pushed out from the Fade into the physical world, and that’s part of the reason behind their housing spirits in bodies - neat! The existence of Curiosity spirits, also neat!

5. Is Ghilan’nain’s horrible body horror place supposed to be spelled Hormak like in the title and previous canon references, or Hormok like throughout the text here? I know this was just a mistake but maybe I’ll use this to say that in-world there’s multiple ways of transliterating Dwarven.

6. Lukas Kristjanson story #1, the one featuring approximately a million minor Inquisition character cameos and a meditation on Solas’s regrets, introduces a character with the phrase “free mage by special commendation,” and I was briefly thrown by that little signal that we are Not In My Worldstate, that the mages aren’t all free by default - except then the story went on to destroy Solas’s fresco so I wound up quite grateful for that little heads up that this isn’t my worldstate actually.

(Unfortunately I can’t get into this guy’s writing style at all, which is a shame because it’s one of the big Solas stories in the book.)

7. There’s a little plot point in the Wigmaker Job story that demonstrates those elven artifacts Solas had us activate all over Thedas do indeed strengthen the Veil - like, he wasn’t lying to us about what those orbs do, that is how they work, here we see a Crow stab one in order to deactivate it, weaken the Veil and unleash a horde of vengeful demons. Nice confirmation.

8. Genitivi is the Randy Dowager. (Possibly. At least, Philliam wrote a scene in which Genitivi alludes to being the Randy Dowager. I do appreciate an unreliable narrator but after a certain point it does make the lore hard to keep straight.)

9. By the time we got to the story about adventurers stealing an incredibly powerful healing amulet just to donate it to a mysterious contact at a makeshift hospital trying to help people where the Qunari-Tevinter war has spilled over, I knew better than to expect any cameos from DAO/DA2 characters. And with the mention of the squire, I was pretty sure the mysterious contact was going to be Vaea, and it was. Still. Anders would approve. And for a moment I was fantasizing that it would turn out to be him, or connected to him. A new mental setting for him and Hawke post-mage-freedom - makeshift hospitals at the edge of the invasion, secretly sponsored by a certain pair of absurdly overpowered, dungeon-crawling, treasure-hunting fugitives.

Yes, my Dragon Age interpreting is still all about Anders even when he’s not remotely present.

10. You know, I really expected the leaders of the Crows to be a bit more ruthlessly competent than this. Someone is setting up a grand demonstration, recreating infamous historical assassinations carried out by the Crows but now with the leaders of the Crows themselves as the victims, incredibly flashy, incredibly clearly sending a message, and yet not one of the characters trying to figure out whodunit is speculating about the meaning behind that message??? the motive in going to all that trouble??? it’s all, hm, perhaps it’s the qunari invaders. hm, this one was posed with a pearl necklace just like the one in the historical murder it’s recreating, i bet the culprit owns a pearl-fishing business! I know they’re assassins not detectives but at least show the professional courtesy of paying attention to the message in the show your fellow assassin is putting on for you, geez.

Anyway. Interesting Crow details: they talked about neutral ground and territories divided between the Crow households here, does that just apply to Antiva or like, does Arainai have claim to all jobs in Ferelden? 

And the line “Teia's back was bare except for a tattoo marking her as a member of House Cantori” puts Zevran’s tattoos in a slightly different light for me - he’s mentioned that some symbols are sacred to the Crows, and logically it follows that having that symbol tattooed on him would indeed mark him as a Crow to other people in the know, but that his tattoos mark him as belonging to House Arainai is a thing that did not hit me from that.

11. An agent of Fen’harel muttering “Felassan” to activate a rune. In memoriam? Charming. I mean it’s a rune that’s intended to kill an entire city, so possibly the more literal slow arrow is meant, but I’m still charmed.

12. PATRICK WEEKES CLOSING OUT THE BOOK BY JUST DUMPING THE CONTINUING DREAD WOLF HUNT PLOT ON US. 

So much. 

An actual giant wolf in the Fade, I’m so happy for tumblr user corseque. 

A character again raising the possibility that Solas is not an ancient elf but rather a young elf who stumbled onto old magic, a theory I thought debunked by Trespasser but here we are considering it again. 

A minor side note that a lot of Kirkwall’s templars went rogue after the explosion - that’s not relevant to the post-DAI plot really, I’m just noting it for my generally-DA2-focused fanfic purposes. 

The possibility that somniari (presumably) can kill even dwarves who don’t dream in their sleep. Somniari in general or did Solas personally step in here?

A ritual involving the red lyrium idol resulting in the phrase “As if we were the blood and the cavern the body through which it flowed” right before the POV character enters the Fade, which is a rather Titan-esque turn of phrase. 

The Dread Wolf again asserting that all creation is in danger and he’s trying to fix that. A biased POV character recognizing that, huh, funny how those spirits around the Dread Wolf which surely must be demons actually look an awful lot like Justice and Valor. 

And Charter’s notes at the end, so direct, not only spelling out the new details on the idol for us (that the figure represents a crowned figure comforting another) but thoroughly hitting us over the head with Solas’s essential characterization in his own words, as if Weekes is still trying to clear up any possible lingering misinterpretations there. (Prideful, hotheaded, foolish. Doing what he must. Sympathetic to elves. Said that he was sorry.)

And the quiet simplicity of Solas coming to this meeting of spies in person because, pause, “...the Inquisition was involved,” written in such a way that you could read all sorts of things into that pause, whatever the Inquisition and the Inquisitor might mean to him.

The book would have been worth reading for this last story alone, what a note to end on.

[whalden]

Whalden School of Magical Propriety/ The Origins of Alva/ Prologue

According to Shaya Abernathy, she lived a quiet peaceful life on Maple Street inside of Abernathy Manor along with her books, tea cups, and an extensive collection of oil paintings decorating the Abernathy family history. No one ever seemed to come or go from the dark blue, Victorian modern styled home with the exception of crows circling the tall tower in the west wing. A lot of local lore began around the tragic history of the home, but no one ever dared get close for fear of the long line of witches that lived inside its walls.

Shaya Abernathy had no children, nor did she ever plan on having any. The little menaces that would run up on her porch was enough for her. Little did she know that was about to change. The sun had yet to rise that still dark Tuesday morning in the small Appalachian town of Mt. Crest. In the shadows, a cloaked figure floated through the gates of Abernathy Manor, a small bundle of blankets held close to their chest. Without hesitating, the cloaked figure gently sat the swaddled child on the door mat as another figure in a top hat and long tailed black coat appeared to stand at the open gates.

"I'm not going to tell on you, Maman Brigitte" called out a casually nasally masculine voice that was walking up the cobbled path towards the dimly lit porch. His face was painted in elaborate patterns that resembled a skeleton with sunken eyes. Long heavy locks framed his face under his feather decorated top hat. He held a cigar between his long boney fingers, his other hand tucked into the front pocket of his pinstripe long tailed coat. The buttons had been carved out of bones and into different shapes of bird skulls. He had taken Maman Brigitte by surprise as he came to rest at the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the iron wrought stair railing of the dark blue home. He gave a deep chuckle from the look on Maman Brigitte's face. The fury behind the thought of betrayal screaming through the look in her eyes, but he liked to act aloof until the situation presented itself. His straight face turned into a smile full of crooked teeth. "I could never tell on you, Maman."

"Baron, tonight has turned into a night for Lady Brigit," the cloaked woman said with a hint of bitterness in her Celtic accent. Her green eyes looked swallowed by the thick black line of ash that ran across her upper face, but the ash seemed to make her green eyes more piercing, almost as if she could see through you and everything in you simultaneously. Her dark red curls were falling out of the hood of her cloak, surrounding her freckled face in a golden hue reflected in the upcoming sun. "I couldn't let this child die. It is too soon for them. I know of where they come and of where they will go."

"You will always be Maman to me," he chuckled as he took a drag from his cigar. The laugh disappeared quickly from his face and turned into a playful sense of curiosity. The Baron was used to seeing many things between the mortal realm and the magical realm. He and Maman Brigitte existed most often between the two realms, creating crossroads at places of collision and guiding souls through the veil.

"And from where did the child come and where will they go?" The Baron continued, moving the cigar back to his lips as he studied the woman for a moment, his eyes setting on the child. A rooster cawed in the distance causing his eyes to narrow as they flicked back toward the woman. This only caused him to raise an eyebrow in suspicion as Lady Brigit closed her eyes for only a moment.

"They have Áine's mark, the mark of my Celtic sister, goddess of the fae. Each holds a prophecy of a fairy or fae's future and the effects they will have as a champion of both worlds, the prophecy of the druids." Lady Brigit held up what appeared to be a small pearl like stone hanging from a silver chain, but instead of the milky reflective coating of a pearl, a pale blue glow was emitting at a small radius. Beneath the light blue skin of the stone was a swirl of dark teal and gold moving beneath the surface in slow motion, almost appearing like shooting stars on a clear night held back by a single glass orb.

Lady Brigit looked past the stone hanging from her fist and stared into the Baron's face, looking over all of the artful details in his skeletal paint, waiting for a response. Surely he would understand that this child had immediately become a family incident amongst the Celtic gods. The child's safety was important to the long awaited prophecy of the druids. The Baron's top hat sat atop his dark locks, hiding his eyes beneath its shadow as the curiosity in his face fell. His eyes locked to the stone as all emotion seemed to drain from his face behind the paint. Even his dark amber eyes that were usually lively with expression seemed to dim as he glanced back up at Lady Brigit. His eyes became unfocused before settling to look at the still sleeping child.

"I found them near the bayou outside of Bastrop, Louisiana at nightfall. I followed a trail of smoke to the closest home. I could only watch as their mortal caretaker died in the fire. They come from the Abernathy line. There is no doubt that with the mark of Áine at hand. Shaya was the last of this line until this moment. Only Shaya had never fully grown into her powers. Perhaps this child will, should they be given the chance. I only took the child, knowing that I could get them to a place of safety and with a family that knew of our dark world so as to prepare them. We can only hope Shaya can teach the child our ways before they must return to our world."

Lady Brigid set the translucent stone on the child's chest, gently sliding the stone into the folds of the blanket. She couldn't look away from the child as she pulled out a small letter she had scribbled to Shaya Abernathy about the situation, expressing that she would be back to explain in further detail at a later date.

"I trust you," the Baron whispered. "They will return to our world when it is time. Until then we have to trust Shaya Abernathy to provide for and protect them." The woman only gave silence as a response. She didn't look up at the man as she stood quietly from her place hovering over the child. The sun was beginning to rise to meet the tree line as the sky grew lighter by the moment.

"Maman," the man whispered in return, causing the woman to look at him. Her eyes held the sight of a warpath her body had not yet seen. "Have faith. We have to be patient and trust that the divine will guide them back to us. We mustn't halt their path by adjusting the timeline any further. They must stay here. When the time comes, they will be ready, and you will be ready to receive them. Until then, I can watch over them from the shadows. They have my blessing. I will not take my hat off for them yet."

Silence sat between them at that moment, as thick and heavy as the weight of the stone tucked in the swaddling with the soundly sleeping child. Something rustled in the woods beside the house, causing both figures to snap their heads in that direction. They needed to avoid human contact, and both knew so. For a mortal to face the Baron meant near or immediate death. It was best to keep death from happening around an innocent child's name.

"We need to leave," the Baron said, holding his hand out for Lady Brigid. She took it, and the moment she touched his hand, they disappeared into nothing, leaving the door frame of the house on Maple Street empty with the exception of the sleeping child, a letter, and a stone of prophecy.

[elsewhereuniversity]

Summer

I didn’t figure out that Elsewhere University was anything other than a place filled with shivery-but-ultimately-harmless traditions until I’d already started my second year.

  It wasn’t anything too exciting - I stumbled into the wrong part of the library, came out and realized I hadn’t missed my afternoon classes after all. I went to class, came back to my dorm room, had a panic attack, and went on with my life. Oh, and I changed my safename. I think I ended up going through half a dozen in the next few weeks, trying to find one that didn’t actually mean anything to me. (I remember Toucan was one of them, though I think I got anxious over what if it somehow offended the crows.) Sunny was the one I stuck with that year, mostly because my TA for Intro to Statistics sat me down and told me to just pick one so he’d know who to give the assignments back to.

  I already knew most of the lore by then. I’d thought it was just fun bits of knowledge, traditions and legend-building, but I’ve always collected that kind of thing. After that initial panic (having made sure the horseshoe was securely over my doorway, and stuffed salt packets in all my pockets, and turned my underwear inside-out, and written and deleted several emails to my parents) I remembered that according to everything I heard, Bio majors didn’t usually interact much with the Fae. I’d actually been disappointed by that, back when it was just a story not quite close enough to touch, but it was a comfort now. So once I’d settled on my new safename (and stopped side-eying my poor roommate), I caught up with my assignments and moved on, just a little bit more careful than before.

  I fell in love with lab work that year, and on the advice of a professor shifted into the tiny Molecular Biology concentration. Elsewhere University doesn’t do much research, but there’s lab space available for fourth years doing a thesis, and you can use it earlier if you have a Prof willing to supervise and sign off for you. The Molecular Genetics professor was full of ideas for what I could do with the reagents left behind in the fridge and one big freezer, and between us we managed to get me an internship the next summer, to stay and start on my own project.

  I spent those months sharing a tiny apartment in the next town over with an English major going into her fourth year. (I don’t know why she was staying for the summer. I asked, but she gave me a different answer every time - she needed to hang teardrops on the rainbow, or count crow’s teeth, or find the door out of the laundry room. After a while, I stopped asking). In the mornings she’d drive us both into the university, and in the evenings I’d either wait for her in the library (always near the front) or I’d take the single late-night bus that ran from the university to the middle of town.

That bus isn’t safe. My parents knew that, though their concern was about other humans - other students, maybe, and me alone at the bus stop after dark. The ones that come by while you wait for the bus are dangerous, yes (especially the ones who only look human until you look away and see them out of the corner of your eye, and the ones who whisper into your ear and aren’t there when you turn around, and the ones who offer sweetly to let you sleep on their couch so you don’t have to ride all the way home in the dark (and maybe some of them were really human, or at least real offers, but it’s never safe)). I’m more concerned about taking the right bus and not the carriages pulled by horses that snort smoke, or the mockup of a bus that I almost got one night before I realized that the steps were wood and the driver had no eyes.

  I think they get bored over the summer.

  You’d think that I would have been safe during the days. I thought so. Everyone knows about the Fae and Bio students - and even if I wasn’t the kind of Bio major who’d be interested in studying the Fae anymore (a bit too macro-scale for me), I was surrounded by machines and chemicals, and in a science that focuses on breaking things down to their smallest parts and seeing how they fit together. Nothing that the Fae would want anything to do with, nothing that they’d even be able to mess with.

  Except.

  Except that my project involved mutating one specific gene (that we had samples of left over in the freezer), growing it in a lab strain of E. coli (also left over in the single -80°C freezer), and testing it to see whether it still worked. Except that as tiny as my lab was, I had to run up and down the building and into the next one to get to the machines I needed. Except that for all that it was tiny and for the sake of knowledge, I was still taking life and changing it, just a little. I think maybe that was close enough to what They do, some of them, to catch their interest.

  Or maybe it was just that it was summer and they were bored. I wasn’t stupid (or brave) enough to try and ask.

  It was a surprise the first time I left agar plates incubating on the counter overnight and came back to find bacterial colonies in colours that I’m pretty sure the human eye can’t normally perceive. Or when I had to run halfway across campus to stores and then go right back once I opened the package because my DNA purification kit was full of tiny white pearls. Or when I was walking back from the autoclave in the next building over, I decided to cross the greenspace instead of take the tunnels, and I met something that bent nearly in half to meet my eyes and offered to make sure my water was really pure.

  (I declined. Politely. I’m not that stupid).

  (…Then again I did keep the pearls, so maybe I am.)

  I cried some nights. My roommate wasn’t much help. We were off campus, so I’m almost sure she isn’t a changeling (or wasn’t then), but it became clear pretty quickly that what I’d taken for English-major dreaminess mixed with a bit of EU oddness was in fact almost entirely EU strangeness in a way that meant while I didn’t feel unsafe sharing a room with her, she wasn’t much help in talking about how scared I was. I couldn’t tell my parents - they wouldn’t have believed me, but they would have believed that I was so stressed and upset that I was starting to believe the school traditions and encouraged me to take a year off or transfer somewhere closer to home.

  I still don’t know why I didn’t do that. I guess I was just too stubborn, or maybe it’s that I’ve always preferred making the best of what I have to leaping into a new situation. Kind of silly in hindsight, but I did get through it in the end, so maybe it was for the best.

  And I did get through it. I asked one of the engineers for help and got a box with iron corners to carry samples and reagents in when I had to leave the lab. I made sure everything was stored in some sort of machine - fridge, incubator, whatever - or at least a metal cupboard before I went home for the day. I talked to my godmother (Wicca, and had suspicions about EU even before I went) and got thin iron chain sewn around the hems of my lab coat - heavy, but safer. And I started reading poetry to the crows.

  Things settled down when the rest of the students started coming back. I had gotten as far with my project as I was likely to get, and my supervisor (still acting oblivious, but she didn’t say anything about the failed plates or when the iron showed up everywhere) and I agreed that working over the school year would be a bad idea, since she’d be too busy to supervise and I wasn’t ready to work entirely on my own. It’s like second year again; I’m aware of the Fae around me, but they don’t pay me any particular mind and I don’t bother them. Classes have gotten harder, but I like my roommate this year, and she has her own protections to add to the room - she’s a pre-veterinary student, so I think some of them are in return for favours. My safename this year is Delta - maybe a little too on-point, but I think it fits.

  I’m going to apply again next year. I think I’ll try to get summer housing on campus though - the bus takes way too long.

[x]