#as far as i'm aware tevinter is the only country where mages would have freedom

[quilleth]

The Devil for the DATV ask game? :D

Thanks for asking!! (List of questions here if anyone is curious or wants to send others :3)

The Devil: What type of demon is most likely to target Rook? Why?

this one is good, so I had to think about it for a bit! I think Lilya would be most likely to attract a despair demon, or one of the ones related to them (like the remorse or regret ones that come up in the side quests in Minrathous in da4).

Explaining the why means getting a little handwavey with the story the game actually gives us for a MW mage!Rook and also sort of about how it seems to present the MW in general (or maybe I’ve just been too lost in the sauce of mage rights or mage fights for too long that it made me go huh that doesn’t sound right).

The game tells us MW Rook was found in the Necropolis as an infant on the background’s title card. However, a mage MW Rook tells Emmrich they ran around around the city for a while before their magic kicked in, and then they were found by the Mortalitasi and presumably, given the course of that conversation, raised by them? There’s contradictions to the stories they give us, and also to what we know from previous installments about how the Orlesian Chantry--which, unique funerary practices aside, Nevarra still follows-- works. Nevarra has two mage Circles including the one in Cumberland where the College is, and the one in Perendale that has a whole side quest in Inquisition about how the mages were afraid to leave it because they were afraid of how the people in the city would treat them given the whole mage-templar war.

So for Lilya, personally, I think if she did run around some in the city before her magic developed, she was too young to remember it. Then a guardian or parent brought her to the Necropolis, perhaps when she started showing magic and out of concern for her wellbeing, where she was found by the spirits, like the game describes. I think she probably stayed with the Mortalitasi for a while before her magic really kicked in and couldn't be overlooked, and then she was sent to the nearest Circle, like any other mage in a country that follows the Orlesian Chantry would've been before the Circles are abolished during Inquisition. I imagine the Mourn Watch make an arrangement for her to go through her Harrowing and join them back in the Necropolis when she's old enough.

And then the Banner Wars happens and they send her away. Again.

So Lilya has a fear of abandonment from having it happen multiple times, especially at a young age, and a very desperate longing to have a place and a family of sorts where she belongs. She, of course, buries this under several heavy layers of snarkiness, sarcasm, bad puns, and a gigantic “fawn” response in situations where other people might have fight or flight.

I think given that, and I think it was a despair demon pulling the strings in the fade quest in origins, by putting people in either remembered situations, or in idealistic situations based on what the demon thinks the companions would want (though maybe that was sloth. I don’t feel like checking it at the moment though xD), it could easily pull on the insecurities and self-criticism she has; creating a little idealistic alternate version of events where slowly, the companions express disappointment and eventually leave, until it’s just her.