#bringing Gale to Thedas with me

[meglet1]

When two of your favorite fics get updated in the SAME DAY it’s like…

[marythegizka]

WIP Meme

Tagged by @illusivesoul, thank you 😊

I'm not sure any active mutuals would be interested in taking part (or interested in this particular BG3xDragon Age crossover, for that matter), so I'm not tagging anyone this time around, but if I'm mistaken and anyone reading this wishes they'd been tagged: *palpatine voice* DO IT

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The tunnel grows lighter as the other party turns a corner, their torch casting long shadows on the floor. Not a chance they'll miss them. Not a chance they'll miss him. He can smell their bloody clothes from here. Just a few more seconds. He pulls his daggers out. 

The footsteps come to a halt. 

"I don't know who you are or what you're after," the man calls out, "but if you want to live, I suggest you head the other way. Ortan Thaig is crawling with darkspawn." 

'Darkspawn'. Well, that's a new one. Somewhat nicer than 'beast' or 'leech'... not that it changes anything. 

Before he can stop her, Tavalyn steps out of hiding, gesturing for him to stay back. 

"Greetings," she hazards. "I'm Tavalyn. Tavalyn Silversong. We were on our way to Thay when my friend suggested a shortcut, but it seems the portal spell misfired. We have no idea where we are or how to get back on track but you... mentioned vampire spawn? Ahead of us?" 

The voices don't answer. Not right away. Then the woman sighs. 

"This is what I get for not stealing Irving's books when I had the chance. I... I have no idea what you're talking about but my husband is right. You need to turn back. There's a group of darkspawn ahead and it'll only get worse the closer you get to the Thaig. We're heading to the surface ourselves. If Corypheus hasn't destroyed it." 

Ah. Another 'end of the world' situation. Wonderful. 

[invinciblerodent]

idly daydreaming while crocheting a little Iona and watching an Inquisition stream, and now I'm kinda stuck with an entirely too elaborate AU in which she's yanked through some sort of a portal to 9:41 in Thedas in the post-game, and she's stuck inquisiting until either she figures out a way to get back, or the party figures out a way to get her back from the other side

man, it'd be very convoluted, but so fun.

I picture it going on from two separate perspectives, one in which she's experiencing a whole new kind of Racism and Oppression from the kind she's used to, vis a vis being a caster AND an elf ("I'm neither Dalish -whatever that is- nor a servant, I'm not an apostate or a maleficar -again whatever that is-, I've never even heard of an Andraste in my life, and my name is most certainly not Lavellan- listen, I'm not unused to just showing up at places, but usually they're at least still on the Material Plane?") and another in which Astarion is all but breaking down Gale's door in the middle of the night like "INVITE ME IN ALREADY, DAMN YOU, SOMEONE KIDNAPPED MY FUCKING WIFE WITH WEIRD MAGIC"

("Oh, you two did marry after all? That's wonderful, congratulations! Was I not invited?" "Well no, it's nothing official, it just felt appropriate at the time-- what am I talking about, THAT'S NOT THE POINT RIGHT NOW, WIZARD.")

(also Solas would fucking shit. can you imagine an elf mage 1. who claims to be a descendant of dragons, 2. whose magic works nothing like anything he's ever seen before, 3. whose understanding of the world isn't confined to just the two sides of the Veil, but includes a veritable plethora of very different plains of existence?)

(she's BEEN TO HELL, you guys. And when someone is surprised about it, she'd just shrug, and say something like "Well, a hell. There are eight others I've never seen. My best friend Karlach could tell you more, she's a tief-- well. Half-infernal, I guess, is a term you all would understand? No, not a demon, or a devil, nothing like that, those are different things, I-- ugh. Someone bring me a chalkboard and a bottle of whiskey, this will be a long night.")

[squadron-of-damned]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤️

Alright, shameless self-promotion, sanctified by an ask! I am so going to do this! In ascending order of my fond feelings for the fic:

The Night In Gale - Not my personal favourite, but definitely the read favourite, and it'd be a shame not to mention it as such. Supernatural x Good Omens (TV series) crossover. Like many SPNxGO crossovers this one also taps into the "Hey, they are both named Crowley, ain't that fun!" This one, however, brings up soem plot twists, and, dare I to say it, plot! Took me 4 chapters to come up with it. Written with the collective knowledge of 6 episodes of Good Omens (aka the 1st series) and 6 episodes of SPN. Noteworthy tag: Seat Belt Propaganda

Sick of you - Hiveswap AKA Homestuck, hanahaki trope explored through the lends of troll romance. Written around the time when my laptop burned out for the first time, so I had to re-write msot of the second chapter, because I had lost it. Subtextually fun character exploration and how people incorporate into themselves character traits of people they value around them. Blatant Tagora Gorjek apologism. Noteworthy tag: Quadrant Parkour

Between the Clock and a Hard Place - The Great Ace Attorney Chronicels, but they are more used as a setting rather than working with a premise. I wanted to write a horror and working magical system, instead I had, once again, wrote a slapstick comedy. Most notably this fic puts Enoch Drebber into the role of a refusing protagonist and it is due to this fic why I refer to him almost strictly as "Eeny". If I had finished Angelus ex Machina (more magical horror, thus time about failing and/or refusing family expectations), I'd put Angelus ex MAchina here. No noteworthy tag, sadly, I was boring in the tags.

The Original Feeling of Sharing - A self-insert "Modern Girl In Thedas" Dragon Age: Origins playthrough starting with a deviation of the plot: The initial battle at Ostagar doesn't happen. My personal power fantasy. It's funny, it reads quickly, spoiler alert: the main hero dies in the 15th chapter (out of 44). Literally the only fic when I sat down and wrote down a point by point what was going to happen and when, rather than just winging it as I usually do. Noteworthy tag: Graphic Description Of Becoming A Golem

Never is the end - Chances are this is my magnum opus. Could I have written it better? Of course. But could I have come up with something better? No. The Stanley Parable fic inspired by the release of the Ultra Deluxe, because really did the point nto carry across: TSP did everything it could have done inside of itself and could be only repetitive. To bring something new, it'd have to stop being TSP in the first place. But the challenge was: Can I write TSP outside of TSP? Also I started writing this as I began to take medication to treat my depression, so the fic starts helpless and lost and finishes with powerful justified anger, as such was my mental journey. Never is the end was written to inspire you to re-read it at least once. Noteworthy tag: Narrative Horror.

Honourable mention: They Hadn't Met at the End of the World - One of my early works which still stands up to the test of time. This is not a fanfic. A little heart-warming story about four different trolls (who as such share name of their species but not the actual species) who meet in a dying post-apocalyptic urban world and celebrate the end of the year together. Noteworthy tag: Theoretically a crossover

[ink-asunder]

The Heartless DLC - The Rest of the Story

I’ve given a lot of thought to this, but I’ve decided to drop my Dragon Age: Inquisition/Dragon’s Dogma crossover fic, The Heartless DLC. I’m not out of ideas, but it turns out retelling the entire last 2/3rds of the game WITH original quests was too much of an undertaking for me. That combined with my surprising distaste with elements of Dragon Age and issues with the fandom just made it a project that I have no interest in continuing at this time.

It’s not fair to keep my readers in the dark, even if I *do* plan to get back to it someday. So I’m going to give a heavily abridged but general summary of how The Heartless DLC would’ve continued and ended right here, just so you get the full story instead of me leaving you hanging. It’s also a fairly long post!

After the events at Adamant, the Inquisitor and Arisen ltake care of some side-quests, favor quests, and cleaning up some areas whilst also preparing for the ball at Halamshiral. As stated previously, the Arisen and Gale will be going on their own, not under the Inquisition. Once there, the Inquisitor searches for clues, and the Arisen very quickly realizes that there are pawns serving at the ball. Gale pretends to faint, which allows him and the Arisen to be temporarily excused while the pawns take them to the servant’s quarters.

Once in the privacy of the servant’s quarters, the pawns give Marnie an urgent update about the state of things in Gransys. The Duke wasn’t ill, he was trying to keep her away. Nothing particularly heinous is unfolding, but the pawns are worried the Arisen has abandoned them. Marnie assures them that she’ll return, but before they resolve the issue, the harlequin drops in and tries to murder them.

Cut back to the Inquisition. The Inquisitor finally finds some clues and escapes to the servants quarters with his companions. By the time they get there, Marnie and the pawns are nowhere to be found and everyone else is slaughtered. They briefly have a moment of “oh, so I guess we might have to consider Marnie did this” and move on. They find Marnie and the pawns engaged in battle in the courtyard, and the two groups converge for the rest of the quest. They discover the pawns have been traveling to and from Gransys by a Riftstone they brought overseas with them. This Riftstone is later transported to a grove closer to Skyhold for ease of access to the Pawn Guild. It might be noted that Marnie is the one who finds and unlocks the Empress halla door, mostly because her pawns were collecting whatever they could find already. She has Gale interrogate the man for her, then she brings the information to the Inquisitor. The empress is spared, Florianne is arrested, and the Inquisitor has enough evidence to ally all three parties.

Now that there’s a Riftstone at Skyhold, Gale is going out at night on jobs in other worlds. More pawns begin to frequent Skyhold. They don’t blend in well, but the Arisen is able to explain it away as if the Duke sent over members of his elite army, of which the Arisen is a commander. No one ever suspect she had that kind of station. The pawns all seem moderately wary of Solas, but decide he won’t pull anything in Skyhold around the Arisen, for whatever reason. Gale has the most influence over the other pawns aside from the Arisen because he is the main pawn in this universe. That puts him at a high position, even though he may be younger than many pawns he meets.

Gale still goes to Solas frequently. Their meetings range from Gale asking for help with spells to discussing the Inquisition and the Arisen. Solas starts asking Gale to keep their meetings a secret from the Arisen (red flag!). Meanwhile, Cole and Marnie settle their differences; Marnie says she was never upset with Cole to begin with, and they both make a point to be more objective and communicative with each other. Marnie resumes training Cole and gifts him a pair of climbing boots with spikes on the bottoms (shout out to RavenNox on fanfiction.net for mentioning the strider concept art in a review, because I hadn’t seen it before!).

After Wicked Eyes, Wicked Hearts, the Inquisitor decides to finally get in a good dragon hunt like I’ve been teasing. This is a long-ish “Dragonhunt Arc,” and it’s what I’d imagine Marnie’s main favor quest would be if this was a real DLC. They go to the Hinterlands to fight the Fereldan Frostback, (I know, I should be writing them getting back at that damn dragon in Crestwood, but I haven’t written anything in the Hinterlands yet, and I wanna get to it). There’s an epic battle where the Inquisition FINALLY gets to see more of that dynamic climbing from Marnie and Cole. Gale also shows some creative use of healing spells by preemptively casting healing spells while Marnie is in danger, then she’ll heal as soon as she’s injured and it’ll spare her, (Gale actually did stuff like this with consumable curatives while I was fighting the Ur-Dragon quite a few times, so I wanted to implement it).

At the end of the battle, the Arisen realizes that dragons are just animals here, as opposed to intelligent, self-possessed beings like in Gransys. Therefore, the only real “reason” she came to Thedas was a bust. She’s noticeably sullen and distraught for several days, and Gale begins to worry. Eventually, Gale reaches out to the Inner Circle for help, and they arrange a quiet evening in the yard where she and Gale could dress fancy and slow-dance because it was the one thing she wanted to do at Halamshiral and couldn’t do. There’s this vague internal monologue about how she never gets to keep what she loves, and it’s implied she only truly loves Gale, and it’s also a subtle reminder that she’s a fucking god, but anyway.

After the Dragonhunt Arc, I get back to the main quest, except I kind of don’t, because I want things to be more dramatic. They chip away at some favor quests, and oddly enough, Gale and the Arisen start to drift apart. This is due to several factors including but not limited to Marnie being preoccupied with other pawns and Inquisition-related duties, but it’s also largely because of a concentrated effort on several people’s part to get Gale to assert himself as an individual human as opposed to a pawn defined by his Arisen.

When they go to the Temple of Mythal, Marnie and Gale can barely keep themselves together. The group manages to complete the quest regardless. They ally with Abelas and Morrigan drinks from the Well of Sorrows.

When they face off against Corypheus, Marnie uses the Backfire skill when fighting the red lyrium dragon to ensure it dies. In that moment, a part of her is frighteningly powerful, almost like she is no longer human. (God this stuff sounds corny.) She passes out for a minute and Gale stays with her while she recovers and the others go to fight Corypheus. Corypheus probably delivers a villainous monologue. I was originally going to have Marnie and Gale bust in and at the part where Corypheus says "ancient ones, if you've ever been there, be with me now," Marnie says "I am one" but I decided against it. The Inquisitor lands the killing blow because this is his quest and his game.

During the afterparty, the Arisen and Gale interact with each member of the inner circle with the news that they'd be leaving for Gransys in the morning. Neither are drinking and they're both dressed as if they're going to leave any minute.

When Marnie and Gale are setting off, Cole comes to Marnie one last time and tells her she never will be alone. That reassures her and, for the time being, she seems ready to confront Grigori upon her return to Gransys.

When Marnie and Gale return for the Tresspasser DLC, they still haven't killed Grigori, but they did go to Bitterblack Isle. As such, their gear is dope and dragonforged, and their mental health is in shambles. Gale also converted to the way of the bow while they were there. They aid the Inquisition in fighting Qunari and finding Solas, and he and Marnie have a final showdown where he's revealed to be the Dread Wolf and she's revealed to be the Seneschel who reset the world so she could relive being the Arisen again and again. Solas needles her about why she redid everything, why she refuses to assume her place as Seneschel, and how many times she's done this same thing over and over again. Gale manages to shoot Solas from afar and they're all driven apart.

After the Inquisition returns to Skyhold and orients themselves, only Gale reappears saying his Arisen sent him in case they meant her any harm after her reveal. After the Inquisitor agrees not to compromise Marnie, Gale leads him to the ruins by the Riftstone, where Marnie's been waiting. They have a chat about her true origins and intentions, and she admits she didn't defeat Grigori because she knew she'd have to leave the mortal world soon after. She agrees to help the Inquisition when she can and places a Portcrystal by the Riftstone. They both agree that things are probably going to get a whole lot worse.

And that's where the fic ends. There's also a number of subplots I neglected to detail. Cole's favor quest, a few side quests related to the pawn guild, etc. As I said, I might return to the fic later on, but I really don't care for it or the fandom or the source material anymore. It's sad, but I'm happier elsewhere. And I thought it was only fair to leave some conclusion to the fic regardless. I might post certain chapters and snipets on my tumblr, but for the most part, this is the last you'll see of the official fic.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the readers and fans that have stuck with me through all this. I wish you all the best, and I'm sorry I couldn't give you the full fic. Stay safe out there!

[bigfan-fanfic]

Your Lips are Sweet

For @scharoux and @spring-into-love March Prompts!

Prompt: Honey Kisses Pairing: Gale Lavellan x Josephine Montilyet

Josephine stamped yet another missive from Orlais containing the usual perfunctory words of praise for the quality of the Montilyet Trading Company and let out a large and quite unladylike yawn, and then she glared at the smirking elf staring at her from across her desk. “And what are you looking at?”

“What, I can’t gaze at my beautiful wife whenever I want? I thought that was the whole point of getting married!” Gale chuckled, and Josephine felt the blush sear her cheeks again. Her husband had a way of flustering her.

Josephine tilted her head at him, lips quirking. “I know you well, Signore Lavellan. You only smirk like that when you’re hiding something from me.”

Gale laughed. “Fine. I have several packages that I wanted to share with you.”

“That’s not it.” Josephine narrowed her eyes playfully. “That said, I do want to see these packages, so I will let it go.”

“Well, my lady love, these parcels refuse to be opened anywhere that there’s a report or work thing of any kind.” Gale said, eyes twinkling.

Josephine sighed and set down her quill. “Very well. I shall retire to our bedchamber, and you will bring me these packages.”

- - -

Gale placed the packages on the bed before slipping in, wearing only the sleep trousers he had taken to. It had been hard to adjust to the silken nightgowns and sleep attire expected of Antivan nobility, but Josephine had been wonderfully accommodating. Of course, perhaps that was because she enjoyed the sight of his bared chest.

Josephine smiled at him, dressed in her silken nightgown and quickly slipping into bed, brushing his legs with her cold toes, making him yelp and her giggle in response.

“Now, what do you have for me?” she asked, her eyes lighting up.

“First of all, I ordered something for our anniversary without telling you because I wanted it to be a surprise.” Gale said sheepishly before handing her the first package. “I know it’s tomorrow, but I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.” She ripped it open with gusto, before squealing with delight. She had always loved those Tevinter scented candles. It had been quite difficult to secure them, but some of Josie’s knack for diplomacy had rubbed off on Gale.

The second package was addressed from Orlais, from the city of Windron. Josephine smiled. “Ah, what did Tash send us?”

“A number of things.” Gale smirked, indicating the rest of the pile. “Among them a letter... congratulating us on our first anniversary, so, we’ll have to read it tomorrow before the celebration your father is throwing for us.”

Josephine rolled her eyes, reaching for the smallest box. “Well, I know what these are. Tash has been writing to me about the advances that Ylenn Basin has made, particularly in the realm of magics meant for storing food. And in patisserie.”

Gale chuckled, raising his eyebrow. “Let’s pretend I don’t speak Orlesian.”

Josephine’s eyes lit up. “Desserts.”

 -  -  -

Gale laughed around a mouthful of something Josephine said was called ‘honey cake’ at a particularly ribald story of Josephine’s youth.

“You said that? To a duke? You?”

Josephine giggled. “My sister does not always exaggerate. Just most of the time.”

Gale leaned over to kiss her, and she giggled again after pulling away.

“What is it?”

“Your lips are sweet.” she sighed. “They taste of honey.”

“Flatterer.”

Josephine darted in to grab one of his petit fours of honey cake and pop it into her mouth. “Try mine.”

He kissed her and smiled against her lips, laughing. “They do. You taste of honey as well.”

They finished the box of desserts, and Gale drew Josephine close to him. She seemed suddenly uneasy.

“Gale?”

“Yes, my love?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“...I... I visited the physician today. I... I am with child.”

Gale froze. Josephine turned to him in worry, just in time to see a beatific look of happiness dawn on his features, and tears prickle the corner of his eyes. “Really?”

“Truly.” Josephine smiled, gasping as he grasped her tightly and peppered her face in kisses.

-  -  -

“So,” Josephine said through another large yawn, nestling her head into Gale’s chest. It was only after many kisses and the frenzied planning of a young couple expecting their first child that they were able to settle down and prepare for the new day once more. “What were you smirking about?”

“Earlier? Before you made me the happiest elf in Thedas for the second time?”

Josephine laughed, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. “Yes, my love. Before that.”

Gale smirked again, before kissing his wife’s forehead. “You look very cute when you yawn.”