#angitia mercar

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Drew a portrait of Angitia and her papá, Charon. Got experimental with the shading/lighting and idk how I feel about it but I'm tired of looking at it so I present it in its current state to Tumblr.

Then I got carried away and made a wee codex entry for them.

I am conscious of your dash space, so additional ramblings about Charon and Angi Mercar below the cut.

After some digging around into what info the game had on Shadow Dragon Rook (there's not a lot), but there's mention of a Mercar who is a Legatus. In the Roman army this was kind of equivalent to a general, so I'm assuming it's similar here. ANYWAY it's mentioned in a letter from Maevaris to Dorian that Charon Mercar quietly supports Tevinter reform. Given the name I feel like they're implying at the least that Rook could be related to him.

The more I thought about it, the more I was bothered by the glaring gaps when it came to playing a non-Dalish elf in Veilguard. By the games own established back story, you were found and raised by a Tevinter military family, and yet you still get the Dalish exclusive responses to certain things in game (The last time an oversight bugged me this bad in a Dragon Age game, Morrigan was shem-splaining Mythal to my Lavellan who had her vallaslin on her face). I find it nearly impossible to believe that the Tevinter military would have an elvhen general, let alone a Dalish one.

SO I decided to fill in some gaps for myself. It's been fun to imagine what kind of a person Charon Mercar is. After all, he adopts a random baby he found on a battlefield, no matter if Rook is a human, elf, qunari, or dwarf baby.

For Angi's dad, that meant he was a man who came from almost nothing who had worked his way up through the ranks. Overtime, through his travels and interactions with people outside of the Imperium, instead of falling deeper into blind patriotism, he began to see through the propaganda he'd been fed by the Imperium growing up. This left him between a rock and a hard place. He knew his rank gave him standing. Were he to leave the military, he'd go back to being a nobody who had no power to influence change, since the Imperium doesn't care about anyone if they aren't a mage or wealthy.

He stayed in order to use what little power he could to try and begin reform in Tevinter, not knowing what else he could do. Almost as if he were a Shadow Dragon, despite not even knowing they existed. Granted, he was much less effective because he was acting on his own and had to be careful about the things he said and whom he trusted. I do like to imagine that after Angi is recruited by the Shadow Dragons, they loop Charon into it too, making his work more impactful and effective.

Personality wise I imagine Charon as a bit of an old soul; quiet, more introverted, and someone who is constantly observing and learning the world around them. He's a single man in his early 30s when he finds Angitia. Naturally, single dad shenanigans ensue, but he is a good father, even if he is a little over protective sometimes.

The first time baby Angi grabbed his finger with her little hand and cooed at him, it was game over and he knew he was meant to be her father. He named her Angitia after his late mother.

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“Neve is flirting with my man" this and "Lucanis is flirting with my girlfriend" that--

HEAR ME OUT: Rook has two hands.

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Sketchy little comic feat a quote from Easy A, Charon & Angitia Mercar + Angi's teacher, Nehn.

More info dumping about the strange little chosen/found Mercar family below the cut

Couldn't fit him in this little doodle, but there's one more adult in the Mercar household that helped Charon raise Angi. He's Charon's childhood best friend, Viator. They both enlisted together, but a pretty severe injury caused Viator to retire early. Charon wanted to help how he could, and while Viator's pride wouldn't let him accept anything he could view as charity, he did accept Charon's job offer to act as his stable hand/handyman/Gardner around his moderately sized villa.

Viator is mostly recovered from his injury, but he does wear a brace on his ankle to help him with stability and balance.

While he doesn't actually live in the villa with Charon & Angi, he, his wife, and three children live just across the road.

When Angi reached schooling age Charon couldn't find a school he felt good sending her too (he worries about her being an elf in Tevinter) so he sought out a private tutor. He managed to find Nehn, a formerly Dalish mage who left her clan after her late husband passed. She found it too difficult to stay and needed to find healing elsewhere.

Nehn was already a scholar in her clan, but once she left she traveled all over Thedas learning everything she could, including fellowshipping with a few different universities across northern Thedas.

She also teaches Angi about the Dalish. Obviously no one knows for sure if her bio parents were Dalish, but somewhere in her history she is Dalish. Nehn and Charon both encourage Angi to learn as much as she can about the Dalish culture.

Charon handles the PE side of Angi's education. He teaches her to swim, climb, run, and as she gets older he even teaches her hand to hand combat and some archery.

When Angi develops her magic, Charon is ecstatic since he knows this will only help her standing in Tevene society, and conveniently, Nehn is a mage so she can help with that too.

Nehn and Charon fall into the "unrequited love that is actually requited, they're both just too scared to talk to the other person about it until someone in their life intervenes and tells them both they're being dumb" trope.

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She definitely looks more like her depending on the camera angle or the facial expression she's making, but I think I did pretty okay! Might try and tweak a couple things later in the magic mirror, but I had spent so long in the CC my eyes were hurting so I had to be done.

I thought it would be fun to try and make my second Rook look like an actress or a character from something, and because I'm working on a painting of Regalla from Horizon Forbidden West, I ended up trying to make her look like Angela Bassett.

She's a Shadow Dragon mage and her name is Angitia Mercar. She has the snake tattoo on her forehead, and one on her back. Her ears are pretty hidden in both these shots, but make no mistake, she is an elf. I've seen people say there aren't a ton of options you can pick to establish your elf is a city elf, but that's what I'm going for in her backstory.

Bonus cc screenshot of my og Inquisitor, Bronwen Lavellan that I'm using for this playthrough. I miss her. Veilguard may have healed my relationship with Inquisition just a little. I probably won't play it ever again, but it's been nice to be reminded how much I loved the characters and the story it set up.

Hell, I'll throw Emrys in here too since they're siblings and I wanna see 'em together.

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A few action pics of my Rook. I've started playing with the camera more especially during fights and it's been fun

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Just read a codex about Lorelei, the elf who runs the shop in front of the Shadow Dragon hideout and apparently she was one of the elves from the Denerim Alienage that Loghain sold into slavery. It mentions the Shadow Dragons freed her and she joined them shortly after.

If I'm remembering right (and I could totally be inserting my head canon here and I can't remember if it's actually in the game or not lmao) I think one of the things you can say you'll do at the end of Origins as a Tabris is say you're going to track down and rescue the alienage elves that were taken so now my working theory is my Tabris is either a Shadow Dragon or works/worked with them closely to find all the elves.